A Place Called Rhodesia

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris, for a history -themed podcast today.

I know often we talk about politics and cultural issues, especially as it relates to evangelicalism,

American Christianity, social justice, maybe the election, but we're gonna give you an escape to all of that by talking about the political problems of a regime from 40 years ago.

So there you go. But we have Will Tanner with us to discuss Rhodesia. Will, how are you doing?

Hey, man, thanks for having me on. I'm doing well. You know, Will, I should probably plug before I say what I'm about to say.

If people wanna follow you, if they like what you have to say, theamericantribune .news, okay? That's what you told me, theamericantribune .news.

That's your sub stack, and it's pretty popular. But Will, I think you're the first person possibly that I've had on the podcast because of a

Twitter threat. Which I don't usually do that, but I thought your threads were pretty good on Rhodesia, which is a topic that I'm not an expert in, but I'm interested in it.

And I showed you this, I'm gonna show everyone else. This is a rare copy of a book by Ian Smith, who was the prime minister of Rhodesia called

The Great Betrayal. If you can get this book for $100 or less, then you need to, because it's probably worth quite a bit more than that.

I think I got this for about $100. It's out of print, but I've started it a few times.

I've actually never finished it, and I really need to, but it's a really stunning account of from the perspective of Ian Smith, what actually happened to Rhodesia.

And I don't know, Will, if you've seen the William F. Buckley interview with Ian Smith, that's eye -opening too.

When you see that, you see the clash of, at the time, the American, and I'm gonna say neoconservative.

That's where Buckley fits in this, but the neoconservative right in America clashing with what Ian Smith's government in Rhodesia.

And this is my understanding, and I'm wanting you to do most of the talking and correct me if I'm wrong on this, but my understanding is pretty much this.

Rhodesia was primarily settled by British people. They had the opportunity to be part of South Africa.

They rejected that by a narrow margin, and they became their own country. And it became the breadbasket of Africa.

This is an extremely prosperous country, the most prosperous, I believe, per capita, at least, in Africa. And they did not have, as a feature, or it wasn't sanctioned by the government or anything, they didn't have slavery, they didn't have apartheid.

They didn't have anything that was technically racially -based as far as, like, you could be involved in the government, and you could vote, you could make decisions being any race, but you had to meet certain qualifications.

I think aptitude tests, and I don't know if income was part of that as well. It was property, not income.

Property. So having a stake in the country, owning property. Right. And so, obviously, there's a disproportionate number of, well,

I shouldn't say obviously. Knowing the conditions of Rhodesia and how it was settled, it's obvious to people when they understand that.

But Rhodesia was primarily, the people who did vote, who did qualify, were primarily

Brits, essentially, culturally. Right. And so there were these other, and maybe we can talk about this, but these other things that the

Rhodesian government did, like, there was a tremendous amount of territory. I think it was like half of Rhodesia. They allowed for the

Black people who live there to have some ownership of, I guess, share a government of some kind.

They had some autonomy. And they could serve in the military side -by -side,

Blacks and Whites and all of this. It was integrated in that sense, I suppose. But this wasn't enough.

This was, I guess, a rudimentary form of DEI. That's the impression I get that really took them out, that this was odious to the

United States. And this is the funny thing. This is Cold War era stuff we're talking about, 1970s and 80s.

But USSR, both of these countries, this is the leader of the quote -unquote free world and the leader of the communist world, both were against Rhodesia, this very tiny country, well, compared to them, not an empire at all.

And so the Soviets backed Mugabe. And so this created this bush war.

There was many heroic struggles and stories. And I've read a number of books on the military aspect of this.

But eventually, Rhodesia was just overwhelmed and it doesn't exist today. And the Rhodesians who were there, many of them had to flee.

And now it's one of the most tyrannical, failed states in Africa, I guess.

So it went from being the most successful. So that's my, I thank you for being patient with me. That's my cartoon image of what happened because I don't probably have all the knowledge you do, but you put out some

Twitter threads. You have studied this. So the first question I have, and I'm gonna let you talk, did

I get anything wrong there? Is that a basic understanding of what actually happened? And then after that, just go into detail about the formation of Rhodesia, the success of Rhodesia, and then what happened, what went wrong?

Yeah, so most of that was right. One thing you mentioned, the Buckley -Smith interview earlier. One thing that's really interesting about that is it shows the difference between somewhat grafted on American conservatism, which is weird because there's so many liberal impulses in the country.

And I mean, small L liberal, where it's very anti -hierarchy, anti -hereditary principle, whereas Rhodesia was just quite the opposite.

And then it very much preserved the old Anglo forms of things, particularly the property vote, I think is the best example.

Another thing is that you mentioned the 50 -50 land split. The guy behind that was the Duke of Montrose.

I think the seventh Duke, it might've been the fifth or something. But so it was a Duke in government and he was the one making these,

I think, farsighted and quite good agricultural and land policies, as opposed to America, where now it's corporate farms run everything.

So those, I think, are quite interesting, like splits between the United States, which people claim as a conservative country, but it's,

I think, really quite opposite, and Rhodesia, which was a self -assured conservative country. But other than that, you're quite right.

And most of what you said, the communist world and supposedly free world did unite to destroy a small thriving country, just because it didn't have mass democracy.

To some extent, race played a role in that, particularly in the United States with Andy Young, who is a civil rights leader, pushing the destruction of Rhodesia.

But a lot more of it was about the war between mass democracy and landed republicanism, or the idea that a voter should be responsible rather than merely existing.

One correction is that Zimbabwe now is less tyrannical than it used to be. The Mugabe dynasty was done away with a couple of years ago, and the new government has allowed white farmers back in to reclaim their land or pay them compensation.

Real quick, I did see a video, and as you say this, I remember from a few years back, where I think it was a white farmer who did come back, and he was greeted by all these black people just cheering, and they were excited that he was coming, which is a sight that, it just goes against the grain of the narrative, but.

Yes, and last year, I think it was last year, it might've been 2021, Miss Zimbabwe was a white

Rhodesian. This isn't a joke, but mine was that it was Miss Rhodesia. But so they're back in Rhodesia now, and it's a somewhat better country than it was a couple years ago, though much of the problems remain.

There's all the hellishness of being famine -wracked, and hyperinflation. So yeah, there's some of that.

And relatedly, you talked about the black guys cheering when the white farmer returned. One interesting dichotomy between Zimbabwe, even when it became that, rather than Rhodesia, and most of Africa, is that the whites weren't despised by the local populace.

So even when Mugabe took over, there wasn't really a bloody genocide in the way that there was, say, in the

Congo with the Simba Rebellion, or in Mozambique when the Portuguese started fleeing. Instead, it was not peaceful, but they did just leave rather than being butchered.

So, okay, the application of this, I think, I probably should have focused on this at the beginning, but I think that what you were getting at in two of your tweet threads,

I should probably show those, is that this was an early casualty of DEI, essentially, right?

Yes, yeah. And that's why, really, politically, it's applicable, and we should be talking about it.

