Rhodesia Bush War

[Macconermaoile]

I have been reading about the Bush War, and it seems to me that South African support was halfhearted at best. Why was this ?
I can only think of two possible reasons. One was that South Africa saw Rhodesia as a losing proposition, and thought supporting it would be a waste of effort. Two, Rhodesian s and Afrikaners had no great love for each other.
You would think South Africa would have every reason to support Rhodesia.
They both shared a racist ideology. They had very few friends in the world. There was belief in "The Domino Theory" at the time and Rhodesia falling left South Africa exposed.

[juergen c. olk]

 The South African support publically and privately were two different matters. South Africa had it's own political pressure to deal with. They helped as much as they dare ,even using Puma Helicopters and personnel on a Rhodesian raid into Mozambique.,unmarked off course.They even gave Rhodesia 8x T-55 tanks they captured in transit at sea.It was there as much as they could ,especially Fuel oil. ,spare parts and such.

[Arlequín]

What South Africa wanted was a buffer zone of stable states between itself and the rest of Africa. Hence its support of Portugal in Angola and Mozambique (or the FNLA, UNITA and RENAMO after), and Rhodesia. When it became apparent that the Smith Regime was not going to bend to the inevitable, they briefly cut-off the drip of weapons and ammo to bring them back to the bargaining table. In essence they wanted Smith out and a moderate Black leader the West would get behind in. The effort after c. 1976 was mainly just to stop ZANLA until the political climate changed enough to allow majority rule by the UANC.

The other side of the coin was that the political backlash from sending SADF conscripts to prop-up Smith's Rhodesia would have ended the government; South Africa was still a democracy of sorts after all. Namibia was already 'South Africa's Vietnam' to many and was a hard sell to the public. Sending 'the boys' to Rhodesia would have been like the U.S. going into Cambodia. Sending regular Police and Army was one thing but conscripts were out of the question.

The social/ethno/cultural relationship between South Africa and Rhodesia back then might be roughly on a conceptual par with that between Mississipi and Vermont if they were separate countries.