Forty years ago, a revolutionary African leader named Robert Mugabe was my hero. Or rather, he was the hero of a political novel I was writing based on then-current events.
It was 1979, and Rhodesia was in the violent throes of being reborn as Zimbabwe. The idea of basing a book on historical events as they were being made, and as facts on the ground changed daily, felt like a desperately original undertaking. After all, I was a graduate student at the University of Toronto, full of bluster and ambition, bored stiff with studying what other people thought was important. This was the perfect opportunity to write what I hoped would be a bestselling thriller about events taking place in the colonial outpost bordering my homeland, South Africa.
Back then, few people knew the name Nelson Mandela, who was in the seventeenth year of his incarceration on Robben Island. Four years would pass before he and his closest associates were transferred to Pollsmoor Prison, where conditions were less severe. Apartheid seemed in no danger of collapse, and Rhodesia was at the epicenter of the struggle against European colonialism and white minority rule. The goals of Comrade Robert Mugabe’s revolutionary movement resonated with those of us expatriates who were watching from afar.
Premier Ian Smith was desperately trying to hold onto white rule in Rhodesia against the intractable force of a people willing to die for their freedom and independence. It was ultimately a losing battle, but at the time, as I began to write my own fictionalized version of events, it seemed to me unrealistic that Mugabe’s revolutionary forces could emerge victorious without a powerful ally to train and equip them.
Wouldn’t it be an interesting plot twist, I thought, if the Communist Chinese, who so clearly wanted a foothold on the tip of Africa, could be that ally? It would work in the story for multiple reasons — not the least of which was that a powerful Communist force allied with a black liberation movement on South Africa’s northern border would (and did) throw the apartheid regime into full-fledged panic.
So, I wrote the Communist Chinese into the story. They gave the book its title, The Third Power. I began to wonder if it really mattered whether the story remained in lockstep with facts on the ground or took off on a flight of fancy all its own. This was, after all, fiction.
In those distant days, I wrote on an electric typewriter, using three carbon copies. I had a rotary phone on a table beside my apartment door. The Internet and cell phones — now indispensable tools of the writer’s trade — were still far in the future. The only way to keep abreast of current events in far-flung places was the daily Toronto paper and the BBC radio station.
I was struck by this ironic twist of fate.
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Each morning I ran down the stairs to the Italian deli below my apartment on St. Clair Avenue to purchase a newspaper. Then I would rush back upstairs to read about what had happened the previous day, searching feverishly for any mention of events in southern Africa. Some days, I was only a step ahead of what was happening. On others, I was two steps behind and had to scrap what I had written — or worse, alter it on all three carbon copies.
Then, political reality caught up with me.
One Saturday morning, it snowed deep and long. I ran down the stairs to my Italian deli, my sneakers sinking into eight inches of slush, returned with my copy of The Globe and Mail, and opened up to the international news. The headline: Robert Mugabe’s ZANU Party was being trained and financed by the Communist Chinese. Needless to say, the Chinese stayed in the book.
Fast forward to this week. I have been following current events in Zimbabwe with keen interest.
After all, I’ve been here before.
It came as no surprise to me that shortly before Mugabe was placed under what his generals politely called “protective custody” last week, the chief of Zimbabwe’s Armed Forces, General Chiwenga, met privately with the Chinese foreign minister. Or that Chinese Premier Xi Jinping recently described China as Zimbabwe’s “all weather friend,” undoubtedly reflecting China’s desire to protect its position as Zimbabwe’s largest foreign investor.
But I was struck by this ironic twist of fate: Robert Mugabe was brought to power almost forty years ago on the strength of China’s arms, training and financing. Now that same might is helping to bring his reign of terror to an end.
After decades of investment, China certainly has an interest in a politically and economically stable Zimbabwe, but what form that stability will take has yet to be determined. Perhaps it will be the democratic stability for which Zimbabweans have yearned for two generations. But if I were writing the sequel, my bet would be that China doesn’t really care. Much simpler to ease another autocrat into power and keep him fat and happy, while he safeguards Chinese interests.
Only time will tell.
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