IMPERIAL PAST
Britain should finally admit that the sun has set on empire
There has been an upsurge of nationalist sentiment and much huffing and puffing about ‘making Britain great again’
At first the letters from what was then Rhodesia were peppered with mentions of "Good ol’ Smithy". A few years after independence, when nothing had yet been done to disturb the privileged lives of the white population, the letters from Zimbabwe began to make glancing references to "Good ol’ Mugabe". Now, following the euphoria that greeted the ejection of president Robert Mugabe, I wonder if my correspondent, who I never met, might refer to "Good ol’ Emmerson". The letter writer was the daughter of a Rhodesian tobacco farmer who, after I had left SA, married my best friend. But the marriage did not last. He was a hard-drinking rebel while his wife was clearly very conventional; so dutiful, indeed, that when her husband proved to be a hopeless letter writer, she took that chore upon herself. Eventually, she returned to Rhodesia and remarried, all the while continuing to write with no apparent irony in her shifts of loyalty. Today, such is the relief at the departure of Mugabe that th...
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