Zambezia (1983), XI (I).ESSAY REVIEWLAST DAYS OF WHITE RHODESIATHE TITLE OF this essay review is that of Dennis Hills's book on events in thiscountry from mid-1978 to mid-1980.' This is his second book on thesubject within three yearss2 and, although enjoyable, is symptomatic of thetendency of writers and publishers to saturate a market. Thus we have had'Rhodesian Problems',3 'Ending Eras',4 'Rhodesias to Zimbabwes'5 and'Roads to Zimbabwe',6 'Racial Conflicts',7 'Triumphs or Tragedies'8 or simply'Tragedies',9 'Short Thousand Years',10 and 'Pasts Are Another Country'11often with sub-titles that confuse one with another even more, sometimes, as inthe case of the last two mentioned, with revised editions (and revised subtitle inone case) to keep up with the march of events. Such is the plethora, in fact, thatdistinguishing one from another becomes difficult, particularly as they all goover similar ground with little originality; the purpose of this essay,therefore, is simply to provide a brief record of the more recent of these booksand of those which for one reason or another were not reviewed earlier.Perhaps the most blatant example of'over-publishing' on Rhodesia wasthat of Kwane Nkrumah's Rhodesia File which was but a half-written manu-script and working file that the publishers have seized upon; nevertheless, anddespite Nkrumah's lack of real knowledge of the problem, one is constantlystruck by the vigour of his mind and the continental sweep of his ideas.12Another aspect of saturating the market for works on Rhodesia has been the'D. Hills, The Last Days of White Rhodesia (London, Chatto & Windus, 1981), 187 pp..£9.50.2D. Hills, Rebel People (London, George Allen & Unwin, 1978); reviewed ante (1978), VI,221.3E. Windrich, The Rhodesian Problem: A Documentary Record 1923-1973 (London,Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975), 312 pp., £5.95.4H.P.W. Hutson, Rhodesia: Ending an Era(London, Springwood, 1978), 198 pp., £5.95.5C.C. Crocker, From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe (Washington D.C., Georgetown University,Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1977), reviewed ante (1982), X, 150; D.W.H.Morris-Jones (ed.), From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe (London, Frank Cass, 1980), 123 pp.,£12.00; H. Wiseman and A.M. Taylor, From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe: The Politics ofTransition (Oxford, Pergamon for International Peace Academy, 1981), xxi, 170 pp., £11.00.6C.M.B. Utete, The Road to Zimbabwe: The Political Economy of Settler Colonialism,National Liberation and Foreign Intervention (Washington, D.C.. Univ. Press of America,1978), 170 pp., US$8.50.7G.C. Kinloch. Racial Conflict in Rhodesia: A Socio-Historical Study (Washington,D.C., Univ. Press of America, 1978), xiii, 321 pp.. US$10.75; P. O'Meara, Rhodesia: RacialConflict or Coexistence? (Ithaca, Cornell Univ. Press, 1975), 217 pp., £5.75.8M. Hudson, Triumph or Tragedy: Rhodesia to Zimbabwe (London, Hamish Hamilton,1981), 252 pp., £9.95.9E. Dumbutshena, Zimbabwe Tragedy (Nairobi, East African Publishing House, 1975),138 pp., no price indicated.10P.L. Moorcraft, A Short Thousand Years: The End of Rhodesia's Rebellion (Salisbury,Galaxie, 1979), 248 pp., illus., Z$9.95; a revised and updated edition was published in 1980(Z$3.95 p/b) with an additional chapter on the Lancaster House Settlement and the resumption ofBritish control."M. Meredith, The Past Is Another Country: Rhodesia 1898-1979 (London, AndreDeutsch, 1979), 383 pp., £9.95; an updated edition, a new subtitle Rhodesia: U.D.I, toZimbabwe (London, Pan Books, 1980). 430 pp., £2.50 (p/b).i2K. Nkrumah, Rhodesia File (London, Panaf, 1976), 168 pp., no price indicated.73encouragement to write books that could well have remained useful articles ina learned journal, or to write long books that could well have been muchbriefer. With this tendency to inflation also often comes a certain priggishness,particularly among academics, which was well exemplified in Larry Bowman'sPolitics in Rhodesia. ° The only sections of real value in his book were thoseon the structure of the Rhodesian Front, the substance of which had alreadybeen published,14 and much of what comes earlier in the book is inaccuratepadding. Portentous, rather than priggish, is Graham Kinloch's RacialConflict in Rhodesia, a socio-Mstorical study that attempted to uncover thedynamics of the (allegedly