Lately we've been bombarded with commentary addressing the situation in Zimbabwe; a situation that comes as no surprise whatsoever to those of us who followed the situation or saw it up close. The British in particular are clucking their tongues and wondered how did things get so bad?
One of the many problems with the English is that they are such overbearing and effete snobs. I've often heard them mock the "hillbilly" accent of Rhodesians as if that somehow placed them outside the pale of "real" Englishmen. How unfortunate that Rhodesians employed blacks as servants. Unlike the British who for centuries have bred themselves a class of specially trained and highly sycophantic white men for that very task. Of course it is racist to have black servants. Far better to let them die of starvation due to lack of job skills. The Rhodesians further confounded the Brits by actually working hard. It's in such bad form.
But wait – isn't the black African's lack of job skills the white man's fault!? That's what we are supposed to believe. The reverse is true. Stone age tribesmen have very few if any skills that are useful in technological society, and indeed the blacks (Mashona) in Rhodesia were facing extinction when the brutal and racist whites showed up with all that mean ole medicine and food, indirectly encouraging population growth but not creating enough jobs for them all to work. Not that bush tribesmen had previously had any such formality as employment. For some reason that must astonish the environmentalists, tribesmen who've been exposed to western style culture can never return to communing with mother earth in the bush, even if they are there physically. Once they taste that store bought beer and get the feel of money in their pocket, it's hard to turn back. Yet the blacks who wanted to farm did so quite satisfactorily under Ian Smith despite the myth that the whites got the best land. The whites made something of the land is all, sharing freely of their technology, particularly in animal husbandry and things like cattle dips. Plenty of blacks made good at this too, until the communists murdered them.
The petulant and facile news media have no time to actually learn anything; they are programmed to go out to write a piece that supports the point of view their masters have determined is right for them. I wonder if they are aware how indifferent soldiers have become to their safety? We must take our laughs when we can get them. But such harshness calls forth all sorts of simpering platitudes about morality from silly boys and girls who wouldn't know morality if they stumbled over it. We in Rhodesia were accused of waging an immoral war by liars who wouldn't report enemy atrocities and made up atrocity stories about us. These same fledgling Pulitzer candidates had no clue about tribal hierarchies or dynamics; that sort of thing can't be summed up in a sound bite. The communist tactic of coercing the witch doctors and brutalizing the tribal chieftains was dismissed by the west as "giving collaborators what they deserve."
Journalists were convinced that all the blacks were poor because even the rich ones (and there were plenty in the Trustlands) lived in roundels (round buildings – often well made of brick and quite sturdy). Well guess what Mr. Newsman – they must have forgotten to tell you in that fancy school that not everybody wants to live in Manhattan, cooped up like a rat in a trap. But that doesn't stop rich Africans from owning thousands of mambi (cattle) and having dozens of wives. Or at least it didn't before they were exterminated by the "liberators." It wasn't just whites who lost their land and their lives.
Americans made a really silly choice, back in 1861. The choice between a gentlemen, Mr. Lee and a drunk, Mr. Grant. The latter burned the South down and went on to become the most corrupt American president until Mr. Bill Clinton shambled onto the scene. Lee, of course is honored by millions to this day. That same kind of choice was made for the Rhodesians, and like Southern Americans, they resisted. But they fought like gentlemen, scarcely realizing how vicious the international community had become. It still amazes me that most Rhodesians had at least a gut assumption that the western countries wouldn't allow the collapse of the country into barbarism and were simply misinformed about the true nature of the struggle there. Shows how wrong you can be. Just as the Southern American forces could have defeated the North, had we but stooped to their barbaric methods, the Rhodesians too could have destroyed their enemies. But they were too civilized to do it. They realized, as Christians must, that defeat is a matter of degree, and when we give into the satanic practices of the enemy, we are lost. Better to lose the whole world than to lose your soul.
Could that be why America declined so radically when our leaders determined to fight communist fire with more of the same? Have we become our enemy? It sure looks like it. Just ask any school kid what he knows about our constitution and you will find he knows nothing. But I bet he knows what kind of underwear the president wears.
In the US, it is commonly assumed that we won the cold war. This is because we were so misinformed that most of us assume it was the Russians who were our enemy. No, it was the communists. They rule us now.
