Rhodesia is a fan-favourite of reactionaries, "muh breadbasket of africa", "damn commie niggers ruined it". Can anyone give me the rundown on Zimbabwe?
Muh rhodesia
Aaron Hughes
William Baker
rhodesia was destroyed by blacks who preferred getting rid of whites over improving the status of blacks. actual communism could have saved it but the blacks instead wanted to become the new ruling class. it's a country, the most successful in africa, destroyed by idpol
also that pic is stupid as rhodesia declared independence from britain and the queen in 1965
Camden Walker
Bump. It's on topics like South Africa and Zimbabwe where reactionaries drop their façade of "le nice guy nationalism" and show their inner fascists.
Owen Murphy
you sure you haven't been taking the fascist kool-aid?
see the green text at the bottom
Nolan Brown
it's not "fascist kool-aid" to acknowledge bad decisions and ideological stupidity. blacks are capable of wrongdoing
yeah, zim is much better now that it's a failed state ruled by black supremacists
Evan Torres
I posted that ironically from my favourite turbo tankie.
So the problem with Rhodesia can be summed up as "made the ruling class black instead of white which fixes nothing"?
Ryder Hernandez
it's only my opinion. i don't think a country's failure can be summarised with a single sentence. but if you look at the history of what happened, i think it's accurate
reality was that the educated and skilled classes, i.e. those who made the country successful, were mostly white. terrorising them and forcing them to leave had easily predictable consequences and was just obviously stupid. kicking white farmers out and handing the land over to people who had no idea about agriculture was obviously stupid, for example
rhodesia's problem was that blacks were second-class. other than that it was highly developed and functional and blacks had a standard of living better than those of most countries in africa. the solution was to maintain that success while addressing the social/societal inequalities, not to cleanse the country of those who made it successful in the first place in an act of petty racist revenge
obviously the whites were not blameless as they were resistant to change, but they were a small minority and their demise was almost certain, especially since the "international community" wanted nothing to do with them and gave them no help
ultimately everyone lost out and ended up worse off, black and white alike. except mugabe and his cronies, i suppose
Owen Green
Zimbabwe really is a shitshow, but it's more a demonstration of the limits of ethnic nationalism than "lol niggers xD".
When your bourgeois revolution only manages to liberate the national bourgeoisie, you have to justify why the living standards of the people hasn't improved and since you got in on an ethnic nationalist line, you need to double down on that to maintain legitimacy, causing your country to become even more of an isolated basketcase as you piss off everyone around you
Logan Rodriguez
Rhodesia was a relatively prosperous British colony. Britain wanted to hand it over to majority (african) rule after the South Africa debacle while the whites wanted to keep minority rule. Britain kind of came close to selling out the Africans a few times but took too long so the Rhodesian Whites just up and declared independence unilaterally, which nobody recognized as legitimate (Though Portugal and South Africa offered support for obvious strategic reasons. Perhaps also Israel because they're also a pariah state and pals with SA.)
Despite UDI Rhodesia did retain legitimate prosperity for the whites and reasonable-if-paternalistic policies towards some of the black population (I must confess myself to being relatively ignorant. It certainly seems plausible that things were better under the Smith regime than under Mugabe, but this is due to Mugabe more than any nonsense about le blacks ruin everything meme.), retaining a strong manufacturing industry etc despite massive sanctions (though the oil-sanctions were busted by labelling oil as going to a non-Rhodesian country, then when that oil arrived swapping it for some tanks already there and sending those to Rhodesia by train.)
Eventually though fighting an internal battle with guerillas and facing reduced South African support and the independence of the Portuguese colonies the Rhodesians were forced to settle, buy this point a settlement was being demanded that would involve Mugabe. First they tried an internal settlement with a moderate black president, but this was rejected by the international community because Mugabe and others were excluded. So they went off to London and negotiated with the British government. Elections were held and Mugabe won (despite some knowledge of intimidation. Britain knew, but by this stage we've gone through a 20-year-or-so debacle and Britain just wants OUT.) and for a while things went okay. Lots of white Rhodesians fled, but with the end of sanctions the Zimbabwean economy surpassed that of late-Rhodesia briefly before Mugabe fucked everything up and set up his dictatorship and whatever.