changing) relationship between the races overtime.15 The essence of this overlong book also has been published before andadds nothing to our understanding,16 Similarly overlong was Lord Blake'smassive tome on the history of Rhodesia17 that also has little that is new by wayof fact and hardly anything by way of analysis. The two introductory chapterson African history before 1890 are laughable; thereafter Africans drop out ofthe picture and there is little on the political economy. The length of the book isdue to old-fashioned narrative that ignores recent research but is padded outwith Establishment gossip dignified in the footnotes as 'private information5(like the claim that individually the wives of Rhodesian Front ministersdissuaded their husbands over lunch at home from accepting the TigerProposals (p. 399)).The approaches of these three authors are very different Š Bowman'ssympathies are self-righteously with the African Nationalists and Blake'ssnobbishly with the old, liberal, White Establishment, whilst Kinloch'sinterests are jargonistically in overarching theoretical explanations Š butcommon to all three is a reluctance to grapple with the historical problems of aWhite minority trying to build a modern economy in the heart of Africa, seenmost clearly in their complete incomprehension of the Rhodesian Front. Asthis party, and what it represented, is really their point of departure, this failureon their part makes the length of their works even harder to bear.Such failures of understanding, nevertheless, seem to have been commonamong academics in the 1970s, and similarly vitiated other books. ElaineWindrich, for example, was for some reason impelled to write two books, TheRhodesian Problem and Britain and the Politics of Independence.191 The firstis a documentary record from 1923 to 1973, but the problem is never clearlyexplained and the commentary on the extracts from documents is superficial,whilst even the 'documents' themselves are often but journalistic pieces andnot primary sources at all. Similarly, her second book plunges straight into thedetailed negotiations over the Five Principles and NIBMAR; and there is noanalysis of the political reality behind the Principles and absolutely no attempt13L,W. Bowman, Politics in Rhodesia: White Power in an African State (Cambridge.MA, Harvard Univ. Press, 1973), [xii], 206 pp., US$9.50.14L.W. Bowman, 'Organisation, power and decision-making within the Rhodesian Front'.Journal of Commonwealth Political Studies (1969), VII, 145-65.15 See above, fn. 7.l6See, in particular, G.C. Kinloch 'Changing Black reaction to White domination', RhodesianHistory (1974), V, 67-78, and Flame or Lily? Rhodesian Values as Defined by the Press(Durban, Alpha Graphic, 1970); a review of this book appeared, ante (1971), II, i, 90-1 and wasreplied toby the author: 'Flame or Lily? revisited: A response and elaboration', ibid. (1973), III, i,95-101.17R. Blake, A History of Rhodesia (London, Eyre Methuen, 1977), 430 pp., £12.50.18E. Windrich, Britain and the Politics of Rhodesian Independence (London CroomHelm, 1978), 283 pp., £10.95; for The Rhodesian Problem, see above, fn. 3.74to understand, or explain, the Rhodesian Front's negotiating position. Thenthe author awards with Olympian detachment black marks to Britishpoliticans, especially those of the Labour Party (which sometimes passedresolutions on the subject which the author, perhaps because employed by theParty, regards as Holy Writ), as they tried to negotiate a settlement Thispeculiar book, written In a convoluted style that is often ambiguous, ends inmid-sentence as it were, with no conclusion or analysis; in fact, it adds littleexcept self-righteous certainty (the Pearce Commissioners get a patronizinggood mark for amYing at the 'correct conclusion* (p. 187) on the 1971 proposals)to what Young and Good have already said on the subject.19After these exercises in self-righteousness it is a relief to turn to one of thefew books by academics in the 1970s which will retain usefulness. This IsPatrick O'Mema's Rhodesia: Racial Conflict or Coexistence?20 Much of thebook goes over well-trodden ground but the latter part provides a very usefulsurvey of the 'constitutional' opposition to the Rhodesian Front, notably theUnited People's Party and the Centre Party. It could, be argued that he makestoo much of these groups as effective political parties Š the one became aparty because there happened to be