The Fear: Robert Mugabe’s Campaign of Terror in Zimbabwe

Open Society hosted a presentation and dialogue with Peter Godwin, Zimbabwean journalist and author of The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe.

In mid-2008, after nearly three decades of increasingly tyrannical rule, Robert Mugabe, the 84-year-old Robespierre of Zimbabwe, lost an election. But instead of conceding power, he launched a brutal campaign of terror against his own citizens. Peter Godwin, author of the memoir When a Crocodile Eats the Sun, was one of the few outside observers to bear witness to the terrifying period that Zimbabweans call, simply, “The Fear.”

Godwin’s book is a moving and stunning account of a people grotesquely altered, laid waste by a raging despot. It is about the astonishing courage and resilience of a people, armed with nothing but a desire to be free, who challenge a violent dictatorship.

Listen to the event above.