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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 enmity between the indigenous nations by dividing the RAR into Mashona and Matabele regiments. When there was trouble in the Matabele areas of Rhodesia, the Mashona troops were sent. When there was trouble in the Mashona area, the Matabele troops were sent.
    It is tempting—because it is less complicated—to think of the Rhodesian War as being about right and wrong, black and white. The truth is, of course, blurrier than that. On the whole, it was a war of race, but it was also a war of clashing nations and conflicting ideals. The whites claimed they were defending a way of life, that they were defending the country against communism, that they were protecting “our munts from themselves.” In the late seventies, when the Rhodesian War was at its most desperate and brutal, some of the rest of Africa was in the throes of a postcolonial massacre. The liberators of many African states had learned too well the vile lessons of their erstwhile oppressors and had turned their jaws—sometimes literally—onto their own people.
    Blaine Harden, the Washington Post bureau chief in sub-Saharan Africa from 1985 to 1989, offers up a smattering of examples of the bizarre behavior of some of Africa’s leaders in the late seventies in his Africa: Dispatches from a Fragile Continent:
    Uganda’s Amin declared himself King of Scotland, sent a cable to Richard Nixon wishing him a “speedy recovery from Water-gate,” and ordered white Britishers to carry him on a throne-like chair into a reception for African diplomats. Before he was toppled in 1979, his troops killed an estimated quarter-million people and ripped Uganda, once the most prosperous country in East Africa, to pieces. Bokassa installed himself in 1977 as “emperor” of the Central African Republic in a diamond-studded, Napoleonic-style ceremony that cost $22 million, one