Without Honour - A Story from Rhodesia and Zimbabwe

“Fuck off! You fucking racist! Get yourself out of my country!” To Robb WJ Ellis, a young white recently appointed policeman in Zimbabwe just after Robert Mugabe’s accession to power, it was soon made clear what the new potentates thought of him. At the same time that Mugabe was being lauded by much of the rest of the world, his secret armies were murdering thousands of his political opponents and the ethnic cleansing of the country’s white inhabitants continued. Kenneth Wallgren reviews Robb WJ Ellis’ e-book Without Honour, a unique documentation from within African politics in practice, published earlier this year in Swedish newspaper Folkets Nyheter.

“The war was over and Robert Mugabe was the new leader of the country as its Prime Minister.

Independence came and went. The family stayed. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Mugabe had addressed the nation and had offered a “hand of reconciliation”. He wasn’t interested in what colour you were. He wasn’t interested in who you fought for pre-1980… He didn’t even care who you voted for in the election — he had secured 63% of the voters in the election that brought him and his party to power.

If you wanted to stay, you could stay. He just wanted people who would help build Zimbabwe into the pride of Africa.

And do you know the strange thing about his speech? We all believed it. We all swallowed it — hook, line and sinker.”

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