Mugabe and Padukone c.1980
It was March 1980. After having done with my matriculation exams, I was looking for magazines to brush up on my general knowledge. The latest issue of Competition Success Review had Robert Mugabe on its cover while Prakash Padukone held aloft the All-England Badminton Championship trophy on the cover of Sportsworld. Mugabe was indeed the poster boy of liberation and democracy. Padukone was a matter of pride for Indian sports in an era when there were hardly any sports heroes to write home about. I remember having read with a lot of interest articles detailing Mugabe's guerrilla war and how he was the hope of the predominantly black nation, on the doorstep of an apartheid-ridden South Africa. Winds of change in South Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, would sweep across the borders and rid South Africans of their misery. Interestingly, South Africa found its own formula of inclusive growth and development a little more than a decade later. So it is quite surprising that Zimbabwe were to fal...