You say the impulse behind America's Rhodesian policy very clearly shows why we're now declining and failing.

Yes. Why don't we flesh that out, and then we'll get into the history of Rhodesia a little? Yeah, so that is egalitarianism.

There's a lot of impulses behind the egalitarian thing, and I forget which one I focused on in that thread, but it's the idea that everyone has to be not seen as equal in the eyes of God, which

I think most, if not all of us, can agree with, but seen by the state as having equal capacity and equal ability to do things, which is quite false, and you saw that in Zimbabwe, because Mugabe stole all the land from the farmers, and what had been the breadbasket of Africa just became a famine ractal hole, because they didn't know how to farm.

They didn't know how to use the agricultural equipment. They didn't know how to use new, modern chemical fertilizers rather than cow dung, so it was a mess, and that same impulse you see a lot in America, where people are unwilling to accept that there should be some responsibility in terms of what people do, and that perhaps there are people who are better suited to making governmental decisions than just the mob, democracy mob voter, and so you get a bunch of disastrous results, which in the

US tends to take the form of DEI, affirmative action, the idea that the 7 -Eleven robber who murdered someone can be an astronaut if only he puts his mind to calculus.

It's insanity, and it makes no sense, but it is much of what the current American myth is founded upon, is that idea that mass democracy should translate into every facet of life and be considered the end -all -be -all of society, and that it's quite true because of egalitarianism, the idea that we're all equal in capacity and talent.

You know, I have been doing some research on the Declaration of Independence, and specifically the phrase, we are endowed by our

Creator with certain unalienable rights, well, before that, that all men are created equal, you know, and this notion being translated into now both the right and the left, but previous the left, using that as a hammer to really destroy anyone who would object to some kind of a social egalitarian agenda, and of course, this was not in the minds of the framers of that document.

They make clear, even when, I think it's Vermont, a year later, less than a year later, 1777 tries to petition that, and it's not even

Vermont yet, these are New Hampshire land grantees that are saying, that have a dispute with New York, and they're saying, hey, our rights are being threatened, and the

Continental Congress basically says, we represented 13 separate jurisdictions, 13 separate states, this wasn't about your rights being anything, this was about us separating from Great Britain, and you keep just reading the document, and they're complaining about Lord Dunmore's Emancipation Proclamation, and how this was to, you know, invoke slave rebellions, they're complaining about the king's whipped up savages, they're talking about Native Americans on the frontier, and he's enlisted foreign mercenaries, and it's like all these things that you're like, well, that doesn't square with this egalitarian social notion, but that's what everyone takes from it, that's what everyone now remembers it as, and this is just one more facet of that, in the 70s, when we started taking aim, not just at Rhodesia, but there was some,

I mean, you've had some threads, I think, on South Africa as well, that is a different situation in many ways there, but we've perhaps not been as prudent as we ought to, and looking at cures and diseases, right, and some cures are worse than their diseases, and so anyway, all that to say,

Rhodesia itself was a success story, if you're looking at conditions, but we looked at, there was a political status that we didn't like, so I think this has to take us back to the origin of Rhodesia, and where it came into being, because I think the common story out there, and it's not just with Rhodesia, but it's with South Africa as well, is that a bunch of white people showed up, and they just took all the land, and frankly, that's the

United States, that's Australia, that's - It's everywhere. That's, yeah, that's the common origin story, is like it was stolen, it was robbed, it was this great, it was

Wakanda, and then, and we messed up, so tell us about Rhodesia, is that how it happened, what happened there?

So one thing, just before I start, is that I think our hatred of Rhodesia, just for people to keep in their minds, shows a very odd focus, or to me, odd on the means rather than the ends, which is a lot of what that thread you showed is about, in that we cared not that Rhodesia was prosperous, or the breadbasket of Africa, as you mentioned, but rather that it just didn't have mass democracy, and instead had landed voting, which traces back to its origin, which is why

I bring it up, in that it was just a normal country from when it was founded, but instead became a pariah, because it stayed that way instead of changing, which is very odd,

I think, and then, so that gets into the founding of Rhodesia, which was by Cecil Rhodes, who, for some reason, people on Twitter hate him, but he,

I thought, was a cool guy, and he pushed the British Empire and expanded it, and I mean, right, people on Twitter hate him, because they think he was a

Satanist, which. Well, he's a, the Rhodes Scholar comes from him, right, when you say, I'm a Rhodes Scholar, okay.

Back when he created it, it wasn't like a gay liberal thing, it was for people who he thought would cherish the

Anglo tradition and further Anglo hierarchy abroad and expand the empire, so it's very different than it now is, where only weird people get it, but that is where the

Rhodes Scholarship comes from, but so he wanted to expand the African Empire of the

British, particularly he wanted to have a railroad that went from Cairo to Johannesburg or Cape Town, and so he saw that the next step up from South Africa was what's now called

Zimbabwe, and was then, or now it's called Zimbabwe and Zambia, and then was just generally called

Rhodesia, North Rhodesia was Zambia, and South Rhodesia was Zimbabwe, Rhodesia, and so instead of getting the

Queen's permission to do it, he just sent a column of volunteers into the country, and this is why

I brought up the hereditary principle, is that he didn't just recruit everyone, this wasn't a rogues gallery of pirates and various scum of the earth type people who were willing to go into Africa, he was very selective for the

British South Africa Company's pioneer column and only selected the best, generally that meant the second sons or so of peers and gentlemen and their assistants, and so once he cobbled together a group of people he thought would be the best and would settle

Rhodesia and build it into the colony it ought to be, he sent them into what became Rhodesia and then was just pretty much a virgin territory, and it was called the pioneer column and it marched up and settled the land, there weren't really many natives of note there, there were some fighting, but it's kind of like when after the plague gripped through the

Indians here and they showed up and there was no one around except for occasionally people hunting in the woods, that was much the same in Rhodesia where natives weren't like they are today where it's just an overpopulated country full of people, it wasn't completely empty but it was quite empty and those who were there were hunters, pastoralists, it wasn't civilization, it wasn't settled, the

British South Africa Company settled it and eventually received the Queen's blessing in doing so but it was very much a after the fact rather than before the fact situation, and it remained a private company until 1921 when it received responsible rule, so it was quite like Jamestown which is another throwback that Rhodesia represents and that it was the second sons of the nobility settling this place as a company rather than as a government -administered colony.

And for everyone out there who might not be familiar, why are you saying second sons because they would be the ones that didn't have the -

Right, they wouldn't inherit. Inheritance, yeah. Because they had, so in Britain they had primogeniture and to some extent in the 1800s that wasn't as much a force as it had been but generally it was the first son who would inherit the estates and the title and he had to inherit all the estates so that they could support the title and each could live in dignity.

So then the second and third sons and so on had to get jobs in the military or going abroad and so the pioneer column was made up of people of that sort.

I don't know exactly how many second sons were in it but it was the people he thought were the best of Anglo world rather than just whoever he could gobble together.

