When a book cover means so much

MUGABE_001Hildegarde The Arena
BOOKS are a part of my life and when I have that time to serendipitously go through the rows of bookshelves in libraries or bookstores, the feeling is more than when I shop around for personal effects.
How sad that the new technologies will rob us of this important element – touching and feeling books because it creates an intrinsic bond between the reader and the book.

As I go through the rows of bookshelves, I am left with unanswered questions on the artistic packaging, especially the cover design.

Just like in a clothing store or a grocery shop, what attracts the buyer in a number of cases is the packaging and layout of the goods. A well-packaged and laid-out product has a certain appeal. You can’t resist walking over and picking it up and looking it over. In most cases you end up buying impulsively.

The same with books. You might also end up reading one book over and over, because there is something about the book that attracts you to it, apart from the message.

This last Monday I visited the National Archives of Zimbabwe to search for a book I last read in 1984.

“Mugabe: Illustrated” was written by David Smith, Colin Simpson and Ian Davies and first published by Sphere Books in the UK in 1981.

Pioneer Head later published it in Zimbabwe the same year.

Many books have been written about President Mugabe’s life, but “Mugabe: Illustrated” is unique because the cover design is pregnant with meaning. It is a cover design that answers the authors’ questions: “Who is Mugabe? What influence will he have on Africa’s future?”

The cover design looks simple with then Prime Minister Mugabe’s picture – a partial bespectacled face in full colour superimposed on the map of Africa. He looks focused and intent.

In 1981 a year after Zimbabwe attained its independence from Britain, this cover design might not have meant much except to say that Africa had a new kid on the block. So, why fill up his face up on the map of Africa?

As this writer examined the cover design early this week, and reflected on the impact that President Mugabe’s leadership has had on the African continent and beyond, it dawned on me that the authors and cover designer were not only futuristic in their thinking, but they had a better understanding of the Zimbabwean leader, or tried to. At least this is what the cover seems to imply 34 years into his leadership.

President Mugabe has played an important role on the continent’s transformation, especially the quest for total political and economic emancipation.

He is admired on the continent for his principled stand on issues that are African and for Africa. He has also become the lone voice on the continent speaking out against the West’s machinations on the continent and the divide and rule tactics they use against Africans.

President Mugabe has become thy brother’s keeper. This is what this 33- year-old cover design implies. You cannot speak about Africa, without mentioning the name Mugabe, and you cannot also speak about Mugabe without hearing his voice about the well- being of the continent and its people.

The book’s blurb is also an eye-opener. Smith, Simpson and Davies write: “For 20 years, Robert Mugabe has been typecast as an extremist: a colourless Marxist-Leninist ideologue and a fanatical guerilla leader. Now, in his fifties, with the bitter experience of political imprisonment behind him, he represents the long sought-after reconciliation of a nation – and a continent – that has been many years in the making.”

The culmination of this cover design is that at 90, President Mugabe is set to be the African Union’s chairperson in 2015-2016, and doing so at a time when Africa is dubbed the world’s next growth region.

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry writing in Forbes magazine on August 25 under the title ‘China understands what the West doesn’t: Africa is our next superpower’ underscores this: “Not that ‘Africa’ is a country, of course, but it helps to look at broad, continent-wide trends.

“People are reluctant to the idea of demographics as the great driver of history. In the general case, this might be true. But the 21st century will see an unprecedented situation: one where every continent will face large-scale ageing and slowing demographic growth.

Every continent, that is, except one: Africa (or, to be more specific, sub-Saharan Africa). Africa is young whereas the rest of the world is greying, and any strategic thinking about the 21st century must take this into account.”

Smith, Simpson and Davies also add: “Mugabe was the last person the British, the Americans, and even the Russians, either expected – or wanted – to be the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe. His victory in that country’s first democratic elections came as a surprise to, and terrified, his opponents.

“And yet Mugabe’s moderation, pragmatism and apparent sympathy for his opponents, have utterly mystified them. This biography presents an in-depth profile of the man who is the most influential and articulate of Africa’s statesmen, the black leader who holds the key to the future of Southern Africa.”

The irony is that while the British and Americans have continued to demonise the Zimbabwean leader, Russia and China, Zimbabwe’s long-term friends, think otherwise. President Mugabe at the invitation of President Xi Jinping, paid a state visit to China from August 24 to 28. It was his 13th visit and third state visit to China.

During that visit, many bilateral deals were inked and the Chinese leader paid tribute to the Zimbabwean leader and his role on the geopolitical sphere.

“Your Excellency is a renowned leader of the African national liberation movement, the main founder of the Republic of Zimbabwe and important promoter of African integration. Your Excellency enjoys high prestige in Africa. You are also an old friend of the Chinese people,” said President Xi.

This Tuesday, the world witnessed the commissioning of an historic US$3 billion platinum-mining joint venture in Darwendale, between Zimbabwe and Russia. This was the largest ever venture that Zimbabwe has entered with a foreign investor.

Just like the multiple deals that the Government of Zimbabwe signed with the Chinese government, the project with Russia will inject life into Government’s economic turnaround programme, Zim-Asset thereby creating jobs and transforming Zimbabwe and the region’s economic well-being.

To witness the revival of this historical partnership was none other than the Russian Federation’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Russia’s top diplomat also paid tribute to President Mugabe, saying: “There is no coming back to (a) unipolar world, bipolar world. The future of the world could only be multi-polar otherwise the world system would not be sustainable and Africa is one of the pillars of the evolving world and Russia would always be with Africa and today we got confirmation from President Mugabe, a legend, a historical figure that Zimbabwe and Africa will always be with Russia.”

In E. M. Forster’s words “only connect, the prose and the passion”. Three decades on, the cover design on the book “Mugabe: Illustrated” shows that it was, after all, not a wild card to have the Zimbabwean leader’s face fully immersed in Africa, for this is where he belongs. It was Africa that formulated his being and made him who is.

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