After 3/4 of a bottle of Red Label, and interpreting Ed’s silence like me, Brian must have come to the conclusion words were becoming about as useless a means of communication between us as they had been between Mugabe, Carrington, Nkomo and Soames during the Lancaster House shenanigans. He switched to an analogy that was … More Crocodile Farm
In 1982, Smith visited America and Britain, and told reporters that Mugabe was turning to totalitarianism. For some reason, Mugabe later went on to choose the Marxist Leninist flavour preferred by Nkomo’s ZAPU, over ZANU’s Chairman Mao Chinese flavour, perhaps to sideline Nkomo. That was when he sent his Matabeleland Massacre brigade to North Korea … More The Courage Of Ian Smith
The door to door mishap coincided with the timely return of another good Cargilfield friend, Ed Douglas-Miller, from a stint working on a game farm with the well-known conservationist Clive Walker. Ed was the source of the flawed intel that had landed me in trouble at Jan Smuts; he had arrived in South Africa a … More Motorbike Trip To Matopos Hills
The discovery of diamonds on the border of the Orange Free State opened up the interior to prospectors from abroad, many of them British. The Boers had no alternative, they had neither the skills nor resources to control the new market, and before long were outnumbered by the rapid influx of immigrants, or uitlanders, which … More Rhodes, Slavery And Diamonds
So I took a risk, and it seemed to have worked out fine. And that’s when I should have gone straight to university, off the back of a successful warm up in Cambridge, but all my friends were taking a year out, so when it came to filling out the application form, I did the … More An Early Brush With Insurgents