Inflation soared nearly 2,000 percent (Mr. In 2000 his government started taking over white-owned commercial farms and redistributing the land, mostly to his supporters, and the economy began to tank.Īgricultural production plummeted, leading to growing unemployment and growing food shortages. In addition to eight years of war (which pitted black nationalist groups against white settlers and mercenaries), the country has been subjected to more than two decades under the increasingly violent, corrupt and oppressive rule of Robert Mugabe. Godwin grew up, things are very bad indeed. Godwin reports, two total eclipses occurred within less than two years, something no one he knows can recall, “even in the stories handed down through the generations.” People are saying that “the celestial crocodile must be truly furious to be back so soon, threatening us again with perpetual darkness.”Īnd in Zimbabwe, where Mr. It is the very worst of omens.” At the turn of this millennium, Mr. The title of Peter Godwin’s haunting and beautifully written new memoir, “When a Crocodile Eats the Sun,” comes from an African tribal belief, which holds that an eclipse of the sun occurs when a crocodile eats it: “This celestial crocodile, they say, briefly consumes our life-giving star as a warning that he is much displeased with the behavior of man below.
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