MUKIWA
by Peter Godwin
I admit to being a bit concerned about my
choice of this book. I am an old
Rhodesian, a “when we” as we get called in South Africa for our predilection to
reminisce at great length about the wonderful country we used to live in, a
country that no longer exists, and indeed has not even been heard of by many
young people. It is all history now, and
it seems odd to be relegated to history.
This book is the story of a man, and a nation, recounting their
respective transitions from innocent childhood to terrifying adult knowledge
for the man, from colonial administration to black governance for the country.
It is in three sections. The first and the longest is the warm and
funny story of his childhood in the Eastern Highlands of Rhodesia, his father
an engineer on a big estate, and his mother the General Medical Officer for the
Melsetter area. He is surrounded by
kindly black servants, and his parents are busy, so a lot of his time is therefore
spent with his nanny Violet, and he learns to speak fluent Shona. His parents are relatively liberal, and, what
stands out for me, is that through them he learns the importance of respect for
everyone regardless of the colour of their skin. This
section is full of wonderful tales, funny, sad, heartbreaking: his membership with Violet of the Apostolics
with their red and white “gammonts”; the tale of Mr Arrowhead. His mother takes him with her when she goes
out on call, so he learns about death at a very young age, starting with the
murder of Oom Piet Oberholzer by the Crocodile gang, and he also attends
post-mortems. One review I read compares this first part
with My Family and Other Animals, which recreates childhood in a similarly
evocative fashion.
He takes us through the pains of growing
up. He has to go away to school, away
from his beloved Silverstream, and eventually for secondary school to Salisbury
to attend St George’s College (incidentally the same school that all the male
members of my own family attended).
The second part of the book describes his
years of national service in the BSAP. He
is participating in a brutal civil war he has little belief in, against people
for whom he holds a certain sympathy. Like
many he feels that majority rule should come sooner rather than later, and he
sees his role as holding the place together until this happens. He has to deal
with fighting between the Matabele and the Shona, which results in many more
Africans being killed than whites. Anger, fear and terrible atrocities take
their toll. What strikes me most
forcibly about this period of his life is how young he is, just 18 or 19, and
yet he seems to be an old head on young shoulders.
He then goes to Cambridge where he studies
law, and returns to Rhodesia just before it becomes Zimbabwe, and starts
practicing in Salisbury. He eventually
becomes a journalist, and the final part of the book deals with his undercover
excursions into territories held by the notorious North Korean trained Fifth
Brigade. His activities result in his being declared
an enemy of the state, but he is able to escape before he is arrested. Black majority rule is finally in place, but
with only fragile hopes for a better future.
It is a tragic, painfully honest and
heart-wrenching memoir, rather than an autobiography. He admits to the foibles
of memory, and changes names, or creates composite characters to protect his
contacts. What I like best about it is
that it is completely non-judgmental, he never indulges in hindsight to judge
past events.