So how did it come to be then eventually? Well, first they had to gain their independence from Britain, right?

So maybe we should start there because at this point it's not really Rhodesia as a government that's autonomous.

So when did that happen? So they didn't gain independence until 65 which is what kind of began the

Bush war and the struggle with the world. Between, I think it was 21 and 65 it was a locally administered province of the empire part of the

Commonwealth but on a closer track with Britain than say like Canada was which was mostly independent by then.

So it had local responsible rule which is where the property voting system came from and there were exceptions to property.

Like if you got a certain amount of education and could prove you were responsible and smart because of that, you could vote even if you didn't have the requisite amount of property but generally it was a property voting system and that's what it was based on much like America up until Jackson's presidency or Britain before the first reform bill.

So into the 1830s or so. And it just maintained that system through 1920 to into this about 69 is when they had to change it because of wartime conditions and was quite successful.

It never was independent from Britain until 65 though it did receive the offer after World War II for services performed because men like Ian Smith who was a

Spitfire pilot had contributed quite heavily to the war effort outside their numbers as mere Rhodesians.

I mean, there were never that many whites in Rhodesia maybe 250 ,000 at the maximum but a good number of them served in World War II and for that service they were asked if they wanted independence.

Wait, wait, so they fought Nazis? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Despite being called Nazis. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay.

So they mainly fought is in the Mediterranean during World War II. A lot of them were pilots.

So question for you then, how did it come to be that there was a, well, there was a large population then of blacks.

Were they from other areas of Rhodesia? Did the population flourish?

Yeah. And how did it come to be that they were given some level of autonomy? Yeah, so this is one of those things where it tends to happen.

So Rhodes for white immigration into Rhodesia, they maintained the

Rhodes type system where they only really wanted the best and only wanted people who would integrate once they immigrated.

So it remained a lot of the wealthy Anglo types who would buy big estates there and settle there. The Duke of Montrose is a good example.

He was the agricultural minister I talked about a little bit ago. The black population however hand, or on the other hand was, didn't really immigrate in but were very much in these villages that received a lot of investment from the

Rhodesian government because they wanted to better their circumstances. So when, instead of having tribal medicine and not being able to grow anything, they were receiving the fruits of modern industrial agriculture and had modern

Western medicine and a lot of, there wasn't welfare in the way we have it but the government of Rhodesia was looking out for them to some extent.

The population flourished and grew quite dramatically. So there became a lot more Africans than whites.

Whereas in the beginning, it was somewhat, the blacks saw a number of the whites but it was somewhat more even to begin with.

And then Western conditions had their population flourish and they grew dramatically which created some of the problems later down the road.

And meanwhile, the white population stayed somewhat small because in addition to it being a subtropical climate, immigration was quite limited because they only wanted the best rather than just anyone.

I think Ian Smith talks about this in the beginning of his book, The Great Betrayal that when they were, before they became independent, there was an opportunity to join with South Africa.

And he says that the South Africans because of their history of fighting the

British, they kind of shot themselves in the foot by closing off immigration from Great Britain and other parts of Europe, I believe as well.

And so their population remained smaller, the same as you're describing,

I guess in Rhodesia because it wasn't being supplied by immigration. But I guess in South Africa, it's a different story because you had also surrounding areas, tribes from other regions also coming in.

And so, and then there became different visions of what life, what the government should provide, what life should look like.

And then the communists, this is where maybe you can explain more in the Rhodesian situation. I know a little more about South Africa but this is where the communists came in and took advantage of that situation and said they would represent the less, well, the oppressed, the less economically successful groups.

And in South Africa, that was black people. And I suppose to some extent as well, they call them,

I think they call them colored if I'm not mistaken, if that's the word. And I apologize if that's an offensive term. I'm not sure exactly what the

South African rules are on that, but there was three tiers. It wasn't just blacks and whites, so.

But - Well, there were four actually because there's a large Indian population. Okay, so they were gonna unite though against the whites essentially.

And that's the ANC, right? Right. And so what happened in Rhodesia though?

Is Rhodesia a similar story? Did the communists get their foot in the door or was it just all external military pressure from communists?

It's a mix. One thing that's different with Rhodesia than South Africa and is the reason

I'd prefer talking about Rhodesia to South Africa with the exception of crime just because that's such a good example there is that there was no apartheid system.

It was just the property voting system. So there wasn't the hate there was in South Africa.

For example, Smith talks about this in his book but a lot of the tribal chiefs and their underlings got along quite well with Smith.

And there was that village investment where it was a more stable situation internally. And there wasn't that hate that really fed into communism.

But the communists were, if you think about original Leninism it's the weaponization of grievance with the supposedly unfairly dispossessed warring against their social betters.

And there is that in Africa even though the black population in Rhodesia was much better treated than in South Africa.

And so you get the problem where even though these people are treated quite well and generally like the government they're always disaffected members of any community.

And so those disaffected members allied with the communists and because of Rhodesia's geography the communists had quite an upper hand in being able to infiltrate the country.

If you look at a map to its Northwest there's Zambia which during the Bush war was communist controlled.

To the North doesn't quite border Rhodesia but it's there is the Congo which was a bastion of discontent communism and anarchy throughout all of its history since the

Belgians left. Then Mozambique is to its East and after the Portuguese left in 74

Mozambique was a communist controlled country that could infiltrate it. So on all sides, except South Rhodesia was surrounded by enemies and the communists could infiltrate.

Oh, thanks for that. Yeah, I don't know if this is the best map. Let's see here. I'm trying to look for a good map here of Rhodesia.

These look like kind of like older maps on search engines, maps of Rhodesia. But so it was here.

This one doesn't label the countries but yeah, I'll find one. So what, so let me ask you this real quick before we move on with the history.

Here's a good one. This is a good map right here. Let's see if I can blow this up. Can you see that?

Yeah. Yeah, that's a, so here's and there's Zambia to the North. So you, when we talk about in African I think it's inescapable and people who wanna bring

American standards or offensive terms that are offensive ways to divide groups up in America to Africa.

It doesn't transfer very well. You do end up having to talk about blacks and whites. And of course with blacks, there's different tribes and with whites, there's often it's not just, well, in South Africa, it's not just British.

It's also the Boers. And so you have, these groups have their own groups within them, but I don't wanna oversimplify it.

In Rhodesia, if you were someone who was not white you could also integrate in some respects into the white population.

I think that's an important thing probably to just point out before we move on with the history. And that wasn't the way it was in South Africa, right?

It was quite different. It's, you know, it's kind of ineffective to play up the civic nationalist thing too much where there was some racial grievance there,

I suppose. But in terms of Africa, it was probably the best country. And that because of the property voting you just had to be responsible and successful to kind of become part of the community rather than being outside the voting system.

So if you look at, for example, the South African military the Rhodesian African rifles were mainly black at least for the enlisted men.

The gray Scouts had some black troopers and the Sela Scouts had a good number of black members.

And there aren't that many Rhodesian military units because it was a small country. But so in three of them there was a good level of integration.

