In addition to a revolutionary wave of homemade armored fighting vehicles being rolled out, an experimental recruitment drive was put in place to recruit Rhodesian women into the military and thus, the Rhodesian Women’s Service (RWS) was formed. The country soon faced severe economic sanctions and a weapons embargo that seriously crippled the military.īy 1975, with a growing communist insurgency, the Rhodesian Army was overstretched and was soon reaching critically low levels of manpower and needed to combat this. Ian Smith, the Prime Minister of Rhodesia was denounced by the British upon declaring independence. Very soon a war broke out between the internationally unrecognized Rhodesian government and two of the largest communist guerilla movements known as the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA) and the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA).
In short, the white settler minority seized power in 1965, in what was deemed as a political preemptive strike intended to prevent the black majority rule. Throughout the sixties and seventies, the country today known as Zimbabwe and formerly known as Rhodesia was locked in a bloody civil war that came as the consequence of the African decolonization effort. In the first segment of our Women at War series, we’re going to look at the women who took part in the Rhodesian Bush War under the Rhodesian Women’s Service (RWS).