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Cry Havoc-How NOT to organise a coup-Simon Mann

  • 09-11-2011 11:21am
    #1
    timhorgan
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 42 ✭


    Thank God we do not have an army that attracts the likes of Simon Mann!


    John Crace in the Guardian (below) has an excruciatingly funny review of his book- well worth a read (The review, that is). And in the Telegraph review Tim Butcher is not very impressed either.



    http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/oct/24/digested-read-cry-havoc

    Tim Butcher

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/8874661/Cry-Havoc-by-Simon-Mann-review.html

    A couple of small points from me:


    The "Black Boots".
    The unit permanently based next door to Chikurubi Prison is the Police Support Unit which was the only unit to wear black boots in the old Rhodesian forces and they were generally called by this name then and indeed even today the Support Unit are described as such. Today they are used for internal supression of the opposition by Mugabe. Mann describes a unit known as the "Brown Boots"- no such unit exists as such. The Support Unit was sited next to the prison so that they could be called out at very short notice in the event of unrest at the prison.

    Tatenda.

    One of the few Shona words Mann uses to describe his time in Chikurubi is "detende". No such word exists in Shona but the Shona word for "Thank you" or "We are grateful" is Tatenda. It looks like his language skills are not the greatest either- or, of course it might be that all his cell-mates had lisps.

    His story of course has an interesting twist that he does not mention-shortly before he was arrested 3 whites held in Chikurubi since 1988 were transferred to Harare Central Prison. It looks like they "saw him coming".


    The CIO.

    It also seems that his interrogation was done by black officers only of the CIO. He describes how his interviews were of about half an hour duration with breaks. This seems to suggest that his interviews were in reality being conducted by hidden watchers who did not want their well-spoken accents from parts of these islands to be identified.

    Interesting read-but as mentioned
    "How not to organise a Coup".


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