Now they've given us Alan Paton, The Comedians, which is full of nasty blacks, and Othello. They may learn, for instance, that it is perfectly possible to believe that black people deserve the vote without actually endorsing the invasion of Afghanistan. Because they see the war as invented and run by Communists, they tend to believe that their blacks were happy and content in a white-dominated society. The briefest chat with an African reveals this to be untrue, but then most Rhodesian whites don't have conversations with Africans, except to give them orders. However, it is easy to see how they have got hold of this idea.
Rhodesian blacks are startlingly docile and even courtly.
This gentility can be surprising. Irish people in Ulster tend to relish these deaths, to recount the horrors with something near satisfaction, to draw comfort from each hideous detail. Rhodesian blacks are the opposite, and speak in a deadpan and fatalistic way about the loss of friends and family. I met General Debengwa, who is Nkomo's senior military leader in Rhodesia itself. No, he said, there was no real point since he had no family there.