THE 1978 short film, Rhodesia Unafraid, was part of a broader propaganda initiative, Operation Springboard, launched by the Rhodesian government at the height of the Second Chimurenga.
Produced by Stan Hannan, a chaplain in the Rhodesian Army, the film was a follow-up to his earlier project, A Chaplain’s Story, initially broadcast on Rhodesian television in 1976. The purpose was to rehabilitate the image of army chaplains among soldiers. But with international attention mounting, Hannan was tasked with creating a version that could be shown abroad to garner sympathy and support for the embattled Rhodesian regime.
By 1978, ZANLA (ZANU’s military wing) and ZIPRA (the military wing of ZAPU), were gaining ground in the war, buoyed by strong grassroots support across Zimbabwe. In desperation, the Ian Smith regime pivoted to international propaganda. They sought to convince Western capitalist nations that the war was not one of colonial resistance, but rather a global ideological battle: Christianity versus Communism.
In the documentary, Lieutenant-Colonel Reverend Norman Wood claims:
“We are fighting against international Communism. In Rhodesia we do not have Black-White confrontation, but rather Black, White, Coloured, and Asian united against Marxist terrorism which is seeking to destroy all that is Christian.”
This narrative was a fabrication. Africans were not fighting a religious war. They were resisting white minority rule, British imperialism, and decades of land dispossession, racial discrimination and economic exploitation.
After World War II, Britain had encouraged its colonies to begin the process of decolonisation. But Ian Smith, determined to preserve white supremacy, unilaterally declared Rhodesia’s independence in 1965 without majority African consent. This led to a bitter liberation struggle, culminating in a war waged by nationalist forces for self-determination.
Another voice in the documentary, Colonel Reverend Robert Slimp, a retired US military chaplain, echoed this misleading rhetoric:
“This is not a racial war… it is a case of Blacks and Whites together against Communism.”
Likewise, Robin Moore, a pro-Rhodesian author, falsely asserted that two-thirds of the Rhodesian army was African, and that these soldiers feared the Communist ideologies of leaders like Robert Mugabe. The implication was that Africans supported the Rhodesian government — a distortion of reality. African participation in the Rhodesian army was often coerced, including through forced conscription known as the ‘call-up’.
The film even features a black Rhodesian soldier claiming:
“We don’t hate the white man… but because they are oppressing and exploiting us, that’s why we staged this war.”
This statement conflicted sharply with Reverend Wood’s earlier claim that African soldiers fully understood the war to be religious in nature. These contradictions expose the documentary’s aim: to mask a colonial war of liberation as a defence of Christian civilisation.
To understand the roots of this deception, one must look back to the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, where European powers carved up Africa among themselves. Missionaries were among the first to arrive, softening the ground for colonisation. A notorious 1883 letter attributed to King Leopold II of Belgium, addressed to Christian missionaries in the Congo, laid bare this strategy:
“You are not going to teach them what they already know . . . Your essential role is to facilitate the task of administrators and industrialists b. . . Teach students to read but not to reason . . . Evangelise the niggers so they stay forever in submission . . .”
This letter, later exposed by Moukouani Muikwani Bukoko, a Congolese man who found it inside a second-hand Bible in 1935, is evidence of how Christianity was used as a tool of control and submission, its message manipulated to suppress African identity and resistance.
In Zimbabwe’s history, traditional spiritual leaders such as Mbuya Nehanda played a central role in the First Chimurenga (1896-1897). Nehanda was captured, tried, and executed by the British for her role in the uprising. Before her hanging, she famously vowed: “My bones will rise again.”
Her prophecy was fulfilled decades later in the Second Chimurenga, as thousands of young Africans crossed into Mozambique and Zambia to join the liberation struggle under ZANLA and ZIPRA. These fighters did not draw their inspiration from Christianity as portrayed in Rhodesia Unafraid, but from traditional African spirituality, ancestral guidance, and a profound commitment to freedom.
Freedom fighters were guided by spirit mediums, with clear principles such as no adultery, no looting, and respect for civilians that defined the moral backbone of the liberation struggle. The Eight Points of Attention, often misattributed to Maoist China, were in fact rooted in indigenous ethics and reinforced by spiritual leaders.
Towards the film’s end, the producers blame ZANLA for the massacre of seven Catholic missionaries at St Paul’s Musami Mission on February 7, 1977. The victims included four nuns, two priests, and a brother mostly from Germany and the UK. However, many believe this atrocity was carried out by the notorious Selous Scouts, elite Rhodesian forces posing as freedom fighters to commit atrocities and discredit the liberation movement.
This false flag operation was part of a broader campaign to turn the African population against the freedom fighters, while gaining sympathy from Europe and America by portraying Rhodesia as a bastion of Christian resistance.
Rhodesia Unafraid was not a documentary but a propaganda tool. Its intent was to distort the truth about the liberation struggle, obscure the brutality of white minority rule, and manipulate international opinion by reframing a war for African independence as a war for Christianity.
In reality, it was the spirit of Mbuya Nehanda, not imported religion, that led the way to freedom. And in 1980, that spirit triumphed, as Zimbabwe emerged from the shadows of Rhodesian oppression into sovereign nationhood.