Talk:Rhodesia

History Seems Incomplete

This article, and the history section in particular, seems to exhibit a particular slant by focusing extensively on the white minority's economic and political history while minimizing broader historical context and the experiences of the black majority. The history section starts relatively late, omitting significant early figures like Cecil Rhodes, and heavily emphasizes the economic activities and political maneuvers of the white population. This selective historical narrative may give an unbalanced view of Rhodesia's history, glossing over the impact of colonialism and the black majority's struggle against racial discrimination and for independence.

I would politely request a review by someone with scholarly credentials and specialization in African history. 217.180.214.108 (talk) 11:24, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

The history section starts relatively late because events prior to the mid 1960s are topics covered in two other articles, Southern Rhodesia and Company rule in Rhodesia. --Katangais (talk) 20:30, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Just popping in quickly here to say that there probably should be some discussion of how to deal with the duplication in a natural way. Before I hack and slashed my way through all the repetition on the Southern Rhodesia page (seriously everything on that page was written in triplicate) the article tried to do a fly-by summary of post 1965 history to get back to the covering the colony's brief history in 1979 since it technically reverts back to being the colony of Southern Rhodesia (or well reverts back to being under their control since it was always de jure Southern Rhodesia).

I feel that "Southern Rhodesia" history between 1979-1980 should be almost excluded from that article and only addressed in detail here. If not, its going to be really weird having a 15-year gap or we're going to have to essentially add a bunch of stuff that's better served just being on this article to the Southern Rhodesia article as well. Your Friend From 1914 (talk) 02:03, 12 April 2026 (UTC)

     I highly agree. The History section seems to be filled with a lot of anecdotal evidence. I would like to see more reputable sources being used in this section, particularly around the subject of the Bush War and motivations for political reform in 1979. FJVR (talk) 14:17, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for speedy deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for speedy deletion:

• God Save the King.ogg

You can see the reason for deletion at the file description page linked above. —Community Tech bot (talk) 02:52, 15 July 2025 (UTC)

Legacy section should be fixed or removed

The Legacy section at the end of this article contains no sources, makes dubious claims, and does not contribute any major or meaningful information on the enduring legacy of Rhodesia. It should either be removed or edited to include bibliographic citations. FJVR (talk) 14:32, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

About the national anthem

Hey, May I change the national anthem audio with your permission, because it has some national anthem somewhere on Youtube. if no, it's fine, it just that the anthem needs a bit of a change. Sanatiball (talk) 12:43, 28 November 2025 (UTC)

We cannot use any audio files unless they are freely licenced, ideally uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. CMD (talk) 13:01, 28 November 2025 (UTC)

"New country"?

This is why we need actual research, not lazy parroting. This entire article needs to be overhauled. Here is part of an official UK government Act from 1952 [1]

Go to p "548", and read (6). The COUNTRIES this UK act of 1952 applies to.

Now go back and look at this article. It needs to be completely rewritten. ~2026-15984-31 (talk) 18:28, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

New York Times refers to Southern Rhodesia as a nation in 1939. [2]

This article needs a major clean-up to remove the blatant pov. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ~2026-15984-31 (talk) 14:16, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

Explanation of reasoning for edit revision

“White minority rule in South Africa predated apartheid.”

This is irrelevant. The claim was that “From 1965 to 1979, Rhodesia was one of two independent states on the African continent governed by a white minority." It is entirely appropriate to refer to South Africa between 1965-1979 as South Africa under Apartheid to differentiate it from it during previous periods of its history and there is no reason not to include that useful detail given the similarities between the two regimes. The statement did not read to imply that South Africa was always under apartheid or that there had never been a time before apartheid. It accurately states that at the time of Rhodesia's existence, the only other country that was around in Africa that was ruled by a white minority was South Africa under Apartheid

“As far as Rhodesia transitioning to a republic, that is not entirely accurate either. It declared a republic in 1970, but since UDI was not recognised in legal terms this was semantics, a constitutional fiction”

