AIR RHODESIAN JETS LEAD TO RHODESIA’S OVERTHROW.
These are three Boeing 720 jets bought by the Rhodesian government through a Swiss company called Jet Aviation in 1973.
Even though Rhodesia was under UN sanctions that prohibited any country from selling them machinery, technology or products from America and the west and despite Air Rhodesia operating at a loss; it was able to secure a loan to purchase these aircraft from a Swiss and German bank in contravention of UN sanctions.
That loan was later settled by Zimbabweans after independence, together with the US$800mil [$2.4bil] dollars of high interest loans the Rhodesians took to buy weapons .
It’s such examples that make us say with authority that Rhodesia wasn’t really under sanctions because they were supported by European governments to bust sanctions. The only reason the US and Britain signed off on sanctions upon Rhodesia is because they knew that liberation was coming and they wanted sanctions debt and underdevelopment to be passed on to the incoming black government to keep it under debt colonialism.
Nevertheless, here is the irony. While 92% of Rhodesians were suffering as underpaid labor, with high levels of unemployment, less than 5 schools preparing non-white Rhodesians for university, 70% illiteracy, 76% malnutrition, 200 black children dying per 1000 born and more than 90% of citizens living in barren reserves in what the world called a crime against humanity. Rhodesia decided to take a loan to buy jets and weapons instead of building hospitals, schools or providing social welfare.
As a result of this incompetence, young Rhodesians frustrated with living in villages without education or jobs, walked to Zambia and Tanzania to get military training and overthrew this corrupt government after just 7yrs of buying these jets.
Since then Zimbabwe has achieved a 92% literacy, built 13 universities, 13 nursing colleges, 11 technical colleges, 1161 clinics and hospitals, 7000km of road, 19321 hospital beds, Satellite Earth Station and ensured that Zimbabwean human skills are the biggest export of the country to bust sanctions. That is what we call strategic governance.
Rutendo Bereza Matinyarare.
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