Palaver Finish

by Chenjerai Hove

Hove is highly regarded as a novelist, poet and essayist in Zimbabwe and internationally. A politically engaged writer, he has also turned to journalism. This timely volume brings together a series of articles, which have previously appreared in his weekly column in The Zimbabwe Standard. Hove, publishing in Zimbabwe, believes the voices of the nation's politically engaged writers - in tune with the mood of the people and the times - are crucial in the current climate of political violence and censorship. To outside media and observers trying to ascertain the truths of the political situation, his writings offer insights from a black Zimbabwean writer and critic.

Hove writes for and about Zimbabwe from a perspective that acknowledges recent history, and debates around culture, tradition and democracy. His criticism is uneqivocal, his portrayal of Zimbabwe's politics, damning and unforgiving. His case is that Zimbabwe is a police state, which has inherited pre-indepedence totalitarianism; members of the Government are in politics for reasons of personal gain - they are unsophisticated, poorly educated and have no notion of public office. He believes that the army and police - whom he compares with those of apartheid South Africa, are the politicians' personal weapons, committing acts of crime and terrorism in the President's name and in their own.

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Reviews

'This is an impassioned polemic from a writer agonisingly aware of the catastrophic path his country is taking and doing his utmost to alter that course.': The New Internationalist