Mukiwa: A Memoir of Growing Up White in Zimbabwe

John: .

United Kingdom on Jun 18, 2023

Mike Brooke: Godwin is an excellent author and can capture the most significant sights and sounds. After the civil war,
the country has become a Banana Republic with the Blacks having little idea about running a fertile, rich
country. And now after Magabe's death, there is little hope of improvement. It is a sad but beautiful country.

Canada on Jun 04, 2023

Tommy Lee Brock: In some respects this might be a white boy's account of growing up in Zimbabwe, sort of a counter part to Alexandra Fuller's "Don't Lets go to the Dogs Tonight, " a girl's account of life there. In fact they were raised in the same far east part of the country, but the Godwins were there ten years before. There is not the crazy, yet sympathetic antics of a mother that has had a breakdown, and Peter's father, unlike Mr. Fuller, had too much good sense to develop into an exciting character. That leaves it up to Peter Goodwin himself. And he certainly does the job. His own explorations and encounters with the curious Shona, curious other Africans, and curious whites are presented matter of fact, with lots of gritty detail.

I also understand much better the tribal aspects among Zimbabwe's native Africans, particularly between the Shona, the Matabele, and the Manicas. Their dislike for one another began many years before the white tribe ever arrived, and persists long after they left.

Among the many characters was Godwin's hippie cousin, Oliver, who traveled to Rhodesia with the notion that if he and his counterparts across the world could teach the whites of the country...

United States on Apr 30, 2014

BT Invictus: The best memoirs not only render a life, but also a unique time and place. I can't think of a memoir that has done this more beautifully than Peter Godwin's Mukiwa, the first installment in his Rhodesia/Zimbabwe trilogy. By now, I've read all three, and this one is not only my favorite within the trilogy, but definitely my new favorite memoir, and quite possibly one of my favorite books. As a work of creative non-fiction, it's deeply personal, yet unsentimental. It's meticulously crafted and literary, yet still honest and raw. It's a kind of bildungsroman, set against the backdrop of a crumbling Rhodesia, yet it's so much more than a coming-of-age story.

Divided into three books, Mukiwa tells the story of Godwin's rather charmed childhood in Rhodesia, his experiences as an adolescent serving faithfully, yet begrudgingly, in the national police force during the war, and his return to Zimbabwe as an adult, as he tries to make sense the choices he's made, the tragedy that has afflicted his family, the dissolution of Rhodesia and the lingering deleterious effects of colonialism.

It's difficult to choose a favorite section, as they each contribute uniquely to the big...

United States on May 08, 2013

Giant: I happened to read this as the last one out of Peter Godwins trilogy about Zimbabwe. Started with the 2nd one and then "The Fear" and lastly this one. I actually think that "When a crocodile eats the sun" (2nd one) is the best one out of the three books. With this one I already had pretty high hopes, maybe that is a problem. What I started to think about in this one is how detailed all of Godwin's memories are. It's incredible actually. He writes long dialogues about conversations he had and thoughts he had when he was 8-10 years old. It I think of what I remember from that age it is not that much and certainly not that detailed. Maybe it is one of those things that are accepted when reading a memoir that the author remembers some and that makes up the rest, but I think this is misleading. Either he has been writing a very detailed diary since 4 years of age, or he has one of the best memories in the world or he is partly lying.. Or maybe a combination of the three. It's easy to just go with the story and not question anything but this book seems at least in part, fake. Still a good story, but I get the feeling that less than half of the book is what actually happened and the rest...

United Kingdom on Jan 24, 2013

F Henwood: What is it one looks for in a memoir? For me it is to see a life experienced seen through a different pair of eyes, so one feels one has almost actually that life. Peter Godwin accomplishes this in this in his memoir of his childhood and early adulthood in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe beautifully.

Godwin is from a liberal white family, sent off to boarding school aged six, against the background of a nationalist insurgency. He desires to escape provincial Rhodesia and go to Cambridge but is instead conscripted into the British South African Police, to do battle against black guerrillas in the bush. Upon discharge he escapes to Cambridge, studies law, and returns to defend a black freedom fighter. Finally he becomes an undercover journalist to cover Mugabe's brutal campaign against the Matabele people and is forced to flee the country once again as a political person non grata. And all this before he turned thirty!

Rhodesia/Zimbabwe's white population is sometimes referred to as a tribe. This tribe, such as it was, is now largely vanished and dispersed. There are now estimated to be a few thousand mostly elderly survivors left behind inside the country itself.

Many...

United Kingdom on Jul 04, 2011

Geoffrey Woollard: Peter Godwin has written much, but "Mukiwa: A White Boy In Africa" and its follow-up, "When A Crocodile Eats The Sun," must surely be the volumes of which he is most proud. For anyone with even a passing interest in Africa and/or the present problems in Zimbabwe/Rhodesia, they are 'must-reads,' preferably in chronological order - Mukiwa (1996 and later paperbacks) first, and then Crocodile (2005 and 2007).

I confess straight away that my own knowledge of Africa is limited, but I have interested myself in the continent's affairs for as long as I can remember and I also nurtured enormous sympathy for Rhodesia, for its people, and for former Prime Minister Ian Smith.

Peter Godwin has little apparent sympathy for Smith and, for that and other reasons that are clear in his books, he can be looked upon as a liberal. Therefore, his two books are all the more potent for their description of 'the reversal of progress, the shocking decline, the descent into darkness' (Crocodile 2007, page 314) under the tyrannical and murderous regime of Robert Mugabe. These beautifully and movingly written but appallingly tragic books, based on first-hand experience and knowledge and Godwin's...

United Kingdom on Mar 30, 2007

Gillian A: 'Mukiwa' opens with a six year old boy describing what he sees of a local murder. So begins this enthralling memoir. This saga of a youth growing up in troubled Zimbabwe (Rhodesia at that time), is divided into three parts.

Book I, which comprises half of the book, is seen through the eyes of a child and told in that voice. As such it is reminiscent of 'Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight' by Alexandra Fuller. Both authors grew up in the eastern highlands of Rhodesia, near Umtali and the Mozambique border. One is a boy's story, the other a girl's and the differences are largely stylistic. They were separated by about ten years and 'Dogs' focuses only on one family, with the bush war only in the background, whereas 'Mukiwa' gives a broader picture of life in the remote, often dangerous, areas of the country. A preschool boy accompanies his mother, a doctor, to various bush clinics where she is both GP and pathologist. Before long he can recognize not only dead bodies, but also malaria, TB, leprosy and other ailments. In this lonely place he forms close relationships with the various African staff and describes the harshness of their life there as well as the miseries of...

United States on Nov 20, 2006