Michael Holman

Michael Holman was brought up in small-town white Rhodesia, establishing his political credentials in Salisbury (now Harare) as a University of Rhodesia student leader opposing UDI in 1965. In August 1967 he was served with a govenment order confining him to his hometown (Gwelo, now Gweru). Allowed to leave after a year, he completed an MSc at the University of Edinburgh, before returning to Zimbabwe to work as a journalist. He narrowly escaped arrest after refusing to accept a military call-up and after three weeks in hiding, left the country illegally. He soon returned to Africa, basing himself in Lusaka, Zambia, and writing as the Financial Times's Africa correspondent. After moving to London he became the paper's Africa Editor, taking early retirement in 2002 following surgery for Parkinson's disease, but continues to visit his old beat regularly. In addition to collections of his reports, he has written three satirical novels set in the imaginary East African nation of Kuwisha.