Royal Sable Publishing is pleased to announce release of its book, The Last Rhodesians: Society Adrift, by Duncan Clarke, author of Rhodes’ Ghost: The Conquest of Zambesia 2020, available on Amazon worldwide, and distributed in First Edition in South Africa by Protea Books.
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An evolutionary saga, The Last Rhodesians is the definitive insight on this culture’s origins, identity, and imprint in Africa. Then 16 years of war led to the demise, sunset, and ‘fall’ of Rhodesia. Negotiations ended the state in 1979: but Rhodesians ‘never died’.
The war was fought in numerous bush battles, across adjacent states, in espionage, sanctions-busting, for rural hearts and minds, and in covert diplomacy. Fault lines in history, with Cold War powers in Moscow and Peking – and East Bloc belligerents, ethno-nationalist armies, and Western interests – coalesced in revolutionary war.
This multi-ethnic society – tagged ‘the jewel of Africa’ – bequeathed an inheritance that Zimbabwe squandered. Its inheritors crafted a failing state beset by genocide, economic regression, and social malaise. Yet its economic bedrock of 90 years, hidden or unacknowledged, still exists. Zimbabwe was birthed from those legacies.
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Literature, art, poetry, icons, images, symbols, lingua franca and cyber-Rhodesiana sustain this social identity worldwide. The Last Rhodesians provides critical review of this culture’s imprints as seen by eminent authors, historians, novelists, journalists, thinkers, politicians, soldiers, troopies, spies, diplomats, poets, satirists, academics, cartoonists, economists, ‘Rhodies’, ‘Whenwes’, and foreign critics – in hundreds of works, fiction and non-fiction, documentaries, music and film, about Africa’s ‘white tribe’ of ‘scatterlings’, now found in 60 countries. Those remaining are under 5 per cent of Rhodesians worldwide, 0.07 per cent of Zimbabwe’s populace. Fifty years of Rhodesian exoduses marked this ‘disappearance’.
The ‘House of Stone’, the inheritor state, remains. After its false dawn, the ‘jungle grew back’, leaving an imperfect future for all.
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It was 511 years ago when the first white man, Antonio Fernandes, entered Zambesia, and 167 years since the first pre-Rhodesians arrived. Rhodes landed in Africa 150 years ago, and it’s been 120 years since his burial. Rhodesia acquired self-government 100 years in the past, and Federation began 70 years ago, while Ian Smith declared UDI in 1965, nearly six decades ago. Zimbabwe’s independence was in 1980.
‘I am in awe of this portrait of white Rhodesia. The mastery of the detail is astonishing, the sheer intellectual power deployed is extraordinary.’ Michael Holman, author of Postmark Africa: Half a Century as a Foreign Correspondent, EnvelopeBooks, 2020.
About the Author
Duncan Clarke was born in Salisbury, Rhodesia (Harare, Zimbabwe) in 1948. His published works include Rhodes’ Ghost: The Conquest of Zambesia (2020) – see www.RhodesGhost.com; Africa’s Future: Darkness to Destiny (Profile Books, 2012); Africa: Crude Continent (Profile Books, 2010); and Three Decades in the Long Grass, (2014). The author’s 50 years of writings on Zambesia, Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, Africa, and the world are found on www.dgclarke.com.
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