Guns and Rain: Guerrillas and Spirit Mediums in Zimbabwe - Softcover

By examining the interaction of the guerrillas with the local mediums who are possessed by the spirit of dead ancestors he brilliantly explains how the ZANU liberation forces had to enter the social and cultural practice of the local peasantry ....Guns and Rain is a study of the interaction of the ideology of the peasants of Dande with that of the guerrillas who lived among them between 1971 and 1979. Dande lies in the far north-east of Zimbabwe... From October 1980 to May 1982 David Lan lived in a village at the foot of the escarpment, learned the Korekore dialect of Shona and prepared this brilliant work. - David Caute in LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS
... an excellent book... Lan is already known in Britain as a playwright, shows a sensitivity for the living moment in dealing with his subject. He brings out admirably, in terms of the rapidly changing historical perspective, the spirit mediums' skill in redefining Shona society. - A. David Jones in THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
... a breathtaking book combining science, politics and adventure. - GOOD BOOK GUIDE
...an opportunity taken with enormous panache and originality to write the ethnography of a rural revolution. - Adam Kuper in MAN

Almost every anti-colonial struggle in the 20th century was led by an army of guerrillas, and no such struggle has succeeded without cooperation between the guerrillas and the local peasantry. This book examines what such 'cooperation' meant in the context of Zimbabwe's war of independence between 1966 and 1980 when hundreds of thousands of peasants provided the guerrillas with practical help and support. But throughout the country scores of spirit mediums also gave active support to the resistance, and with their help the scale of the war expanded into an astonishing act of collaboration between ancestors and their descendants, the past and the present, the living and the dead.

North America: University of California Press