A Lesson From Rhodesia

Back in early American history, the “militant farmer” was the concept of the pioneers heading west. Born out of the “Minuteman” that led to this nation’s birth, the militant farmer was little changed until 1900 rolled around. He may have traded his musket for a lever action, but the principle was the same.

The farmer and his neighbors formed an informal militia. If bandits, hostile forces like the French or Spanish, or Native warriors attacked, the farmers grabbed their gear, fought the fight, and then returned to their farms. Each man from 12 and up was expected to have a fighting rifle and a knife or hatchet, along with the field gear to live in the field ready at a moment’s notice. This is remarkably similar to the modern preparedness philosophy, isn’t it?

Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you,

as though something strange were happening to you.

1 Peter 4:12

How did they handle community security when there was generally only one Sheriff or none? There was no network of state, local, and federal law enforcement to harass, I mean protect, the community. With the exception of massive cities, most towns had little to no law enforcement. These communities were self-policing.

For the rural community, security consisted of men visiting each place. One group would start at one end of the community and go along stopping at each farm or home and chatting, checking in on each other and sharing news. If the traveling group was at your house at mealtime, it was expected that you would feed them. If they were at your place at the end of the day, you let them sleep there, either in a guest room or the barn. The next time, a different group did the riding. This was in modern terms nothing more than a local security patrol.

When one farm or homestead was under attack, word was sent for the fighting age men (the “militia”) to meet somewhere to march to the aid of the victims. The same was done throughout the west with the “Posse” concept when a group of bandits was thought to be in an area. The Posse was doing what we would consider scouting and patrolling (TW-04) to locate the bandit camp and then conduct a raid. Based on this, it’s not out of the norm for us to plan on needing to do these things again. Remember, this bubble of Western society we live in is the exception, not the norm.

But has it ever been done in a relatively modern way and what did it look like? To apply it to the modern world, we look to the late stages of Rhodesian Bush War and the farm attacks. Similarly, my friends Gideon and Reaper will tell you that this is informally being done in South Africa, as they are on the same glide path. Don Shift in his excellent book “Rural Home Defense” covered this same topic.

The “Agric-Alert” program was a way to fight back against bandits and terrorists attacking farms and rural homesteads. Under this program, each rural farm was issued a base station radio. In our context, this means you need a radio more powerful than your Baofeng radio. The Baofengs are for local (less than 500m) communications and aren’t designed for more. You should pick up some type of base/mobile radio that is capable of transmitting at higher power. I have 25W, 40W, and 50W radios set up in my office, one of which is a repeater (that I never turn on – it’s for THOSE times). Combined with putting your antenna on the roof, these can get you 10-20 miles in urban areas and even farther in rural areas. My 40 Watt Motorola in the office hits a repeater about 35 miles away easily in urban terrain. Once things go bad, the HOA rules go out the window and I can toss up the LARGE antenna for more range. NC Scout sells the BTech 25×4 on his website for $135 and it’s a 25W radio that lets you monitor 4 frequencies at once. Side note: He has the BF-F8 handheld at the cheapest price I’ve ever seen so check out brushbeater.store.

On the Agric-Alert system, there was “roll-call” each morning and night. We would call that a “net check-in” and it’s absolutely a good idea. The morning check-in was to make sure that everyone made it through the night and to share any intelligence developed or suspicious incidents that occurred overnight. The nightly check-in was to make sure everyone was in the proper security posture and to share any warnings of activity. If someone missed a check-in, the local “security group”, which was nothing more than a militia or posse of local men, would go and check on that farm to make sure no attack had happened. During the day, any alerts or suspicious activity was shared over the radio.

Your preparedness group should already be running “nets”, even if it’s just on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. I participate in a few each week. It’s a good way to test your gear and stay abreast of local conditions. I know that most of you think of this as an Amateur Radio thing, and Amateur Radio is a good thing. But these nets I participate in are all done via GMRS or license free. You can run a net on MURS or FRS with your local people as long as they are in range. We run GMRS nets via repeater, covering large areas. One regional net is shared via the internet so that unlicensed folks can listen and contribute via online messaging. I’ve run preparedness nets via CB radio which is also a good idea. Start running these so that your people get familiar with their equipment and ensure that it all works.

A CB side note to the base/mobile point made earlier: All CB’s in the US and most of the world are limited to 4 watts. You can get 12 watts PEP using SSB, which is recommended for nets. In my radio deck here in the office I have an SSB-capable mobile radio and it is attached to a longer antenna outside the house for better range. Remember, radio is about antenna and atmospherics, not simply power.

Under the Agric-Alert program, all participants were expected to contribute to community security. If you wanted other folks to come and help you, you were required to be ready to come and help them at a moment’s notice. Every adult and teen were expected to be armed with a long gun and sidearm whenever outside. They were expected to keep field gear like a belt kit/patrol pack ready for a “grab and go” situation. Make no mistake, these people were at existential risk and were killed frequently.

Neither I nor my brothers nor my men nor the guards with me took off our clothes;

each had his weapon, even when he went for water.

Nehemiah 4:23

Each family unit was expected to commit personnel to the local patrol, which would check on farms, scout for infiltrators, man defenses at a threatened farm, or whatever other local security tasks that needed doing (see TW-03). They would even occasionally throw up checkpoints and set ambushes.

Doesn’t that sound like the “militant farmer” described above?

I’ve had guys comment before that they “don’t want to play soldier boy” and that they are just preparing to live some type of prairie farm life. Well, that’s a great plan and I’d love to as well, but we have to live in the real world. That idyllic “prairie farm life” was frequently punctuated by raids by Native Americans or thieves. We just saw last week an attempted attack on a rural property in California using South African-style tactics (crawling like a dog or animal to defeat some sensors). We have a wide-open border allowing in unvetted people from regions of the world where such attacks are common. It’s foolish to close your eyes to the possibility. The best-case scenario is to train for this type of attacks, yet never have them happen. For the record, if you run this type of system, coupled with patrols like the Rhodesians did, you most likely WON’T be attacked, because the bad guys will choose a softer target, like someone who DOESN’T do this.

I know at some point someone will point out that the Rhodesians lost. Well, they were sold out by their partners. It was not for lack of will or skill on the part of the Rhodesians. They were infiltrated by communists from within (speaking of things that sound familiar). Make Zimbabwe Rhodesia Again. The best line in the movie Blood Diamond comes after Danny tells the reporter that he’s from Rhodesia. She says, “Rhodesia? We say Zimbabwe now, don’t we?”, to which Danny replies, in EPIC fashion, “Do we?”. Let’s keep them north of the Zambezi, boys. We’re all Rhodesians and Rhodesians never die.

Use this system to up your local situational awareness.

On that note, as we enter election season again, we expect to see more unrest. In response to what they are seeing, my friends at Forward Observer are bringing back the Far Left Playbook, which is their reporting on planned protests and extremist training events. Sign up for a special offer: https://farleftplaybook.com/far-left-playbook1694101246770

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