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Best case for Zimbabwe post-WWII

C

Coiler

Connoisseur of the Miscellaneous
Published by SLP
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I guess I have these simple questions:

1: What would the best case for Zimbabwe be with a POD after World War II, going to majority rule without the wars or economic collapse?
2: What PODs would be needed for a realistic best case scenario (ie, no UDI, but how would you butterfly away UDI...)
 
Coiler said:
I guess I have these simple questions:

1: What would the best case for Zimbabwe be with a POD after World War II, going to majority rule without the wars or economic collapse?
2: What PODs would be needed for a realistic best case scenario (ie, no UDI, but how would you butterfly away UDI...)
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I have wondered what would have happened if Rhodesia had gotten dominion status. IMO, the best time is right after World War II. Unlike in our timeline, such a Rhodesia would have had international recognition as an independent state but, like Apartheid South Africa, would be internationally condemned for its racist policies of white minority rule and segregation.
 
Off the top of my head, maybe the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland not dissolving or North Rhodesia (Zambia) staying bound after the dissolution could be a POD? That was hoped as a way to get a peaceful balance of white European and African interests. (Of course then it's not our Zimbabwe, it's a different larger place) Getting a realistic reason for this POD would be hard though, the Rhodesians didn't like being part of these unions or the growing nationalism
 
Charles EP M. said:
Off the top of my head, maybe the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland not dissolving or North Rhodesia (Zambia) staying bound after the dissolution could be a POD? That was hoped as a way to get a peaceful balance of white European and African interests. (Of course then it's not our Zimbabwe, it's a different larger place) Getting a realistic reason for this POD would be hard though, the Rhodesians didn't like being part of these unions or the growing nationalism
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Black North Rhodesians wanted no part of the white Southetn Rhodesian constitutional system. They were vocal about that as early as the 30s.
 
Not sure what the whites would think they're getting out of it. Feels you need something PODish at this point though, once they're declared Just Rhodesia it feels like it's too late unless there's, say, British invasion to shut down UDI. And that's still a war, even ignoring any other bad aftereffect (we just need a Zimbabwe without war and collapse, not a utopian one)
 
Roger II said:
There's a joke about the US south I could make that I won't.
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A while back, the issue of civil rights in a Cold War context came up, and I pointed out that US whites were willing to damage the reputation of the US abroad and hinder its diplomatic efforts with the new states of Africa in order to maintain their racialised caste priviledges.
 
Ricardolindo said:
I have wondered what would have happened if Rhodesia had gotten dominion status. IMO, the best time is right after World War II. Unlike in our timeline, such a Rhodesia would have had international recognition as an independent state but, like Apartheid South Africa, would be internationally condemned for its racist policies of white minority rule and segregation.
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@Sulemain As our Rhodesia expert, what do you think of this? I know most of your knowledge of Rhodesia is earlier than this time period.
 
Sulemain said:
A while back, the issue of civil rights in a Cold War context came up, and I pointed out that US whites were willing to damage the reputation of the US abroad and hinder its diplomatic efforts with the new states of Africa in order to maintain their racialised caste priviledges.
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Yea, my notes on the civil rights law class I took somewhere I THINK had a thing about how the state department had to give evidence in hearings for Maryland's state civil rights law to the effect of 'your state specifically is embarassing us" b/c it was the one segregated state you had to stop at if you were going from NYC to DC
 
Ricardolindo said:
@Sulemain As our Rhodesia expert, what do you think of this? I know most of your knowledge of Rhodesia is earlier than this time period.
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It would have made things way worse. Dominion Rhodesia would have been able to deal freely with South Africa and Portugal, and Britain wouldn't have been able to lay sanctions like it was in OTL. You basically end up with a South Africa situation. Sure it'd be internationally hated, but the level of sanctions that took down the Apartheid regime was a long time in the coming.
 
Max Sinister said:
Anyone but Mugabe?
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The problem is preventing Mugabe. Mugabe got to power because the Black Rhodesian population had been radicalized by years of racist white minority rule. The Internal Settlement was too late. By 1979, the Black Rhodesian population was too radicalized and the Rhodesian Bush War too far along for a deal with the moderate black opposition to work.
 
The most obvious answer is 'find a way for Garfield Todd's (flawed and limited) program to be implemented successfully,' but the most obvious answer to that is 'the response to that flawed and limited program was retrenchment that produced Ian Smith and the UDI.'

It's a really hard one.

Make the environment tougher for white Rhodesians- a nasty war of decolonisation next door, for instance- and they're likely to panic and retrench faster and further. Yet if you make it easier- more prosperous times, less racial paranoia- they're not going to feel a pressing urge to make concessions.

A tourist gets lost in the Irish countryside, the old joke goes. He asks a farmer: 'How do I get to Dublin?'

Farmer looks at him and says, 'well, if I were you I wouldn't start from here.'
 
SenatorChickpea said:
The most obvious answer is 'find a way for Garfield Todd's (flawed and limited) program to be implemented successfully,' but the most obvious answer to that is 'the response to that flawed and limited program was retrenchment that produced Ian Smith and the UDI.'

It's a really hard one.

Make the environment tougher for white Rhodesians- a nasty war of decolonisation next door, for instance- and they're likely to panic and retrench faster and further. Yet if you make it easier- more prosperous times, less racial paranoia- they're not going to feel a pressing urge to make concessions.

A tourist gets lost in the Irish countryside, the old joke goes. He asks a farmer: 'How do I get to Dublin?'

Farmer looks at him and says, 'well, if I were you I wouldn't start from here.'
Click to expand...
How viable would it have been for the UK to buy the Rhodesian white farmers' land like they did in Kenya? As I understand it, the problems are that Rhodesia's white population was much larger and that Rhodesian agriculture was more productive which made the white farmers more reluctant to sell their land.
 
How about having a failed communist uprising in Zimbabwe, relatively early in the Cold War? Would that make things worse or better in the long run? Heck, maybe you could have the communists taking over in North Rhodesia (Zambia) and breaking away, with North and South Rhodesia subsequently following parallel development paths to North and South Korea?
 
SinghSong said:
How about having a failed communist uprising in Zimbabwe, relatively early in the Cold War? Would that make things worse or better in the long run?
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Rhodesia painted black majority rule as leading to communism so I suspect a communist uprising would have made things worse.
 
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