Mukiwa : a white boy grows up in Africa

A poignant, beautifully evocative, savagely violent memoir in the tradition of My Traitor's Heart. Rhodesia, 1946: A small boy witnesses the death of his neighbor, murdered by guerrillas, marking the beginning of white rule in Africa. Now, Peter Godwin, the witness to that murder, has written a vivid and moving account of growing up in a colony rapidly collapsing into chaos. Rhodesia, 1964: A young boy stumbles upon the dead body of his neighbor, killed by the African guerrillas known as the Crocodile Gang. It is the beginning of the end of white rule in southern Africa. In Mukiwa, Peter Godwin, the young boy confronted by that murder, has written a vivid and moving account of growing up in a British colony collapsing into chaos. The story begins in the magnificent mountains of eastern Zimbabwe, where Godwin, the son of a country doctor and an engineer, grew up. Seen through the eyes of a child, the strangeness of Africa is perfectly rendered; it is a magical and frightening world of leopard hunting, witch doctors, lepers, snakes, forest fires, and the human autopsies his mother had to conduct. But in the eyes of an adolescent, a boy-soldier caught in the middle of a civil war, and finally an adult who has returned to Zimbabwe as a journalist to cover the bloody transition into black rule, it becomes a land stalked by death and danger. Mukiwa opens with Peter Godwin, six years old, describing the murder of his neighbor by African guerillas, in 1964, pre-war Rhodesia. Godwin's parents are liberal whites, his mother a governement-employed doctor, his father an engineer. Through his innocent, young eyes, the story of the beginning of the end of white rule in Africa unfolds. The memoir follows Godwin's personal journey from the eve of war in Rhodesia to his experience fighting in the civil war that he detests to his adventures as a journalist in the new state of Zimbabwe, covering the bloody return to Black rule. With each transition Godwin's voice develops, from that of a boy to a young man to an adult returning to his homeland. This tale of the savage struggle between blacks and whites as the British Colonial period comes to an end is set against the vividly painted background of the myserious world of South Africa. "Rhodesia, 1964: a small boy witnesses the death of his neighbor, murdered by guerrillas--it is the beginning of the end of white rule in Africa. Peter Godwin, the witness to that murder, has written "a classic of the genre" (The Sunday Telegraph), a vivid and moving account of groiwng up in a colony rapidly collapsing into chaos. In an unforgettable tale of innocence lost under African skies, we follow Godwin's awakening to the often savage struggle between whites and blacks. We witness his horror when he is forced to fight in a civil war he detests and his experiences as a journalist covering the country's violent transition to black rule as Rhodesia's colonial era comes to an end and the new state of Zimbabwe is born from its bloody ashes."--Cover Een man beschrijft hoe hij vanaf de jaren zestig van de twintigste eeuw zijn land Rhodesië langzaam ziet veranderen in een voor hem onherkenbaar Zimbabwe. Na een verblijf in Engeland keert hij terug als journalist om de geschonden mensenrechten aan de kaak te stellen. "I think I first realized something was wrong when our next neighbour, oom Piet Oberholzer, was murdered."