Talk:Rhodesian Bush War

Neutrality

The origin of the Second Chimurenga is in Ian Smith's refusal to go along with the Wind Of Change that saw indirect rule replace direct colonial rule among the former British colonies in Africa and Asia. The result was 15 years of war and 50,000 dead, which ended in April 1980. The problem with this article is that it only relies on Rhodesian and white South African sources. Add to this the use of the term 'Rhodesian Bush War', which only rhodesians use. It is very much like renaming the American Civil War the 'War Of Rights', or the 'War Of Northern Aggression'. Or calling WWII the 'War Of The Reich'. This article is highly biased, and should be rewritten in a way that includes the views of the actual Zimbabwean people who fought for their freedom, not the rhodesian British minority, who were never more than 5% of the population. 83.84.100.133 (talk) 07:49, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

@83.84.100.133 I agree. Violence against white civillians from the nationalists is discussed on the page quite a bit, while the vastly larger number of black civillians killed is only mentioned in passing around the end of the article. I understand that some black civillian casualties were perpetrated by nationalist groups, as is mentioned in the article, but no Rhodesian atrocities aside from the biological/chemical warfare program are discussed.

It seems like there is a lot of uncritical regurgitation of Rhodesian sources. If one were to read this article uncritically, they'd leave believing that a noble, albeit problematic, Rhodesia fought murderous savages until they were stabbed in the back by their allies.

The vibe I get from the pages relating to Rhodesoa and the war in general is that there are people trying to disseminate a version of events that are sympathetic to the Rhodesian government. Tubbydoorway (talk) 17:19, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

More serious scholarship has also called the reality of the chemical program into question, so that is also unsatisfactory. -Indy beetle (talk) 21:49, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

With all due respect to the anonymous author of this paragraph, who is clearing Zimbabwean and also clearly took no part in the war, a couple of points:

(1) Only black Zimbabweans refer to the Rhodesian Bush War as the "Second Chimurenga", nobody else, and certainly nobody outside of Zimbabwe. Renaming the article to that name would only cause confusion for any non-Zimbabwean reader.

(2) The current content of the article shows a remarkable bias towards modern thinking on the causes and course of the war, as does much of the other related content on the subject in the Wikipedia archive. Recent efforts at editing it have sought to redress that balance and remove bias.

(3) The fact that the content on the war in this article is derived from largely European, possibly Rhodesian sources is not a matter of bias. It's because the majority of content available in print and on the internet is of that origin. The fact is that there are virtually no reliable sources of information from ZIPRA or ZANLA combatants, and even the published materiel from those sources of the time, even their internal documents, were what can charitably be called "light" on hard facts. This makes them unreliable for use as sources for factual articles.

(4) Show us any good sources with verified information from authors of any other group than European, ex-Rhodesian or South African ethnicities and nationalities, and we will happily include the information from those sources. Or better yet, stop hiding behind your anonymity, register an account here on Wikipedia to become an editor, and make the changes yourself, but and here's the thing: cite your sources always, with verifiable references.

Cadar (talk) 09:32, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

":(1) Only black Zimbabweans refer to the Rhodesian Bush War as the "Second Chimurenga", nobody else, and certainly nobody outside of Zimbabwe. Renaming the article to that name would only cause confusion for any non-Zimbabwean reader." Nobody except rhodesians call the Zimbabwean War of Independence the Rhodesian Bush War.

"(2) The current content of the article shows a remarkable bias towards modern thinking on the causes and course of the war, as does much of the other related content on the subject in the Wikipedia archive. Recent efforts at editing it have sought to redress that balance and remove bias." The bias of 'modern thinking' has been replaced with what, regressive thinking?

"(3) The fact that the content on the war in this article is derived from largely European, possibly Rhodesian sources is not a matter of bias. It's because the majority of content available in print and on the internet is of that origin." That is exactly the same as saying that the article is one-sided. You just explained why you think it is one-sided. 83.84.100.133 (talk) 15:45, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

@83.84.100.133: If you cannot be civil and cannot accept the edits or input of other editors here on Wikipedia in good faith - as amply demonstrated by the numerous complaints on your talk page - then you have no business wasting the time of editors who are working to improve Wikipedia. I will not dignify your unfounded accusations with a discussion. If you want to make changes to the page in question, as previously requested, stop hiding behind your anonymity, register an account and take responsibility. Otherwise stop wasting our time.

