RHODESIAN BUSH WAR (1965 – 1979) THE LIBERATION WAR

The Unilaterally Declared of Independence creating a Country of Rhodesia’s (1965 – 1979) white minority under the leadership of Ian Smith refused to make significant changes to the constitution to advance universal suffrage (White’s had 95% of the voting power in 1961). He was hesitant to make concessions to internal pressures for constitutional, political rights which was sorely needed. Universal suffrage would have massive political repercussions for the white Europeans since a majority of the population was African black, disadvantaged, exploited, and psychologically subordinated. Ian Smith felt that their European civilization and culture (economic, infrastructure, political, legal, religious) would be destroyed without administrative control by a competent white government. In characteristic rhetoric, Ian Smith wanted blacks and whites to work together but desired white control for at least “1,000 years”. Whites widely held that Blacks were not capable in the short to medium term to build a prosperous country without paternal support. Smith’s justification for opposing African majority rule was that blacks were not capable of self-rule. Blacks were opposed to socioeconomic backwardness, which the whites actively perpetuated through economic exploitation, through racially motivated institutional discrimination: denying education, opportunities for advancement, protection of white interests (or the White Nation of Rhodesia). On either side then, justifications for positions are cloaked in ideology (Communist, Capitalist, Social Democratic, Christian) that suits their ultimate objectives. The austerity and violence in Rhodesia is a product of the insecurity of white settlers who had lived their entire lives in Rhodesia.

[THE FILM BELOW IS GRAPHIC: VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED]

One way Ian Smith and the Rhodesian whites framed the Bush War (1964 – 1979) was to cast the violent uprising led by Nkomo ZUPA (Soviet leaning) and Mugabe ZUNA (Maoist leaning) as a conflict along ideological lines ONLY. The following film attempts to paper over the obvious racial and tribal conflict by sighting the Communist politics of these competing ZUPA and ZUNA movements as the source of conflict. It is not racial it is ideological according to Smith. This is plausible but an obvious misdirection at the inherent issue of racial discrimination at the institutional level. There is also a nationalist sentiment to the conflict. Mugabe’s Shona fought with the Nkomo Ndebele-speaking south in an uneasy Patriotic Front. These parties were militant and actively engaged in violent conflict amongst eachother and against European whites. Mugabe claimed that non-violent approaches had failed to achieve his goals. Mugabe’s forces engaged in Terrorism or Freedom Fighting/Intimidating Authorities to support revolution: their guerilla warfare was gruesome with widespread murder as this film demonstrates. This violence is perpetrated by both sides against civilian bystanders. “Only a dead imperialist is a good one”: Mugabe used dangerous language about how the settler government needed to be removed. In accordance with Communist politics, priests were brutally murdered (Spanish Civil War, for example). Mugabe, as any African nationalist movement, embraced European ideas/principles in order to accrue power through the ideology of Nationalism as well as Communism. Mugabe advocated for a none-race based polity which in essence meant African majority rule. On either side then, justifications for positions are cloaked in ideology that suits their ultimate objectives.

The events leading to the Peoples Temple massacre on November 18th, 1978 describe the anatomy of a paranoid leadership who had garnered awesome power over his congregation. The Peoples Temple emerged in Indiana, USA as an anti-racist religious sect which preached thinly veiled communist ideology. The movement was heavily political with a diverse congregation of a spectrum of ethnic diversity from African, Fillipino, and Caucasian Americans. His church seems to have targeted people who lacked much independent thinking skills. The church’s underlying popularity in the San Francisco area was influenced by the charisma of Jim Jones who from his childhood was obsessed with religion and death. Jim Jones grew up in abject poverty and realized that the cooption of a religious movement would allow him to exercise authority over and accrue – through targeted brainwashing- a large congregational base of support.
With the move to Guyanne in South America, the Peoples Temple established at Jonestown, an egalitarian lifestyle with Jim Jones as the communities “Dad”. Jones used the criminal murder of a US Congressman Leo Ryan to justify the final act of self-destruction in what he referred to as a Revolutionary Suicide. The mass suicide of 909 American citizens was ostensibly to protest the racial injustices in the United States of America.