What Zimbabwe Has To Offer Today For Travelers?

In 2009, I gave my stepdaughter (then 5), a 100 trillion dollar note to take to school for show and tell. The “teacher” embarrassed her by saying “that’s just pretend money, there’s no such note that big” . Her mother was furious, and demanded a full apology, I emailed her the Wikipedia page, and she got a full apology, in front of the class! 😂

I am a white Zimbabwean. My parents were born there of Dutch, German, Stottish descent. I and my children were born there too. I live in the UK now. I moved away 40 years ago. I notice it has not improved or even stayed the same as how it was when it was Rhodesia. I miss Rhodesia, which now as my mother would say is Scotch Mist ie. Something that is hard to find or does not exist.

A senior manager in the company I worked for, in Australia, was raised in Rhodesia. He was born in London to a single mother who died and he was left with one relative, his elderly grandmother, who knew she would not live much longer. She noticed in the newspaper that a school was being established in Rhodesia for intelligent boys. The idea being they would received a British private school type education and then be subsidized for University to eventually form a White aristocracy to run Rhodesia. Many of these boys made friends with the local black children. While at university in South Africa he knew white rule in Rhodesia wouldn’t last much longer and on finishing his degree did not return to Rhodesia. He didn’t want to do army service and fight his black friends. A very smart guy he left immediacy for Australia and had a good life and did very well. ps:- Fredo’s originated in 1930 in Australia by the MacRobertsons company, which Cadbury took over.. .

Regarding the minority rule, it’s worth noting that Ian Smith, prime minister of Rhodesia, continued to live in Zimbabwe until mid-2000s, as an ordinary citizen. Few black Africans who were left disenfranchised by the Rhodesian Front government were actually hostile towards him. perusal old interviews, my impression is that he was a decent, principled man. Nobody is perfect and no country is perfect. It’s also debatable whether the transition to Zimbabwe as it happened was inevitable. The Rhodesian military had things pretty well under control until 1975 when the Portuguese Estado Novo collapsed in the Carnation Revolution and they decided to pull out from their colonies. Rhodesia became then heavily reliant on South Africa, and the guerillas were able to establish themselves in the newly independent Mozambique. The Portuguese armed forces were not under serious pressure from the colonial independence movements: their withdrawal was a political decision. If the Portuguese had stayed ten years longer, then the Chinese involvement would have waned before Mugabe or Nkomo had serious shot. (Edit: style)

My boss was a missionary in Zimbabwe in the early 2000s. At one point during his mission, a fellow missionary at a remote posting upset the local authorities. His crime? He had knocked the center out of a $1 Zimbabwean coin and placed the outer ring on his keychain. The jail cell at the police station was full so he and his mission companion were placed under house arrest over the weekend while they awaited trial. My boss and a few other missionaries drove all night across the country with two panel vans. When they arrived in the village it was 1 AM and the police were asleep across the street. In less than thirty minutes they had the mission house stripped of everything, and by the time the sun was up and the police had awoken, those missionaries were on a flight from Zambia to Paris.

My South Africa is now the same. The little town on the suburbs of Durban was green, lush, peaceful. Everyone, black and white, lived peacefully. Then the ANC took over and it’s all gone to shit. We had to escape to the UK when whites started getting murdered. I’ve never been back but Google street view shows utter devastation.

Went to SA in 2008 and it was clearly a country in massive decline, then I saw the Durban riots about 3 years ago and it was obvious that this is a country slowly becoming a failed state. Such a tragedy but it’s what happens when you vote along tribal lines and not for the most competent people to run an economy.

South Africa is gone. I’ve visited RSA numerous times between 2001 and 2008 for both work and pleasure, making some solid friendships with the local Boere folk over the years. With every single trip you could see the situation getting worse. Load shedding, crime, corruption. Mbeki stating in a TV interview that crime is not an issue In South Africa only to get a fence built for 40m ZAR around his estate. Then things got even more interesting with Zuma… During the last two trips in 2008 literally every other day there was a farewell party, as one by one friends or friends of friends were leaving for the UK, Australia etc. The feeling was just straight out of JRR Tolkien, either the failing people of the West or the Elves boarding their tall ships to sail into the sunset, make your pick. In 2019 my last close friend called it quits and left for New Zealand with his entire family. All these people owned companies or did highly qualified jobs, they were resilient, hard working so I never worried about their future regardless of where they went. But for South Africa, this is a terrible loss.

My great uncle was quite the adventurer during his time with the New Zealand Defence Force, he served in Korea, Malaya, Vietnam during his Army days. After he left the Army he served in the Rhodesian Security Forces for a few years. He decided to return to all the places he fought in before he passed and he was actually quite excited to return there as Rhodesia was second only to Vietnam in natural beauty to him but he had nothing nice to say when he returned to NZ. “I was there in the 1970s and somehow I returned in the 1870s.”

