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FT 24 APR 93 / Books: Small wars, millions dead: who cares?
By MICHAEL HOLMAN
RHODESIANS NEVER DIE by Peter Godwon and Ian Hancock Oxford Pounds 35, 400
pages
SMALL WARS, SMALL MERCIES by Jeremy Harding Viking Pounds 18, 442 pages
HIGH NOON IN SOUTHERN AFRICAby Chester Crocker W W Norton Dollars 24.95, 384
pages
'Rhodesian born, Rhodesian bred, strong in arm, thick in head'.
This disparaging ditty appears in Rhodesians Never Die, a fascinating and
learned analysis of the tribe to which I belong, albeit as a renegade
member.
Strong of arm, certainly. At one stage Rhodesia had enough cricketers in
English county sides to have made up a decent Test XI. Not so thick in head.
Those who have made their intellectual mark abroad include the former editor
of The Economist, a senior member of the British government, and a host of
businessmen, writers and academics. Not bad for Surbiton in Africa.
Nevertheless the ditty could well serve, broadly speaking, as the conclusion
to a demolition of the myths and delusions which sustained white Rhodesia in
the 1970s. Also revealed is the skullduggery and rivalry in the ranks of the
security forces during the last days of white rule. The remarkable
transition to peace and independence in 1980 was closer to disaster than
most people realised.
Much of the tribe is now scattered around the world, a harmless
post-colonial diaspora. A contact magazine offers nostalgia, army
memorabilia, and the news that Jock and Hazel, ex-Fort Victoria, offer a bed
and beer to 'Rhodies' passing through Vancouver. Yet for nearly 15 years
Jock and Hazel and their like defied the world. Never more than 275,000 of
them, and outnumbered 15 to 1 by blacks, they were eventually ground down by
sanctions and a guerrilla war.
Over 20,000 people died - 468 white and 7,790 black civilians, 1,361 members
of the security forces (just under half of them white) and 10,450
guerrillas. By comparison South Africa is getting off lightly. Apartheid's
death toll over the past decade is under 10,000. On a deaths-to-population
ratio, South Africa would have to endure 120,000 fatalities before reaching
a settlement.
The Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965 brought out the best and
the worst of white Rhodesia, caught up in the myth of a frontier society of
pioneer stock which defended Christian values. Most were not Rhodesian-born;
the majority were immigrants, as Godwin and Hancock point out. But they kept
Morris Minors on the road, and Viscounts in the air, longer than anyone
thought possible. They broke sanctions with ingenuity, and either
manufactured what they formerly imported, or managed without.
The dark side is that white Rhodesia tortured its enemies, executed jailed
guerrillas in secret and lacked the decency to tell next-of-kin, and
compulsorily regrouped thousands of peasant families in 'protected villages'
which became urban slums.
All this was known. Other truly terrible deeds have since been revealed. Ken
Flower, Smith's intelligence chief, recruited a black church minister to
supply poisoned clothing to youngsters who thought they were joining the
guerrillas. Hundreds died a horrible death; Flower had the minister
assassinated to avoid exposure, but recounts the tale in his autobiography.
As Donal Lamont, the deported Catholic bishop observed, white Rhodesians
became moral pygmies, and Godwin and Hancock put them under the microscope.
It was Flower and his colleagues who helped cultivate civil war in
neighbouring Mozambique, one of the African battlefields so vividly and
intimately covered by Jeremy Harding in Small Wars, Small Mercies. Rhodesia
helped arm and train Renamo, retaliation for Mozambique's support for
guerrillas. Harding picks up the story from later on, when Flower's work had
been taken over by South Africa.
Mozambique became part of the front-line in the battle against apartheid, as
did Angola, also on Harding's itinerary. If one takes their death tolls into
account, the cost of ending white rule in Southern Africa is measured in the
hundreds of thousands.
His account is not a catalogue of despair, however. Whether in Eritrea or
southern Africa he finds an extraordinary resilience, 'people contriving to
live beyond the wars, or in spite of them.' Harding draws on his own
expertise, but one of the merits of his book is that he lets Africans do
most of the talking.
Small wars, millions dead: who cares? For a while Washington did. Patient,
skilful diplomacy by Chester Crocker, the US assistant secretary of state
for Africa for much of the 1980s, extricated South Africa and Cuba from
their entanglement in south-western Africa. With the vital help of Moscow,
the process secured independence for Namibia and also paved the way to what
should have been a lasting peace in Angola.
Crocker moved on in 1988 and began writing what is an engrossing and
invaluable handbook on diplomacy in southern Africa. The tragedy is that the
book came too late to instruct his successors under President Bush. The
lessons it contains have been ignored. Washington bears as much of the blame
for the disaster in Angola today as the hapless United Nations monitors.
Countries:-
GBZ United Kingdom, EC.
USZ United States of America.
Industries:-
P2731 Book Publishing.
Types:-
TECH Products & Product use.
The Financial Times
London Page XVIII