Rhodesia: What Ian Smith said about the Whites of German South West Africa (Now: Namibia)

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I’ve been going through Ian Smith’s biography, The Great Betrayal. While going through it I stumbled on some remarks and observations he made about Whites whom I rarely write about.

German South West Africa, is now known as Namibia. But when I was a kid, we knew it as SWA – South West Africa. I’ve never been there, and its total White population was about 100,000 people. They were a mix of Germans and Boers. Quite a few Boers went to SWA and loved it.

I met a tiny handful of people who had lived in SWA. SWA fell under South African rule as a result of WW1. Then later the UN tried to seize it from South Africa. SWA was owned and defended by the Whites of South Africa. This is where units like Koevoet came from.

What I did not know were Ian Smith’s thoughts on SWA and the people there. In his biography he wrote about having contact with the Whites of SWA and that he was sorry that SWA did not share a border with Rhodesia. He liked the Whites of SWA a lot and he said that he thought that they and the Rhodesians would get along very well together. He really liked them a lot.