The Boston Globe - 07.09.2019

10
SEPTEMBER7, 2019

Obituaries

By Alan Cowell
NEWYORKTIMES
Robert Mugabe, the first
prime ministerand later presi-
dent of independent Zimba-
bwe, who traded the mantle of
liberator for the armor of aty-
rant andpresided over the de-
cline of one of Africa’s most
prosperous lands, diedFriday
in Singapore, where he had
been receiving medical care.He
was 95.
The death,at Gleneagles
Hospital, wasannouncedby his
successor,President Emmerson
Mnangagwa.
“It is with the utmost sad-
ness that I announcethe pass-
ing on of Zimbabwe’s founding
father and formerPresident,
Cde Robert Mugabe,” he wrote
on Twitter onFriday, using the
abbreviation for comrade.
“Mugabe wasan icon of libera-
tion, a pan-Africanist who dedi-
cated his life to the emancipa-
tion and empowerment of his
people.His contribution to the
history of our nation and conti-
nent will never be forgotten.”
In August, Mnangagwa had
said thatMr. Mugabe had spent
several months in Singapore
getting treatment foran undis-
closed illness.
Mr.Mugabe,theworld’sold-
est head ofstate before his o ust-
er in 2017,was the onlyleader
Zimbabweans had known since
independence, in 1980. Like
many who liberated their coun-
tries,Mr. Mugabe believed that
Zimbabwe was his togovern
until the end.In a s peech before
the AfricanUnion in 2016, he
said he would remainat the
helm “untilGod says, ‘Come.’”
Throughout, Mr. Mugabe re-
mained inscrutable, some
would say conflicted. Remote,
calculating, ascetic, and cere-
bral, a self-s tyled revolutionary
inspired by what he once called
“Marxist-Leninism-Mao-Tse-
tung thought,” he affected a
scholarly manner, besp ectacled

and haughty, a ve stige of his

early years as a schoolteacher.

But hishunger for power was

undiluted.

In an interview withstate-

run television on his 93rd birth-

day, in February 2017,Mr.

Mugabeindicatedthat he

would run again in presidential

elections in 2018.

“They want me tostand for

elections; they wantme to

stand for electionseverywhere

in the party,” he said.“The ma-

jority of thepeoplefeel that

there is no replacement, succes-

sor, who to them is acceptable,

as acceptable as I am.”

He added, “The people, you

know, would want to judgeev-

eryone elseon the basis ofPres-

identMugabe as the criteria.”

Events proved him wrong.

In November 2017, army offi-

cers, fearingthat Mr. Mugabe

would anointhis second wife,

GraceMugabe, ashis political

heir, moved against him. With-

in a dramatic few days he was

placed under house arrest and

forced by his political party,

ZANU-PF, tostep down.

The military insisted that

the ouster did not amount toa

coup, although it had all the

trappings of one, witharmored

vehicles patrolling the streets.

The officers took control of th e

state broadcaster to announce

their action.

Yet remarkably in a conti-

nent where deposedleaders of-

ten meet grisly fates or flee into

exile, Mr. Mugabe and hiswife

were allowed to remain in their

sumptuous 24-bedroom home

in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital.

In his final years in power,

Mr. Mugabe presided over a

shattered economy and a frac-

tured political class that was

jockeying for influence inanti c-

ipation of his death. Although

often viewed in theWest as a

pariah, he was, in many corners

of Africa, cons ideredan elde r

statesman thanks to his libera-

tion pedigree, his longevity and

his eloquence in articulatinga

broad resentment ofWestern

powers’ past and present poli-

cies toward the continent.

If Nelson Mandela of South

Africa, his contemporar y, won

universal admiration for em-

phasizing reconciliation,Mr.

Mugabe tapped into an equally

powerful sentiment in Africa:

that theWest had not suffi-

cien tly atoned for its sins and

had continuedto bully the con-

tinent.

Mr. Mugabe had in his e arly

days belonged to ageneration

of African nationalistswhose

confrontation with white mi-

nority rule fomented guerrilla

warfare in the name of democ-

racy and freedom.