Cadar (talk) 13:45, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Wouldn't it make sense to use the name that is most common in Zimbabwe, especially if it is impartial? The Rhodesian Bush War name implies partiality towards Rhodesians, and since Zimbabwe is an English-speaking country it makes sense to use the most common impartial term (Second Chimurenga War).Rivere123 (talk) 20:32, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

I absolutely second this... among modern academic sources on the subject, the term 'Rhodesian Bush War' is openly associated with the perspective of the Rhodesian Front. It is by no means a neutral naming, and I wholeheartedly support changing the title. I had a bit of an embarrassing moment when I used this term in a paper and my professor, a historian of South Africa, was incredibly confused and said that this term is an openly political one. I will quote a bit from a book by the scholar of the conflict Luise White from 2021:

"The war about which I write was an enormous part of that history, and what an author calls that war literally stakes out a political position. Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle is enshrined in nationalist historiography. However nuanced and critical an analysis is, this was the story of guerrilla armies defeating minority rule in Southern Africa years after the era of decolonization. What Rhodesians—even after there was no country of Rhodesia— called the bush war has another meaning. At its best it is the story of brave white men defending their land, and at worst it removes the struggle from a political context: it describes where white men patrolled and fought; it reveals nothing about what they fought for."

This was from "Fighting and Writing: The Rhodesian Army at War and Postwar" published by Duke University Press. Surely this is a clear demonstration that the title of the article is overtly biased towards one side of the conflict at the expense of the other and violates neutrality rules. A frank discussion on renaming should be had immediately. 129.2.181.227 (talk) 17:35, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

• Having read most of White's book and done what I can to make the article as a whole more neutral, I think it's worth pointing out that as White suggests unfortunately, neither "Rhodesian Bush War" or "Second Chimurenga"/Zimbabwean Liberation War" are entirely neutral titles. Having written the "Historiography" section of this article, I can attest to the fact that the writing on this subject is fractious and politicized. Anecdotally, I am willing to say that the more professional scholarship tends to prefer some variant of "Zimbabwean War". A source that primarily calls the conflict Second Chiruenga is probably going to be uncritical black nationalist discourse (Hellicker et al. is an exception because it is an analysis of that discourse), and if you search Rhodesian Bush War you can see that mostly returns results for white veteran pulp literature of dubious quality. Nothing is really ideal here, I think it's just good that we have all three names in the lede. If this article were to be moved, I would offer my mild support to "Zimbabwean Liberation War" or similar, since in my experience that's what the most professional works gravitate too. -Indy beetle (talk) 22:06, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

  In doing extensive history research on this topic, I agree that most academic historiography refers to the war as either Zimbabwean Liberation War or Second Chimurenga. The Rhodesian Bush War, in my view, is an outdated and colonial expression 145.90.74.112 (talk) 14:58, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Majority Rule?

The side box references the "outcome" of the conflict as the Lancaster House Agreement. That is accurate insofar as it goes. However, the result of that agreement was not really "majority rule" since a form of majority rule had already been established through the internal settlement. What Lancaster House resulted in was elections in which ZANU and ZAPU also participated. A more accurate description would be: "End of armed hostilities" and "Elections involving all parties".

Claims regarding "occupation" etc.

To the IP editor: We do not in Wikivoice try to ascertain who has rightful claims to a country in a moral sense. It is clear you are trying to inject your moral views on what constitutes a rightful claim to land into the article text. I disagree with trying to debate the complex issues of "who can say a country is theirs" by changing vocabulary in the article text. One side had a view and another had their own, it would be mighty unusual for Wikipedia to declare one side was simply "correct" in any war, though many of us might personally feel that way. See WP:NPOV. What is factually inaccurate about saying "The Nationalists considered their country occupied and dominated by a foreign power, namely Britain, since 1890."? -Indy beetle (talk) 22:04, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

Dubious source for Yugoslavia support

The source for Yugoslavian support to the rebels is an article from a tabloid. The article cites a Croatian diplomat regarding this, no other sources exist that would indicate Yugoslavia did really provide military, financial or diplomatical. I would advise modders of this page to review this statement and it's source. 31.223.131.16 (talk) 02:09, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Hist401

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 22 August 2023 and 12 December 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Simonntrann (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Simonntrann (talk) 00:46, 26 September 2023 (UTC)