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By Root 347 0

for his breakfast.” He tromped off to the shower—a loose grass enclosure at the top of the camp that was open to the sky and occasionally sagged open at the edges, revealing glimpses of the soapy, white body within. A silver bucket was suspended by a rope pulley over a circle of red gravel, a rickety bush-pole table held a candle (in a green wine bottle), a dish of soap, and a bottle of shampoo. Frogs and snakes nested in the grass fence and scorpions peered with glinting black eyes from the drain. The dogs trotted after Dad, looking forward to their morning encounter with the shower’s variety of wildlife. In a few moments I heard the squeak of the bucket as it was lowered over my father, then a gush and Dad muttering under his breath at the shock of cold water. One of the Jack Russells came trotting out with her tail raised in victory and a lizard clenched between her jaws.

BY THE MID - 1960S , all but a handful of African countries had gained independence from their European settlers. The Southern Rhodesian government, led by Ian Smith, in a panic lest the British prime minister turn their country over to the Africans too, made a Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) on November 11, 1965. Under UDI whites retained power and black Rhodesians remained unable to vote. Wrex Tarr, Rhodesia’s resident wag, reflected the casualness with which whites regarded this momentous decision by tagging UDI a “Universal Declaration of Indifference.” A state of emergency was declared—but this was more a way to keep uppity blacks in line than to placate satiated whites.

Britain and the United Nations Security Council responded to Smith’s move by slamming economic sanctions on the rogue state, and black Rhodesian nationalists began preparing for war, training in countries that were sympathetic to their cause: Zambia, Ghana, Tanzania, China, North Korea, and the Soviet Union. For a time, the nationalist guerrillas dispatched into Rhodesia were quickly captured and killed by government forces; they were, as one white farmer put it, “only a pinprick in our sides” and “merely garden boys.” But, in 1972, the rebels intensified their war. No longer operating from beyond Rhodesia’s borders, they infiltrated the northeast of the country, caching arms near Centenary and Mount Darwin, and living in and off the local villages. From these bases, they attacked white farmers and intimidated their laborers; they laid mines and set ambushes. The “garden boys,” it turned out, weren’t nearly as inept or inefficient as the whites had painted them, and they were serious about gaining their independence.

What made the Rhodesian War almost unique among wars for independence in Africa was that both sides—white and black—considered themselves indigenous to the land. By the start of the war in the in the late sixties, the total population of the country hovered at around 5 million—of that, 230,000 people (at most) were white (or, in appearance, obviously “white”) and were considered by the government to be politically and socially more important than any other race in the country. There was also a small population of Indians and coloureds—coloureds were defined by Rhodesians as people with mixed blood—who ranked in the power base slightly above the blacks, but still far below the whites. By the end of the war, all able-bodied white and coloured men between the ages of seventeen and sixty were on permanent or semipermanent call-up “in defense of Rhodesia.”

The guerrillas belonged in one of two forces—ZANLA (Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army) or ZIPRA (Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army). The Mashona joined the ZANLA forces and made for Mozambique. The Matabele joined the ZIPRA forces and hid in Zambia. Whenever the two forces met, the rivalry that existed between the Matebele and the Mashona, and that preceded their common hatred of the whites, erupted in skirmishes.

The regular Rhodesian army had two battalions—the all-white RLI and the all-black (but white-officered) Rhodesian African Rifles (RAR). The Rhodesians took advantage of the existing