Decolonisation, Identity And Nation In Rhodesia, 1964-1979: A Race Against Time 3030326977, 9783030326975, 9783030326982

Table of contents :
Acknowledgements......Page 7
Contents......Page 11
List of Figures......Page 13
Chapter 1 Introduction......Page 14
Siting Settler Colonialism: Rhodesia in Perspective......Page 19
Rhodesian Settler Colonialism: Origins and Evolution......Page 21
The National: From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe?......Page 25
The Transnational: Rhodesia and Global Britishness......Page 30
A Race Against Time: Rhodesia and Its Rebellion......Page 36
Chapter 2 White Rhodesian Society ca.1950s–1980s......Page 40
White Rhodesian Demography......Page 41
Gender in White Rhodesia......Page 50
Demography and Immigration Policy After UDI......Page 52
European Politics in Rhodesia, 1953–1980......Page 57
Conclusion......Page 70
Chapter 3 Blood and Referendums: Nationalist History and the Case for a Unilateral Declaration of Independence......Page 73
The 1922 Referendum......Page 74
Talking About Talks: Independence in Settler Political Discourse 1959–1964......Page 76
‘A People’s Progress’: Rhodesia’s Record of Good Governance......Page 80
‘Rhodesia’s Finest Hour’: Rhodesia and the World Wars......Page 85
A Nation Under Arms......Page 94
Chapter 4 These Colours Don’t Fade: Changing Rhodesia’s Flag, 1967–1968......Page 99
Rhodesia and Its Flags, 1953–1968......Page 104
Colourful Bunting or National Banner? Rhodesia’s Flag Debates, 1968......Page 114
The New Flag Unfurled......Page 128
International Responses......Page 132
Conclusion: Flagging up Difference......Page 134
Chapter 5 Sovereign Independence? Rhodesians and the Monarchy, 1965–1970......Page 140
Loyal Rebels and an Imperial Monarchy......Page 141
Rhodesian Republicanism, 1965–1969......Page 146
Popular Reaction to the Constitutional Proposals......Page 164
Referendum Result Roundly Repudiates Regent......Page 169
The Rhodesian Republic, 1970–1979......Page 171
‘Smithy’: Father of the Rhodesian Nation?......Page 172
This New Rhodesia, Sovereign and Independent: The 1969 Constitution......Page 176
Conclusion......Page 180
Chapter 6 ‘The Last Word in Rhodesian’: Visions of the Nation in White Rhodesian Music......Page 185
‘Guide Us Lord, to Wise Decision’: Choosing the Rhodesian National Anthem......Page 186
Alternative Visions: Rhodesian Folk Songs of the 1970s......Page 197
The Troubadours of UDI......Page 200
War Songs: Rhodesian Folk in the Late 1970s......Page 207
Conclusion: The Music of the Nation......Page 215
Chapter 7 ‘Now as Then’? Race, Remembrance and the Rhodesian Nation in the 1970s......Page 218
Remembering Race: The Historicisation of Black Challenges to the Nation......Page 224
The African Response to the Pearce Commission......Page 225
Race in Rhodesian Front Propaganda......Page 227
War and Settlement in the 1970s......Page 234
Chapter 8 Conclusion: The Strange Afterlife of Rebel Rhodesia......Page 250
Bibliography......Page 260
Index......Page 283

Citation preview

BRITAIN AND THE WORLD

Decolonisation, Identity and Nation in Rhodesia, 1964–1979 A Race Against Time David Kenrick

Britain and the World Series Editors Martin Farr School of History Newcastle University Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK Michelle D. Brock Department of History Washington and Lee University Lexington, VA, USA Eric G. E. Zuelow Department of History University of New England Biddeford, ME, USA

Britain and the World is a series of books on ‘British world’ history. The editors invite book proposals from historians of all ranks on the ways in which Britain has interacted with other societies from the sixteenth century to the present. The series is sponsored by the Britain and the World society. Britain and the Worldis made up of people from around the world who share a common interest in Britain, its history, and its impact on the wider world. The society serves to link the various intellectual communities around the world that study Britain and its international influence from the seventeenth century to the present. It explores the impact of Britain on the world through this book series, an annual conference, and the Britain and the World journal with Edinburgh University Press. Martin Farr ([email protected]) is the Chair of the British Scholar Society and General Editor for the Britain and the World book series. Michelle D. Brock ([email protected]) is Series Editor for titles focusing on the pre-1800 period and Eric G. E. Zuelow (ezuelow@une. edu) is Series Editor for titles covering the post-1800 period. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14795

David Kenrick

Decolonisation, Identity and Nation in Rhodesia, 1964–1979 A Race Against Time

David Kenrick London, UK

Britain and the World ISBN 978-3-030-32697-5 ISBN 978-3-030-32698-2  (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32698-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: Marion Kaplan/Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For Haydn and Paul

Acknowledgements

This book is the culmination of a decade’s academic work and a significant part of my life, so it would be unfair to take all the credit for myself. That said, whatever errors do remain are my own and no one in this impressively long and roughly chronological list is responsible for them. My family have played a large role in my enthusiasm and interest in history, writing and just doing my own thing. It is a long road from a state comprehensive to Oxford University, but my mum and dad, Helen and Philip, never let anything like statistics get in the way. They’ve always supported me and encouraged my love of learning and I’m forever grateful for that (even if it didn’t always seem like it at the time). My little sister Megan is a continuous source of pride to me, particularly when she went back to university and my little nephew—Charlie—is a credit to her tenacity and determination. My grandparents, Haydn, Pamela, William and Rona, have always been firm allies along the way. My grandad Haydn deserves special thanks for listening to endless phone calls (many of which were whiney or ranty) and who drove me to Sheffield every Wednesday for an entire academic year. Those long drives across the Pennines in all weathers were always a wonderful bookend to what was probably a rather quotidian lecture by comparison. My teachers also helped set me on the road to becoming an historian—particularly Chris Smallbone and Mike Holland of Hartford High School, and Gill Darby and Paul Allanach at Sir John Deane’s Sixth Form College. Though I don’t think any of them actually read this manuscript in the end James Goodwin, Paul Weatherby, Ed Hunt, Dan Kenny, Matt McGing, vii

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Ben Holmes, Fraser McColm, Adam Giles and Sam Walters have been firm friends for most of my life, and I’m grateful for the nights out, the nights in, the moral support, the many laughs and the trips around the world that provided a wonderful counterpoint to my academic studies. I hope at least one of them reads, and enjoys, the finished article. It was during my undergraduate studies at the University of Liverpool that I first became interested in the history of British imperialism and Rhodesia in particular. This was in large part thanks to Dmitri van den Bersselaar and Alexander Morrison. No student could have wished for better teachers and mentors. Dmitri and Alexander encouraged me to develop into the historian I am today, and without them, both my Ph.D. and this book wouldn’t exist. Dmitri’s fierce critical mind and supervision during my B.A. and M.A. dissertations (both on Rhodesia) were a much-needed confidence boost for me having transferred from Sheffield to Liverpool in my second year of undergraduate studies, easily one of the best decisions I ever made. Alexander’s remarkable generosity with his time and knowledge gave me the confidence to apply to Oxford, a place I never thought I could belong. In my time at Oxford, I was guided and supported by some remarkable individuals. Jocelyn Alexander was an exceptional supervisor. Supportive, helpful and warm, she read endless drafts and responded calmly to countless early-morning emails about whether I was ever going to finish the D.Phil. Without her encouragement, the research which supported this book would not have been possible. Other academics helped along the way, and I’m grateful to John Darwin, James Belich and the late Jan-Georg Deutsch for their feedback during my Transfer of Status and Confirmation examinations. John also read my finished thesis and offered tips for turning it into a book, and I’m very lucky to have been able to benefit from such wisdom and experience in the field of imperial history. I owe much to Miles Tendi and Donal Lowry, my thesis examiners, for their generosity and incisive remarks about my thesis. Donal has been particularly instrumental in helping to turn my research into a book. Finally, this research and my academic career would not have been possible without the generous financial support from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Beit Trust. Outside of the examination room, Oxford introduced me to some truly exceptional individuals, especially Zahra Shah, Danielle Dunbar and Duncan Money. They are outstanding historians and outstanding

