The 1979 fall of the unquestionably racist U.D.I. regime in Rhodesia (present day Zimbabwe) marked a triumphant victory for anti-colonialists world-wide. However, the former British colony had not fallen by the sword of the Maoist/Communist ZANU and ZAPU insurgent infiltrators; instead Rhodesia had crumbled under the impossibility of prolonged minority rule. Despite the fact that the Rhodesians fought a 15 year war against Chinese, Russian and Cuban backed communist militias; the West abandoned the racist state in a web of sanctions and treachery. Rhodesia was a sacrificial lamb in a Cold War where both sides usually played for keeps. The only real help the Rhodesians received was from Apartheid South Africa (who turned the faucet of military/economic aid on and off in quite a Machiavellian manner, using Rhodesia as a front for Pretoria's protracted war against the ANC and other African nationalists) and the fascist Salazar regime in Portugal who were also struggling to hold on to their southern African “overseas provinces” in Angola and Mozambique.
Despite its anti-democratic, racist qualities, the betrayal and fall of Rhodesia is an interesting bone to chew. Was it as simple as “White racists repress communist blacks and then get their just deserts?” Or are there more difficult questions that freedom loving democrats (with a lower case "D”) would rather not answer.
In 1964, as the Brits clamored for majority rule in British Southern Rhodesia (as it was known at the time), Prime Minister Ian Smith looked north to Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda and a plethora of other African states that had submerged into devastating economic turmoil and civil war after the fall of colonial, “white” rule. His reaction is the famous proclamation of “I don’t believe in black majority rule ever in Rhodesia, not in 1000 years.” In 1965 Rhodesia declared independence from Great Britain, the UDI embodying Rhodesia's refusal of universal sufferage.
Obviously, history has proven Mr. Smith (and other faithful "Rhodies") wrong about the thousand years, but his question remains unanswered: what if democracy leads to famine, economic destabalization, currrency inflation, land nationalization and the (bizarre and cruel) dictatorship of Mr. Robert Mugabe? Should the weak suffer what they must or should the meek inheret the earth?
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