fifteen African M.P.s, the other was a partyvirtually without parliamentary representation; and certainly his ownconclusion is that there has been no meaningful political opportunity forconstitutional, moderate opposition. Less dispassionate but well argued wasMartin Loney's Rhodesia: White Racism and Imperial Response21 which setout to explain White Rhodesian politics in economic and class terms and to;.irgue for British complicity because of a shared capitalist interest; that Msargument is thinnest where it matters most (i.e. in the economic history ofRhodesia) is but a reflection of the unbalanced nature of Rhodesian historiographywhich, like the books reviewed above, has been almost exclusively concernedwith political superstructure.Of a very different character from these academic works have been twobooks based upon personal reminiscence. Enoch Dumbutshena had to leaveRhodesia illegally, having been denied a passport in 1967, in order to take up a-ob with the Zambian Ministry of Justice, This painful episode was used as thepeg on which to hang his reminiscences and interpretation of Rhodesia'shistory.22 The tragedy of the title was, of course, the war situation broughtabout by White racialism and intransigence but with hints that Africannationalist disunity has contributed. The rise of the A.N.C., at the time of thePearce Commission and a new unity, however, was the climax of the book,with independence and freedom then regarded as imminent, somewhatprematurely as it turned out. Nevertheless, in keeping with these ¥iews, theauthor soon returned to Rhodesia, to become the first African to sit as anassessor in the High Court, and then the first African judge. Remarkablydifferent from the moderation and thoughtfulaess that went into the writing ofOumbutshena's book, was Fr Roland Pichon's similar mixture ofreminiscence and historical overview, he Drame rhodesien, which is a wild,maccurate tirade Š the emotional point of which appears to be to denigratehis own Catholic colleagues in Rhodesia, particularly English Jesuits and,19K, Young, Rhodesia and Independence (London, Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1967); R.Good, The International Politics of the Rhodesian Rebellion (London, Paber & Faber, 1972).20See above fn. 7.21M, Loney, Rhodesia: White Racism and Imperial Response (London, Penguin, 1975),J.35 pp., £0.70,'"See above, fn. 9,75mirabile dictu, Bishop Lament.23 French readers will be better advised to rely "on Eisemann's study for La Documentation francaise, La Rhodesie,2* which isseverely factual and like many of this series translates in full basicdocuments such as the 1969 Constitution Š in which matter French readersare better served than English readers of Windrich's documentary record(which prints only an extract from a White Paper on the subject25) or Mutiti'sRhodesia Constitutions (which prints part of the 1923 and 1965 Constitutionsand is an extremely muddled, dreadfully produced book, with almost 'incomprehensible footnote references26).Of a similar factual nature to Eisemann's work was the first survey of racerelations in Rhodesia, for an eighteen-month period from the beginning of1972 to mid-1973, organized by the Centre for Inter-Racial Studies of theUniversity of Rhodesia.27 This useful reference book is very much like the wellknown annual survey published by the South African Institute of RaceRelations, now in its thirty-fifth year of publication;28 it is based largely upon -v.local newspaper items and official publications, notably ParliamentaryDebates. Reliance on these sources does, of course, have its limitations,particularly in view of the local newspapers' reluctance to follow up someaspects of the war; for these one has to turn to various pamphlets by theInternational Defence & Aid Fund, the Anti-Apartheid Movement, theInternational Commission of Jurists or, better, the publications of the RomanCatholic Justice and Peace Commission.29 Nevertheless, despite the —limitations, it was a great pity that the Centre for Inter-Racial Studies was notable to keep the survey going as originally planned.Unusual among serious books on the 1970s is Major-General Hutson'sbook, Rhodesia: Ending an Era,30 which is a general survey of the Rhodesianindependence problem written very much from the side of the settlers Š anapproach not common among former Colonial Office officials with a workinglifetime in Africa. Neither a historian nor a