Review by New York Times Review
PETER GODWIN has carved out a niche as a skillful chronicler of politics and war in his native Zimbabwe. His 1996 memoir, "Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa," was an affecting account of his coming-of-age in white-minority-ruled Rhodesia, where his father managed a factory and his mother, a physician, operated a rural health clinic. The story climaxed with the outbreak of the civil war that would bring the guerrilla leader Robert Mugabe to power - and with the accidental killing of Godwin's elder sister by Rhodesian troops at a roadblock. "When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa," published in 2007, picked up the narrative with Mugabe's evolution into a brutal dictator who stomped on the opposition, evicted thousands of white farmers in a violent land reform program and plunged his country into ruin. Now Godwin has written the third installment of what might be called his Zimbabwe trilogy. In "The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe," he documents the 2008 presidential election and its aftermath, when Mugabe unleashed ruling-party militias in a savage campaign to keep his hold on power. Godwin's narrative begins with a moment of promise. It is early April 2008, and voters have just flocked to the polls to repudiate by an overwhelming margin Mugabe's catastrophic rule. Eighty-four years old and in failing health, the dictator seems ready to concede defeat to the charismatic opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai. Godwin has rushed to Zimbabwe from his New York home "to dance on Robert Mugabe's political grave." "The crooked elections he has just held have spun out of his control, and after 28 years the world's oldest leader is about to be toppled." Days later, however, Mugabe and his circle launch a counterattack. The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, controlled by the ruling party, flagrantly falsifies the vote count, forcing Tsvangirai into a second round. Foreign journalists are detained or chased from the country. (I reported on the election and left on April 1, just before the police raided the hotel where I'd been staying and arrested correspondents from The New York Times and The Daily Telegraph.) Then Mugabe loyalists begin hunting down, beating and killing supporters of Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change. Mugabe's generals call it Operation "Who Did You Vote For?" Their henchmen have a less euphemistic name for their activity: Operation "Let Us Finish Them Off." What follows is a kind of wartime diary as Godwin - one of the few Western journalists then remaining in the country - travels from Harare to rural Zimbabwe (including his birthplace, Chimanimani), documenting the bloodshed. He visits hospitals overflowing with maimed, bludgeoned, burned victims. "Think of deep, bone-deep lacerations, of buttocks with no skin left on them, think of being flayed alive," he writes of a torture method called falanga. "Think of swollen, broken feet, of people unable to stand, unable to sit, unable to lie on their backs because of the blinding pain." In one of the most riveting sequences in "The Fear," Godwin joins James McGee, the burly, no-nonsense American ambassador, on a fact-finding trip outside Harare. Confronted repeatedly by gun-toting policemen, militia members and intelligence agents, McGee bravely brushes them aside as he and his team gather evidence of torture and murder. (On this trip, Godwin wanders into a farmhouse used as a torture center by Mugabe's hit teams and riffles through a notebook that documents interrogations and names people "who are to be beaten.") Finally advised to leave the country for his own safety, he watches from New York as Tsvangirai withdraws from the June 27 runoff, saying he cannot participate in a "violent, illegitimate sham." But the story doesn't end there. A few months later, Tsvangirai and Mugabe sign the so-called Global Political Agreement. Brokered under international pressure by the South African president Thabo Mbeki - who stood silently by as the murder count rose - the deal keeps Mugabe entrenched in power but forces him to install Tsvangirai as prime minister and turn over half the cabinet seats to members of the Movement for Democratic Change. Back in Zimbabwe to witness the inauguration of the new government, Godwin quickly realizes that the ruling party has no intention of upholding its end of the bargain. Godwin's friend Roy Bennett, a white Shona-speaking ex-farmer and M.D.C. leader, beloved by his black constituents, returns from exile in South Africa to take up a junior cabinet post and is clapped into jail, held for weeks in frightful conditions. Tendai Biti, a courageous attorney and M.D.C, secretary general, survives his own incarceration on treason charges and reluctantly signs on as finance minister. "Here is Tendai," Godwin writes, "trying to scrounge the money to pay for the bullets that were used against his own supporters in the last election." Unfortunately, Godwin's book has a slapdash feel. It lacks the artful construction of "When a Crocodile Eats the Sun," which set scenes of political violence against descriptions of the increasingly desperate circumstances of his aging parents. "The Fear" can read like a reporter's notebook, a raw accounting of victims' horror stories and random encounters with farmers, political activists and others touched by the violence. It's also short on analysis. We never learn what motivates these mobs of ruling-party thugs, many of them so-called "war veterans" whom Mugabe previously recruited to expel white farmers from their property. And it's never clear how active a role Mugabe is playing in "The Final Battle for Total Control," as his campaign slogan calls it. Has the fading octogenarian ceded power to his generals and other insiders, who may be terrified at the prospect of being sent by an M.D.C-led government to an international criminal tribunal? Or does he remain the "crocodile" - slow, yet still capable of extreme acts of violence? Godwin, alas, never gets close enough to Mugabe to find out. Yet in the end these shortcomings fail to diminish the extraordinary power of Godwin's narrative. The accretion of detail builds into a damning portrait of a regime that has lost all its moral bearings, a gang of thieves and murderers bent on holding power at any cost. The book draws to a close with the testimony of Emmanuel Chiroto, a Harare opposition leader whose campaign for mayor has brought down the wrath of Mugabe's goons. Even as he is celebrating his victory, members of the youth militia set his house on fire and abduct his wife, Abigail, and 4-year-old son. The boy is released, but Abigail's swollen and battered corpse is found in the morgue. "This is my lovely wife," Chiroto tells Godwin, holding up a cellphone image of Abigail in her wedding dress. "And they killed her." Three years after his defeat at the polls, Mugabe still clings to power in his ruined nation. But Godwin's intrepid reportage has at least given voice to some of his victims. Supporters of the Movement for Democratic Change at party headquarters in Harare in May 2008. Godwin traveled from Harare to rural Zimbabwe documenting the bloodshed wrought by Mugabe's forces. Joshua Hammer, a former Newsweek bureau chief, is a freelance foreign correspondent. He is writing a book about German colonialism in southern Africa.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [March 27, 2011]
