Postmark Africa: Half a Century as a Foreign Correspondent

The intelligence and passion that brought independence to colonial countries in Eastern and Southern Africa was greeted with enthusiasm by many progressive Whites. Michael Holman was one of them. A Rhodesian student activist whose support for black independence frightened his own minority white government, he was inspired by the black unionists and political leaders he interviewed, and whose message he took to Western readers, notably through the London Financial Times. But as the years passed, their early ideals became increasingly corrupted, internally and by what Holman still sees as the misguided policies of outside donors. Now brought together into a single volume, Holman’s 50 years of reporting vividly conveys the hopes and disappointments of the post-colonial era.

Michael Holman was brought up in small-town white Rhodesia, establishing his political credentials in Salisbury (now Harare) as a University of Rhodesia student leader opposing UDI in 1965. In August 1967 he was served with a government order confining him to his hometown for a year and was adopted by Amnesty as a Prisoner of Conscience. He later became a reporter and monitored human-rights violations by the Rhodesian authorities, eventually having to leave the country illegally after narrowly escaping arrest for refusing to accept military call-up. Basing himself in Lusaka, Zambia, he wrote on African affairs for the Financial Times, before moving to London to become the paper’s Africa Editor. He took early retirement in 2002, following pioneering surgery for Parkinson’s disease, but continues to visit his old beat whenever possible. In addition to Postmark Africa, he has written three satirical novels set in the imaginary East African nation of Kuwisha.