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS  

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friends, and I was very lucky to know them during my research. I’m particularly grateful to Duncan for suggesting the book’s excellent subtitle. Without the three of them, it would have been a much lonelier and much duller experience. I also got to meet several other brilliant academics, such as Kate Law, Andy Cohen, Lazlo Passemiers and Jamie Miller, along the way. Their advice, critiques, inspiration and suggestions helped to strengthen my research and my career path immeasurably. Last but by no means least, no researcher would be able to do anything without the support of some excellent librarians, and Lucy McCann at the Bodleian, Katie Ankers at the BBC Monitoring Archive and Cornelius Thomas at Rhodes University in Grahamstown were knowledgeable and patient in dealing with my queries and supplying me with some fascinating source materials. Thanks to Pete Shout and John Edmond for providing support and permissions for Chapter 5, to John MacKenzie and Tim Williams for sharing their memories of Rhodesia, and to Bruce Berry, Fred Goodwin, Julian Francis, and Michael Evans for providing copies of their work during my research. I’m also grateful to the editors of the Journal of Southern African Studies, for permission to adapt my article ‘Settler Soul-Searching and Sovereign Independence: Rhodesians and the Monarchy, 1965–70’ for Chapter 4. As this book has been some time in the making, I owe it to several friends and colleagues that I have since worked with to thank them for ideas, encouragement to keep going and enduring me talking about my book—Tom Hutchinson, Rhonwen Bruce-Roberts, Lauren Newell, Julie Humphreys, Megan Rhys, Olivia Dalseme-Stubbs, Melissa Springer, Lara Hampshire, Matt Crane, Catrin Rees, Mattea Todd, Morna Cannon, Paula Spencer, Mallory Sedgewick, Ethan Hall, Arantxa Fernandez, Lis Wood, Jonathan Simpson, Isobel Pastor, Faith Wilkinson, Dominik Lengauer, Karl Murphy, Peter Duggan, Dan Cosnett, Liz Smith, Ian Timpson and many others. Thank you for listening and for giving me a sense of what the future could hold beyond academia. I’m grateful to Josiah Brownell, who I remember quoting in my undergraduate thesis and then having a feeling of being mildly academically starstruck when we began corresponding. Josiah’s close reading of my drafts led to some useful suggestions and excellent reading recommendations. Also to Tim Alsop, who read this manuscript with no idea of what it was about, and to Brooks Marmon—who did. I was delighted when Martin Farr and the editors of the Britain in the World

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series decided to pick up this book and Martin’s advice was invaluable in shaping the proposal. I’m grateful for the very kind and incisive comments of the anonymous reviewer both before and after acquiring the contract for helping nuance and finesse the manuscript. Additionally, I’d have been lost without my editors at Palgrave: Maeve Sinnott and Molly Beck, whose assistance was vital in turning my manuscript into the finished article. Finally and most importantly, to Taryn Tait, who turned up in the endgame of my Ph.D. and changed my life. I’m humbled by your endless reserves of love and support. By your belief in me whenever I was flagging. By your encouragement and understanding when I needed to spend all weekend writing (especially when it always seemed to be the nicest weekends). I’m grateful for your putting things into perspective. For you reading this manuscript innumerable times without complaint. For all the cakes you baked and the board games we played and the trips we took to take my mind off research. For our daughter, Lyra, and for letting me finish off the manuscript in the first few weeks and months of her life—by way of recompense this book could be an excellent way of settling her off to sleep (until she can understand it of course). Taryn, I wish you had been here from the start, but I am so very, very glad that you’ll be here for the rest of it.

Contents

1 Introduction 1 2 White Rhodesian Society ca.1950s–1980s 27 3 Blood and Referendums: Nationalist History and the Case for a Unilateral Declaration of Independence 61 4 These Colours Don’t Fade: Changing Rhodesia’s Flag, 1967–1968 87 5 Sovereign Independence? Rhodesians and the Monarchy, 1965–1970 129 6 ‘The Last Word in Rhodesian’: Visions of the Nation in White Rhodesian Music 175 7 ‘Now as Then’? Race, Remembrance and the Rhodesian Nation in the 1970s 209 8 Conclusion: The Strange Afterlife of Rebel Rhodesia 241

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Bibliography 251 Index 275

List of Figures

Fig. 4.1 Flag of Southern Rhodesia, 1964–1965 and Rhodesia, 1965–1968 (Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Flag_of_Rhodesia#/media/File:Flag_of_Rhodesia_ (1964%E2%80%931968).svg) 92 Fig. 4.2 Flag of Rhodesia, 1968–1979 (Source https://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Flag_of_Rhodesia#/media/File:Flag_of_Rhodesia_ (1968%E2%80%931979).svg) 100 Fig. 4.3 Flag of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, 1979–1980 (Source https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Rhodesia#/media/File:Flag_ of_Zimbabwe_Rhodesia.svg) 126

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Wednesday 12 December 1979 was a momentous day in Zimbabwean history, the date on which the long-postponed constitutional processes of decolonisation that would create Zimbabwe began. Fourteen years and one month after the segregationist Rhodesian Front (RF) party had illegally declared the colony of Southern Rhodesia’s independence from Britain on 11 November 1965 (known as the Unilateral Declaration of Independence or UDI), British colonial control was, briefly, assumed. After months of negotiations, the British government despatched Lord Soames to the capital, Salisbury, to resume British sovereignty over the rebel republic.1 The country’s most popular daily newspaper, The Herald, reported that: ‘The governor will step onto Zimbabwe Rhodesian soil soon after 2p.m. to bring the country under direct British rule for the first time in its history’.2 The next day, the paper reported that the changeover was relatively muted. Upon landing at Salisbury airport on a gloomy afternoon, Soames inspected a small guard of honour provided by the country’s police force, the British South Africa Police (BSAP), and then drove immediately to Government House, which had lain empty since the resignation of the previous British Governor,

1 See R. Renwick, Unconventional Diplomacy in Southern Africa (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1997) for a British insider’s perspective of these negotiations. 2 ‘Soames Ends UDI Today’, The Herald, 12 December 1979, p. 1.

© The Author(s) 2019 D. Kenrick, Decolonisation, Identity and Nation in Rhodesia, 1964–1979, Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32698-2_1

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Sir Humphrey Gibbs, in 1969.3 Ian Smith, the man who, as Prime Minister and leader of the RF, had declared independence in 1965, was invited to greet Soames but declined to do so.4 Soames’ arrival generated mixed reactions among white Rhodesians, reflecting their weariness after years of war and privation. After UDI’s brief honeymoon period between 1965 and 1972, Rhodesians had been at the centre of an expanding and ever-bloodier civil war.5 By 1979, thousands had ‘gapped it’, or taken the ‘chicken run’, as emigration was derisively known by those who stayed behind.6 In such a small society as white Rhodesia, many of the families that remained had experienced death, disablement or dispossession. The suffering caused by the war that the whites had provoked was inflicted a hundredfold upon the country’s black African population as thousands of ordinary Africans in rural areas often found themselves targets for horrific, tit-for-tat, violence and intimidation. Uprooted and dumped into protected villages (PVs), tens of thousands of Africans in 1979 were ‘behind the wire’; others were mutilated or killed on a daily basis by guerrillas or Rhodesian special forces posing as guerrillas.7 While whites were the ones complaining about the hardships of conflict, it was mostly black Africans who were victims of a shadow war in which each side sought to attribute the worst atrocities to the other. They were the ones reaping the bloody harvest the whites had sown with UDI. In this context, in which the country had already been through one ostensible national transition, from white-ruled ‘Rhodesia’ to 3 ‘British

Rule in Rhodesia’, The Herald, 13 December 1979, p. 1.

