Book dossier

Where we have hope

by Andrew Meldrum

"Where We Have Hope is the memoir of a young American journalist who arrived in a Zimbabwe flush with new independence, only to be illegally expelled twenty years later as an enemy of the state. When American-born journalist Andrew Meldrum arrived in Harare in 1980, he planned to stay for only three years - but he quickly fell in love with the country and its people. Newly independent from Britain, Zimbabwe was infused with the optimism of new nation-building, but over the twenty years he lived there, Meldrum watched as President Robert Mugabe gradually consolidated power and the government slowly evolved into violent despotism. In May 2003, Meldrum was seized and expelled, forced to leave the country for writing "bad things" about Mugabe's regime." "In Where We Have Hope, Meldrum describes what it meant to live through this period of hope and tragedy: how hundreds of people lined up to tell him of horrific massacres; how he once hid from Mugabe's thugs in a cupboard; how Mugabe grabbed him as he challenged him about human rights; how he was harassed, arrested, imprisoned, and tried. Ultimately, however, this is a story of the triumph of hope - of doctors, teachers, journalists, and lawyers who refuse to accept the abuses of Mugabe's rule."--Jacket.