Wednesday 21 November 2007

If Rhodesia Had Happened Today

The Exile writes:

Smith and the Rhodesians were proto-Thatcherites who liked to pretend that they were self-sufficient pioneers. Actually most whites lived in Salisbury, the capital city, where most of them were employed as civil servants.

and

Had the Rhodesia Crisis happened in 2005 instead of 1965 things probably would have been very different. Those same fake-socialists who today cheer on the forward march of capitalism would, I have no doubt, have found something progressive in Ian Smith and his people. As it is they have to content themselves with the odd discrete call for the kaffir to be put firmly back in his place.

If Smith couldn't accept black suffrage until blacks had become sufficiently prosperous and well-educated to meet the property and educational qualifications for voting, then he was simply accepting Rhodesia's immaturity, and should therefore have accepted continued British rule while that immaturity remained.

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