Out of Time: Global Settlerism, Nostalgia, and the Selling of the Rhodesian Rebellion Overseas

Abstract

This article looks at how the Rhodesian regime and its friends abroad used certain types of temporalising rhetoric to define and defend Rhodesia's unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) to overseas audiences. Supporters of UDI inside and outside Africa played with the differences between calendar and civilisational time in order metaphorically to place Rhodesians, white and black, back in time. It allowed them to situate white settlers enough ahead of Africans on a civilisational time-scale to justify white supremacy, yet sufficiently behind the modern west to have reduced culpability for that very same white supremacy. This was done to appeal to the sympathies of certain western audiences, in particular conservative Americans. The use of these metaphors provides insight into Rhodesia's self-image as a settler state, and how defenders of UDI wanted the Rhodesian settler project to be seen in the west.