Running Dogs and Rose’s Children

Book excerpt: Running Dogs and Rose’s Children tell the story of how Eric and wife Jenny are plunged into parenthood after adopting three siblings aged eleven, five and one after their mother died of cancer. The new family set about starting over, building a family life together from scratch, in their rambling farmhouse outside Harare, Zimbabwe. Their story was on course for a happily ever after ending, until their lives and the lives of those around them were destroyed by Robert Mugabe’s war of terror, unleashed on white farmers and opposition party members, launching an era of economic, social and political turmoil which eventually saw the family fleeing the country for fear of being killed. Eric’s fierce love of his country and his principles saw him immersing himself in the dangerous opposition politics of the day where elections were rigged, and fellow party members were tortured and murdered. Somehow Eric de Jong’s irrepressible sense of humour bubbles throughout this absorbing, honest and deeply personal account of a growing family, of love, entrepreneurial success and failure, mental illness, political exile, and the distressing and often absurd collapse of a beautiful African country and stoicism of its people.