Press Release The Last Rhodesians Available, April 2022 Royal Sable Publishing
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Press Release The Last Rhodesians
Available, April 2022
Press Release The Last Rhodesians
Available, April 2022
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.
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.
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.
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‘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.
Contact: Duncan Clarke at duncan@glopac.com
© Duncan Clarke, 2022 – Softback.ISBN 9798437536322
The Cover Image is from the original painting by Clive Kay, the Rhodesian artist now based in Canada, whose works can be found at clivekay-artist.com.
The Last Rhodesians: Society Adrift
Amazon: Last-Rhodesians-Society-Adrift
Contents
Maps and Illustrations
Nomenclature
Preface
PART I: BORN of AFRICA
Chapter 1: The Mists of Time: Genesis
Chapter 2: Origins to Destiny: Homo Rhodesiensis
Chapter 3: The Arc of History: Rhodes to Rebellion
Chapter 4: Rhodesian Bedrock: The Pillars of Babylon
Chapter 5: Minority Ethnicities: Highveld Streams
Chapter 6: ‘Others’ in Minority: Country Cousins
Chapter 7: The Rhodesians: Polyglot World
Chapter 8: Savannah Menagerie: Who’s Who in the Zoo
PART II: WRITTEN ON STONE
Chapter 9: The Literary Wars: ‘Africa’s little white step-children’
Chapter 10: Nobel Icon: Doris Lessing Comes Home
Chapter 11: Nostalgia in Paradise: ‘My Africa no Longer Existed’
Chapter 12: Writing the Story: Reading Rhodesia
Chapter 13: The Traditional School: Old Boks and Old Tops
Chapter 14: Truth and Power: Critics, Home or Abroad
Chapter 15: Rhodies and Zimbos: ‘Rhodie Till I Die’
Chapter 16: Inside the Mind: No Country Without its Past
Chapter 17: House of the Rising Sun: The Sunshine State
Chapter 18: The Dismal Science: Slaves of Defunct Economists
Chapter 19: Reason and Revolt: Cultures in Resistance
PART III: BURIED IN THE SKY
Chapter 20: Cultures and Icons: ‘Don’t Die in the Bundu’
Chapter 21: Our Vernacular and Lingo: Rhodie Discourse
Chapter 22: The Disappeared: ‘Go Away’: ‘Where-The-Fuck-Are-We’
PART IV: SINS OF THE FATHERS
Chapter 23: Thinkers, Writers, Soldiers, Spies: Kwete
Chapter 24: The Secret Wars: Hidden Battles, Africa and Abroad
Chapter 25: Cold War-Hot War: The Grand Chessboard
Chapter 26: Fault Lines: Casus Belli
PART V: BEYOND THE RUBICON
Chapter 27: The House of Stone: Forty Years in the Desert
Chapter 28: The Withering Vines: Time, Enemy of Survival
Chapter 29: Left Behind in Paradise: Forsaken, Unforgotten
Chapter 30: Foreign Natives: Aliens at Home
PART VI: THE DELUGE
Chapter 31: The Descent: ‘Humpty-Dumpty Fell Off The Wall’
Chapter 32: False Dawn: Blood Red Sunrise
Royal Sable Publishing
Acknowledgements
Appendices
I. Abbreviations
II. Chronology, 1890-2021
III. Language and Lingo
IV. Bibliography and Historiography
V. Author’s Note
Index
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