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So they did what anyone would do: They posted a want ad.įrom its very first issue in 1975, Soldier of Fortune magazine featured advertisements seeking “men among men” for “interesting and varied careers as fighting men in Rhodesia.” The full-page, color ads were featured in prime locations, usually on the back cover. And although the South Africans sent several thousand police units into the fight (the “police” label was used to give plausible deniability to claims that the South Africans were intervening militarily), the Rhodesian military found itself woefully short of boots on the ground. Hobbled by the British embargo and harsh UN sanctions, the Rhodesian armed forces were forced to rely on military equipment left behind by the British, supplemented with hand-me-downs from their only remaining ally, South Africa.

When Portugal withdrew from Mozambique in June 1975, Rhodesia found itself on a figurative island, surrounded on three sides by newly minted Marxist regimes in Zambia and Mozambique, and Botswana, which was sympathetic to the nationalists.

Militants received training in North Korea, Libya, Cuba, and China. Each group went on to fight its own separate war against Rhodesian security forces, with groups sometimes fighting each other as well. Two rival nationalist organizations emerged: the Soviet-backed Zimbabwe African People’s Union (its armed wing known as ZIPRA) under Joshua Nkomo, and Chinese-sponsored Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANLA), led by Robert Mugabe, along with dozens of splinter groups as infighting and tribal rivalries took their toll. Only Portugal—which was fighting a similar war against nationalist guerrillas in its colony of Mozambique—and South Africa supported independent Rhodesia, and even then never officially. The United States stated that “under no circumstances” would it recognize Rhodesian independence. The United Nations imposed trade sanctions, and the British Royal Navy enforced a blockade of oil shipments to Rhodesia. The international community immediately condemned the UDI. Rhodesia was considerably safer and enjoyed a higher standard of living than most African countries. With atrocities committed after changes of power in the Belgian Congo and Kenya fresh in their minds, most white Rhodesians (and a sizable number of black Rhodesians) saw their lifestyles jeopardized. As a result, the government declared the country’s independence from British rule on November 11, 1965, in what became known as the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI). The white-minority government in Rhodesia grew fearful of what would happen to the 270,000 white settlers in a nation of 7 million native Africans. This meant that colonies with a substantial population of white settlers would not receive independence except under conditions of majority rule. But in 1960, when Britain declared its intention to grant independence to its territories in Africa, it also specified a policy of no independence before majority rule.

The country was operated as a British colony and was known at different times as South Zambezia, Southern Rhodesia, and the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. The area of southern Africa then known as Rhodesia was first colonized by British and South African settlers in the 1890s. But the political situation was far, far more convoluted. On its surface the Rhodesian Bush War that raged from 1964 to 1979 was a simple one: A former British colony was locked in conflict with nationalist (read: communist) guerrillas. Where do you turn for more adventure—the want ads? Soldiering is your calling and now the war is over for you. You loved the life of a soldier: the discipline, the adventure, the adrenaline rush. So, you’re an American soldier—trained, drilled, and honed into a top-flight fighting machine by Uncle Sam—suddenly yanked from combat in the jungles of Vietnam. And nowhere was business better than in post-colonial Africa. If soldiering was your business, business was good in the 1970s.