The 1978 petrol-storage attack in Rhodesia: past and present imaging

Wiarda, Tjalling Yme
Tjalling Yme Wiarda (1964) has an MBA with Henley School of Management and has been working in Sub Saharan Africa as from 1994. He started his working career in Zimbabwe. Wiarda has always been interested in history and studied history at the University of Antwerp at a later age. This work on the 1978 petrol storage attack was his Master thesis.

This study maps out what we know based on facts from the primary sources, and what was later deliberately created for imaging reasons, focusing on the causes of and motivation behind a particular imaging and where we find this imaging. Hereby there is a distinction between the imaging of the past and the present. Shortly after the attack in December 1978, the imaging created by the white minority regime was deliberately aimed to downplay the attack and its effects. In the current imaging created by the present ZANU government the attack was the work of 'their' ZANLA forces which fits perfectly in 'their' patriotic history. This patriotic history was part of the post-colonial history and became the dominant and official history of Zimbabwe. In many newly decolonized African countries, the rulers were looking for their own history. The aim of this study is an attempt to dissociate the event of the attack from any imaging and return to the historical facts. This is an important piece in the historiography about the attack, because for the first time primary sources were consulted in addition to many secondary sources.