Peter Godwin se derde boek oor Zimbabwe is: When a crocodile eats the sun: a memoir (Northlands: Picador Africa, 2006, 342p). Dit handel oor die besoeke wat Godwin aan Zimbabwe gebring het tydens sy pa se siekte en dood in Harare. Die outeur het van Amerika af daarheen gekom en is soms deur Georgina, sy suster wat nou in Engeland woon, vergesel. Dit is 'n opset waarmee wit Suid-Afrikanes goed bekend is. Die bejaardes bly aan in Afrika terwyl die jonger geslag geen toekoms hier sien nie en uitwyk na die Eerste Wêreld. Peter en Georgina het hierdie geleenthede gebruik om vas te stel in watter toestand hulle geboorteland is, al roem hulle deurgaans op hulle politieke (oor)verligtheid.
Dit is glo die koerantredakteur Piet Cillié wat eerste was om PW Botha die groot krokodil te noem. Hier gaan dit om 'n ander betekenis. In sy eerste boek (SêNet, 19 deser) verwys Godwin na 'n terreurbende wat die Crocodile Gang genoem is (p 14). In sy derde boek meld hy die Shona en ander stamme se bygeloof "that a solar eclipse occurs when a crocodile eats the sun ... Mugabe's clan totem is ... a crocodile" (p 118). Winston Churchill het gesê: "Appeasement is feeding the crocodile, hoping it will eat you last" (p 249). Dit kan valse optimisme wees, soos blyk uit die "boiled-frog syndrome ... if you put a frog in a shallow saucepan of water and heat up the water very slowly, the frog will never quite notice how hot it's getting. It won't actually jump out. Until it's too late. Until it's boiled alive" (p 102).
Dwarsdeur die boek is daar talle opmerkings wat toon hoe soortgelyk die situasies in Zimbabwe en die nuwe Suid-Afrika is. Daar is nie 'n aardverskil nie; hoogstens 'n graadverskil. Oor 'n hospitaal: "There were no bedspreads in the linen room – they have all been stolen" (p 14). Die bevrydingsteoloog en eerste swart president van Zimbabwe, Canaan Banana, het die Onse Vader-gebed soos volg aangepas: "Teach us to demand our share of the gold, and forgive us our docility" (p 30). Tradisioneel was swart mans leeglêers: "It's a wise man who cultivates just as much land as his wife can conveniently hoe" (p 155). Sedert 1997 was daar "enormous one-off payments to the fifty thousand war vets, plus generous monthly pensions" (p 51). "Africans can't do governments ... we never pay our dues" (p 53).
"The idea of land 'ownership' as such was an alien one ... 'Buy land?' said the chief. 'You must be cracy, you don't buy the wind or the water or the trees'" (p 54). Tydens geweldadige plaasbesettings word daar gesing: "Down with the Boers" (p 69). "The government kept promising us land, but we never got anything, so now we have come to take it for ourselves, it is our spoils of war ... We will take half of each farm ... if we need tractors we will borrow them from the farmer" (p 81). Dit word jambanja genoem, 'n Shona-woord wat "turn everything upside down, to cause violent confusion" beteken (p 179). "Some of the main casualities of jambanja are the two million black farm workers and their families who lived and worked on the commercial farms" (p 182). Die hoofonreg word die boer en sy gesin aangedoen, maar dit bly onvermeld.
Robert Mugabe het gesê: "If ZANU-PF loses the election he and his men will go back to war" (p 89). Die vredesikoon Nelson Mandela het presies dieselfde belowe indien die ANC die 1994-verkiesing sou verloor. Dit toon in watter mate hierdie twee "struggle"-helde tot demokrasie verbind is. Daar is 'n soortgelyke gesindheid by die generaal wat gesê het "his soldiers will not permit the victory of any candidate who has not served as a guerrilla" (p 159). Soos in Suid-Afrika is die paaie in 'n vervalle toestand en is daar boere wat op eie koste die herstelwerk doen (p 90).
Afrika is glo die wieg van die mensdom, "the environment originally most hospitable to man", maar dit het "the Third World's Third World" geword. "In 1963, Zimbabwe had the same GDP as South Korea. Now South Korea's economy is a hundred and twenty times the size of Zimbabwe's. Africa accounts for more than eleven per cent of the world's population and less than two per cent of its trade. Zimbabwe ... has the world's fastest shrinking economy. Today the average Zimbabwean has a standard of living half what it was at Independence in 1980" (p 153). "The jealousy in traditional societies can be extreme if someone garners any sort of advantage. This is the downside of their egalitarianism" (p 286). "The economy has halved in size in five years ... seventy per cent of the black middle class has fled" (p 296).
Soos in Suid-Afrika was dit wit sendelinge wat die voortou geneem het om die inheemse tale te standaardiseer (p 157). Godwin het 'n onderhoud met 'n swarte gevoer wat dink "African post-colonial identity provided a protective fog of black culture to obscure a multitude of sins against the people ... He wished to break out entirely from the sterile binary bout between colonizer and subject, oppressor and victim, exotic and indigenous – the lazy, generalized shorthand of evil and good" (p 158). "Ninety-seven per cent of six thousand white-owned farms have been served with eviction notices" (p 175). "The government confiscates the farm without compensation. It then insists that the farmer pays large 'retrenchment packages' to the labour force" (p 178).
Soos sommige wit Suid-Afrikaanse boere wyk Zimbabwiese boere uit na lande soos Mosambiek, Zambië en Nigerië, waar hulle vermoëns verwelkom word (p 161). "How long before they become victims of their own agricultural success?" (p 162). Samora Machel, Mosambiek se eerste swart president, "told Mugabe that you might well keep your whites, they can be useful" (p 274). "A white in Africa is like a Jew everywhere – on sufferance, watching warily, waiting for the next great tidal swell of hostility" (p 266).
"Many of the rich men in their castles are of different hue, though the poor men at the gate are the same, only there are more of them now and they are poorer still" (p 312). "The average life span is now down to thirty-four (from fifty-seven at independence in 1980)" (p 314-315). 'n Swarte erken ruiterlik: "We've gone from bread bin to dust bin" (p 339). Maar wat dink die eens hiperverligte Godwin-ouers? Die outeur se pa: "'Do you think there is any room left for an honest white in this country, Pete?' 'I don't', volunteers Mum. 'I consider that we are now like Greek slaves in Rome', says Dad. 'Some of the culture may come through us, but all the power lies with the Roman soldiers' ... Mum ... 'We have some use culturally, even though we've been reduced to a subclass'" (p 295).
En die outeur? "I feel the profound guilt of those who can escape" (p 229). "I am abandoning my post ... I am rejecting my own identity. I am commiting cultural treason" (p 230). "When our civil war was over in 1980, I remember half-expecting that the dead would be restored to us, like some weary column of POWs returning after an armistice ... There is only a void where once there was life" (p 259). "What we've all seen, the reversal of progress, the shocking decline, the descent into darkness" (p 314). "Darkness is restored to our corner of Africa" (p 261).
Johannes Comestor