4 Ibid. 5 P. Godwin & I. Hancock, Rhodesians Never Die: The Impact of War and Political Change on White Rhodesia ca.1970–1980 (Northlands, SA, Pan Macmillan South Africa, 2007). 6 C. Mears, Goodbye Rhodesia (Sussex, Antony Rowe Publishing Services, 2005), p. 222. 7 For more information on PVs, see J.K. Cilliers, Counter-Insurgency in Rhodesia (London, Croom Helm, 1985), pp. 79–103; A.K.H. Weinrich, ‘Strategic Resettlement in Rhodesia’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 3, 2 (1977), pp. 207–229. For the atrocities, see J. Frederikse, None but Ourselves: Masses Versus the Media in the Making of Zimbabwe (Harare, Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1982). Other studies of the war include N. Kriger, Zimbabwe’s Guerrilla War: Peasant Voices (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992); T. Ranger & N. Bhebhe (eds.), Society in Zimbabwe’s Liberation War (Oxford, Currey, 1996); D. Lan, Guns & Rain: Guerrillas and Spirit Mediums in Zimbabwe (London, Currey, 1985).

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3

purportedly majority-ruled ‘Zimbabwe-Rhodesia’ in 1978–1979, Soames had arrived to oversee the implementation of a ceasefire and independence elections in which all parties to the conflict could participate. The major externally based nationalist organisations, the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), had been proscribed by the government for well over a decade. At Lancaster House in London, they had agreed to instruct their military wings, the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army and the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZANLA and ZIPRA, respectively) to report to holding camps and lay down their arms. Meanwhile, the white-led Rhodesian armed forces were to remain in their barracks. All of this was to be overseen by a small contingent of troops from across the former British Empire known as the Commonwealth Monitoring Force, along with an incongruous contingent of British ‘bobbies’ who came out to oversee the elections.8 Soames’ return, and what it represented, caused resentment among some whites, who expressed their views to The Herald about being ‘back under the Jack’ in the days after his arrival.9 One such letter, from Miss A. Mitchell on 13 December, observed: I note with utter amazement the preparations and in many cases the jubilation on the part of many Zimbabwe Rhodesians over the arrival of the British Governor to this country. Have we all been so brainwashed over the last year or two that we have lost all our fight and are now ready to accept anything which is handed out to us by the double-dealing British Government? I sincerely hope our memories are not that short.10

The same day PM Taylor expressed hope that Soames was: ‘not going to be accorded pomp and ceremony. Let him know just how greatly his 8 M. Tendi, ‘Soldiers Contra Diplomats: Britain’s Role in the Zimbabwe/Rhodesia Ceasefire (1979–1980) Reconsidered’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 26, 6 (2015), pp. 937–956; J. Mackinlay, ‘The Commonwealth Monitoring Force in Zimbabwe/ Rhodesia 1979–80’, in T.G. Weiss (ed.), Humanitarian Emergences and Military Help in Africa (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1990), pp. 38–60. The Commonwealth Monitoring Force included contingents from the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Kenya, Australia and Fiji. 9 The phrase is taken from Harry Garner, ‘Back Under the Jack’, The Herald, 12 December 1979, p. 10. 10 A. Mitchell, ‘Why the Jubilation?’ The Herald, 13 December 1979, p. 18.

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imposition is resented’.11 Meanwhile, The Herald reported that a small crowd of supporters had gathered to welcome the governor, singing ‘God Save the Queen’ and raising the Union Jack in a display which another letter writer described as ‘nauseating’.12 Some white Rhodesians such as ‘Wondering’ jokingly asked if they were now eligible for British ‘benefits’ such as the NHS and state pension system.13 Joan Pohl, of Centenary, was more resigned in a Christmas Day letter pointedly titled ‘Invaded – this city I used to love’. She described a remarkably unlucky visit to Salisbury on the same day Soames had arrived. First, Pohl’s favourite dog had died at the vets (‘Part of our security gone’), her car had been broken into, and her drive home involved a large detour due to a ‘contact’ (slang for an engagement between armed forces); this was all the fault of the new administration.14 She lamented the arrival of ‘[t]he others, the ones from outside who have come to record our agony, and who gathered in chattering groups, managing our affairs…’15 Finally, she remained confident in her support of the RF, the popular white settler political party which had ruled Rhodesia since UDI, and what it had stood for: ‘in spite of all the awful things that have happened to us in the last 14 years I still think Ian Smith is the greatest’.16 Other writers were fearful of the future. Lynald Pritchard urged readers to ‘Remember Kenya’; Mau Mau had long been a bogeyman of Rhodesia’s white settler community, warning that: ‘After our independence Britain intends to desert us, even in the face of constant threats that the war will escalate’.17 Some were more accommodating; D. Dur of Salisbury defended the singing of ‘God Save the Queen’, arguing that ‘Rhodesia is a British colony… [the Rhodesian national anthem] is widely regarded as the “RF anthem” and is eschewed by all who deplore the bloodshed unleashed against our country by the RF’s squalid objectives’.18 11 P.M.

Taylor, ‘Cut Out the Pomp’, The Herald, 13 December 1979, p. 8. Save the Queen—And an old Union Jack’, The Herald, 13 December 1979, p. 19; V.H. Van Cleef, ‘Singing Was Nauseating’, The Herald, 25 December 1979, p. 8. 13 Wondering, ‘British Benefits, Please’, The Herald, 25 December 1979, p. 8. 14 J. Pohl, The Herald, ‘Invaded—This City I Used to Love’, 25 December 1979, p. 8. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 L. Pritchard, ‘Remember Kenya’, The Herald, 28 December 1979, p. 4. 18 D. Dur, ‘Rhodesia Is a Colony’, The Herald, 25 December 1979, p. 8. 12 ‘God

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These white reactions: anger and fear of the war, ‘nausea’ at the prospect of majority rule, tired resignation and quiet relief, reflected the complicated status of ‘Rhodesia’ as an entity in the minds of white settlers. To a few, Rhodesia had always been a British colony, in name if not in administrative minutiae, and the past fourteen years had simply been an unpleasant interlude. For others, UDI was a brave and vigorous experiment in settler rule in post-colonial Africa which had been cruelly and unjustly cut short. Some were simply glad that their privations appeared to be over, whereas others were anxious about what the future would bring. The letters pages of The Herald in 1979 were suffused with notions of loyalty, identity and nationality but they were a rehash of debates which had been taking place in the country for decades, with roots stretching back beyond 11 November 1965. The events that occurred in 1979 and 1980 as the ‘Rhodesia’ that most whites recognised collapsed demonstrates the messy and unsatisfactory resolution of these earlier debates about what ‘Rhodesia’ was and what it meant to be ‘Rhodesian’. In the mid-1960s, the RF embarked upon a remarkable attempt to freeze time in an aspic of white settler rule. It tried to build a new nation but found itself inextricably bound to its British colonial past. Yet, as the letters show, amidst the ruins of the white Rhodesian nationalist dream, something endured. The character of the RF’s nation-building project failed to create a lasting state, it was too narrow and exclusionary for that, but it did create lasting senses of belonging and community. It shaped mentalities that reverberated around the continent, the world, and even back into the imperial metropole and which continue to have resonance in the present day, over half a century later. This book is about that nationalist endeavour, its successes, failures, inspirations, operations and implications for the viability of a white-ruled Rhodesia in the 1960s and 1970s. It considers how white Rhodesians held a dialogue with themselves about who they wanted to be and the nation to which they wanted to belong, often in complete disregard of the wishes of the (black) majority of the country’s population. It looks at a range of key themes to explore the evolution of white nationalism in Rhodesia: the significance of national symbols and the processes by which they are invented, the importance of transnational contexts and relationships to ostensibly national movements, the implicit and explicit operations of strictly policed racial boundaries, and the impact of militarisation upon settler society. These themes emerge repeatedly from the

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following chapters and are analysed through several main frames of reference, which we shall consider in turn.

