An African Memoir

Mwana Wevhu meaning "child of the soil", is the Shona name given to Diana Mitchell by her great friend and Zimbabwean Nationalist, Willie Musarurwa. This was his tribute to her, recognizing her deep attachment to the country of her birth. Diana was born at the height of the Great Depression in what was then Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia and her memoirs chronicle her life as a political activist, journalist, and the first biographer of the African Nationalists who fought for Zimbabwe's Independence. She describes her poverty-stricken childhood in Southern Africa, her intellectual and political awakening in this British colony where racial prejudice and inequality were institutionalized. Around her, the momentous events of the early 1960's in Southern Africa unfold; she witnesses the dissolution of the Central African Federation, the rise to power of the reactionary Rhodesian Front government and its subsequent declaration of illegal UDI. Diana Mitchell's story narrates how she and a tiny band of like-minded liberals did political battle with the monolithic Smith Regime. While her ancestry was British she learned the Shona language and began to move within the social circles of the African Nationalists who were soon to be the leaders of the new country of Zimbabwe. The story moves from pre-war Bulawayo to the grandeur of Capetown University. Utterly fearless, Diana's quest for knowledge leads her from the staid suburbs of Salisbury, to the Frontline states of Zambia and Tanzania, culminating at the Foxtrot assembly point in central Zimbabwe where she covered the military handover from Rhodesian to ZANLA guerrilla forces. These memoirs capture her optimistic view of the first years of independent Zimbabwe, swiftly followed by disillusionment as she learns of the Gukurahundi massacres of Ndebele people by Robert Mugabe and his henchmen. Her unquenchable desire for justice and equality lead her to political and journalistic opposition to this new oppressor and finally to exile in the UK.