when a crocodile eats the sun by peter godwin

In telling the story of his parents who after World War II moved from England to Rhodesia he gives us a searing account of what has happened to Zimbabwe in the last 30-odd years, as bright post-revolution dreams of a multiracial society gave way to bloody racial hatred and strife, and the ordinary chores of daily life going food shopping, buying gas turned into a dangerous run through a gantlet of car hijackers and thugs. Godwin creates an indelible picture of life in that besieged and battered land. Godwin observes, “It is jambanja time” in Zimbabwe now a time when everything is turned upside down, and violent confusion rules. With an estimated 20 percent of the population infected with AIDS and medicine and medical help in increasingly short supply, the life expectancy rate for women fell to 34 years.Īs Mr.

Mugabe were threatened, bullied and killed. Hit squads began roaming the countryside, and political opponents of Mr. Godwin notes that at one point a local stamp cost 2,300 Zimbabwe dollars) and much of the country’s middle class began to flee.

Inflation soared nearly 2,000 percent (Mr. In 2000 his government started taking over white-owned commercial farms and redistributing the land, mostly to his supporters, and the economy began to tank.Īgricultural production plummeted, leading to growing unemployment and growing food shortages. In addition to eight years of war (which pitted black nationalist groups against white settlers and mercenaries), the country has been subjected to more than two decades under the increasingly violent, corrupt and oppressive rule of Robert Mugabe. Godwin grew up, things are very bad indeed. Godwin reports, two total eclipses occurred within less than two years, something no one he knows can recall, “even in the stories handed down through the generations.” People are saying that “the celestial crocodile must be truly furious to be back so soon, threatening us again with perpetual darkness.”Īnd in Zimbabwe, where Mr. It is the very worst of omens.” At the turn of this millennium, Mr. The title of Peter Godwin’s haunting and beautifully written new memoir, “When a Crocodile Eats the Sun,” comes from an African tribal belief, which holds that an eclipse of the sun occurs when a crocodile eats it: “This celestial crocodile, they say, briefly consumes our life-giving star as a warning that he is much displeased with the behavior of man below.

When a crocodile eats the sun by peter godwin