Books   Lost in Africa Stu Taylor R135.00 September 2007 Irreverent, self-deprecating, hilarious and poignant         “Irreverent, self-deprecating, hilarious and poignant, Stu’s story will make you alternately laugh and cry” —Chris Cocks, author of Fireforce ‘Lost in Africa’ is a colloquialism from the Rhodesian Light Infantry (RLI), meaning ‘a state of bewilderment or cluelessness’, which Stu Taylor uses to describe his disjointed life. The parallels are clear as Taylor’s life in many ways mirrors the white Diaspora of central-southern Africa, particularly from Zimbabwe, and the subsequent fallout they have endured after the demise of colonialism and rise of brutal tyranny. Born in South Africa and raised in Southern Rhodesia to nomadic parents, Taylor’s early years were unsettled as he was shuffled from school to school during the 1950s. Describing himself as marginally above “really thick”, he signed on in 1967 with the RLI and served with that crack airborne unit for thirteen years, always at the forefront of hostilities during the bitter Rhodesian bush war. In 1980 he demobbed and slid into Civvy Street, at times an easy, and at times, a difficult transition, as he tried to find his place in the newly independent Zimbabwe. Again, in the late 1990s, he found himself on the ‘front line’—this time in the security business, desperately facing off against Mugabe’s ‘war veterans’ in their notorious land-grab campaign of farm invasions. Ultimately homeless, stateless and jobless, Taylor never gives up. This is his remarkable story.