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Inside the crazed court of Robert Mugabe
Kate Kellaway,The Observer (UK)
June 27, 2004

Andrew Meldrum is positive about Zimbabwe: his title is, in a sense, his slogan and the image on the cover, of a Zimbabwean girl with worn trainers, a pretty smile and a skipping rope, makes the heart skip too. In choosing this optimistic stance, for which I was grateful, he emulates the spirit I remember from teaching there from 1982-5, which I had supposed to have been all but extinguished by Mugabe's disastrous, seemingly unending regime.

Meldrum was a journalist in Zimbabwe for 23 years and made headlines as the last foreign correspondent in Harare, where he wrote for The Observer and the Guardian, before being illegally ejected in May 2003. He describes his trial in June 2002 (he was acquitted) and his ejection, but on the whole it is Zimbabwe, not Meldrum, which is centre stage.

His writing is driven by a passion for the country and its people. He was never an opportunistic, visiting reporter. And when forcibly escorted onto a plane at Harare airport, he was leaving home.

It is no mean achievement to remain hopeful when writing about brutality, chaos and corruption, and Meldrum does not flinch from the most harrowing stories. I did not know the extent of the Matabeleland massacres of the Eighties at the time because, like many expatriates, I had been quick to swallow Zanu PF's party line. But it is now calculated that between 10,000 and 20,000 people were killed in Mugabe's name.

Meldrum describes calmly, in equally shocking detail, the more recent torture of supporters of the opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change.

He is quick to doubt - and to entertain. I had wondered whether Mugabe was gradually deranged by his own power. It is fascinating to learn that as early as 1981, Meldrum had observed a slipperiness about the man. He was 'stiff, starchy and distant at all times'.

Meldrum wanted to feel elation during his first interview with the country's leader but was left ambivalent. Soon afterwards, he found reasons to conclude that Mugabe was a 'cold, calculating manipulator who did not care how many lives would be lost so long as he consolidated his power'.

The book begins with Meldrum's deportation, then reverts to his arrival just after independence in 1980. He moves pacily, slowing for more recent history: Mugabe's bigotry, rigged elections, stage-managed 'land reform', the murder of white farmers and food shortages. And he makes the canny point that Mugabe and Ian Smith are 'two sides of the same coin'.

His lively account of the MDC brings hope to the story, as do the inspiring Zimbabweans he met. He champions heroic women: Beatrice Mtetwa, his fearless lawyer; Margaret Dongo, the politician who dared to challenge Zanu PF, and his 'best friend', Mavis Ngazana, an Aids counsellor in a country that denies its epidemic.

Where We Have Hope is essential reading for anyone who cares about Zimbabwe and its future. Let us - with Meldrum - hope it will soon be out of date.

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