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Speaker 1: Also media, Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast

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Speaker 1: that you and I mean you, my friend, are listening

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Speaker 1: to right now. Uh, unless you're the not the youth

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Speaker 1: that I was referring to, in which case I'm not

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Speaker 1: talking to you right now. Go away, come back later,

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Speaker 1: you know, and you know, if you've got to come

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Speaker 1: back later, make sure that you're back in time to

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Speaker 1: hear from our guests in this episode today. Uh that's

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Speaker 1: not really a very clean way to go to to introduces.

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Speaker 2: Hello.

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Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I don't know. I didn't have a good

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Speaker 1: intro planned out, and I just started talking and letting,

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Speaker 1: letting the words follow. But yes, Becker Ramos, welcome to

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Speaker 1: the show. Do you want to plug your pluggables better

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Speaker 1: than I?

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Speaker 2: Yeah?

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Speaker 3: Sure. I am a producer here at iHeart, But I

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Speaker 3: also have my own show called Welcome to al Barrio,

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Speaker 3: which is a podcast about all things Porto Rican history, news, culture.

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Speaker 3: I interview really amazing port Rigans that are redefining what

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Speaker 3: it means to be Puerto Rican all in hope somebody

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Speaker 3: and every episode you feel a little closer to bord

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Speaker 3: Agen no matter where you are in the world. And

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Speaker 3: we have had some amazing guests lately. We literally on Tuesday.

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Speaker 3: I'm like, when is next Tuesday?

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Speaker 1: It'll be Chewy Day.

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Speaker 3: If you are a fan of that bunny, you're a

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Speaker 3: fan of Chewy probably, so tune in. It's gonna be

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Speaker 3: a great episode.

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Speaker 2: That rocks, that rocks cool. And this is my first

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Speaker 2: episode back after I mean, it's not the first episode

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Speaker 2: you'll hear me and it's my first episode was sick.

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Speaker 2: But uh, you guys on the reddit. Ian's a real

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Speaker 2: person and is very much real.

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Speaker 1: We have one episode with our producer Ian instead of Sophie,

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Speaker 1: and I forgot to do a separate introduction.

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Speaker 2: Because I was yeah he and Johnson is a superprising producer,

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Speaker 2: cool Zone Media, really great guy. Can't say enough nice things.

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Speaker 2: But that is who was filling in for me, and

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Speaker 2: nobody reminded Robert that he should.

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Speaker 1: Have separate our producer. Yeah that was that was the subreddit.

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Speaker 2: I'm safe and that was I mm hmm, well done.

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Speaker 1: I fucked up. But you know, well, actually we're going

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Speaker 1: to talk about people who fucked up today. Absolutely, we're

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Speaker 1: talking about Becca. What do you know about Rhodesia?

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Speaker 3: You know, I'm gonna say.

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Speaker 1: Not much, not Okay, okay, not much. That's good. They've

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Speaker 1: come up a few times in previous episodes of our podcast,

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Speaker 1: like Rhodesia is kind of like a specter haunting the

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Speaker 1: white supremacist cause for the last like several decades in

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Speaker 1: the US and abroad, and so we've talked around Rhodesia.

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Speaker 1: We've talked about like how Soldier of Fortune used to

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Speaker 1: try to recruit like white racists in America to fight

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Speaker 1: for the Rhodesian Army in Africa, but we haven't talked

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Speaker 1: about but Rhodesia directly as like the pure subject of

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Speaker 1: an episode we talked about that fucking guy who got

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Speaker 1: wrongfully blamed for doing the anthrax attacks in the US,

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Speaker 1: who like volunteered the Rhodesian Army. We've talked about We've

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Speaker 1: talked around Rhodesia a bunch, but this week we're talking

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Speaker 1: about Ian Smith, who was the Prime Minister of Rhodesia

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Speaker 1: for its entire existence. Is what you might call an

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Speaker 1: independent country, although it's never recognized by the rest of

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Speaker 1: the world as an independent country. But the kind of

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Speaker 1: TLDR before we get into this is that Rhodesia was

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Speaker 1: a state in southern Central Africa, that was started as

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Speaker 1: like a colony of the British Empire and declared its

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Speaker 1: own independence illegally from Great Britain in the late twentieth

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Speaker 1: century and fought like a twenty year war against the

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Speaker 1: black majority of the country, which was fought by like

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Speaker 1: the white colonists who owned all of the guns, and

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Speaker 1: eventually they failed and Rhodesia became Zimbabwe. And that's like

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Speaker 1: the long story, short version, Right, So we're going to

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Speaker 1: talk about how all of that happened this week. Are

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Speaker 1: you excited, Becca, let's get into it. Yeah, you should be.

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Speaker 1: You should be. So in the early eighteen eighties, that's

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Speaker 1: where we're going to start our tail because that's kind

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Speaker 1: of where the origins of Rhodesia come from. Right, You've

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Speaker 1: got this this period of time in which the great

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Speaker 1: powers of Europe are all caught up in what was

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Speaker 1: became called the Scramble for Africa. Right near the end

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Speaker 1: of the eighteen eighties, kind of all of these different

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Speaker 1: European powers that had gotten rich by setting up colonies

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Speaker 1: all over the world had started to like they'd kind

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Speaker 1: of run into two horrifying realizations. The first was that

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Speaker 1: the map was no longer mostly empty, right, like the world.

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Speaker 1: We knew what was in the world as a general rule,

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Speaker 1: and we knew like there were no longer blank spots

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Speaker 1: on the map. In the European mind of those had

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Speaker 1: never really been blank spots on the map, but as

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Speaker 1: far as white people were concerned, there used to be

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Speaker 1: a lot of those. And the other was kind of

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Speaker 1: only Africa. We know what's going on in Asia, we

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Speaker 1: know what's going on in the Americas, and in fact,

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Speaker 1: most of those American colonies that we used to have

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Speaker 1: have started kicking us out right, but Africa would never

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Speaker 1: do that to us. And there's this also this understanding

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Speaker 1: because of the kind of dominant economic understandings of the time,

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Speaker 1: there's this wide spread belief that like, well, the world,

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Speaker 1: you're not just like making new more of anything, Like

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Speaker 1: there's a finite amount of all the resources we have,

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Speaker 1: and so the countries that want to be great have

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Speaker 1: to steal as much of the rest of the world

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Speaker 1: as they can. And when we're out of the rest

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Speaker 1: of the world to steal the power, positions of the

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Speaker 1: great powers will be locked. So there's this real panic,

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Speaker 1: especially among countries like Germany that are like, wait a second,

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Speaker 1: we'll never get a chance to be bigger than the

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Speaker 1: British Empire. And obviously the British empires, like, wait a second,

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Speaker 1: other guys are going to try to like swoop in

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Speaker 1: and grab enough Africa that they can they can get

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Speaker 1: bigger than us, Absolutely the fuck not. So everybody starts

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Speaker 1: rushing to try to grab as much of Africa, like

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Speaker 1: every part of Africa that wasn't nailed down in the

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Speaker 1: possession of other Europeans. Right. All this gets sparked when

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Speaker 1: the Belgians take the Congo, but it it goes on

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Speaker 1: for decades, and it's it winds up causing most of

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Speaker 1: the problems in Africa that we're gonna be dealing with

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Speaker 1: in the twentieth and twenty first centuries. Right. Weirdly enough,

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Speaker 1: if you look back at like and read how a

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Speaker 1: lot of these imperial thinkers talked about African colonization during

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Speaker 1: the Scramble, there's this kind of manic paranoia to them

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Speaker 1: that seems really similar to how like venture capitalists talk

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Speaker 1: about AI today, where they believe that, like we have,

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Speaker 1: we've got a we've got a couple of years to

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Speaker 1: set out who's going to be powerful forever and so

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Speaker 1: if we fuck up and don't get enough Africa, then

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Speaker 1: that's the game plan obviously, right.

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Speaker 3: I love all the consideration that there were people there

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Speaker 3: were never on their mind, you know, Like it's this

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Speaker 3: concept that it's like we must be the rulers of

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Speaker 3: civilization because we lead civilization as the European majority.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, where the civilizing power. Yeah, And if we don't

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Speaker 1: get enough of Africa, maybe those those dastardly crowds will

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Speaker 1: get to do you know, more of civilizing than us.

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Speaker 1: So part of the idea here and again these are

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Speaker 1: bound up in all these mercantilist attitudes about how the

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Speaker 1: economy works back then. They don't fully graft even how

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Speaker 1: we understand stuff like capitalism today. But part of the

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Speaker 1: idea that was in vogue among people at the time

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Speaker 1: is that land is the only resource that really mattered,

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Speaker 1: and you know, all of the freeland was running out,

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Speaker 1: and that put a ceiling on how wealthy and powerful

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Speaker 1: in a European nation could get. In eighteen eighty nine,

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Speaker 1: the crown granted a royal charter to the British South

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Speaker 1: Africa Company, which are allowed it to expropriate land and

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Speaker 1: the vast chunk of Southern Africa that the Brits felt

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Speaker 1: was ours basically and exploit its resources. Right, So the

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Speaker 1: Crown gives this guy, Cecil Roads, who's the founder of

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Speaker 1: the b SAC. Yes, Cecil, we've done.

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Speaker 2: Episodes of Cecil fucked Cecil.

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Speaker 1: They give Cecil, the founder of the British South African Company,

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Speaker 1: you know, this charter to colonize a bunch of British

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Speaker 1: South Africa right under the governance of the British South

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Speaker 1: Africa Country Company. And Rhodes goes in to this area

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Speaker 1: and he signed some treaties with local leaders, including the

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Speaker 1: big local leader, this guy named King Lobengula of the Nebele, right.

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Speaker 1: And the idea of all these treaties is that that

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Speaker 1: way none of what we're doing will look like an

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Speaker 1: invasion and a land grab. This is kind of again

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Speaker 1: the Belgians started this. But the idea is if you

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Speaker 1: go in and you get like treaties from the locals,

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Speaker 1: then you're not taking over. Then you're like helping the

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Speaker 1: locals govern you know, this territory with their consent, and

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Speaker 1: it doesn't seem as gross. This is always a lie

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Speaker 1: and the light of this is made is as Cecil

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Speaker 1: is making these treaties. He's also formed what's called the

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Speaker 1: Pioneer Column, which is this giant mercenary army, and he

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Speaker 1: just grabs white fighters from all of the white parts

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Speaker 1: of British Africa and is like, hey, were you too

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Speaker 1: late to wind up, you know, becoming a rich farmer

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Speaker 1: in South Africa. Well maybe you can be a rich

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Speaker 1: farmer in Rhodiji. You just pick up a gun and

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Speaker 1: join the Pioneer Column, right, Like, that's the idea here.

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Speaker 1: We're going to clear these locals out and we're going

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Speaker 1: to take land. I'm going to give anyone who fights

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Speaker 1: for me a big chunk of land, you know. So

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Speaker 1: he sends this column up. The locals get really pissed.

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Speaker 1: There's a war. We've already covered the First Matabelele War

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Speaker 1: in our Cecil Roads episodes. It's very bloody and it

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Speaker 1: ends in eighteen ninety three with British forces winning a

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Speaker 1: bloody victory because they've got machine guns and stuff. Right.

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Speaker 1: That first war buys Rhodes's colonizers about three years of

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Speaker 1: peace before another war called the First Chimorenga breaks out

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Speaker 1: in eighteen ninety six. That name came from a warrior

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Speaker 1: who led the Marenga people in a rebellion against the

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Speaker 1: British a few years earlier, and the Chimaerenga becomes the

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Speaker 1: shown US people's term for a revolutionary struggle. When we

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Speaker 1: eventually cover Robert mcgabi, that term will be really like meaningful,

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Speaker 1: because that's one that he uses a lot. But the

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Speaker 1: first Chimoringa is this rebellion of all these peoples and

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Speaker 1: what becomes Rhodigia against Rhodes and his like pioneer settlers.

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Speaker 1: And it starts when of a religious leader, a guy

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Speaker 1: named Milimo, convinces a bunch of Nobele and Shona people

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Speaker 1: that white settlers in the area, who were numbered about

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Speaker 1: four thousand at this point, were responsible for the drought

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Speaker 1: that had been hitting for the last couple of like

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Speaker 1: growing cycles. And obviously they weren't, but they were responsible

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Speaker 1: for other things that were making the people in the

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Speaker 1: area unhappy. So these folks band together and they carry

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Speaker 1: out a series of attacks on like Native police stations,

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Speaker 1: which are a big thing that they Because there's not

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Speaker 1: a lot of white people, the white people will find

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Speaker 1: groups of like black indigenous people who they considered more trustworthy,

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Speaker 1: and they'll make them, you know, native police, and you'll

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Speaker 1: get to police this area and we'll give you some money.

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Speaker 1: So the rebels kill wipe out some of these police

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Speaker 1: stations and they start attacking like white settlers on their farms,

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Speaker 1: these like farms full of white families that have taken

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Speaker 1: land from the indigenous people and have started farming there.

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Speaker 1: And within the first week of this rebellion, about three

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Speaker 1: hundred white settlers have been killed. So this really pisses off,

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Speaker 1: you know, the British South African Company, and it provides

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Speaker 1: sort of the justification for them to send real forces

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Speaker 1: into the area, and in very short order the rebellion

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Speaker 1: is broken. Right, the Shona and the Neballe people they

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Speaker 1: don't really have the firepower to contrast like any of

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Speaker 1: these sort of pioneer armies, and they get wiped out

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Speaker 1: in pretty bloody fashion after this point. So this is

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Speaker 1: like eighteen ninety six eighteen ninety seventh that you have

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Speaker 1: this war, and none of the white colonial leaders who

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Speaker 1: are on the ground and becomes Rhodisia at the time,

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Speaker 1: are stupid enough to believe that like, just because we

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Speaker 1: beat them in a second war, they're going to be

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Speaker 1: peaceful forever, right, we had fought a war three years previously.

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Speaker 1: There's been a lot of history of colonization in South

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Speaker 1: Africa that evolves, you know, pretty regular war and violence.

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Speaker 1: So their plan after this eighteen ninety six to seven

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Speaker 1: war is, let's create a bunch of changes that will

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Speaker 1: make it impossible for the locals to resist and mass

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Speaker 1: ever again. Right, We're going to as we set up

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Speaker 1: the governing for what's going to be a colony and

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Speaker 1: then a country, our entire legal system is going to

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Speaker 1: be based around making sure black people can't organize and

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Speaker 1: resist white people, right like, that's the foundation of Rhodesian

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Speaker 1: political society. As an article in The Conversation summarizes, the

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Speaker 1: British South Africa Company introduced commercial agricultural development after discovering

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Speaker 1: that the colony was not rich in gold. Commercial farming

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Speaker 1: was dependent on the expropriation of land from the rural population,

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Speaker 1: so in eighteen ninety eight it encouraged expropriation for commercial

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Speaker 1: agricultural production of tobacco, maize, and corn. It also set

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Speaker 1: up a reserve system which aimed to move and concentrate

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Speaker 1: Shona and Theble populations into so called native reserve lands.