Calling it a “transition to a republic” is entirely accurate to how the Rhodesian government changed itself. “Republic” is not just a legal term of art; it also describes the mechanism by which a government operates whether or not Britain or the broader international community recognized the change and accepted it. Saying that it was “declared” is less clear than the describing it as what happened. Rhodesia did create an office for a president who acted as head of state and did undergo legislative reforms to turn itself into a republic. There is already the de jure/de facto distinction in the article unless you provide a reliable source that it was only a declaration and they did nothing to actually implement reforms to act like a republic (which would contradict the article) then describing only as a "declaration" significantly more inaccurate than "transition" is.

You provided no justification for changing “white minority” back to “white minority of European descent and culture.” All white people in Rhodesia were of European descent even white American immigrants to Rhodesia ultimately descent from Europe because that is where white people are from. It adds absolutely nothing of value to the sentence. Similarly, the term “culture” is the exact same thing we want to bog the lead down over Rhodesian culture and identity formation. As such it is also superfluous and adds no value to the reader because its already implicitly included in the term “white minority.”

Similarly, you provided no good explanation to re-include the phrase "was predominantly white, with a small number of seats reserved for black representatives." That is not an accurate statement as to the constitutional developments prior to and immediately after UDI and as I explained when I deleted it, it implies that it was not predominately white afterwards which is wrong and restoring it verbatim does not improve the problem with that sentence at all. Your Friend From 1914 (talk) 00:32, 12 April 2026 (UTC)

Hi @Your Friend From 1914: In the future, kindly ping me on the talk page so when I see the changes on my watchlist, I'll know that these comments are directed towards a contribution I made (and not another editor).

"It is entirely appropriate to refer to South Africa between 1965-1979 as South Africa under Apartheid to differentiate it from it during previous periods of its history" is problematic from my perspective, because "South Africa under Apartheid" is an overly broad, subjective, and generalized term that encompassed both the Union of South Africa as well as two separate constitutional republics, one which lasted from 1961-1983, and a second established by the constitutional reforms of 1982-83. I think it's an oversimplification for this reason, and also for the fact that apartheid itself was a system of racial segregation and discrimination encoded in the legislation of a pre-existing regime, not a political regime in and of itself. This has come up many times on Talk:Apartheid, where I have consistently pointed out there's a difference between the discussion of the state, and the discussion of a specific framework of legislation that existed inside that state. Apartheid is not a country; ergo, "South Africa under apartheid" is not a country. The more appropriate way to word the sentence would be to substitute "South Africa", "Republic of South Africa", or "South Africa under the National Party" to denote the state. Ideally, we would insert a link to Republic of South Africa (1961-83), which doesn't yet exist but is being worked on as a draft.

"there is no reason not to include that useful detail given the similarities between the two regimes." This is also an oversimplification which is a major pet peeve of mine. No equivalent of either apartheid or the National Party's brand of herrenvolk democracy existed in Rhodesia. The political systems of both nations were also extremely different. Broadly speaking, they are similar because they were ruled by white minorities, were anti-communist, faced guerrilla insurgencies, were former British colonial possessions that achieved self-governing status early, and possessed discriminatory land apportionment legislation. But there the similarities largely end. Each regime is worthy of a discussion on its specific nuances, and this is cheapened by the often uneducated attempts to conflate them based on superficial details. I'll point out that South African and Zimbabwean academic sources tend to recognize this nuance in their literature. Western (mostly American and British) academic and especially journalistic sources do not, so I see it this kind of oversimplification as a form of external POV as well.

