ABSTRACT
Civil wars anywhere involve not only divisive and traumatic violence but also lasting and troubling memories. The Rhodesian poisoning tactic involved infiltrating guerrilla supply lines with poisoned clothing and food. It was a deliberate attempt to exploit the popular association between poisoning and witchcraft and to break the relationship between guerrillas and civilians on which successful guerrilla warfare depended. The notorious witch-hunts that concern this paper accompanied Rhodesian use of poisons in the final year of the liberation war, particularly after 1978. Guerrillas had entered Lupane in serious numbers in 1977 and by late 1978, much of the district was semi-liberated and under the control of ZIPRA guerrillas operating through ZAPU party structures. In place of the controlled, everyday argument in peacetime about moral character and sorcery came something uncontrollably monstrous in wartime: a campaign against sorcery that was brutal and often arbitrary.
