It was winter in Zimbabwe and at the height of the farm invasions when I first met Nigel and Claire Hough on their large ostrich farm about an hour from Harare. We sat on the terrace outside their farmhouse, chatting and taking tea and madeira cake, trying to ignore the wood smoke rising from the huts of the war veterans at the end of the lawn.

It was August 2002. The war vets had been living at the bottom of the garden for months. Every night the Hough (pronounced Huff) family tossed and turned to drumming and chanting. Every morning Nigel would find the carcasses of slaughtered cattle.

Their property, Kendor, was the only white farm left in the Wenimbi valley in the tobacco-growing district of Marondera. The first murder of a white farmer had happened only a few miles away in April 2000. Since then many farmers had been badly beaten; some had been hacked to death. Most had been either kicked off or fled.

The Houghs had thought about leaving. But the 1,400-acre farm and eight-bedroom house was their dream. They had worked hard and sunk all their money into it.

From the highest point in the area they could see 30 miles in all directions over a canopy of msasa trees and stunning granite rocks. They loved that spot and had christened their four children there, including the most recent, little blonde Megan.

They could not imagine starting all over again. Other white farmers who had moved abroad to England or Australia had ended up driving minicabs and living in poky council flats. Besides, the Houghs employed 300 people as well as running an orphanage for children whose parents had died in the Aids pandemic.

Nigel and Claire encouraged me to talk to Aqui (pronounced Ack-we), their much-loved maid and nanny. An exceptionally bright woman with a great big laugh, she was refreshingly candid as well as stunning in her red and white polka-dot uniform and green headscarf.

To the Houghs and their four young children, Aqui, short for Aquinata, was almost part of the family. Nigel had paid for the schooling of her children, and she had a wonderful warm way about her that his own children loved. They talked and joked together in a manner that gave me hope for the future of Zimbabwe.

Their relationship seemed different from any other I had seen between white farmers and black servants there — rather uplifting at a time when Robert Mugabe’s government was promoting racist hate-speak in the state media.

I wrote an article describing Nigel as “a model white farmer”, and I pointed out that to take his farm would expose the fact that the Zimbabwean government was clearly not interested in helping its people.

Within days, to my horror, the farm was seized. Shortly afterwards I got a phone call from Nigel. He had come to London to look at moving his family here after all, as they were eligible for British passports.

We met in a coffee bar opposite Highbury and Islington Tube station. It was a miserable day, cold rain pinging on the windows.

As we warmed our icy hands on the steaming mugs, he said: “I have to tell you something bad. It was Aqui, you know.”