The Flame Lily Weeps: An African Autobiography, by Ross Gordon Cooper is the latest addition to a growing micro-genre of reflective, even at times confessional, writing by children who grew up in late wartime Rhodesia and witnessed the transition of Rhodesia to Zimbabwe in the early 1980s. Authors such as Alexandra Fuller, Peter Godwin, Lauren St. John, and Wendy Kann have each written memoirs that narrate their childhood impressions of war, white settler rule, and a traumatic independence. All of them, and Cooper as well, inevitably leave a collapsing Zimbabwe and--to varying degrees--reflect on their role (that is, the role of Zimbabwe's white minority community) in engineering/resisting Zimbabwe's economic and political collapse.
Cooper tells a much less succinct and descriptive narrative than the professional authors like Fuller and Godwin, but, as someone who has self-published (and/or subsidy-published) a book in the past, I find that more amateurish writing conveys a kind of honesty that may be lost in more professional writing. Cooper is a scientist, not a journalist as are Godwin, Fuller, and St. John, and he does not sacrifice truth for the sake of the narrative. This is not to say the book does not have limitations. The voice of the memoir is emotionally distant and glosses over seemingly-important plot points. It relies too heavily on objective impressions (like the author's report cards and comments on his school papers) and less on the author's subjective impressions--what life was actually like in growing up in wartime Rhodesia. On the other hand, the book lapses into discussions on Zimbabwe's economic and political collapse that are more subjective than objective (i.e., President Robert Mugabe as personal demon) and, though interesting, ultimately not entirely convincing. The book also has minor amateurish flaws in its construction and design, but I forgive these as someone who has self-/subsidy-published in the past (it's hard!). At the end of the day, reading the book was ultimately fulfilling. It certainly provided an intimate account of daily life in Rhodesia and Zimbabwe, and I learned from it.
The reason I read the book, as I have with the other books in the micro-genre, is that I am fascinated with how white narratives of wartime Rhodesia are helping to organically reconstruct the history of Zimbabwe by repudiating (partially in some instances) the white "myths" of the war and this later romanticization by white Zimbabweans of Ian Smith's Rhodesia. Fuller, Godwin, and St. John do this more or less pretty well, by describing how, as naive children, they cheered the Rhodesian army and condemned black Africans as "terrorists," before coming to realize, many years later, that they were actually on the wrong side of a losing war. The authors later learn how brutal Ian Smith's Rhodesia was, and they attempt to reconcile their Rhodesian identity with their Zimbabwean one. Kann does this also, but less effectively. Cooper only makes hints in the general direction: "I was, 23 years later, to visit the graves of Chipinga residents killed in the war. They were all brave peple and deserving of the highest accolade and respect. Whilst looking at their headstones, I wondered if all this blood shed [sic.] had been necessary" (p. 44). Coming to terms with loss in the Rhodesian war, particularly in modern Zimbabwe where such losses do not really have a place in public discourse, is important to this reconciling. However, Cooper doesn't go far enough: "Rhodesia had every right to defend its sovereignty and to protect its citizens from Marxist rule" (p. 45). In that sense, he is reproducing a Rhodesian stereotype.
Elsewhere, he does provide some childhood recollections of the war, seared in his memory. He discusses how the guerrilla forces blew up a large oil stockpile in Salisbury (now Harare), Rhodesia's capital. "I remember the black smoke from the burning oil rising high into the clouds," he recalled, noting his fright that the guerrillas had finally made it to Salisbury (p. 60). However, he makes a political judgment soon after: "It's a pity that Mugabe and Nkomo chose to continue the war...with the ultimate objective of the complete riddance of white rule. It cost the country many lives" (Ibid). I might doubt that the "riddance of white rule" was actually the objective of Mugabe and Nkomo--it is not self-evident that this is true--but my bigger concern here is that Cooper does not explain why a scheme in which white rule was preserved in some fashion would have been preferable to the post-1980 Zimbabwean regime. The other political statements in the book are likewise simplistic. Writing of post-1980 Zimbabwe, Cooper notes, "[g]enerally blacks, whites and Indians got along, although there was the occasional, disturbing talk of politics usually fuelled by Mugabe" (p. 79). Other politicized statements in the book single out Mugabe personally, as monolithic head of ZANU-PF (see p. 89 as well). It is not clear that Mugabe's rule over ZANU-PF, or of Zimbabwe, was monolithic, given the personal rivalries of his potential successors throughout much of his reign. Still, the personal blaming of Mugabe and ZANU-PF for Zimbabwe's collapse (and not a more complex set of factors) feeds into certain media-created stereotypes of Zimbabwe.
In short, the book is a good effort as a well-documented microhistorical narrative. It provides evidence as to a child's impressions of war, white rule, and a traumatic transition, which is always fascinating to me and certainly under-documented. However, the book does reproduce some stereotypes of Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, and the ruling regime. Some of this may be forgiven, as the book is the author's first work and not professionally developed, but some of it is undoubtedly his honest perspective showing through. To his credit, he may have had a longer experience in Zimbabwe than the other authors in the genre, and he lived through the economic collapse while the other authors did not. The book has strengths and weaknesses. Recommended, with these limitations in mind.
