by James Buchanan

Rhodesia, a small nation bordering on South Africa, became the target of a world-wide boycott for having a White-run government. Despite the boycott, everyone was fed and the Rhodesian army was able to fight off communist terrorists from Angola. The trains ran on time and ordinary people could get gasoline although the boycott eventually caused gas rationing.

Back in 1980, the United States was sympathetic to terrorists, who were trying to overthrow the White government. Under world-wide pressure the government of Rhodesia surrendered to the terrorists in 1980. Prime Minister Ian Smith sold out the best interests of both the Black and White population. For 24 years, a communist tyrant Robert Mugabe has ruled Rhodesia under its African name “Zimbabwe.”

Conditions had deteriorated so badly in Zimbabwe that Mugabe cancelled the 20th anniversary celebration of his coming to power. An Associated Press article reports “Reeling after an unprecedented electoral rebuke, President Robert Mugabe sought to shore up his flagging popularity among Zimbabwe’s landless poor by backing armed black squatters’ illegal occupation of white-owned farms. But 20 years after he led his country to independence as an international hero of African liberation and democracy, Mugabe is now being branded a despot for ignoring court rulings to evict the violent squatters… Mugabe canceled deeply symbolic parades and ceremonies marking the 20th anniversary of freedom from white rule in Rhodesia, as Zimbabwe was known before independence on April 18, 1980. The events were scrapped, he said, to save money to help Zimbabwean flood victims. But he likely feared the jubilant crowds that once packed his rallies would be replaced by protesters and possible violence between rival parties. ‘His ship is sinking. There’s nothing to celebrate and he knows it,’ said Isaac Maphosa, director of the National Constitutional Assembly, an alliance of opposition and reform groups. Inflation soared last year to a record 70 percent, and corruption and economic mismanagement have been blamed for acute gas and power shortages since December that have crippled the economy.”

Another article reports “four months into a crushing fuel shortage, and more than two months since the government began a campaign to clean up slums and informal markets, the capital of about 1.4 million has slowed to a halt. Empty cars are parked in gasoline lines that stretch for blocks. Even at rush hour, pedestrians can stroll across major boulevards without a glance in either direction… Grocery stores routinely run out of cooking oil, sugar and soap. Shoppers must wait in line to buy a loaf of bread… for the past five years, he (Mugabe) has been resorting to increasingly authoritarian measures, including cracking down on political dissent, closing independent newspapers and seizing land owned by white farmers.”

A sane government would be kissing the feet of the White farmers and doing everything it could to make them stay. Instead there have been murders of White farmers while the Mugabe government looks the other way. The government of Niger has actually appealed to Rhodesia’s farmers to move to their country since the threat of starvation to the Nigerians is more important than Marxist rhetoric. White farmers are feeding ALL the people of Rhodesia, but Mugabe considers this an embarrassment instead of a blessing.