TIL: Today I Learned...
TLDNR: Rhodesia existed, now it's Zimbabwe
TLDNR: Rhodesia existed, now it's Zimbabwe
I know, its just a lot of lives couldve been saved and perhaps even a brutal, power-mad, homophobic tyrant like Robert Mugabe wouldn't have come to power if white Rhodesians had accepted majority rule as British policy-makers intended and Ian Smith doesn't thumb his collective nose at numerous British PM's, starts off a vicious, guerrila Bush war that spirals into a Cold War proxy conflict all throughout the 1970's that eventually brings in Angola, Mozambique, apartheid South Africa and even Castro's Cuba. For most of the 1970's, South African special forces was training, arming and sometimes even personally took part in "security sweeps" with Rhodesian SA units against Moscow-and-North Korean backed ZANU (?) rebels. After our withdrawal and end of U.S backed regimes in South Vietnam, and Cambodia, the focus, intensity, and scale of the Cold War turned for a time to proxy wars in sub-Saharan Africa, and then Latin America throughout the 1980's and 90's.
The Rhodesian Bush War was sort of South Africa's Vietnam to a certain extent, and their military situation got even worse after a left-wing military coup in Portugal overthrew one of Europe's last fascist regimes, Salazar's Nuevo Estadio (?) (New State) in 1974's Carnation Revolution. After the new Portuguese government granted independence to Angola and Mozambique, it wasnt a matter of if, but when, Smith's regime would fall or crumble.