Add to that, although Bourne has a well traveled background as a young journalist and then a specialist in Commonwealth studies and human rights, he has never lived and worked in the country. The end-notes show how busily he did research and interviewed a range of people in Africa and Britain these last two years. Is it an advantage for an author to be detached, dispassionate, filtering the views of main actors and providing balance? Perhaps.
But I think the book serves a thoroughly useful purpose in pulling the whole, sad 120-year story together and indicating in that final chapter how many mistakes were made, opportunities missed, by so many politicians and governments. He deals fully, at the end, with “the Mugabe factor”, without letting it dominate. And Bourne has no heroes. No, that’s not right. His heroes – if that’s any comfort – are the suffering, enduring, resilient victims of this long history of repression.
One of the attractive features of his narrative journey is the number of times he digresses to contrast how other governments have faced similar circumstances. In covering the “crucial year” of 1997 when President Mugabe caved in to Chenjerai ‘Hitler’ Hunzvi and his war veterans and announced the first seizure of 800 white farms, Bourne recalls how Mozambique under the 1992 Rome peace agreement produced (with UNDP backing) a trust fund. This supported 93,000 troops and guerillas for two years while they integrated into civilian life with their families. Mugabe’s lack of follow-up to his famous independence speech on reconciliation Bourne contrasts with Jomo Kenyatta’s harambee (pull together) campaign. He points out that Namibia and Mozambique have ‘rotated’ presidents; and he cites Brazil several times as choosing the wiser way.
Conversely, after describing the horrors of Operation Murambatsvina in 2005 and quoting Police Commissioner Chihuri’s description of the victims as “worms”, Bourne quietly mentions that officials in two Nigerian cities – Lagos and Port Harcourt – also carried out slum clearance campaigns that year.
There are intriguing bits of information that give colour. Some bits explain the strength of feeling of the combatants: Josiah Tongogara grew up on the farm of Ian Smith’s parents. Emmerson Mnangagwa was “severely tortured” by the Rhodesians, Bourne says but gives no details. He records that, on arriving at Lusaka for the 1979 Commonwealth Summit, Mrs. Thatcher wore dark glasses for fear of having acid thrown at her, and he retells the rumour that Sally Mugabe’s death from kidney problems “may not have been accidental” (based on the fact that Sally died at 60 – 41 years younger than her mother.)
So what made the wheels fall off? Bourne rightly places a lot of blame before 1990; on land grievances, including the Land Husbandry Act, which Garfield Todd and other whites thought progressive as it gave tenure and access to loans; on the Central African Federation “built on illusions”; on UDI “the greatest misfortune” and on British failure to intervene in 1965. A familiar list, and Britain under Thatcher and Blair compounded its faults by not buying out white farmers as it had done in Kenya.
What of the “Mugabe factor”? He is, says Bourne, “a loner” long isolated from colleagues and experienced people with thoughtful priorities. Tellingly there is no worthwhile mention in the book of Bernard Chidzero or Enoch Dumbutshena, and none whatever of Garfield Todd, Victoria Chitepo, George Nyandoro or even Nathan Shamuyarira. Land reform as ever was the key issue, but during the years of opportunity Mugabe was more concerned with education, and was never one for reconciliation while adept at surviving by dividing rivals. A bleak prospect and, yes, catastrophe. – Reviewed by Clyde Sanger, former editor of the Central African Examiner and Africa correspondent of The Guardian (UK).
Post published in: Arts