Journalist Peter Godwin Speaks on Zimbabwe

On June 29, approximately 150 DLA Piper lawyers, staff and clients from 19 offices across the country attended a Marbury Institute presentation by Peter Godwin, renowned Zimbabwean author, journalist and filmmaker and one of the most well-known and outspoken commentators on the political and humanitarian situation in Zimbabwe.

Trained initially as a lawyer at Cambridge and Oxford, Mr. Godwin went on to become an award winning journalist, reporting from over 60 countries for, among others, the BBC, the London Sunday Times and the New York Times. He is the author of five prominent non-fiction books, four of which focus on Zimbabwe. His latest, The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe, begins with Mr. Godwin returning home to Zimbabwe in 2008 to celebrate Mugabe’s defeat in the latest presidential election. The celebration never got off the ground, since Mugabe went on to orchestrate yet another brutal campaign of terror and intimidation, which Mr. Godwin witnessed and reported on first-hand at great personal risk.

DLA Piper and New Perimeter, the firm’s international pro bono program, are featured in The Fear. Mr. Godwin highlighted New Perimeter’s pro bono work on Zimbabwean human rights. In 2009, a team of nine DLA lawyers teamed with the organization AIDS-Free World interview and draft affidavits for Zimbabwean women who were gang-raped by Mugabe’s thugs because of their support for the opposition political party. Four of our lawyers who worked on the project, Sara Andrews, Kristen Abrams, Brenda Meister and Syma Mirza, are quoted in The Fear.

Mr. Godwin gave event participants a fascinating primer on Zimbabwe’s recent history under the iron fist of Robert Mugabe. He stated that contrary to the popular narrative that Mugabe started his rule in the 1980s as a moderate and then became more dictatorial as time passed, in fact, Mugabe has been quite consistent in his extremism and his ruthlessness. Mr. Godwin also discussed the current political dynamics in the region and fielded questions from event participants on issues ranging from the current economic situation in Zimbabwe to the possibility for legal accountability for Mugabe and his cronies for crimes against humanity. Mr. Godwin stated that almost no other country has as detailed and voluminous documentation of humanitarian crimes that directly implicate the country’s highest levels of leadership as Zimbabwe does. Despite this, Mugabe has largely been protected by his fellow African leaders, most notably, in South Africa.