And you see this in books, particularly I think Tim Bax describes it in Three Sips of Gin. The South Africans were very uncomfortable around black soldiers.

They had a couple of black units like the Buffalo soldiers but they didn't integrate and weren't integrated well.

Whereas the Rhodesians were quite comfortable around each other. There wasn't that hate and strict division purely based on race that there was in South Africa.

So the Rhodesian troopers if they were around fellow black troopers were quite comfortable with it in the way that the

South Africans weren't. So you lacked that bright dividing line and the consequences of it in Rhodesia.

So how did Rhodesia then, with everything you're saying which sounds like this is more accommodating than South Africa, there, as you said there seems to be some blessings of Western medicine and other things that are benefiting these groups that didn't have it previously.

And yet we're supposed to hate them. In fact, I had someone messaging me very concerned this morning and I don't wanna minimize his concern but that I shouldn't even talk about this topic.

That this is a topic that is going to really hurt me that it's unnecessary, our political fights now are downstream.

No one talks about Rhodesia, it's gone. But there are still people because I've actually had one person on the podcast who grew up in Rhodesia a while back who they're from there.

The culture still exists. Many of them went to Australia. Some of them, as you said, are back.

And this is, I think, this is just one more thing because there's so many things that we could talk about.

This is one of them where we have in the United States I think given an incorrect portrayal of what the actual situation is.

And now it's a stain, it's odious to everyone. You can't even mention it.

I guess that's my point. When I'm told that, I wanna talk about it more in a sense because I'm just like, well, this means we're going to let the left just write the narrative of what happened here.

Well, it's letting the same media that says Kamala is a genius who says that Rhodesia was like a

Nazi country despite having fought against the Nazi. Yeah, it's weird. And I think that goes back to that thread about like ends versus means.

And there was one, I think, relatively small point of disagreement between the

West and Rhodesia. And that was it had landed voting as opposed to mass democracy.

So a certain percentage of the population couldn't vote. And other than that, it's like the same thing. And it was the exact same thing as the

West in 1830. But because of that point of disagreement it became beyond the pale.

And if there's any restriction on anything then that's fascism to the left. Well, they were more vilified in South Africa initially, weren't they?

South Africans were trying to get pressure off themselves by saying, well, we're not Rhodesia, which boggles my mind.

Like, how did that work? Yeah, it's insane. Rhodesia, South Africa never had an apartheid system.

They did have to change their government somewhat in 69 because of wartime. I mean, Rhodesia, Rhodesia never had. Oh yeah, yeah, sorry, excuse me.

Rhodesia had to change its voting system somewhat because of the war. But also that, they were branded racists for changing it where they had a white vote and a black vote essentially.

But the black vote counted. And the point of that was to get blacks more used to voting and part of the government system so that when they had a more integrated sort of government it would function rather than just being a disaster as it had been in the entire rest of the continent.

And for trying to plan ahead and make things different a few years before they integrated they were branded as just racist, awful people.

And Smith points out, it made no sense. It was incorrect. It was a false portrayal of the country. And the country was quite successful and prosperous for everyone.

Blacks were in a far better condition in Rhodesia and much freer than they were in say the Congo where drug addicted warlords ruled and mercenaries had to be called in to pacify it just a little bit.

Or in Sierra Leone where their hands were being chopped off by diamond warlords. So it's just completely false portrayal of Rhodesia.

And it's quite, I think, unfortunate because there are so many good lessons there that people shy away from because of what the communists characterized

Rhodesia as. How successful was Rhodesia? Like they were the breadbasket of Europe, but what were the consequences of destroying this country?

Did - You talked about famine earlier. Was that the only consequence? No. So if you look at say

Salisbury was the Rhodesian capital it looks like a normal functioning Western city. Harare is now what

Salisbury was. And you can get pictures of it where it looks like somewhat the same thing or even updated.

But would you rather live in Salisbury or would you rather walk around with a gold watch in Salisbury or Harare?

And we all know the answer. It's Salisbury. And so that's one of the consequences is what order and stability there was because of a responsible government now is gone.

Or even though the government's better, it's anarchic. It's like what we think of when you think of Southern Africa where there's chaos and meddling even if it's not to the total state that it is in say the

Congo. The more important consequence is that Rhodesia went or not more important, but more even noticeable just from an outside view consequence is that Rhodesia before it fell and particularly before the war really got going where they had a hard time making things happen and functioning was a modernized agrarian or had a modernized agrarian sector where instead of like in England where things were somewhat limited by past rent rolls and tenant farmers where you couldn't get things done to the same extent.

It was somewhat like the American Midwest where there are these huge farms that you could farm using modern agricultural implements and on a vast scale.

And so it was quite successful agriculturally and particularly tobacco which was its main cash crop export and wheat which grew quite successfully and also had a large cattle sector.

It did well in that and was well -fed and stable and could export things for foreign exchange. And similarly it had a booming industrial sector.

I don't know as much about that cause I'm not as interested in industrial type things as I am in agricultural type things but it was successful and it did well and was growing and stable and a good place to do business.

That then changed with Mugabe with the farmers. There's the obvious example where they just handed farms to people who didn't know how to farm.

So they all went fallow and Rhodesia instead of exporting crops had to try and import stuff but because it was no longer exporting anything it didn't have the foreign exchange to do so.

So it couldn't import food and people starved and there was a large famine there for quite a long time. The other problem is that there was hyperinflation.

So if you ever see those like $100 trillion Zimbabwean bank notes that weren't worth what they would be as toilet paper under Mugabe's reign of tyranny that's essentially what happened.

Inflation wasn't a huge problem for Rhodesia until Mugabe took over and the country just became a hell hole.

So you have, I don't know Rhodesia's GOP or GDP, excuse me but it was a successful country and the sectors in which it was good thrived particularly agricultural sector and then not so much under Mugabe all that like prosperity and built up ability to function is quite gone.

So what happened? Why did the Soviets hate Rhodesia? What did they do in backing

Mugabe? You know, what was Mugabe's gripe? And then why did the Americans join in on putting sanctions on Rhodesia as well as England to ensure that they were cut off from the outside world?

So the communists hated it because it was a Western country to them. Even though the West turned its back on it the communists hated it.

So Mugabe and Nicomo were the two rebel leaders. One was backed by China and one was backed by the

Soviets. I forget which, although I know China and North Korea ended up helping Mugabe after he won and with his subsequent genocides.

This is where the Americans should have, you know, it's the meme. Like, are you sure we're not the baddies?

Yeah, exactly. And just to like characterize the world that, excuse me the rebels were atrocious and they committed so many atrocities.

Like there are these two flights flying from Salisbury to South Africa and Nicomo's rebels shot down both using surface to air missiles.

And then because the flights weren't that high yet there were a good number of survivors. Instead of helping the survivors or even just taking the prisoner,

Nicomo's men chased them down with bayonets and bayoneted all the survivors, women, children, men alike to death.

