Super Rhodesia

Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM

Super Rhodesia

Let us make it 1930. Everyone with half a brain can see that Empire is on the way out. Ghandi in India had the British discussing when and not if. Major agitation in Arab lands and most of Asia. Africa was still pretty quiet but the handwriting was on the wall. Ghandi had started in South Africa. The ANC was already making some noise. So was Nkrumah in Gold Coast [now Ghana]. So a wise man might say that Empire was going to end and Africa would be last.

Now one choice for the Rhodesian white ruling class [self governing since 1923,process complete by 1930] would be union with South Africa. Bad bet given the Anglo-Boer rivalry.

The other was to face cold facts. WW1 had weakened Europe. There were war clouds starting to form on the horizon in Europe, the Med, Far East. The big events were in the future - Manchuria 1931, Hitler 1933, Spain 1936...but the dictators were on the march. Liberal capitalism was in retreat. To survive Rhodesia would need to dilute the number of blacks and achieve real economic self-sufficiency.

So you have 50K and 1.2M blacks. By all means encourage immigration from the British Isles but you aren't going to get that many British people who want to emigrate to Rhodesia in the Depression to compete with African labour at subsistence wages. Fortunately for the Rhodies, the next decade will produce some of the great ethnic slaughters of all time. So take immigrants who will come - only requirement is that they pay passage - Eastern European Jews, Assyrian Christians from Iraq, Copts from Egypt, White Russians refugees from China...this is an age of 'planning' - go for a promise only that they will be allowed to live as long as they work. Rhodesia has excellent land, minerals [more so as this spills into northern Rhodesia].

Next the blacks. The essential mistakes of the colonizers were to give the locals medicine [which massively swelled their numbers] but very little education and zero real chance at social status. We now reverse this. Those Africans living in the traditional sector are denied modern medicine. Spirit world/spirit doctors. However those willing to play by 'civilized' rules - one wife, church on Sunday, etc. get access to some education [call it grade school -letters, numbers, socialization in British mores] followed by apprenticeships in modern skills. The idea is to start low tech processing of agriculture and minerals that are already local. Promise of the local ballot if they buy property, send their kids to school, join police reserve, pay taxes for 10 years. Parliamentary ballot has higher hurdle but jumpable. In other words take Ian Smith's rhetoric from the 70's and make it real. No promise of social integration but a clear plan where over say 30-40 years all would have civic equality and European standards of living.

Now take full advantage of the run-up to war. In OTL this is what Egypt, Palestine, India, others did. Instead of a world swimming in over production world transitioned in the mid to late 30's to a situation where all production was needed. Higher cost didn't matter. No way that you can compete with massive industries but turning raw agriculture into processed canned food, small metal shops, etc. becomes a useful adjunct to empire wide military potential even on a cost plus basis where costs are fairly high. This is massive value added and the British Treasury will be grateful. Also start training your literate, numerate, English speaking young blacks in useful trades - auto repair, small machinery repair - all of the endless skilled hand labour that 20th century wars need. As war comes you can do labour conscription for use by the Empire in Egypt, India, even the UK. Skilled hands were desperately needed.

You can also point out that you can do the same transformation to Northern Rhodesia that you have done in the south. Northern Rhodesia [now Zambia] was a metals powerhouse. With the fall of Belgium there you are to keep the mines of Congo running, to expand their railroads.

Now take your police reserves. They can use basic firearms, take orders. You have training facilities that can bang out more such paramilitaries. Black Africa is full of young men. The refugees you have taken in will include many people with police and military backgrounds. In OTL the British Empire wasted 20-25 divisions for most of the war as Imperial garrisons - Middle East, east Africa, India. You can keep banging out police brigades to replace them. And every place your police brigades go your officers make sure to tell their British commanders that they can solve problems -skilled construction workers, truck drivers, mechanics, machinists, warehouse workers ...Rhodesia becomes a major provider of men and units to the British war effort. Easy to build positive monetary reserves - just tell the mother country you will take payment in industrial goods after the war. Meanwhile you are making money, building skill levels, converting traditional African peasants to modern urbanites [this finesses the land question] and forging a transracial national identity. No the races aren't equal. Everybody agrees that will take generations. But they are all Rhodies taking guff from British, Arabs, Indians, etc.

Now for a really cute trick. British took hundreds of thousands of Italian POW's. Shipping was always short. They stuck them everywhere from Ethiopia to Arabia. Rhodies offer to take them all. Claim they need more European workers - treat them halfway decently and many stay after the war and send for their families.

Final trick comes postWW2. There were tens of millions of displaced persons floating around Europe. This time Rhodies can be a bit fussy. You go for skill packages in short supply -real techs, doctors, nurses...you also take orphans. You've now expanded to include northern Rhodesia and probably Katanga, Kivu and Kassai in Congo [offer to buy the Belgians out while making it clear you have no intention of leaving - UK and US have better things to do than piss off their valuable Rhodesian allies over a colonial border dispute]. Take the US side in the Cold War - Marshall Plan aid. You fight beside UK in Cyprus, Aden, Suez, Malaya, Kenya. By the US in Korea and Vietnam. You justify suppression of African nationalism, censorship, security police on Cold War grounds. You are semidemocratic, growing economically, probably majority non-black [i.e. mixed race, mixed marriages, whites, Arabs, Asiatics together outnumber blacks and vastly outnumber traditional blacks]. You arrest the inevitable African Nationalists as International Marxists. Soviets and non-aligned block WILL be backing them so it is NOT impossible for London and DC to swallow. Rhodesia will be more democratic than Taiwan or South Korea and slowly trending in the right direction. The final push comes with Portuguese decolonisation in 1974. You grab Angola and Mozambique. UN will scream but your economy will by this time be too big for sanctions. Angolan oil and the ports from the Portuguese colonies now make you self-sufficient.

I will be the first to concede that this never would have happened. However the challenge was to stretch the limits of the possible. Given a tight cabal of a few hundred of the top people in Salisbury in the late 1920’s it was all foreseeable and doable.

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