Zimbabwe

I was still a teenager when Rhodesia made its Unilateral Declaration of Independence, my uncle lived in Bulawayo and had been the Superintendent of the hospital there for some time.

In an effort to persuade me that Rhodesia was the place to be, my uncle sent me the newspapers from Bulawayo every week for many months and I found it a fascinating country.

Sometimes I have vague regrets that I didn't at the very least go for a holiday so that I could say I had seen with my own eyes the beauty and potential that was the budding Zimbabwe in those days of the late 60s and early 70s but, even then, the writing was on the wall.

Even my uncle, who would never have believed it would happen, left the country never to return in the 70s. He had seen first hand what happened to opponents for Robert Mugabe to achieve his all-powerful position.

But the World turned a blind eye to terror, beating, murder and what amounted to ethnic cleansing and held up the elections as some kind of example of transition between white rule and African rule.

Of course Robert Mugabe thought he could do as he pleased, the World was allowing it.