During Zimbabwe’s war of liberation (1965-1980) fought between Zimbabwean nationalists and the minority-white Rhodesian settler-colonial regime, thousands of black soldiers volunteered for and served in the Rhodesian Army. This seeming paradox has often been noted by scholars and military researchers, yet little has been heard from black Rhodesian veterans themselves. Drawing from original interviews with black Rhodesian veterans and extensive archival research, the book Black Soldiers in the Rhodesian Army (Cambridge, 2024) tackles the question of why so many black soldiers fought steadfastly and effectively for the Rhodesian Army. It demonstrates that these troops felt loyalty to their comrades, regiments and an ‘apolitical’ concept of the state rather than the Smith regime. Units in which black soldiers served – particularly the Rhodesian African Rifles – were fundamental to the Rhodesian counter-insurgency campaign. Black Soldiers in the Rhodesian Army also highlights the pivotal role black Rhodesian veterans played during the tumultuous early years of independence, when they decisively intervened during episodes of serious inter-factional fighting widely perceived as posing the danger of a Zimbabwean civil war. That black Rhodesian veterans fought for a government led by Robert Mugabe, their former wartime foe, was another seeming paradox – one these veterans explained by invoking a strong sense of soldierly professionalism, which mandated acting in an ‘apolitical’ manner and made them duty-bound to fight loyally for the ‘government of the day’.