The fall of Rhodesia was a dark day in the history of civilized man. Good manners and old fashioned hospitality are now dead in the world. The emergence of the new Zimbabwe seemed to a parallel the decline of the western democracies, who having sold out Rhodesia to the communists, deserved no better. Political correctness rules. Bill Clinton is president of the United States. The states have thrust their constitutional prerogatives at the central government, in exchange for a share of the loot. Property is routinely seized and guns are confiscated. No, we most certainly did NOT win the cold war.
How I wish these arrogant blowhards in London and Washington had to live among the people they purport to love so much. The African tribesmen to whom the politicians handed over Rhodesia had one very important quality in the eyes of the diplomats who shill for the multinationals: they are unsophisticated, and in the case of their carefully selected "leaders," they are quite venal. Mugabe has protected his new found wealth by using the national army to defend his holdings in the Congo, by purchasing a castle in Scotland, and by the massacre of the Matabele tribe – the services of North Korean "advisors" carry a price tag. Yet Mugabe was so very popular in the west until he committed the one unpardonable sin, he expressed his distaste for homosexuality. Perhaps the Matabele would be alive today, had they been gay. Simple African tribesmen of the heterosexual persuasion are quite expendable however; the world proved it's view on that by watching the mass murder unfold in Ruwanda, even though a principled Canadian general had raised all kinds of warning flags well in advance.
Perhaps it's time for a trip back to the dark days of the Chimuranga, and the "Year of the People's Storm." Whole areas of Rhodesia had been rendered uninhabitable by the terrorists, not as feeble, intellectually lazy western journalists wrote, "by the war." As if the war itself did the murdering. No, it was the fine specimens we see referred to now as the "bush war veterans," who tortured whole villages full of people to death "pour encourager les autres." This communist reign of terror begins the first day of any war in which you find them – terrorize the people into subjection, then "swim like fish in the sea." The fact that the villagers will feed anyone who sticks a gun in their face and pretend to like it, escapes most people. The meanest fish swim best but that fails to prove that minnows actually want sharks in their neighborhood. Western journalists assumed the villagers liked the communists because the communists ultimately had their best interests at heart. Only a very foolish black African would support the Smith regime according to the standards of western political thought. The fact that Africans were eating regularly in Rhodesia and South Africa, both under white rule, was of significance only to the African people sitting at table. Westerners, who've never missed a meal, assumed that hunger was a small price to pay for "freedom." Western taxpayers thus found themselves training counter-terrorist forces at home, who would ultimately be used against them, while simultaneously paying for communist insurgency overseas. With never a whimper of complaint – just open that checkbook and keep on trucking. Wasn't it Mao Zedong who said, "There is a sucker born every minute."
The Commonwealth countries brought in troops and police and announced a truce. Jimmy Carter, ultimately dethroned by Clinton as "worst president ever," supported the truce. The only problem with the truce was rather a big one: it was only enforced by one side. The terrorists were plying their vicious trade among the villagers, who were taught to chant "Voteri ne Jonghi," vote for the cock, Mugabi. They were tortured and beaten, subjected to executions and extortion, while the Commonwealth soldiers enjoyed the invigorating environment of the Rhodesian Army battle camps. They, the soldiers at least, got a long with us quite well. But their presence tilted the war against us. They enforced no truce on the other side. We sat in our camps while the communists carved out an election victory with their bayonets.
Now there is talk of British troops going in to save the white farmers. Why? The Brits abandoned their own citizens once before, why not now? When the Brits talk of intervening, they are talking American logistics and those same old overworked red berets. Perhaps their guns work now, unlike in Kosovo. They can button on their uniforms, the ones Drudge claims are made in Germany; hop in their American planes and go off to make a mockery of themselves – these heirs to empire. Kipling is dead – these modern troops are more experienced at police actions in white countries, suppressing the politically incorrect or freedom loving victims of the third way, then duking it out with the "Fuzzi Wuzzis."
Those who imagine they will benefit by association with Britain and America should take a good look at Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. They should ask themselves how on earth can such a marvelous and fertile place be teetering on the brink of starvation. They should consider very carefully the cost of friendship with the greedy, insatiable and totally amoral predators who have usurped the positions of power in the "free world."
May 5, 2000
Mr. Peirce fought with the Rhodesian freedom fighters (the Ian Smith side, of course).
