A native-born white farmer and his Mashona maid reveal very
different aspects of Zimbabwe's history over the past three
decades.London Sunday Times foreign-affairs correspondent Lamb (The
Africa House: The True Story of an English Gentleman and His
African Dream, 2005, etc.) first wrote about Nigel Hough and Aqui
Shamvi in 2002, when Aqui apparently led an angry mob invading his
homestead and screaming abuse. (In fact, she was trying to protect
the Hough family, though at the time they felt betrayed.) Based on
intensive interviews with both Nigel and Aqui, Lamb's narrative
traces their individual paths beginning in the 1970s, around the
time that Robert Mugabe emerged as a revolutionary leader: hero to
the black population (save a few of the majority Mashona's tribal
enemies) and bane of the white farmers, who owned most of the good
land. Their recollections clearly delineate the cultural divide as
Rhodesian white minority rule was forced to capitulate to
multiracial elections and Mugabe's accession as prime minister in
1980. Blacks, who had shared neither power nor privilege, had
little notion of the role capital and investment played in making
their nation an African showplace of high literacy rates and food
surpluses. Average whites, on the other hand, hardly cared that
members of a tribal society in which accruing more visible wealth
than one's neighbors was considered rude, even anti-social, might
view them as infected with greed. Blacks gained admission to
private schools and did as well as the best white students, to
Nigel's admitted surprise. Yet reconciliation had no chance, as
Mugabe cemented his political monopoly by giving open blessing to
farm seizures (euphemized as "land redistribution") by ad hoc "war
veteran" parties that drove most whites from a now-destitute
country.A balanced portrait of emotions, ideologies and awakenings
on both sides of the racial divide as Mugabe's abuses pushed a
"model" African nation toward the brink of ruin. (Kirkus Reviews)
A powerful and intensely human insight into the civil war in
Zimbabwe, focusing on a white farmer and his maid who find
themselves on opposing sides. In 2000, after Robert Mugabe had
launched his controversial land reform programme, Nigel Hough held
on to a fervent hope that he might keep hold of his ostrich farm. A
few months later, however, he arrived home to see his family
residence and livelihood violently seized by veterans - and to his
shock saw his former maid Akwe at their head. By tracing the
intertwining lives of the Nigel and Akwe - rich and poor, white and
black, master and maid - Christina Lamb not only presents both
sides of the Zimbabwean dilemma, but captures in achingly intimate
terms her own uplifting conviction that, although savaged, there is
still hope for one of Africa's most beautiful countries.
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