The ZIPRA Invasion of Rhodesia, 1979...

MacCaulay

Banned
I guess I still don't see this being good for Rhodesia in anyway. One reason for this and I admittedly may be a little off base here, is that I see 1970s Rhodesia as essentially being two systems. The first being the white settler nation state, the second being the black nations. The two intersect at many points and the former controls the latter, but the the former is so small compared to the latter that its impact or penetration of the latter is necessarily shallow outside of the urban areas.

For some reason, this reminded me of a point that was raised in the military history I just read about why guerilla wars are so often won by the insurgent forces and lost by the conservative ones.

"The ZANU/ZAPU forces knew what they were fighting for; on the other hand, the Rhodesians only knew what they were fighting against."

It's a very interesting point about counterinsurgency.





Also, your writeup on the Rhodesian societal setup is interesting. If I was more interested in it, I'd probably try and co-write this with you.
 
... if the Rhodesians do their worst and take over Zambia, with its copperbelt, they add a tool to their economic arsenal, and one could see Rhodesian coal mines send their coal to the synthetic crude plants at Secunda and Vereeniging, or even building a steel plant and then making their own armaments.

And oddly enough, that may work out for the best in the end. Once the USSR is dead and gone, the US and Europe are going to exert full economic pressure to end apartheid. IOTL, a major force in making that happen was business leaders (i.e. DeBeers) wanting a peaceful transition that would keep their companies in their hands and able to export to the world. If Super-Rhodesia has a similarly powerful steel/copper export industry, a similar business-supported coup could happen. In the best case then, TTL's circa-2010 Rhodesia (or whatever it is called) could look a lot like modern South Africa, and be a much better place to live (for everyone) than modern Zimbabwe...
 
My view is based on a lot of assumptions based on my own experiences and a collection of half remembered books I read at high school and college. So it is largely just my thoughts on the matter. But if you want to develop this further, we can certainly talk about it.

For some reason the local and university libraries I frequented growing up in NZ were full of contemporary works (memoirs, etc) about SA and Rhodesia. So it was really easy to get hold of interesting works, if one was so minded. Hell, I've even read the official history of the Republic of Transkei, as dedicated by Kaiser Matanzima

It was a really big political issue in NZ in the 1970s and 80s, perhaps more so than most countries due to the sporting connection. Probably the worst civil disorder since since the Depression occurred in and around the tours of the South African rugby team .

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For some reason, this reminded me of a point that was raised in the military history I just read about why guerilla wars are so often won by the insurgent forces and lost by the conservative ones.

"The ZANU/ZAPU forces knew what they were fighting for; on the other hand, the Rhodesians only knew what they were fighting against."

It's a very interesting point about counterinsurgency.

That's an excellent quote there Mac, I don't think it applies to all counterinsurgencies, but its still a great point in general. Where is the quote from exactly?
 
I think people are seriously overestimating ZIPRA.
Yes the Russians had given them some goodies and yes they had had some training and yes the Rhodesian Army was very COIN-centric but battles are won by small unit (platoon-company) cohesion and discipline and the Rhodies had ZIPRA beat on that by a million miles.
Bluntly giving a bunch of rebels some tanks doesn't make them an army, nor does giving them some Russian advisor's do the job. The sort of discipline and professionalism that the Rhodesians had would have won out, just as how the better equipped Arabs got creamed by the cohesive and disciplined Israelis in '67 and '73.
 
To agree with everyone else here, in the short term the Rhodesians are going smash ZIPRA (the degree dependent on how much the SADF aid them) but white emigration and the Rhodesian financial crisis is only going to get worse, meaning that by the 1981 at the latest you see a change, however its won't be the reasonably orderly one of OTL.
Its going to be like Angola with the white population simply getting on planes overnight that means Zimbabwe is going to collapse much faster than OTL.
As to South Africa its might push the National Party to hold on for a bit longer but the end of the Cold War was the death knell. They could no longer claim they were holding back the Communist Tide and with that went a lot of the white populations motivation to bear the burden of apartheid.

This war would probably change that, though. ZIPRA explicitly wanted wealth redistribution, and the ANC of the time was the same, so a full-scale war, which would require logistical and equipment help from the Soviets, which will make white Africans in general ridiculously paranoid, and while the end of the USSR may fix that, it may not as well. The apartheid state in particular would probably see a full-scale invasion of Rhodesia by Soviet-backed forces and absolutely have a full-blown meltdown, probably at the very least resulting in a pile of weapons, ammo and fuel to the Rhodesians. At worst, the SADF decides to fortify its positions in Angola and deploy units to Rhodesia to hammer back the ZIPRA army. And as its been pointed out here, for all that was wrong with Rhodesia, its racist policies and the ignoramuses who ran the place, the Rhodesian armed forces were a capable, dangerous unit, and while their training was focused on counter-insurgency methods, considering their numbers and their relative lack of heavy equipment, this is fairly smart on their part. ZIPRA would either have to have a boatload of equipment to overcome the Rhodesian organizational and training advantages, or they would have to dramatically improve the standards of their training.
 
For some reason, this reminded me of a point that was raised in the military history I just read about why guerilla wars are so often won by the insurgent forces and lost by the conservative ones.

"The ZANU/ZAPU forces knew what they were fighting for; on the other hand, the Rhodesians only knew what they were fighting against."

It's a very interesting point about counterinsurgency.

That is part of the difference between Rhodesia and South Africa, too. The defenders of apartheid were not defending their priviledge against communists, they saw it as defending their homes and their country, fighting for their country to be around for their kids. Rhodesia might end up gaining that if it gets subjected to a full-scale invasion.
 
How would Carter and Thatcher view an invasion by ZIPRA? Would they end up supporting Smith and apartheid SA? If Reagan had been elected president in 1976, how would he have viewed Rhodesia?
 

MacCaulay

Banned
How would Carter and Thatcher view an invasion by ZIPRA? Would they end up supporting Smith and apartheid SA? If Reagan had been elected president in 1976, how would he have viewed Rhodesia?

I honestly don't think it would change the political reality. If Thatcher didn't recognize them after Muroweza was elected, she wasn't going to recognize them anyway. Which is kind of crazy, because she said she would and reneged on the promise after her cabinet ministers recommended she do so.
 
I honestly don't think it would change the political reality. If Thatcher didn't recognize them after Muroweza was elected, she wasn't going to recognize them anyway. Which is kind of crazy, because she said she would and reneged on the promise after her cabinet ministers recommended she do so.

She wanted to, Carter pushed hard to make sure she didn't.
 

MacCaulay

Banned
That's an excellent quote there Mac, I don't think it applies to all counterinsurgencies, but its still a great point in general. Where is the quote from exactly?

The Rhodesian War: A Military History by Moorcraft and McLaughlin. I'd highly suggest it.
 
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