Reading and almost finished with A Handful of Hard Men (one of the best war books I've ever read), and I'm struck by how sweet their operators were for the RPD given they were mostly (barely) supplied by NATO forces. How did they procure enough RPDs to field them as their field MGs alongside their FALs?

Were they pulling them off the dead commies and repurposing them? How did they keep them up and running or supplied with enough ammo to deploy? Hoping someone has the answer because it seems like a total anomaly when compared to how militaries operate these days in terms of supplies.

1.  The Rhodesian security forces received no "NATO Forces" support after UDI.  What external support they got was from South Africa or by sanction busting.  The Portuguese weren't really any help before their revolution as Portugal was dirt poor (except for the G3s their colonial troops gave Rhodesia went Mozambique and Angola got their independence).

South Africa produced 7.62x39mm ammo.

The Rhodesian sanction busters were dedicated.  They became masters at it.

2.  The Rhodesians captured tons of COMBLOC war material from ZANU & ZAPU intercepted units, caches, and in their highly successful cross border operations (like OP DINGO & OP SNOOPY).

I read about Operation Dingo a few days ago- absolutely incredible. If not for the theater of war, there is no doubt that they would be held as the most successful fighting force in post-WW2 history. Some of their exploits are beyond comprehension considering how little support they had

I recently read a couple of books about these guys . They were some great bush fighters , operating in small groups against much larger forces and got results .

Honest question: what does Rhodesian use of RPDs have to do with Precision Rifles?

They were really accurate with them.

Accuracy by volume.