Review by Booklist Review
Returning to his native Zimbabwe in 2008, Godwin had hoped to dance on Robert Mugabe's political grave. But though Mugabe had been voted out as president, he did not concede power, instead sponsoring a brutal campaign of violence to crush his political opponents and suppress dissent in a land already devastated by hyperinflation and Mugabe's compulsory land-redistribution program. Chronicling the violence, the suffering, and the chaos; recounting the stories of torture survivors and victims of politically motivated vigilantism; and examining Mugabe's biography and politics (and placing himself in significant danger in the process), Godwin only occasionally recognizes the Zimbabwe of his childhood. But, finding heroism and resistance in the face of horrific carnage, he discovers a side of the nation that he had not known before. Much more than just the author's third memoir of Zimbabwe (after Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa, 1996, and When a Crocodile Eats the Sun, 2007), this selection is an important work of witness.--Driscoll, Brendan Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this remarkable look inside Mugabe's isolated yet restive Zimbabwe, journalist Godwin (When a Crocodile Eats the Sun) and his sister, Georgina, return to their childhood home "to dance on Robert Mugabe's political grave"; that is, to observe firsthand the teetering of Africa's (and the world's) oldest tyrant at the critical moment of the 2008 elections. Although the elections promised an end to Mugabe's nearly 30-year dictatorship, even as the 84-year-old president has clung to power in a campaign of widespread terror. The depiction of the heroic (if "prissy") liberation leader against white-minority rule turned brutal power-monger is at once personal, well-informed, and at times, heart-racing. Godwin and Georgina tour the economically devastated and state-terrorized cities, farms, and diamond mines at considerable personal risk, gathering candid interviews with dispossessed farmers, marginalized elites, and former insiders to cast a light on the workings of Mugabe's dictatorship and psychology, and the "fear factor" crucial to his control. Godwin's skills as a journalist and his personal connection to Zimbabwe combine to create an astonishing piece of reportage marked by spare, stirring description, heartrending action, and smart analysis. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In 2008, native white Zimbabwean Godwin (former foreign correspondent, Sunday Times, London; When a Crocodile Eats the Sun) returned to his home country, where the world's oldest dictator was struggling to retain his political power. Godwin intended to "dance on Robert Mugabe's political grave" after voters overwhelmingly rejected him. Instead, Godwin found his country engulfed in political violence orchestrated by Mugabe in an effort to punish opposition leaders and the ordinary Zimbabweans who had voted for them. The stories Godwin hears-from opposition leaders, displaced white farmers, and black Zimbabweans who are watching democracy fail them-are each more horrific than the next. The most harrowing chapters relate the torture and murder of individuals. Readers learn that in Mugabe's Zimbabwe, voting is a crime that can cost you your home, your family, and your life. The bravery of torture victims telling their stories is remarkable. VERDICT The risks that Zimbabweans take for democracy, for their friends and families, and for their country are extraordinary. While much of the book is bleak and frankly grim, there are instances of personal courage and bravery that speak to the strength of the human spirit. A difficult but essential read; recommended.-Julie Biando Edwards, Univ. of Montana Lib., Missoula (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Godwin (When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa, 2007, etc.), a white Zimbabwean journalist schooled in and relocated to England, bears brave witness to the last brutal days of Robert Mugabe's dictatorship.The author managed to infiltrate his devastated homeland during several months in 2008, when the 84-year-old dictator was finally voted out of power yet held on by a savage reign of terror and violence. Along with his younger sister, Georgina, a London broadcaster, Godwin toured the scarred land, interviewing victims of torture, rape and forcible land seizure, as well as officials such as the British and American ambassadors and the presidential opposition leader who was forced to drop out of the running. The author's account is harrowing and not for the faint-hearted. For example, visiting the south, where he and Georgina grew up, they spied people being pushed home in wheelbarrows, and only later did they learn that these were torture victims of Mugabe's interrogation houses, too weak to walk. Moreover, the hospitals began to fill with people battered because they dared to vote for the opposition. In the offices of the Counseling Services Unit in Harare, victims limped in, still in shock. Godwin relates these stories in pointed, immediate prose, as he, too, was horrified and amazed at this "torture factory," a system which "is ordained from the top, it is hierarchical, planned and plotted." With foreign journalists strictly banned from the country, the opposition removed to South Africa and the diplomatic community cowed but attempting "smart sanctions," Godwin's work serves as an invaluable, urgent dispatch from a country in the throes of an international humanitarian crisis.The author's return to his beloved homeland transformed by violence and no longer familiar proves heart-wrenching and extremely moving.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
