Customer Reviews

The White Tribe

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I enjoyed "The White Tribe" greatly. It is very well-written and the history that it is based on is extremely interesting (it's a fictionalized account of the author's experiences in the Rhodesian war). It's a pity that it's out of print. However, I do have one problem with it. The author portrays Rev. Andrew Young as a homicidal race-baiting nut case who calls the Republicans in the USA, the Rhodesian whites, and everyone else he disagrees with "Fascists" and "racists" and rails about how all American whites secretly support white rule in Africa. Although Rev. Young supported some causes that were not worthy of the support of a man of his moral standing (Robert Mugabe and Communist-directed army, basically), he is not the lunatic portrayed in the book. I recommend "The White Tribe" to any interested in a good war story and/or history.

I should note that I like Moore's Green Berets and The Hunt for Bin Laden, and so was intrigued by this book. The civil war in Rhodesia in the 1970s is an interesting case study in counter-insurgency on a shoe string budget and I assumed that if Moore brought the same flair to the subject matter as he did to the Special Forces during the Vietnam War it would be a winner.

Sadly, I don't feel he delivered that level of quality. Perhaps it is a topic he feels too strongly about, perhaps (as the book suggests) he feels personally betrayed by individuals he dealt with in Rhodesia during the war and could not bring a healthy level of objectivity to the book.

I don't know exactly what went wrong, but the end result is simply not the best. His characters tend to be exceedingly one dimensional, and he puts some very stilted conversations in the mouths of various real or loosely fictionalized characters in the book. Strangest of all is a sort of projected hero worship of his fictionalized alter-ego, "Masefield" who is frequently referred to by villains within the book as being the potential one-man salvation of Rhodesia who must, consequently, be stopped at all costs. It all just comes off as a bit paranoid, really, and detracts from the story of the men and women facing an ugly civil war while under international sanctions, etc.

Personally, I'd recommend a non-fiction account like Chris Cocks' Fire Force over this particular work.

As a person who has researched the Rhodesian Bush War and Robin Moore, I found this to be a good novel but alot of people have postulated that it was his defense against his complicity with the CIA and the Carter Administration to Damage the Rhodesian Cause by giving intel to people who sought its demise. Opinions Rage on both sides. Moore, lost the fifth star because he portrayed himself as a hero in the cause and that is debatable. I was very lucky because the copy I got was autographed by him.

D.R. Tharp
Author of Task Force Intrepid: The Gold of Katanga

This is not the REwritten pc story of a frontier but the history of those stubborn Afrikaners that turned wilderness into S. Africa.The era paralleled the settling of our own American West with the exception that geography and diseased "fly-belts" had prevented any serious populatng of the area (unlike our native peopled tribal lands).If you like the history channel; then open your media spun preconceived mind and enjoy learning who the displaced people really are in this great continent.