A NEW film being promoted as the “definitive account” of President Robert Mugabe is set to get its first screening at an international festival in South Africa next month.

“Whatever Happened to Robert Mugabe?”, an 80-minute film by Simon Bright, has been given opening night billing at the 13th Encounters South African International Documentary Festival to be held in Cape Town and Johannesburg from June 9-26.

In advance publicity material, the festival’s organisers said the documentary “tells the stories of Rhodesia’s transition to Zimbabwe and the personal journey of Robert Mugabe, using one to explain the other, finally suggesting why Mugabe chose the road he has”.

“As a biography it has everything – first-hand accounts of Mugabe’s early life with a desperately poor Catholic mother, what he was like at school, the effects of a Jesuit education and his rage against his absent father,” the organisers said in a statement.

They added: “The parallel story of the transition is equally well researched, as are later episodes of importance, notably Lancaster House, the Matabeleland genocide and the growing role of global business in Africa’s economies.

“But it’s the behind-the-scenes jostling for power which Bright exposes that are the most riveting, and from it Mugabe emerges as unquestionably one of history’s most canny, devious leaders. It is a haunting film, the music an achievement in itself, a mix of liberation, folk and contemporary sounds.”