Senate Israel/Palestine

Um, OZK?

Yeah, hi. I don't know if you have much in the way of interaction with white Africans but calling Zimbabwe Rhodesia, regardless of what it was called at the time, is fairly well regarded as being not-dissimilar to pining for the good old days of Apartheid.

It's not lekker, bru.

 

i actually didnt know that. ive only met a couple of afrikaners, and i havent discussed history with any of them. i have a tendency to refer to rhodesia when talking the historical state of rhodesia. i also liek to make offensive jokes about an acquaintence of my parents who happens to be named "ian smith".

also im a bit surprised to see you correcting people on this ender; arent you and cecil rhodes best buds 4L?

 

So . . . lemme get this straight.

"The United States of America opposed the southern rebellion." = Okay

"The United States of America opposed the Confederate States of America." = I miss Jim Crow

 

OK, so OZK, you don't know any white Africans. Got it. Thanks mate.

Rogue_Ten - I have friends who are from Zimbabwe, or who are Boers or English South African migrants. They're not that comfortable calling it Rhodesia given the politics around it.

 

and you dont correct them on the need, nay duty to honor the great man, NAY THE COLOSSUS!! that was Cecil Rhodes?

 

different groups and cultures deal with collective controversies/shame differently. just look at the german policies against holocaust denial or displaying swastikas for almost any reason

 

Not my place. It's pretty tough being a white African of 35 years or younger in many respects, especially if you had to get out due to the inherent violence and threats there. I mean, obviously not if you're an athlete who has anger issues and shoots a girlfriend. But these guys can't really go home and are in effect reaping seeds they didn't sow. I'm glad it's not my existence.

But yeah, they sort of hold this view that Mugabe is a tyrant and has covered up his illegitimacy with anti-White rhetoric - but that he also gave Zimbabwe a long time of being a perfect, peaceful, post-colonial state.

 

mugabe is p bad not gonna lie. i do, in fact, know a black zimbabwean refugee, for the record

 

I played collegiate rugby for a couple years with a black Zimbabwean. He had some pretty nasty things to say about Mugabe.

 

yah my friend's family were opposition politicians soooo

 

Morgan Tsvangirai won a plurality of votes in a national election. That means we can fairly predict that roughly half the country (relatively) dislikes Mugabe, and his political opponents at least very recently outnumbered his supporters. In that context, I'm not sure why we're making such a big hullaballoo about this.

 

Didn't he claim he won a majority?

 

yeah its kind of a derail at this point but oh well. new senate

 

I'm not sure why you felt that was relevant? I pointed out that many of the white Africans I know (and Sydney has a lot of Saffers) all consider the term Rhodesia to be used either by old guard racists or new guard racists. No white African calls it "Rhodesia" unless they're about to tell you how savage blecks are.

 

I wasn't remarking on your comment. I was just making a note about the long train of "I heard of someone that doesn't like Mugabe" posts, that followed. The posts were so breathless you would've thought people were discussing the time they met Michelle Obama in real life.

 

So what do they call the regime that ruled what is now called Zimbabwe between 1965 and 1980? And what do they call the British colony that existed previously?

 

Couldn't you use a better example, like Her Majesty?

 

I guess if, in line with the original mention of Mugabe's abuses, we're trying to cite people who are awful instead of wonderful, the Queen of England would be a more appropriate choice, you're right.

 

Even in a historical context?

edit: I'm curious about the origin of that name. Did the African blacks call their country something else at the time?
I always knew it as Zimbabwe, even as far back as third grade. The other name I only read about later.

I think the issue I have with OZK using it is he didn't use it as a historical name but as if that name and Zimbabwe were currently interchangeable.

 

i dont know the specifics around zimbabwe but african kingdoms and teh like that existed before colonization have almost zero correspondence with the colonies and states that came later (with a few exceptions, mostly in north and west africa... benin of today exists in similar territory as the pre-colonial kingdom of benin). it was a haphazard matter of whatever a particular colonial power could scrape together and hold in a particular region.

rhodesia was named for Cecil Rhodes, who was a famous british colonizer douchebag. zimbabwe takes its name from Great Zimbabwe, (which iirc just means "house" a cursory search reveals that it means "venerated houses"), a walled city in what is now modern zimbabwe which was so impressive that the colonists who "discovered" it decided it surely could not have been made by black africans and must instead have been made by a lost colony of white phoenecians (thereby conveniently establishing a national mythology for the white settler state of rhodesia; "you see, we're not invaders! it was our land all along!")



another popular story that persists to this day among some white africans and their sympathizers, is that zimbabwe was the kingdom of the biblical queen of sheba, who also must surely have been a white woman, (because racial ideology, i guess?)

at least they didnt take the "aliens did it" route of modern antiquarian snake-oil salesmen and the achievements of the egyptians, nubians, mayans, etc

 

I thought Rhodesia was named because War Machine helped save the country...

 

i thought he just beat up a pornstar?

 

How dare you. The royal family are better than the Obamas in every way. They don't make promises they can't keep, and very rarely have they been so spectacular a disappointment. I mean, people mock Charles, but he does more good for more people than Obama did (unless of course they can eat his delicious, hopeful words. No? Can't? Will those words mitigate climate change? No. Gosh. Awkward).

Wicked Wocky.

 

The Obamas aren't a laughing stock in the tabloid/gossip media the way the Royal Family has at various points in the past.

 

Course correction! Let's get back to Middle East, people. We somehow got lost.