Increasingly, I enjoy the critical and timely reviews of Percy Zvomuya in South Africa's Mail & Guardian. Thus, for this May 1 post, I select a few choice paragraphs from his March 2008 article on Holland's latest book:
Dinner with Mugabe (Penguin South Africa) is in equal measures touching and enthralling, damning and well-researched, reflective and pacily written. It's a psychological biography of the hero of the 1970s independence war against Ian Smith's government.
And then this, with revealing observation:
The difficulty with this kind of book is obvious: how do you get people to talk about the subject as honestly and truthfully as possibly -- and to a white woman? For, after all, even Mugabe's grip on power grows more tenuous while he still retains that power. I found, for instance, the account by Patricia Bekele, Sally Mugabe's niece, to be fluffy and idealistic. She obviously can't say anything really damning, even though Sally's last days were not particularly rosy especially when Grace Mugabe, then part of Mugabe's secretarial pool, became his mistress. The same criticism could be valid in the parts Holland interviews Donato.
The picture of the early Mugabe is that of a loner, an unambitious person, who is thrust into the leadership of a violent organisation, very much against his will. Tekere says he found Mugabe exasperating, indeed, infuriating whenever Mugabe blocked moves to purge leadership -- even in cases in which Mugabe stood to benefit. "At no stage do you find him doing anything to promote himself to a position of leadership. It's very strange. Even in Mozambique and at Lancaster House he seemed to be almost unambitious."
How little one knows or assumes...sometimes.
Read more at: www.mg.co.za
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