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.'
In the short and medium term, no doubt. But in the long run, could it have had the potential to make Zimbabwe a better place by the present day? The kind of 'failed' uprising I was thinking about was either one akin to the Malayan Emergency, aka 'the Anti–British National Liberation War', at around the same time (late 40's to 1960)- in which Southern Rhodesia directly participated on the British side IOTL- or the New JEWEL Movement in Grenada, 'failing' insofar as it succeeds in overthrowing the government and seizing power (perhaps when ZIPRA proceeds with its proposed 'Storming the Heavens' strategy to launch a conventional invasion from Zambia in the late '70s, supported by a limited number of armored vehicles and light aircraft, and with more overt backing from the Soviet Union).Rhodesia painted black majority rule as leading to communism so I suspect a communist uprising would have made things worse.
If one just wants to do away with Mugabe's rise to power, how about something related to The Front for the Liberation of Zimbabwe (FROLIZI)-announced in Lusaka, Zambia in October 1971 as a merger of the two principal African nationalist factions in Rhodesia, the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) and the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), when it was in actuality a breakaway faction of both ZAPU and ZANU, established by members of both groups who had become disaffected due to their rival organisations' incessant internal and external disputes. Its domination by members of the Zezuru, a subgroup of the Shona people, led to accusations that it was merely a tribal grouping and ridicule as the "Front for the Liaison of Zezuru Intellectuals".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.
In the short and medium term, no doubt. But in the long run, could it have had the potential to make Zimbabwe a better place by the present day? The kind of 'failed' uprising I was thinking about was either one akin to the Malayan Emergency, aka 'the Anti–British National Liberation War', at around the same time (late 40's to 1960)- in which Southern Rhodesia directly participated on the British side IOTL- or the New JEWEL Movement in Grenada, 'failing' insofar as it succeeds in overthrowing the government and seizing power (perhaps when ZIPRA proceeds with its proposed 'Storming the Heavens' strategy to launch a conventional invasion from Zambia in the late '70s, supported by a limited number of armored vehicles and light aircraft, and with more overt backing from the Soviet Union).
In the 'failed' scenario, they'd prove unable to fight off a subsequent invasion and overthrow of the Communist government by armed means, to reinstall the Rhodesian government (led by South Africa, with the Rhodesian Bush War effectively becoming an extension of the greater Border War conflict in the process- only for the South Africans to be far less capable of 'getting away with it' than the USA did in Grenada IOTL, with their various war crimes and crimes against humanity in the conflict being called to far greater attention, leading to markedly greater sanctions being imposed against them, which greatly accelerate the end of the Apartheid regimes). Of course, this also raises another intriguing possibility- what if the Communist uprising succeeds, with ZAPU seizing the reins of power?
Here is an idea: What if they had brought ZAPU into the Internal Settlement but not ZANU? The problem is that ZAPU was mostly Ndebele and the Ndebele were a minority and this would probably just turn the Rhodesian Bush War into an ethnic war.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.
There were a couple of roughed out timeline ideas in the WI: Rhodesia Never Became Zimbabwe? over at the Other Place. The first one from TheMann seems a bit on the wank-ish side, whilst the second one from Jonathan Edelstein seems – to my unskilled eye – somewhat more realistic.What PODs would be needed for a realistic best case scenario (i.e. no UDI, but how would you butterfly away UDI...)
Yeah, the Edelstein scenario is interesting - heck, even some more minor fluke cpuld have swung the election the UFP's way, though at the cost of being dependent on the African vote.There were a couple of roughed out timeline ideas in the WI: Rhodesia Never Became Zimbabwe? over at the Other Place. The first one from TheMann seems a bit on the wank-ish side, whilst the second one from Jonathan Edelstein seems – to my unskilled eye – somewhat more realistic.
