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Great question and an incredibly difficult one to answer but I'll give it a shot. There's obviously the geopolitical approach and the more local one but I'll try and talk about both.

First, I'll deal with the question of white Rhodesians portraying themselves as fighting communism rather than their own black African population's desires for self-rule and an end to racial discrimination, as this provides an insight into some of the rhetoric used between 1957 and 1980. Donal Lowry in 'The impact of anti-communism on white Rhodesian political culture' has written extensively on this so do go read that if you get the chance.

It is important to note that one of the very reasons why the Rhodesian state declared its Unilateral Declaration of Independence in November 1965 was because as a society, the right-wing, conservative white Rhodesians felt increasingly out of touch with the rest of British society. As Ian Smith recalled in his memoir, The Great Betrayal, he was:

‘overwhelmed by a feeling of absolute frustration’ at a British government ‘hell-bent on appeasing the cult of Marxism Leninism at the expense of the old traditional values of the British Empire.’ (pp.101-103)

Rhodesian society and the Rhodesian Front (RF) government of Winston Fields and later Ian Smith which gained power in 1962 were increasingly concerned by what they saw as a spreading socialist liberalism throughout the western world. One of the main reasons for this was that such ideologies were non-racialist and therefore anti-Rhodesian. When Harold Macmillan, the British Prime Minister in 1960, made his "winds of change" speech, Rhodesians knew that he was referring to their society and the fact that 200,000 whites ruled around 5 million Africans with little regard as to the majority's wishes. The British policy of No Independence Before Majority Rule (NIBMAR) for its colonial possessions meant that white Rhodesia quickly became largely isolated on the African continent as both Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland gained their independence in the early 1960s as Zambia and Malawi respectively.

Meanwhile a rapidly growin African nationalist movement under the long-term politician and African leader Joshua Nkomo had begun in 1957 and by 1963 was beginning to cause serious disturbances in African townships throughout Rhodesia and had led to what the Rhodesian intelligence services called a 'serious breakdown in law and order'. The nationalists - first as the Southern Rhodesian African National Congress, then the National Democratic Party, then the Zimbabwean African Peoples' Union [ZAPU] (and from 1963 the splinter group the Zimbabwean African National Union [ZANU]) - had prominent non-black supporters, many of whom had connections with the radical white South African Communist Party (SACP) to the south.

This is an important point in understanding why communism, communist trained guerrillas, and groups with the support of the USSR or China suddenly became a big fear in Rhodesia from the 1960s onwards. Between 1960 and 1964, a number of white, liberal groups in South Africa - including the SACP and the African Resistance Movement (ARM) - launched a sabotage campaign against apartheid state infrastructure, which eventually resulted in the Johannesburg train station bombing in July 1964 and the death of a white woman. The individual behind the attack - Frederick John Harris - was executed for the incident and became the first white South African to be sentenced to death for his anti-apartheid beliefs. During his trial, a large number of his associates within the ARM were arrested and tried and it quickly came to light that were strongly Marxist in their political views. This caused a scare in South Africa and this quickly spread to Rhodesia which also had an active group of white radicals, albeit a much smaller one. When a group of white ZAPU supporters - including the outspoken Marxist economist Giovanni Arrighi - were caught smuggling grenades into the country in 1966, the RF's fears were apparently justified.

The result was that from the early 1960s, communist in Rhodesia was used by the RF government to mean any non-conformist elements of Rhodesian society. This played 2 roles - first, it reduced the African nationalists to simply puppets for an external communist power, thus diminishing the nationalist's claims to represent the grievances of the African people in Rhodesia; secondly, it permitted the RF to depict its struggle against the African people as being one against communism and thus attempt to gain support from the US and other western powers at a time when the fear of a spreading communism was at a peak. This fear and the concern over the instability the Rhodesian situation could create was made evident in the week after UDI. What the British press emphasised was the fear that the Rhodesian situation could be taken completely out of British hands if a solution was not quickly resolved. ‘The situation is tailor-made for intervention by Chinese or Russian “volunteers”’, proclaimed the Daily Mail on 12 November, and on the day following UDI the British Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, himself emphasised the dangers of foreign intervention in a speech to the House of Commons:

There may be other nations seeking a foothold, perhaps a military foothold, on that continent, and who would be glad of establishing that foothold with the special backing, and the aura of legitimacy, of a resolution from the United Nations. [...] If we are not able to say to world opinion, and those who have it in their power to go in for military action, that we ourselves mean business in carrying out effective measures – unless we are prepared to face that, then we might be inviting a prospect which is not one I find comforting – the prospect of a Red Army in blue berets. (‘Hard task for Foreign Secretary’, The Times, 13 November 1965, 7.)

Thus the RF were quick to play up this risk and to portray the African nationalists of ZAPU and ZANU as being nothing more than Soviet and Chinese terrorists, seeking to overthrow the democratically elected government in the nation. When ZANU sent its first contingent of five men under current President Emmerson Mnangagwa to the PRC in September 1963 for military train, the RF were quick to highlight this as evidence of external influences. ZAPU and Nkomo's connections to China had also been highlighted as early as 1962, and a cache of weapons discovered in late 1964 which contained Chinese made weapons, grenades, and a booklet on the Mao doctrine of warfare were widely publicised. The multi-racial and somewhat liberal University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (UCRN) located just outside Salisbury was also called the 'little Kremlin on the hill' by RF MPs simply because it counted amongst the faculty and students a number of liberals, radicals, and African nationalist supporters.

Thus as the violence between the nationalists and the Rhodesian security forces escalated from 1966 onwards, the representation of the nationalists as being communists continued to increase. The use of Soviet and Chinese weapons, the presence of Soviet and Chinese military advisors in the nationalist camps in Zambia, Tanzania, and later Mozambique, and the sending of nationalist recruits to the Soviet Bloc, East Germany, Korea, China, Cuba, and elsewhere for their training (including to Chinese instructors in Ghana) only added more fuel to the fire. The US secretly supported the Rhodesian state through the purchase of chrome and other natural resources, partly in response to these apparent investments by the communist states in the nationalists.

The problem was that only a very few of the nationalists of either group were actually communists. Most of the nationalists had very little thought for large-scale ideological policies or conflicts. Most wanted nothing more than a chance to rule themselves and a better future for their children than seemed likely under white minority rule. ZAPU in particular remained incredibly anti-communist until well into the late-1970s when Joshua Nkomo realised that his new opponent Robert Mugabe was using socialist discourse regarding land and wealth distribution to drum up support amongst rural black Rhodesians. Nkomo also maintained close friendships with prominent white capitalists like Tiny Rowland (who went so far as to pay for Nkomo's hotels, flights, and maintenance whilst abroad). ZANU, who had formed as a splinter group consisting of younger, more radical black nationalists, were more socialist in their views but again this did not rise to the fore until 1976 and after. Certainly, socialist rhetoric and policies were embraced from the nationalist movement's foundations in 1957 as a means of undoing white supremacist rule in the nation, particularly with regards to the unequal distribution of land and wealth, but they were a far cry from a Marxist state. Admittedly, ZAPU did adopt Maoist strategies of warfare from a very early stage (as explored by Paresh Pandya in Mao Tse-tung and Chimurenga: An investigation into Zanu strategies) which included mobilising and indoctrinating the civilian population.

Now, to discuss why the Soviets and Chinese were keen to get involved. The answer is simple and two-fold: they were hoping to destabilise the region and tie up western resources fighting prolonged wars of liberation across the African continent, and they wanted to be on good terms with the African nationalists so that once independence was achieved they would be able to benefit from the natural resources of the regions.

(cont'd below)