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Speaker 1: So they're doing the in America, and this is very

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Speaker 1: consciously they're kind of looking at what I mean. This

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Speaker 1: is also based on other things the British have done elsewhere,

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Speaker 1: but they're influenced by what the is doing with reservations,

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Speaker 1: you know, of the native people of North America. And

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Speaker 1: that's kind of what Rhodesia starts by doing, is we

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Speaker 1: need the best farm land, so we're going to kick

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Speaker 1: people off of it. We'll give them farms, but in

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Speaker 1: land that they can't really support their population on. And

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Speaker 1: that'll also allow us to kind of concentrate them in

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Speaker 1: areas where we can control them better, where they can't

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Speaker 1: link up together and make better use of their numbers.

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Speaker 1: So what becomes Southern Rhodesia, which is initially a private

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Speaker 1: corporate colony of the British South African Company, starts up

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Speaker 1: in this period of time. The name Rhodesia starts getting

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Speaker 1: used in eighteen ninety five when they're still fighting these wars,

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Speaker 1: and it's kind of adopted unofficially before it's adopted officially.

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Speaker 1: Is the name of this colony. As Charlton Cussons wrote

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Speaker 1: for a twenty twenty four article in the journal Historical Research,

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Speaker 1: its purpose was both to line the Coffers of Roads

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Speaker 1: and his backers in the Cape in London and also

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Speaker 1: outflank the Boers of the Transvaal Republic. So this is

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Speaker 1: also this is both like a way for these white

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Speaker 1: farmers to get rich in an area that hasn't been

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Speaker 1: settled yet, but it's it's a way to deal with

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Speaker 1: the fact that this this the South like South Africans

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Speaker 1: are not they're under like control of the British Empire,

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Speaker 1: but they're not British, right, They're like they're Boer and

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Speaker 1: the British don't trust them, and they're like, we're gonna

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Speaker 1: have to fight these fuckers at some point. It would

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Speaker 1: be really helpful if we had like a polity, like

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Speaker 1: a colony on their border that we could use as

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Speaker 1: a base, but that we could trust. So that's another

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Speaker 1: part of like they're not just starting Rhodesia in order

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Speaker 1: to take shit from the indigenous people. They're also starting

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Speaker 1: Rhodesia in order to make sure the Boers don't control

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Speaker 1: too much. Right, It's it's both of those things at once.

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Speaker 2: It's great Britain they love to colonize.

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Speaker 1: Historically, they love to colonize, and they also periodically have

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Speaker 1: to create new colonies to deal with the problems created

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Speaker 1: by the colonies they created earlier or wound up in

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Speaker 1: charge of earlier. So the name Rhodesia again, it starts

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Speaker 1: as kind of a bit of a joke, but it

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Speaker 1: sticks because of its fundamental honesty, given that it borders

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Speaker 1: South Africa and comes to share a white supremacist outlook

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Speaker 1: on government. A lot of people are surprised to hear that.

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Speaker 1: Initially Rhodesians and South Africans do not get along at

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Speaker 1: all because Rhodesians are British and South Africans are Boers

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Speaker 1: and they kind of hate each other for a long time.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen twenty two, yeah, classic white people in Africa.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen twenty two, white people in Rhodesia have a

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Speaker 1: referendum on whether or not to join South Africa. You know,

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Speaker 1: in the early nineteen hundreds, not long after Rhodesia's establishment,

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Speaker 1: you have these brutal wars, like this brutal war that

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Speaker 1: the British Empire fights against the Boers in South Africa.

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Speaker 1: You've got this Boer War where they really experiment with

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Speaker 1: concentration camps in a big way for the British in

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Speaker 1: the first time against these Boer people, and it's this

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Speaker 1: really hideous conflict. And so not long after that, after

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Speaker 1: you know, South Africa has been kind of beaten back

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Speaker 1: into shape, there's this referendum on like do we want, hey, Rhodesians,

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Speaker 1: do you guys want to be part of South Africa?

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Speaker 1: And the British are like, absolutely not. We're not Boer, Like,

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Speaker 1: we're British people. We're part of Britain. We want to

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Speaker 1: be part of the British Empire. We won't want to

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Speaker 1: be part of South Africa. Like that's not our kind

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Speaker 1: of thing. And it's interesting because this is the white supremacists,

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Speaker 1: the folks whose primary political goals are white supremacy want

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Speaker 1: to combine Rhodesia and South America because they see, we

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Speaker 1: need to keep all of the white people in this

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Speaker 1: area together so that they can pool their military power.

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Speaker 1: But the Rhodesians, initially they're white supremacist, but they're also

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Speaker 1: British supremacist before anything else, so they just don't want

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Speaker 1: to be they don't want to deal with these like

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Speaker 1: dirty Boers. It's kind of like a big factor in

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Speaker 1: Rhodesian politics is they're a little too racist to be

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Speaker 1: friendly to South Africans until they really need it, which

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Speaker 1: is very funny. You have to be super racist to

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Speaker 1: be like, oh, South Africins not the right kind of

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Speaker 1: white sorry, guyside, yeah yeah, And we have our own

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Speaker 1: apartheid from them, from the Bowers. So one of these

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Speaker 1: early Rhodesions, these British Rhodesians, is a guy named Jack Smith.

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Speaker 1: Jock is originally a Scotsman. He immigrates to Rhodesia in

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Speaker 1: eighteen ninety eight, not long after it becomes a thing,

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Speaker 1: and he settles in a small town called Selukwe, where

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Speaker 1: he comes to own and operate a farm and a mine.

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Speaker 1: He's like got a butcher's shop, and he's good. He's

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Speaker 1: a good businessman. He's successful. He becomes one of the

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Speaker 1: biggest men in town in fairly short order. And part

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Speaker 1: of what makes them successful is he's one of these guys.

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Speaker 1: There's like a gold rush, right, there's mining and farms

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Speaker 1: that people are like rushing to fill. And instead of

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Speaker 1: trying to become a mine owner or a farmer, I mean,

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Speaker 1: he does a little bit of both, but he primarily

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Speaker 1: sells things to miners and farm owners to allow them

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Speaker 1: to like do their bit jobs and that the smart play.

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Speaker 2: My question is it is Jock Smith, Yeah, the right

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Speaker 2: kind of white for them?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah, Jock Smith is the British kind of white.

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Speaker 1: Well he's Scottish, but that's close enough. Yeah, so Jock, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Jock is a successful businessman. He invests wisely and he

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Speaker 1: makes a lot of money. He comes to own a

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Speaker 1: business breeding racehorses and becomes one of the leading men

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Speaker 1: in the growing white settler community of Rhodesia. His young son,

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Speaker 1: Ian Smith, is born in nineteen nineteen, just three years

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Speaker 1: before Rhodesia would vote in that referendum, and Ian Smith

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Speaker 1: is this is the guy. He's going to become the

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Speaker 1: political leader of Rhodesia. And his life is a very

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Speaker 1: normal one, and it was like early years are very

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Speaker 1: normal for kids in colonial British African possessions in this period.

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Speaker 1: His family background is pretty standard for this sort of thing.

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Speaker 1: His mom's family came from some money back in England,

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Speaker 1: and Jock had been you know, he was the sky

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Speaker 1: men who was kind of hungry for success. So he

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Speaker 1: he moves to Rhodesia and he makes a lot of

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Speaker 1: money in Rhodesia and he meets other members of his

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Speaker 1: wife's family before she's traveled over there, and it's like, hey,

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Speaker 1: I'm successful here, why don't you send your fancy daughter

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Speaker 1: to marry me? And like that way I can kind

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Speaker 1: of marry into a higher status in society, and you'll

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Speaker 1: get the money that I've made being successful in this

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Speaker 1: new quality, right Like, that's kind of his background. So

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Speaker 1: from the beginning, his family are like the first generation

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Speaker 1: of like aristocrats in Rhodesian society. And that's the whole

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Speaker 1: that's the whole reason why you want colonies if you're

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Speaker 1: a country like Great Britain and this time, is that

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Speaker 1: it gives something for your hungry young men to do

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Speaker 1: in a way, for them to like climb the ladder

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Speaker 1: without upsetting the apple cart or pushing anyone out of

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Speaker 1: power back home, right like that that's a big part

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Speaker 1: of the appeal. And so colonialism is going to kind

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Speaker 1: of work perfectly for Ian Smith and his family for

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Speaker 1: his entire early life, he is these are some of

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Speaker 1: the people for whom the colonial system is made, and

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Speaker 1: they love it as a result. This is the water

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Speaker 1: that Ian Smith grows up waiting in. He never knows

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Speaker 1: any other way to be right. He loves colonialism.

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Speaker 3: As those who benefit do.

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Speaker 1: As those whose entire life like they were crafted in

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Speaker 1: a lab to further this kind of thing. Basically, like,

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Speaker 1: it's not really weird why he's so loyal to this system.

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Speaker 1: It's everything he's ever known. His dad is the founding

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Speaker 1: member of their town's Masonic lodge. His mom runs the

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Speaker 1: local women's institute. They both get awarded the MBE, which

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Speaker 1: is like the members of the British Empire, right, for

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Speaker 1: their various contributions to civic life in Siluque and in

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Speaker 1: Rhodesia as a whole. And they see this as again

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Speaker 1: like we're creating a new white civilization to civilize and

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Speaker 1: clean up this like wild but valuable and untamed land

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Speaker 1: that's populated sparsely by savages. That's how they're talking about

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Speaker 1: this to themselves, right, is like we're the first generation

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Speaker 1: of people who are like making a civilization out of

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Speaker 1: this like wilderness. Ian would later recall his parents teaching

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Speaker 1: them quote principles and moral values, the sense of right

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Speaker 1: and wrong to their children. His father, who Ian recalled

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Speaker 1: as one of the fairest men I have ever met,

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Speaker 1: repeatedly told his young son, We're entitled to our half

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Speaker 1: of the country and the blacks are entitled to theirs, right,

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Speaker 1: And Ian is going to see this as like and

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Speaker 1: that means that I'm a fair man. I think that

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Speaker 1: white people should have half of Rhodesia and black people

404
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Speaker 1: should have half of Rhodesia. But at the time he's I.

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Speaker 3: Will say that is insane, as people who came into

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Speaker 3: that space.

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Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying, Yeah, like they were there first.

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Speaker 1: And also at the time he's born, there's like two

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Speaker 1: hundred something thousand Rhodesians and there's like four million black

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Speaker 1: people in Rhodesia. So he's like, well, we just want

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Speaker 1: equal space for both races. It's like, but that means

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Speaker 1: white people get a lot more, right.

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Speaker 2: That's that's not called being fair, that's called being.

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Speaker 1: Definitionally.

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Speaker 2: You know, it's entitlement.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, but that's like, that's the big Rhodesian thing is entitlement.

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Speaker 1: That's like sense of like we are here, like we

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Speaker 1: own this in a special way because like we came

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Speaker 1: and stole it very recently. So Ian Smith was again

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Speaker 1: by birth African. He's born in Africa and he's raised there,

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Speaker 1: and he's gonna spend his whole life there, but he's

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Speaker 1: not raised to see himself as an African. First, people

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Speaker 1: like Ian's parents very much considered themselves citizens and part

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Speaker 1: of the British world. And this idea of the British

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Speaker 1: world is a nebulous concept, and it's distant to us

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Speaker 1: today because people don't really talk about that the British

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Speaker 1: world today like they did back then. But this is

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Speaker 1: still the period where the sun never sets on the

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Speaker 1: British Empire, and so we need to we need to

430
00:22:56,119 --> 00:22:58,879
Speaker 1: like think about this concept a little bit because it's

431
00:22:58,960 --> 00:23:01,240
Speaker 1: very influential to everything that comes later. So I'm going

432
00:23:01,320 --> 00:23:05,040
Speaker 1: to quote Charlton Cousins again. Writing in the journal Historical Research,

433
00:23:06,320 --> 00:23:09,040
Speaker 1: Carl Bridge and Kent Fetterwich made the argument that the

434
00:23:09,040 --> 00:23:12,480
Speaker 1: British World was a phenomenon of mass migration, where migrants

435
00:23:12,480 --> 00:23:16,120
Speaker 1: found they could transfer into societies with familiar cultural values.

436
00:23:16,359 --> 00:23:19,120
Speaker 1: In doing so, these settlers and migrants created a global

437
00:23:19,160 --> 00:23:22,440
Speaker 1: community based on the commonality of values in which people

438
00:23:22,480 --> 00:23:26,520
Speaker 1: could enjoy a liberal, pluralistic polity regardless of their location.

439
00:23:26,960 --> 00:23:30,119
Speaker 1: Whiteness was a dominant element, but people of color across

440
00:23:30,160 --> 00:23:33,880
Speaker 1: the world adapted a British identity out of conviction and necessity, right,

441
00:23:34,240 --> 00:23:38,160
Speaker 1: And that's a really important point because these people are

442
00:23:38,240 --> 00:23:41,880
Speaker 1: any in as a white supremacist, but they're not necessarily,

443
00:23:42,000 --> 00:23:45,520
Speaker 1: especially not at the start, white nationalists, because that's not

444
00:23:45,680 --> 00:23:49,720
Speaker 1: the concept of the British world. The British world always

445
00:23:49,840 --> 00:23:53,960
Speaker 1: includes a lot of non white people, even as citizens, right,

446
00:23:54,080 --> 00:23:56,800
Speaker 1: not always as people who are like don't have any

447
00:23:56,880 --> 00:24:00,000
Speaker 1: legal recognition, because there's a lot of like non white

448
00:24:00,040 --> 00:24:02,880
Speaker 1: people who are British like citizens of the British Empire

449
00:24:02,880 --> 00:24:04,840
Speaker 1: in this period too, which again doesn't you know that

450
00:24:04,880 --> 00:24:07,159
Speaker 1: it's not white supremacist and not racist, it's just not

451
00:24:07,320 --> 00:24:10,159
Speaker 1: white nationalists in the same sense that we use that

452
00:24:10,240 --> 00:24:14,680
Speaker 1: word today. And so there's both this idea that, oh,

453
00:24:14,680 --> 00:24:17,840
Speaker 1: there's this beauty of anywhere in the world British people

454
00:24:17,880 --> 00:24:19,720
Speaker 1: are it's a little piece of Britain. So you can

455
00:24:19,760 --> 00:24:23,119
Speaker 1: pick up and move from Scotland to Africa to you know,

456
00:24:23,240 --> 00:24:25,960
Speaker 1: Myanmar or Burma that as they're calling at the time,

457
00:24:26,000 --> 00:24:29,200
Speaker 1: and you're still a citizen of the British world or India,

458
00:24:29,240 --> 00:24:31,600
Speaker 1: and you're still in the British world. And that's really

459
00:24:31,640 --> 00:24:35,199
Speaker 1: cool to a lot of people. But at the same time,

460
00:24:35,400 --> 00:24:37,880
Speaker 1: what you don't have as much in all of these

461
00:24:37,920 --> 00:24:41,400
Speaker 1: other corners. It's always a factor the fact that white

462
00:24:41,400 --> 00:24:44,440
Speaker 1: people are out numbered, but there's also in other different

463
00:24:44,480 --> 00:24:48,159
Speaker 1: parts of the British Empire, there's more idea or concessions

464
00:24:48,200 --> 00:24:50,600
Speaker 1: to the idea that other people are parts of the

465
00:24:50,640 --> 00:24:54,440
Speaker 1: British Empire. In Rhodesia, there's both this understanding that we're

466
00:24:54,480 --> 00:24:57,760
Speaker 1: part of this world wide thing, but also we're really

467
00:24:57,800 --> 00:25:00,919
Speaker 1: badly outnumbered here by black peace people like ten to

468
00:25:01,000 --> 00:25:04,080
Speaker 1: one or more by the time Ian comes up. And

469
00:25:04,119 --> 00:25:07,280
Speaker 1: so there's also this kind of bunker mentality that merges

470
00:25:07,320 --> 00:25:09,679
Speaker 1: with this sense of the British world in the mind

471
00:25:09,840 --> 00:25:13,840
Speaker 1: of white Rhodesian people, right. And so the upside of

472
00:25:13,960 --> 00:25:17,720
Speaker 1: Rhodesian society for white people is there's the sense of egalitarianism.