Siting Settler Colonialism: Rhodesia in Perspective Rhodesia in the 1960s and 1970s was a place profoundly shaped by time, and by regional and global processes of decolonisation and post-colonial nation-building. White-ruled Rhodesia briefly formed a nexus at which these wider phenomena intersected. This book explores how white settlers in Rhodesia (white Rhodesians) responded to the end of the British Empire in Africa and how they tried to build a post-colonial, white-ruled nation on the African continent. The Rhodesian rebellion took place at a time when concepts of post-colonial nationhood in Africa, though gaining pace through formal decolonisation, remained fluid and contested. In 1965, France’s bloody war in Algeria, concluded in 1962, remained fresh in the memory, and in the nearby Congo, which had been wracked by conflict since its independence in 1960, Joseph Mobutu seized power, beginning his 32-year reign.19 Closer to home in Southern Africa, when Rhodesia illegally declared its independence, it was almost completely surrounded by friendly states: the Portuguese colonies of Mozambique, Angola and white-ruled South Africa (Zambia, which went onto become a major guerrilla base in the liberation war, was a notable exception). Together, these states formed a white bloc in Southern Africa that seemed well equipped economically, militarily and politically to buck continental trends of majority-rule decolonisation. The rhetoric if not the substance of late experiments in British colonial rule, such as the Central African Federation (1953–1963), had until only recently suggested the possibility of new forms of multiracial cooperation within settler colonies in Africa, alternatives to the much-maligned apartheid of the south.20 Informed by its own political philosophy of a white-ruled multiracial state, the RF claimed a space where the paternalistic, gradualist

19 E. Kennes & M. Larmer, The Katangese Gendarmes and War in Central Africa: Fighting Their Way Home (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2016), p. 11. 20 A.R. King, ‘Identity and Decolonisation: The Policy of Partnership in Southern Rhodesia 1945–62’ (University of Oxford, DPhil Thesis, 2001); A. Cohen, The Politics and Economics of Decolonization: The Failed Experiment of the Central African Federation (London, I.B. Tauris, 2017).

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7

process of the old colonial fantasy that was the ‘civilising mission’ would have more time to play out. Yet no one expected UDI to last as long as it did. Though broadly popular among Rhodesia’s settler population and the RF, the seizing of independence was a tactic, a desperate throw of the dice by men backed into a corner by their own rhetoric. After UDI had been declared, and Rhodesia’s ‘first prize’ of a negotiated settlement with Britain, which by and large refused to budge on the principle of ‘No Independence Before African Majority Rule’ (a term which gained the cumbersome acronym of NIBMAR), began to slip beyond their grasp, the Rhodesians had to change tack in order to preserve the rebellion and the nation. In this early phase of UDI, which was contemporaneous with the creation of a Cabinet Committee on Honours and Awards tasked to create new national symbols for Rhodesia, the RF’s nationalism was refocused around processes of ‘symbolic decolonisation’. Symbolic decolonisation, or what Stuart Ward has called the ‘new nationalism’, was a process by which many of the trappings but none of the substance of settler colonialism rule were cut away.21 Though the creation and adoption of new national symbols and civic cultures were a critical part of the decolonising process in all former colonies, it was particularly important in Rhodesia, where the settler administration controlled the levers of military, economic and political power both before and after UDI. Accordingly, Rhodesian symbolism after UDI was designed to indigenise the white settler population to strengthen their legitimacy and obscure their essentially foreign nature.22 As the rebellion went on, the symbolic links to Britain and its former empire, which had been cherished parts of white Rhodesian culture, were replaced: the Union Jack flag, the national anthem of ‘God Save the Queen’ and the role of the British Monarchy in national public life. By 1970, Rhodesia was a republic with almost all the accoutrements of independent statehood: a flag, a constitution and a head of state (a national anthem was another five years away). Despite the RF’s vociferous protestations of difference with ‘black Africa’, the country was 21 S. Ward, ‘The “New Nationalism” in Australia, Canada and New Zealand: Civic Culture in the Wake of the British World’, in K. Darian-Smith, P. Grimshaw & S. Macintyre, (eds.), Britishness Abroad: Transnational Movements and Imperial Cultures (Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 2007), pp. 231–263. 22 The author thanks Josiah Brownell for this reflection.

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undergoing a nation-building project of the type taking place all over the continent. The chapters that follow seek to properly contextualise white Rhodesian nationalism, recognising its unique nature without obscuring its rich comparative potential. The debates that surrounded these transitions are explored here on their own terms to show what Rhodesians thought about themselves and others in this period and how they made sense of their changing situation as the rebellion went on. Despite their small number, Rhodesians were prolific writers and there is a rich corpus of material: newspapers, pamphlets, books, novels and music, that contains traces of their world. Studying white Rhodesians through their own words helps to uncover the complexities and contradictions of rebel Rhodesia, an ever-shifting terrain that defied easy classification and periodisation.

Rhodesian Settler Colonialism: Origins and Evolution The country that came to be known as ‘Rhodesia’ was first established by white settlers mostly from Britain and South Africa in 1890 as a private venture. Rhodesia was the name given in gratitude by the settlers to their patron, Cecil John Rhodes. Rhodes’ whose name and reputation have most recently resurfaced in public discourse as the object of the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ movement, a student-led movement to remove statues of him at the Universities of Cape Town (where it was a success) and Oxford (where it was not).23 Rhodes was a ruthlessly determined politician and businessmen whose personal ambition and sense of mission drove the frontiers of British imperialism forward in Central and Southern Africa. He established a company, the British South Africa Company (BSAC) which obtained a Royal Charter in 1889 and gained the authority to administer territory on behalf of the British Crown. After receiving his sanction from London, Rhodes moved quickly, assembling a pioneer column which drove north from the Transvaal.24 The column, comprising 23 See the #RhodesMustFall blog accessed on 2 February 2019 at https://rmfoxford. wordpress.com/; D. Lowry, ‘The “Rhodes Must Fall” Campaign: Where Would the Destruction End?’ The Round Table, 105, 3 (2016), pp. 329–331. 24 Rhodes was not part of this column, however, and would not visit the colony until the following year, in late 1891. Robert Rotberg, Rhodes’ biographer, notes that Rhodes, despite his duties as Prime Minister of Cape Colony, saw the colony’s fortunes as inextricably linked to his own.

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9

almost 200 white men from the Cape (women were banned from entering the colony for several years) entered the territory that would become Rhodesia and made their camp on the North-Eastern Highveld. They raised the Union Jack at Fort Salisbury, named for the British Prime Minister of the time and the site of the future capital, on 11 September 1890.25 The settlers were accompanied by indentured labourers, indigenous contingents from South Africa and Mashonaland, from the start: there were actually more Africans (some 350 labourers from the Cape) in the pioneer column than whites.26 Violence was endemic to Rhodesia’s early history as the settlers, far from encountering an ‘empty land’ waiting for them to tame it, proactively dispossessed local Africans of their land and possessions (particularly cattle, which held a special significance as a source of wealth in the region’s pre-colonial African societies). In October 1893, on the pretext of protecting the ‘Mashona’ (Shona) people from the predations of the ‘Matabele’ (Ndebele), the colony’s administrator and Rhodes’ crony, Leander Starr Jameson, invaded Ndebele lands. Settler volunteers, encouraged by promises of lucrative spoils of land and cattle, deployed Maxim Guns against the Ndebele impis of Lobengula to devastating effect.27 In November, Lobengula’s kraal at Bulawayo was razed to the ground, and the man himself died while on the run in January 1894.28 Two years later, the colony was once again at war when both the Ndebele and the Shona attempted to seize back control from the stilltiny settler populace. Their efforts were aided by the disastrous Jameson Raid into the Transvaal, the possession of better weaponry and an astute use of guerrilla tactics rather than the open battles which had doomed the impis in 1893.29 Jameson’s raid, which had seen him take most of the colony’s armed police force (the British South Africa Police, named for the chartered company) into the Transvaal at Rhodes’ behest to try and foment a pro-British uprising among the white miners there, failed spectacularly and was thwarted by Paul Kruger’s Boer government. With Jameson and his policemen languishing in jail, the Shona began 25 R. Rotberg, The Founder: Cecil Rhodes and the Pursuit of Power (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 299. 26 Ibid., p. 299. 27 Ibid., p. 442. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid., p. 555.

