Me in Salisbury, Rhodesia, 1964.

Another time, another era. Amazing to think of all that has transpired since this picture was taken of me in 1964 in our garden in Salisbury, the capital of the British colony of Southern Rhodesia, as it was then.  Even Rhodesia's UDI was only the next year....

The Intelligence of White Rhodesians

From INTELLIGENCE: THE MENSA JOURNAL No. 97, MARCH 1967, p. 1. 

By Nathaniel Weyl. For the past five years, all Standard Two European, Coloured and Asiatic students in the Salisbury District of Rhodesia (which contains over 50 per cent of the white population) have been given South African group intelligence tests. Those scoring 130+ have then been tested individually, using the latest international standardization of the Terman-Merrill test.* 

About 95 per cent of those scoring 130+ on the group test did so on the individual test. The Terman-Merrill tests revealed that about 7 per cent of the white children in the government schools of the Salisbury district had IQs of 130 or better. This compares with about 2.5 per cent in that range in the U.K. and the U.S. and about 3 per cent in New Zealand. Group testing of pupils in privately operated schools indicated that their inclusion would not have lowered the percentage of gifted children. 

Elite 

Thus, white Rhodesians are an elite element within the English-speaking world in terms of psychometric intelligence. This finding is reinforced by visual impressions. Salisbury whites appear larger, healthier, more vigorous, alert and bright than London whites. Beatniks, transvestites and obvious homosexuals are conspicuously absent. 

Among the reasons offered for the intellectual superiority of white Rhodesian children were: 

(1). The Group Test is a much better instrument than the subjective opinions of teachers for winnowing out gifted children from the mass. 

(2). Rhodesian policy is to exclude immigrants who lack jobs, thus minimising the influx of unskilled, uneducated and incompetent elements. 

(3). Since the white minority must provide managerial, scientific, professional and intellectual leadership for the Africans as well as the Europeans, the demand for elite elements is enormous. Rhodesian officials estimate that 15 per cent of their white population consists of professionals and highly skilled technicians as against 10 per cent in the case of white South Africans and only 6 per cent in the case of the British. (The tests showed that the Coloured and Asiatic children made quantitatively insignificant contributions to the 130+ IQ group.) 

(4). Immigration to developing frontier countries is probably positively selective for self-reliance and intelligence. 

Of the 800 or so white Rhodesian children who scored 130 or better, no less than twelve were shown to have IQs in the 180+ range. This again is a multiplier of the normal IQ distribution. 

Sensitive barometers 

I should like to make two additional comments on these test results, for which no Rhodesians bear any responsibility: 

First: Antony Bowl of Bulawayo complained in a recent letter to Interim that Rhodesians tend to be non-intellectual and evince practically no interest in Mensa. Surely Mensans tend to be people with low boring points and one of the main reasons for joining Mensa is to escape the society of tedious people. Accordingly, the attraction of Mensa should vary inversely with the average IQ of the population to which the potential members belong. 

Second: Small, emergent nations such as Rhodesia may be sensitive barometers of the brain drain from older and more decadent ones. The IQ enrichment of the former is a harbinger of the IQ impoverishment of the latter. Obviously, punitive taxation of the successful, the imposition of economic hardship on young professionals, the underpayment of the creative elites and the over-payment of the subnormal and the mediocre will encourage some gifted people to emigrate and others to have small families while stimulating the exuberant reproduction of the intellectually under-endowed. Social planning of this sort has the dual advantage of eliminating nonconformists, malcontents and trouble-makers, and of reducing mean IQs to levels at which the population can readily be managed by its socialist rulers. Given this state of affairs, the emergence of overseas white elite communities, such as that of Rhodesia, should come as no surprise. What is most interesting, and to this writer unexpected, is that the extrusion of brain from socialist Britain seems to be far more effective at the so-called genius level of 180+ than at the merely talented level of 130+. 

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* I am indebted to Mr. H. Hall, psychologist of the Rhodesian Ministry of Education, for this information on Rhodesian IQs, and to Mr. Arthur Philip Smith, Minister of Education, for making it available. I visited Rhodesia in November 1966.

