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.BOOK REVIEWS 201The role of ideology and education in the war is discussed in SectionTwo, where A. Chennells provides a fascinating analysis of settler ideologywhilst P. M. Nare and F. Chung document ZAPU and ZANU's efforts todevelop and maintain viable educational systems in the refugee camps ofZambia and Mozambique, respectively. Through an examination of severallate-colonial novels published in Rhodesia, Chennells provides an insightfuland interesting analysis of settler ideology in the closing years of colonialrule and demonstrates that, with a few exceptions, settlers completelyfailed to understand both the dynamics of African nationalism and Africanmotivation and objectives in taking up arms against White rule. Remainingmired in a static view of the African as a child-like savage, incapable ofanalysis and independent action unless put up to it by some outsideinvisible hand, settlers completely failed to appreciate the nature of theforce they were up against until the 1980 ZANU victory swept away boththe settler colonial regime and its underpinning ideology.Both Nare and Chung recount efforts by their respective parties todevelop and sustain educational systems for the thousands of Zimbabweansin exile in Zambia and Mozambique. Their accounts reveal not only thecomplexity of the problems which confronted the two parties in theirendeavours, but also the ingenuity, creativity and tenacity of those assignedthe task of establishing and developing the programmes. Despite logisticaland security problems, they succeeded in mounting viable and relevanteducational programmes which eventually helped shape the country'spost-war educational system.In Section Three, N. Bhebe, J. Alexander and R. Werbner attempt toanswer the question: What happened after the war? Entitled 'Legacies ofthe war', this section examines the problems facing the Evangelical LutheranChurch in Zimbabwe, the processes of post-war political change inZimbabwe's rural areas and the heritage of war in southeastern Zimbabwe,respectively. N. Bhebe's knowledgeable treatment of the divisions andconflicts within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in southern Zimbabwe,born during the war but deepened and complicated by the post-independence conflict in Matabeleland, makes fascinating reading.Equally interesting and thought-provoking is Werbner's analysis ofthe impact of the post-independence conflict in Matabeleland whichtraumatised the local communities. The local communities were not onlydenied a chance to recover from the brutalities of the liberation war inwhich they were victimised by both the Rhodesian Security Forces andthe guerrillas, but were immediately plunged into another brutal conflictin which they were, once gain, victimised by the Fifth Brigade whichconducted itself like an army of occupation. According to Werbner, thesubsequent 'remarkable increase in the number of mediums known assangomc? (p. 200) in Matabeleland is an indication of how the local people202 BOOK REVIEWSsought to come to terms with their catastrophic experiences and to beginthe necessary post-conflict process of healing.Society in Zimbabwe's Liberation War is a significant book because ittells the story of what occurred in those nightmarish years of the war andthe post-war Matabeleland conflict and thus makes public what has hithertoremained closed to Zimbabwean society as a whole. By addressing thesesensitive but important issues and attempting to understand the forcesthat helped shape Zimbabwe's current social and political reality, itprovides the necessary foundation for that national healing process whichcannot begin unless Zimbabwean society as a whole confronts the past,the 'heroic' and the 'terrible things', squarely in the face. The book will beuseful to both professional researchers and academics because it pointsto new directions for academic enquiry. It will also be useful to the generalpublic, who need to know what happened then in order to come to termswith the present reality as well as to contribute towards the constructionof a Zimbabwean society in which such traumatic experiences are neverrepeated.University of Zimbabwe A. S. MLAMBOAre We Not Also Men? The Samkange Family and African Politics inZimbabwe 1920 to 1964 By Terence Ranger. London, James Currey Ltd.;Cape Town, David Philip (Pty) Ltd.; Portsmouth, Heinemann, 1995, iv, 211pp., ISBN 0-435-03977-3, Z$135.Professor Terence Ranger, whose earlier works, especially Revolt inSouthern Rhodesia and its sequel, The African Voice in Southern Rhodesia1898-1930, established him as a household name among Zimbabweanhistorians and freedom fighters, has once again produced in Are We NotAlso Men? an outstanding study of the rise of the African elite and massAfrican politics in Zimbabwe. Before reading his latest book, it might havebeen difficult to imagine that Ranger had anything new to tell us on thesetopics. Admittedly readers will tread on familiar ground in this book, butthey will also find familiar things presented in a different and refreshinglynew light together with some new discoveries, some of which substantiallyrevise our current views of certain important events and socialdevelopments. In particular, Ranger throws new light on gender relationsamong the emergent African elite, argues for a very radical and relevantAfrican National Congress in the mid and late 1940s, and disputes EdisonZvobgo's assertion that the National Democratic Party leadership plannedand orchestrated the violent demonstrations and riots in Bulawayo in1960.