South Africa recognises Rhodesia?

What would happen if South Africa recognised Ian Smith's Rhodesia as a legitimate state? I'd suppose some time before the Portuguese coup which resulted in Angolan/Mozambican independence. How harsh would the international community act on SA and would this affect the result of the Rhodesian Bush War, as well as the Namibian Border War?
 

Japhy

Banned
At the very least it isolates SA's intelligence services from the rest of the West as "We can track this Rhodesia problem for Mi6" was basically the leading reason they were allowed to even stay in the room with the other agencies. To a lesser extent that would also be true for their diplomatic corps though they were far more isolated as is.

Recognition as recognized by SA and Rhodesia was pretty much also a guarantee of SA troop deployment so the wars of the Apartheid era just got bigger and could see Cuban involvement.
 
Recognition as recognized by SA and Rhodesia was pretty much also a guarantee of SA troop deployment so the wars of the Apartheid era just got bigger and could see Cuban involvement.

It's still mindboggling to be that Cuba of all countries engaged in military interventions in Africa.
 
Cuban soldiers were just puppets of the USSR when they fought in Angola. Sure Che Guevera might have preached a good line, but Che was past his prime when he went to Africa.

As for SA publically "recognizing" Rhodesia .... that would only be a move for international political audiences. SA quietly provided plenty of military support to the Rhodesian Army. At one point SA even "loaned" a significant batch of Allouette 3 helicopters to Rhodesia. Rest assured than Rhodesia never had to worry about shortages of Allouette 3 spare parts. And I doubt if Rhodesia ever worried about depleting ammo reserves.

Meanwhile the USA quietly supported the South African Army. .....
 
At the very least it isolates SA's intelligence services from the rest of the West as "We can track this Rhodesia problem for Mi6" was basically the leading reason they were allowed to even stay in the room with the other agencies. To a lesser extent that would also be true for their diplomatic corps though they were far more isolated as is.

Recognition as recognized by SA and Rhodesia was pretty much also a guarantee of SA troop deployment so the wars of the Apartheid era just got bigger and could see Cuban involvement.

It would really break any prospects of useful relations with Britain too, given how much UDI came up in domestic politics
 
I’ve read somewhere that there were 2 main reasons why they didn’t grant recognition.

Firstly the ratio of Whites to Africans in Rhodesia was so low that the South Africans didn’t think they could hold on for very long. Apparently they were astonished that they managed to survive as long as they did.

Secondly Vorster believed that he could get Black Africa to accept apartheid and therefore Pretoria concluded that it was in its interests to keep Rhodesia at arm’s length. There was a lot of quite overt support given and in the final days a lot of Rhodesian military and security personnel were airlifted to South Africa to join its war.

If they had then as well as the other consequences listed above I think that Rhodesia may have lasted as long as the apartheid regime did and eventually there will be some kind of “Grand Settlement” that introduces majority rule to both states.
 
It's still mindboggling to be that Cuba of all countries engaged in military interventions in Africa.
Not as if a lot of them didn't believe in communism. Apparently there was an incident where the Cubans were outraged that the leader of the Angolan group (or some local division) they were backing up came driving down the river in a speedboat with two women drinking a lot of alcohol.
 
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