Other than the FALs, the shorts might be the most distinctive part of the Bush War, but few know why they wore them
So we’ll explore that in the short 🧵👇
It all boils down the nature of the Bush War
This wasn’t the Eastern Front, with huge, mechanized armies opposing each other along a defined front
Rather, it was (somewhat) more like Vietnam and the Malaysian Emergency, with light infantry on light infantry conflict defining most of the war
Commie guerrillas on one side and the Rhodesians, in units like the RLI, SAS, RAR, and Selous Scouts on the other
So, the Rhodesian infantry units were often trying to track and ambush guerrilla units through the thick Rhodesian bush
This wasn’t England…it was thing, briar territory of the sort that is hellish to slug through, particularly if you’re trying to jack your way through it
So the Rhodesians didn’t want their men trying to hack and tromp through the bush
But they found that that is just what the soldiers would do if they were wearing thick pants and heavy leather boots
So they had to remove that ability to tromp through the heavy bush to get them to stop doing it
That involved taking away their heavy pants and boots
They were given, instead, the characteristic short shorts and canvas shoes…can’t tromp through thick briars in shorts. You’ll get scratched up
Instead, you have to do what the guerrillas would do and follow trails, without making noise, and sneak up on the enemy
As Tim Bax describes in Three Sips of Gin, that strategy quite worked
The Rhodesians, because they could no longer tromp, were much better at following the enemy and ambushing them, rather than getting weighed down and ambushed like US troops in Vietnam
So, that’s why they wore the distinctive short shorts!
If you enjoyed this thread, please rt it and drop a comment with your favorite pics of Rhodies in short shorts!
Oh, and @WBSApparel is making Rhodie short shorts. Check em out!
@WBSApparel And many thanks to @DonShift3 for reposting a similar thread this am that reminded me to write about this, one of my favorite tidbits of history from the Bush War
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NYC's communist is quoting Nelson Mandela, a communist terrorist known for murdering white civilians
As a reminder: Nelson Mandela was not a kindly leader as presented in Invictus. He did not want peace; he explicitly rejected it
A short 🧵on Mandela's terror campaign👇
For one, Mandela was in prison because he created a civilian-bombing terror group called "Spear of the Nation," and premised it on the success of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in Cuba
He then carried out dozens of bombings on civilian farms and infrastructure
MK was backed by the Soviet Union, co-led by a Lithuanian communist named Joe Slovo, and the Mandela-era leadership was convicted of trying to violently overthrow the state
This was after Mandela convinced the ANC, in the '50s, to request arms and support from the People's Republic of China
Once in prison, Mandela refused to renounce violence
In fact, the South African government offered to release him from prison if he would simply pledge to not engage in terrorism anymore. He refused
He then smuggled messages to MK's new leadership through his murderous wife Winnie, and those messages helped them plan their attacks and tactics in the terror bombing campaign of the '70s and '80s, which led to hundreds of white civilians killed and thousands wounded
*I typed this incorrectly. It was this percentage per generation, not per year. However, the same study estimates that around the same percentage died at the scene of the crime, in some form or another, or while awaiting trial, which would boost it to 1-2% per generation
So yes, not per year, per generation. Still a lot of people and enough for a eugenic effect over time
All you think you know about King Leopold II and the Belgian Congo is wrong
You were told it was a hellish land of cruel exploitation. That's a lie
In reality, Congo was a colonial jewel, the atrocities didn't occur, and the Belgian years were the only good rule it's had🧵👇
First, it's important to note what state of things existed in what became the Belgian Congo before King Leopold II became its ruler
That tale is best told by Henry Stanley in his book, How I Found Livingstone, his tale of searching for Dr. Livingstone in the heart of Darkness
In it, he describes hell on a grand scale. Arab slavers from Zanzibar pillaged the anarchic territory, taking gangs of fettered slaves back with them to be castrated and sold to the Arab slave market
The interior, when not being raided by Arabs, was in a state of horrid chaos. Random violence, cannibals, the ever-present threat of famine, and all the rest we think of when we think of pre-colonial Africa is what life was like in the Congo. Rotting vegetation, insect-infested huts, farms barely maintaining subsistence, and tribes raiding each other and explorers were the basic aspects of life in the pre-Belgian world
In short, life before the Belgians was like life in the Stone Age: nasty, brutish, and short, with the only law being the law of the jungle
Stanley and Livingstone did much to expose this state of things, and it was the greedy, exploitative traders who followed in their wake, before Leopold and the Belgians, that are recorded by Conrad in his The Heart of Darkness
