, Southern Rhodesia

Southern Rhodesia

Southern Rhodesia was the name of the British colony situated north of the Limpopo River and the Union of South Africa. From its independence in 1965 until its extinction in 1980, it was known as Rhodesia...

 – now Harare, Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe is a landlocked country located in the southern part of the African continent, between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. It is bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the southwest, Zambia and a tip of Namibia to the northwest and Mozambique to the east. Zimbabwe has three...

) is a former policeman, lawyer and journalist. He is of English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 and Polish

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

 Jewish

Judaism

Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...

 ancestry.

Early life and education

Godwin grew up with his family in Rhodesia

Rhodesia

Rhodesia , officially the Republic of Rhodesia from 1970, was an unrecognised state located in southern Africa that existed between 1965 and 1979 following its Unilateral Declaration of Independence from the United Kingdom on 11 November 1965...

. He was conscripted by the British South Africa Police

British South Africa Police

The British South Africa Police was the police force of the British South Africa Company of Cecil Rhodes which became the national police force of Southern Rhodesia and its successor after 1965, Rhodesia...

 in 1973 to fight in the Rhodesian Bush War

Rhodesian Bush War

The Rhodesian Bush War – also known as the Second Chimurenga or the Zimbabwe War of Liberation – was a civil war which took place between July 1964 and December 1979 in the unrecognised country of Rhodesia...

. He studied Law

Law

Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...

 at Cambridge University and International Relations

International relations

International relations is the study of relationships between countries, including the roles of states, inter-governmental organizations , international nongovernmental organizations , non-governmental organizations and multinational corporations...

 at Oxford University.

Career

He wrote Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa, a memoir about growing up in Southern Rhodesia in the 1960s and 1970s during the Rhodesian Bush War

Rhodesian Bush War

The Rhodesian Bush War – also known as the Second Chimurenga or the Zimbabwe War of Liberation – was a civil war which took place between July 1964 and December 1979 in the unrecognised country of Rhodesia...

. Mukiwa won the Apple/Esquire/Waterstones award, and the Orwell Prize

Orwell Prize

The Orwell Prize used to be regarded as the pre-eminent British prize for political writing.Three prizes are awarded each year: one for a book, one for journalism and another for blogging...

.

In 2006, he published a second memoir, When a Crocodile Eats the Sun

When a Crocodile Eats the Sun

When a Crocodile Eats the Sun is an acclaimed 2006 book of memoirs by Peter Godwin. It is a continuation to Godwin's highly-successful earlier memoirs, Mukiwa. The book was published by Picador.-Content:...

, which details the ebbing of his father's life, set to the backdrop of modern-day Zimbabwe, and his discovery of his father's Polish Jewish roots.

Godwin was formerly a foreign correspondent for the Sunday Times

The Sunday Times (UK)

The Sunday Times is a Sunday broadsheet newspaper, distributed in the United Kingdom. The Sunday Times is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News International, which is in turn owned by News Corporation. Times Newspapers also owns The Times, but the two papers were founded...

(London) and later a documentary maker for BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 TV.

He visited the Hay Festival Maldives and spoke to a mostly Maldivian audience about ways to establish transitional justice like that which was practiced in South Africa in the aftermath of apartheid. The Maldives, which itself has been racked with allegations of torture and corruption under the previous Gayoom administration, may learn much from the content of his memoirs. Godwin even suggested that a committee should be set up in the Maldives to investigate such allegations.

"Should the Maldives seek retribution for the events, exercise reconciliation and forgiveness or just simply forget about it? This is a moral dilemma that the Maldives has not quite addressed," Godwin told the Maldives Traveller news website.

"There should be a clear distinction between the Maldives of the past and the Maldives of the future. Before we can do that, though, we need to acknowledge what happened in the past so that the same mistakes can be prevented in the future."

Works

• "The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe"
• When a Crocodile Eats the Sun
  When a Crocodile Eats the Sun
  When a Crocodile Eats the Sun is an acclaimed 2006 book of memoirs by Peter Godwin. It is a continuation to Godwin's highly-successful earlier memoirs, Mukiwa. The book was published by Picador.-Content:...
  
  
• Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa
• "Rhodesians Never Die" The Impact of War and Political Change on White Rhodesia c1970 - 1980 (which he co-authored with Ian Hancock).
• "The Three of Us" (co-authored with Joanna Coles.)
• "Wild at Heart - Man and Beast in Southern Africa," (with photographs by Chris Johns.)