Review: The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe

The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe by Peter Godwin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Mugabe is the current President of Zimbabwe, serving since 31 December 1987. As one of the leaders of the rebel groups against white minority rule, he was elected as Prime Minister, head of government, in 1980, and served in that office until 1987, when he became the country's first executive head of state. He has led the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU–PF) since 1975. Born in the Rhodesia now called Zimbabwe, journalist Peter Godwin returned to his homeland in 2008 after three decades of Robert Mugabe’s brutal economic and human destruction. Hoping to “dance on Mugabe’s political grave” in the wake of the tyrant’s narrow 20008 defeat at the polls, Godwin instead risked his life to secretly chronicle Mugabe’s ruthless backlash of torture and terror locals call “The Fear". Mugabe subsequently won the run-off election in a landslide after his opponent Morgan Tsvangirai withdrew; Mugabe then entered a power-sharing deal with Tsvangirai as well as Arthur Mutambara of the MDC-T and MDC-M opposition party. This uneasy balance saw no peace due to the Mugabe party militias executing the military plan given the code name of "CIBD", which stood for: "Coercion. Intimidation. Beating. Displacement." Godwin ended up chronicling a history of violent repression and torture and a coda of the same theme. The near 400 pages becomes a litany of cruel abuse almost too much to bear...

I was surprised at the South Africa angle since ZANU was influenced by the Africanist ideas of the Pan Africanist Congress in South Africa and the countries border each other with spill overs of violence for political and xenophobic reasons.

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