The Zimbabwean story often divides opinion. In his openly brutal but brave assessment of the country's tense liberation struggle, Zimbabwean academic and liberation war fighter Wilbert Sadomba endeavours to go beyond the ideological narratives that surround the often jaundiced depictions of the country by journalists who criticise land occupations and vociferously blame ‘lawless’ war veterans for the country's present political quagmire. Instead, he offers a historical perspective that traces the origins of the conflict, providing an analysis that traces the deep-seated roots of war veterans' frustration over unfulfilled resettlement promises, which effectively yet acrimoniously led to countrywide land invasions in 2000. Land and racially skewed access to it represented the main bone of contention in the conflict.

Interestingly, and contrary to popular belief, Sadomba argues that far from being celebrated advocates of affirmative agrarian redistribution, the war veterans endured years of political insults and isolation from President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF party after independence, attracting little attention from government for two decades. He posits that no one took their grievances seriously. In fact, the president, while acknowledging the need for land resettlement, had not been in favour of the ubiquitous assaults on white-owned farms prior to 2000. Sadomba argues that by then the occupations had become irreversible, making it impossible for anyone – including Mugabe – to stop them. Thus the farm invasions were not only waged against the white farmers and their sympathisers abroad, but represented a direct rebuke to ZANU-PF. From 2000 onwards, several of Mugabe's loyalists took the opportunity to join in, declaring their unconditional support for the land invasions for the first time because, he argues, other options had been closed off.

However, Sadomba admits that not everyone who made an attempt to reclaim land had the interests of the masses at heart, and points to a number of individuals who took advantage of the political mayhem to further their egoistic goals. He attributes variations in the political ideologies motivating his comrades to differences in their experience of the liberation struggle and their exposure to the war. The tenor and strategies adopted by the movement led by Hebert Chitepo between 1963 and 1975 were markedly different from those employed by Mugabe from 1977 onwards.

Sadomba himself is supportive of land occupations, justifying them on the basis of Britain's failure to fulfil its promise to fund the exercise. Besides, he notes, land was the main reason why several of his fellow cadres had joined the war of liberation. The failure to reclaim this land some twenty years after independence meant that in their eyes the revolutionary struggle was only partially complete.

Sadomba's book provides a vivid account of his personal experiences and a thorough account of the pain, poverty and repression that the country went through as the locals sought and aspired for political independence. A chronicle of war-time tensions and rivalry between different black African political camps is also provided and offers a rare glimpse into the events leading to the formation of a unified position against the settlers.