Poem from an anonymous Rhodesian – putting pen to paper

I recently purchased a book online by Phillippa Berlyn, The Quiet Man, published in April 1978 by Mardon Printers of Salisbury, Rhodesia. It is a biography on Ian Smith. A couple of pages into the book, I found the above handwritten poem. It immediately caught my attention. This was written by a Rhodie who was in complete despair at the demise of his country.

I typed the poem in to Google and saw two website references on this poem. The first was a review on Goodreads.com for a book by Hannes Wessels and Andrew Scheepers, We Dared to Win: The SAS in Rhodesia, where a man named Christian quoted the above poem explaining it was ‘Found on a wall of an abandoned barrack somewhere in the bush. February 1977’. The second entry of this poem was on a Commentary Thoughts blog written by David Wesley Tonkin where author of the poem is listed as being ‘Anon’ and ‘1980’.

Tonkin’s blog was on the topic of the Rhodesian Bush War and discussed two significant events of the war in 1978. First in September 1978 Air Rhodesia Flight 825 was shot down in northern Rhodesia by the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army. In response, in October 1978 the Rhodesian Air Force had a decisive victory in Operation Gatling killing and injuring thousands of black communists on the southern border in Zambia.

The poignancy of this poem by an anonymous Rhodie got me thinking of how a small population of 250,000 – 300,000 whites in Rhodesia had confidence in Smith to stay put and fight for their country. For close to 15 years there was both internal and external socio – political forces against Rhodesia, but her institutions remained intact. Until suddenly in the late 1970s it all fell apart and Rhodesia was gone.

Since 1964 Smith had been defending white minority rule against the push by Britain and the Commonwealth to facilitate ‘the Winds of Change’ by moving aside for black majority rule. In late 1965 Smith, a stubborn old school Tory, proceeded to unilaterally declare independence from the United Kingdom, known as the Unilateral Declaration of Independence. Harold Wilson, Labour, responded by going ‘woke’ and blocking oil shipments from passing through the Port of Beira in Portuguese Mozambique onto Salisbury.

Smith still had the support of South Africa and Salazar’s Portuguese Mozambique ensured that Rhodesia’s eastern borders were stable. However, in the mid – 1960s both South Africa and Rhodesia began to experience the emergence of border confrontations with black communists funded and armed by the Soviet Union and Cuba. This was made worse when Portugal experienced a ‘Carnation Revolution’ and Mozambique was suddenly under black rule.

The final blow was the pressure from Prime Minister John Vorster’s South Africa in pushing Smith to accept peace with the black communists by limiting critical materiel to cross from the Transvaal into Rhodesia.

In fairness to Vorster, South Africa had her own Bush Wars on the borders of South West Africa, Pretoria was desperate to ‘sell’ Apartheid to the United States, despite a decade prior, Dixie was forced at gunpoint to desegregate, arguably to help US foreign policy in Africa to stem Soviet influence. Furthermore, South Africa’s long-term vision of black autonomous ethnic homelands differed from Smith’s vision of one country under white majority rule with black parliamentary input achieved through a white and black electoral roll.

In March 1978 Smith had caved into pressure to permit through the Internal Settlement agreement a general election that inevitably allowed for black majority rule. It was hoped that Bishop Muzorewa’s moderate United African National Council would prevent a radical communist takeover. In December 1979 the Lancaster House Agreement resulted in a ceasefire between Rhodesia and the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF). This enabled Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo, both terrorists of Rhodesia to return and run for the 1980 election. Of the overwhelming black vote, Mugabe won 63% of the black vote and Nkomo won 24%.

Rhodesia is a perfect textbook case of how the Westminster Parliamentary system developed by Anglos can facilitate through the democratic process the election of individuals who are terrorists, incapable of performing the duties required to run a country and have no understanding or appreciation of democracy to begin with.

‘Here stayed men of substance’

The poet appears determined that he would stay. Perhaps Rhodesia was his birthplace. The prospect of the terrorists you once fought against, occupying Parliament House and seeing to it that positions of power go to their cronies must have been a daunting prospect.

‘Yet how did we fail’

At the end of the poem, the author concedes, despite sincerity to Rhodesia, defeat.

Rhodesia was gone.

