Zimbabwe

Discussion about Wilbur Smith's Ballantyne series

Zimbabwe

Postby Lochner » Tue Jun 24, 2008 5:40 am

Hi.

I just mentioned it, but I live in South Africa and visit Botswana and Zim quite regularly. Is anybody following the Mugabe/Zim election crisis???? If you want to know why all of this is currently happening, please read the last three Ballentyne novels.

I know stories should normally end with happiness, but Leopard hunts in darkness ends very happy for a very sad country.

Regards
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Re: Zimbabwe

Postby Ciclograz » Wed Aug 27, 2008 11:34 am

Yes i hear a lot about the Zimbabwe crisis and I've at once understand why it happen!!

There is a question that i have to do from i've read The Angels Weep: is it real that Ralph Ballantyne was a Prime Minister of Rhodesia?

In Italy there arent detailed information about african's history :?
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Re: Zimbabwe

Postby delby » Sun Nov 16, 2008 12:32 am

i love to read about rhodesia/ zimbabwe and in all the wilbur books matabele are my fave people i dont know why maybe its because king willie loves them he portays them wonderfully xxx
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Re: Zimbabwe

Postby Raxephion » Tue Nov 25, 2008 1:03 pm

Hi there, Ciclograz.

No, unfortunately Ralph Ballantyne was not a real person. However, Charles Patrick John Coghlan, was the first Prime Minister of Rhodesia (as Zimbabwe was know back then). Hope this helps.
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Re: Zimbabwe

Postby masvingo » Sat Aug 01, 2009 4:29 pm

Hi,
It's a very long time since I read the book, and even longer since I visited Zimbabwe, but from memory........
Ralph Ballantyne (as prime minister) is buried on 'roof of the world' alongside Cecil Rhodes. In reality Patrick Coghlan is buried there.

John.
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Re: Zimbabwe

Postby Nefer » Sun Aug 02, 2009 2:20 pm

I went to Coghlan Primary School in Bulawayo... so that's who it's named after!! I always wondered :)
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Re: Zimbabwe

Postby masvingo » Wed Aug 12, 2009 3:05 pm

Hi,
whoops got that wrong didn't I........
Cecil Rhodes (and Ralph Ballantyne / Charles Coghlan) is buried on 'Worlds View' not 'Roof of the world' as I said earlier.
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Re: Zimbabwe

Postby bayside » Tue Aug 30, 2011 1:16 pm

In 1972 my wife and I were on a trip through the eastern states of the US. We spent the night in the colonial town of Williamsburg, Virginia. At dinner that evening in a nice, colonial-style restaurant we became acquainted with two older couples at a nearby table. They joshed us about being rebellious colonials and disloyal to the British Empire. We enjoyed the jibes, and when I questioned them they told us this story:

'My friend John and I were born and raised in Southern Rhodesia, as were our wives. We owned adjacent farms that our grandparents had created. Life had been beautiful for us, but it all started crashing down around our heads last year -- a Marxist revolution had started. We talked it over amongst ourselves and our children, and decided to sell out and move to Australia. We sold out for "top dollar" and moved. Many of our friends called us cowardly, traitors, and so forth. Do you know what our farms are worth today?" Saying this, they both held up their hands and made the letter "O" with thumb and forefinger. "Zero," they said.

I've recounted this story many times over the years, often to illustrate the fact that, "Everything in life is a matter of timing."
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Re: Zimbabwe

Postby Nefer » Tue Aug 30, 2011 6:12 pm

The eternally sad story of African expatriates :(

Glad that the couple you met left in time - with their money & lives!
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Re: Zimbabwe-Scenario Revisited

Postby bayside » Wed Aug 31, 2011 2:05 pm

This forum, with its devoted fans of Wilbur Smith's outstanding books on Africa, has become an interesting part of my life. It's fascinating to read opinions, ideas, responses, and reactions from people scattered all over the world. Thank you all.

I hesitantly introduce an a news item I just read in today's local newspaper, knowing it must portend so much in the lives of many Forum members:

"Violent protests Tuesday by supporters of South Africa's firebrand youth leader are the latest political salvo in a power struggle that could determine the future of South Africa's president and the man who helped catapult him to power,k youth league chief, Julius Malema.
Demonstrators burned flags of the ruling African National Congress and ran through the streets of Johanesburg holding up flaming T-shirts bearing the image of President Jacob Zuma.
Malema, 30, has mobilized disillusioned and unemployed youth with demands that the government nationalize the wealthy mining sector and appropriate white-owned farmland for black peasants."

This news item sounds like it could have come from "Rage" or "Power of the Sword". I wonder how white South Africans are relating to this. There are so many -- with so much to lose. My heart bleeds for them, they are people whose families have lived there for 300 years. I can't keep from comparing them to the white citizens of the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand or South America. They created the wealth and civilization of S.A., along with all the health, welfare, and medical services (albeit, with the help of cheap, black labor)-- and they are still being called oppressors who will be forced out so the old tribal hatreds will once again be unleashed to create destruction, chaos, mass genocide of the minority tribes, poverty, corruption, mass starvation. Is this another Zimbabwe in the making.
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Re: Zimbabwe-Scenario Revisited

Postby Matbow » Wed Aug 31, 2011 8:14 pm

bayside wrote:They created the wealth and civilization of S.A., along with all the health, welfare, and medical services...


Interesting point of view. A lot of people would argue that the "whites" did not create the wealth, they only exploited the natural resources of the continent...
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Re: Zimbabwe

Postby mahound » Sun Sep 11, 2011 5:10 pm

We owned adjacent farms that our grandparents had created. Life had been beautiful for us, but it all started crashing down around our heads last year -- a Marxist revolution had started.


How different it might have been if smith had not declared independence and worked with the black population so that they could have worked together to make a better country for all. Surely working together would have prevented years of the armed conflict that have destroyed the country and the economy. The countless lives lost.
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