In praise of Martin Meredith, a British writer who knows his Africa

I first met Martin Meredith through his 1979 book, The Past is Another Country: Rhodesia 1890-1979.

In it, one gets acquainted with the troubled history of the country we now know as Zimbabwe: its occupation by a band of marauders sent by Cecil Rhodes in South Africa; the relentless subjugation of the natives and their exclusion from any meaningful economic activity except as servants of the white settlers; the hypocrisy of the “reluctant imperialists” in London, who pretended not to know what their kin were up to; the rise of black nationalism and the cutthroat rivalries among the nationalists; the liberation war, and finally Independence in 1980.