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Title: From the Barrel of a Gun: The United States and the War Against Zimbabwe, 1965-1980 by Gerald Horne ISBN: 0-8078-4903-0 Publisher: University of North Carolina Press Pub. Date: 25 June, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95

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Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (3 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: The Southern Connection
Comment: Gerald Horne shows clearly how the U.S.A. encouraged the White Population to defy international law and set up Rhodesia. It show the tragic role American mercenaries played in maintaining this state.

Rating: 3
Summary: Not good enough
Comment: This book detailing the liberation struggle has an unusual structure. It starts off with a chapter "Toward Zimbabwe," which raises three of Horne's themes in this book: racism, anti-communism, and the problem of "whiteness." It is often repetitive and padded and is the least interesting chapter in this book. The next chapter looks at the links between the Rhodesian government and its supporters in the United States. The third chapter looks at the ideological support of the white minority regime, concentrating on missionaries, anti-communist supporters and sexual violence. The fourth actually offers a summary of American diplomacy towards Rhodesia from the Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965 to Zimbabwe's independence. The fifth looks at business relations with the white minority regime. The sixth looks at the mercenary scum that came mostly from the United States to ravage Rhodesia and the indulgence they received from the American government. The seventh looks at links between African-Americans and the liberation struggle. The conclusion looks at modern Zimbabwe and the often pernicious effect Rhodesian mercenaries have had, mostly on South Africa.

Horne, of course, is thoroughly in favour of the liberation struggle and is properly angry towards those who obstructed and delayed independence. Yet this is a mixed book. One point to start off with is that Horne is affiliated with the Communist Party of the United States of America. Even by the standards of world communist party leaderships, the American party is notorious for its dogmatic, simple-minded, philistine and uncritical attitude. Many intelligent and thoughtful people have joined the American Communist Party and the vast majority have left (or been expelled from) it in disgust at its dishonesty. Horne, a rather prolific scholar, is one of the very, very few who remain.

What makes this issue important is that Horne is less than frank on a number of important issues. The CPUSA, of course, supported the Soviet Union and they, in turn, supported the ZAPU movement headed by Joseph Nkomo. By contrast the first elections were won by ZANU, led by Robert Mugabe, which had support from China and Tanzania. On the one hand Horne writes that ZAPU was more authentically non-tribalist, in contrast to ZANU, which was also affected by African-American middle class nationalist ideas. (There is little research provided about Zimbabwean politics which would allow the reader to decide the issue one way or another). On the other hand, Horne writes sympathetically of Mugabe's government, and certainly does not provide a refutation of those, like R.W.Johnson, who have vociferiously criticized it for its authoritarianism and violence. There is also a passage in which Horne writes about possibility of homosexuality among Rhodesian mercenaries. The passage has a disingenous quality and certainly does not go far enough to castigate Mugabe's demagogic homophobia and massive failure in confronting the AIDS Crisis (In a footnote, Horne writes of Zimbabwean support for a book which suggests that AIDS is the result of a South African germ warfare program, without clearly stating that such views are nonsense.)

Having said that the book has some virtues. Too much is made perhaps of the letter writers to prominent Southern senators, but their racist, anti-communist, and occasionally anti-semitic tone has a certain rebarbative quality. Surprisingly little is written about Kissinger's transition to a pseduo-majority rule, though the Nixon administration has tried to keep its records as obscure as possible. There are plently of amusing information about the supporters of the repulsive Salisbury regime, as prominent William F. Buckley, Milton Friedman, Robert Dornan and Jesse Helms mix shoulders with racists, the John Birch Society and the Liberty Lobby, while Richard Burton and Percy Sledge make idiots of themselves as tourists. It is rather horrifying to learn that Bayard Rustin, one of the heroes of the civil rights struggle, pacifist and homosexual, was so poisoned by anti-communist hatred that he gave his moral support to the farcical 1979 elections in which Smith tried to buck up his regime with a few pathetic Black puppets. It is alarming to think that so many American senators were willing to give this regime the benefit of the doubt, and that it took Jimmy Carter, Margaret Thatcher and Churchill's son in law to point out basic reality. While the chapters on business and mercenaries would undoubtedly have benefited from more systematic research (as Horne himself admits) there is much information about sanctions busting and the pathology of mercenary life. Horne is not able to provide much more than insinuations over whether the American government supported these mercenaries, but they were important, they did prolong the war, and it was alarmingly easy for the scum of the earth to cross the Atlantic. Considering that it was the official view of the United Nations and the United States that Rhodesia will still a part of the United Kingdom and the Salisbury regime in illegal rebellion against it, the government did give these people a surprisingly easy time (certainly more so than those who protested the Vietnam war and went into exile so as not to serve in it). Not a bad portait of a qualid episode of seventies diplomacy, but not good enough.

Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent account of thre realities of the War
Comment: Gerald Horner provides an excellent account of the realities of the fight for liberation in Zimbabwe. The author takes a unique course to make his arguement, but in the end is very effective.
The revelation of the extent of the US's involvement in the war, as an extention of white supremist aspirations under the guise of fighting 'communism'. The book will provide a good basis for understanding the present circumstances in Zimbabwe.