It’s been one of the best documented reigns of terror, author Peter Godwin says of the Zanu-PF atrocities that followed the landmark 2008 elections in Zimbabwe.
In his latest book, The Fear: The Last Days of Robert Mugabe (Picador), he answers all the questions that many might have about this country on our border. Zimbabwe is so much a part of our psyche, yet it is still mostly ignored. He is still trying to deal with the world’s reaction to what is happening in the country he had no option but to leave – especially as a journalist critical of the ruling party and its leader.
What he has done in this book is to distil all the information he gathered in the few years since the last elections and to try to make sense of what he describes as all the information that is available. He is fully aware that he is dealing with a sceptical world, and he is trying to document each atrocity in as much detail as possible.
One of the things he speaks about loudly and clearly is that South African newspapers are sitting with this huge story on their borders but are not covering it in the way they should be.
He believes there are many similarities between the neigh-bouring countries and many lessons South Africans can learn from the downward-spiralling Zimbabwe.
“It happens by small calib-rations,” he says, “and you adapt. We were the prototype rainbow nation,” adds Godwin as he remembers those early days when white Zimbabweans could finally have a life without guilt. But he describes it as a kind of Faustian pact.
“We could stay, have many of our goodie bags and baubles, but we had to turn away from any-thing political.”
He believes that white Zimbabweans then retreated into a kind of mental laager, yet their wealth was way above the average.
“A politics of envy kicks in and the people who retreated have no power to sway the general populace as things turn nasty and this vulnerable group become the scapegoat.”
And even though he is puzzled by the silence of the local media – or more fairly, the lack of constant in-depth reporting – he does point out that as soon as there are white victims, the story lights up internationally.
This is what happened with the farm invasions, as opposed to the lack of noise during Mugabe’s earlier Matabeleland massacres. The big losers were not the white farmers, many of whom had some kind of support systems, but the huge labour force who were then left destitute.
Godwin points out that while South Africa has its fourth president, “we have never got beyond our first”. Mugabe simply got rid of everyone who spoke back and became more and more out of touch with what was happening and life in general.
He also stresses that Zimbabwe has had the world’s fastest-contracting economy in peacetime.
Godwin’s book captures what our neighbours are living through every day.
He believes the lack of South African intervention has to do with that mantra that underpins all the countries that fought against white rule. “They’re all still in power and it is not in their interest that any of these countries fail.”
That is also why any post-liberation party is undermined.
His wish is for a country and a continent where race doesn’t matter any more.
“It would be such a relief to live in a post-racial society that is allowed to be democratic,” he says.