Dinner with Mugabe
By Heidi Holland
Penguin, R210/$17.60

Interviewing African autocrats is a time-consuming and usually thankless affair. I remember waiting for a week in a down-at-heel Malawian hotel in 1995 hoping for an interview with Hastings Banda, the country’s eccentric tyrant, then in his late 90s. I had a similar experience in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, three years later waiting to see Daniel arap Moi, then nearly 20 years into his un­lamented presidency. On both occasions I gleaned the odd delicious snapshot of the sycophantic ways of their entourage – plus a sense of how dictatorial kitsch appears not to vary, from the Balkans to Africa – but little insight into their thinking or plans.