…livro que retrata a brilhante carreira política de Mugabe que trouxe depois seu país a ruina económica.
Heidi Holland should have been a cop,” said Penguin CEO, Alison Lowry at the launch of Dinner with Mugabe last night, “because she always gets her man.” The laughs were loud and merry as she described how Holland had waited in Harare to interview Robert Mugabe - when she should have been reading her proofs and making corrections to the finished manuscript.
“When I went in to see him, I felt I knew him better than he knew himself. The thing that struck me was how tense he was. I was told he clasped his hands tightly together to stop them from shaking, but they don’t shake. When he waves them around in conversation they are quite steady, and very beautiful. He clasps his hands because he is so tense.”
She continued, “His office was a simple affair, with a map of the world on one wall, which he probably doesn’t visit as much as he’d like to, and an ancient portable transistor radio on a shelf – and old blue thing from the ’50s, with knobs on the top. That attests to his lack of materialism. Admittedly, his shirt was beautiful, hand-stitched. He dresses immaculately.”
Holland thought that Mugabe was almost as apprehensive of meeting her as she was of him. “He can’t bear to confront the failure, but I think he’s more aware of what he’s done than his actions reveal,” she said. “At the same time, I suspect he’ll be there for a while yet. His mother died in her late ’90s.”
She feels that many people have not looked hard enough yet at the recent history of Zimbabwe, referring especially to white Rhodesians, white South Africans and the British government, which all contributed to the tragedy that is Zimbabwe’s economic ruin. She believes there has been collusion from these quarters that haven’t adequately been considered. “I hope that Dinner with Mugabe gives us a chance to look at that.” Foto/artigo PenguinBooks
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