473
00:25:18,119 --> 00:25:21,120
Speaker 1: Everyone who's white is equal, which is not a factor

474
00:25:21,160 --> 00:25:24,439
Speaker 1: in England, right, there's a lot of class stratification, whereas

475
00:25:24,480 --> 00:25:27,080
Speaker 1: in Rhodesia, doesn't matter how you're born, if you're a

476
00:25:27,080 --> 00:25:31,040
Speaker 1: white person, we're all equal because there's not enough of us, right,

477
00:25:31,080 --> 00:25:33,320
Speaker 1: And that's a big pull to a lot of people.

478
00:25:33,560 --> 00:25:38,080
Speaker 2: Why do they think, why do they think that it's egalitarianism?

479
00:25:38,200 --> 00:25:42,879
Speaker 1: Like what forces white people are equal for white people.

480
00:25:42,960 --> 00:25:45,359
Speaker 1: It's equal, right. In other words, if you're born a

481
00:25:45,400 --> 00:25:48,080
Speaker 1: poor white guy and you move to Rhodesia, you don't

482
00:25:48,119 --> 00:25:50,159
Speaker 1: have to feel ashamed that you're not born into the

483
00:25:50,240 --> 00:25:53,199
Speaker 1: upper class because members of the aristocracy will treat you

484
00:25:53,240 --> 00:25:57,080
Speaker 1: with a basic level of respect they wouldn't take because

485
00:25:57,080 --> 00:25:59,760
Speaker 1: they need you, because we all have to band together

486
00:26:00,080 --> 00:26:04,840
Speaker 1: to hold the line, right. So it's a lot that's

487
00:26:04,880 --> 00:26:07,160
Speaker 1: part of the appeal to these parts of the British

488
00:26:07,160 --> 00:26:10,160
Speaker 1: world that aren't really British is I can go there

489
00:26:10,240 --> 00:26:14,639
Speaker 1: and gain respect as a white British person, but also

490
00:26:14,920 --> 00:26:18,960
Speaker 1: like I have to do that by holding the line

491
00:26:19,000 --> 00:26:21,400
Speaker 1: against this greater number of non white people. Right. There's

492
00:26:21,440 --> 00:26:25,159
Speaker 1: this bunker mentality in Rhodesia that's also merged with this

493
00:26:25,280 --> 00:26:29,080
Speaker 1: sense of the British world, right, And that's there's also

494
00:26:29,080 --> 00:26:32,080
Speaker 1: this idea that like, we're building something great, we're like

495
00:26:32,240 --> 00:26:35,040
Speaker 1: saving the world in a way by creating these cults,

496
00:26:35,040 --> 00:26:38,000
Speaker 1: we're civilizing this chunk of the world too. So there's

497
00:26:37,800 --> 00:26:42,200
Speaker 1: this part of like, I'm not just seeking benefit to myself,

498
00:26:42,280 --> 00:26:46,639
Speaker 1: I'm helping to improve humanity at the same time. And

499
00:26:46,680 --> 00:26:49,480
Speaker 1: that's really appealing to a specific kind of guy that

500
00:26:49,560 --> 00:26:54,280
Speaker 1: makes the obvious dangers seem tolerable and inequalities of daily

501
00:26:54,320 --> 00:26:57,400
Speaker 1: life in Rhodesia makes sense, right, the fact that you're

502
00:26:57,520 --> 00:26:59,760
Speaker 1: viewing it all this way. And so by the early

503
00:26:59,840 --> 00:27:04,280
Speaker 1: time twentieth century, Rhodesians have developed a reputation among colonial

504
00:27:04,280 --> 00:27:08,320
Speaker 1: communities in Africa as being quote more British than British.

505
00:27:08,359 --> 00:27:11,080
Speaker 1: And here's what Ian Smith later wrote about that idea.

506
00:27:11,680 --> 00:27:13,400
Speaker 1: That was how we were all brought up and taught

507
00:27:13,440 --> 00:27:15,679
Speaker 1: to live. When you walked past the Union Jack, and

508
00:27:15,720 --> 00:27:18,240
Speaker 1: it was in the forefront of most buildings of any consequence,

509
00:27:18,520 --> 00:27:21,440
Speaker 1: you looked at it and admired it. All formal occasions

510
00:27:21,440 --> 00:27:24,520
Speaker 1: commenced with the national anthem, with everyone standing at attention,

511
00:27:24,600 --> 00:27:26,639
Speaker 1: and if you move there would be a restraining hand

512
00:27:26,680 --> 00:27:31,800
Speaker 1: on your shoulder. Right, this is intense propaganda. These kids,

513
00:27:32,160 --> 00:27:36,080
Speaker 1: white kids like Ian are being well, yeah, but they're

514
00:27:36,119 --> 00:27:40,080
Speaker 1: being raised not just to believe that like they're better,

515
00:27:40,320 --> 00:27:44,840
Speaker 1: they're engaged in this noble, heroic, sacred project of civilizing,

516
00:27:45,240 --> 00:27:50,199
Speaker 1: but also like you're a part of this thing that

517
00:27:50,280 --> 00:27:53,560
Speaker 1: will protect you from these obvious dangers that you see

518
00:27:53,600 --> 00:27:57,080
Speaker 1: staring out at you every single day. Right, And so

519
00:27:57,720 --> 00:28:02,119
Speaker 1: that makes young white kids who are deeply, unceasingly loyal

520
00:28:02,320 --> 00:28:07,240
Speaker 1: to this idea of the British world right and this

521
00:28:07,400 --> 00:28:10,480
Speaker 1: idea of Rhodesia, and they're going to fight very hard

522
00:28:10,520 --> 00:28:14,200
Speaker 1: to maintain these things. This is kind of this ideological

523
00:28:14,400 --> 00:28:17,920
Speaker 1: training is going to make perfectly loyal soldiers to go out,

524
00:28:17,920 --> 00:28:19,520
Speaker 1: who are going to want to go out and push

525
00:28:19,520 --> 00:28:22,479
Speaker 1: the frontier. And that's how Ian grows up. That's how

526
00:28:22,480 --> 00:28:25,600
Speaker 1: he describes himself as a child. Right, we'll talk more

527
00:28:25,640 --> 00:28:35,840
Speaker 1: about that, but first here's some ASTs. Yeah, we're back,

528
00:28:36,800 --> 00:28:39,720
Speaker 1: so I want to read a little quote. Another quote

529
00:28:39,720 --> 00:28:42,240
Speaker 1: from Ian Smith. This is later from his autobiography, how

530
00:28:42,240 --> 00:28:45,400
Speaker 1: he kind of talks about his own ideological makeup as

531
00:28:45,400 --> 00:28:48,080
Speaker 1: a little kid. This is how he grows up, believing

532
00:28:48,160 --> 00:28:51,400
Speaker 1: the world works, law and order in your society, discipline

533
00:28:51,440 --> 00:28:53,480
Speaker 1: at your school, play the game by your fellow man,

534
00:28:53,520 --> 00:28:56,280
Speaker 1: you cannot let your team down, and then the final analysis,

535
00:28:56,320 --> 00:28:58,600
Speaker 1: it may even be necessary to die for your cause.

536
00:28:58,880 --> 00:29:01,120
Speaker 1: Those are the conditions under which you lived under, which

537
00:29:01,200 --> 00:29:03,560
Speaker 1: is a member of the British Empire, you were privileged

538
00:29:03,640 --> 00:29:08,080
Speaker 1: to live, right, These are they're very much kind of

539
00:29:08,080 --> 00:29:11,200
Speaker 1: see themselves as like modern spartans. In a lot of ways,

540
00:29:11,320 --> 00:29:13,640
Speaker 1: including like we've got all these helots we've got to

541
00:29:13,720 --> 00:29:14,520
Speaker 1: keep down, right.

542
00:29:15,120 --> 00:29:17,719
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pathological propaganda.

543
00:29:18,440 --> 00:29:19,920
Speaker 1: And you have to do that if you want to

544
00:29:19,960 --> 00:29:23,760
Speaker 1: maintain an empire. Right, this is part of the machinery

545
00:29:23,800 --> 00:29:26,360
Speaker 1: of empire, is you need white kids like this who

546
00:29:26,400 --> 00:29:30,920
Speaker 1: grow up surrounded and thus really both dedicated to their

547
00:29:30,920 --> 00:29:34,160
Speaker 1: fellow white people and also with this kind of just

548
00:29:34,560 --> 00:29:36,680
Speaker 1: gut understanding that I have to be willing to fight

549
00:29:36,760 --> 00:29:41,200
Speaker 1: at all times because I'm surrounded, right, Otherwise they're going

550
00:29:41,280 --> 00:29:43,840
Speaker 1: to take away what's mine which I took from them,

551
00:29:43,880 --> 00:29:46,480
Speaker 1: or my parents took from them. Right. But yeah, so

552
00:29:46,600 --> 00:29:49,000
Speaker 1: Ian grows up this way. He describes himself as a

553
00:29:49,000 --> 00:29:54,440
Speaker 1: pretty average child, and my only quibble with his autobiography

554
00:29:54,640 --> 00:29:57,560
Speaker 1: is the fact that, like, we don't get a lot

555
00:29:57,640 --> 00:30:01,080
Speaker 1: about his early childhood. He opens his aobiography with two

556
00:30:01,080 --> 00:30:04,320
Speaker 1: full pages talking about how badass and amazing his parents were,

557
00:30:04,400 --> 00:30:06,720
Speaker 1: like listing all of the awards his mummy and daddy got,

558
00:30:06,960 --> 00:30:08,760
Speaker 1: all of the clubs that they started, all of the

559
00:30:08,760 --> 00:30:12,520
Speaker 1: cool things that they did, and he doesn't talk anything

560
00:30:12,640 --> 00:30:15,880
Speaker 1: about his own childhood. There's nothing in here about his

561
00:30:15,920 --> 00:30:19,120
Speaker 1: early life. The first three pages are almost exclusively about

562
00:30:19,120 --> 00:30:21,280
Speaker 1: his mom and dad, and all he says about his

563
00:30:21,360 --> 00:30:23,840
Speaker 1: childhood is that it was pretty average and he did

564
00:30:23,880 --> 00:30:26,120
Speaker 1: well in math and science as opposed to the arts

565
00:30:26,120 --> 00:30:29,560
Speaker 1: and classics. He doesn't talk at all about his own youth.

566
00:30:29,760 --> 00:30:32,200
Speaker 1: He's only interested in what his parents did. And I

567
00:30:32,280 --> 00:30:33,720
Speaker 1: kind of read from that this is a kid who

568
00:30:33,720 --> 00:30:37,840
Speaker 1: grows up worshiping his parents, right and kind of threw

569
00:30:37,920 --> 00:30:40,720
Speaker 1: them worshiping the British Empire. But he doesn't see anything

570
00:30:40,760 --> 00:30:43,719
Speaker 1: as important about himself as a child because he is

571
00:30:43,800 --> 00:30:46,520
Speaker 1: All he's ever doing is thinking about how amazing his

572
00:30:46,600 --> 00:30:48,200
Speaker 1: mom and dad were and now he has to live

573
00:30:48,280 --> 00:30:51,720
Speaker 1: up to their example. That's kind of out what I catch,

574
00:30:51,760 --> 00:30:57,440
Speaker 1: at least by analysis of his work. So he is

575
00:30:57,520 --> 00:30:59,680
Speaker 1: not really going to talk at all about his own

576
00:30:59,720 --> 00:31:03,360
Speaker 1: childhood until he starts playing sports in high school, and

577
00:31:03,360 --> 00:31:05,320
Speaker 1: then he we have pages about how good he is

578
00:31:05,320 --> 00:31:07,080
Speaker 1: at rugby and how good he is at all these

579
00:31:07,120 --> 00:31:08,600
Speaker 1: that I'm not going to quote for you. You don't

580
00:31:08,600 --> 00:31:11,400
Speaker 1: need to hear this old dead racist talk about how

581
00:31:11,400 --> 00:31:13,760
Speaker 1: good he was at sports in high school, but it

582
00:31:13,840 --> 00:31:15,840
Speaker 1: is noteworthy. That's probably.

583
00:31:17,040 --> 00:31:18,880
Speaker 2: Most of you are You know who you are?

584
00:31:19,920 --> 00:31:21,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I don't know. I'm sure he was

585
00:31:21,360 --> 00:31:25,000
Speaker 1: good in fucking colonial sports in his class of like

586
00:31:25,080 --> 00:31:28,280
Speaker 1: ten other white kids. Right, it's also not the I

587
00:31:28,360 --> 00:31:30,160
Speaker 1: don't know in that situation.

588
00:31:30,280 --> 00:31:32,320
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, sports looks very different.

589
00:31:32,360 --> 00:31:33,240
Speaker 1: Then we only have.

590
00:31:33,280 --> 00:31:35,880
Speaker 2: His word for it. And you know what, I don't

591
00:31:35,880 --> 00:31:37,240
Speaker 2: trust Ian Smith.