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to attack the widely dispersed settlers in their homes in March 1896.30 When the Ndebele also began to fight back in what Zimbabweans subsequently called the ‘First Chimurenga’ (meaning struggle or liberation war), Britain swiftly despatched imperial troops to suppress the indigenous offensive. Bloodier and more protracted than the first conflict, the imperial and settler forces did not regain control of Rhodesia (the name first came into usage in 1895) until the summer of 1897.31 Shortly after, in 1902, Cecil Rhodes died at the age of 53, and his body was interred at World’s View in the Matopos Hills near Bulawayo. Rudyard Kipling, poet and close friend of Rhodes, wrote ‘the founder’s’ epitaph: Living he was the land, and dead, His soul shall be her soul!32

Ruramisai Charumbira has shown how these early wars gained a quasi-mythological significance in the nationalist imagination of both white settlers and the black population.33 For white settlers, they became a story about the ‘blood price’ that had been paid to win, and subsequently rule, the country. For black African nationalists, they were a tale of indigenous unity and resistance against imperialist oppression, the first time that the disparate African polities which existed in the region had banded together in what could retrospectively be called a proto-Zimbabwean nationalism. The simplified stories that were told, and the underlying assumptions that were formed by them, would shape nationalist mentalities throughout the 1960s and 1970s (and continue to influence the political discourse of Zimbabwe to the present day). Between 1896 and 1922, when settlers voted for a dominion-style autonomy in a referendum (see Chapter 2), Rhodesia was ruled not by the imperial government in London but by the BSAC. This unconventional governance arrangement facilitated the development of a distinctive ‘Rhodesian’ nationalism from a relatively early stage. Though technically a colony, like Britain’s other African settler society in Kenya, after 30 Ibid. 31 Rotberg,

The Founder, pp. 574–575. full epitaph, called ‘The Burial’, can be viewed at ‘Poetry Lovers Page’ accessed on 2 February 2019 at https://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/burial.html. 33 R. Charumbira, Imagining the Nation: History and Memory in the Making of Zimbabwe (Charlottesville & London, University of Virginia Press, 2015). 32 The

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11

1923 Rhodesian affairs were handled by the Dominions Office, alongside Canada, Newfoundland, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa rather than the Colonial Office, reaffirming (in the settlers’ minds at least) Rhodesia’s place in this special group of imperial possessions, a group that shared deep social, cultural and familial ties as well as British colonial rule. As well as serving to group Rhodesia within a wider ‘British world’ of settler societies, this administrative quirk meant that indigenous rights were less well protected than they were in Crown Colonies, such as Kenya or Northern Rhodesia (another former BSAC possession which was created as a distinct colony in 1924). In 1953, Southern Rhodesia (renamed in 1923 to distinguish it from its northern neighbour) became part of the short-lived Central African Federation alongside the Colony of Northern Rhodesia and the Protectorate of Nyasaland. The Federal period initially offered lucrative new opportunities for Southern Rhodesia, which was the Federation’s economic and political hub. Yet not long after there was acrimony between Britain and the settlers, who felt they were being abandoned by the former colonial power, decolonisation swept across the African continent. It was this broader continental trend that precipitated the collapse of the Federation in 1964 with Zambian and Malawian independence. Seeking independence for themselves, but with minority instead of majority rule, the Rhodesians (their ‘Southern’ appellation now unnecessary since Northern Rhodesia had gained independence as Zambia) began to play a game of brinkmanship, threatening to secede from the empire unless independence was granted to the settlers by Britain. Unable and unwilling to do this in a rapidly decolonising world, the British government of Harold Wilson remained firm in its position of NIBMAR. On 11 November 1965, the RF government of Ian Smith signed a unilateral declaration of independence, heavily modelled on the American Declaration of Independence of 1776. The rebellion lasted until 12 December 1979, beginning a short interlude until 18 April 1980, when Robert Mugabe took office as the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe (Mugabe would rule Zimbabwe first as Prime Minister and later as President until ousted by the military in 2017). As Rhodesia’s settlers finally succumbed to the pull of decolonisation which had begun decades before, they emerged from their isolationist laager into a world which was almost beyond recognition. How they negotiated the period in-between can tell us much about what decolonisation meant on the ground, and how individuals and groups navigated the uncharted waters

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of independence, indigenous resistance, and fluctuating racial and regional identities.

The National: From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe? Arguments about Rhodesia’s present and future were permeated by engagements with and understandings of Rhodesia’s past. At the heart of the book is an exploration of the way in which the RF and its supporters used the past in their nationalist project. It is a long-accepted truth to students of nationalism that history is a key component within any nationalist project, yet the literature on white Rhodesia in this period often overlooks the importance of the past to UDI-era Rhodesia. This is surprising, as white Rhodesian debates about ‘Rhodesia’ almost invariably involved harking back to some form of mythologised past about the British Empire or Rhodesian autonomy, about white competency and African savagery, about betrayed promises, referendums and Second World War fighter squadrons. It was these disparate threads that, when woven together, created the fabric that was white Rhodesia, a place profoundly shaped by its remarkably brief history. The centrality of history to Rhodesian (and Zimbabwean) nationalism can be seen in the literature today. Like other former settler colonies, Zimbabwe’s ‘post-colonial’ present continues to be haunted by the ghosts of the Rhodesian past. In contemporary Zimbabwe, the emotive power and entitlement of the military and ‘war veterans’ continue to pervade public life. The replacement of Robert Mugabe with Emmerson Mnangagwa in November 2017 saw one veteran of the liberation war replaced with another; in both cases, these men’s status as veterans was key to their appeal. The war against white Rhodesia was called the second chimurenga (chiShona for ‘struggle’) and was explicitly linked to early colonial struggles against European settlers (the first chimurenga of the 1890s). In the early twenty-first century, a spate of land seizures from white farmers were declared a ‘third chimurenga’ by the ruling ZANU-PF party. Memories of colonialism and the war are also critical to ZANU’s project of ‘patriotic history’, an explicit rejection of academic history in favour of a state-sponsored narrative which serves to endlessly legitimate ZANU’s rule.34 34 T. Ranger, ‘Nationalist Historiography, Patriotic History and the History of the Nation: The Struggle Over the Past in Zimbabwe’, Journal of Southern African Studies,

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13

During the UDI period, a corpus of often polemical histories was produced, drawing upon the past to argue for or against minority rule.35 In Rhodesia itself, the academic historians at the University of Rhodesia (disparagingly referred to by some white Rhodesians as ‘the Kremlin on the Hill’) were a source of significant political dissent and historians wrote Rhodesian and Zimbabwean histories even as they made it. Academics like Terence Ranger, an outspoken supporter of the Zimbabwean nationalist cause and author of seminal ‘nationalist history’ text Revolt in Southern Rhodesia (1967), were deported from the country for their African nationalist sympathies.36 In one instance, a lecturer, Giovanni Arrighi, author of The Political Economy of Rhodesia (1967) was deported for reportedly encouraging grenade attacks.37 More recently, a growing corpus of white writing about the ‘good old days’ of Rhodesia has emerged.38 The tone and style of these memoirs can be remarkably similar: anecdotes about breath-taking landscapes and exotic wildlife, light-hearted misunderstandings between black servants and white masters, solemn interludes about loved ones serving (or lost) in the war. As Jean Smith has noted, for these old settlers,

30, 2 (2004), pp. 215–234; M. Tendi, Making History in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe: Politics, Intellectuals and the Media (Oxford, Peter Lang, 2010). 35 Godwin & Hancock, Rhodesians Never Die. Polemical histories of Rhodesia include the pro-settler P. Berlyn, Rhodesia: Beleaguered Country (London, The Mitre Press, 1967) and the pro-nationalist T. Ranger, Revolt in Southern Rhodesia (Oxford, Heinemann, 1964). Just a small selection the more scholarly work produced during or before UDI includes: R. Blake, A History of Rhodesia (London, Methuen, 1977); D. Murray, The Governmental System in Southern Rhodesia (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1970); C. Leys European Politics in Southern Rhodesia (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1959). 36 T. Ranger, Revolt in Southern Rhodesia: 1896–7: A Study in African Resistance (London, Heinemann, 1967). For Ranger’s account of his time in Rhodesia see, T. Ranger, Writing Revolt: An Engagement with African Nationalism, 1957–67 (Oxford, James Currey, 2013). 37 G. Arrighi, The Political Economy of Rhodesia (The Hague, Mouton, 1967); P. Moorcraft & P. McLaughlin, The Rhodesian War: Fifty Years On (Barnsley, Pen & Sword, 2015), p. 31. 38 For just a small sample of these, see: A. Fuller, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight (London, Picador, 2002); P. Godwin, Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa (London, Picador, 1996); C. Cocks, Fireforce: One Man’s War in the Rhodesian Light Infantry (Alberton, SA, Galago, 1988); D. Lemon, Never Quite a Soldier: A Policeman’s War 1971–1983 (Stroud, Albida Books, 2000).

