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Why would the Rhodesians have objected to a mercenary unit landing there? And why didn't Shawn simply say-look,we're running out of fuel and we're going to have to crashland?
shareI may be wrong, but Rhodesia—one of the last bastions of white/European rule in Africa—was surrounded by enemy states to the North, and would have been suspect of any airplane originating from the North. Fynn (Roger Moore) does plead that they have wounded on board, to no avail. It was only when they could prove that Julius Limbani (based on the real-life anticommunist leader from the Congo, Moise Tshombe) was on board that the Rhodesians okayed the landing. This seems realistically consistent with attitudes at that time, and I imagine that Daniel Carney (the South African on whose book the movie was based) knew what he was talking about.
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