But once he won power in

Zimbabwe’s fir st free elections,

in 1980, after a seven-year war,

he turned, with a blend of guile

and brutality, to the elimination

of adversaries, real and imag-

ined.

He found them in many

places: among the minority

Ndebeleethnic group and the

clergy; inthe judiciary and the

independentnews media; in

the political opposition and

other corners of society pushing

for democrac y; and in the coun-

tryside, where white farmers

were chased off their land from

2000 onward.

Mr. Mugabe morphed into a

caricature ofdictatorship:vain

and capricious, encircled by the

flashy spending of his second

wife a nd other family members,

who lived in luxuryat hom e

and went on shopping sprees

and long annualvacations in

the Far Eas t. (That wife, the for-

mer GraceMarufu, had been

his secretary and mistress, and

Mr. Mugabe, despite astrict Ro-

man Catholic upbringing, fa-

theredtwo children with her

whilestill married to his fir st

wife, SallyHayfron.)

“His real obsession was not

with personal wealth butwith

power,” British writerMartin

Meredith observed in his book

“OurVotes, OurGuns: Robert

Mugabe and theTragedy of

Zimbabwe” (2002). As Mr.

Mugabe declared inJune 2008,

referring to the opposition

Movement for Democratic

Change: “OnlyGod, who ap-

pointed me, will removeme,

not theMDC, not the British.

OnlyGod will remove me!”

Robert GabrielMugabe was

born onFeb. 21, 1924, inKuta-

ma, northwest of Harare, inan

area set aside by the white au-

thorities for black peasants. Ed-

ucated by Catholic missionar-

ies, he was astudious, earnest

child who later recalled being

happy with solitude as he tend-

ed cattle, so long as he hada

book under his arm.

His father abandoned the

family when Robert was 10,

leaving him to deal witha mer-

curial andemotionally scarred

mother, according to “Dinner

WithMugabe” (2008), a biogra-

phy byHeidi Holland.

“The color bar sliced

throughevery domain of soci-

ety,” he said of his childhood.

His political thought, like

Mandel a’s, took shape in South

Africaat Fort Hare Academy,

which heattended on a scholar-

ship from 1950 to 1952, earn-

ing the first of astring of de-

grees in education, law, admin-

istr ation and economics.

“The impact of India’s inde-

pendence, andthe example of

Gandhi andNehru, hada deep

effect,” Mr. Mugabesaid in an

interview with The New York

Timesbefore Zimbabwe’s inde-

pendence.“Apartheid was be-

ginning to take shape.Marx-

ism-Leninism was in the air.”

“From then on I wanted to

be a politician,” he said.

Robert Mugabe, 95, first prime minister of Zimbabwe

WALDO SWIEGERS/BLOOMBERG/FILE

Robert Mugabe (above)at his residence inHarare, Zimbabwe, inJuly of 2018.Prime

MinisterMugabe visitedPresident Carterat the WhiteHouse in 1980.

BARRY THUMMA/AP/FILE

By Anita Gates
NEW YORKTIMES
CarolLynley, a for mer child
model who had an intense film
acting career mirroring the
country’s transformation from
the modest Eisenhower era into
the sexually frank 1960s, died
on Tuesdayat her home inLos
Angeles. She was 77.
The cause was a heartat-
tack,said Trent Dolan, a friend.
Ms. Lynley may be best re-
membered as the naïve, soft-
spoken adolescent who be-
comes pregnant by her equally
wide-eyedboyfriend, pl ayed by
Brandon De Wilde, in the 1959
film “Blue Denim.”It was a role
she had originated on Broad-
way the year before, when she
was 16.
Ms. Lynley madeat least a
half-dozenHollywood movies
over the next eight years, but by
the time she was in her mid-20s
her star had faded, and she was
never directly in the publiceye
again.
Still , she did makea notable
if brief comeback in 1972,
when she turned up wearing
hot pants and go-go boots in
the movie“The Poseidon Ad-
venture,” singing (orat least lip-
syncing) the Oscar-winning
song“The Morning After.” The
ensemble cast of the disaster
film also included Oscar win-
nersGene Hackman,Ernest
Borgnine, Jack Albertson, Shel-
ley Winters, andRed Buttons.
Her career may have been,
at least partly, a victim of unfor-
tunate marketing. In the late
1950s and early’60s, Holly-
wood’s publicity machine had
three blond teenage actresses to
promote.In a case ofextreme
image segmentation, Sandra
Dee was promoted as the pam-
pered rich girl,Tuesday Weld as
the bad girl andMs. Lynley as
the good girl —studious, sensi-
tive, wholesome, and just a bit
prim.
This worked well enough
with the characters she played
in her debut film, the Disney
drama“The Light in theForest”
(1958), set in pre-Revolution-
ary America; in “Blue Denim”;
and in “Hound-DogMan”
(1959), in which shestarred op-
posite the teenage idolFabian.
But beginning when she was
19, Ms. Lynley turned topor-
trayals of more knowing char-

