The 'Rhodesian crisis' of the 1960s and 1970s, and the early-1980s
crisis of independent Zimbabwe, can be understood against the background
of Cold War historical transformations brought on by, among other
things, African decolonization in the 1960s; the failure of American
power in Vietnam and the rise of Third World political power. In this
history of the diplomacy of decolonization in Zimbabwe, Timothy
Scarnecchia examines the rivalry between Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe,
and shows how both leaders took advantage of Cold War racialized
thinking about what Zimbabwe should be. Based on a wealth of archival
source materials, Scarnecchia uncovers how foreign relations
bureaucracies in the US, UK, and South Africa created a Cold War 'race
state' notion of Zimbabwe that permitted them to rationalize Mugabe's
state crimes in return for Cold War loyalty to Western powers. This
title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.