Zambezia (1995), XXII (ii).BOOK REVIEWS'Rhodesians Never Die': The Impact of War and Political Change onWhite Rhodesia, c.1970-1980 By Peter Godwin and Ian Hancock. Harare,Baobab Books, 1994, xvi, 400 pp., ISBN 0-908311-82-6, Z$100.In 1971 the Rhodesian Ministry of Information issued a booklet calledRhodesia in Brief. Its purpose was to attract White immigrants to replacethose Whites who had emigrated during the slump which followed thebreak-up of the Federation. Among its more memorable claims was that incoming to Rhodesia the new arrivals would find themselves removed from'a troubled world, greatly beset by the vexatious problems of the twentiethcentury' (p. 28). A Rhodesia Front ministry clearly did not consider thatimperialism and its dismantling were high among our century's problems.By 1970 the Front felt sufficiently confident that its 1965 gamble had paidoff and had declared Rhodesia a republic. During the Liberation War andthe various constitutional conferences which punctuated it, Smith neverseemed to understand that Rhodesia was a British colony and that thedays had gone when people in Europe regarded Whites ruling Blacks inAfrica as part of the eternal fitness of things. Smith never registered thehuge ideological shift which had taken place in Britain even though theRhodesia Front's rebellion could be righted and the war ended only if, forthe first time in its history, Britain assumed direct control of the colony'sgovernment. The sovereignty of Rhodesia was Britain's and only Britaincould hand over power to the nationalists. UDI was an affront againsthistory and was the direct cause of the death of perhaps 50 000people. And yet Smith recalled that awful time between 1965 andZimbabwe's independence as 'fourteen great years' which he had accordedRhodesians.Peter Godwin and Ian Hancock address the events of the last ten ofthose years in 'Rhodesians Never Die'. They are peculiarly well placed toprovide different perspectives on those years from the authors of otherpublished works which deal with the same period.Godwin is a White Zimbabwean and, unlike most of the people whohave written about Rhodesia, he knows the White community from inside.He was, however, a sceptical Rhodesian. Rhodesians were not peculiarlyheroic or peculiarly evil. They were a fairly unremarkable group of peopleof some diversity. With the help of imported capital and Black labour, theyhad created a relatively developed economy. The privileges which thisgave them was perhaps the only bond which united them. Like anyprivileged group, they wanted to retain their position and from the earliestsettler elections they voted for whoever seemed able to guarantee it. Theywere even willing to fight although as the book shows, as soon as the call-197198 BOOK REVIEWSups interrupted the easy flow of settler life, people started drifting away.When it was obvious that their privileges would be lost, the majority ofWhites simply fled the country.Hancock is an outsider, an Australian academic. His White Liberals,Moderates and Radicals in Rhodesia 1953-1980 (Beckenham, Croom Helm,1984) is the only full study of White Rhodesia's opposition parties andgroups. More than any one, he knows that over the last 30 years ofRhodesia's life there were always Rhodesians, both to the left and theright of the dominant power group, who were aware of other politicalpossibilities than those which were followed. Having studied the liberalsas a group, Hancock knows that the only White in public life who almostalways understood what was happening was Allan Savory. Twenty yearslater it is easy to forget the fury which greeted Savory's use in Parliamentof 'guerrilla' instead of the politically correct 'terrorist' and theincomprehension of RF MPs when he claimed that the side which wonBlack support would win the war. Savory's arrogance gave him theconfidence to vie with Lamont as the White other Whites most liked tohate. It also made it difficult for him to work with anyone. The liberalsknew that Whites wanted to hear only what was comforting; Savory wantedto tell them what was going to happen. As long as the liberals soughtpower from the electorate, Savory was a liability.In comparison with the parties to the right of the RF, however, theliberals had the pulse of national life at their finger tips. Through the pagesof this book stalk grotesque characters like Len Idensohn and WilfredBrooks. Both believed that Smith was in the pay of what Brook's weeklywould have called international communism. For all its blindness, theright recognised much more quickly than most Whites that Smith'sagreement to the Kissinger proposals in 1976 was Š what this book callsit Š a surrender. In agreeing to hand over power to the Black majoritywithin two years, Smith had turned his back on every political principle hehad ever stood for. Of course, he refused to admit that this was what hadhappened and probably believed that he was negotiating a situation thruston him by South Africa's betrayal. He never seems to have admitted thathe was responding to an agenda which Blacks had made.Godwin and Hancock describe their narrative as one written 'on theprinciple of listening and observing' and the text is largely constructedaround the interviews both authors carried out with a large number ofpeople from an assortment of backgrounds. They have used this methodto discover not only what Whites did but what they thought they weredoing. The people that emerge from these pages, although frequentlyabsurd as most people are, are altogether more complex and varied thanthe Rhodesians in so many books and articles. Godwin