journalist, and no doubt influencedby his relatives and friends in Rhodesia, Hutson was concerned to present acase Š for White rale and against the policies of the British Government; in tparticular Hutson was concerned to sway opinion against the Anglo-Americanproposals of 1977 in favour of an internal settlement which, he believed, wouldquickly destroy popular support for the guerrillas. In his survey there are many"R. Pichon, Le Drame rhodesien: Resurgence du Zimbabwe (Paris, 1DOC Š France,1975), 247 pp., no price indicated. Rather similar in this respect, is the work of a Shona Catholic,L.T. Kapunga, Rhodesia: The Struggle for Freedom (Maryknoll NY, Orbis, 1974) is quoted withapproval by Pichon but shocked Bishop Lamont because or its lack of objectivity; the attack on theChurch, however, is only a minor part of Kapunga's book and has, in any case, already been *-discussed by the Revd Dr Peaden (ante (1979), VII, 191-3); the book is essentially an analysis ofthe Rhodesian problem, rather like but less detailed than E. Mlambo, Rhodesia: The Struggle for Ł»a Birthright (London, Hurst, 1972). Like Dumbutshena, the author was greatly encouraged bythe burgeoning unity following 1972 and returned to Rhodesia, at least temporarily, but he is muchmore concerned with politicization of the people than Dumbutshena.24P.M. Eisemann, La Rhodesie: Evolution politique et le constitution (Paris, LaDocumentation francaise, Notes et Etudes Documentaires, No. 4151-2, 1975), 56 pp., FF6."Windrich, The Rhodesian Problem, 72-4.26M.A.B. Mutiti, Rhodesia Constitutions and Politics in a Dispute for National 'Independence (Nairobi, Kenya Literature Bureau, 1979), 218 pp., no price indicated.27D.K. Davies (comp.), Race Relations in Rhodesia: A Survey for 1972-73 (London, R.Collings, 1975), 458 pp., £6.50.28The latest to be published is M. Horrell: A Survey of Race Relations in South Africa, 1981(Johannesburg, The South African Institute of Race Relations, 1982)."See R.S. Roberts, 'Epiphenomena of the Struggle', Zambezia (1982), X, 143-50.30See above, in. 4.76factual inaccuracies, including the Freudian slip of referring to the governingparty in Rhodesia as the 'National Front' (p. 41); but he does have a pointwhen he wonders (p. 188) whether Britain would ever accept any internalsettlement lest that appear to justify U.DJ. British officials had, until the mid-1970s, been prepared to settle without the participation of the Africannationalist parties, but, after years of bungling, they were not prepared to havea settlement without their own participation Š hence the impact of Kissinger'sintervention.Less parti pris than Hutson, although written from a conservative point ofview, was Hudson's more recent work, Triumph or Tragedy which is basicallya survey of events since U.D.I, with emphasis on the negotiations with theBritish Government.31 As a research worker for the Conservative Party hegives the other side of the story from that given by Windrich and shows howConservative policy was in many ways more consistent and realistic.Ineyitably the key differen.ee of approach between his and her interpretation isover the Smith-Home agreement and the Pearce Commission of 1971-2which, Hudson feels, was another missed opportunity, like the 1961Constitution, for working out a solution that had the merit of avoiding the lossof life, mostly African, that followed over the next eight years.After all these serious-minded but limited works, it is something of a reliefto read the more recent books which, for all their lack of academic pretensions,in some ways give greater insight into the Rhodesian problem. First there isHills's book mentioned at the beginning of this essay.32 Written in a diary-likeform, it describes Ms rather aimless journeys around the country from mid-1978 to mid-1980. It is, however, Ms impressions and reflections that are ofinterest rather than his direct observations of events; with an unerringtraveller's eye he seizes upon the significant amongst the trivial and tellinglysummarizes the mood of a variety of Whites in their last days beforeZimbabwe was born. Perhaps because that end was now clear and inescapable,Hills is much less critical of White Rhodesians than in Ms earlier book; indeedhe almost comes to admire them and is somewhat gloomy about Zimbabwe'sfuture government, perhaps because of his experiences under Amin inUganda. Dick Pitman's modest book, You Must Be New around here(Smith's