And the US still supported Nicomo after that and said, well, he's a good guy and it was a mistake. How did we support it? Did we give him like aid or was it just we turned our eye or turned a blind eye to what he was doing?

It wasn't that we turned a blind eye. There are rumors that American weapons from Vietnam ended up in the hands of Mugabe and Nicomo.

That I haven't been able to verify but Rhodesians who fought in the military tell me it's true. It was more that we blocked

Rhodesia from being able to get the materials it needed. So the UN in 65,

I think when Rhodesia declared the universe its unilateral declaration of independence and broke away from Great Britain, the

UN responded by passing sanctions, the first in its history on Rhodesia. The sanctions not only were the first ever for the

UN but were mandatory. So every member state that wanted to remain in good standing had to go along with the sanctions.

That meant that the only countries still helping Rhodesia at that point, and by helping, I just mean trading freely with it, not even providing free aid, though South Africa somewhat did, were

Portugal, which was hated because Salazar ruled and he was called a fascist, kind of like Ian Smith was but it was much more just like a competent ruler who did a good job and kept out the communists which is why he was hated.

And then Israel helped Rhodesia and it was also helping South Africa. And then South Africa traded with Rhodesia and provided some aid.

So those were the - Israel helped Rhodesia, I actually didn't know that. People don't know that because people who like Rhodesia tend to not like Israel.

Okay. But Israel did help. You know, it's one of those weird things. People wanna forget it, but Israel helped

Rhodesia a great deal and was one of the three countries that traded with it and provided weapons and such. Wow.

So you had those three countries were the only ones who stood up to the UN and didn't go along with the sanctions regime.

America really enforced the sanctions like we do now with Iran or whatever by threatening countries who didn't wanna go along with it.

Britain, the UK went a step further. And other than the Falklands War, the last real gasp of the

Navy that formally ruled the waves of the world was to try and fail in trying to blockade a port in Mozambique called

Biera, which is where Rhodesia imported soil through because Salazar was friendly to Rhodesia. But so from like 66 to 74, when

Portugal fell, the UK Navy was trying and failing to stop oil tankers from providing oil to the civilian economy of Rhodesia.

It's insanity. It bothers me. It's like, you know, historians get bothered that the library at Alexandria, you know, got destroyed or like these little things that only nerds.

But like this is not actually ancient history. This is something that happened within the lifetime of my parents.

Yeah, it was when most people who are now like around and talking on the internet were watching cartoons. Their government was busy trying to starve this successful country in Africa to death because it existed.

Who was responsible in our country? Is this mainly Jimmy Carter's administration, right? But it didn't start under Carter. No, so Nixon was elected in 68.

The war began in 65. So Lyndon Johnson was originally responsible. So he and his administration went along with a lot of it.

He was friendly with the civil rights people who mainly were infiltrated by the communists.

So it was LBJ and the communist civil rights people originally pushed it. Nixon went along with all of it.

If you read Ian Smith's book, he's somewhat friendly towards Kissinger and doesn't think Kissinger was responsible.

Kissinger, in his own words, blames himself and says he was responsible and he regrets it, but he helped push it along.

So first LBJ, then Nixon and Kissinger, and then it really kicked into high gear when Carter was elected in, is that 76?

Yeah, yeah, 76. That's when America really got going into high gear against Rhodesia, though Nixon had pushed all this for his years in power and Ford went along with it as well because Andy Young was close with Carter.

They're both from Georgia and both were really interested in the whole communist civil rights thing.

So Andy Young really pushed along U .S. moral support for Mugabe and promises of aid once Mugabe got elected.

They also were responsible in that it was really Carter and Young who pushed for the second national election in which

Mugabe was elected as opposed to a more moderate black politician who had run one shortly before Mugabe demanded another election,

America demanded it. And so Mugabe was able to just terrorize people in the voting forum and America was largely responsible for that.

So Carter's inaugurated in actually January of 77. Rhodesia falls in 1980, three years later.

And during that time, there was, as I understand it,

Rhodesia could have still come out of this successful like it was before there was an intense war.

And they on a shoestring, they actually were quite successful militarily. And there's several books on the

Rhodesian Bush war on Audible I know years ago, because I just liked military stories.

I started listening to this stuff. This is actually where my interest comes into this more than anything else. I didn't really know anything about Rhodesia but I started hearing these amazing stories that really you could make so many amazing movies or miniseries or shows or whatever based off of the heroic,

I don't know, have you ever seen, there's a movie called the Wild Geese, which is not about Rhodesia, but it's about, but it's, yeah, it's about the

Congo and stuff. But it's like, but what they portray in that movie, these mercenaries who are kind of between governments and in the

Bush, they're against the elements, they're against the animals, they're against, it's a safari slash war.

Like that happened in the Rhodesian Bush war in so many circumstances, there's just incredible stories about it.

And yet at the end, they still couldn't pull it off. And is it just because the sanctions, they just ran out of fuel and equipment or what was the straw that broke the camel's back?

Yeah, there were a couple of things. The first was that, as I mentioned earlier, Portugal fell to the communists essentially in 1974 after Salazar died.

And when they pulled out of Mozambique, that opened up about half the Rhodesian landmass or maybe a third of its border to communist infiltration.

It also dramatically expanded the war because up until that point had mainly been kind of small scale engagements between light infantry.

It remained a light infantry war throughout, but after that point, there were so many more communists able to infiltrate, it became a much larger scale war.

And additionally, the communists were able to do a much better job at infiltrating and attacking farms, which was their main strategy, was laying landmines in the roads and attacking farmsteads and trying to kill the farm laborers and farmers.

And so a lot of Rhodesian families started fleeing because it was hard for the government to defend the border and too many attacks were happening.

So as the farmers fled, they took their families with them and that dramatically limited Rhodesia's recruit pool. So it had trouble staffing the army and filling it up.

Also South Africa betrayed Rhodesia because as you mentioned earlier, South Africa wanted to take heat off itself by saying the

Rhodesians are awful, we don't have anything to do with them, they're so mean. So South Africa stopped supplying Rhodesia with a lot of weapons and aid and material at a time when it really needed it because of the

Mozambique border opening up. Additionally, the Rhodesians, after Mozambique fell, weren't able to import fuel through Bira anymore.

So they had to store what remaining fuel they had. It was in one large, most of it was in one large central facility that got blown up by the rebels in 79.

And at that point when South Africa wasn't helping them like it should, the sanctions were really biting and it couldn't import fuel anymore and had none left.

It more or less had to give up. So things wound down in 79 and then Mugabe was elected in either 80 or 81 and it was all over at that point.

So I have so many more questions and you're very well -spoken on this, Will, but we have some questions in the chat.

And if you have a question and you're streaming right now on YouTube or Facebook, any question whatsoever, just leave it in the chat.

And so let me get to this one. This is the first one. Are the blacks in Rhodesia and South Africa really better off since the

Europeans were taken out of governments? I think you already answered this and the answer is not so much.

Opposition parties, Roxana Swart says, are suppressed and the people of Zimbabwe are no better off today than they were under the rule of Mugabe.