and Hancockinvoke the stereotypes this book is trying to abolish. On the one side thereBOOK REVIEWS 199are the Rhodies who left and meet 'to remember the hurt of loosing acountry or to relive past glories' (p. 10). On the other side there are theRhodesians constructed by a particular sort of scholarship. This isconcerned 'to formulate the theory which correctly locates race andsettler capitalism within the framework of class analysis' (p. 10). Godwinand Hancock briefly ponder whether the nostalgia of exile or apreoccupation with class produces the greater caricature of the variedreality of Rhodesians.Perhaps the strongest impression of those last ten years of Rhodesiais how few Whites there were who knew what was going to happen. It wasnot that Rhodesians did not know what was happening in the war. Ignoranceoperated at a deeper level than day-to-day events. Censorship preventedany intelligent public discussion; but even without censorship Whiteswanted to be fooled. It is worth recalling the more important of thosevarious moments of self-deception. They believed that the majority ofBlacks supported the 1971 Anglo-Rhodesian agreement; they believed thatSouth Africa would always come to their rescue; they believed that Blacksliked being put into protected villages and that the guerrillas had nopopular base; finally they believed that Muzorewa would win the 1980elections. It was not simply ill-educated men and women who held tothese extraordinary notions about the world they were supposed to control.Senior officers and civil servants believed them. Only the business worldretained its sanity if sanity means having some sense of how other peoplethink.What this book shows however, is that no particular section of Whitesociety was more ignorant than any other. Until I read this book I havealways been inclined to think that Internal Affairs was largely responsiblefor misleading the regime. Hostes Nicolle, the Secretary for Internal Affairs,was both enormously influential with the Cabinet and monumentallyignorant about what Blacks wanted. There is evidence, however, thatpeople working for Internal Affairs in the north-east knew that there wasunrest before the 1972 attack on Altena farm but their reports wereignored by higher officials in Salisbury who wanted only to hear ofcontented Blacks. Somewhere in the senior ranks of the army were menwho knew that victory in a guerrilla war involved winning the confidenceof the people. But there was so much rivalry between Hickman, Reid-Daly,Maclntyre and Walls that they had little energy left to win anyone's heartsand minds.If I had to single out the principal strength of this superb book it wouldbe the boldness with which its narrative mimics White Rhodesia's ignoranceof the context in which it was living its life. The guerrillas and the nationalistleaders are largely absent in the book. They are present only when theyattack White farms or when White politicians have to negotiate with them.200 BOOK REVIEWSThis allows Godwin and Hancock to convey the sense of what it was likefor Whites living through those ten years. The cruelty and villainy andbumptious confidence are there of course. Also there are the surprisinglynumerous people who hated what the Rhodesia Front was doing in theirname. Some bitterly regretted the lives which were being sacrificed tohold off the inevitable. Others loved the country and wanted everyone tobe able to enjoy its benefits. And others knew that Blacks were beingdenied their humanity and this was wrong. These are not the motives ofheroic resistance. They do, however, counter the normal image of WhiteRhodesia with alternative and perhaps saving moments of ordinarydecency.University of Zimbabwe ANTHONY CHENNELLSSociety in Zimbabwe's liberation War, Vol. Two Edited by N. Bhebe andT. Ranger. Harare, University of Zimbabwe Publications, 1995, xii, 250 pp.,ISBN 0-908307-37-3, Z$60.This book is an important and timely contribution to scholarship onZimbabwe's experience during the liberation war. It is the outcome of theinternational conference on the Zimbabwean liberation war held in Hararein July 1991, which brought together academics and participants in thewar to analyse the significance of the conflict to the Zimbabwean socio-economic and political reality. Unlike the earlier volume, also edited byN. Bhebe and T. Ranger and which focussed on the experiences of thesoldiers, the current volume concentrates on the role of religion, educationand ideology in the war, as well as the impact of the war on society atlarge, both during and after the conflict. It is an impressive effort byparticipants and leading academics who are concerned more with analysingthe factors that shaped the Zimbabwean experience during the years ofthe conflict than with upholding the 'comfortable myths of the war'.Society in Zimbabwe's Liberation War comprises nine chapters groupedinto three sections, each focussing on a select theme. Section One, entitled'Religion and the war', analyses three case studies of interaction betweenreligion and the guerrillas. The first paper by T. Ranger and M. Ncubeexamines the role of both traditional religion and Christian missions in theliberation struggle in southern Matabeleland, while, the second and thirdcontributions by D. Maxwell and J. Mclaughlin respectively, provideinteresting case studies of the war experiences of Christian missions ineastern Zimbabwe, one Catholic and the other protestant. AH papers inthis section demonstrate clearly that the relationship between religionand religious organisations and the guerrillas was a complex, dynamic andfluid one.