It was about a decade and a half later that, during the Berlin Conference, King Leopold II was granted control of the area now knows as the Democratic Republic of the Congo
He controlled it through the Congo Free State, a private attempt he founded and fully owned, with the goal of colonizing and bring order to the anarchic territory
To do so, he started sending to the state Belgian officers and administrators. They, along with a bevy of monks, nuns, and traders, were the ones who set out to turn the anarchic Congo into a well-administered area that turned from animist paganism to Christianity while becoming prosperous and stable
The military/police arm of that rule was the Force Publique, which was mainly officered by Belgians but otherwise consisted of natives allied with the Congo Free State. They protected the nuns, protected the traders, kept out the Arab slavers from Zanzibar, and generally tried to first impose and then maintain order
South Africa is back in the news because of its anarcho-tyranny and Mugabe-style land expropriation
Missed is that this is Mandela's vision
The ANC's "National Democratic Revolution" concept—using liberalism to establish communism—is going exactly as he planned & hoped for🧵👇
"National Democratic Revolution" (NDR), is originally a Soviet concept that was adopted and built upon by the South African communists, particularly the ruling ANC regime, to suit their unique situation and goal
Their goal, as one might expect of an anti-colonial communist group, is race communism of the sort seen in Zimbabwe under Mugabe
Their unique situation, however, was that they had the world's sympathy and were expected to create the "Rainbow Nation" rather than just another nominally democratic hellhole
Hence, the NDR concept. By slowly boiling the frog, they could use the slogans and methods of liberalism to first establish socialism, and then, from ther,e move to communism
It's that final step we're seeing now, and they might not have boiled the frog slowly enough, as they're getting more resistance than was expected
Still, it's gotten them this far, so it's worth reviewing
The American left is embracing race communism of the sort that destroyed South Africa + Rhodesia
Here, e.g., the Chicago mayor admits to anti-white racism in permitting: “Every dime [blacks] were robbed of, I’ll make sure is returned two- or threefold”
Here's what's coming🧵👇
Mayor Johnson's spewed absurdities are, essentially, the same inane nonsense the African communists pushed before destroying their countries
In South Africa, Mandela's ANC has long insisted that the white farmers "stole" the land from blacks, and thus it needs to be "returned" to them
Much the same was true of Mugabe's thuggery in Zimbabwe, where he and his cronies insisted that "land reform" (farmland expropriation) was a necessity because the white farmers had "stolen" the land when they founded Rhodesia
In every case, it was absurd: the supposed "thieves" built everything that existed, they didn't steal it
South Africa is a great example. When the progenitors of the Afrikaners arrived in 1654, they found a nearly uninhabited land, and those few Khoisan there were roving pastoralists who had settled nothing. The Afrikaners then built South Africa from the ground up, turning an untamed wilderness into a thriving colony with hugely successful farms. They gradually marched to the north and west, settling the land as they went and eventually finding the Xhosa and Zulu, both of whom arrived in what's now South Africa from the north well after the Afrikaners did. Once again, it was the Afrikaners who built civilization, with their labor and hands, in that mostly untamed land. Over the mid-19th to mid-20th century, Anglo settlers and capital poured in as well, helping build civilization where none had formerly existed in South Africa
Rhodesia was much the same thing. The British South Africa Company did, admittedly, find the Matabele and Shona in what became Rhodesia when settling the territory began. But agriculture was limited. No cities, roads, railroads, or the like existed. Populations were limited and sparse. Anglos then poured in and settled it, turning veldt into farms, building cities on open land, and gradually raising civilization on land where little formerly existed. Further, what land the BSAC obtained, the land on which civilization was built, was bought from the Matabele, not "stolen."
Well, here's what prominent SA politicians say: "We will k*ll white women, we will k*ll white children, and we will even k*ll your pets"
Importantly, this violence is part of Mandela's legacy and happened because of American policy 🧵👇
This should be quite clear as the Afrikaner refugee situation heats up
For example, an ANC (Mandela's party, long aided by the Soviets) hack calling himself "Staling" released this statement about Trump's refugee program and demanded the Afrikaners stay so that they can face "accountability" for "historic privilege"
What does "accountablity" mean in this situation?
It means he wants them to be slain in some of the sickest, most horrific ways imaginable
This is what the farm murders and home invasions across South Africa are: aided by the government (the military, for example, provides them with signal jammers), thugs r*pe, m*rder, and k!ll Boers in their homes
The farm attacks are almost always black on white, almost always involve sexual assault, and frequently involve murder. The same is true of home invasions in urban zones, what few are left in the years after Mandela