Surviving Rhodesia?

Would it ever have been possible for Rhodesia itself to have survived? Whether by South Africa loosening its restrictions on ammunition exports to the country (the ones it adopted later in response to Pretoria's feeling that Salisbury needed to come to a negotiated solution)?

Would the end of white minority rule, but the prevention of the subsequent takeover by ZANU-PF been avoidable (by way of Britain banning them from parliamentary elections)?

I must admit it's a quandary I've been considering quite a bit lately.
 
Yeah, just get the Rhodesian whites to stop being supremacist jackasses in 50s and 60s...

Actually I had thought of one way, though really any surviving Rhodesia needs to be one where Salisbury is defeated - they wont just decide to be amicable, efforts by liberal ministers with UK support to attempt compromises in the 50s just got chucked, and black complaints were taken as unrest, leading eventually to UDI.

I'd suggest the Central African Federation of the 1950s (South Rhodesia, North Rhodesia and Nyasaland) is made a unitary state, still under white rule - say you've got a moron at the colonial office who not only ignores black complaints about the CAF, but fails to see the long-term problems and gives Salisbury total control.

The CAF had a 66/1 racial ratio. Yeah. So the Rhodesians have one of two options, no doubt after some kind of armed conflict, either peacefully accept majority rule (with guarantees backed by the UK if they're lucky) and they might get a compromise Rhodesia-Zimbabwe, or organise some kind of rump white state in South Rhodesia, which bar becoming a land-locked African tax haven has little chance of being a particularly successful state. Hell, the South Africans might just annex it, with invitation or not.
 
Yeah, just get the Rhodesian whites to stop being supremacist jackasses in 50s and 60s...

Actually I had thought of one way, though really any surviving Rhodesia needs to be one where Salisbury is defeated - they wont just decide to be amicable, efforts by liberal ministers with UK support to attempt compromises in the 50s just got chucked, and black complaints were taken as unrest, leading eventually to UDI.

I'd suggest the Central African Federation of the 1950s (South Rhodesia, North Rhodesia and Nyasaland) is made a unitary state, still under white rule - say you've got a moron at the colonial office who not only ignores black complaints about the CAF, but fails to see the long-term problems and gives Salisbury total control.

The CAF had a 66/1 racial ratio. Yeah. So the Rhodesians have one of two options, no doubt after some kind of armed conflict, either peacefully accept majority rule (with guarantees backed by the UK if they're lucky) and they might get a compromise Rhodesia-Zimbabwe, or organise some kind of rump white state in South Rhodesia, which bar becoming a land-locked African tax haven has little chance of being a particularly successful state. Hell, the South Africans might just annex it, with invitation or not.

Indeed, a white settler state in parts of Southern Zimbabwe would have the same problems as all of Rhodesia except even worse: while the smaller amount of territory might make enforcement easier, the whole place is still completely landlocked, and once the Portuguese get out of Mozambique the only avenue of access they are going to have to the wider international community is going to be South Africa (Malawi, which was historically friendly to white minority regimes, to a lesser extent, but Malawi has no coast). If it isn't outright taken over by South Africa, it'll basically be a part of South Africa in all but name.

Happier ending for the settlers (expulsion from Zimbabwe but resettlement in South Africa rather than just being massively dispossessed) but maybe not so much for the blacks.
 
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