“Outside my study window in London stood an old hawthorn tree enveloped in a massive growth of ivy. Over the years the tree had become an ivy bush in the shape of a hawthorn tree and I saw it as an image of what corruptions does to a country. Mobutu’s rule in Zaire seemed like the ivy squeezing the life out of every green shoot, sucking its wealth and energy, smothering any initiative.”
- Richard Dowden in Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles.