Offered an opportunity to join a Rhodesian death squad dealing in germ warfare and other nasties, and faced with the torture and murder of his close staff, Douglas Schorr resigned from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, a refugee of a brutal war at the age of 28. Today, 30 years later, he has sat down to write out the tale of his involvement in that war, told from the experience of another lifetime's worth of living and learning. 'The Myth of Smith' pierces the dark heart of Zimbabwe's Bush War and offers an alternate telling of that tale. It is an autobiography with a mission: to explode the fable of the 'Breadbasket of Africa' just as surely as a landmine beneath a Land Rover, and to send shrapnel from that explosion hurtling into the past, present and future. "I am a white man bred under the African sun. I am a white man who fought for Smith. I fought for a dream, my dream couched in his dream of a thousand years of white rule, a dream many, many of us Rhodesians shared. Today I am sitting down to write a book about that dream, principally about how that dream never was."
About the Author: Though born in South Africa, I celebrated my first birthday in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) in 1950. Early on I knew the government Department of Internal Affairs was my home, our job to assist with the development of the country's tribesmen and women. 'Called-up' for national service at 20, I was a proud lad when I was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Rhodesian army. Hard work, resignations and war-deaths saw me fast-tracked to promotion in '76 to the very senior rank of District Commissioner. My conflicting experience in assisting and controlling Rhodesia's rural people as an Intaf member, and fighting them as a loyal patriot finally came together to teach me a life-changing lesson, one that shattered the façade of our Rhodesian society for me: To make war on one's own people in the name of personal privilege, I realised, is wrong. Believing that a non-political capitalist structure would replace apartheid and make all men equal under its free-market system, I moved to South Africa. There I earned an MBA from Stellenbosch University and embarked on a career in business. The country's boom of the 80's opened a new world of personal gain. I was young and prepared to sacrifice all to get ahead. The '87 crash, however, punched home a new life-lesson: The true consequence of a free market system, I discovered, is that only the best connected will survive. Today I am based in Malaysia. After a journey amongst both the world's most privileged and most destitute, I now write about the devastating effect of a global profit at all costs economy, particularly amongst the poverty stricken of Southern Africa. My goal is to add my voice to a simple message: The rich are getting richer while the rest head for servitude. It is a breach of human rights, and cannot continue. I want to help hasten the change by assisting in the education of those who have yet to see the true nature of the system they are a part of. My article and analysis work can be seen at www.douglasschorr.com, and I can be contacted at douglas.schorr@gmail.com.