Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa
by Peter Godwin
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Book Summary Information
Author: Peter GodwinEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-11-30
ISBN: 0802141927
Number of pages: 432
Publisher: Grove Press
Book Reviews of Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa
Book Review: A sad and moving book
Summary: 4 Stars
Peter Godwin certainly has a story to tell. It's a story of an idyllic, if unusual childhood, a disrupted but eventually immensely successful education, military service and then two careers, one in law, planned but aborted, and then one in journalism, discovered almost by default. Listed like this these elements might sound just a bit mundane, perhaps not the subject of memoir. When one adds, however, the location, Rhodesia becoming Zimbabwe, the result is a deeply moving, in places deeply sad, as well as quite disturbing account of a life lived thus far. Mukiwa, by the way, is Shona for white man.
The setting for Peter Godwin's early years was a middle class, professional and, crucially, liberal family living in eastern Rhodesia, close to the Mozambique border. I had relatives in that same area, near Umtali and Melsetter, and they used to do exactly what the Godwins did regularly which was to visit the Indian Ocean beaches near Beira. We used to get postcards from there every year, usually in the middle of our north of England winter. Envy wasn't the word...
Peter Godwin's mother was a doctor and this meant that his childhood was unusual in two respects. Not many youngsters in white households had liberal-minded parents and even fewer helped their mothers conduct post mortems. Unlike most mukiwa, Peter Godwin had black friends. He learned the local language and got to know the bush. He also grew up close to death and then lived alongside it during the years of the war of independence. He describes how the war simply took over everything and labels himself as a technician in its machinations. It's a telling phrase, admitting that he did not himself want to fight anyone. Like everyone else, he was caught up in the struggle, required to actively perpetrate the violence and that is what he did.
His education was disrupted. His family life was effectively destroyed. And how he managed to keep his sanity during the period I have no idea. He served most of the period in Matebeleland alongside other members of the Rhodesian armed forces and police who were not, to say the least, as liberal as he was. So in some ways he was already doubly a foreigner in that he was working in an area where he could not speak the language and was accompanied by fellow countrymen with whom he shared no beliefs or ideals. And yet he had to fight.
I have never served in a war and hope I never will. But my relatives from the same area as Peter Godwin were also called up into national service and also fought the war. I had not seen them for fifteen years or so when we met after they, along with many thousands of others, as recorded by Peter Godwin, had already fled south. But for them also memories of war were deep and resented scars. It was a bloody and dirty war where, if you were lucky, you could at most trust your closest colleagues. It was a vicious conflict at times and left everyone angry. No-one won. Everyone suffered.
Having eventually achieved the education he sought, Peter Godwin attempted to launch a legal career. But then, almost by default, he became a reporter. After independence, he learned of atrocities perpetrated by the Zambabwean army in the area where he had served during the war. He investigated. He reported. And then, on advice, he fled.
But he did eventually return to all of the areas he knew and the last part of the book is a moving and deeply sad account of how little he recognised in the places he loved as a child. But within this, there is a moment of hope as he meets a former freedom fighter and, with humour and new friendship, the two of them realise that they had not only been enemies, but had actually been two commanders trying to kill one another on opposite sides of the same skirmish.
But in the end, Peter Godwin is changed man, and his home and homeland, at least as he had experienced them, were no more. War had changed everything and everyone. No-one won.
Summary of Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa
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 government-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 poignant compelling memoir describes the savage struggle between blacks and whites as the British Colonial period comes to an end, set against the vividly painted background of the mysterious world of southern Africa.
Peter Godwin grew up in Rhodesia during the end of white rule. While his Rhodesians Never Die is a historical account of that time, Mukiwa is a more personal narrative--a testament to Africa and a memoir as seen through the eyes of a child becoming a young man amidst civil war. Spanning 1964-1982, from when Godwin was a boy of six in Rhodesia to when he returned to Zimbabwe as a journalist covering the bloody transition back to black rule, Godwin personalizes a difficult era in South African history with clarity, intelligence, humor, empathy, and sharp prose.
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