Cry Zimbabwe: Independence - Twenty Years On - Peter Stiff

Cry Zimbabwe: Independence - Twenty Years On - Peter Stiff - Galago - 2000 - 496pp, indexed, maps, full-colour photographs - Hard cover with dust cover: very good condition - Internally: nearly new condition.

Postage & packaging R45.00

The story of Rhodesia, its Unilaterial Declaration of Independence in 1965 and the subsequent war that lasted througb 1979 is a fascinating story. For 7 year war launched by ZANLA/ZANU and ZIPRA/ZAPU in or around 1972 culminated in the election of an interim government in 1979 led by Bishop Abel Muzorewa and finally `independence' in 1980 with the election of Robert Mugabe, the leader of ZANU (PF). In April of 1980 Mugabe assumed office and the white community, which had prepared to leave the country en masse, decided to stay, partly at the behest of the former Prime Minister who had led the country from UDI, Ian Douglas Smith.

The story of Zimabwe's subsequent decline, fall and collapse at the hands of Mugabe's dictatorship has been touched upon in Ian Smith's own Bitter Harvest (2001) and principally in Martin Meredith's Our Votes, Our Guns: Robert Mugabe and the tragedy of Zimbabwe (2002). Meredith's account focuses mostly on the late 1990s. In contrast Peter Stiff, who lived in Rhodesia for 28 years and worked in an elite police unit, has privded readers with a true portrait of the entire experience of Zimbabwe from 1980 through 2000. He is strongest discussing the period 1980-1983, which included the the falling out between Joshua Nkomo and Mugabe and the subsequent ZIPRA resistance to the government, fears of a Matabeleland UDI by the Ndebele people who made the majority of the area and formed the ethnic group (tribe) from which Nkomo was from. Eventually the Zimbabwean government formed the 5 Brigade of North Korean trained soldiers drawn from Mugabe's supporters and unleashed them in Matabeleland in an operation that would come to be known as Gukurahundi, a genocide of Ndebele people.

With an expert's knowledge of the land and its people Stiff brings his typical writing style to this excellent history. There is no flowerly language here, just a strait presentation of the facts with numerous discussions of daring military actions and descriptions of events down to minute details. In many places Stiff leaves the reader with the only existing historical account of events. No other book can provide the level of detail, based on interviews with participants, about secret operations in a country such as Zimbabwe. But Stiff is even better and giving the reader an actual view of how things really are in Africa. For instance he provides a very interesting explanation of why Nkomo left Botswana in 1983. It wasn't because he could get better digs in England or because he had already resolved to return home. It was because there exists in Botswana an ethnic group of Kalanga who are part of the Ndebele tribe. Stiff notes that "the popular view of Botswana is that it is a single-culture country [of Tswana]," barring the few whites and Asians who reside in the capital. When on visits Botswana they don't realize that this cleavage exists and is most pronounced in the area of Francistown are a majority. So much of the writing on Africa, whether in Africa or in the West, simply does not understand the reality of Africa. In Africa this is party because people choose propoganda over reality, and in the West it is due to ignorance and the need to romantisize the continent through the creation of false classifications and categories that do not mirror reality.

As usual, as with all the Galago volumes published by Stiff, there is the usual inclusion of maps, documents and color photographs, something that no book should be without. In the end the last hundred pages chronicle the formation of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the creation of `war veterans' groups, farm invasions and the attempts to disenfranchise the remaining 86,000 white Zimbabweans. The book chronicles the country's descent into hell as both blacks and whites become victims of the regime. The book also deals with the rise of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. In the end this book will be one of the few first rate chronicles of what befell Zimbabwe in its 20 years after independence and perhaps serves as a reminder of how not to run a country and the danger that `revolutionary' movements pose when they come to power if they do not act responsibly to ensure free elections and refuse the temptation to demagougery.