It is a fine book, a warts and all memoir that takes Godwin from his early childhood into early manhood, from a small child assisting his mother, who was a doctor, to his time in the Rhodesian Police force, fighting a fight he was not in favor of. It is an unflinching look at life in this period, where racism is examined from different perspectives, scenes of horrible brutalities are narrated, appalling violence, including a violent death in his own family. And there is a lot of sadness; despite the untenable future of white minority rule in the country, for someone like Godwin this was also his homeland. The life that he knew as a child turned out be so very transient. That so many people died in this civil war and in its aftermath just seems like something that ought to have been resolved in some other fashion. Still, the book is not a jingoistic paean to the good old days of Imperialism. And the book is no indictment of one specific group--there is blood on every one's hands in this case. And sadly, once white rule was gone, the cooperation among tribes fell apart, and even greater atrocities occurred, which Godwin later related to the world as a journalist regarding the notorious North Korean trained 5th Division of the Army in Matobeleland.
Godwin masterfully describes people and the terrain of Zimbabwe. When he talks about a Boer neighbor or a tribal chieftain, you can almost see the person through his eyes. And he intersperses throughout the book in almost a rhythm the sights, sounds and smells of his homeland. The flowers, the animals, the dust, the heat rising from the earth.There is not a lot of sabre-rattling and braggadocio in this book. Godwin is a thoughtful person who was sympathetic to the lot of the Africans and he treats them as human beings, not as the enemy and not with the racist derision that other whites felt toward Blacks. But he also understood that different groups see the world in diverse ways, that the different peoples of Zimbabwe had difficulty understanding one another's cultures. Though he considered himself someone who knew more about African life than the average White Rhodesian, there was so much he just didn't know. He was a liberal who optimistically believed that somehow all the peoples of Zimbabwe could work together as a group, and you can feel his sadness and frustration as this vision did not become a reality. Of course, you would not characterize him as a saint either, and he very ably details how the intense police training could turn a liberal minded person as himself into a paranoid, dangerous, finger-on-trigger, enforcer.
I definitely enjoyed reading this book. Once I got into it I had trouble putting it down. I think I learned some things in this book, but overall it speaks of a time that is all but erased but in the mind of expatriates, though the narration is straight forward without rose colored glasses. Certainly things could not stay as they were with the small White population controlling most of the land and the tremendous social and economic inequities in the colony. Zimbabwe at one point was a fairly affluent state in comparison to many African nations, but it appears that things have gone horribly wrong in the aftermath of the civil war (famine and repression, declining average lifespans), due to bad leadership and corruption. The economy basically imploded. It is not only whites who have had to flee the country. But despite the sad events that occur throughout the book, there is also communicated the resiliency of the people and their desire to be able to live their lives peacefully and with some form of prosperity. Which is natural, because that is what most people wish to have. It raises the hope that even in the most downtrodden places, a better future is possible, and in the longer term may in fact be inevitable.
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