We worry about Zimbabwe.
Actually, Mrs W and I worry about a particular young man in Zimbabwe.
Justice was a small boy when we began sponsorship of him through Plan International back in the late 1980s.
We used to pay £15 a month and sent him gifts and he would write back to us to tell us of his life in a village near Bulawayo.
When he became about 18 our contributions stopped because he was no longer a child and we heard no more.
Our fear will always be that the regime of Robert Mugabe will have had some terrible effect on him or his family.
I must admit to my shame that while we were interested in Justice and his life we didn't really pay much attention to Mugabe.
I just remember Zimbabwe being a poor country where progress was being made following black majority rule in 1980.
Simon Bright's film shows that Mugabe was, in fact, a great hero to the majority of his countrymen.
After all, this was a man who had been at the forefront of a war for universal suffrage and on winning power had talked Mandela-like (but ten years before Mandela was released) about reconciliation and brotherhood among previously warring Zimbabwean factions.
This was all the more remarkable because he had been imprisoned and was not even allowed to go to his only son's funeral during the white minority regime.
Bright's documentary talks to key observers of Zimbabwean politics over the last 50 years. It asks how Mugabe went from a hero who united a country to a madman who instructed the killing of his own people in the naked pursuit of power. The footage of his speeches from 1980 and recent years shows just how dramatically he has changed. He has gone from eloquent leader to scarcely coherent and shambling.
The film provides a most enlightening context, some of which I had known but forgotten and, I am afraid, made me sad.
It shows Zimbabwe is clearly a wonderful country but does not really explain how its people have allowed one man to wreck their lives.
Worse still, Mugabe has made the ghastly Ian Smith seem prophetic when he said black majority rule would be a disaster for the country. That is almost greater than any sin he has committed.
Laughs: none
Jumps: none
Vomit: none
Nudity: none
Overall rating: 7.5/10
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