acters, like the small-town au-

thor AllisonMacKenzie, who

has an affair with her publisher,

in “Return toPeyton Place”

(1961), a disappointing sequel.

That film was followed by a

sex comedy, “Under theYum

Yum Tree” (1963), withJack

Lemmon and DeanJones, and

by the drama“The Cardinal”

(1963), in which she played

bothTom Tryon’s wayward sis-

ter and her character’s daugh-

ter.

She was 23 when she posed

discreetly nude in Playboy mag-

azine andplayed the title role in

“Harlow” (1965), a biographi-

cal film about the 1930s screen

star and sex symbolJean Har-

low. (AnotherHarlow film, star-

ring Carroll Baker, was also re-

leased in1965. Neither did

well.)That same year, she won

positive reviews as a distraught

young mother in Otto Prem-

inger’s thriller “BunnyLake Is

Missing,” but neither critics nor

fans responded to her in the

same way as they had during

her teenage years.

From the 1970s onward, her

film career was winding down,

and Ms. Lynley worked mostly

in television, making guest ap-

pearances onvarious shows.

She was in the original televi-

sion film “FantasyIsland” and

in at least 10 episodes of these-

ries that it spawned, as well as

the television film that laterbe-

came theDarrenMcGavin se-

ries “Kolchak:The Night Stalk-

er.” She also appearedin a num-

ber of low-profile movies, some

of them of thestraight-to-video

variety.

She was born Carole Ann

Jones inNew York City onFeb.

13, 1942. A child of divorce, she

began modeling under the

name CarolynLee. When she

went into acting — appearing

on golden-age-of-television se-

ries like “GoodyearTelevision

Playhouse” and“The Alcoa

Hour” — that name already be-

longed to another member of

the Actors’ Equity union(as did

the name Carolyn Jones), so she

invented the sound-alike name

CarolLynley.

In April 1957 she appeared

on the cover of Life magazine,

identified as “CarolLynley, 15,

Busy Career Girl.” She was in-

deed busy, making her Broad-

way debut in Graham Greene’s

drama“The Potting Shed.”For

that role, asa dying man’s talk-

ative niece who reveals a family

secret, she received a Theate r

World Award, given annually

for an outstanding debutper-

formance.

Ms. Lynley returned to

Broadway once, in 1975, re-

placing Sandy Dennis in Alan

Ayckbourn’s comedy “Absurd

Person Singular.”

Her later projects included

“Vic” (2006), a 30-minute short

about an older actor, directed

by Sage Stallone, a son of Syl-

vester Stallone; and“A Light in

the Forest” (2002), in which she

playedthe grandmother ina

family-oriented fantasy.That

film hadno connection toMs.

Lynley’s first movie, which had

almostexactly the same title.

Ms. Lynley was married

from 1960 to 1964 toMichael

Selsman,a film industry publi-

cist, and they had a daughter,

Jill, who survives her. She also

had a long on-again, off-again

relationship with thetelevision

host DavidFrost.

In 2000, in an interview

with The SanFranciscoChroni-

cle, Ms. Lynleytal ked about

middle-aged actresses’ difficul-

ty in finding roles, butpredict-

ed a comeback forherself in old

age.

“I don’t mean to sound con-

ceited, but I am a very talented

actress, and I havemy head

screwed on right,” she said. “I’m

not going to drug clinics,I look

good, and I’vegot all my mar-

bles. So I really believe I’ll be

back.”

