Under the Skin: The Death of White Rhodesia

Very vivid account of the War for Independence. A must read!

David Caute's "Under the Skin: The Death of White Rhodesia" is a difficult book to pin down. On the one hand, it is an exhaustive account of the most grim years of the Rhodesian war (1976-1980), and does a masterful job of chronicling white Rhodesia's violent, chaotic last days. The "feel" one gets from the book is go gripping and vivid that one's first inclination is to recommend this book as the definitive account of "the death of white Rhodesia."Despite this great strength, however, "Under the Skin" is crippled by a terrible flaw: Caute's decidedly one-sided views and blatant distaste for Rhodesia's whites. He provides laundry-lists of whites killed by African guerillas with the non-chalance of someone who believes the whites got what they deserved; at one particularly ludicous point he refers to a white Rhodesian politician as "Herr" Hilary Squires. As a piece of journalism, then, "Under the Skin" is atrocious -- Caute makes no attempt to be the least bit impartial, and that undermines the credibility of his entire narrative.So why the four stars? This rating is based on the assumption that most people who come across this book have a strong interest in / knowledge of southern Africa and can therefore cut through Caute's personal agenda to appreciate his otherwise deft handling of 1970s Rhodesia. If you are a newcomer to the subject, be warned: this is not an even-handed account, and you may do better elsewhere for starters.

After spending a 15 hour flight from NYC to South Africa sitting next to a former Rhodesian, I picked up this book to learn about the end of that nation. There is so little information available about this chapter of world history, that I found this book to be quite informative. The use of large number of vignettes with varying viewpoints was helpful in getting a sense of the times, though the book does seem to take the traditional leftist viewpoints of manipulative exploitative out-of-touch whites and exploited peasants, passing on the contributions of western society made by western immigrants. I did like the use of news article-like explanations of every single casualty in the war (sarcasm) to give you a sense of the fear that was created in the white suburban community, and the bravado of the rhodesian military. Well worth reading!