592
00:31:38,480 --> 00:31:40,240
Speaker 1: But you know, I bet it is easier to be

593
00:31:40,360 --> 00:31:42,920
Speaker 1: like the best kid in your school at basketball when

594
00:31:42,960 --> 00:31:46,040
Speaker 1: your school is like twelve other rich white kids. Like

595
00:31:46,320 --> 00:31:48,280
Speaker 1: of course, yeah.

596
00:31:47,960 --> 00:31:50,600
Speaker 2: Robert, you would be the Lebron James of that high school.

597
00:31:50,720 --> 00:31:52,960
Speaker 1: I would be. I would have been the Lebron, yes,

598
00:31:54,440 --> 00:31:57,240
Speaker 1: because I'm taller than most of these Rhodesian kids were.

599
00:31:57,920 --> 00:31:58,960
Speaker 2: Yeah.

600
00:31:59,200 --> 00:32:02,560
Speaker 1: So. And yet this is though, one of the things

601
00:32:02,600 --> 00:32:04,120
Speaker 1: I noticed, because I thought it was weird at first

602
00:32:04,120 --> 00:32:06,440
Speaker 1: going through Ian Smith's out of biographiography and being like,

603
00:32:06,480 --> 00:32:08,480
Speaker 1: he only talks about the sports he played as a kid.

604
00:32:08,520 --> 00:32:11,160
Speaker 1: We don't get anything about Like, he doesn't give us

605
00:32:11,200 --> 00:32:14,240
Speaker 1: any specific details of like things his dad told him

606
00:32:14,400 --> 00:32:17,320
Speaker 1: early experiences in childhood that made him think about the

607
00:32:17,320 --> 00:32:19,800
Speaker 1: way his society was ordered, the first time he saw

608
00:32:19,840 --> 00:32:21,800
Speaker 1: a black person working in a field. We don't get

609
00:32:21,800 --> 00:32:23,560
Speaker 1: any of that from Ian Smith. What we do get

610
00:32:23,760 --> 00:32:25,920
Speaker 1: is in talking about sports. And you see that in

611
00:32:25,960 --> 00:32:29,080
Speaker 1: a lot of memoirs by right white Rhodesians when they'll

612
00:32:29,120 --> 00:32:32,520
Speaker 1: talk about, like how before Rhodesia fell, before those you know,

613
00:32:32,560 --> 00:32:35,640
Speaker 1: the natives took it over and made Zimbabwe and destroyed

614
00:32:35,680 --> 00:32:38,200
Speaker 1: the wonderful country we had, they'll talk about what life

615
00:32:38,240 --> 00:32:40,680
Speaker 1: was like, and nearly all of those anecdotes are just

616
00:32:40,840 --> 00:32:43,720
Speaker 1: about like sporting. They'll just talk about polo and hunting.

617
00:32:44,160 --> 00:32:47,160
Speaker 1: That's like every Rhodesian account of life in Rhodesia is

618
00:32:47,240 --> 00:32:50,719
Speaker 1: like polo and hunting and being served by servants. And

619
00:32:51,000 --> 00:32:53,320
Speaker 1: I found that kind of weird until he read a

620
00:32:53,360 --> 00:32:56,120
Speaker 1: piece in City Journal by a guy named Theodore Dalrymple

621
00:32:56,200 --> 00:32:59,200
Speaker 1: who moved to Rhodesia in like the sixties or seventies

622
00:32:59,200 --> 00:33:01,840
Speaker 1: and worked as a doctor there, right, And he's working

623
00:33:01,840 --> 00:33:04,240
Speaker 1: there as a doctor while the country is falling apart.

624
00:33:04,280 --> 00:33:06,960
Speaker 1: So he's a foreigner who comes there to work as

625
00:33:07,000 --> 00:33:10,720
Speaker 1: like an emergency medicine basically, and he gets to see

626
00:33:10,760 --> 00:33:13,280
Speaker 1: the country as an outsider. And so I read his

627
00:33:13,320 --> 00:33:15,240
Speaker 1: recollections and there's a piece in there that gave me

628
00:33:15,320 --> 00:33:17,680
Speaker 1: pause because I think it made some of Smith's stuff

629
00:33:17,720 --> 00:33:19,400
Speaker 1: make a little more sense. To me, And so this

630
00:33:19,480 --> 00:33:23,320
Speaker 1: is Dalrymple talking about being a doctor in Rhodesia. We

631
00:33:23,360 --> 00:33:25,760
Speaker 1: worked hard. I have never worked harder. The luxury of

632
00:33:25,800 --> 00:33:28,280
Speaker 1: our life was this that once our work was done,

633
00:33:28,360 --> 00:33:31,200
Speaker 1: we never had to perform a single chore for ourselves.

634
00:33:31,440 --> 00:33:33,840
Speaker 1: The rest of our time and our most beautiful surroundings

635
00:33:33,880 --> 00:33:37,040
Speaker 1: was given over to friendship, sports, study, hunting, whatever we wished.

636
00:33:37,320 --> 00:33:40,240
Speaker 1: Of course, our leisure rested upon a pyramid of startling

637
00:33:40,240 --> 00:33:43,320
Speaker 1: inequality and social difference. The staff who freed us of

638
00:33:43,360 --> 00:33:46,720
Speaker 1: life's little inconveniences lived in existence that was opague to us.

639
00:33:46,920 --> 00:33:49,120
Speaker 1: Though they had quarters only a few yards from where

640
00:33:49,160 --> 00:33:52,560
Speaker 1: we lived. Their hopes, wishes, fears, and aspirations were not ours.

641
00:33:52,760 --> 00:33:56,920
Speaker 1: Their beliefs, tastes, and customs were alien to us. Does

642
00:33:56,960 --> 00:33:59,800
Speaker 1: that make sense what Theodore is saying in terms of

643
00:33:59,840 --> 00:34:02,200
Speaker 1: like making the fact that all of these Rudesion is

644
00:34:02,240 --> 00:34:05,280
Speaker 1: only right about like playing sports and hunting makes sense

645
00:34:05,320 --> 00:34:07,600
Speaker 1: that their life isn't anything else. They don't have it.

646
00:34:07,720 --> 00:34:10,719
Speaker 3: The way he writes it, though, is so like dissonant

647
00:34:10,920 --> 00:34:14,400
Speaker 3: of the experience they're putting onto the black people that

648
00:34:14,440 --> 00:34:17,839
Speaker 3: are native to that land, where it's like they are

649
00:34:17,880 --> 00:34:20,279
Speaker 3: doing this service to us to free us of the

650
00:34:20,280 --> 00:34:24,760
Speaker 3: burden of work, but then also being like, their dreams

651
00:34:24,760 --> 00:34:26,520
Speaker 3: are different than ours, and it's like, well, you robbed

652
00:34:26,520 --> 00:34:28,520
Speaker 3: them of their dreams because they have to do all

653
00:34:28,520 --> 00:34:29,319
Speaker 3: the hard work for you.

654
00:34:30,200 --> 00:34:32,920
Speaker 1: Dalrymple is saying that because I because he's not a Rhodesian.

655
00:34:32,920 --> 00:34:35,560
Speaker 1: He's saying like, because he calls it startling inequality, right,

656
00:34:35,600 --> 00:34:38,799
Speaker 1: And he's saying that, like, I recognize because I had

657
00:34:38,800 --> 00:34:41,000
Speaker 1: to recognize that we only didn't have to deal with

658
00:34:41,120 --> 00:34:44,560
Speaker 1: chores because all of these people were like forced to

659
00:34:44,600 --> 00:34:46,719
Speaker 1: work for us, and we didn't like we had I

660
00:34:46,760 --> 00:34:48,359
Speaker 1: had no idea what they wanted because they're not even

661
00:34:48,400 --> 00:34:50,280
Speaker 1: allowed to talk to us. I think that's what Theodore

662
00:34:50,400 --> 00:34:50,760
Speaker 1: is saying.

663
00:34:51,040 --> 00:34:53,160
Speaker 3: Yes, I guess I was saying. The dissentance was coming

664
00:34:53,160 --> 00:34:55,840
Speaker 3: from his his wording of the use of opague.

665
00:34:56,080 --> 00:34:59,120
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, yeah, I mean I think it's it's

666
00:34:59,160 --> 00:35:02,480
Speaker 1: it's deliberately made O pay because they were not supposed

667
00:35:02,520 --> 00:35:06,960
Speaker 1: to be talking. And that's the thing Dalrymple recognizes. But

668
00:35:07,239 --> 00:35:09,439
Speaker 1: Ian Smith and guys like him never do. They never

669
00:35:09,840 --> 00:35:13,080
Speaker 1: wonder was the reason why your entire life until the

670
00:35:13,120 --> 00:35:16,719
Speaker 1: war started was just like hunting and playing because you

671
00:35:16,800 --> 00:35:19,080
Speaker 1: never had to be a real person. All you had

672
00:35:19,080 --> 00:35:21,239
Speaker 1: to do was be on vacation most of your life

673
00:35:21,239 --> 00:35:24,120
Speaker 1: while other people worked for you. Right, that's the white

674
00:35:24,200 --> 00:35:28,200
Speaker 1: Rhodesian lifestyle. When people talk about the glorious Rhodesian lifestyle,

675
00:35:28,560 --> 00:35:30,799
Speaker 1: it's having other people do all the work for them.

676
00:35:31,080 --> 00:35:34,400
Speaker 1: It's the same as the Confederacy. Right when people when

677
00:35:34,480 --> 00:35:36,719
Speaker 1: you get this like lost cause narrative about like, oh,

678
00:35:36,760 --> 00:35:39,400
Speaker 1: but things were so different than people were so much

679
00:35:39,520 --> 00:35:41,799
Speaker 1: nicer and more genteel in the Old South, it's like, well,

680
00:35:41,840 --> 00:35:44,480
Speaker 1: because they didn't have to do stuff, it's because other

681
00:35:44,560 --> 00:35:45,480
Speaker 1: people did all the work.

682
00:35:45,640 --> 00:35:48,920
Speaker 3: The way that you were not to be bravo pilled,

683
00:35:49,000 --> 00:35:53,000
Speaker 3: but the way you were reading that text was very

684
00:35:53,080 --> 00:35:54,240
Speaker 3: Southern charm esque.

685
00:35:54,640 --> 00:35:55,200
Speaker 1: Yes, it is.

686
00:35:55,719 --> 00:35:59,280
Speaker 3: It is very much that where these very rich, old

687
00:35:59,360 --> 00:36:02,640
Speaker 3: socialized refuse to acknowledge the lend that they're on. And

688
00:36:02,680 --> 00:36:05,560
Speaker 3: then also speaking that way, where like I love art

689
00:36:05,600 --> 00:36:08,120
Speaker 3: and culture and these things, and it's like on the

690
00:36:08,200 --> 00:36:11,280
Speaker 3: backs of the slave labor that is this land.

691
00:36:11,719 --> 00:36:14,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, are you really cultured if you're able to like

692
00:36:14,520 --> 00:36:16,640
Speaker 1: fucking learn to play the piano because you never have

693
00:36:16,719 --> 00:36:18,879
Speaker 1: to cook your own food or what exactly right, if

694
00:36:18,880 --> 00:36:21,560
Speaker 1: that's the reason you're cultured, is that really cultured? Or

695
00:36:21,600 --> 00:36:27,040
Speaker 1: are you just a blood drenched demagogue? Right? You know exactly? So,

696
00:36:27,680 --> 00:36:30,000
Speaker 1: uh yeah, And that's that's the thing, because I think

697
00:36:30,080 --> 00:36:32,719
Speaker 1: Dalrymple is kind of like recognizing that as an outsider,

698
00:36:32,719 --> 00:36:35,120
Speaker 1: And that's the thing. Ian is never going to examine

699
00:36:35,200 --> 00:36:38,399
Speaker 1: or understand about his own life. Right, So he gets

700
00:36:38,400 --> 00:36:41,200
Speaker 1: sent away to boarding school for his secondary education and

701
00:36:41,200 --> 00:36:44,640
Speaker 1: Evan's awards for rugby and the one hundred yard dash

702
00:36:44,680 --> 00:36:48,040
Speaker 1: because again, his parents aren't Rhodesian parents don't raise their kids.

703
00:36:48,360 --> 00:36:50,719
Speaker 1: They like occasionally give them lectures and then like their

704
00:36:50,760 --> 00:36:52,560
Speaker 1: black nannies, raise them until it's time for them to

705
00:36:52,600 --> 00:36:56,319
Speaker 1: go to boarding school, right, Like, that's how a rich

706
00:36:56,400 --> 00:37:01,120
Speaker 1: Rhodesian family raises their children. His own only detail recollections

707
00:37:01,120 --> 00:37:04,880
Speaker 1: of his childhood involved sporting events. He goes to college

708
00:37:04,920 --> 00:37:07,959
Speaker 1: in South Africa because Rhodesia didn't really have a college yet,

709
00:37:08,080 --> 00:37:10,080
Speaker 1: and he gets to work on a degree in commerce

710
00:37:10,120 --> 00:37:12,399
Speaker 1: and things are going well for Ian Smith, but he's

711
00:37:12,400 --> 00:37:14,040
Speaker 1: not going to get a chance to finish that degree

712
00:37:14,120 --> 00:37:17,839
Speaker 1: right away because near the end of nineteen thirty nine,

713
00:37:18,200 --> 00:37:21,240
Speaker 1: World War Two rears its ugly head and Great Britain

714
00:37:21,280 --> 00:37:22,759
Speaker 1: is going to be one of the first powers to

715
00:37:22,760 --> 00:37:26,520
Speaker 1: get involved. Now, we don't have Ian describing his own

716
00:37:26,560 --> 00:37:28,960
Speaker 1: reaction to the outbreak of hostilities. We don't have him

717
00:37:28,960 --> 00:37:31,040
Speaker 1: talking about like how he felt about any of this,

718
00:37:31,560 --> 00:37:33,360
Speaker 1: but we do have him writing about how many of

719
00:37:33,440 --> 00:37:35,560
Speaker 1: the how many of the young men in his hometown

720
00:37:35,640 --> 00:37:39,000
Speaker 1: were eager to fight just to have something to do. Right,

721
00:37:39,239 --> 00:37:42,520
Speaker 1: there's like nothing to do in Rhodesia. It's really boring

722
00:37:42,560 --> 00:37:44,560
Speaker 1: because I don't have to work. Other people do all

723
00:37:44,560 --> 00:37:47,200
Speaker 1: the work, but like all I have to do, Like

724
00:37:47,400 --> 00:37:49,560
Speaker 1: life is just kind of boring, and war seems more

725
00:37:49,640 --> 00:37:52,680
Speaker 1: exciting than like playing sports back at home. All Right,

726
00:37:53,000 --> 00:37:55,680
Speaker 1: I get a chance to fulfill my patriotic duty. And

727
00:37:55,760 --> 00:37:57,960
Speaker 1: I've been raised to feel like I'm a member of

728
00:37:58,000 --> 00:38:00,680
Speaker 1: this great society that's now being threatened at war, and

729
00:38:00,719 --> 00:38:02,839
Speaker 1: I want a chance to fight for it too. That's

730
00:38:02,880 --> 00:38:06,720
Speaker 1: another part of what's going on for Ian. So, because

731
00:38:06,719 --> 00:38:08,640
Speaker 1: he's a special boy, he's not going to join the

732
00:38:08,640 --> 00:38:11,640
Speaker 1: regular military. He's like at the child of special parents,

733
00:38:11,680 --> 00:38:13,799
Speaker 1: and he feels like he deserves the sexiest job in

734
00:38:13,800 --> 00:38:16,920
Speaker 1: the military at the time, which is fighter pilot. So

735
00:38:16,960 --> 00:38:19,040
Speaker 1: in the winter of nineteen forty, he travels to the

736
00:38:19,080 --> 00:38:22,160
Speaker 1: Rhodesian capital, Salisbury to meet with a contact at the

737
00:38:22,200 --> 00:38:24,680
Speaker 1: Air Force whose name that he had been given is.

