Zimbabwe

Whenever I read Denford Magora’s Zimbabwe Blog, it reminds me of when I was doing my BA in London. I was 34 and there were several other mature students on our Media Studies degree course. We tended to stick together, and one I became specially friendly with was Mabel, a black girl from Zimbabwe. Like me, she had two young children, and they were of similar ages to mine.

She introduced me to many of her friends and we spent time at the BBC World Service and at the Africa Centre in the city. I well remember the celebrations at the time of Robert Mugabe’s first election as President of Zimbabwe.

Mabel’s family was known to him and she had worked with him briefly in the past. She firmly believed he was to be the salvation of her country.

The photo is of Robert Mugabe at the 12th African Union Summit Feb. 2, 2009 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

After we graduated, she went home to Zimbabwe, but we kept in touch for a while. A couple of years later she came back to the UK for a visit and turned up on my doorstep. It was a lovely surprise. I really envied Mabel as she told me she had soon managed to get her own radio show and eventually a TV show as well. (I had not been able to fulfil my own ambitions to go into radio, apart from selling a few freelance features. I was too old to join a BBC training programme at that time, although I had worked with some of their producers.)

It’s many years since I last heard from Mabel. I often wonder what became of her, indeed whether she is still alive, and if so, how she feels about the Mugabe regime now. All the reports from Zimbabwe are pretty horrendous. And there is much more detail on Denford Magora’s blog than we get in our media.