"Calling it a “transition to a republic” is entirely accurate to how the Rhodesian government changed itself. “Republic” is not just a legal term of art; it also describes the mechanism by which a government operates whether or not Britain or the broader international community recognized the change and accepted it. Saying that it was “declared” is less clear than the describing it as what happened. Rhodesia did create an office for a president who acted as head of state and did undergo legislative reforms to turn itself into a republic. There is already the de jure/de facto distinction in the article unless you provide a reliable source that it was only a declaration and they did nothing to actually implement reforms to act like a republic (which would contradict the article) then describing only as a "declaration" significantly more inaccurate than "transition" is." My issue with this phrasing is that it implicitly takes the perspective of the Rhodesian regime. This is frankly a problem throughout the article, but if we want to keep it NPOV we must not shy away from the emphasis that - regardless of the practical realities on the ground - UDI was considered illegal by the entire international community, and changes in government in Rhodesia during this time were also (by extension) invalid from a de jure perspective. You make a distinction between de jure and de facto realities in your comments, and I don't see why we can't make this same distinction in the wording of the lead. I would be happy with a sentence that recognizes this distinction, by pointing out that Rhodesia was a de facto republic after 1970 (although under international law it was still a British crown colony).

"You provided no justification for changing “white minority” back to “white minority of European descent and culture.” All white people in Rhodesia were of European descent even white American immigrants to Rhodesia ultimately descent from Europe because that is where white people are from. It adds absolutely nothing of value to the sentence. Similarly, the term “culture” is the exact same thing we want to bog the lead down over Rhodesian culture and identity formation. As such it is also superfluous and adds no value to the reader because its already implicitly included in the term “white minority.”" This is largely due to my experience contributing to White Africans of European ancestry, which was subject to numerous discussions about the amount of overlap with the term "White Africans", and which ones should be favoured. The fundamental issue in these discussions was that there are numerous Levantine and North African ethnic groups which are also considered "white" in a broad sense, and many of them lived in European colonies south of Sahara, including in southern Africa (see Lebanese people in South Africa) without being considered "European". Therefore, from my perspective the distinction between "white minority" and "white minority of European descent" is important.

"Similarly, you provided no good explanation to re-include the phrase "was predominantly white, with a small number of seats reserved for black representatives." That is not an accurate statement as to the constitutional developments prior to and immediately after UDI and as I explained when I deleted it, it implies that it was not predominately white afterwards which is wrong and restoring it verbatim does not improve the problem with that sentence at all." The bolded seems to be an unusual extrapolation. I think it's important to mention in the lead that Rhodesia had black political representation in parliament, because frankly that was the crux of the political issue in Rhodesia - how much more of the political representation to extend to the black majority, not whether to exclude them from national government altogether (as in neighbouring South Africa). It's an important distinction, again because Rhodesia was not a herrenvolk democracy like South Africa. As it stands, the lead suggests that Rhodesia had a wholly white government rather than a predominantly white government prior to 1979, and that is highly misleading to the readership. I would be open to re-wording the phrase to "was predominantly white, with a small number of seats reserved for black representatives until 1979," if you felt it incorrectly suggests the government was not predominantly white prior to 1979. The addition of a date would eliminate the possible misinterpretation that minority rule was not perpetuated until 1979.

--Katangais (talk) 01:09, 12 April 2026 (UTC)

Fair enough -RE pinging you I am still trying to figure out how all this stuff works (see me breaking all the fonts on the Southern Rhodesia page somehow for about five minutes the other day --I still have no idea what I did there tbh)

Initially I was going to put your name and the date of the edit in the thread title but I was unsure if that was considered bad form and remembered seeing something about a proper way to archive things and didn't want to do it improperly.

I will respond to the substance of your comment within the next day or so, I am kinda swamped on exams/getting my thesis finished and submitted (its actually on far-right misuse of Rhodesian/Southern Rhodesian history hence why I started cleaning up the Southern Rhodesia article and adding citations). If you don't mind keeping it as I've got it now, I can probably come up with a compromise that satisfies both our issues after I am done my exam tomorrow evening. Your Friend From 1914 (talk) 01:28, 12 April 2026 (UTC)