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 deported, forced to leave 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 in a cupboard from Mugabe's thugs; how Mugabe later grabbed him as he challenged him about human rights; how he was harassed, arrested, imprisoned, and tried. Utimately, 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.
Where We Have Hope is a moving memoir of a life lived in a world of extremes-of ugly tyranny and of the extraordinary friendships and passionate beliefs that inspire defiance. It will join recent classics such as Philip Gourevitch's We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed Along with Our Families and Rian Malan's My Traitor's Heart as landmark works on Africa in the post-colonial era.
