Change Afoot in Harare?

General Constantine Chiwenga may be behind the possible coup in Harare

There were news reports this afternoon Hong Kong time that the military had put Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and his family under house arrest, according to Major General S. B. Moyo, who made a statement on the state broadcaster ZBC.

While he and another uniformed officer confirmed Mugabe and his family are safe, and their security was guaranteed, Moyo said: "We are only targeting criminals around him who are committing crimes that are causing social and economic suffering in the country in order to bring them to justice."

No bloodshed, but tanks and soldiers are in the streets

He also warned that any provocation would be met with an appropriate response.

There is speculation that General Constantine Chiwenga who is leading what looks like a coup, is close to the former Vice President Emmerson Mnangawa, who was expelled from the government and governing ZANU-PF party last week.

These latest developments have a Zimbabwean friend of mine who has lived in Hong Kong for over 20 years very excited.

In my first newspaper job, he was one of the first photographers I worked with, a white Zimbabwean whose family had been there for generations. It was he who explained to me what Mugabe had done to his country since he took power in 1980.

Is this the beginning of the end of Robert Mugabe?

He was frustrated and upset when President mandated blacks take over farms owned by whites, causing racial backlash against whites, like his parents who had been there all their lives. They were told to go back to where they came from, but where? They were from Zimbabwe too.

His parents' farm was taken over, a place that his family had lived in for decades, which caused his father so much shock that he died of a heart attack soon after. His mother had to create a new life for herself in a small apartment with a tiny balcony for her to continue growing plants and flowers, a tiny fraction of what she was used to looking after.

The story he told me was very similar to Peter Goodwin's When a Crocodile Eats The Sun: A Memoir of Africa, a memoir that my friend YTSL lent me.

A powerful memoir of Zimbabwe

Ever since my friend told me about Mugabe, I would read about any news on him and be shocked and horrified by what he was doing to the country, particularly the insane inflation that rendered their currency worthless by the day.

Several years ago I caught up with my friend who had been going to Mandarin class. I asked him what for and he said to be able to get a Chinese passport. He was so ashamed of carrying a Zimbabwean passport and was ready to renounce his citizenship of his native homeland if he could get a Chinese one. I don't know if he managed to get it or not.

So I can imagine he is anxiously watching the news of the so-called coup that the military claims is not a coup, while there are reports people in the streets are happy to have anyone else but Mugabe.

We shall see what happens, but it may be the light at the end of what has been a very long and dark tunnel.

China Recognizes fellow Strongman

Robert Mugabe is the 2015 winner of the Confucius Peace Prize

The Confucius Prize winner was announced on September 28, but the rest of the world didn't hear about it until... three weeks later.

Now such a prestigious prize should have had been highly anticipated, but alas only those in China knew that the winner was... (drum roll please)... Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe.

Isn't he the perfect person to win China's answer to the Nobel Peace Prize?

The selection committee chose Mugabe, 91, for "working tirelessly to build the political and economic stability of his country, bringing peace to the people of Zimbabwe, strongly supporting pan-Africanism and African independence, and making unparalleled contributions for the renaissance of African Civilization".

Mugabe only got 36 out of 76 votes, with others going to Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and South Korean President Park Geun-hype.

And now the Zimbabwean strong leader enters a small circle of winners in which he has good company: fellow strongmen Fidel Castro and Vladimir Putin.

Will he or won't he be the first person to actually come and accept the prize of 100,000 yuan ($15,000)...

Book Review: When a Crocodile Eats the Sun

A passionately written memoir about Zimbabwe

Almost 20 years ago I had a white colleague in Hong Kong who was from Zimbabwe. I'd never met anyone from there before and he told me about the beautiful African landscapes and how his parents had a farm there.

But then when President Robert Mugabe began the forced land redistribution in 2000, blacks started to violently take over white farms, including my colleague's parents' piece of land.

People just literally took over their farm they had lived on for generations and the experience so profoundly shocked his father that he had a heart attack and died soon afterwards. His mother, now displaced, had to move to a small apartment where she only had a balcony to tend to her small plants.

My colleague was angry at Mugabe, for destroying what his family had built for decades. He said that the blacks told them to go back to their homeland and he retorted, Where? We are Zimbabwean like you! We were born here -- where else can we go?

Many years later my colleague told me when he went back to Zimbabwe for a trip, he visited what used to be their farm. He said the blacks occupying it were nice enough to let him see it again. There was no malice, but disappointment at what had been done.

I remember feeling my colleague's anger and frustration of what had happened to his family and country, but I didn't fully understand it until I read When a Crocodile Eats the Sun by Peter Godwin. It was a book YTSL lent me and it was a powerful read.

Godwin is an author, journalist and former lawyer. In this book he talks about this period when farms were being forcibly taken and documents his family's friends fates, many of them meeting horrific and depressing ends.

He too, like my colleague, writes about his frustration and inability to fully comprehend the irrationality of it all -- farms that were previously profitable, organized and efficiently run by whites -- were all of a sudden taken over by blacks who didn't have much first-hand knowledge or experience in farming and basically ran them into the ground, so there was nothing to harvest, nothing to eat and people resorting to violence and the black market to feed themselves.

Meanwhile inflation jumped exponentially to the point where people had to carry around bricks of cash just for a loaf of bread.

Author and journalist Peter Godwin

Godwin talks lovingly of his parents who immigrated to Zimbabwe to make a new life for themselves and devoted their careers to helping develop the country. However in the end they were hardly thanked for their efforts.

There is another interesting aspect of the story when his aging father cryptically reveals to his son that he is actually a Polish Jew who managed to escape the gas chambers because he went to school in the UK, but is unable to reunite with his father again. Godwin's grandmother and aunt died in the concentration camps.

And so having lost his family, Godwin's father starts a fresh chapter in his life with a new identity with his British-born wife in Zimbabwe. As a result Godwin has a new appreciation for his parents, why his father seemed restrained yet witty and totally in love with his wife.

Godwin also describes his childhood and how he was totally integrated into the culture of Africa, how he grew up learning voodoo chants and the Shona language, the friends he had and of course the natural environment that he so passionately describes.

The title of the book, When a Crocodile Eats the Sun, is an African way to explain how eclipses of the sun happen, but also foreshadows other bad things, particularly the forced land redistribution. The memoir was such a powerful read that it was so difficult to put down, the images so vivid, dialogue witty and events thoroughly researched.

I now have a greater appreciation for what my colleague and his family experienced, what upheaval Zimbabwe had gone through and hope that somehow the country will eventually awaken from the madness...