Our Votes, Our Guns: Robert Mugabe and the Tragedy of Zimbabwe [Hardcover]

Martin Meredith (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2002

The story of what Robert Mugabe did to the once-flourishing African state of Zimbabwe: how it happened, why it happened, and its implications for Africa. Robert Mugabe came to power in 1980 after a long civil war in Rhodesia. The white minority government had become an international outcast in refusing to give in to the inevitability of black majority rule. Finally the defiant white prime minister Ian Smith was forced to step down and Mugabe was elected president of a country now called Zimbabwe. Initially hopes were high that he had the intelligence, political savvy and idealistic vision to help repair the damage done by colonialism and the bitter civil war, and to lead his country's economic and social development. He was admired throughout the world as one of the leaders of the emerging nations and as a model for a good transition from colonial leadership. But month by month, year by year, Mugabe became increasingly autocratic; his methods increasingly violent. In recent years he has unleashed a reign of terror and corruption in his country. Like the Congo, Angola, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Liberia, Zimbabwe has been on a steady slide to disaster. What happened in Zimbabwe? Now for the first time the whole story is told in detail by an expert. It is a riveting and tragic political story, a morality tale, and an essential text for understanding today's Africa.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In 1980, Zimbabwe was the great hope of Africa, a place where blacks were supposed to realize their postcolonial destinies under the enlightened leadership of Robert Mugabe. But now the country formerly known as Rhodesia is an international basket case with a wrecked economy and a dim future. In this disturbing book by Martin Meredith, a British journalist with extensive experience in southern Africa, Mugabe transforms into a villain. "Year by year, he acquired ever greater power, ruling the country through a vast system of patronage, favoring loyal aides and cronies with government positions and contracts and ignoring the spreading blight of corruption," writes Meredith. "Power for Mugabe was not a means to an end, but the end itself." His reign has been so wretched, in fact, that some of the most sympathetic people in Our Votes, Our Guns are the white farmers who once supported apartheid-style rule but decided not to flee when Mugabe came to power. They were promised multiracial harmony; what they got instead was a racist dictator who thought nothing of using violence against them. Admirers of Philip Gourevitch--or, indeed, anyone with an interest in African politics--will appreciate Meredith's depressing but important story. --John Miller

Review

"Fast paced and readable." -- The Nation, April 8, 2002

"Meredith's concise and lucid [book] gives some answers [regarding Zimbabwe], in the shape of Mr. Mugabe's career and character." -- Wall Street Journal, March 13, 2002.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: PublicAffairs; 1st edition (March 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1586481282
• ISBN-13: 978-1586481285
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #962,759 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Distressing Portrait of a Nation, November 9, 2002

By 

Brian D. Rubendall (Oakton, VA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Our Votes, Our Guns: Robert Mugabe and the Tragedy of Zimbabwe (Hardcover)

Martin Meredith's "Our Votes, Our Guns" is a particlarly depressing work of jouralism covering the descent of post-Rhodesia Zimbabwe into a barbarous authoritarian kleptocracy thoroughly dominated by a corrupt leader who turned his back on ever principle he supposedly had before obtaining power. The world's attention (such as it is) has been focussed on the forcible removal of white farmers from their land with the explict support of the government. But as Meredith demonstrates, President Mugabe's racist policies toward whites is just one of many evils he has perpetrated on his country.

Meredith starts out by setting the historical stage, including telling about the horrific brutality of white rule in what was then Rhodesia before the 1979 "revolution" that brought Mugabe to power. Certainly, Zimbabwe's violent release from colonialism has a lot to do with the country's current situation.

Meredith then goes on to show the early promise that Mugabe showed as president, so willing for reconcilliation that he met with the last white Prime Minister, Ian Smith on numerous occasions to ask adbvice in the early years. Meredith then shows how as Mugabe became increasingly paranoid and obsessed with power his cronys became more and more corrupt. Anyone who believes that third world debts ought to be forgiven should read this book. Zimbabwe is in a state of financial collapse because its president and his associates bled the country dry, not because of IMF or World Bank financial imperialism. If anything, Western aid has helped serve as an enabler for Mugabe's destruction of Zimbabwe.

