Spotted Soldiers by Emily Dibb
Published by Leo Publications (1978)
ISBN: 0 7974 0376 0

The book ‘Spotted Soldiers’ by Emily Dibb published in 1978 makes interesting reading as this was a period that Ian Smith’s dream that whites would rule Zimbabwe for a thousand years was fast crumbling.
The story highlights the thoughts uppermost in many Rhodesians during a period when the liberation struggle had intensified.
The freedom fighters during this period had evolved into a lethal force using not just guerrilla tactics but conventional tactics that saw them taking the war to urban areas.
Spotted Soldiers as much as it is presented like a story about a superior and caring people, it is really a tale of imperialists at their wits end.
It was published as part of last efforts to garner international support for a losing war.
Rhodesians were not ready to give up power despite everything pointing to the coming of black majority rule.
And they painted a picture of masses that were being forced to join the war.
The guerrilla is presented as daft and using brute force and in some instances trickery to have Africans join the war.
For instance, a guerrilla recruiter in the book is presented lying to school children in a bid to have them join the struggle.
“You are to be let off school because you have worked so hard and done well at your work, you have been selected for colleges and universities overseas, there is an aeroplane waiting for you across the border in Mozambique,” said the recruiter.
Facts and not fiction show that by 1978 guerrilla commanders were having difficulties accommodating the huge numbers of would-be fighters that were crossing the borders into Mozambique and Zambia on a daily basis.
For example, at the height of the struggle as many as 200 children from St Alberts in Muzarabani at one go left the school and gave the guerrillas a headache as moving them was a logistical nightmare.
Such scenes of massive departure from schools by children who wanted to contribute to the struggle were replicated across the country.
The book presents Africans as a docile people that were not ready to fight for their independence and had to be coerced to do so.
“From being consenting fellow-travellers, they found themselves prisoners and (those) who announced that they wished to return home were treated to severe disciplinary action,”ludicrously claims the writer.
Yet today we have hundreds of people who are ridiculed for turning back from the struggle.
The likes of MDC-T’s Morgan Tsvangirai ran away from Mozambique and came home claiming he had to come and look after his mother.
Dibb claims that guerrilla recruiters lied that students were leaving for universities abroad.
However, it is common knowledge that many Africans left colleges and universities to join the struggle.
The likes of war veterans Minister Christopher Mutsvangwa and Judge President George Chiweshe left the University of Rhodesia to join the liberation struggle.
The writer definitely wrote in a cocoon that was far removed from the reality of Africans.
If she knew how the Africans felt about the war and their response to it then she would not have had an African character that asked a ‘recruiter’; “What about our parents Sir, should we not speak to them first.”
In most instances the decision to join the liberation struggle was unilateral seldom were consultations made.
Typical people woke up to find a member of the family gone.
Dibb goes over board when she presents some Rhodesian soldiers ‘worried sick’ about black children that had been ‘abducted’ by guerrillas and they go out of their way to track them right onto Mozambique.
“With nose to the ground, Bullet threaded his way along the maze of footpaths that criss-crossed the mountain like veins. They crossed the frontier into Mozambique at noon…”
A character by the name of Ben goes to his father to get a dog to help him track and rescue the ‘abducted’ children.
Rhodies never had empathy for blacks and never wasted the resources they were so determined to keep solely for themselves on Africans.
How could people that had no qualms about killing black children that would not give them information on the whereabouts of guerrillas be ready to rescue them?