reply to a journalist who asked if there was to be a settlement) coversmuch of the same period, the time of the March 1978 Agreement and theTransitional Government.33 A journalist, but entirely new to Africa and itspolitics, he relates his slow, faltering introduction to war-torn Rhodesia; basedlargely in Salisbury he captures something of the interminable, enervatingdiscussion among Whites about what was going to happen, whether therewould be a settlement, when and how retaliation would be made for theViscounts. Of no great insight, he has at least recorded the strange mood ofWhite Rhodesia in 1978-9, that mixture of uncertainty, bellicosity andnostalgia. Something of that same mood comes through Paul Moorcraft's3ISee above, fn. 8, "See above, fn. 1,33D. Pitman, You Must Be New around here (Bulawayo, Books of Rhodesia, 1979), 214pp., ZS3.75 (p/bj.77A Short Thousand Years.3* Written in a racy, wisecracking journalese thissurvey of events from 1976 is easy to read, and occasionally Š but onlyoccasionally Š amusing. It adds little to our understanding of the problem orthe events, although by the irreverent tone it does prick not a few bubbles ofpretentiousness and self-righteousness on the part of White Establishmentliberals and academics. Because of this tone some readers have interpreted thebook as being pro-settler but its concluding remarks oe the implications ofRhodesia for South Africa show that beneath the jocular approach is a realisticassessment of the futility of minority rale. Similar, but more staid, is The PastIs Another Country which is a survey of events from 1965 by a journalist whowas based in Salisbury for several years; written without any particularargument to prove, without any display of high-minded moralizing, it straight-forwardly records the facts in a prosaic manner which will make it a usefulbook to turn to for checking the chronology of events, etc. In so far as it has athesis, it is that all parties in the country have displayed greed, intransigence,miscalculation and recklessness, and no-one comes out of the mess that wasRhodesia with honour. Much the same could be said of most of the books underreview which can only have added to misunderstanding if they have been takenseriously at all.Thus it is refreshing to turn to Charles Utete's The Road to Zimbabwe andW.H. Morris-Jones's From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe which do not dwellentirely on the past but look to the future. Utete's book is a compact andanalytical survey of the Rhodesian problem which has the merit of putting it ina wider perspective of past underdevelopment and future needs.35 Morris-Jones's book is a collection of essays (some originally delivered as papers to aconference on The Economic Future of Zimbabwe Rhodesia at the Universityof London in 1979) and first published in the Journal of Commonwealth &Comparative Politics (1980), XVIII, i. The essays by R. Riddell, C. Stonemanand D.G. Clarke on land, industry and trade do not add much to what theseauthors have written elsewhere but the contributions by R. Hodder-Williams,J. Barber, J. Day and A.R. Wilkinson are interesting surveys of the legacybequeathed to Zimbabwe by a decade of political isolation, regional upheaval,nationalist divisions and war,36 That seemingly unattainable objective, peace,that finally did come to Zimbabwe in 1980 with the end of White rale, is thesubject of Henry Wiseman and Alistair Taylor's From Rhodesia toZimbabwe. Their useful work is focused narrowly on the making of theLancaster House Agreement and the work of the Monitoring Force and theObservers as an example of a successful peace-keeping operation.37 Althoughthe book is rather boring in its presentation it must be hoped that it is its lessonsthat will be the ones to survive the passage of time.R.S.R.34See above, fn. 10. The 'Thousand Years' (typically unexplained by Moorcraft) are, ofcourse, in reference to Ian Smith's declaration in 1976 that he did not 'believe in black majorityrale ever in Rhodesia , . .not in 1000 years', The Sunday Mail, 21 Mar. 1976. He later explainedthis as opposition to Black majority rule qua Black just as he opposed White majority rule quaWhite, The Rhodesia Herald, 25 Mar. 1976. The problem was, as always, that this sort of beliefin a meritocracy, if sincere (which Nationalists doubted) needed a thousand years to evolve,35See above, fn. 6. i6See above, fn. 11. "See above, fn. 5.78