Iam Zimbabwean we young people have absolutely no problem with White/British People majority of people blame the Mugabe Regime for Economic disaster and after 2001 brutal Sanctions against our Country, the Sanctions just been lifted 2024 I believe with right investment the infrastructure/agriculture/industry can be rebuild fast what the current government is trying to do

I find it so strange that in the time that the people who left Africa to settle the rest of the world have advanced in every field of human endeavour, those who stayed behind have barely moved forward, even rejecting the advances that they were left with from colonial times. (Given that we accept that humanity began in Africa in the first place.)

A few years back, I found out that my nanny was not south african, but actually from bulawayo. I’d known about the tragedy of Rhodesia for a good decade prior and this bit of family history was unknown to me. Her passport had been invalidated by the Mugabe regime. That night, on a hunch, I looked up “Rhodesian Rock Music”, and John Edmond came up. The songs are great on their own, but with the lore? Incredible. Moved to Colorado a few weeks after that night and I’ll admit, hiking around a new place with those songs in my head, whistling in the bush was a treat!

Good God. Its worse than Fallout: nobody is smart or enterprising enough to take what has been abandoned and turn it into something else they need or want. If I lived there, I’d take that racetrack and make it into a new track, reinforce the seating, and have people do footraces, cart races, horse races… anything! It would be so fun! But no. Trains abandoned instead of converted into housing or businesses. Beautiful buildings preserved but little else going on. Insane. We really did build the entire world, didn’t we boys? Without us, they amount to NOTHING.

I went to visit my English friends that lived in Zimbabwe in the late 1900s I went to the falls and also stayed on a private island for a few days….WHAT A LOVELY PLACE……BUT IN THE END THEY HAD TO GET OUT BECAUSE IT WAS NO LONGER A SAFE PLACE TO LIVE….?Unfortunately they are no longer with us and I miss them very much …But I still remember my visit with fond memories……..

Thank you for doing this, as an American ive always had a fascination with Rhodesia. They never taught us about it. Imagine that. A fellow English colony that declared independence in the modern era, wouldn’t want to learn that. Very timely considering the entire west being purposely decolonized currently

Good article. I felt a strange sense of melancholy for a country I never knew. It’s an interesting thought to consider that if Rhodesia had survived to the modern day, what would it be like? We’ve seen the decline with Rhodesia and South Africa, but then frankly, we’re perusal the decline of the UK in real-time. Perhaps that’s where the sense of melancholy comes from. I can see the demise of Rhodesia happening to the country I do know, and that’s heart-breaking.

It’s strange. This seemingly exceeded and failed all my expectations. Because I thought Zimbabwe was just one big burning pit. That’s what I heard. But perusal this it seems seemingly normal. Poor and destitute, but otherwise normal…even quaint. Half way through the article I thought. “I’d survive this.” And that scares me more, because I live in California. And the US is heading in the same Direction as Zimbabwe and nobody seems to care.

Hands down this article is better than any bald and bankrupt content. Not to knock bald, his coverage of the old USSR is cool – but we know communism screws up everything in the end. Callum’s coverage of a former part of the British empire was fascinating & a sobering reminder of how a dictatorship run by a soviet shill ruined a beautiful place. Much respect.

The San people are haplogroup A, the most genetically ancient people. But the Bantu have all but exterminated them in Africa. Ironically, European settlers are probably the only reason there are any San remaining. With an average IQ of 50, the San never really got beyond stone-age hunter-gatherer life.

Thanks for the article Callum … yesterday Zimbabwe arrested czech tourist Lukas Slavik who was filming a article about power outages there… and want to imprison him for 20 years for spreading dangerous propaganda misinformation against the regime… they had a court session today but funny thing is during the court hearing the power went out again 🙂

There’s something that happens to a native culture after empire, where they forget the maintenance and skills are regressively lost, you see that in Anglo-Saxon writing (historically not that long after the Romans left Britain) where the skills that built the villas, bathhouses etc… are not only forgotten but they look completely alien to the current culture (there’s a poem known as ‘The Ruin’, where a wanderer, possibly coming across the ruins at Bath, ponders the fate of the ‘giants’ that must have built such works, as if to say if they can disappear then how long has a ‘less advanced’ culture like their own got left…).

I was in Zim in 1988, and rode the steam train from Harare to Bulawayo, and from Bulawayo to Victoria Falls. At Victoria Falls, we walked across the bridge and traded with very desperately poor Zambians. A most amazing trip. So sad to see it in its current state. At that time it seemed that schools seemed to be the major industry in Zimbabwe – I took that as a very promising sign. Very sad to see that promise fade away.

As a teenager, I remember full well the upheavals of Rhodesia and other places in Africa cause by the push for ‘majority’ rule, and Ian Smith’s resistance to it — which was based on the knowledge they had no idea how to run a country. I remember, too, his caution in just turning it over to the ‘majority’ — which has turned out to be both well-founded and prescient, and that he acquiesced against his own better judgement. Another thing I know is that competent manages are always outnumbered by the ‘majority’ of workers. And look where things are now… 😐 South Africa, Uganda, Rwanda, Zimbabwe have all descended into a Hell of violence, corruption and misery for their ‘majorities.’ They’ve driven white farmers out, and now ‘their’ people live in even worse poverty and starvation than before — but that’s okay, ’cause they drove out Whitey… Get out! said the ‘people’ of Gaza, and so they did. And look what they did with it.