Speak to the people that live there. So I don't know if Roxana lives there or knows people who live there, but I think she's taking issue with what you said about them being better off today now that the government is allowing some of the white farmers to come back.

So I don't know if you wanna answer that. Yeah, it's a question of degrees. And if the question is if you're better off under a incompetent and not particularly good government or under one that actually wants to string you up and kill you, you're better off under the former, even if it's not great by comparison to any functional

Western country. So if it's a land they love and they're being allowed back in, even if the political situation isn't great,

I think they are in a better position just because they can have their farms and function, even if, I mean, I wouldn't wanna live in Zimbabwe and I'm shocked that people do, but it is better, though not great.

It's a question of degrees. Here's a question.

Rhodes wanted a global British empire. I don't think your guest is exactly presenting an objective perspective here.

Did you say that he didn't? I don't know what you said. No, I said he's hated by people on Twitter, which

I think is weird because I have no objections to the British empire. Of course it was a global empire. The Sun never sat on it and they controlled like a quarter of the world's landmass.

I don't think that - It wasn't a Caliphate though. They weren't trying to like - No, it was a very free and prosperous empire.

It's probably better than the American empire is. So if the question is, is it a bad thing that Rhodes wanted to expand the empire, then my answer is no and I think it was a good thing.

Here's a question. Seems like what the West did to the Cantingese, am

I saying that right? Or Cantingese? I think it's Katangese, but I could be wrong.

The province is called Katanga. Okay, all right, Katanga. Okay, so province of the Congo, late 50s.

Was the same as they did to Rhodesia. What does your guest think? Yeah, all

I know about Katanga is what Mike Hoare wrote about in his book called The Road to Kalamata.

It was a province of the Congo that wanted to break away from the larger Congo because it was the resource rich and more prosperous region.

The UN refused to let that happen and sent in troops to enforce it not happening.

Hoare was involved in trying to make it happen and leading a commando column to try and fight the rebels or fight the

Congolese government and try and help it break away. It was a messy situation.

I think it was somewhat different in that it was hard to say that the

Congo was gonna be ruled well by anyone because it was such a chaotic situation. Like the guy who was elected president when the

Belgians left had been a corporal in the Congolese territorial force beforehand. So it wasn't really like the best and brightest of the world.

It was a hard situation. I don't think the UN should have gotten involved. And I think Katanga probably would have been better off had it been able to break away.

I think the difference is that Rhodesia had America and Britain not gotten involved or even better helped it would have been a very prosperous and free country in a way that the

Congo wasn't gonna be no matter what happened. Where was the church in all of this from Don Burton, who so I love dearly, he has a,

I think a good question on this because I think the Rhodesians were Anglican, right? And to have the

British turn their back on them, oftentimes you have these political ties, but then there's other ties, there's cultural and ecclesiastical ties.

Were those cut off as well? What happened there? Unfortunately, the church was on the wrong side of it.

In America, the church has somewhat long been to the left, particularly during the civil rights movement when that took on a

Christian aura. And so Christianity in America was probably on the net against Rhodesia.

In Britain, I could be wrong, but I believe the Archbishop of Canterbury who kind of heads the

Anglican church was against Rhodesia in assisting the government morally in its crusade against Rhodesia.

One small difference is that the Lords or the peerage still have some relationship with the church where they're seen,

I think, somewhat as its leaders, at least in terms of social ability. I don't really know how to phrase that, but I think the peerage is involved in the

Church of England or seen as being involved in a way that American elites aren't seen as being involved in the American church. And the peers were very much against the destruction of Rhodesia.

The House of Lords, thanks largely to Winston Churchill, had lost its veto power in 1911 where it could only delay things, but it did try and delay things when

Britain went along with the sanctions by vetoing them. So there was about a year long period where Britain couldn't get the sanctions pushed through the government because the

Lords were holding it up. So on the whole, the church was against it, but the Lords are somewhat different.

Now, domestically, I know it has been said, I don't know who said it first, but that the

Rhodesians were more British than the British. So I'm assuming they were also fairly religious, that Christianity was very integrated into their society.

In fact, I remember, I think from some of the bush war stuff I was listening to years ago, that even in the military, if I'm not mistaken, they were given

Bibles. There was a very strong Christian presence in the military there.

And I'm assuming there were a lot of missionary efforts and so forth to let the population, the native populations and so forth understand

Christianity. Is that an accurate depiction? And would that have contributed to perhaps why the

Soviets also were against Rhodesia? Yeah, so for the white population, at least, since it was mainly kind of upper class -ish

British, at least in terms of character, if not entirely inherited, the Anglican church was strong and that was part of its cultural identity.

I don't know so much about the black population other than that it was largely Christian rather than pagan, at least from what

I gather. It's hard to tell when it's village -based communities where you don't really know what people are doing.

It was different in that since it was the Anglican church rather than the Catholic church, there weren't nunneries and monasteries like there were in the

Belgian Congo, where there was a large number of those and they were attacked and the residents brutalized during the

Simba rebellion. That's a lot of what you hear about the Congo and a lot of why Rhodesia wanted to not go along with decolonization is because of that rebellion and the bloodshed and brutality that was inflicted on the white population by the rebels.

But because again, Rhodesia was Anglican, that wasn't so much a factor. You didn't have those.

So if there were missionaries, it was much more a kind of individual thing rather than a large target, if that makes sense.

Yeah, and I'm assuming the Soviets, whether that probably just factored into the whole anti -Western, the

Christianity being part of that. Here's another question. I'm getting a lot of questions, by the way.

We may end up ending the podcast with just these questions, even though I have some more. Can we get a documentary on Rhodesia? Oh, well, when

I was studying, I thought there's gotta be a movie. There's gotta be, because some of the military stuff is so interesting.

And there was like two movies that I found that were, I think, British -based and they were just negative against Rhodesia and they were boring.

And even as far as documentaries go, I don't know of any good documentaries out there about this. Do you know of any? No. If you wanna learn about Rhodesia, you should read books.

The only thing, it's about the Congo, it's called Empire of Dust. I haven't seen it, but I've heard it's good.

And it's about the Chinese trying to deal with the Congo and it's just a mess. I've heard it's good, but it's more just about what happened after decolonization and how the area's a mess now rather than about Rhodesia specifically.

Well, there's one, it's not about Rhodesia either, but Afrika Toto or something like that.

Oh, yeah, I've heard that one's good too. Yeah, yeah, and it's like, don't watch it if you have a weak stomach though.

I mean, it's - It's the Italian one, right? Italian, yeah, Italian film. Anyway, are there still whites in Zimbabwe?

I think you already answered this. And this was one of the questions I had, so I'll piggyback off it. The white population that's coming back from places like Australia, where they have fled and now they're coming back.

They're coming back though under circumstances, which you said are still less than ideal. And it's not technically though a communist government.

So what are the conditions right now? Like why not move to Rhodesia? What's the argument?

So the, I forget the name of Mugabe's wife, just cause

I have trouble reading about communists in there because it makes me so sad, but she tried to hold onto power after he died and the army deposed her.

