Quote Originally Posted by davidbfpo View Post
Mac,

You are not alone in this interest. At one stage quite a few books often with a more military emphasis referred to such tactics aka "dirty tricks", then there was a pause and IIRC a book by an ex-BSAP officer, Ellert being the author, added a lot more. I don't think we know much today, if records existed they have gone and now Rhodesian memories are fading away. In my reading I have yet to encounter the views of the targets, the liberation fighters.
David,

From the Rhodesian forces there has been restraint on writing about the 'dirty tricks' stuff. In those days much of what was done was considered to be smart innovation - which could be/would be viewed differently in todays world.

There is detail starting to come out with other stuff waiting for the right moment to be released. When that will be I'm not sure.

For instance A book by Ed Bird who was with SB has published a book based on the SB Diary which he took out of the country with him after the war. Disarming honesty. I know Ed, he lives down the coast a few hours and told me he was not censoring anything for the book.

Special Branch War: Slaughter in the Rhodesian Bush. Southern Matabeleland, 1976-1980

I too am in search of content from 'the other side'. Yet to find anything that seems vaguely honest. For example I bought a kindle book from a then child who was used to spy on troop movements and the like. When in his first chapter he wrote about the idyllic life experienced befor the colonists arrived I stopped reading.

Anyone with any historical knowledge would be aware of the inter clan wars and the invasion of the area some 50 years before the arrival of the colonists by the Ndebele in the 1830s made the area less than idyllic and peaceful as this liar maintains.

Another book by a female had a long piece about a supposed ambush on the Salisbury/Kariba road after which it took the Rhodesian forces three day to recover the bodies of their casualties. Nonsense, complete nonsense.

Then we have that piece - based on a doctoral thesis - published in the Journal which again was utter garbage.

It may take sometime and certainly until after the collapse of the Mugabe regime for the truth from that side to start coming out. In the meantime as per my Orwell quote below in the case of Zimbabwe it is a case of "He who controls the present controls the past."