738
00:38:24,719 --> 00:38:26,520
Speaker 1: All he writes is that, like, I was given this

739
00:38:26,520 --> 00:38:28,520
Speaker 1: guy's name and I went to meet with him, and

740
00:38:28,560 --> 00:38:31,120
Speaker 1: he got me like a spot in the Air Force

741
00:38:31,200 --> 00:38:33,920
Speaker 1: training academy. I think he has like a family or

742
00:38:33,960 --> 00:38:36,359
Speaker 1: a school connection. Right, this is a rich guy sort

743
00:38:36,360 --> 00:38:38,920
Speaker 1: of thing. Like he gets the job everyone wants in

744
00:38:38,960 --> 00:38:42,000
Speaker 1: the military because he comes from a family who's something,

745
00:38:43,120 --> 00:38:45,520
Speaker 1: but he gets it. He drops out of college to fight.

746
00:38:45,680 --> 00:38:48,000
Speaker 1: This does not seem to have bothered him. Full of

747
00:38:48,040 --> 00:38:51,440
Speaker 1: patriotic fervor. He was posted to a training wing in

748
00:38:51,480 --> 00:38:56,319
Speaker 1: Bulawayo alongside British and Australian cadet groups. The Rhodesians are

749
00:38:56,320 --> 00:38:58,719
Speaker 1: the only ones without a uniform because there'd been no

750
00:38:58,880 --> 00:39:02,279
Speaker 1: need for a Rhodesian Air Corps before the war, right,

751
00:39:02,360 --> 00:39:04,600
Speaker 1: So like they don't even have like an outfit to

752
00:39:04,640 --> 00:39:08,000
Speaker 1: wear it first. They're so like alien to the idea

753
00:39:08,040 --> 00:39:11,520
Speaker 1: of having an independent military of any kind because they're

754
00:39:11,560 --> 00:39:14,800
Speaker 1: just British. Right. So after training, he joins the RAF

755
00:39:14,880 --> 00:39:17,480
Speaker 1: and he gets posted to Egypt and then Lebanon. Where

756
00:39:17,520 --> 00:39:20,600
Speaker 1: he grows comfortable flying. The war came for him in

757
00:39:20,640 --> 00:39:23,120
Speaker 1: a belated fashion, but when it did, it hit hard.

758
00:39:23,480 --> 00:39:25,320
Speaker 1: Over the course of World War Two, he was shot

759
00:39:25,400 --> 00:39:28,680
Speaker 1: down twice in combat, the first time in North Africa,

760
00:39:28,760 --> 00:39:31,160
Speaker 1: and he was badly injured in this first crash.

761
00:39:31,200 --> 00:39:35,200
Speaker 2: Incredible he survived twice being shot down twice twice.

762
00:39:35,760 --> 00:39:40,480
Speaker 1: Real Harrison Ford levels of luck here yes as a

763
00:39:40,520 --> 00:39:43,640
Speaker 1: writer for the AP noted in their eventual obituary of Smith.

764
00:39:43,920 --> 00:39:47,080
Speaker 1: Plastic surgery to fix scars from the first crash, paralyzed

765
00:39:47,080 --> 00:39:49,160
Speaker 1: the right side of his face, giving him a sinister,

766
00:39:49,280 --> 00:39:52,040
Speaker 1: expressionless appearance. So for the rest of his life he's

767
00:39:52,080 --> 00:39:54,880
Speaker 1: this man who can only glare right. That's like a

768
00:39:54,880 --> 00:39:57,719
Speaker 1: big part of his is like, especially when he gets

769
00:39:57,760 --> 00:40:00,560
Speaker 1: into politics. He's really like scary to a lot of

770
00:40:00,600 --> 00:40:03,680
Speaker 1: people because he can't smile or even move his face

771
00:40:03,719 --> 00:40:06,560
Speaker 1: at all. It's just like locked in this stony position

772
00:40:06,600 --> 00:40:09,960
Speaker 1: because he got horribly injured in the plane crash. It's

773
00:40:09,960 --> 00:40:13,279
Speaker 1: a very like Bond villain kind of origin story. So

774
00:40:13,960 --> 00:40:16,439
Speaker 1: he gets better from this first crash and he gets

775
00:40:16,440 --> 00:40:19,040
Speaker 1: posted to Europe where he gets shot down a second time,

776
00:40:19,080 --> 00:40:21,839
Speaker 1: this time over Italy, and he winds up. He has

777
00:40:21,880 --> 00:40:24,239
Speaker 1: like a very cool World War Two. He meets and

778
00:40:24,280 --> 00:40:27,080
Speaker 1: embeds with a group of Italian partisans after he gets

779
00:40:27,080 --> 00:40:29,600
Speaker 1: shot down, and he like fights with them until he

780
00:40:29,640 --> 00:40:33,000
Speaker 1: gets like rescued and Italy is conquered. On the whole

781
00:40:33,160 --> 00:40:35,680
Speaker 1: great World War two story, right, you know. He does

782
00:40:35,719 --> 00:40:40,160
Speaker 1: his bit, no real notes there, and he returns home

783
00:40:40,160 --> 00:40:42,960
Speaker 1: to Africa after the war and finishes his degree at

784
00:40:43,000 --> 00:40:46,840
Speaker 1: Rhodes University. So he comes home a war hero. He

785
00:40:46,880 --> 00:40:49,680
Speaker 1: gets elected when he's back at college in South Africa

786
00:40:49,840 --> 00:40:53,360
Speaker 1: spokesman for veteran students. So there's like a veteran students

787
00:40:53,360 --> 00:40:55,000
Speaker 1: group of the kids did to go away to fight

788
00:40:55,040 --> 00:40:58,160
Speaker 1: World War Two, and he becomes their spokesman at Rhodes University.

789
00:40:58,440 --> 00:41:00,719
Speaker 1: And this is going to be like his first experience

790
00:41:00,760 --> 00:41:03,440
Speaker 1: in politics, Like he has to get basically elected to

791
00:41:03,520 --> 00:41:06,040
Speaker 1: this job. And so he realizes from that, like I

792
00:41:06,160 --> 00:41:09,520
Speaker 1: kind of like campaigning, I kind of like politics. I

793
00:41:09,520 --> 00:41:11,640
Speaker 1: think that might be the thing for me. You know,

794
00:41:11,760 --> 00:41:14,879
Speaker 1: my family's rich. I just became like a war hero.

795
00:41:15,280 --> 00:41:17,720
Speaker 1: I have this kind of gravitas from that. Maybe that's

796
00:41:17,800 --> 00:41:19,040
Speaker 1: what I'm going to do the rest of my.

797
00:41:20,080 --> 00:41:23,200
Speaker 2: Roy from succession, He's like Ian Smith was interested in

798
00:41:23,239 --> 00:41:25,400
Speaker 2: politics at an early age.

799
00:41:26,360 --> 00:41:27,040
Speaker 1: What experiences.

800
00:41:27,400 --> 00:41:28,439
Speaker 2: My family's rich.

801
00:41:28,840 --> 00:41:32,040
Speaker 1: That sounds and I got shut down.

802
00:41:33,120 --> 00:41:38,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's like a colt's that's the and like low key.

803
00:41:38,520 --> 00:41:39,919
Speaker 2: I look them up. They kind of look the same.

804
00:41:41,680 --> 00:41:44,120
Speaker 1: So once he graduates, he goes back to Rhodesia and

805
00:41:44,120 --> 00:41:46,160
Speaker 1: he does what all affluent white men are supposed to

806
00:41:46,160 --> 00:41:49,680
Speaker 1: do in Rhodesia. He buys land and he establishes himself

807
00:41:49,719 --> 00:41:53,200
Speaker 1: as a farmer. In Ian's case, this initially meant tobacco.

808
00:41:53,560 --> 00:41:56,640
Speaker 1: Most farming in Rhodesia was done by black people. At

809
00:41:56,640 --> 00:41:59,600
Speaker 1: its peak, the country had sixty two hundred white farming

810
00:41:59,640 --> 00:42:02,840
Speaker 1: family who employed some three hundred and fifty thousand black

811
00:42:02,920 --> 00:42:06,000
Speaker 1: laborers to work their fields. Right, So that should tell you,

812
00:42:06,400 --> 00:42:09,520
Speaker 1: like how much work is being done by these white

813
00:42:09,600 --> 00:42:12,480
Speaker 1: farmers who always brag about being great farmers and how

814
00:42:12,560 --> 00:42:15,560
Speaker 1: productive they were, how much better the country did. They're

815
00:42:15,560 --> 00:42:20,319
Speaker 1: not farming. Each farming family, on average, had fifty to

816
00:42:20,400 --> 00:42:25,160
Speaker 1: sixty black laborers, right, They're not doing real farming work.

817
00:42:25,440 --> 00:42:28,080
Speaker 1: They're telling people what to do while they wear white

818
00:42:28,120 --> 00:42:34,840
Speaker 1: linen suits and drink julips. You know, like absolutely not. Yeah,

819
00:42:35,200 --> 00:42:38,560
Speaker 1: I cannot exaggerate the degree to which Rhodesians are not farmers.

820
00:42:38,600 --> 00:42:43,600
Speaker 1: White Rhodesians are not farmers. Now. In his autobiography, Ian

821
00:42:43,640 --> 00:42:45,920
Speaker 1: doesn't discuss black workers on his farm at all. He

822
00:42:45,960 --> 00:42:48,880
Speaker 1: doesn't acknowledge that they exist. He talks about his farm

823
00:42:49,120 --> 00:42:52,319
Speaker 1: and how well his farm does, but we don't get

824
00:42:52,360 --> 00:42:54,920
Speaker 1: any discussion about the people who like lived there. He

825
00:42:55,000 --> 00:42:58,040
Speaker 1: makes in his whole autobiography, I only found one brief

826
00:42:58,080 --> 00:43:01,120
Speaker 1: reference to the people who lived on his land before

827
00:43:01,160 --> 00:43:04,040
Speaker 1: he bought it, and this is that reference. Our land

828
00:43:04,040 --> 00:43:07,200
Speaker 1: had been utilized over decades as a squatting camp for workers.

829
00:43:07,200 --> 00:43:09,799
Speaker 1: On the main section of Aberfoil Ranch. There had been

830
00:43:09,800 --> 00:43:13,160
Speaker 1: indiscriminate plowing without the necessary measures for soil protection, and

831
00:43:13,280 --> 00:43:15,839
Speaker 1: uncontrolled wood cutting, not only for fuel, but even more

832
00:43:15,880 --> 00:43:19,680
Speaker 1: devastating for building houses under the traditional Poland dagga system.

833
00:43:20,120 --> 00:43:24,040
Speaker 1: And that's like his issue is, Oh, these squatters who

834
00:43:24,040 --> 00:43:27,360
Speaker 1: were like workers for this nearby farm have been plowing

835
00:43:27,400 --> 00:43:30,120
Speaker 1: the land and ripping up trees to build their houses,

836
00:43:30,160 --> 00:43:32,719
Speaker 1: and they build their houses like the wrong way, so

837
00:43:32,760 --> 00:43:36,000
Speaker 1: they waste all these beautiful trees, and they're damaging the soil.

838
00:43:36,040 --> 00:43:38,160
Speaker 1: And he writes about them like their squatters. They're these

839
00:43:38,239 --> 00:43:41,360
Speaker 1: workers who are like wrongly on my land, damaging it

840
00:43:41,400 --> 00:43:44,560
Speaker 1: as opposed to like but like before the Aberfoil ranch,

841
00:43:44,920 --> 00:43:47,279
Speaker 1: they just lived there and they probably got kicked off

842
00:43:47,320 --> 00:43:50,120
Speaker 1: of wherever their village was because a white guy wanted

843
00:43:50,120 --> 00:43:51,960
Speaker 1: a ranch, which is why they had to move over

844
00:43:52,000 --> 00:43:54,440
Speaker 1: to your land before you owned it, which is the

845
00:43:54,440 --> 00:43:56,439
Speaker 1: only place that they could live. And then you moved

846
00:43:56,440 --> 00:43:58,160
Speaker 1: in and there you're like, oh, these guys are bad

847
00:43:58,200 --> 00:44:01,480
Speaker 1: for the bad for the environ They're bad for the climate.

848
00:44:01,520 --> 00:44:03,120
Speaker 1: Look at how bad they are for the trees. They're

849
00:44:03,160 --> 00:44:06,160
Speaker 1: destroying trees. Better kick them off, right. They're not thinking

850
00:44:06,160 --> 00:44:08,080
Speaker 1: at all about the fact that these are people who

851
00:44:08,120 --> 00:44:10,319
Speaker 1: live here. They're thinking about them as like, well, I

852
00:44:10,320 --> 00:44:12,880
Speaker 1: own this beautiful land and these people are making it ugly.

853
00:44:13,280 --> 00:44:16,879
Speaker 1: They're bad for the land, right, the people who live here.

854
00:44:17,239 --> 00:44:22,960
Speaker 1: That's the Rhodesian attitude in a nutshell. Yeah he sucks, Yeah,

855
00:44:23,280 --> 00:44:28,080
Speaker 1: so that's pretty cool. He doesn't like acknowledge, you know,

856
00:44:28,640 --> 00:44:31,080
Speaker 1: the fact that the people needed houses or needed to

857
00:44:31,120 --> 00:44:33,399
Speaker 1: live there, and he doesn't mention what happens to these

858
00:44:33,440 --> 00:44:36,080
Speaker 1: people who would relied on his land for housing materials

859
00:44:36,080 --> 00:44:38,680
Speaker 1: after he kicks them off. He just moves from talking

860
00:44:38,680 --> 00:44:41,719
Speaker 1: about forcing them off to expressing glee that there were

861
00:44:41,800 --> 00:44:46,040
Speaker 1: still some areas and sound natural condition, and the important

862
00:44:46,040 --> 00:44:48,920
Speaker 1: fact was we were able to arrest further deteriorations. So

863
00:44:48,920 --> 00:44:50,719
Speaker 1: again he doesn't talk about how did you make these

864
00:44:50,719 --> 00:44:53,919
Speaker 1: people leave? What happened to them later? Where did they go?