There are also some theories along various lines as to how Rhodesia came to be handed to a communist-bloc leaning leader despite this being the height of the cold war, such as American tobacco manufacturers not liking Rhodesian competition and Ian Smith preventing terrorists blowing up an economically crucial dam, but I don't really follow those. There's also the apologist case that the Rhodesians "just wanted to prepare the blacks for democracy" (dubious in reality, but may have had a legitimate case if they were actually doing it.) and that "blacks could vote too if they met the voting qualifications" (risible, given it was plain to all that those qualifications were drawn up knowing 99% of blacks wouldn't meet them.)
It is quite hard not to admire the sheer stubbornness of Rhodesia in lasting so long as a pariah state, and the situation does raise some interesting questions from a liberal/bourgeoisie-political sense (What would be better for the black community? Antipathetic white minority rule, or incompetent black majority-rule cum dictatorship? And indeed, is it our place to say?) but it takes a lot of wishful thinking and rose-tinted glasses on the part of the right to idolise it.
And love blows through Rhodesia
And love blows through Rhodesia
Easton Howard
...
Juan Edwards
Rhodesia was never the breadbasket of Africa, farming may have been more productive, but it was never a breadbasket.
With Rhodesia, the White apartheid government brutally suppressed moderates and communists, and assassinated black leaders until only the most radical and retarded remained, and that's how Mugabe came to power.
Matthew Cruz
Not only did they just implement a black supremacist ruling class, but an infinitely more incompetent one that mismanaged the country all to hell. I'm generally not one to drop some liberal claptrap about both sides being equally shit, but this is a case where that was actually the truth.
Nathan James
This is a pretty good analysis. Mugabe was a brainless kleptocrat tinpot Aladeen-tier dictator, but the Rhodesian government was a straight up Apartheid state and no amount of slimy weaselling or misrepresentation by reactionaries can change that.
John Gomez
It's almost like racialism is shit no matter what side you are on…
Easton Myers
I feel the same way about any one democratic state solution in Palestine/Israel. Straight-up anti-colonial/anti-imperialist nationalism has extreme limits, and speaking as an Arab I fear that simply "dismantling the Zionist entity and all its institutions" is short-sighted, since like it or not Jews are the ones who make the desert flourish, and driving them away would make a future Palestine a total backwater.
Thomas Gutierrez
I think there's less of a case for that in the Palestinian case then in the African settler-states. Palestine in 1947 was as heavily populated per capita as New Jersey and there were a great deal of Palestinian industrialists and proletarians under the mandate.
According to the Alison Weir the value of the property stolen from the Palestinians during the ethnic cleansing of 48 is approximately around 7 trillion dollars in today's money.
I'm not trying to sell you some Arab 'we wuz kingz' shit but I think Israel-Palestine is just too strategically significant to ever be a complete backwater. Plus, significant oil and gas supplies have been discovered in Palestinian waters and that's been thought to be a major reason for Israel's Operation Protective Edge.
Nicholas Hall
Zimbabwe's democratization provides an interesting contrast to Souh Africa. I think that one of the core problems of South Africa was that, with a completely peaceful reconciliation, political reforms weren't accompanied by any economic reforms, so ye olde means of production remained almost completely in white hands. Also, the new ruling class proved to be less-than-capable. These two facts added together mean SA basically turned into a putatively democratic banana republic.
Meanwhile, Zimbabwe forewent peaceful reconciliation, fucked whitey up and took his shit, but instead of creating some form of socialism, they made some monstrous hybrid of extremely cronyist capitalism with demagogic socialist trappings. Add to this that Mugabe turned out not only to be corrupt and incompetent but literally insane and, well.
But they still try to paint it as benevolent tho. They say even black people had it better under apartheid than after black rule. Crocodile tears, of course (is there a word for "mendacious but about benevolence instead of ignorance"?), but they do have a point. Rhodesia had a healthily developing economy, which has since utterly crumbled.
linkedin.com
Whether the average black citizen's material conditions got worse or not is hard to gauge, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's true. Ditto for immaterial standards, lke civil rights.
