Peter Godwin - Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa

Praise for Mukiwa:

Time and time again in his uncanny ability to evoke the sensations and secret observations of childhood I was reminded of the young Kipling.

Trevor Royle, Scotland on Sunday

A remarkable memoir.

Time

I have no hesitation in saying that Mr. Godwins book is a classic.

Anthony Daniels, The Sunday Telegraph

It makes you laugh even while youre weeping.

Fiammatta Rocco, The Literary Review

Mukiwa ... is an antiheroic memoir. It is filled with what one is in the habit of calling adventure: narrow escapes, a harrowing return in disguise ... a last-minute flight from certain arrest and imprisonment. But these episodes can be called adventures only if theyre stripped of their private meaning, and that, fortunately, Godwin is unable to do; the book lacks the roistering jingoism... that is necessary to such stories. Instead, it chronicles the development of a kind of internal exile ... a relocation of allegiance, for which Godwins adventures are the external signposts. The tone throughout the bookmuted, graciously sadis the consequence of a liberal mind discovering its own inutility.... Whats special is the sense one gets ... of a conscience that tries to resist coarsening and does not forgive its own failures.

Verlyn Klinkenborg, The New Yorker

A beautiful, painful, and subtle memoir.

The Economist

The book demonstrates the vivid readability and the magpies eye for a telling detail that make him an exceptional journalist.

Hugo Barnacle, The Independent

This book is superb: a tragic song of lament for the land of our youth.

Graham Lord, The Daily Telegraph

This fine and powerful memoir is a marvelous contribution (to the literature of Africa).

William Boyd, The Sunday Times

Mukiwa... speaks directly to the heart about the hope of childhood and the gradual extinguishing of that hope. It also speaks of something else: The beauty and dignity of the human spirit as it suffers and survives.

The Jerusalem Post

A searing and brilliant piece of writing, a lasting literary and personal achievement ... If you read only one book about that place and time, make it Mukiwa, by Peter Godwin.

Shaun Johnson, The Sunday Independent (Johannesburg)

A very good book, the best to come out of the war for independence in Zimbabwe. Its strength is its balance and the width of experience of the author who had many black friends, was a liberal, brought up by liberal parents, and then had to fight in a war he hated.

Doris Lessing, The Observer

The insanity of war, the beauty and mystery of Africa, the chaotic death pangs of colonialism, an extraordinary coming of age: All swirl hauntingly together.... A fervid blend of My Traitors Heart, Dispatches, and Heart of Darkness, Godwins account ranks with some of the finest war reportage of this century.

Kirkus Reviews

Forget about the breast-beating confessions by people who have grown up under apartheid or neighboring forms of racist colonialism. Peter Godwins book is, at last, a totally unsentimental, honest testimonywritten without fear of who, white or black, might be shockedof the conflict, confusion and compromises.... Godwins account belongs not only to the history of Zimbabwe and the African continent. It is part of the truth about the era of colonialism and its consequences that must be pieced together, now, in the history of this, the century for which we are all, in one way or another, responsible.

Nadine Gordimer

Mukiwa

A White Boy in Africa

Peter Godwin

Copyright 1996 by Peter Godwin

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, or the facilitation thereof, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

First published in Great Britain in 1996 by Picador,
an imprint of Macmillan General Books

Printed in the United States of America
Published simultaneously in Canada

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Godwin, Peter.
Mukiwa: a white boy in Africa / Peter Godwin,
p. cm.
eBook ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-9493-0
1. Godwin, Peter. 2. ZimbabweEthnic relations. 3. Zimbabwe
HistoryChimurenga War, 1966-1980Personal narratives.
I. Title.
DT2984.G6A3 1996
968.9104dc20 96-2283

Grove Press
an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
841 Broadway
New York, NY 10003

Distributed by Publishers Group West

www.groveatlantic.com

For my mother and father, with love

Mukiwa is intended as a memoir rather than an autobiography. The characters who populate these pages are a mixture of actual people and composites. I have changed many of their names and identifying characteristics, not particularly for legal reasons, but to protect them against possible intrusion. In some cases, especially in the war chapters, I have altered quite a lot people still risk retribution. But all famous people, politicians and other leaders, are accurately identified.

Although Mukiwa is a work of nonfiction it is not a work of forensic research. For that you should read Rhodesians Never Die the history book I wrote (with Ian Hancock) on the end of white Rhodesia. In Mukiwa I have written as I remember, with all the foibles and imperfections brought on by the passage of time.

This book was both easy and traumatic to write. There are things here which I had very effectively buried under layers of emotional scar tissue. The process of tearing it away was in some cases pleasurable and in others deeply disturbing. But it was always liberating.

I have tried not to be wise after the event but to describe things as they seemed at the time, even where that may have portrayed us unattractively. I have tried not to preach or to politic. I have tried not to be sentimental or censorious.

Above all the book is intended as a tribute to Africa the home I never knew I had.

Peter Godwin
London, 1996

I think I first realized something was wrong when our next-door neighbour, oom Piet Oberholzer, was murdered. I must have been about six then. It was still two years before we rebelled against the Queen, and another seven years before the real war would start.

I can remember oom Piets body lying on the tar road. He was on his back, with the bone handle of a hunting knife sticking out of his chest. Of course Id seen lots of dead people before, so I wasnt that impressed. In fact I was proud of my familiarity with death. I used to tell other children stories about it, to boost my popularity.