Besides the obvious association with the colonial state, two factors made police and military service different from most paid jobs in Southern Rhodesia: the opportunity to travel far from home and the strong possibility of facing deadly violence. African police were posted and transferred to various places around the colony, and occasionally they would visit neighboring territories. Law enforcement also meant that policemen sometimes had to confront violent criminals and eventually angry protestors. Military service potentially involved overseas travel to exotic destinations. It was also likely to entail combat, as the RAR saw fighting in every decade of its history, from Burma in the 1940s to Malaya in the 1950s to the Rhodesian counter-insurgency campaign in the 1960s and 1970s.

Police: Courage and Corruption

African policemen sometimes experienced fear and danger on a daily basis. Former policeman Johnson Chikomwe remembers the vulnerability of the African constable who often worked alone “at night, in the dark,” armed only with a baton. Constable Phanuel, who had joined the BSAP in 1962, later wrote that the i rst time he saw a dead body was when attending his first murder scene. His legs became weak when told to help put the corpse in a box and he was later ordered to leave the morgue because he looked sick. Phanuel eventually overcame his revulsion and stated, “I am no longer scared of dead bodies—sometimes!”