865
00:44:54,200 --> 00:44:57,440
Speaker 1: Did they ever find housing? Again, he's just like, don't worry.

866
00:44:57,560 --> 00:45:00,400
Speaker 1: We were able to stop them from damaging the land further,

867
00:45:00,960 --> 00:45:03,520
Speaker 1: and then I was able to fix it. And then

868
00:45:03,600 --> 00:45:07,720
Speaker 1: comes this very telling line. All land requires dedicated people

869
00:45:07,760 --> 00:45:09,840
Speaker 1: who believe in that well known maxim that we do

870
00:45:09,920 --> 00:45:13,080
Speaker 1: not inherit our land from our fathers. We borrow it

871
00:45:13,120 --> 00:45:16,280
Speaker 1: from our great grand children, and each generation is honor

872
00:45:16,320 --> 00:45:18,520
Speaker 1: bound to pass it on in better condition than it

873
00:45:18,600 --> 00:45:24,120
Speaker 1: was when it was received. I didn't inherit, We didn't

874
00:45:24,160 --> 00:45:26,360
Speaker 1: steal our land from the people who owned it before.

875
00:45:26,600 --> 00:45:29,120
Speaker 1: I'm borrowing it from my kids.

876
00:45:29,920 --> 00:45:32,279
Speaker 3: And those people never get it back.

877
00:45:32,520 --> 00:45:36,520
Speaker 1: Oh no, absolutely not, absolutely not. We have to pass

878
00:45:36,560 --> 00:45:39,120
Speaker 1: off the land in better condition, which means with less

879
00:45:39,200 --> 00:45:42,000
Speaker 1: black people on it than it was when we received it. Right,

880
00:45:42,600 --> 00:45:47,280
Speaker 1: Like you can both tell how like white supremacists today

881
00:45:47,480 --> 00:45:49,640
Speaker 1: look at and read Ian Smith and are like, what

882
00:45:49,719 --> 00:45:53,040
Speaker 1: a good man, a decent truly a conservationist. He cared

883
00:45:53,040 --> 00:45:55,600
Speaker 1: about the environment, you know, as opposed to be like,

884
00:45:55,640 --> 00:45:57,960
Speaker 1: but what about like the people? But hey, like there

885
00:45:58,000 --> 00:46:00,520
Speaker 1: were people there, Hey like this was just like a

886
00:46:00,560 --> 00:46:02,920
Speaker 1: farm forever for one white guy, Like this was like

887
00:46:02,960 --> 00:46:05,239
Speaker 1: a community, and he forced him off so that he

888
00:46:05,239 --> 00:46:08,839
Speaker 1: could have his nice farm. Maybe that's not actually being

889
00:46:08,840 --> 00:46:11,480
Speaker 1: good for the environment. Maybe he's just a tyrant. I

890
00:46:11,480 --> 00:46:15,839
Speaker 1: don't know. And a lot of Rhodesia works this way, right.

891
00:46:15,880 --> 00:46:18,720
Speaker 1: You can find all manner of lovely Rhodesian childhood memoirs

892
00:46:18,719 --> 00:46:21,080
Speaker 1: by white people, all of which act as if white

893
00:46:21,080 --> 00:46:23,520
Speaker 1: people just kind of stumbled upon Rhodesia when it was

894
00:46:23,560 --> 00:46:28,000
Speaker 1: empty and started civilizing it. Right, that's the official attitude

895
00:46:28,000 --> 00:46:30,319
Speaker 1: as to how they got their land. There's a good

896
00:46:30,320 --> 00:46:33,279
Speaker 1: example of this in the website Window on Rhodesia, which

897
00:46:33,320 --> 00:46:36,120
Speaker 1: was written by a former Rhodesian citizen named Colin Wire.

898
00:46:36,360 --> 00:46:39,480
Speaker 1: It's like an old fucking GeoCities looking website, but it's

899
00:46:39,480 --> 00:46:42,000
Speaker 1: still up today, and so you can get an idea

900
00:46:42,040 --> 00:46:45,440
Speaker 1: of how Rhodesians justified the state of affairs to themselves.

901
00:46:45,480 --> 00:46:48,319
Speaker 1: And here's a quote from Colin's memoir, it must be

902
00:46:48,400 --> 00:46:50,880
Speaker 1: remembered that the whites really did settle in a country

903
00:46:50,880 --> 00:46:53,520
Speaker 1: which was all but empty, probably no more than about

904
00:46:53,560 --> 00:46:55,880
Speaker 1: half a million people in a country three times the

905
00:46:55,920 --> 00:46:58,640
Speaker 1: size of England. To get that in perspective, the city

906
00:46:58,640 --> 00:47:00,640
Speaker 1: of Oxford has a population of about one hundred and

907
00:47:00,680 --> 00:47:03,920
Speaker 1: sixty thousand people in eighteen ninety. The native population of

908
00:47:03,920 --> 00:47:07,120
Speaker 1: what became Rhodesia was only about three times this. But

909
00:47:07,160 --> 00:47:09,279
Speaker 1: as Rhodesia is three times the size of England, a

910
00:47:09,280 --> 00:47:11,560
Speaker 1: fair impression may be gained by imagining that people of

911
00:47:11,600 --> 00:47:14,120
Speaker 1: Oxford is the only people living in the whole of England,

912
00:47:14,280 --> 00:47:17,719
Speaker 1: but living in small, scattered communities with large areas uninhabited.

913
00:47:17,920 --> 00:47:21,120
Speaker 1: This was the situation whites found in Rhodesia. First off,

914
00:47:21,400 --> 00:47:24,640
Speaker 1: it wasn't They fought two different wars just to clear

915
00:47:24,680 --> 00:47:27,560
Speaker 1: off the people who had been there before they started farming.

916
00:47:27,960 --> 00:47:31,479
Speaker 1: And second, half a million people is twice as many

917
00:47:31,560 --> 00:47:35,400
Speaker 1: Rhodesians as existed when Ian Smith was born. That's what

918
00:47:35,440 --> 00:47:38,200
Speaker 1: they're saying, is like, the inconsequential number of black people

919
00:47:38,440 --> 00:47:41,319
Speaker 1: that were living here when we founded it, right, is

920
00:47:41,440 --> 00:47:43,799
Speaker 1: twice as many as the number of white people who

921
00:47:43,840 --> 00:47:47,120
Speaker 1: existed at the height of Rhodesia. Also just because.

922
00:47:46,840 --> 00:47:50,600
Speaker 3: There weren't enough people. In your mind, what makes you

923
00:47:50,600 --> 00:47:52,680
Speaker 3: think having more people on that land is good?

924
00:47:52,760 --> 00:47:55,920
Speaker 1: Simp The environment was empty? Is empty? It was empty?

925
00:47:56,120 --> 00:47:56,319
Speaker 2: Good?

926
00:47:58,320 --> 00:48:00,640
Speaker 1: Yeah. In fact, it seems like Rhodesia are the worst

927
00:48:00,640 --> 00:48:02,799
Speaker 1: for the land because by the time, like if there's

928
00:48:02,840 --> 00:48:05,560
Speaker 1: only half a million people living there, when Rhodesians start

929
00:48:06,000 --> 00:48:08,520
Speaker 1: fluttering it and killing them, and then by the time

930
00:48:08,760 --> 00:48:11,360
Speaker 1: the seventies come around, there's three hundred thousand Rhodesians and

931
00:48:11,440 --> 00:48:14,359
Speaker 1: four and a half or six million black people living

932
00:48:14,360 --> 00:48:16,960
Speaker 1: in Rhodesia, then that means that like the land has

933
00:48:16,960 --> 00:48:20,440
Speaker 1: gotten more crowded under the Rhodesian state, exactly right, if

934
00:48:20,440 --> 00:48:24,480
Speaker 1: that's what you're judging it by. So yeah, there's a

935
00:48:24,520 --> 00:48:29,960
Speaker 1: lot that's flawed about this attitude. Speaking of things that

936
00:48:30,000 --> 00:48:35,400
Speaker 1: are flawed, my sponsors aren't. They've never made a mistake

937
00:48:35,800 --> 00:48:38,719
Speaker 1: ever except for sponsoring me. I guess fuck, I don't know,

938
00:48:45,600 --> 00:48:51,640
Speaker 1: and we're back, okay, So uh yeah, we're talking about Rhodesia.

939
00:48:51,880 --> 00:48:55,440
Speaker 1: So again, this attitude that like it was empty when

940
00:48:55,440 --> 00:48:59,239
Speaker 1: we got there. Africans fought constantly against the expansion of

941
00:48:59,280 --> 00:49:02,279
Speaker 1: company Tarot story from the earliest days. They never just

942
00:49:02,360 --> 00:49:05,400
Speaker 1: seated this land. It was never empty, and as the

943
00:49:05,480 --> 00:49:08,879
Speaker 1: territory grew more populated, it always had way more black

944
00:49:08,920 --> 00:49:11,680
Speaker 1: people than white people, who always enjoyed a very different

945
00:49:11,680 --> 00:49:15,960
Speaker 1: set of rights. And this happened because white Rhodesians needed

946
00:49:16,160 --> 00:49:18,839
Speaker 1: more poor black workers. That's another important point is when

947
00:49:19,040 --> 00:49:23,440
Speaker 1: Rhodesians started colonizing this area, they deliberately set up their

948
00:49:23,560 --> 00:49:27,720
Speaker 1: legal system to bring in more poor black people because

949
00:49:27,760 --> 00:49:30,399
Speaker 1: they needed them to do work they didn't want to do.

950
00:49:31,000 --> 00:49:34,840
Speaker 1: As one British South Africa Company report concluded, cheap and

951
00:49:34,880 --> 00:49:37,880
Speaker 1: abundant native labor also had to be provided to attract

952
00:49:37,920 --> 00:49:42,040
Speaker 1: settlers from kinder environments, and this meant creating artificial inducement

953
00:49:42,280 --> 00:49:45,120
Speaker 1: to the Africans to leave their own farming on an

954
00:49:45,200 --> 00:49:48,400
Speaker 1: already even larger scale than was necessary to provide labor

955
00:49:48,400 --> 00:49:51,400
Speaker 1: for the mines. That's an official company document about the

956
00:49:51,400 --> 00:49:54,080
Speaker 1: founding of Rudisia saying that like we had to make

957
00:49:54,120 --> 00:49:57,080
Speaker 1: it untenable for people to keep living on their own

958
00:49:57,200 --> 00:50:01,000
Speaker 1: farms so that they would work ours and our minds.

959
00:50:01,360 --> 00:50:04,200
Speaker 1: We had to ruin the lives of a huge number

960
00:50:04,200 --> 00:50:07,480
Speaker 1: of black people so that they would become impoverished and

961
00:50:07,520 --> 00:50:09,960
Speaker 1: have no choice but to work for us. That was

962
00:50:10,000 --> 00:50:14,359
Speaker 1: a conscious part of creating Rhodesia to ensure that white

963
00:50:14,360 --> 00:50:17,520
Speaker 1: people had their labor supply. In eighteen ninety six, the

964
00:50:17,520 --> 00:50:21,120
Speaker 1: company imposed a native hut tax on black people living

965
00:50:21,160 --> 00:50:23,960
Speaker 1: in the area. And this is basically, if you're not

966
00:50:24,120 --> 00:50:26,160
Speaker 1: in a white person house, you have to pay a

967
00:50:26,280 --> 00:50:29,600
Speaker 1: tax on your hut. That's what they that's what it's called.

968
00:50:29,600 --> 00:50:32,319
Speaker 1: And that means that like you have to work. Even

969
00:50:32,360 --> 00:50:35,120
Speaker 1: if you're like making enough food in your small farm

970
00:50:35,120 --> 00:50:37,920
Speaker 1: to feed yourself, it's no longer enough because now you've

971
00:50:37,960 --> 00:50:39,560
Speaker 1: got this tax to pay, so you have to go

972
00:50:39,600 --> 00:50:41,919
Speaker 1: get a job somewhere, which means you don't have time

973
00:50:41,960 --> 00:50:44,320
Speaker 1: to farm to feed your family, which means your family's

974
00:50:44,360 --> 00:50:46,560
Speaker 1: going to have to move with you and become impoverished

975
00:50:46,600 --> 00:50:49,440
Speaker 1: and spend the rest of their lives for generations working

976
00:50:49,440 --> 00:50:52,400
Speaker 1: for white people because you've stolen their ability to support

977
00:50:52,400 --> 00:50:56,719
Speaker 1: themselves from them. Right, that's how the Rhodesian state is constructed.

978
00:50:57,280 --> 00:51:00,200
Speaker 1: In nineteen oh two, this there's a pass law law

979
00:51:00,200 --> 00:51:03,000
Speaker 1: that gets added. So in nineteen eighteen ninety six, black

980
00:51:03,040 --> 00:51:05,320
Speaker 1: people start having to pay this tax for their houses

981
00:51:05,320 --> 00:51:07,520
Speaker 1: and in nineteen oh two, they have to start carrying

982
00:51:07,520 --> 00:51:10,359
Speaker 1: around a pass and this restricts them to only living

983
00:51:10,400 --> 00:51:13,040
Speaker 1: in certain areas of the country. And the reason for

984
00:51:13,080 --> 00:51:15,520
Speaker 1: this past law is then you can tell people, if

985
00:51:15,520 --> 00:51:18,640
Speaker 1: we know, oh, we need more workers in this region

986
00:51:18,920 --> 00:51:21,040
Speaker 1: and there's too many of them, too many black people

987
00:51:21,040 --> 00:51:23,799
Speaker 1: down here where we don't need them, we can make

988
00:51:23,840 --> 00:51:26,520
Speaker 1: it illegal for them to live where they've been living.

989
00:51:26,560 --> 00:51:28,760
Speaker 1: So they have to move where they have no support

990
00:51:29,000 --> 00:51:32,520
Speaker 1: and no community and work in order to avoid starving

991
00:51:32,640 --> 00:51:34,600
Speaker 1: for white people in area where we need more of them.

992
00:51:34,800 --> 00:51:37,880
Speaker 1: That's why the pass system comes into effect. It's to

993
00:51:37,960 --> 00:51:42,720
Speaker 1: destroy and break up communities and create artificially a labor

994
00:51:42,760 --> 00:51:46,279
Speaker 1: force who have no ability to resist or agitate for

995
00:51:46,360 --> 00:51:50,200
Speaker 1: better conditions. The past system ensures that workers have no leverage.

