Yes, because of course that is what I said.
I dug out Hasting's account of Rhodesia and the Bush War.
"I felt not the smallest sympathy for the Salisbury regime. Ian Smith and his cohorts were near-fascists, committed to the permanent maintenance of white rule, and suppression of the black majority by ruthless use of force, backed by ridiculous rhetoric about the justice of their own cause... The Prime Minister enlivened an election meeting in 1970, at which he was heckled by African students, by singing an Afrikaans song entitled '
Bobbejaan klim die berg' - 'Baboon, climb the hill'."
"'What do you do about the landmine problem, Mrs Smith?' I asked over tea after a guinea fowl shoot. "Oh, first thing every morning we just pile the farm boys into the truck and send them to drive up and down the road until we can see they haven't blown up.'"
What a lovely bunch of people.
"The weakest link in their society's extravagant claims for white Rhodesia's 'patriotism', however, was the simple fact that so many were first or at most second-generation immigrants, with no historic stake in the country at all. Urban whites basked in the comforts and unearned authority they could exercise... The white farmers who tilled the land amid growing danger, who maintained their remote homesteads in an atmosphere of tightening siege, who uncomplainingly sent their sons into the bush to fight the guerrilla war and bear the brunt of the casualties, seemed entitled to a respect for their courage which their leaders never merited."
And onto the Defense Minister:
"It was van der Byl, a right wing fanatic with huge estates in South Africa, who responded wittily to a journalist who asked why the Salisbury government had ceased to disclose the names of people hanged for terrorist or criminal offences: "Why should we? Anyway it's academic, because they are normally dead after it.""
"The garden party never ends. One is reminded irresistibly of a little boy, in tears, refusing to go home at the end of the outing, insisting somehow that the music plays on. Yes, dear, we all think that it has been marvellous, but it's over now. You don't believe me? You won't come home? There is a curfew south of Umtali, and the railway to the border is under constant attack. Mr Charles Holloway and his wife are in their late sixties. They took an outing last Sunday afternoon. They went home with multiple gunshot wounds."
The white leadership could have negociated a settlement with the moderates, but their arrogance, their ridiculous sense of justice instead meant hundreds more died.
So back to your point. Standard of living must be wonderful when you are a third class citizen ruled by 1st generation immigrants, who hold you in utter contempt, who do not allow you to vote because of the colour of your skin. Today people can't vote because of the political climate. Like I said, the pendulum has swung. Zimbabwe today and Rhodesia 30 years ago are pretty crap for your average 'citizen'.
