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... of Zimbabwe had at one point a great hatred of Tony Blair. I am slightly ashamed to admit that it raised Blair in my estimation. Just a bit, he isn't my hero (although like others in his game he is not to be underestimated).
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Top boy, Bob.
A hero to many.
After all, he chased the whites off the farms, and gave them to his mates.
Many in this nation advocate the same. Ignoring the fact that Zim went to hell in a handbasket soon afterwards.
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An associate of his was in the news earlier this year:
tinyurl.com/jzr5j65
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What a sweet little darling Hoogstraten is. Good enough to eat.
Perhaps there are lions on his property. No harm in hoping.
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Backwards his name is e ba gum. Clearly not to be taken seriously.
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I used to have a journalist colleague who was a Shona from Zimbabwe, like Mugabe from the Karanga segment of the Shonas. He wasn't a friend exactly but we were long-time colleagues and got on OK usually.
He was appointed editor of Africa journal by the owner, who wanted to get in with Mugabe before he became president. He wouldn't let me write anything on Zimbabwe just as the owner wouldn't let me write anything about Nigeria.
Weirdly, someone from the Grauniad rang and asked me to write his obituary, which I did of course. It was quite difficult being obituary-kind without telling too many actual lies.
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Another editor of Africa journal was an Ibo from the Niger delta whose first name was Okey, pronounced as you would expect. We had a telephone routine that went:
'How are you?'
'Howe I am. How are you?'
'I'm Okey...'
This gave me anyway a certain innocent pleasure.
But we fell out over FGM, about which I had been prating one day. I don't think Okey's people went in for it much, although hard information about these things is by its nature a bit difficult to come by. But he didn't think it was any of my damn business. We became quite heated and the owner's pet, a glamorous secretary type person, looked in to make sure blood wasn't being shed.
It was quite amusing being a freelance Africa hack in those days.
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>> It was quite difficult being obituary-kind without telling too many actual lies.
Herself, who knew the Zimbabwean and didn't like him - she's less racist than I am in case anyone was wondering - was very impressed by my effort and said she wouldn't have been able to do it.
Of course those Fleet Street carphounds always mutilate or drop the best bits. C'est normal.
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Weirdly, someone from the Grauniad rang and asked me to write his obituary, which I did of course.
It had to be done in a hurry and I seem to remember getting 200 quid for it, quite a decent wedge in those days by my standards. Nothing lasts for ever though, or even to the end of the week.
Still, 200 quid... yee-hah sort of thing. Nothing wrong with living for the moment.
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For a while, I had a part-time job driving African and Asian students around. On one occasion I had to take a student to Heathrow for his return trip to Zimbabwe. He looked distraught, but I couldn't understand why there were so many people, including a member of staff, seeing him off that I had to use a minibus - female students, in particular, were making a real fuss of him. All became clear at the airport when, at the very last minute, he ran back into the departure lounge so that he missed his flight. He had to go eventually, of course, but I was relieved not to be given the sad task of taking him to the airport.
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Waiting for my flight at Orly or somewhere like that, I remember these very gloomy and very black Central Africans all wearing handcuffs. They all looked well used to it.
The French fuzz were surprisingly decent to them, letting them sit down and so on.
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He's no financial genius either. Zimbabwe's rate of inflation peaked at an estimated at 79.6 billion percent in mid-November 2008, forcing them to adopt the US dollar as currency. They are apparently going back to their own currency again, causing panic as people withdraw their money from the banks in dollars.
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Just looked through the old banknotes dish and found two swingeing Zimbabwean notes, one for a mere 500 million dollars and the other for a decently healthy five billon dollars. Both dated 2008.
Weimar? Amateurs!
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>> Just looked through the old banknotes dish and found two swingeing Zimbabwean notes, one for
>> a mere 500 million dollars and the other for a decently healthy five billon dollars.
>> Both dated 2008.
>>
>> Weimar? Amateurs!
>>
Makes the old Italian Lira look rock solid.
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>> Makes the old Italian Lira look rock solid.
Of course the French franc turned a few cartwheels in the fifties.
At one point it was thought expedient to divide it blandly by 100. The idea was to reduce the volume of bumf one had to carry, and it sort of worked.
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The Hungarians seem to be the champions
"The largest denomination banknote ever officially issued for circulation was in 1946 by the Hungarian National Bank for the amount of 100 quintillion pengő (100,000,000,000,000,000,000.
I would have loved to get on a bus and proffer a note and say "Sorry the smallest I have is a 100 quintillion"
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>> The French fuzz were surprisingly decent to them, letting them sit down and so on.
And I think, not sure though, taking off their manacles. Loosening them anyway.
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>> Weirdly, someone from the Grauniad rang and asked me to write his obituary, which I did of course.
Damned if I can find it though. I know it exists. 'Godwin Matatu - A Vivid Reporter', something like that was the title. It wasn't that good a piece, and it was a bit mauled by subs in the usual way.
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The unpleasant Robert Mugabe - Ian (Cape Town)
