Christina Lamb has written a good book about the last 40 years in Zimbabwe. She alternates between the story of Aqui, a black Zimbabwean, who grew up in a village, marries, has several children and who eventually becomes a maid for white families, and the story of Nigel who grew up as a privileged white Rhodesian. The author chronicles the rise of Robert Mugabe as it parallels the lives of Aqui and Nigel and their families.
Mugabe is 87 years old (in 2011) and, while he started his rule with improving the quality of life for the blacks and reassuring the whites, that good will and those good intentions have long dissipated. Just last week I heard on NPR that Zimbabweans are the "least happy" people in the world. What makes this book compelling is the double narrative...the excitement and hopefulness of Aqui as she watched Rhodesia became Zimbabwe and Mugabe replace Ian Smith and then, sadly, her eventual disillusionment. Opposition to Mugabe was/is met with violence, yet much of the world (including the US) supported his government for years.
Zimbabwe lies between the Limpopo and Zambezi rivers, and is bordered by South Africa, Botswana, Zambia and Mozambique. It is a beautiful country. Nigel and Aqui both grew up and still live in Zimbabwe but in very different circumstances, with very different histories.
As in Scribbling the Cat or The Last Resort, this book also describes the rogue war veterans, the white-owned farms, the poor villages and their subsistence existence, the government, its challengers, its political machinations and corruption and the eventual disenfranchisement of both white and black in today's Zimbabwe. These are sad stories whose outcomes are not yet decided.
Dzimba dza mabwe means houses of stone.
At the end of the book, Christina Lamb talks about The Great Zimbabwe: "...a mysterious series of walled circles, the remains of what had once been the greatest medieval city in sub-Saharan Africa....no one really know who built this place or why...the place has the same romantic feel as Machu Picchu. I wandered amid the stone walls and wondered what had happened to this great empire where more than 10,000 people lived until its collapse at the end of the 15th century...By summer 2006, inflation was above 1200% and...a family of five needed 22 million Zimbabwean dollars per month for basic goods and services. Life expectancy for women had fallen to just 34 years...The first deaths from cholera were reported in Harare and municipality cleaners began finding dead newborn babies people had thrown away because they couldn't afford to feed them...Just as the collapse of Great Zimbabwe remains an enigma, so it is a mystery how one man could so willfully destroy his own country. How could Mugabe, the man who seems at war with the world, be the same man who stunned everyone with his forgiveness and conciliatory speeches after independence [1980]?"
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