Weep for Africa: A Rhodesian Light Infantry Paratrooper’s Farewell To Innocence (2014)
By Jeremy Hall
30 Degrees South Publishers
ISBN 978-1-920143-93-0

I MUST admit that as a reviewer over time you tend to have preconceived ideas when you get hold of a white ‘African’ writer’s work.
In almost all cases there is a defensive, proud, unapologetic tone that is adopted by white writers who still feel the need to defend the empire and all its atrocities.
They write how we the real ‘Africans’ are supposed to be grateful for the development of the continent of-course this is not measured against the destruction and genocide that occurred at the same time.
However, in the case of Jeremy Hall’s Weep for Africa: A Rhodesian Light Infantry Paratrooper’s Farewell To Innocence, the cliché do not judge a book by its cover applies.
Of course it has the typical racial overtones and attitudes that I have come to expect, but the book is an entry point into the white psyche specifically why race categories will continue to divide mankind despite all the talk about the world being one global village.
Jeremy Hall’s is a confessional piece that is reminiscent of Bruce Moore-King’s 1988 book, White Man Black War.
Jeremy Hall was born in Natal, South Africa, and is a descendant of British settler stock.
He grew up during apartheid with all the trappings of colonial administration specifically racial superiority.
“The generations of settlers and colonials in Southern Africa were a product of very powerful and entrenched dynamics, the beliefs passing down through the lineages: In my case on through my grandparents, my parents and thus bestowed upon us, their children,” writes Hall.
“I do not apologise or make excuses — that is the way it was.”
Hall writes of how his attitude towards the black race was shaped from childhood.
“I was learning hate from others at an early stage,” he writes.
The author recalls the violence perpetrated towards blacks, a time when a white child had more power than an African adult, a world where the blacks were pushed off prime land and recalled to service the needs to the white settlers for pittance.
He recalls his grandmother repeating to him over and over again that blacks were inferior and not human enough to deserve any respect of any kind.
Hall recounts how his father often called him when he punished black people.
“I felt as though I was in a dream, that this was not what humans were capable of doing to one another,” writes Hall.
“How little did I know?
“Why was my father showing me this?
“Sometimes it just did not feel right, all of this.
“But we pressed on, pushed on the same old way.”
With all these ideals pressed on to the young author and also in a bid to appease his father, he went on to join the Rhodesian war.
His unit covered several missions to squash guerilla warfare and one of these was the attack on the Chimoio Base codenamed ‘Operation Dingo’.
The genocides were committed to preserve white privilege.
The notion is also stated by Bruce Moore-King who writes, “we were constantly subjected to the propaganda that ours was the only Western, Christian, democratically-approved, way of killing people.
“It was the other side who were savages.”
Hall writes how the white soldiers defending the empire earned US$340 in the process exposing the deceptive MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai’s claims that he was having the time of his life in Rhodesia earning US$400 Rhodesian dollars.
Hall begins his story from his childhood drawing the reader to understand white attitudes and privileges which they later defended on the battlefront.
There was no space for the black citizen except when given to him hence Tsvangirai and many others like him who are paid to glorify this period should be ashamed.
In the book, Hall causally raises another point of interest.
There is a persistent belief that it was the Rhodesian and South African soldiers who were fighting the guerillas to maintain empire standards.
Hall writes of how they had British, Irish and American recruits as part of their forces.
It must be noted that it was during this time that the British and the Americans were also imposing sanctions on the Rhodesian government albeit targeted.
America was Rhodesia’s largest chrome buyer so they put sanctions on everything else except chrome.
On negotiating tables the imperialists claimed they wanted democracy to thrive in the former colonies yet they were sending their citizens to help kill the guerrilla fighting for independence.
Today history is recorded under the illusion that the philanthropic Western governments were championing democracy then while in fact they were offering lip service on cameras and killing Africans off cameras.
Throughout the book, the author is wrestling with the ideals bestowed upon him for generations.
At the end of the book, he is robbed at gunpoint at his sister’s home and he states how it is easy for him to ‘wear’ the racist attitudes of his forbearers.
“But the ancient apartheid words rise unbidden with the heat-wave of anger in me, slot back into their old places in my noggin: ‘f**, useless, thieving kaffirs’” writes Hall.
After the incident, the writer leaves for Canada never to return, but that is not before he acknowledges that the demise of Africa together with that incident at his sister’s house are all a result of the colonial heritage.
Hate is a two-way street he rightly states.
The book is an eye opener and reveals the reason behind the determination by Rhodies to restore a disintegrated Rhodesia.
Lessons of superiority over Africans drilled in them from the cradle are difficult to let go.