At the end of the second world war, numerous British families left the UK to start new lives in remote parts of the British Empire, filled with a spirit of hope and adventure. Mark Milibank’s family headed for Kenya, and his life as a farmer in that country and subsequently in South Africa and Zimbabwe is told in his book Scrambled Africa.
Milbank was just ten years old when he arrived with his family at his great uncle’s farm in Kenya. He completed his schooling and was then called up to serve in the all-white Kenya Regiment at the time of the Mau Mau rebellion. He had some involvement in the capture of the rebel leader Dedan Kimathi, who was convicted and executed, but who is now regarded as a leading Kenyan freedom fighter. During his time in Kenya, Milbank grew to love playing polo.
In the early 1960s Kenya was moving towards independence, and Milbank found himself a job in England for a brief period before travelling to South Africa to join his parents who had moved to a farm there. A brief South African faming career, interspersed with plenty of polo, followed, and then Milbank moved with his new wife to a farm in Rhodesia. There he started up a safari company, with business coming through his polo contacts, and there followed the bush war, independence, and eventually the chaos and violence that is Zimbabwe today.
The book is filled with interesting and funny anecdotes, some of which are quite coarse. Much of what the author has said and done would be viewed as politically incorrect by today’s standards, but he tells the story in a way which enables you to identify with him. The author is not a professional writer and the style is fairly terse, but the book is quite readable. The book is a useful reference for anyone seeking to understand what has happened in Zimbabwe over the past 35 years.