Part Two: Ian Smith: The Prime Minister of Rhodesia

**Robert** (0:05)
Oh, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast that this is the part two of our series on Ian Smith, the Prime Minister of Rhodesia, a country made by racists, for racists, and of racists. Here to talk to me about racists, Becca Ramos, how are you doing, Becca?

**Becca Ramos** (0:27)
Love it. I do feel like it is an area of expertise I have as a woman of color in America, but what can you do?

**Robert** (0:34)
What can you do? These are the racists who trained a lot of the racists who came after, although they're still standing on the shoulders of great racists, like Cecil Rhodes and the Confederacy. But if they could be more racist, it's only because they stood on the shoulders of racist giants.

**Becca Ramos** (0:53)
They learned from the racists before them.

**Robert** (0:56)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know how else to talk about Rhodesia.

**Becca Ramos** (1:01)
Loving them, loving their brand of racism. It actually does remind me of Puerto Rico a little bit, just in the way that they...
I'm like, how do I put this? The colonial status of Rhodesia is kind of similar to I feel like the way the United States utilized Puerto Rico, where they colonized Puerto Rico and then they called it unincorporated territory. And then they're like, no, no, no, but it's not a colony though. And like, if you work really hard, you can maybe become a state and then it's never gonna happen, so.

**Robert** (1:35)
Denying Puerto Rico any kind of like real autonomy is just the same as the like, well, we don't want their votes to mean more than like our white votes.

**Becca Ramos** (1:44)
And they're not a lot of votes. So they don't even have representation.

**Robert** (1:49)
You just take that away from them basically. Like, it is interesting. Like, because yeah, the US answer to like what to do with Puerto Rico was just like, let's obscure it a little more than the Rhodesians we're going to, right?

**Becca Ramos** (2:03)
Yeah.

**Robert** (2:03)
Like, but it is always the fundamental issue is always, okay, but like, yeah, if we give back power to these people in a democratic system, they're gonna vote for stuff that's good for them and maybe not good for like the 40 of us who own everything.

**Becca Ramos** (2:19)
Exactly. And contextually, this is happening similar timelines, you know, like the Jones Act happened early 1900s, you know, so it's like at this time in history globally, it is not cool to be a colony, which is where I feel like Rhodesia and Puerto Rico are learning how to navigate their own political systems, while it's not saying colony.

**Robert** (2:45)
Yeah, we're not saying that's that is exactly kind of the and both their, their kind of mother countries are trying to deal with the same problem, right? The US and Great Britain are both dealing with the fact that globally, it doesn't look good to be pro colonialism and pro colony in this period. But we don't want to give up our stuff entirely. So I mean, that's less of the British by this point are kind of accepting we're going to have to give up a lot of our stuff. So it's for them more how do we avoid embarrassment, right? How do we avoid being shamed over the fact that things are going to fall apart once we leave or whatever?
Whereas the US is like, well, what if we just make up something for them that means they're technically members of the state, but they don't get to vote in a way that matters, right?

**Becca Ramos** (3:34)
Exactly.

**Robert** (3:35)
But it's still like the same fundamental issue is like, well, we want a colony, we can't call it that. How do we make sure the majority of the people who live in this area don't get to actually make decisions because we want their stuff still.

**Becca Ramos** (3:48)
Yup.

**Robert** (3:55)
So, in Central Africa, the first way that the white people attempt to maintain their power in the post-colonial era is this dream that Ian Smith signs onto called the Central African Federation or CAF. This was established in 1953 as a sort of bulwark for British white supremacists in Central Africa. The Federation, as I noted last episode, consisted of Southern Rhodesia, then a self-governing British colony, and the British protectorates of Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Each territory remained autonomous and subject to a representative of the British Queen's government, as well as an African Affairs Board, which was meant to protect indigenous people from discriminatory laws. You always had to have that in there. This is part of the ploy. That's part of how they want to dress up the CAF is like, and there's this whole board dedicated to making sure we're not mean to the black people.