Carol Lynley, ‘Poseidon Adventure’ actress

20TH CENTURY FOX

CarolLynley (second from left) with other cast members of the 1972 disaster movie“The

Poseidon Adventure” Shelley Winters (left), Roddy McDowall, and Stella Stevens.

By Julie Turkewitz

NEWYORK TIMES

DawdaJawara, a veterinari-

an-turned-politician who led

Gambia to independence from

the British and thenpresided

over the country as it became

one of Africa’s longest-running

democracies, died Aug.27 at

his home inFajara, a coastal

suburb of Banjul, the capital.

He was 95.

Mr. Jawara waslong hailed

for promoting tolerance, hu-

man rights, andthe rule of law

at a time whensub-Saharan Af-

rica was dominated by authori-

tarianism andmilitary regimes.

He was president of his

smallWest Afri can nation until

1994, when, in a bloodless

coup, it fell into the hands of

Yahya Jammeh,a young officer

who embarked on a brutal 22-

year rule.

Some ofMr. Jawara’s success

came from the contacts he

made before he became a politi-

cian, when he traveled the

countryside vaccinating cattle

in his 30s, anexperience that

connected him with broad

swaths of hisnatio n.

“There’s not a cow in the

Gambia that doesn’t know me

personally,” he liked to say.

Mr. Jawara, a bespectacled

man of modest bearing, negoti-

ated independence in 1965,

part of a wave of liberation

movements that reshaped the

continent in the 1960s.He was

elected Gambia’s first president

in 1970.

His death comesat a partic-

ularlyraw time for Gambia.

Jammeh, his successor, recently

lost a presidential election and

fled the country. A new presi-

dent, Adama Barrow, was dem-

ocratically elected, and thena-

tion is in themidst of truth and

reconciliation hearings, which

have laid bare theatrocitiesof

Jammeh’s rule.Several ofJam-

meh’s lieutenants have recently

admitted to murdering suspect-

ed dissidents.

The investigations and dis-

closures have left many feeling

nostalgic forthe Jawara era and

deeplyaware of the vulnerabili-

ties ofGambia’s democracy.

Dawda KaibaraJawara was

born onMay 16, 1924, in Bara-

jally Tenda, a smalltown in the

Gambian interior, while the na-

tion was under British control.

His mother,Mama Fatty, was a

homemaker; his father, Almami

Jawara, a merchant.

Mr. Jawarastudied veteri-

nary medicineat the University

of Glasgow. On returning to

Gambia, he converted fromIs-

lam toChristianity, tookthe

nameDavid, and marrieda

Christian woman, AugustaMa-

honey.

He had worked as a veteri-

narian and was the country’s

chief veter inary officer when he

decidedto enter politics, having

grown convinced that Gambia

had to followin the footsteps of

neighboring countries, includ-

ing Ghana,Guinea, and Nige-

ria, and become independent.

“Gambia has no prestige

projects, no grandiose spending

projects, no political prisoners,

no army and no defense bud-

get,” The New York Times wrote

in 1977. “Its elections are per-

hapsthe c leanest on the conti-

nent: it has opposition parties

and a freepress, including sev-

eral mimeographed broadsides

that attack theGovernment in

roundhouse punches.”

Some inGambia, however,

wanted morerapid improve-

ment, and one ofMr. Jawara’s

greatest challenges came in

1981, when a young Marxist

namedKukoi Samba Sanyang

led anattemptedcoup. Without

a military, Mr. Jawara had to re-

ly onPresident Abdou Diouf of

neighboring Senegal tosend in

troops to push out the rebels.

The coup failed. Officials put

the Gambian death toll, in clud-

ing rebels and civilians,at 500;

some putit higher.

In 1994, soldiers led byJam-

meh, then a 29-year-old lieuten-

ant, stormed Banjul and took

over thegovernment. Mr.

Jawara escapedaboard aUS

Navy warship.He lived inexile

in London.

Mr. Jawara returned to

Gambia in 2002.Gambians vot-

ed Jammeh out in 2016, and

Mr. Jawara lived just long

enough to see his country re-

turn to democracy.

Dawda Jawara, 95,

helped create an

independent Gambia

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