| Peter Godwin | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1957 Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia |
| Occupation | Journalist, Author/Memoirist |
| Spouse(s) | Joanna Coles[1] |
| Children | 3 |
| Notable relatives | Georgina Godwin (broadcaster) |
| Ethnicity | Caucasian |
| Notable credit(s) |
Foreign correspondent for The Sunday Times Author of Mukiwa: White Boy in Africa Author of When A Crocodile Eats The Sun |
Peter Godwin (born 1957 in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia – now Harare, Zimbabwe) is a former policeman, lawyer and journalist. He is of English and Polish Jewish ancestry.
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Godwin grew up with his family in Rhodesia. He was conscripted by the British South Africa Police in 1973 to fight in the Rhodesian Bush War. He studied Law at Cambridge University and International Relations at Oxford University.[2]
He wrote Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa, a memoir about growing up in Southern Rhodesia in the 1960s and 1970s during the Rhodesian Bush War. Mukiwa won the Apple/Esquire/Waterstones award, and the Orwell Prize.
In 2006, he published a second memoir, When a Crocodile Eats the Sun,[3] which details the ebbing of his father's life, set to the backdrop of modern-day Zimbabwe, and his discovery of his father's Polish Jewish roots.
Godwin was formerly a foreign correspondent for the Sunday Times (London) and later a documentary maker for BBC TV.
He visited the Hay Festival Maldives and spoke to a mostly Maldivian audience about ways to establish transitional justice like that which was practiced in South Africa in the aftermath of apartheid.[4] The Maldives, which itself has been racked with allegations of torture and corruption under the previous Gayoom administration, may learn much from the content of his memoirs. Godwin even suggested that a committee should be set up in the Maldives to investigate such allegations.
"Should the Maldives seek retribution for the events, exercise reconciliation and forgiveness or just simply forget about it? This is a moral dilemma that the Maldives has not quite addressed," Godwin told the Maldives Traveller news website.
"There should be a clear distinction between the Maldives of the past and the Maldives of the future. Before we can do that, though, we need to acknowledge what happened in the past so that the same mistakes can be prevented in the future."