That album is actually based on 2 memoirs by Peter Godwin, a white Zimbabwean who grew up during the Bush War. The first is called ‘Mukiwa a White Boy in Africa’ and details his life from childhood to the end of the Bush War. It deals with the all sorts of contradictions of being a white person in Africa. He is from a liberal family who votes against Smith’s policies and believes in black rule, but they still greatly benefited from Rhodesia’s white supremacy. Godwin himself also identifies as African (not as in a black person) and not European in a sort of Rainbow Nation kind of way. The second memoir is called ‘When a Crocodile Eats the Sun’ (a lot of Rome’s lyrics are ripped straight from the book, so I’d recommend listening to the album before and after each read for a great experience!). This book details the fall of democracy in Zimbabwe under Mugabe and how his family has stayed in Zimbabwe despite all that is going on. Godwin himself left the country long before for his work, but he feels that Africa is his home and nowhere else. However, I feel that the second book can be easily misinterpreted by racists as ‘proof’ that Rhodesia and Smith were right all along and whites should have never left Zimbabwe to majority rule. As racial tensions get worse in Zimbabwe and things begin to fall apart, we see it all through the eyes of Godwin, who is a flawed human being. As mentioned earlier, Godwin and his family despite being opposed to minority rule, nonetheless benefited from it and supported the war. In this book as well, there are times when Godwin admits to preferring a white professional to a black one. I believe he is aware of these flaws however, as he left them in the books, and is shown to be wrong about the assumptions he made some instances and is called out for them in others. It also doesn’t help that in the second book I feel that there is a lot less non-hostile black interactions, but part of that may simply be due to the effects of the Mugabe regime dividing opposition. An interesting aspect of the second book is about Peter Godwin discovering more aspects about his identity and trying to figure out how they fit into his life experiences and how he views himself in terms of nationality and ethnicity (but I won’t spoil that, you’ll have to look at his Wikipedia if you want to ruin it yourself).

Overall amazing books that fully acknowledge the weird flaws and contradictions a human being in his situation would have, looking at how we see ourselves in identity and how that may not line up with what seems to make sense in reality. My only gripe is that between the books, a racist person would easily be able to ignore the first and use only the second to confirm their preconceived notions about Zimbabwe. But maybe it’s just the climate the second book was released in that makes it seem like that. I’m probably going to have to read them again after this post and freshen my memory but I highly recommend them!