[Civsoc-mw] Obituary: Robert Mugabe’s descent from nationalist hero to tyrant

[Tony Tontholani]

BOOKS HE TRUSTED. One was usually in his hand in those first, mostly happy, years as Zimbabwe’s leader. He would be home at State House by 5.30pm, slamming doors so that his beloved Sally would know to come rushing. They crumpled together on a low armchair, almost on each other’s laps, she eating custard as he sipped tea. Then he would drape a long arm round her, while using the other to turn the pages of a favourite novel, usually British, often a Graham Greene.
Written words he could love. It was real live people who proved difficult. A shy, surly boy, he sought no friends in Kutama, his village. Later he admitted it frankly: “I lived in my mind a lot. I liked talking to myself, reciting little poems and so on; reading things aloud to myself.” A loner, he hated scrapping with sticks, running, boys’ boisterous games, communal life. A brother, Donato, thought him “lazy, just reading all the time”. Even at chores, in the shade of the bush while snaring birds or tramping in the dust to herd cattle, he would read. “He held the book in one hand and the whip in the other. It was a strange thing for all of us to see,” recalled Donato.
https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2019/09/06/robert-mugabes-descent-from-nationalist-hero-to-tyrant



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