And now they kind of have a more free government is the one commenter said earlier, there's still opposition oppression.

It's not somewhere I would want to live. The problem or the reason why I think people are moving back is originally a lot of people moved to Zambia.

I don't know what Zambia's conditions are like. I imagine it's like much of the region. A lot of others though moved to South Africa and this isn't the

Australian contingent you talked about. I think they generally like Australia, but Tim Bax describes this well in Three Sips of Gin.

At the end, South Africa just became so much worse than even Zimbabwe now is because of the crime situation and the general chaos and violence in the country.

That's motivated a lot by that grievance of the post -apartheid world and just the badness and the hate that's there.

Where South Africa is now probably a worse place to live, particularly if you're an isolated farmer than Zimbabwe and if you're a

Rhodesian rather than Boer, where the, you're not gonna have the same hate.

You're gonna be welcomed back even if the government doesn't really like you. If you're a Rhodesian farmer returning to Zimbabwe, whereas if you're living in South Africa, you're gonna face a lot of the same kind of hate and violence and potential for being brutally murdered in a farm attack that the

Boers are. So if you're a Rhodesian living in South Africa or living for whatever reason in like Angola or Mozambique, it probably makes sense if you wanna stay in the region to try and return to Zimbabwe and deal with its failings because you're not gonna be hated at least as much by the populace as if you remained in one of those.

Because they in their minds still have a golden age that their parents or maybe they themselves can remember and the white farmer coming back,

I guess, represents that. That's what I saw in the videos a few years ago, the celebrations ensuing.

Samuel says, this is still happening in other African countries. One example is Ethiopia. What does your guest think of this?

I'm not sure what he's referring to, this happening. I don't really know about Ethiopia. Yeah, okay. I am just joining in the

Rhodesian flag similar to the Nigerian flag. They both have green and white and straight, but the

Rhodesian flag was quite interesting because it had that British South African company style logo of, I think it's like a lion or something with the pickaxes.

It's a quite cool design and cool flag. Yeah, yeah, it is a cool flag. Actually, so let me pull it up here so people can see what we're talking about.

That's the Rhodesian flag. Or it's not a lion, excuse me. It's like gazelles or something, or the Roar book. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't really know that, it's kind of smaller. Yeah, I'm not sure. Yeah, it looks like gazelles. It looks like gazelles and then some like, is a hawk or an eagle on the top,

I guess. Yeah. And then there's like a mining, it looks like a mining pick in the center of the flag.

I'm not sure if there was a lot of mining there or what that represents. Or maybe it's an umbrella, I don't know.

It's mining picks, I forget. Yeah, Rhodesia wasn't really known as a mining country by the time it had its unpleasantness, but I think there was originally hopes of mining and it was the

British South African country or company was interested in that because it was such a big deal in South Africa. Be Regenerated says a great source on Rhodesia is

Dr. Peter Hammond. I don't know if you've heard of him, but he runs Frontline Fellowship in Africa. He was in the Rhodesian army and later imprisoned by Mugabe as a missionary.

And I have actually had him on the podcast. He was the one I referenced earlier. He said he grew up in Rhodesia, but I don't think

I had him on to talk about Rhodesia. I think it was something else because he's in South Africa now. And because some of them went to South Africa, some of them went to Australia.

The reason I think Australia sticks in my mind is because you remember when Dylan Roof shot up a church, a black church, horrific mass, well,

I guess it would qualify as a mass murder. I mean, it was a horrible crime. Yeah, and he had a website called

The Last Rhodesian where he would blog and that kind of thing. And it was an Australian organization that claimed to represent

Rhodesians, I remember, who wrote a response and essentially said, you know, any person like Dylan Roof, any white supremacist adjacent, whatever, like that doesn't represent us.

They don't understand Rhodesia. And basically we're misunderstood by everybody, which is why we're doing this podcast in part,

I suppose. On that note, not to interrupt, because I know we're talking about questions, but it is one of the interesting things about Rhodesia.

There's this cool video where it's like a priest or something who went over there to fight and he's talking where it's not a racial war.

It was very much a war between communists and freedom and liberty, because a lot of blacks did participate in the

Rhodesian armed forces and fighting against the communists. And there were a number of American white supremacists who traveled there who were not allowed in the army because the

Rhodesian government didn't want that association. So it's not the racial war it's made out to be in the way that some other conflicts in Africa might've been, which is another reason

I think it's more interesting and more worth talking about and that it represents the fight against communism rather than racial and turn of scene war.

Well, I suspect, because I can think of other situations where the same dynamic happens. The left, they have their propaganda and they portray it wrongly.

But then the people who are, let's say they really like white supremacy or they're neo -Nazi types or whatever.

The people who are in those camps will hear the misrepresentation and then they'll just accept it as true.

And then they'll say, Rhodesia is great because they're Nazi or something. It's like, yeah, but the population fought the Nazis. You don't understand what you're talking about.

There's a lot of that. There's a lot of that, yes. It's amazing how much the right believes the less propaganda.

Right, well, yeah. These guys are, probably a lot of these guys are more fringe groups and that kind of thing.

But yeah, it's a country that they've, a lot of them fought the Nazis. And on top of that, Israel is one of the few countries that's supporting them.

And you're trying to make out like - I'll stop interrupting, but it should really be seen as a war between like pre -reform

Western countries. So like 1830 Britain or the United States against modernism and progressivism and communism.

That's exactly how I see it, yes. Like it's a pre -modern world. They were more

British than the Brits because they retained these traditions and held onto them more strongly as people often do when they're surrounded by very different groups of people.

And it was their way of life that was destroyed more than anything. A way of life that they wanted to incorporate, include, give to other peoples in many respects.

And I think it's just like, it's an anthropology thing, I suppose. And this really does relate to Christianity in some respects, but this idea that popular, you can't just insert institutions and policies that have been successful in very

Christianized societies, in societies that don't have generations of those traditions.

Western Christian societies, and especially Anglo, I'm thinking more Anglo Christian societies have had centuries of development in common law and social mores and all these things.

And you can't just go into a territory, whether you're a missionary or a political reformer and say, let's just drop some democracy in here.

Let's just drop some constitutional government and think, oh, it's just gonna work. Because human nature doesn't work that way.

And I think in Rhodesia, it seems like from what you're saying, there was a willingness to, let's go down this road.

Let's extend all the blessings that we've been afforded over the course of centuries. And with the understanding that this doesn't happen overnight and that there's gonna be some prudential and gradual things that must take place in order to get to that point.

But these ideologues, these communists being a form of ideology, liberalism being another, and really all the modernity is ideology.

They want immediacy on all of these things. They can't stand conditions being different.

It must be universal solutions for everyone. And it seems like that's what Rhodesia was running up against. Yeah, it's like, one thing

I keep going back to with Rhodesia is the involvement of the peers, by which I mean the British aristocracy and baronetcy in Rhodesia.