Nathaniel Weyl: Nathaniel Weyl, a writer and economist who was best known for the minor role he played in the Alger Hiss spy case, died on April 13 at his home in Ojai, Calif. He was 94. Mr. Weyl died of natural causes, said his stepdaughter Georgianne Cowan. 

One of a type of midcentury American intellectual who repudiated youthful communist affiliation and tilted toward conservative thought, Mr. Weyl wrote several books, and two of them, "Treason" (1950) and "Red Star Over Cuba (1960), aroused critical interest and set off discussion in their times. But it was his admission that he had been a communist in the 1930's, and a member of the so-called Ware Group along with Hiss, that earned Mr. Weyl a measure of notoriety. Mr. Weyl (pronounced "while") had been active in leftist student groups while he was an undergraduate at Columbia College. He left academic life for Washington in 1933 and joined the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, where he was recruited into a communist cell that, he would later testify, included Hiss..... According to Ms. Cowan, in later life Mr. Weyl moderated his conservative views, and voted for Bill Clinton and John Kerry. 

Nathaniel Weyl was born on July 20, 1910, in New York City, the only child of Walter Edward Weyl, a founder of The New Republic and a prominent progressive, and Bertha Poole Weyl. He received a bachelor's degree from Columbia College in 1931 and did some postgraduate work at the London School of Economics and at Columbia University. He spent two years overseas in the Army in World War II. 

Bio from the N.Y. Times of May 8, 2005 

Cecil Rhodes: A New Perspective

Cecil John Rhodes (5 July 1853–26 March 1902) was an English-born businessman, mining magnate, and politician who won fame not only for being the wealthiest man in the world, sixth Prime Minister of the Cape Colony in South Africa, founder of the diamond company De Beers (which today still controls around 40 percent of the world diamond trade) and British Imperialist of note. Rhodes was also the founder of the country which became known as Rhodesia.
This remarkable book details much of Rhodes’s life which is often hidden from public view: his racial policies, which were firmly based on racial segregation; his ardent desire to seek conciliation and peace with the Boers, whom he regarded as of the “same race” as the British, and his support for Irish nationalism under the banner of European unity.
Completely reformatted and illustrated. P/B 64pp.

Chris Dixon—Green Leader RIP

Chris Dixon, the famous Rhodesian Air Force’s “Green Leader,” succumbed to cancer on October 21, 2011 in Harare, Zimbabwe.

The “Green Leader” raid took place in October 1978, in retaliation for the shooting down of an unarmed civilian passenger aircraft and the brutal murder of crash survivors.

On September 3, Air Rhodesia Flight 825, on route from Kariba to Salisbury, the capital, was shot down by guerrillas from Joshua Nkomo’s ZIPRA group using a Soviet-supplied air-to-ground missile.

Eighteen of the fifty-six passengers survived the resultant crash. Five of the least-wounded of the survivors managed to walk to a local village to ask for water. 

While they were gone, the ZIPRA guerrillas who had shot down the plane arrived on the scene. Ten of the survivors who were unable to escape were hacked, bayoneted and shot to death. Three managed to crawl off into the bush and hide, and, together with the five who sought water (and had returned while the massacre was in progress) were the only survivors.

As a result, the Rhodesian Air Force launched a series of raids, known as Operation Gatling, on ZIPRA training camps in Zambia on 19 October 1978. 

"Freedom Camp" at Westlands Farm near Lusaka was attacked by Canberras, Hunters, and K-Cars (Alouette III helicopters).

After the first bombing run, squadron leader Chris Dixon took his aircraft into position over the airport of Zambia’s capital, Lusaka, to prevent any military intervention by the Zambian Airforce. It was during this operation that the famous “Green Leader” communication with Lusaka Tower was made (hear it in the videos below).

While Green Leader and his men pinned down the Zambians, Rhodesian Army ground troops moved in and “mopped up” the Zipra camps. It is claimed that 3,000 ZIPRA guerillas were killed in the raids, while one Rhodesian fatality was recorded.

Chris Dixon’s recording entered Rhodesian folklore, and, with his passing, an era comes to a close.