I wish I knew the name of the anonymous Rhodie and the date when he put pen to paper to write his poem. The date of writing may remain a mystery. It could have been written in 1977 amid the bloody Bush wars. Alternatively, it could have been written in 1980 followed by the election of Robert Mugabe, an enemy of Rhodesia and Rhodesians.  

I further wish I knew the journey of my copy of Berlyn’s The Quiet Man. The anonymous poem moved the former owner of this book to go to the effort to write the poem down in a biographical book about his or her former Prime Minister.

I presume that the former owner of the book also at some point conceded defeat, made his or her way south of the Limpopo river, either by land or plane, into South Africa. This is how I presume the book made its way from a Salisbury publisher in 1978 to being listed online for sale by a secondhand book seller in Johannesburg, and purchased in 2024 by a nerd in Australia.

Presumably the former owner of this book became known as a ‘Whenwe’, an affectionate term by South Africans towards whites who moved to South Africa to flee Mugabe. Likely the Rhodie watched the announcement of F.W de Klerk’s February 1990 ‘Quantum Leap’ speech and the four-year rapid deconstruction of white led South Africa.

In a sad twist of fate, the South African’s who coined the term ‘whenwes’ towards English speaking whites from Rhodesia, later found themselves, or their family and friends, scattered all over the white world, including many in Australia, recounting their former life, with a notable accent, ‘Back in S.A…”

We in Australia have had it so good that often when Australians migrate the conditions in the new country are not overall better. Australia is one of the very few countries in the world where there are more Americans in Australia than there are Australians in America.

Australia is not the lucky country anymore. For the past 30 years we have witnessed unprecedented demographic change. In August 2024, a man with an Arab name of Malik Ahmad, allegedly raped a 13 year old boy in a park at Mount Druitt, NSW. In the same month, Australia’s first Muslim MP, Ed Husic, openly admitted that Palestinians are being given tourist visas to come into Australia, because ‘refugee visas take too long’ and ‘the view was to try to get people out as quickly as possible’.

Britain and Western Europe are rapidly becoming more violent amid the increasing presence of non – Europeans. Over the weekend while writing this, a stabbing occurred in Western Germany in a small size city between Cologne and Dusseldorf, killing 3 and injuring 5 at a ‘diversity festival’.

Overnight in Birmingham, UK an Englishman in his 40s was stabbed in his throat while walking with his partner, dog and pushing a pram with their baby. The stabber was an African man and as of writing his name has unsurprisingly not been announced. By miracle, the Englishman is in a stable condition. I pray for his quick recovery. Despite violence becoming common place on the once safe streets of Britain and Europe, our leaders are focused on criminally prosecuting those wanting the remigration of the source of all this violence out of Europe.

Closer to home migrants are protesting in our major capital cities out the front of the offices of Labour MPs demanding the right to permanently remain in Australia and equating paying tax with the right to be an Australian. There is very little critical coverage on these protests, though massive shout out to @aus_pill who has been on the ground recording the protests and capturing the entitled attitude of foreigners demanding to stay here, despite having broken into our country illegally or overstaying the welcome after being told to return home.  

Australia was never to become an Asian Free Economic Zone for ‘legal’ immigrants pouring in from all across the world seeking economic opportunity or a ‘refugee’ dumping ground for those leaving every foreign war around the world or dictatorship in a failing state.

At some point, such demographic change will kill, if it has not already, our representative parliamentary democracy, as politics becomes all about which ethnic or religious group shows up in bigger numbers, as opposed to politics being an ideological debate on the differences of policy.

Demographic change is arguably already stifling the development of Australian culture. Percy Stephensen wrote in his Foundations of Culture in Australia at Section 7 titled, No place like home, that ‘The culture of a country is the essence of nationality, the permanent element in a nation. A nation is nothing but an extension of the individuals comprising of it, generation after generation of them’.

How can a nation develop a coherent and consistent culture if the demographics of that nation are being rapidly changed and replaced? Is it any wonder why as Aussies are going to great length to flee demographic change or feel demoralised because of it, that we are constantly looking decades back to find literature, movies, tv shows, photographs and music that authentically reflects Australian culture of the founding European stock.  