And they loved it because they could leave say Britain when death duties were becoming a problem in 1910, 1898.

They could leave Britain and all its issues behind and instead have a much older world in Rhodesia that was modern in terms of modern agricultural implements, modern houses and their niceties, but without the baggage of democracy and liberalism and communism and socialism.

And so it's an interesting world in that respect. It's one of those abilities to look into what would have happened had the great war not happened perhaps.

So it's just interesting in that it was a fight between the old world and the new world with the entirety of the new world, both democracy and communism alike siding against the old world.

Yeah, yeah. Vodie Bakum, James Riddle says, has been in Lusaka, Zambia nine years now.

Vodie Bakum's a friend. He's a, works at, well, he really actually does more than just training pastors because at the

University of Zambia, they are trying to help people understand agriculture and all kinds of things to make it successful.

So good plug there for - That does remind me, sorry to interrupt again, but I think

Smith might talk about this at the end of The Great Betrayal. Zambia, though it was originally allied with the communists as Rhodesia fell somewhat went in the opposite direction and became welcoming to Rhodesians who wanted to move there because it wanted their agricultural know -how.

So that was one of the changes. I forget the extent to which it was a thing or the extent to which it was actually good for the

Rhodesian to move there, but it was one of those issues as the war ended. I know,

I don't know where the comment was. Someone asked if Last Stand Studios would do a documentary on Rhodesia, which is an LLC that I run and we've done several documentaries.

And I will say this on a personal note, my wife and I, I've never said this public, I guess, but I, you know, for all the, for my conservative views on many things and some of my historical views, you know, which

I intend to be accurate and so forth, you know, I get some of the same smears that are thrown at other conservatives, but, you know, racists, misogynists, all the rest.

But for years, you know, we have, we are very good friends, my wife and I, with a missionary couple in Zambia.

And they are, I think the only, I know that there's some other organizations we've supported and stuff, but they are the only like couple that we have supported on a monthly basis for years now.

We get their updates. And when they come back to the United States, we visit with them and ask them how it's going. They're not far from Victoria Falls and they have, which of course is the border of where Rhodesia was.

And so, yes, and of course, all the supports for those who listen to the podcast for equipping the persecuted with their work in Africa among persecuted

Christians. I have standing invitations to go. And if I do go, I have had this on the back of my mind, there are still

Rhodesians alive in Zambia. And I would love to maybe connect and interview some of them, but I don't know when that would be.

So I can't promise anything. All right, so here's, I think this will probably be, let's see, second to last question.

How was Rhodesia so successful while being landlocked? I don't know if you're familiar with, oh, who is it?

Who wrote Black Liberals, White Rednecks, Thomas Sowell. Thomas Sowell says

Africa is basically the way it is. I'm obviously oversimplifying, but because they did not have navigable waterways except the

Nile. And the only place in Africa that actually was pretty successful was Egypt. And I guess

Ethiopia had an empire. So I don't know if I buy that completely, but it is an intriguing point.

And so how do you explain Rhodesia though, in all of this? How does that fit your theory when they don't have, they're landlocked.

So, you know, I'll let you answer that. So there are a couple of things. One is that before 74,

Rhodesia was largely surrounded by friendly countries. So originally it was the Belgian Congo was to the north because what became

Zambia and what became Zimbabwe were combined as just Rhodesia, Zambia broke away.

And then there was also Mozambique, which was allied, which was Portuguese and so friendly and below South Africa, which was also

British and so friendly. And so it had access to the oceans through friendly countries, though it didn't border them.

That became a problem during the war because they were no longer friendly countries, but during peacetime, they were. Also railroads, if you look at British history, originally canals were the big thing and there was a ton of investment in canals.

Then railroads, once they became functional immediately to displace canals because they're so much better. It's easier to load things, easier to just move along larger amounts of whether agriculture produce or coal or whatever.

Then in a canal, you needed fewer people once they were built at least. So Rhodesia just had railroads and was functional because of that.

So if you in the pipeline at Biera is a good example. If you have a friendly country that will let you just import oil through a pipeline that you have at one of its ports, it's not really a problem that the pipelines in Mozambique rather than Rhodesia until all of a sudden it's a problem.

So while it was prosperous, it was surrounded by friendly countries and through railroads, pipelines, et cetera, it had access to oceans.

Interesting. All right, last question here. Would you ask Wiltaner about how Rhodesians dealt with conserving the environment?

That's an interesting question. Anything related to or adjacent. And I know in that film, the

Italian film I was referencing earlier, that was one of the big things they focused on is when the,

I think it was British actually in that, cause it was Kenya. I think they were, if I remember correctly, they were focusing on when the

British pulled out of Kenya, that was one of the things that happened first, like in the zoos and wildlife preserves, there was carnage.

I mean, people throwing grenades into, I can't even, it makes me so mad, killing baby elephants with grenades and just satanically evil things that happened, what they did to baboons, torturing baboons and all that.

This is all, it's in the film, that's why I say don't for the weak stomach, but did something similar happen in Rhodesia?

Maybe, it's more, so a couple of things. One, I don't know how against the megafauna the government was or its troops were.

I get more of the impression that just poaching became more prevalent once it was a less functional government in charge.

The bigger connection to environmentalism from Rhodesia is this guy named Alan Savory, who he's the father of the modern regenerative agricultural movement, particularly for cattle grazing.

Some people in the industry are less with his ideas cause they're more focused on the environment than being a profitable rancher, but he worked with elephants starting out.

And originally he thought the environment was being destroyed because you needed to thin the herd and there were too many elephants. He later discovered that it was much more getting them to work with the environment and having the elephants trample manure into the ground that made it fertile and applied that to cattle.

So a lot of regenerative ranching and the environmental benefits for it and conservation and all that come from Alan Savory who founded the

Sella Scouts as well, one of the more elite units in the war. So it's an interesting overlap between Rhodesia's war and the modern agricultural attempts to solve environmental challenges that exist because of the problems of modern industrial agriculture.

And this is one of the things I find interesting about the British empire too, when they would go into some of these places, and in contrast to other empires, there is a respect for the land that they're going into.

That is so unique in world history. And I'm laughing at myself,

Will, you didn't catch me on this, which is fine, but the name, and I'll put it up here, the name of the documentary is

Africa Audio. And I kept saying Africa Toto, because -

Oh, yeah, the song, I missed that. Bless the rains down in Africa, I somehow fixed that up in my mind. Oh, Toto, Bless the

Rains Down in Africa, that's the documentary. All right, so anyway, I laughed at myself there. Will, where can people find you?

Yeah, so I'm on Twitter. You can probably just search my name, but I'm at Will underscore Tanner underscore one on Twitter.

And then I write about mainly England before reform and colonial Africa on theamericantribune .news,

it's our sub stack platform. I'm so glad you're out there understanding these things and exposing and just giving us all this great information about things we've been lied to about, essentially.

You're very well -spoken. And so I could definitely see maybe in the future we'll have to talk about South Africa or maybe another country in Africa, just to maybe nerd out on some history.