Coming Soon - RHODESIA!

[rmsharpe]

Hmm, from the sounds of it, it appears their armored car regiments were pretty small. Perhaps for the Scouts, I'll just use a infantryman type graphic.

The book on modern military uniforms has Rhodesian and South African infantry as well as the Scouts in their pages. I would have bought it if I wasn't such a tightwad.

[Case]

This should be interesting. The Rhodesian War is probably the only recent conflict where the war ended with a guerilla force having achieved both a military and a political victory.

As a word of warning, while there are lots of Rhodesian sites on the net, take everything on them with a lot of salt. They generally seek to ignore/play down the extent of White Rhodesia's defeat, often to a laughable extent

[rmsharpe]

The question I've got is: how badly were they defeated and how so? I really fail to see the logic behind how the Rhodesians would be defeated by the ZANU guerillas.

Also, I'm thinking that I may only want to give the player the option to play as Rhodesia, South Africa, or a couple of the frontline states. I may just use the barbarians for ANC, ZANU, and the communists in Angola and Mozambique.

Either that or I was considering giving the ZANU no actual cities to base from, but events that spawn units for them. But what this would do is give any ZANU player or the like many turns until the actual war starts, and does anyone really want to wait for X turns until they can actually start playing?

[Case]

Originally posted by rmsharpe
The question I've got is: how badly were they defeated and how so? I really fail to see the logic behind how the Rhodesians would be defeated by the ZANU guerillas.

By the end of the war the Rhodesian government had lost control of most of the countryside, and the guerillas were preparing to go for Harare/Sailsbury. The white population of Rhodesia was only about 100,000 compared to over 5 million blacks and they had very little industry, meaning that they were totally dependant on South African support, especially after the Portugese pulled out of Mozambique in the mid 70s

In contrast, the guerillas and the neigbouring African states enjoyed the full, and generous, support of the Soviet Union. IMO the Soviets support for the Rhodesian liberation movement was probably the best international intervention the Soviet Union made. While Mugabe is doubtlessly a hideous scumbag, in his day he was quite moderate, and he certainly beats the white government he replaced.

When the South Africans recognised Rhodesia as being a lost cause in the late 70s and pulled their 10,000 man 'police' force out of the country and greatly reduced the flow of economic and military aid into the country, the game was up for Ian Smith and his cronies. Not only were the Rhodesian security forces were on the brink of destruction in the field at the hands of the guerillas but Zambia was preparing a conventional invasion which the Rhodesians had no hope of stopping.

However, what you find in Rhodesian websites are claims that 'we' were winning at the time of the hand over to majority rule. Except that the country was on the brink of economic collapse. And 'we' couldn't keep any of the roads open. And 'our' secuity forces were taking totally unacceptable losses.* And even the South Africans found our racial theories unattractive and 'our' government crazy.


*You'll find that the websites and books tend to obsess over the actions of the Rhodesian SAS and Seleus Scouts. While those units performed quite well, the vast majority of the white Rhodesian security forces were part time conscripts and appear to have performed poorly and took very high casualties (there's a sobering site which lists the names of the literally thousands of white Rhodesians who were killed).

[fairline]

Originally posted by Case
While Mugabe is doubtlessly a hideous scumbag, in his day he was quite moderate, and he certainly beats the white government he replaced.

The sad thing about the situation now is that the redistribution of land is a still a just cause - the minority white farmers still own a massively disproportionately amount of land. Zimbabwe was for some time a model of good African self-government as well, up until a decade or so ago. It's just a shame that Mugabe has become a despot who uses bully-boy terrorism to achieve redistribution. A case of absolute power corrupting absolutely.....

@RM: it may be worth a look at Techumseh's 'Congo' scenario for some pointers.

[rmsharpe]

Very interesting. Now some gameplay questions:

Should the ZANU forces be playable?
Should the ANC forces be playable?
Should Portugal be playable?

[GePap]

well, what are the players slated now?