996
00:51:50,239 --> 00:51:52,560
Speaker 1: They can't even vote with their feet and leave to

997
00:51:52,640 --> 00:51:54,600
Speaker 1: a different part of the country to get a better

998
00:51:54,680 --> 00:51:57,799
Speaker 1: job somewhere. Right. This is slavery and all but name.

999
00:51:57,920 --> 00:52:00,920
Speaker 1: That's the system that Rhodesha Bild holds up over the

1000
00:52:01,040 --> 00:52:04,200
Speaker 1: years with all of these different laws. In nineteen oh four,

1001
00:52:04,320 --> 00:52:07,080
Speaker 1: the tax has increased to about a pound sterling per

1002
00:52:07,160 --> 00:52:10,280
Speaker 1: native home. Since workers made about four to twelve pounds

1003
00:52:10,320 --> 00:52:13,000
Speaker 1: a year. This was like a thirty percent income tax

1004
00:52:13,040 --> 00:52:15,919
Speaker 1: that you're paying just for the home you already own.

1005
00:52:16,960 --> 00:52:20,040
Speaker 1: A legal study published by the International Commission of Jurists

1006
00:52:20,080 --> 00:52:24,080
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy six summarizes how the Rhodesian system developed

1007
00:52:24,080 --> 00:52:27,719
Speaker 1: from here. From these early policies favoring land expropriation and

1008
00:52:27,760 --> 00:52:30,160
Speaker 1: the creation of a manual labor force grew the vast

1009
00:52:30,200 --> 00:52:34,080
Speaker 1: network of contemporary legislation which is enforced in Southern Rhodesia.

1010
00:52:34,160 --> 00:52:36,880
Speaker 1: Its primary purpose is to formalize and maintain a division

1011
00:52:36,960 --> 00:52:40,000
Speaker 1: between the races, a division which largely dictates the range

1012
00:52:40,040 --> 00:52:42,640
Speaker 1: of jobs open to a man, the education his children

1013
00:52:42,680 --> 00:52:45,480
Speaker 1: will receive, the wages he is paid, where he can live,

1014
00:52:45,680 --> 00:52:47,600
Speaker 1: how he may behave to his fellows and to members

1015
00:52:47,600 --> 00:52:50,120
Speaker 1: of another race, and what civil and political freedoms he

1016
00:52:50,160 --> 00:52:53,240
Speaker 1: may be permitted to enjoy. So when we talk about

1017
00:52:53,760 --> 00:52:56,800
Speaker 1: why are there so many more people in this area

1018
00:52:57,239 --> 00:52:59,160
Speaker 1: by the time of the seventies, right, why are there

1019
00:52:59,160 --> 00:53:01,440
Speaker 1: more than half a million people living here, and why

1020
00:53:01,480 --> 00:53:04,440
Speaker 1: are like the entire black population so impoverished, It's because

1021
00:53:04,480 --> 00:53:07,839
Speaker 1: the legal system was created to make them slaves. That's

1022
00:53:07,880 --> 00:53:10,319
Speaker 1: the system. The white people are the only ones voting

1023
00:53:10,360 --> 00:53:15,319
Speaker 1: in Rhodesia created right, and the British government largely leaves

1024
00:53:15,400 --> 00:53:17,960
Speaker 1: Rhodesian voters to figure out their own shit. Right. They

1025
00:53:18,000 --> 00:53:22,000
Speaker 1: are generally given complete control over their own internal affairs

1026
00:53:22,120 --> 00:53:25,400
Speaker 1: by the British Empire. In nineteen twenty two, Rhodesia had

1027
00:53:25,400 --> 00:53:28,040
Speaker 1: become an official colony, but British law gave it a

1028
00:53:28,160 --> 00:53:32,120
Speaker 1: unique disposition. It's a self governing colony which they don't

1029
00:53:32,160 --> 00:53:35,360
Speaker 1: really grant anyone else right that like, Rhodesia has this

1030
00:53:35,480 --> 00:53:39,279
Speaker 1: unique position because they're more British than the British. From

1031
00:53:39,280 --> 00:53:41,640
Speaker 1: this point on, the governor of the colony is referred

1032
00:53:41,640 --> 00:53:44,720
Speaker 1: to as the Prime Minister of Rhodesia. And while England

1033
00:53:44,760 --> 00:53:47,480
Speaker 1: retained the power to veto any law proposed by the

1034
00:53:47,560 --> 00:53:51,640
Speaker 1: Rhodesian Parliament, she never acted on this. It was generally

1035
00:53:51,719 --> 00:53:54,719
Speaker 1: understood for most of the pre and immediately post war

1036
00:53:54,800 --> 00:53:59,040
Speaker 1: period that the Rhodesian Parliament would ask British Parliament basically

1037
00:53:59,080 --> 00:54:03,400
Speaker 1: before we passed they passed any laws governing their African subjects. Right.

1038
00:54:03,440 --> 00:54:06,839
Speaker 1: The British government doesn't want to get embarrassed by like

1039
00:54:07,040 --> 00:54:09,680
Speaker 1: Rhodesia putting out any laws that sound too much like

1040
00:54:09,719 --> 00:54:13,120
Speaker 1: the apartheid laws South Africa has, so when they want

1041
00:54:13,120 --> 00:54:16,279
Speaker 1: to push through a new law to govern their African subjects,

1042
00:54:16,520 --> 00:54:19,720
Speaker 1: they have to get approval of the Commonwealth Secretary first,

1043
00:54:19,960 --> 00:54:22,399
Speaker 1: which is why these laws are never framed as oh,

1044
00:54:22,400 --> 00:54:24,759
Speaker 1: black people don't have this right. It's more framed as no, no,

1045
00:54:24,719 --> 00:54:27,520
Speaker 1: there's at tax on huts because they're more they're less

1046
00:54:27,600 --> 00:54:30,440
Speaker 1: environmentally friendly, the kind of houses the natives use. That's

1047
00:54:30,440 --> 00:54:32,480
Speaker 1: why there's a tax on them. And oh, we have

1048
00:54:32,560 --> 00:54:35,800
Speaker 1: this past system to make sure that they're not like becoming,

1049
00:54:36,120 --> 00:54:39,400
Speaker 1: you know, just lazy or homeless or like filling up

1050
00:54:39,400 --> 00:54:41,319
Speaker 1: the streets in some area. That's why we have the

1051
00:54:41,360 --> 00:54:44,120
Speaker 1: past system. It's not meant to limit what they can do.

1052
00:54:45,200 --> 00:54:47,360
Speaker 1: And that's how all of these laws are kind of

1053
00:54:47,560 --> 00:54:51,640
Speaker 1: justified and stopped from sounding like embarrassingly racist to the

1054
00:54:51,680 --> 00:54:52,400
Speaker 1: mother government.

1055
00:54:53,960 --> 00:54:58,719
Speaker 2: Yeah, question, it's how so they think they have this

1056
00:54:58,920 --> 00:55:03,360
Speaker 2: like illusion of autonomy, but yet they're crying back to

1057
00:55:03,480 --> 00:55:05,720
Speaker 2: Daddy Britain on everything.

1058
00:55:05,760 --> 00:55:08,000
Speaker 1: Sample is that kind of no, no, no, They have to

1059
00:55:08,040 --> 00:55:10,920
Speaker 1: get like that. That's the deal is the Crown won't

1060
00:55:10,960 --> 00:55:14,840
Speaker 1: stop them from governing their own society, but they have

1061
00:55:14,960 --> 00:55:17,879
Speaker 1: to ask that, hey, we've got this rule that's kind

1062
00:55:17,920 --> 00:55:20,879
Speaker 1: of racist. How should we reframe it so it doesn't

1063
00:55:20,920 --> 00:55:24,279
Speaker 1: cause bad pr for you guys. They don't want it great.

1064
00:55:24,320 --> 00:55:27,120
Speaker 1: The British government in London doesn't want to hear Rhodesia

1065
00:55:27,360 --> 00:55:29,719
Speaker 1: passed a law saying that black people can't be out

1066
00:55:29,760 --> 00:55:32,840
Speaker 1: at the same time as white people. So instead they're like,

1067
00:55:32,880 --> 00:55:34,719
Speaker 1: what if we pass this law saying that, like there's

1068
00:55:34,719 --> 00:55:37,160
Speaker 1: a past system that determines where you're allowed to work,

1069
00:55:37,520 --> 00:55:39,759
Speaker 1: you know, based on criminal problems that we've had, and

1070
00:55:39,840 --> 00:55:42,319
Speaker 1: like then the crown will be like, Okay, that's different enough,

1071
00:55:42,400 --> 00:55:44,480
Speaker 1: that doesn't sound racist. You guys can do that, right,

1072
00:55:44,760 --> 00:55:48,359
Speaker 1: That's why they're referring back. London is happy to let

1073
00:55:48,400 --> 00:55:50,920
Speaker 1: Rhodesia do what they want to do, but doesn't want

1074
00:55:50,920 --> 00:55:53,480
Speaker 1: to deal with the blowback of getting yelled at by

1075
00:55:53,480 --> 00:55:56,680
Speaker 1: the international community for having a white supremacist slave state

1076
00:55:56,880 --> 00:55:59,759
Speaker 1: as part of the Commonwealth. Right, that's what's happening here.

1077
00:56:00,120 --> 00:56:02,600
Speaker 2: So we'll help you be racist, but like we're not

1078
00:56:02,840 --> 00:56:03,319
Speaker 2: with you.

1079
00:56:03,960 --> 00:56:06,320
Speaker 1: We're not with you, and you've got to like walk

1080
00:56:06,360 --> 00:56:09,279
Speaker 1: it back past us, right, you gotta let us like

1081
00:56:09,760 --> 00:56:11,600
Speaker 1: pencil in like noa, noa, no. We got to change

1082
00:56:11,600 --> 00:56:14,640
Speaker 1: some wording. We don't want to get in trouble over this, right.

1083
00:56:14,880 --> 00:56:18,200
Speaker 2: They're fucking wordsmithing their racism.

1084
00:56:18,680 --> 00:56:21,319
Speaker 3: Oh yeah yeah, like that's a tails all this time, right,

1085
00:56:21,600 --> 00:56:22,719
Speaker 3: I mean if you think.

1086
00:56:22,840 --> 00:56:28,520
Speaker 1: Everywhere, yeah, that's especially British racism. And there's this there's

1087
00:56:28,520 --> 00:56:31,920
Speaker 1: this expectation Rhodesia that because the call the Crown has

1088
00:56:31,960 --> 00:56:35,680
Speaker 1: given us everything we've wanted, eventually we'll be allowed to

1089
00:56:35,920 --> 00:56:39,439
Speaker 1: get our full independence and will gain dominion status. Right,

1090
00:56:39,520 --> 00:56:43,440
Speaker 1: And so there's this understanding by white Rhodesians that Britain

1091
00:56:43,520 --> 00:56:46,560
Speaker 1: is going to let us become an independent country and

1092
00:56:46,680 --> 00:56:49,360
Speaker 1: call us a dominion at some point while still having

1093
00:56:49,440 --> 00:56:51,960
Speaker 1: minority rule, so we will never have to be a

1094
00:56:51,960 --> 00:56:56,200
Speaker 1: full democracy. Dominion status is what Canada had. I mean,

1095
00:56:56,239 --> 00:56:59,080
Speaker 1: technically it's still a dominion, right, but like a dominion

1096
00:56:59,080 --> 00:57:02,480
Speaker 1: in the Commonwealth is thing where you're basically your own country,

1097
00:57:02,480 --> 00:57:04,959
Speaker 1: but the queen is still your sava or and YadA YadA,

1098
00:57:05,000 --> 00:57:07,680
Speaker 1: Like there's some stuff like that. Rhodesians think they're going

1099
00:57:07,719 --> 00:57:09,520
Speaker 1: to get that and they're not going to have to

1100
00:57:09,560 --> 00:57:13,280
Speaker 1: give black people to vote, right, That is the understanding

1101
00:57:13,640 --> 00:57:16,800
Speaker 1: of right white Rhodesians coming into like the sixties is

1102
00:57:17,200 --> 00:57:20,880
Speaker 1: because we're so special. Once we're ready, Great Britain will

1103
00:57:20,880 --> 00:57:23,040
Speaker 1: make us a dominion and we won't have to give

1104
00:57:23,120 --> 00:57:26,520
Speaker 1: up any of our political power, right Like, that's that's

1105
00:57:26,600 --> 00:57:30,200
Speaker 1: the understanding that white Rhodesians have, is that like, as

1106
00:57:30,240 --> 00:57:33,160
Speaker 1: long as we don't embarrass mom and dad, one day

1107
00:57:33,240 --> 00:57:35,720
Speaker 1: we'll get to be an independent western country and we'll

1108
00:57:35,760 --> 00:57:39,560
Speaker 1: never have to give up everything we've taken. Everybody, Robert here,

1109
00:57:39,600 --> 00:57:41,600
Speaker 1: I didn't want to make it really clear, and this

1110
00:57:41,680 --> 00:57:43,640
Speaker 1: isn't really change much of what I've said. Technically, or

1111
00:57:43,760 --> 00:57:47,840
Speaker 1: there was like a vote that black citizens in Rhodesia

1112
00:57:47,880 --> 00:57:50,960
Speaker 1: could get, and that franchise had expand a tiny bit

1113
00:57:51,080 --> 00:57:54,040
Speaker 1: over the amount of time that Rhodesia existed. But at

1114
00:57:54,080 --> 00:57:56,840
Speaker 1: the peak of like the black franchise in Roodji, you

1115
00:57:56,920 --> 00:57:58,880
Speaker 1: were talking about like eleven or twelve thousand people who

1116
00:57:58,880 --> 00:58:00,520
Speaker 1: are able to vote out of a popular of like

1117
00:58:00,560 --> 00:58:02,200
Speaker 1: four or five million. So I think it's just more

1118
00:58:02,280 --> 00:58:05,360
Speaker 1: accurate to say that they essentially did not have the vote. Right.

1119
00:58:07,960 --> 00:58:12,440
Speaker 1: That is what Rhodesians want. That is the animating understanding

1120
00:58:12,840 --> 00:58:16,720
Speaker 1: belief of their society is that because we're so special,

1121
00:58:16,760 --> 00:58:19,160
Speaker 1: we will always be part of the British world. But

1122
00:58:19,200 --> 00:58:20,800
Speaker 1: we're never going to have to hand over power to

1123
00:58:20,840 --> 00:58:25,600
Speaker 1: the Blacks. Right. That's Rhodesian like civilization in a nutshell.

