Contesting the Myth of ‘ A People’s War ’ in Bruce Moore-King’s White Man Black War (1989)

Abstract

White writing in post independence Zimbabwe has received little critical attention. Yet, there has been a steady and sometimes interrupted output from white writers; the themes in their fiction have ranged from nostalgia for a bygone Rhodesia, the horrors of the war and post independence betrayal. The aim of this article is to explore the idea of the myth of ‘a people’s war’ in White Man, Black War (1989), a novel written by a former Rhodesian white soldier. Bruce Moore-King’s novel engages the myth of ‘a people’s war’ that was used by Ian Douglas Smith to persuade and ‘call-up’ white people to fight the black liberation forces in Rhodesia. White Man Black War questions the myth of whiteness as equal to civilization that was propagated by white Rhodesian leaders, especially between 1965 until 1980. The novel contests the myth of white invincibility and reveals how mytho-poetic discourses of ‘civilization’, ‘standards’ and ‘anti-communism’ were popularised by the Rhodesian government. The third myth that Moore-King’s novel exposes for critical scrutiny is also the one based on the policy of national reconciliation introduced by the then prime minister of a new Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe. When White Man Black War is re-read today in the aftermath of the economic war of the Third Chimurenga (2000–2008) the novel comes across as a satire whose object of laughter are both blacks and whites. This observation is in-spite of the fact that White Man Black War does not totally succeed in dismantling all the political scaffolds of the myth of ‘a people’s war’ as constructed and believed by a significant portion of whites and some blacks in Rhodesia.