I visited Zimbabwe in 2011 and went to most of the Bulawayo and Vic Falls attractions. I especially wanted to visit the Bulawayo train station to pay tribute to Michael Palin who passed through in 1991 and was on Rhodes’ private train. There was a museum and it wasn’t as wrecked. Two curators, a very elderly white man and a very well educated young black man with a master’s degree in history. The Rhodesian solution of requiring education before voting would have saved millions from suffering, hunger and poverty. We should be ashamed for abandoning a pioneer nation to vicious communist inspired ethnic terrorism.

Never have been to Southern Africa, of course, but I held a long interest in the region, and studied its history in the University, and this is one of the best YT mini-docs I’ve seen on the state of Zimbabwe today. This vid/documentary is a remarkable look at what Zimbabwe has become. The amount of decay is sad, really. And it’s not just the remnants of Rhodesian rule), the infrastructure looks completely worn out. The North Korean pop music was a nice touch.

Very interesting summary, well done! I am in my mid 50’s and grew up in Salisbury in the 70’s and 80’s and was a child of the pre and post revolutionary era in that land. My happiest memories are of the early to mid 80s when there was somewhat of a boom taking place, except of course if you were living in rural Matabele land and the dreadful things that happened there. It seemed anything was possible with Mugabe offering the hand of reconciliation to his former oppressors, the cynical among us knew that he had no choice but to keep us around to keep the economy going. I was named after THE Allan Wilson as my parents had a bit of a sense of humour. We used to own a couple of John Edmond records and were regularly played on weekends during the many warm nights at our swimming pool and BBQ parties. Good times

1966 and 1967 my family had a holiday by lake Kariba down from where we lived in Broken Hill. Yes we spent 3 years in Zambia. Our second visit also took in a week in Livingstone and visits to the falls. Very memorable. What are we headed for via some eye opening speeches from the party in Trafalgar Square? Yes we have met Callum 2 times and of course Mr T. Here’s to our many 15 MINUTE GATED COMMUNITYS and saving for our petrol rations

I was 15 years old in 1994, and went on a family road trip to Zimbabwe in the winter school holidays that year. That was well before Mugabe went senile. It is sad to see the state of places that was pretty neat at that time. The funny thing was that, when we were in Vic Falls, Mugabe’s motorcade came through the town and I was close enough to hit him with a stone.

As one Afrikaner woman living in England said to me some 10 years ago: “everything was good until the bloody British got there”. I also heard that Afrikaners are far more likely to strike up a conversation with Black South Africans as opposed to people of British descent who are perceived as haughty and up themselves. Can’t confirm, never been there and I’ve also never been a supporter of the past regime. And certainly not this mess they’re going through now. Just commenting if anyone feels a need to react. The only thing I’m wondering about is why other South Africans are not willing to learn from Afrikaners seeing these guys do some things pretty well. Actually, isn’t it them who made SA the (still) most prosperous African country?

Wow … 1) Kudos for remembering the European Rhodesian’s in the ethnic makeup, and 2) calling out that everyone apart from the Khoisan were immigrants. EDIT. The green soap is for washing clothes (mostly) except my mother used to make me brush my teeth with it when i used to swear as a kid. Lol. Growing up in Africa … good times!

Goats were the curse of Zimbabwe. When the “veterans” got their hands on the farms, they traded the cattle over the border to South Africans who understood the value of the bloodlines, then they brought in goats. Goats don’t graze like cows and sheep, which bite grass. Goats tear it up. The pasture was destroyed. The “veterans” didn’t have the capital or the knowledge to manage equipment or fund crops, just graze goats. On the now destroyed pasture that couldn’t support nearly as many.

3 Boers wounded at Blood River despite being outnumbered by an impossible factor. Even if each of those civilians had semi-automatics there is no chance against such odds. God saved them according to a promise the Boers made there – if He delivered them that day, they and their descendants would honor that day forever. Look up the interview with the last Zulu survivor of that event – he said they were terrified of the flaming chariots they saw coming down from the sky. Boers celebrated that day and gave thanks to God yearly until the day the government changed and everything started going downhill. There is still a church in Australia which celebrates Blood River.

Very interesting article. The British Empire created its own downfall by spreading cultivation of food, moving populations around to work the land, by the Salve trade, by the massive economy of trade through industrialization, this all sealed it’s own fate. The British Empire won in economics and advancement and Science but lost out to it’s fruit which is the rise of Demographics game. When Rhodesia had 2 million people in the 1950s the British Empire ruled over it by a thread but today with 17 million people that is not possible. So between these 2 dates 1950 and 2024 the fate of the British Empire was sealed in stone by it’s own advancements leading to population boom that brough it’s own downfall. Empires rule over other cultures and peoples and as such are always at odds with Demographics. This is why there have been so many events of civil wars and genocide in world history because of when the ruling power fears the Demographics game will loose them that power. This is why only Democracy wins as a way to share power peacefully. The fate of all Empires in world history has been the same from the most advanced the British Empire and in a way the Soviet Union to the least advance to the Empire that depended on force and domination and less about economics like the Mongol Empire.