Maxwell, dedicated campaigner

I met Maxwell Kapachawo in 2013 when I was conducting my PhD research. He has a fascinating life story, having been born on a commercial farm to farmworker parents in 1975. After school he studied and became a church minister, a calling which enabled him to leave the farm to forge a different career. However, Max then fell ill and eventually found out that he was HIV positive, at a time where HIV stigma was at its height – no more so than in the church. When he revealed his status he was promptly stripped of his position and told to leave. Rather than let this experience defeat him, Max became the first religious minister to openly declare their HIV status, and went on to feature in many national campaigns addressing HIV stigma. His illness nearly killed him before he was given access to life-saving ARVs, and he survived tuberculosis twice.

Max still lives on the farm he grew up on, although it was taken over by politically connected individuals during Zimbabwe's land seizures. Being on Harare's urban edge, the former farm has been widely settled by incomers belonging to unregulated housing cooperatives. The former farm-worker community has been squeezed into small pockets between these new settlers. Max also became an important campaigner for the rights of this community, leveraging off his HIV activism. It has not been easy for him, however. This photo of us was taken in December 2022 in Max's little house on the farm. Two months later, this very house was bulldozed by the city authorities, leaving Maxwell homeless.

We continue to collaborate to document the travails faced by former farm workers. You can read about my Zimbabwean farm worker research in my book, Ordered Estates, published from my PhD research by Weaver Press.