After 25 years in power, Robert Mugabe is under increasing pressure to step down and allow democratic reform in Zimbabwe. Amnesty International rates the country among the worst for torture and abuse of human rights, the Commonwealth has suspended Zimbabwe’s membership, and even in Africa there is growing outrage at what some see as a rogue state. In the past five years, millions of words have been written about the tragedy -- including more than a dozen books -- but few have focused on what might happen when freedom comes. As things stand, schools and hospitals have collapsed, a third of the population lives in exile and 3 000 people die of AIDS every week. Once Africa’s second-biggest exporter of food, 70 per cent of the country lives under conditions of famine in the wake of violent land reform.
What will it take to rebuild Zimbabwe? This gripping, incisive book discusses many relevant issues and asks serious questions, including: - Will 4 million exiles go home to a country with 80 per cent unemployment? - Should there be war-crimes trials? - Can the economy be revived? -Where will the billions of dollars come from that are needed to put things right?
What Happens After Mugabe is meticulously researched, with material drawn from hundreds of interviews inside Zimbabwe and among exile communities in Britain, the US and South Africa.
Geoff Hill was born in 1956 and grew up in Malawi, South Africa and Zimbabwe, where he became fluent in the Shona language. In 1980, he joined the Manica Post newspaper on the border of Zimbabwe and Mozambique and, after the nationalization of the press in 1982, he moved to Australia and spent eight years with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. After working in Australia, the USA and UK, Geoff returned to Zimbabwe in 1997, where he worked as a journalist. In 2002, he moved to Johannesburg where he is Africa correspondent for the Washington Times. In September 2000 he became the first non-American to receive a John Steinbeck Award for short-story writing, and he also won the 2000 Common-wealth Short Story Award for Africa.
Geoff Hill is a critically acclaimed author and award-winning feature and travel writer based in Belfast. In a previous life, he was Ireland's most capped volleyball player, the captain of the Northern Ireland team at the Commonwealths and a much younger man. He's motorcycling correspondent for The Sunday Times, the Metro series of newspapers and the Irish Times, making him the most widely read bike columnist in the UK and Ireland; which is surprising considering that his weekly columns are a desperate attempt to disguise the fact that he knows bugger all about motorbikes. He's the author of Smith, a novel of which The Independent on Sunday said: "Lyrical and lunatic...few first novels achieve as much'', and which The Times described as "hilarious". This worried him, since he thought it was a serious work, but not half as much as the fact that it only sold half as many copies as his previous work, The Ulster Joke Book, which is available at all good airports and quite a few bad ones. His first travel book, Way to Go, on two great motorcycle journeys - from Delhi to Belfast on a Royal Enfield and Route 66 on a Harley - was published in April 2005, was the Mail on Sunday's book of the week, was nominated for UK travel book of the year and has been reprinted six times. The sequel, The Road to Gobblers Knob, on a ride from Chile to Alaska along the 16,500 miles of the Pan-American Highway with former Isle of Man TT winner Clifford Paterson, was published in Spring 2007 and went straight to number seven in Waterstone's paperback best sellers list. His latest book, Anyway, Where Was I? Geoff Hill's alternative A-Z of the world, was published in September 2008 and also went straight into Waterstone's best sellers list. His next book, Oz: around Australia on a Triumph, will be published in October 2010, in conjunction with a DVD and TV documentary. He's either won or been shortlisted for a UK travel writer of the year award nine times. He's also a former Irish travel writer of the year and a former Mexican Government European travel writer of the year, although he's still trying to work out exactly what that means, and in 2005 was given a Golden Pen award by the Croatian Tourist Board for the best worldwide feature or broadcast on Zagreb. He was NITB Northern Ireland journalist of the year in 2007. He has written about travel for the Daily Telegraph, the Sunday Telegraph, the Independent, the Independent on Sunday, Wales on Sunday and Escape, Ireland's biggest travel magazine. He was a long-standing editor for Fodor's, the best-selling American guide book series and had a long-running weekly travel show on U105, the Irish independent radio station. Outside motorbikes and travel, he has also won one UK and three Northern Ireland feature writer of the year awards and two UK newspaper design awards. He's also a tutor with the writing school Mightier Than The Sword, where he teaches the art of great writing to journalists, PR and marketing professionals and speechwriters. He lives in Belfast with his wife Cate, a cat, a hammock and the ghost of a flatulent Great Dane. His hobbies are volleyball, flying, motorbikes, skiing and worrying about the price of fish. He is a qualified pilot, international volleyball coach and advanced driver and motorcyclist. He's a member of Mensa, for no good reason he can think of.
This review is from: What Happens After Mugabe? (Paperback)
As Zimbabwe plunges deeper and deeper into chaos the question we all ask is 'will the madness ever end?' It is impossible to see light at the end of the tunnel given the depths to which Zimbabwe has sunk. The book gives a brief history of the country and paints a picture of the dismal current state of affairs. However, Geoff Hill optimistically outlines a rough framework of the process involved in returning Zimbabwe to self-sufficient democracy after the fall of Mugabe. He covers all of the most important areas; personal freedom and law and order, independence of the judiciary, provision of food and the land question, education, health and the task of luring back the millions of Zimbabweans in exile to support the reconstruction process. He interviews numerous prominent Zimbabweans (most in exile) including Geoff Nyarota, Basildon Peta, Gerry Jackson as well as other Zimbabweans from all walks of life, including plicemen, school leavers, MDC supporters and exiles in England and South Africa. Their opinions and ideas for the future are diverse and insightful. It would be easy to dismiss the book as being overly optimistic filled with nostalgia for the Zimbabwe of the 1980's and early 90's. Geoff Hill, however, includes numerous examples of other African countries including Rwanda, Kenya, Mali, South Africa and Nigeria that have managed to heal to a degree and return to states of relative peace and democracy after horrific pasts. As Zimbabwean in exile I felt as if the book was written for people like me, but it is well written and widely researched and I believe anyone with an interest in Zimbabwean affairs would find the ideas fascinating and informative.
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This review is from: What Happens After Mugabe? (Paperback)
Mr. Hill has performed a great service to the world at large. Most leaders and other figureheads believe that once Mugabe goes it will all be roses. Hill explains how difficult it is to recover from a bad regime, especially one that has been entrenched in power for so very long. You must read this book.
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This review is from: What Happens After Mugabe? (Paperback)
This title is the sequel to Geoff Hill's first book entitled "The Battle for Zimbabwe". This book is very insightful and thought provoking as it discusses not only the tragic consequences of events in Zimbabwe under a power-crazed madman who to this day refuses to relinquish power while his country has descended into the abyss. But this book also is a first as it talks about what Zimbabwe would look like after this dictator goes and offers solutions to how this nightmare might end. It offers hope for the long suffering people of Zimbabwe although it is realistic about the issues that would confront a post-Mugabe Zimbabwe.
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