Holland rose to Zimbabwean prominence in 2008, when she published her book “Dinner with Mugabe”, in which she chronicled the rise of President Robert Mugabe from freedom fighter to a power-obsessed leader.
Police spokesman, Lt. Col. Katlego Mogale said a gardener found Holland's body in her home in Johannesburg’s Melville suburb of Johannesburg. There were no signs of foul play and nothing was missing from her home to suggest a burglary.
Holland grew up in the then Rhodesia, but described in her 2008 book "Dinner With Mugabe" her sympathy for the future president and others fighting to wrest control of the nation back to black Africans. She recounted first meeting Mugabe in 1975 at a dinner, and having to leave her toddler son at home alone to drive him to a train he was about to miss.
She interviewed Mugabe in November 2007, after he ordered white-owned farms seized, resulting in hundreds of thousands of black farm laborers lose their jobs, fertile lands wasted and nearly a third of the population flee. Later in his rule, he'd unleash soldiers and ruling party members on opposition supporters, who killed and injured with impunity. Though Zimbabwe is now run by a unity government, it remains fragile and there are few signs that Mugabe, who has ruled the nation since 1980, will give up power willingly.
"I think he's in denial, I think he can't face what he's done in Zimbabwe because that isn't what he intended to do," Holland told The Associated Press in 2008. "He did genuinely, I think, want to be the savior of his people, the liberator of an oppressed nation."
She has had articles published in a number of newspapers as a freelance journalist, and had an occasional column in Johannesburg newspaper The Star.
She is survived by sons Jonah Hull, a correspondent for satellite news channel Al-Jazeera English, and Niko Patrikios.
Post published in: News