Demographics is destiny. Smith acknowledges in his autobiography, The Great Betrayal, regarding population growth in Rhodesia, ‘The problem was aggravated by the fact that our black people had the highest population increase in the world’. In 1950, Rhodesia had just under 3 million people, however by 1980 this had increased to over 7 million. South Africa likewise saw a massive explosion in the Bantu population between World War Two through to the early 1990s, with such demographic change completely removing any white majority in almost all cities which were founded and settled by whites.

As for Australia, we have experienced below ‘replacement’ level birth rates since the early 1970s, yet our population is surging. All effort seems to be employed to discourage Australians from having families, particularly with outrageous rent and mortgages, exacerbated by immigration.

Thirty one percent of Australians are now born overseas, this statistic only looks to increase.  Once the tsunami of migrants admitted under Albanese since 2022 proceed to seek citizenship in years to come, we will see massive electoral consequences.

At present, the main source of migrants into Australia are India, China, Philippines and Nepal. A trip to the supermarket for most Aussies is now an excursion of seeing the demographic replacement in our communities in real time.

Our great grandfathers and our grandfathers fought for Australia in France, North Africa, Turkey, the Middle East, South East Asia, Papua New Guinea, Asia Pacific. Many died, were injured and at a young age, were scarred with trauma. And for what? For their grandchildren to live in a country totally unrecognisable to the country they fought for. Pathetic.

Nativists have an affinity for Rhodesia for various reasons, but fundamentally because Rhodesia was a British construct, created by the same blood that founded Australia, Canada, New Zealand and of course the United States of America.

Rhodesia demonstrates that less than 300,000 whites predominately of British Isles stock are required to tame and settle land to create a country with first world standards for the founding stock. The whites established sophisticated political, legal and economic structures that facilitated, despite the geographical challenges, in laying the foundation of critical infrastructure that is being used still today, despite decades of neglect, incompetence and massive population growth.

The poem from an anonymous Rhodesian is relatable to us as Australian natives. We Aussies foresee that we are in the fight for our lives to preserve and restore the Australia that was federated in 1901. Those with paper Australian citizenship certificates, predominately from the largest intake countries of India, China, Philippines and Nepal can never have the same desire to preserve the Commonwealth of Australia as it was established.

It does not take much of a dispute with an Indian for them to become very resentful of British rule of India and being told that the British are the primary reason for India’s lack of progress and embarrassing shortcomings. Many Chinese in Australia will not be thankful to the drafters of the Australian constitution that in their unintended genius created a political system that while departing from the original intention, has enabled millions of non – Europeans the opportunity to participate in, if we suddenly find ourselves in a hot war with China over Taiwan or disputes over islands and shipping lanes in the Asia Pacific.

The Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 was enacted to retain the composition of the demographic founding stock of Australian citizens who gained federation pursuant to the Commonwealth Constitution.

On the current demographic trajectory, combined regretfully with apathy and ignorance of many Aussies, there will very likely be a confrontation in the future between those pushing for a totally new Australian constitution and Natives such as ourselves who will want to preserve the 1901 constitutional bedrock.

Had the Voice to Parliament been successful, my guess is that one aspect of ‘the Voice’ would have been used as a vehicle to push for a totally new Australian constitution to eliminate the fundamental connection that Australia is inherently a British construct established alongside legislation to preserve our nation’s founding European heritage and identity. Even without the Voice, the push for a new constitution will come at some time in the future from another angle, perhaps through the process of a republican referendum.

This is no time for relaxing, but time can still be set aside for reflection.

The anonymous Rhodesian who wrote this poem, either in 1977 or 1980, could never have foreseen that his thoughts written at a time of despair would one day be disseminated globally across the internet. This is the power of written work. It survives the author and individuals not born when the text was written will find it relatable and appreciate discovering it.

These are historical and critical times, never have we seen before a coordinated global effort in almost every White country for there to be rapid demographic change, coupled by efforts of suppression from the establishment to activism against such replacement. This will be the defining challenge faced by Australian natives’ and nationalists for the foreseeable future.

Amid these times of chaos, change and challenge, I encourage Aussie nativists to put pen to paper. Write down your thoughts. The decision rests with you if you wish to share your work to the world, a select few or keep it to yourself. Someone who you may or may never meet, could very much appreciate your thoughts at the time of your despair, struggle or fight.

Contributed by James.