Apparently when Robert Mugabe was told that Bob Marley would perform at his swearing-in as Zimbabwe’s prime minister in 1980 (where Marley eventually performed his song “Zimbabwe“), Mugabe complained that Marley was too scruffy and suggested that “the perennially wholesome Cliff Richard” would be a better act. Thankfully he was overruled. BTW, I wonder what Mugabe would make of Marley’s son, Damian, who collaborated with New York rapper Nas on a song, “Road to Zion,” where Nas rhymes about Mugabe “holding guns to innocent bodies.”
[I spotted this telling anecdote -- about Mugabe's real politics -- in journalist Andrew Meldrum's book Where We Have Hope: A Memoir of Zimbabwe. A bit of a plodding read, which I have to review for a journalism academic journal.]
