Sir, I am too young to die!

Adventures of a Magistrate

This is the true story of David McCaughan’s exciting and amusing adventures as a young magistrate in Rhodesia between 1967 and 1978. He gives an insight to the training for and life on the judicial bench. His story illuminates the struggle to administer justice and apply and enforce the law equally and fairly for all the people, in a country ravaged by war.

This book includes a small insight into the peoples of Zimbabwe and part of their way of life, particularly the tribesmen who possibly gained the least and suffered the most from the war.

He describes with humour his progress through the many departments in the Rhodesian Department of Justice and the interesting characters he met along the way. He includes his secondment to the Attorney General’s department, a year of compulsory military service, his respect for the interpreters who worked so closely with him and a glimpse of life in Rhodesian prisons.

David explains his theory why the politicians and people of Zimbabwe have let the country, which was ‘the jewel in the crown of Africa’, deteriorate to one of the poorest countries in the world.

This book is not a treatise on the multiple and complicated conflicts and participants interfering in the extensive political negotiations and brutal war preceding the transition from minority white rule to the communist domination in what is now Zimbabwe.

David says researching and writing this book has been a journey that changed many of his deeply entrenched beliefs about the Rhodesian saga in ways he never thought possible.