A journalist recounts his return to his home country of Zimbabwe during "The Fear," a period during which dictator Robert Mugabe, refusing to concede his power after losing an election, waged a campaign of terror against his own people.
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In 2008, memoirist and journalist Peter Godwin secretly returned to his native Zimbabwe after its notoriously tyrannical leader, Robert Mugabe, lost an election. The decision was severely risky ù foreign journalists had been banned to prevent the world from seeing a corrupt leader's refusal to cede power. Zimbabweans have named this period, simply, the Fear.Godwin visited the torture bases, the burning villages, the opposition leaders in hiding, the last white farmers, and the churchmen and diplomats putting their own lives on the line to stop the carnage. Accompanied by his sister Georgina, Godwin visited the grave of their sister Jain, killed during the civil war, and called their mother, now living in exile in faraway London. "Where would you like to be buried when you die?" he asked her. Despite everything that has happened to her and to her country, she replied, "At home. In Africa. Next to your father."Told with a brilliant eye for detail, this is a story that marks Godwin "as one of the sharpest observers of modern Africa" (Economist). It is a personal, stunning account of a people laid waste by a despot and of their astonishing courage, resilience, and desire to be free. The Fear is a searing testament to humanity's ability to transcend terror, and to rise up.
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