[rmsharpe]

South Africa and Rhodesia immediately come to mind, since they were both states established in the region. Zambia and Botswana of course were independent as well, but I don't know if they should be their own separate civilizations.

[jim panse]

I´d say it depends on the number of the other Civs, don´t you think so too?

[typhoon]

Heres a Hawker Hunter by Andrew Livings. Doesn't exactly fit into fairline's style though.

[jim panse]

@ rmsharpe: Cheers, comrade, I´ll be out this weekend having some barbecue party with loads of meat & beer but on Monday I will get my hands on that Recon Car ...

[Case]

Before you get too excited about the Rhodesian arms industry and it's products, have a look at this article: http://ccrweb.ccr.uct.ac.za/defenced...fdigest02.html

The most important section reading:

Zimbabwe's post Second World War history is dominated by two events: the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, 1953 - 1963; and Ian Smith's Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI), 1965 - 1980. The federal period saw a complete break in the manufacture of armaments. Federal defence and foreign policies were dictated directly from London and therefore dependence on the United Kingdom was total. All arms and ammunition were imported and the United Kingdom provided all military hardware including aircraft, pilots and technicians. Between 1951 and 1963 Southern Rhodesia received several tonnes of small arms and ammunition from the United Kingdom. It also received more than 150 aeroplanes, 30 Armoured Fighting Vehicles and 8 helicopters. 5 The net effect of the presence of this formidable Imperial arsenal was that Southern Rhodesia did not have to worry about arms production, for it was only required to provide the infrastructure for the assembly, maintenance and use of Imperial armaments.

3. Arms Production During U.D.I.

After 1965 the economy of Rhodesia was subjected to United Nations sanctions, and an arms embargo. When the guerrilla war started in 1966, the Rhodesians were forced to improvise. Claims were made that Rhodesian industry was capable of manufacturing all the war materiel vital to sustain a protracted guerrilla war. 6 These claims underplayed the real drama of the daring smuggling escapades of military hardware, of sanctions busting and of the dis-implementation of the arms embargo by sympathetic governments like apartheid South Africa, Israel and the United States of America.

A good example is the Israeli arms connection. In 1976, Israel supplied large quantities of the UZI submachine gun to Rhodesia. The Rhodesians were later granted a licence to assemble the UZI which the local press claimed was 100 percent made in Rhodesia and which was locally called the LPD/RHUZI. 7 In 1978 eleven Bell 205 helicopters which had been sold to Israel by the United States were shipped to Rhodesia via South Africa. Also, it was an Israeli corporation which built Rhodesia's notorious 500 mile landmine belt along the country's north eastern border. 8 Furthermore, the armoured fighting vehicles and the landmine protected vehicles that Peter Stiff attributes to the Rhodesian engineering genius were not manufactured in Rhodesia. The Rhodesians had no facilities to manufacture any type of vehicle chassis even for small cars. 9 What they managed to do with the help of South Africa's Armscor, was to bend iron sheets to provide a V shape to smuggled British Bedford lorries to deflect mineblast. Their "greatest" achievement was the manufacture and the spreading of anthrax, cholera and other poisons in the Rhodesian version of chemical and biological warfare. But even though these substances were produced in a small laboratory at the University of Rhodesia, they could not manage industrial production. 10

[GePap]

Well, you would need the Rhodesian gov, The rebels should be playable, the South Africans as allies of Rhodesia. If Zambia was planning at the end to INvade, then certainly Zambia and some other neighboring African states should be implemented. That gets you to 5 or 6 civs.

[rmsharpe]

Thanks Case for the link.

GePap, how would you propose to include the rebels as civilizations? The key here is I don't want to give cities to rebels from the start.

[Stefan Härtel]

I'd say if it's possible to use one civilization for each nation, then do it. Methinks it would become interesting to see how the situation would turn out if the individual countries react differently than they did in history.

Also, regarding the rebels, you could give them a city somewhere in a corner of the map, make it useless for the rebels, and maybe even untakeable (e.g. by placing it on ocean terrain). Using special city graphics, you can even make it unseen on the map (although it will appear on the small map in the corner).