G3 under license in their own factories.By 1960, things
had really begun to fall apart in Africa. While tensions
between native inhabitants and those who had colonized the land had been decaying for some time, there
was a new player waiting in the wings: communism.
Western powers who otherwise may have been willing
to grant independence to their African colonies suddenly
found themselves in the epicenter of the Cold War. And
with these proxy wars, the continent was flooded with
FALs and G3s. Hollywood would have us believe that
Nicholas Cage (portraying an arms dealer) single handedly supplied arms to the 3rd world, but in reality these
weapons were streaming in from NATO countries trying
in vain to stop the never ending spread of communist
wild fires in the region. Some of the more high profile
conflicts came to be known as the Congo Crisis, The
Portuguese Colonial War and the Rhodesian Bush War.
Rhodesia, a land-locked country surrounded by Zambia
to the north, Mozambique to the east, South Africa to the
south and Botswana to the west, had its hands full in the
1970s. Rhodesia had declared its independence from
Great Britain, and was at war with two separate communist factions: the Chinese-funded ZANLA and the
Soviet-funded ZIPRA. No longer a protected colony, its
only allies were Portugal and South Africa. Until losing
all outside support in 1974, Rhodesia was flooded with
Portuguese-built G3 rifles and R1s, the South African
version of the FAL. The Bush War saw these rifles serving side by side in Rhodesian infantry units against the
AK-47 and AKM rifles fielded by the communist forces.
And with the end of the Bush War and the fall of Rhodesia in 1979, many historians have concluded that the AK
platform outgunned its NATO counterparts. The same
had been said regarding the M16 rifle and America’s
withdrawal from the Vietnam conflict. Personally, I think
communism won in Africa and Vietnam not because of a
rifle but because of an idea. It’s easy to fight on the side
of change. It’s harder to convince people to preserve
what they have when they weren’t terribly happy with
what they had to begin with. Communism was the hot
new idea in a place where people were tired