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nostalgia for the landscape and wildlife of Southern Africa ‘became a seemingly apolitical way to express the loss of the status and way of life accorded to members of the ruling white minority’.39 Yet many of these same discourses permeated Rhodesian public life during the rebellion in the 1960s and 1970s. Rhodesia emerges from these writings as a stage upon which a series of acts were carried out: a rags-to-riches tale, a rip-roaring war story, a drama of rural adversity, a misbegotten childhood or youth in a place and time that had literally disappeared. This sense of loss is often magnified by postscripts or final chapters on what happened after Zimbabwean independence. This white memory has itself been the subject of studies by Rory Pilossof, David McDermott Hughes and Kate Law, who noted that ‘[w]hile Rhodesia ceased to be a political entity in 1980, it remained “imagined” and culturally produced to many Zimbabweans who had left the country’.40 Feelings of resentment and dispossession among whites invoke the sentiments of Julius Nyerere, leader of Tanzania, who reportedly said to Robert Mugabe at the independence ceremony in Harare’s Rufaro Stadium on Friday 18 April 1980: ‘You have inherited a jewel. Keep it that way’.41 No set of memoirs is more valedictory in this regard than those of former Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith. Luise White has spoken of these memoirs collectively as ‘confessions’, in which the authors lay claim to the past.42 Together, they often have the effect of 39 J. Smith, ‘“I Still Don’t Have a Country”: The Southern African Settler Diaspora After Decolonisation’, in R. Craggs & C. Wintle (eds.), Cultures of Decolonisation: Transnational Productions and Practices, 1945–70, p. 158 40 R. Pilossof, The Unbearable Whiteness of Being: Farmers’ Voices from Zimbabwe (Harare, Weaver Press, 2012); D. McDermott Hughes, Whiteness in Zimbabwe: Race, Landscape, and the Problem of Belonging (London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); K. Law, Gendering the Settler State: White Women, Race, Liberalism and Empire in Rhodesia, 1950–1980 (Abingdon, Routledge, 2016), quote p. 152. 41 Quoted in Robert Salisbury, ‘How to Ruin a Country’, The Spectator, 11 December 2007, accessed at https://www.spectator.co.uk/2007/12/how-to-ruin-a-country/ on 10 January 2019. Though often invoked by those critical of Mugabe’s rule, the story is so resonant it has also been quoted by the state-owned newspaper The Herald. See Gidi Ngwindingwinidi, ‘Tanzania: A Friend of the Struggle’, 4 October 2013, accessed at https://www.herald.co.zw/tanzania-a-friend-of-the-struggle/ on 10 January 2019. Here Nyerere is quoted as saying ‘You have inherited a jewel in Africa, don’t tarnish it.’ The two versions of the quote appear frequently in other media. 42 L. White, The Assassination of Herbert Chitepo: Texts and Politics in Zimbabwe (Cape Town, 2003); in this work, White offers an extended deconstruction of the memoirs of Ken Flower, the head of Rhodesia’s Central Intelligence Organisation who briefly worked

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transforming Rhodesia into an implicitly superior comparator with Zimbabwe, their personal narratives of lost innocence and promise transposed onto the nation, seeming to confirm many of the deeply seated fears held by whites in the UDI period (and validating the act of UDI). These memoirs create particular images of Rhodesia, transforming it into a narrative terrain in which everything had its place, its part to play and its prominence in the story. Though inevitably tinged with nostalgia, this sense of place was reinforced by a scrupulously maintained system of political, economic and social separation. Ian Smith often liked to claim that Rhodesia had the ‘happiest Africans’, and for external visitors, showcasing the medical, educational and agricultural benefits that settler colonialism had brought to Rhodesia’s black population was critical.43 Yet all of these things are simplifications and reductions. They were prisms through which daily life could be lived and, in the settler-colonial context, rationalised. These reductions obfuscate the messy, lived existence of the Rhodesian rebellion, which is what this book seeks to recover. The weight of these histories lies heavy on the student of Rhodesian history, and for a long time, the history of ‘nationalism’ in Zimbabwe was the history of black nationalism.44 In an age of postmodernism and globalisation, scholars have increasingly questioned the nation as a unit of analysis. Ostensibly concerned with a nation and its nation-building project, this history of white Rhodesian nationalism is important as it

for Robert Mugabe after independence: K. Flower, Serving Secretly: An Intelligence Chief on Record: Rhodesia into Zimbabwe 1964 to 1981 (London, John Murray, 1987). 43 E. Windrich, The Mass Media in the Struggle for Zimbabwe (Gwelo, Mambo Press, 1981), p. 79. 44 For ‘nationalist’ accounts, see D. Martin & P. Johnson, The Struggle for Zimbabwe (Harare, Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1981); N. Kriger, Peasant Consciousness. A growing body of work on white Rhodesians includes Godwin & Hancock, Rhodesians Never Die; the work of Donal Lowry including D. Lowry, ‘Rhodesia 1890–1980, “The Lost Dominion”, in R. Bickers (ed.), Settlers and Expatriates: Britons Over the Seas (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 112–149 and the writings of Luise White, most recently, Unpopular Sovereignty: Rhodesia and African Decolonization (Chicago, 2015). See also J. Brownell, The Collapse of Rhodesia: Population Demographics and the Politics of Race (London, I.B. Tauris, 2011); J. Francis, ‘The Formation and Nature of Identity in Rhodesian Settler Society from Colonisation to UDI’ (Institute of Commonwealth Studies, DPhil Thesis, 2012); C. Watts, Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence: An International History (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 2012); Law, Gendering the Settler State.

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illustrates the wider transnational and global dimensions of seemingly ‘national’ projects. Like all nationalisms, the RF’s white populism was a movement in which the local and the global intersected. The UDI period was a time when notions of nationhood, independence, Britishness and whiteness were examined and contested. The post-imperial malaise that affected Britain and the Rhodesian crisis bled into each other, generating discussion and debates about what it meant for former colonial masters (in both countries) to ‘decolonise’ themselves. At the same time, after formal independence was granted, new states in Africa, their borders bound by Organisation of African Unity Convention, struggled to reconcile colonial boundaries and populations, and sought to establish new nations from former colonies. In this respect, Rhodesia’s government after UDI was faced with a remarkably similar set of problems. Indeed, for white Rhodesians, these problems were exacerbated by their illegal seizure of independence, their awkward and elongated severing of ties with Britain, and their refusal to meaningfully engage the black population in their nation-building project except on highly circumscribed terms. The comparison is not one that the Rhodesians themselves would have welcomed. When they spoke of their majority-ruled neighbours to the north, it was in exclusively negative terms—whether it related to Rhodesia’s superior ability to design flags or national anthems, or its much-improved ‘standards’ and good governance. Nevertheless, the comparison is one worth making. UDI-era Rhodesia is almost always marked out as an anomaly. Digging deeper, sifting through the at times surreal and absurd layers of white Rhodesian nationalism, we can begin to consider what white Rhodesia can tell us about post-colonial nation-building projects elsewhere. The lessons of Rhodesia are relevant to other studies of the processes of colonial independence and the narratives generated thereafter which raise the questions of for whom and for what purpose independence was won.45 In the UDI period, it was the independence of a minority to continue to subjugate the majority which was at stake. This book seeks to show that the seemingly anomalous nature, brevity and ultimate failure of the RF’s project should not 45 C. Seecharan, ‘Whose Freedom at Midnight? Machinations Towards Guyana’s Independence, May 1966,’; T. Barringer, R. Holland & S. Williams (eds.), The Iconography of Independence: ‘Freedoms at Midnight’ (London & New York, Routledge, 2010), pp. 71–88.