The book's main drawback is a lack of first hand reporting by Meredith. There is no indication in the narrative that the author has ever visited Zimbabwe and he seems to have relied mostly on second had accounts. Nevertheless, he is an excellent researcherr, and despite this flaw this is still a compelling read for those with an interest in current events beyond the headlines.

27 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "A cartoon figure of the archetypical African dictator", March 2, 2002

By 

"michaeleve" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Our Votes, Our Guns: Robert Mugabe and the Tragedy of Zimbabwe (Hardcover)

So said Archbishop Desmond Tutu of Robert Mugabe. This is coming from a church leader about someone who often publicly boasts about being a devout christian. If the Archbishop's criticism doesn't bother Mugabe then maybe Nelson Mandela's dissmissive epithet - calling the man "Comrade Bob" hits more to home. Mandela throws cold water on Mugabe's previously illustrious reputation as a freedom fighter and liberator of his people.

Mentioning Mandela is an appropriate starting point for discussing OUR VOTES,OUR GUNS because the author - Martin Meredith - is best known for his authoritative biography of Mandela. Here he applies his writing skills and powers of observation with the same results - a thorough analysis with keen insights into the personality. So who is Robert Mugabe and how is it that from a position of world acclaim as a hero at Zimbabwe's independence in April, 1980 - inhereting "a jewel" as Meredith quotes another African leader as telling him - he has sunk to such a low position today? Meredith says that a lot of this can be explained by over optimism and excessive expectations. In the 1970's he was the guerilla leader of the Zimbabwe African National Union/Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) which wrested control of Rhodesia from the minority, white-ruled government of Ian Smith. Following independence Mugabe emerged as a statesman. He was committed to reconciliation with whites and Meredith refers to Mugabe's speech on Independence day. He promised to "draw a line through the past" and said "if yesterday I fought you as an enemy, today you have become a friend and ally with the same national interest..." Meredith argues however that the hope in Mugabe as a model of the new African leader was badly misplaced. He says that Mugabe was never committed to democracy and his rule increasingly reflected his autocratic tendencies.

The book is very clear however in showing that Zimbabwe is not a one-party state. It is a functioning democracy with the required basics of regular elections, a free press and an independent judiciary. Mugabe also has achieved some notable successes. In keeping with their president's love of education (Mugabe has seven degrees) Zimbabwean's are generally very well educated and highly literate. The country has one of the highest rates of literacy in Africa (nearly 90%). Despite being an avowed marxist and thus seeking radical solutions to economic problems, and his very ugly attack on Matabeleland where his army killed thousands of civilians in an attempt to quash dissent, Mugabe could nevertheless always count on international and domestic support (especially in rural areas). In recent years his support both at home and abroad has evaporated, largely due to his increasingly violent land reform policies. 'Reconciliation' is no longer a word in Mugabe's vocabulary and he now calls Zimbabwe's white farmers racists and neocolonialists.

Meredith goes into all the social, economic, and political underpinnings of Mugabe's 22 year rule and the concomitant decline of Zimbabwe. One of the telling indicators of economic collapse is that this is a country that once had productive farms (albeit white-owned in a majority black country) and a booming agricultural sector. Today there are starving Zimbabweans. This book was no doubt published now because of its relevance in the lead-up to next week's electionsm - the most important in Zimbabwe's short history. As OUR VOTES, OUR GUNS clearly shows the events of March 9-1Oth will go a long way to deciding what kind of future Zimbabwe has and whether a line can in fact be drawn through the past.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Decline and Fall of Zimbabwe, January 11, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Our Votes, Our Guns: Robert Mugabe and the Tragedy of Zimbabwe (Paperback)

This is a super-readable book about the career of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, whose corruption, brutality, and paranoia have wrecked Zimbabwe's democratic institutions and have brought the country to the brink of economic ruin. The book is refreshingly free of cant, and the author has a sharp eye for political grotesqueries, which have abounded in post-independence Zimbabwe. My only complaint (and hence the rating of 4 stars) is the lack of footnotes or any real analysis of the social or economic currents underlying Zimbabwean politics. Instead, journalist Meredith is content to chronicle events newspaper-style.