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PETER GODWIN INTERVIEW
The Human Rights Activist on the Tragedy of Zimbabwe
eter Godwin is a Zimbabwean-born journalist, author and
lawyer who has reported on President Robert Mugabe's
24-year control of Zimbabwean politics, on the mass
attacks Mugabe has ordered on Zimbabwean citizens to retain
political power and on how the country has changed dur
ing Mugabe's reign. Godwin's latest book is The Fear: Robert
Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe. Flagpole interviewed
him in advance of his speaking engagement and book signing
at UGA's Dean Rusk Hall at 12:30 p.m. Nov. 30.
Flagpole: When you start to explain some of the things you
witnessed in Zimbabwe, where do you start?
Peter Godwin: Well, whatever you're writing about,
you’re searching for a universal. Ostensibly, who cares about
Zimbabwe? There are, however, many countries in the wo r ld,
so essentially one's looking for a through-line—a kind of sto
ryline—and Zimbabwe has that in huge dollops. It's an extraor
dinary story of a dictator who declares war on his own people,
and of those people really trying to fight back.
It's like a war where only one side is armed. It's an inspira
tional story... of heroism, and also of accidental heroism... The
weird thing is that you would imagine that when you're look
ing for the thmugh-line, for the universal in something, that
you would pull back and generalize; but actually, the paradox
is that you do the opposite: the universal is in the details.
When I'm writing a book, I have in my mind's eye two dis
parate readers. One of the readers is somebody who knows a
lot about Zimbabwe—a lot about Southern Africa—and the
other reader is someone who may only have the haziest notion
where Zimbabwe is on a map, and why the hell should they
care anyway when there's a million other things clamoring for
their attention? How can you possibly write—never mind the
book—a sentence, a paragraph, a passage, a chapter that sat
isfies both these readers, without boring and patronizing the
one... and without bewildering and confusing the other one?
What one is looking for is that sweet spot in writing.
FP: As someone who speaks out for Zimbabwe, how has your
role evolved as Mugabe continues to hold power?
PG: I've written about Zimbabwe journalistically... When
I was working as a foreign correspondent, I was one of the
first people who reported on the massacres in the south of
the country in Mugabe's early days... and then more laterally,
[written] about it in books. I started writing a memoir about
growing up in Zimbabwe and what it was like, and that world
has largely vanished. I'm not a spokesman or anything, but
I've now written three books about Zimbabwe... and heaven
knows I didn't expect Mugabe to still be in power after all
these years, and I didn't expect things to be quite as bad as
they became.
Things were bad, but I don't think anyone imaged how
Zimbabwe would fall off a cliff and spiral down into this failed
state, and how many people would die of malnutrition, starva
tion, HIV, political violence. This, in a country that was once
seen as the shining beacon of the African hill; this country
that was held up as an example of just how well Africa could
Peter Godwin, author of The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of
Zimbabwe will appear at UGA’s Dean Rusk Center Nov. 30.
succeed. Zimbabwe does have an importance, insofar as it's a
kind of bellwether country for Africa... It's the barometer by
which one can judge a lot of the rest of what's going on in
that region.
FP: Do you see progress happening in Zimbabwe, or see more
awareness about Zimbabwe in other countries?
PG: The attitude of Africa in general is quite interesting,
because if you go back, there was a spike of interest during
apartheid, and I covered the last five, six years of apartheid. If
you look at the column inches, and the general attention that
we paid to that story, it was enormous, and rightly so. It was
one of the last great foreign stories that had a—literally—
clear black-and-white moral through-line to it. It was en easy
story to explain. Once apartheid was over, there was this
palpable drifting away of interest in Africa. And part of that,
I'm afraid to say, is racial, insofar as apartheid was seen as a
better story because it involved white people. When you have
situations in Africa which don't, it's harder to sell to a broad,
American audience as a news story. It's just harder to get
interest, which is a terrible reassignment of our definition of
newsworthiness.
FP: When you speak about this to audiences in America, how
do they react to this information?
PG: The question that I get asked is: "Why aren't we doing
more? Why are we sitting on our hands? Why is it that we man
age to intervene in some countries, like Libya, and then in
Zimbabwe, where it's been going on for much longer with much
greater loss of life, there's been no intervention by America
or by the UN?" Certainly, "Where's the American leadership in
this?" I think it's a relatively painful process to peel away the
layers between what we say our foreign policy is, as one of the
most important democracies in the world in terms of foreign
policy, and what it actually is. The truth is that we talk the
talk of humanitarian concern, but in the end, we walk the walk
of strategic interest.
Zimbabwe falls in that gap between the two. If we really
were concerned with humanitarian issues, we would have
intervened in Zimbabwe a long time ago, but unfortunately, to
trigger that kind of intervention, you need to export one, or
presently both, of two things. Those exports are international
terrorism and oil, and Zimbabwe doesn't export either of those.
As a result, here's an opposition to a dictator [who have] done
everything asked of them by the international community:
they've stayed non-violent, they've done civil disobedience and
they're really after one incredibly simple thing, and that's a
chance to be democratic, to just vote.
FP: Have you seen any resistance that seemed to diminish
Mugabe's power?
PG: Yeah, I think that we're in a very strange situation in
Zimbabwe at the moment, after the spasm of violence in the
2008 elections, which Mugabe lost, but then refused to go.
Under the auspices of South Africa, [Mugabe] pushed through
this so-called "government of national unity," in which the
opposition in the government [had] essentially been co-opted.
Yet, they're not really part of the government at all, and this is
supposed to be a transitional period during which a whole raft
of democratic reform is supposed to be passed, leveling the
electoral playirg field and leading to a free and fair election,
probably next year. Unfortunately, most of those democratic
reforms haven't been brought in by Mugabe; he's resisted most
of them. We're back on a path to crisis, one way or another;
it's just a question of when it happens. Zimbabwe is sort of
hurtling towards its new crisis imminently.
FP: What do you think needs to happen for Zimbabwe to
transition into a more peaceful climate?
PG: Zimbabwe [is] unlike a lot of other African countries,
which need huge amounts of help and have never really existed
as independent countries, [having] gone from being colonies
and being carved up as colonies in very strange and unfeasible
sizes. Zimbabwe was once a leader in Africa, and can be so
again. Its main resources are people. It had the highest liter
acy rate in Africa, the most educated African population by far.
It's got this extraordinary people, and many, many of them are
now scattered all over the world, where they've done very well,
for the most part. The country could, once it sheds this dicta
tor, and this horrible, venal way of running things, turn around
amazingly quickly. All it needs, as a major first step, is just to
have democracy and representative government restored.
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