Rhodesia, the Boers & Croatians – What Rhodesia stood for…
I sent a Rhodesian army colonel I know this quote from a Croatian on my website:
Hi J,I did a video about why Britain did not invade Rhodesia. A Croatian I know posted this. The Croatians fought and won their war of independence in the 1990s. Their leader who guided their future, their "Ian Smith" if you will, was Pavelic. This is what he said about my Rhodesian video:
So many parallels with Croatia. After being defeated in ww2 and incorporated into Communist Yugoslavia accusations of treason to Pavelić (the Croatian leader in ww2) were numerous. You will not get your own country for free or without blood and risk. There is a famous quote by Pavelić "We have in this endeavour (statehood/independence) given many sacrifices, but a People who is not capable of making sacrifices is not capable of living."
And that is how I see Rhodesian UDI. A risk that failed.
The colonel replied to me as follows:-
Hi Jan,
The second Anglo-Boer war should have indicated the consequences of taking on a political war with unequal odds. However, we had the Congo experience fresh in our minds, and a belief that we were a bastion against communism in Africa, with right on our side.
Almost every country in Africa has gone through one or more coups and periods of dictatorship, and what we predicted would happen if black majority rule came about in Rhodesia is there for all to see.
[The above gives some perspective from the Colonel about how the Rhodesians of the time saw the future in their stand in the 1960s. They truly believed in their cause as a bastion of civilisation and progress … in a typical European style. Jan]