Peter Godwin
VAnity Fair

Citation
Peter Godwin saw Zimbabwe as few other journalists could. He grew up and was educated in Zimbabwe, served as a conscript, and maintains a network of friends and associates in the country. After President Robert Mugabe banned Western journalists from Zimbabwe, Godwin was able to spend more than six weeks there at a particularly horrific time, when Mugabe was terrorizing citizens in the run-up to elections. Godwin's brave and moving piece in Vanity Fair describes a social collapse and brutal intimidation so extreme that people in Zimbabwe refer to the prevailing state of mind there simply as "the Fear." But, as Godwin shows, the spirit of resistance has not been entirely extinguished. In one scene in his story, a church congregation crowds around Godwin when the police attempt to seize him, quietly hiding his notebooks under their clothing so that there will be no evidence that he is a journalist.

Excerpt
Day of the Crocodile
September 2008

For more than five hours on the afternoon of April 4 the man who sees himself as synonymous with the destiny of Zimbabwe, and who has made himself the country's dictator to ensure it, remained locked in a meeting in Harare, the capital, with his fourdozenmember politburo. The man was Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's president, and the session was taking place in the upper reaches of the ruling party's headquarters, Jongwe House. Everyone in Harare knew that Mug a be had to be up there; the soldiers of his presidential guard were still lolling around outside, in their distinctive gold berets.

Mugabe was chairing the meeting himself, in a dark suit and polkadotted tie. On Mugabe's flanks were the men and women who fought victoriously with him 28 years ago to transform whiteruled Rhodesia into blackruled Zimbabwe. Now, six days after elections for parliament and president, this group was facing certain defeat. Although the government had not yet officially announced the results, and despite strenuous efforts to rig the election, it was clear that Mugabe's zanuP.F. party had lost not only its parliamentary majority but the presidency as well. The purpose of the meeting was to decide whether to accept the loss gracefully and relinquish power to Mugabe's bitter rival, the Movement for Democratic Change (M.D.C.), led by Morgan Tsvangirai (pronounced Chahngureye), or to fight on, manipulating the results so as to force a second round of voting for the presidency.

Mugabe's party is divided now between hawks and doves, between hardliners and conciliators, and it is riven as well by rival succession candidates. Mugabe's clan totem is Gushungo—meaning "crocodile" in Shona, the language of most Zimbabweans--and on the occasion of his 83rd birthday, last year, a giant stuffed crocodile was presented to him as a symbol of his "majestic authority." But even the wiliest crocodiles eventually tire and die, and the word on the street was that he had been stung by the extent of his defeat, and that his young wife, Grace, had urged him to step down and enjoy his last years with their three children in his 25 bedroom mansion. The mood in Harare was expectant, even giddy.

Biography
Peter Godwin, 51, grew up in Africa. He studied law at Cambridge university, and international relations at Oxford. He is an award winning foreign correspondent, author, documentary-maker and screenwriter. After practicing human rights law in Zimbabwe, he became a foreign and war correspondent, and has reported from over 60 countries, including wars in Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Somalia, Congo, Ivory Coast, Sudan, Bosnia, Kosovo, Kashmir and the last years of apartheid South Africa. He served as East European correspondent and Diplomatic correspondent for the London Sunday Times, and chief correspondent for BBC television's flagship foreign affairs program, Assignment (now Correspondent), making documentaries from such places as Cuba, Panama, Indonesia, Pakistan, Spain, Northern Ireland, the Philippines, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, the Baltics, and the Balkans as it descended into war. His film, The Industry of Death, about the sex trade in Thailand, won the gold medal for investigative film at the New York Film Festival.
He also wrote and co-presented a three part series 'Africa Unmasked' for Britain's Channel Four. He has written for a wide array of magazines and newspapers including Vanity Fair, National Geographic, New York Times magazine, Time, and Newsweek, the Observer (London) and the Guardian (London.)
He is the author of five non fiction books: 'Rhodesians Never Die' - The Impact of war and Political Change on White Rhodesia c.1970 - 1980 (with Ian Hancock), Wild at Heart: Man and Beast in Southern Africa (with photos by Chris Johns and foreword by Nelson Mandela), The Three of Us - a New Life in New York (with Joanna Coles) and Mukiwa, which he received the George Orwell prize and the Esquire-Apple-Waterstones award. His latest book is When a Crocodile Eats the Sun - a Memoir of Africa.
He has taught writing at the New School, Princeton and Sarah Lawrence College.