It changes a lot, in case the new ruling class is more incompetent than the old one, regardless of race or nationality.
Good post.
Aaron Sullivan
Ironically, this has went hand-in-hand with the fall of white workers into greater poverty in SA.
It's well above the African standard and in its own way is a neoliberal "success" story imo its become a kind of hobbyhorse of reactionaries, and not due to legitimate criticisms of South Africa's elites and government but 'le niggers xD' 'le multiculturalism' 'muh irrelevant shiting'
One of the paradoxes of Apartheid was that to make the bantustans and segregation seem legitimate the white government had to pour a lot of resources into black communities. Not a lot, mind you, infant mortality was like 100 per thousand for African women in the bantustans, but enough that it did constitute a significant drain for the government. The white government of SA had significant more power to affect the material lives of blacks then most African governments because SA had perhaps the most state-capitalist economy in the Western world.
When Mandela came to power they initiated a neoliberal policy that took away subsidies made by the white government to electricity, water, and other amenities for poor Africans and often privatized them all together or let them float to their market-value. So, its hard to gauge whether blacks are "worse" after Apartheid ended but many left critics argue that the poorest of poor South Africans are indeed worse off. On the other hand what matters to most neoliberals is the growth of the middle class that occurred there and the success of the government at resolving the debt insolvency left behind by the Apartheid state.
This piece has some interesting work on the Apartheid state and economy but I think is somewhat too prejudicial against white workers there:
ml-review.ca
I think taken in aggregate it shows that Apartheid was failing even the white capitalists, the economy was in shambles, and militarily South Africa was facing their own Vietnams in the Portuguese former colonies plus unrest at home. I don't think Mandela sitting in a prison cell really was the cause of any change contrary to what liberals believe.
Angel Howard
You haven't read anything about Rhodesia, Mugabe & friends were leftists that got corrupted by power, not a big evil black boogeyman who wanted to take away power from le innocent white man.
I wish you Holla Forumstards that became leftist two years ago would leave tbh, you've ruined the quality of this board famalamadingdong
Oliver Morris
Mugabe and friends were not corrupted by power, they were corrupted from the start. He appealed for Soviet aid only for his insurrection (quite typical for African insurgents, by the way), and once in power did not even implement basic economic planning or self management, but DID implement racial supremacist and bizarro-apartheid policies. Had you not been triggered by his tone, you would be agreeing with him.
If you want an example of corruption by power, look at Angola or Mozambique.
Colton Morgan
Here is a good documentary on the topic.
Ryder Carter
They were a nation of self-confident and unapologetic Europeans, a throwback to an earlier age.
tbh, there is no evidence that long term peaceful coexistence between Africans and Europeans is possible. Africans would have to be completely suicidal to allow Europeans to form armed and organized communities in their midst.
Parker Ward
and this happened a few years into his term, no?
Parker Sanchez
virtually every national liberation movement has adopted leftist/communistic rhetoric at some point in their existence. mugabe and co. were just another group of phonies whose talk of communism was pure lip service. way to fall for the "commie niggers" meme
Brandon Foster
fuck I hate this tankie retard and his fucking cancerous memes so much. what normiebook group was this from? I'm pretty sure he got banned from Ultras vs Tankies and was such a big improvement.
Ryan Carter
when you take all the land away from the only people who know how to farm, food production tends to drop sharply
iirc the word Boer literally means farmer in Afrikaans
Xavier Moore
It was evident this was a path that he and the ZANU-PF was treading from the beginning:
Christopher Flores
while we're on the topic of this, are there any good books on the rhodesian and algerian civil war?
Sebastian Sanders
Nicholas Allen
thank you xir.
Adam Hall
It's from his profile. He shares all his memes into a dozen groups doesn't he?
Also, hi Peter.
William James
...
Aaron Bennett
This is an interesting analysis of events, any anons have any futher reading I could look into?
Parker Diaz
Richard Pryor's psychological analysis of Zimbabwe's leader proved to be prescient.