The man behind the monster... This penetrating, timely portrait of Robert Mugabe takes us into the mind of the man whose career began as the great hope for his nation - the man who would save it from the repressive regime of Ian Smith - and has resulted in Zimbabwe's destruction. Heidi Holland's tireless investigation begins with her having dinner with Magabe the freedom fighter and ends more than 30 years later in a searching interview with Mugabe the president. In between, she interviews those who have been closest to Mugabe at successive stages of his life, charting his gradual psychological deterioration and the devastation of his country, and uncovers the complicity of some of the most respectable international players in the Zimbabwe tragedy.
Probing the mystery of Africa's loyalty to one of its worst dictators, Holland explores the contradictions that cloud the life of the man who had embodied a continent's promise...