1124
00:58:26,880 --> 00:58:30,080
Speaker 1: And Ian Smith is a huge backer of this idea.

1125
00:58:30,160 --> 00:58:33,560
Speaker 1: He's very bullish on becoming a dominion. When he returns

1126
00:58:33,600 --> 00:58:36,160
Speaker 1: home from the war, you know, he doesn't just start farming,

1127
00:58:36,200 --> 00:58:38,520
Speaker 1: but he gets involved in politics because he knows this

1128
00:58:38,680 --> 00:58:40,920
Speaker 1: change is coming, and he knows Rhodesia is going to

1129
00:58:40,920 --> 00:58:43,520
Speaker 1: be an independent country soon and he wants to be

1130
00:58:43,560 --> 00:58:47,400
Speaker 1: one of its founding fathers. Right. He realizes that we're

1131
00:58:47,400 --> 00:58:49,520
Speaker 1: in our last probably ten or twenty years of being

1132
00:58:49,560 --> 00:58:52,080
Speaker 1: a colony. And if I make myself a top man

1133
00:58:52,160 --> 00:58:54,840
Speaker 1: in Rhodesian politics now, when we become an independent country,

1134
00:58:55,160 --> 00:58:57,960
Speaker 1: I'll be part of the ruling class of Rhodesia as

1135
00:58:58,000 --> 00:59:00,880
Speaker 1: it becomes a modern state. Right, that's what Smith is

1136
00:59:00,960 --> 00:59:03,240
Speaker 1: looking at. That's how he sees his future. By the

1137
00:59:03,320 --> 00:59:05,840
Speaker 1: end of the nineteen forties and by the end of

1138
00:59:05,840 --> 00:59:09,200
Speaker 1: the forties start of the fifties, Rhodesia has become. This

1139
00:59:09,320 --> 00:59:11,960
Speaker 1: is if you want to know, had the Confederacy, if

1140
00:59:12,000 --> 00:59:14,240
Speaker 1: it had the US Civil War either not happened, or

1141
00:59:14,240 --> 00:59:18,200
Speaker 1: had the Confederacy somehow survived into the twentieth century. What

1142
00:59:18,240 --> 00:59:22,040
Speaker 1: would it have looked like? That's Rhodesia, right like that,

1143
00:59:22,040 --> 00:59:24,479
Speaker 1: that's your best guess for how it would have looked

1144
00:59:24,520 --> 00:59:28,440
Speaker 1: as Rhodesia. For roughly fifty years, the colonial government of

1145
00:59:28,520 --> 00:59:30,920
Speaker 1: Rhodesia had sold or awarded all of the best growing

1146
00:59:31,000 --> 00:59:34,280
Speaker 1: land to white men. Rhodesian defenders will often point out

1147
00:59:34,280 --> 00:59:37,200
Speaker 1: that Rhodesha's land was again split up evenly between white

1148
00:59:37,240 --> 00:59:40,640
Speaker 1: and black populations, but those populaces were nowhere close to

1149
00:59:40,680 --> 00:59:44,080
Speaker 1: equivalent in size. As New York Times reporter Henry cam

1150
00:59:44,120 --> 00:59:48,080
Speaker 1: noted in a nineteen seventy six dispatch quote, whites lived spaciously,

1151
00:59:48,320 --> 00:59:51,200
Speaker 1: mainly in individual houses with a lot of gardens separating

1152
00:59:51,240 --> 00:59:53,840
Speaker 1: them from their neighbors. Car ownership is so high that

1153
00:59:53,920 --> 00:59:57,760
Speaker 1: Salisbury's public buses seem segregated because only blacks appear to

1154
00:59:57,840 --> 01:00:00,680
Speaker 1: use them. Skilled labor is the lowest job category held

1155
01:00:00,720 --> 01:00:03,080
Speaker 1: by white adults, and even they have, for the most part,

1156
01:00:03,120 --> 01:00:06,320
Speaker 1: domestic servants two per families. Seems par for the course.

1157
01:00:06,680 --> 01:00:09,000
Speaker 1: Fourteen percent of the total black labor force is in

1158
01:00:09,080 --> 01:00:14,040
Speaker 1: domestic employment, a huge proportion. So you have this as

1159
01:00:14,240 --> 01:00:17,320
Speaker 1: number one they've kind of recreated, like the dream American

1160
01:00:17,440 --> 01:00:21,320
Speaker 1: suburb society. All the white people drive, the only people

1161
01:00:21,320 --> 01:00:24,280
Speaker 1: on buses are are black or other like non white

1162
01:00:24,320 --> 01:00:27,560
Speaker 1: people in a handful of poor whites. But white people

1163
01:00:27,600 --> 01:00:30,360
Speaker 1: have cars and big gardens and a lot of space,

1164
01:00:30,520 --> 01:00:34,920
Speaker 1: and even poor people have servants, you know, whereas the

1165
01:00:35,000 --> 01:00:38,080
Speaker 1: black people primarily exist to like work their properties and

1166
01:00:38,120 --> 01:00:41,400
Speaker 1: their lands. White people earned on average about eleven times

1167
01:00:41,440 --> 01:00:44,400
Speaker 1: as much as their black counterparts. And even that statistic

1168
01:00:44,520 --> 01:00:48,160
Speaker 1: underplaces the scope of inequality in Rhodesia because so much

1169
01:00:48,160 --> 01:00:50,440
Speaker 1: of the white population were people for whom the very

1170
01:00:50,480 --> 01:00:54,040
Speaker 1: concept of working for money was a bad dream. Right,

1171
01:00:54,360 --> 01:00:57,240
Speaker 1: most of these white people again, as they say it,

1172
01:00:57,320 --> 01:01:00,640
Speaker 1: like skilled labor is like the most shame full thing

1173
01:01:00,720 --> 01:01:03,440
Speaker 1: to do as a white person in Rhodesia because you

1174
01:01:03,640 --> 01:01:06,720
Speaker 1: most of them don't have to. And you can even Ian,

1175
01:01:06,840 --> 01:01:08,760
Speaker 1: you can tell this is not a guy as much

1176
01:01:08,800 --> 01:01:11,240
Speaker 1: as he brags about being a successful farmer, like he

1177
01:01:11,320 --> 01:01:14,240
Speaker 1: never has to think about money as like a limited

1178
01:01:14,360 --> 01:01:16,640
Speaker 1: thing that he worked for. Money is a thing that

1179
01:01:16,760 --> 01:01:18,880
Speaker 1: comes to him because of the people who work for

1180
01:01:18,920 --> 01:01:22,720
Speaker 1: his family, right, Like that's the only way life ever

1181
01:01:22,760 --> 01:01:27,320
Speaker 1: works for Ian Smith. The fact that there are people

1182
01:01:27,360 --> 01:01:29,560
Speaker 1: to this day who call this guy like a farmer

1183
01:01:29,600 --> 01:01:32,000
Speaker 1: and a good man and a hard worker is so

1184
01:01:32,400 --> 01:01:35,360
Speaker 1: absurd on its face. This guy never has to work.

1185
01:01:36,880 --> 01:01:40,080
Speaker 1: In nineteen forty eight, he's elected to the Southern Rhodesian Assembly,

1186
01:01:40,120 --> 01:01:43,040
Speaker 1: becoming a minister of the Rhodesian Parliament at age twenty nine,

1187
01:01:43,480 --> 01:01:46,080
Speaker 1: and initially he backs the Liberal Party, which is the

1188
01:01:46,080 --> 01:01:48,600
Speaker 1: party in opposition at the time. That's not going to

1189
01:01:48,680 --> 01:01:51,600
Speaker 1: last long, but the same year he gets into parliament,

1190
01:01:51,680 --> 01:01:54,880
Speaker 1: he meets a South African school teacher named Janet Watt

1191
01:01:55,040 --> 01:01:57,600
Speaker 1: and the two were soon wed. Over the following years,

1192
01:01:57,640 --> 01:01:59,640
Speaker 1: Ian Smith and his wife will have two sons and

1193
01:01:59,680 --> 01:02:02,800
Speaker 1: a daughters. He becomes a leading figure in this plan

1194
01:02:02,880 --> 01:02:07,000
Speaker 1: that like white Rhodesians start to craft in the mid century,

1195
01:02:07,040 --> 01:02:10,520
Speaker 1: which is it's probably a little too obvious for just

1196
01:02:10,640 --> 01:02:12,640
Speaker 1: us to say, we want Southern Rhodesia to be an

1197
01:02:12,640 --> 01:02:17,520
Speaker 1: independent country governed by white people. So instead there's Northern Rhodesia,

1198
01:02:17,600 --> 01:02:20,440
Speaker 1: which is another colony that's majority black with a tiny

1199
01:02:20,480 --> 01:02:23,640
Speaker 1: number of white people governing it. And then there's this

1200
01:02:23,760 --> 01:02:28,480
Speaker 1: other British colony in Nyassa Land, which is like Malawi today,

1201
01:02:29,000 --> 01:02:32,320
Speaker 1: and they're all governed by this tiny number of white

1202
01:02:32,320 --> 01:02:34,000
Speaker 1: people at the top, and the tiny number of the

1203
01:02:34,000 --> 01:02:36,040
Speaker 1: white people the top, and all of these colonies are like,

1204
01:02:36,080 --> 01:02:38,040
Speaker 1: what if we put all of these three things together

1205
01:02:38,440 --> 01:02:43,600
Speaker 1: and pretend we're an independent nation called the Central African Federation,

1206
01:02:44,040 --> 01:02:47,080
Speaker 1: and we try to get independence as a federation of

1207
01:02:47,120 --> 01:02:50,160
Speaker 1: these three countries, and we just kind of pretend that

1208
01:02:50,200 --> 01:02:53,040
Speaker 1: it's not just white people in charge. That's what they're

1209
01:02:53,080 --> 01:02:55,080
Speaker 1: going to try for a few years, from like the

1210
01:02:55,160 --> 01:02:57,400
Speaker 1: mid fifties to nineteen sixty. They're going to be like,

1211
01:02:57,400 --> 01:03:00,000
Speaker 1: what if we pretend we're trying to start our own

1212
01:03:00,120 --> 01:03:03,480
Speaker 1: Central African Federation as opposed to what we just want

1213
01:03:03,520 --> 01:03:06,400
Speaker 1: to keep Rhodesia for ourselves. And that's Smith is going

1214
01:03:06,440 --> 01:03:09,880
Speaker 1: to back this play initially. And this is the reason

1215
01:03:09,920 --> 01:03:12,200
Speaker 1: why they have to do this is everyone knows by

1216
01:03:12,200 --> 01:03:16,960
Speaker 1: the fifties decolonization is coming. White rule is ending in

1217
01:03:17,040 --> 01:03:20,320
Speaker 1: colonial Africa, right, and so they're all trying to figure

1218
01:03:20,360 --> 01:03:24,080
Speaker 1: out how can we continue to keep everything we have

1219
01:03:24,520 --> 01:03:27,560
Speaker 1: without pissing off the international community, because it's also become

1220
01:03:27,640 --> 01:03:31,240
Speaker 1: kind of gross to want to keep a tiny number

1221
01:03:31,240 --> 01:03:34,000
Speaker 1: of white people in charge of like a whole country.

1222
01:03:34,320 --> 01:03:37,760
Speaker 1: In Africa. That's not a popular thing over in like

1223
01:03:37,840 --> 01:03:41,280
Speaker 1: the general like the rest of the world, and so

1224
01:03:41,680 --> 01:03:43,280
Speaker 1: they're trying to figure out how to like dress this

1225
01:03:43,400 --> 01:03:45,400
Speaker 1: up at a hide what they attend to do. And

1226
01:03:45,720 --> 01:03:48,200
Speaker 1: Ian Smith is going to back the Central African Federation

1227
01:03:48,320 --> 01:03:50,800
Speaker 1: is the best way to kind of obscure and hide

1228
01:03:51,240 --> 01:03:54,800
Speaker 1: their real goals in order to gain power. And so

1229
01:03:54,840 --> 01:03:57,040
Speaker 1: that's the story. That's what we've got for part one,

1230
01:03:57,080 --> 01:03:58,960
Speaker 1: and part two we'll talk about what happens with that

1231
01:03:59,080 --> 01:04:01,960
Speaker 1: and the Rhodesian bush War that starts as a result

1232
01:04:02,000 --> 01:04:04,320
Speaker 1: of this, and how the global far right gets pulled

1233
01:04:04,320 --> 01:04:08,200
Speaker 1: into all of it. But that's part two. You want

1234
01:04:08,200 --> 01:04:10,040
Speaker 1: to plug your pluggles before we roll out.

1235
01:04:10,480 --> 01:04:14,320
Speaker 3: Yes, so thank you for having me you guys, I

1236
01:04:14,360 --> 01:04:17,240
Speaker 3: will see you in part two. But you know, after

1237
01:04:17,280 --> 01:04:19,000
Speaker 3: you listen to part two, after you listen to this,

1238
01:04:19,480 --> 01:04:21,920
Speaker 3: please go check out Welcome to a Barrio. You can

1239
01:04:21,960 --> 01:04:25,680
Speaker 3: find us on all streaming platforms for podcasts, and you

1240
01:04:25,680 --> 01:04:28,080
Speaker 3: can find our socials at Welcome to a Barrio on

1241
01:04:28,160 --> 01:04:31,920
Speaker 3: Instagram and you can find me at bexb ECCS, Ramos

1242
01:04:31,960 --> 01:04:33,280
Speaker 3: on all platforms.

1243
01:04:33,720 --> 01:04:37,800
Speaker 1: Excellent, We'll check that out. Find her on all those

1244
01:04:37,840 --> 01:04:41,520
Speaker 1: platforms and find us in part two. We'll keep talking,

1245
01:04:42,120 --> 01:04:45,600
Speaker 1: see you, We'll keep talking. Bye.

1246
01:04:47,000 --> 01:04:49,680
Speaker 2: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.

1247
01:04:49,720 --> 01:04:52,400
Speaker 2: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool

1248
01:04:52,440 --> 01:04:55,640
Speaker 2: Zonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

1249
01:04:55,680 --> 01:04:59,560
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Full video

1250
01:04:59,560 --> 01:05:02,720
Speaker 2: episode Behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping

1251
01:05:02,720 --> 01:05:05,640
Speaker 2: every Tuesday and Thursday. Hit remind me of Netflix. You

1252
01:05:05,640 --> 01:05:09,160
Speaker 2: don't miss an episode. For clips in our older episode catalog,

1253
01:05:09,240 --> 01:05:12,440
Speaker 2: continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel YouTube dot com

1254
01:05:12,480 --> 01:05:16,480
Speaker 2: slash at Behind the Bastards. We love about forty percent

1255
01:05:16,480 --> 01:05:17,920
Speaker 2: of you, statistically speaking,