Last Days of White Rhodesia

Abstract

The title of this essay review is that of Dennis Hills’s book on events in this country from mid-1978 to mid-1980.1 This is his second book on the subject within three years,2 and, although enjoyable, is symptomatic of the tendency of writers and publishers to saturate a market. Thus we have had ‘Rhodesian Problems’,3 ‘Ending Eras’,4 ‘Rhodesia to Zimbabwes’5 and ‘Roads to Zimbabwe’,6 ‘Racial Conflicts’,7 ‘Triumphs or Tragedies’8 or simply ‘Tragedies’,9 ‘Short Thousand Years’,10 and ‘Pasts Are Another Country’11 often with sub-titles that confuse one with another even more, sometimes, as in the case of the last two mentioned, with revised editions (and revised subtitle in one case) to keep up with the march of events. Such is the plethora, in fact, that distinguishing one from another becomes difficult, particularly as they all go over similar ground with little originality; the purpose of this essay, therefore, is simply to provide a brief record of the more recent of these books and of those which for one reason or another were not reviewed earlier.