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17

obscure its wider comparative potential. Furthermore, at a time of resurgent global white nationalism, memories of Rhodesia are being resurrected by around the world. As a disturbing report by John Ismay for the New York Times observed in April 2018: ‘Nostalgia for Rhodesia has… grown into a subtle and profitable form of racist messaging, with its own line of terminology, hashtags and merchandise…’46 This unsettling afterlife makes it more imperative than ever to better understand the myths surrounding Rhodesia.

The Transnational: Rhodesia and Global Britishness The other major way in which the Rhodesian rebellion was transnational concerns the history of Britishness and British settler societies around the world. Bill Schwarz, in the first volume of his Memories of Empire trilogy, explains how settler-colonial ‘tribunes’ with their concepts of what it meant to be a ‘white man’ impinged upon metropolitan politics in the age of decolonisation.47 Old colonials returning to the imperial centre were often dismayed at what they saw as the louche Britisher, behaving in ways unthinkable at the colonial periphery. In a revealing inversion of this trope, the cultural theorist Stuart Hall, a Jamaican of mixed-race heritage, eloquently details in his memoirs a Caribbean childhood suffused with notions of ‘Britishness’, and how the experience of coming to Britain in the 1950s was profoundly unsettling as indigenous, white Britons treated overseas black Britons with fear, disgust and violence.48 Together, these experiences suggest two things: the sheer breadth of ‘British’ identities even at the moment of decolonisation and the profound importance of place and race to notions of imperial identity and belonging. The Rhodesian rebellion offers an opportunity to study the inverse of this phenomenon. In the wake of the Second World War, as the empire (in the form of non-white immigration) began to ‘come 46 J. Ismay, ‘Rhodesia’s Dead—But White Supremacists Have Given It a New Life Online’, The New York Times Magazine, 10 April 2018, accessed on 3 March 2019 at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/10/magazine/rhodesia-zimbabwe-white-supremacists.html. 47 B. Schwarz, The White Man’s World (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 21. See also C. Schofield, Enoch Powell and the Making of Postcolonial Britain (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2015). 48 S. Hall, Familiar Strangers: A Life Between Two Islands (London, 2017).

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home’, a generation fled Britain for the settler societies, bringing with them pent-up resentments about the mother country which would reverberate back and forth between centre and periphery (and, in so doing, give the lie to this binary terminology). It was these conceptions, firmly held by the wave of ‘new’ post-1945 immigrants to Rhodesia, that facilitated UDI. Schwarz marks Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech in 1968 as the moment in which the unspeakable fears of white British men and women were finally spoken aloud in the metropole.49 As Schwarz has recognised, the immediate context in which this pivotal moment in British race relations and notions of identity and belonging took place, a moment that arguably lingers with us to the present day, was the Rhodesian rebellion.50 Rhodesia reminds us that histories of Britishness in the twentieth century cannot simply be confined the British Isles. In the second half of the twentieth century, as processes of decolonisation began across the world, the relations between the British settler societies (and in turn their individual relationships with the ‘mother country’, Britain) entered a new phase. Though terminology was changing—with the increased prominence of the term ‘Commonwealth’ over the empire—the transnational sense of ethnic belonging remained broadly the same. As the devastation caused by the Second World War drove mass emigration to Britain’s settler colonies, some dreamed of new relationships between these transnational communities and their symbols, such as the British Monarchy. The author Nevil Shute, who fled socialist Britain for Australia in 1950, offered one vision in his novel In The Wet (1953). The novel describes a fantastical fever-dream in which the half-aboriginal protagonist, David ‘Nigger’ Anderson, is a pilot in the Queen’s personal flight.51 The plot turns upon the actions of a strongly monarchist Australia and Canada stepping into reinvigorate a global Britishness that the rabidly socialist government of Britain is no longer willing or able to maintain. Anderson takes part in a mission to evacuate the royal family from Britain, with the Queen escaping to Australia and refusing to return until Britain institutes a complicated multiple vote franchise system designed to privilege the well educated and prosperous 49 C. Schofield, D. Geary, & J. Sutton, The Global History of White Nationalism: From Apartheid to Donald Trump (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2020). 50 Schwarz, The White Man’s World; C. Knowles, ‘The Landscape of Post-imperial Whiteness in Rural Britain’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 31, 1 (2008), pp. 167–184. 51 N. Shute, In the Wet (London, Heinemann, 1953).

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and diminish the power of the masses. This notion of literally transplanting the royal family to Canada and Australia is the apotheosis of the refrain that Britain’s settler societies were ‘Better Britains’, not carbon copies of Britain itself, but newer, improved versions.52 This was precisely the logic of UDI-era Rhodesia which, even as the Powellites bemoaned a moribund Britishness back home, positioned itself as the last, best Britain. Notions of transnational Britishness have enjoyed something of a historiographical renaissance since the turn of the century, largely through a body of scholarship on what was originally known as the ‘British World’. The British World literature, as delineated by two of its most prominent scholars, Kent Fedorowich and Carl Bridge in 2003, was a project to reintegrate colonies of settlement into the historiography of the British Empire, which had hitherto focused predominantly upon tropical colonies and the informal empire.53 Stephen Howe has noted the vagueness of the term ‘British World’ and the potential for it to be employed in a sort of triumphalist, pro-imperialist history of the kind used by rightwing historians like Niall Ferguson.54 Consequently, practitioners of British World studies, like Saul Dubow, have argued that historians must engage with these concepts with caution and qualification.55 Under the broad aegis of the British World, many scholars have focused their efforts upon reconnecting the ‘colonies of settlement’ with the rest of the empire, bringing to light the shared social, economic, cultural and demographic characteristics which travelled around these ‘imperial networks’.56 John Darwin and James Belich have explored these concepts at a global level. Darwin’s ‘British World System’, a particular historical context which was not synonymous with empire but which facilitated its 52 P. Buckner, ‘Reinventing the British World’, The Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs, 92, 368 (2003), p. 79. 53 C. Bridge & K. Fedorowich, ‘Mapping the British World’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 13, 2 (2003), p. 1; C. Bridge & K. Fedorowich (eds.), The British World: Diaspora, Culture and Identity (London, Frank Cass, 2003); J. Gallagher & R. Robinson, ‘The Imperialism of Free Trade’, The Economic History Review, 6, 1 (1953), pp. 1–15 remains the ‘classic’ study of informal empire. 54 S. Howe, ‘British Worlds, Settler Worlds, World Systems and Killing Fields’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 40, 4 (2012), p. 693. 55 Ibid., p. 693. 56 A. Lester, Imperial Networks: Creating Identities in Nineteenth-Century South Africa and Britain (London & New York, Routledge, 2001).

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spread, has demonstrated the fragility and flexibility of British imperialism.57 James Belich, a participant in the British World debates through his studies of New Zealanders, has also looked at processes of European settlement on a wider scale—in America and Russia as well as ‘British’ regions such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa— as a way to account for the remarkable success of what he terms the ‘Angloworld’.58 At a national level, historians such as Philip Buckner have looked at Canada, Saul Dubow and John Lambert have explored the position of South Africans in the British Empire, and Neville Meaney and Tara Brabazon have focused upon Australia.59 While these scholars successfully brought settler colonies back into imperial historiography, they often failed to consider what Robert Bickers has called the ‘losers’ of empire, the smaller communities of Britons overseas in places like Kenya, China and the Rhodesia.60 This has been supplemented in recent years by the work of scholars such as Will Jackson, who has focused upon the history of settler insanity in Kenya, and Duncan Money, who explores white mining communities in Zambia.61 Donal Lowry has published a series of articles and book chapters which make the case for Rhodesia’s integration into wider British 57 J. Darwin, The Empire Project: The Rise and Fall of the British World System 1830–1970 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2012). 58 J. Belich, Replenishing the Earth: Settlers and the Rise of the Angloworld (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011). 59 P. Buckner (ed.), Canada and the British Empire (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010); P. Buckner & R.D. Francis (eds.), Rediscovering the British World (Calgary, Calgary University Press, 2005); S. Dubow, ‘Colonial Nationalism, the Milner Kindergarten and the Rise of South Africanism, 1902–10’, History Workshop Journal, 43 (1997), pp. 53–85; J. Lambert, ‘An Unknown People: Reconstructing British South African Identity’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 37, 4 (2009), pp. 599–617; N. Meaney, ‘Britishness and Australian Identity: The Problem of Nationalism in Australian History and Historiography’, Australian Historical Studies, 31, 116 (2001), pp. 76–90; T. Brabazon, Tracking the Jack: A Retracing of the Antipodes (Sydney, University of New South Wales Press, 2000). 60 R. Bickers, ‘Introduction: Britains and Britons Over the Seas’, in R. Bickers (ed.), Settlers and Expatriates: Britons Over the Seas (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 1–17. 61 W. Jackson, Madness and Marginality: The Lives of Kenya’s White Insane (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2013); D. Money, ‘No Matter How Much or How Little They’ve Got, They Can’t Settle Down: A Social History of Europeans on the Zambian Copperbelt, 1926–1974’ (University of Oxford, DPhil Thesis, 2016).

