The Promise of Zimbabwe

Extract

A Rhodesian revisiting the city he knew as Salisbury could probably make his way around Harare, Zimbabwe, a lot better than a Portuguese revisiting what is now Maputo, Mozambique, or a Belgian returning to Kinshasa, Zaire. Harare still has broad boulevards, flowering jacarandas, clean public parks, orderly traffic circles, and even some city streets with familiar colonial names. But there are also street signs to bewilder the returnee—avenues named for Julius Nyerere, Tanzania's postindependence leader, and for Samora Machel, president of the People's Republic of Mozambique. And our visitor would look in vain for the statue of Cecil Rhodes, now an empty pedestal.