1 INTRODUCTION 

21

World studies.62 In an unpublished doctoral thesis, Julian Francis has convincingly demonstrated that the typical white Rhodesian experience was a quintessentially colonial British one, and that Rhodesians believed themselves to be members of a British World and behaved accordingly.63 These works have laid a foundation for a sustained study of the Rhodesian experience of decolonisation, which permeates the chapters that follow. More recently, there has been a refocusing of ‘global and imperial history’, creating more conceptual space for understanding the multiplicity of ‘British worlds’, relationships between colonies (and not just colony-metropole dichotomies), and the operation of settler power.64 Separately, an interdisciplinary turn towards ‘settler-colonial studies’ has, in the eyes of some scholars, invalidated the need for ‘British World studies’.65 The settler-colonial turn, exemplified in the work of Lorenzo Veracini, is strengthened by its explicit confrontation and engagement with the widespread legacies of settlement that structure the modern world.66 One example of these enduring legacies, ‘CANZUK’, has been analysed by Duncan Bell and Srdjan Vucetic. ‘CANZUK’ is a strand of ‘transnational elite advocacy’ concerning the relationship between Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK which has emerged in each of these countries in the wake of Britain’s vote to leave the European Union.67 Bell and Vucetic demonstrate that the discourses underlying the, admittedly fringe, idea of CANZUK are almost identical to the global settler discourses of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries which, as will be shown below, were so critical to Rhodesia’s rebellion.

62 Lowry,

‘The Lost Dominion’, pp. 112–149. Francis, ‘The Formation and Nature of Identity in Rhodesian Settler Society from Colonisation to UDI’ (Institute of Commonwealth Studies, DPhil Thesis, 2012). 64 See J. Belich, J. Darwin, M. Frenz, & C. Wickham, The Prospect of Global History (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2016). 65 R.K. Bright & A.R. Dilley, ‘Historiographical Review: After the British World’, The Historical Journal, 60, 2 (2017), p. 561. For a useful brief overview of settler colonial studies, see L. Veracini, ‘Settler Colonialism: Career of a Concept’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 41, 2 (2013), pp. 313–333. 66 L. Veracini, The Settler Colonial Present (Basingstoke, Routledge, 2015). 67 D. Bell & S. Vucetic, ‘Brexit, CANZUK, and the Legacy of Empire’, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, accessed on 3 March 2019 at https://doi. org/10.1177%2F1369148118819070. 63 J.

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Adopting these new conceptual approaches is particularly useful for Rhodesia, as the umbrella of British imperialism was even more important for smaller and more precarious communities of settlers such as those in Rhodesia. There, a miniscule population of white settlers continued to justify their rule over millions of Africans in terms of imperial trusteeship. After UDI, they were forced to confront and adapt these justifications to suit a post-imperial age; the tension that resulted from this dilemma would remain unresolved throughout the whole rebellion. Far from being static and unchanging, the RF’s nationalist project went through a series of distinct, yet overlapping, phases in which different types of ‘Rhodesian’ nation were being pursued as the RF government and white population reconfigured their identities. The first, from UDI to around 1967, sought to secure minority-rule independence within the Commonwealth, like the old dominions, completely autonomous but retaining strong links to the former colonial power. The next major phase, from 1967 to 1975 (though mostly completed by the time a republic was declared in March 1970), was ‘symbolic decolonisation’, a period when the RF sought to demonstrate Rhodesia’s independence with new symbols and constitutional arrangements which emphasised its independence from Britain, like the former colonies to the north. The third phase, 1975–1978, saw a retrenchment of the settler state and a polity and society increasingly shaped by war against nationalist liberation armies. Finally, the messy and complicated shifts from ‘Rhodesia’ to ‘Zimbabwe-Rhodesia’ to ‘Zimbabwe’ that took place between 1978 and 1980 saw their own articulations of settler nationalism in the face of the creeping advance of majority rule. As the site of the greatest white divisions and contestations of the nation, this book largely focuses upon the period of symbolic decolonisation, but also illustrates how these different phases of nation-building bled into one another, compromising the RF’s project time and again. By exploring a nationalist project that was not strictly bound by the geographical borders of a ‘nation’, this book gives a sense of the global contraflows of ‘Britishness’ in the 1960s and 1970s. It also allows for the reintegration of Rhodesia and small settler communities like it, into the wider fabric of global and imperial historiography and settler-colonial studies. Illustrating the wider comparative value of white Rhodesian nationalism with other post-colonial nationalist movements, it challenges the teleological image of an ‘anomalous’ Rhodesia existing between

1 INTRODUCTION 

23

1965 and 1980 as an obstacle on the road to independent, majorityruled Zimbabwe.

A Race Against Time: Rhodesia and Its Rebellion Working within and between these broader trends, this book studies the white Rhodesian state’s attempts to build a nation and foster a Rhodesian national identity after between 1965 and 1979, and how the white settler population engaged with these attempts. To explore this topic, it examines the use of symbolism and history in white Rhodesian nationalism. This focus allows for an exploration of several key themes: the transnational dimensions of decolonisation, the racially structured nature of settler-colonial nationalism and the role played by militarism in shaping and reflecting ideas of the nation. These key themes are interweaved through the story of the Rhodesian rebellion and the chapters that follow. The Rhodesian rebellion was brief but complex. UDI was shaped by broader historical trends and this book first sets out this context in which the RF’s nationalism developed in the 1960s and 1970s. Endless amount of ink was spilled on the causes of UDI during the rebellion, by both supporters and opponents of the regime, but demography and politics are a solid foundation on which to build an understanding of the challenges the RF faced. Studying these trends also furthers the work to disaggregate settler society in Rhodesia begun by Peter Godwin and Ian Hancock in their seminal book Rhodesians Never Die. Godwin and Hancock revealed the messy, fractious nature of the white society that the RF’s nationalism was seeking to homogenise and unify. Chapter 2 explores Rhodesian demography and politics to consider the state of white Rhodesian society in the post-war period, illustrating why the RF’s nationalism looked the way it did and showing the critical importance of race to Rhodesian identity and nationalism. Chapter 3 looks at the place of history in white Rhodesian nationalism. To rebel Rhodesians, the past literally was a foreign country (though they did things much the same there). The shadow of the colony of ‘Southern Rhodesia’ loomed largely, and often ludicrously, over UDI as the years went on. Yet Rhodesia’s brief past (the colony celebrated its 75th anniversary in 1965) was a critical resource for the RF as it sought to argue the case for independence. The economic, social and political rationale for UDI was suffused with understandings and

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tropes from Rhodesia’s imperial past. Framing a unilateral declaration of independence as an attempt to recapture and preserve this past and a broader, British imperial ethos, the RF played up Rhodesian blood ‘sacrifices’ in imperial wars, from Messines to Malaya, as a down payment on independence.68 They pointed to the settlers’ unique capabilities to ‘know’ (and thus to rule) Rhodesia’s African population, contrasting their country with Britain’s own late colonial rhetoric about the readiness of subject populations to govern themselves. This deep and complicated engagement with the past would permeate the white Rhodesian psyche throughout the rebellion and sowed the seeds of conflict and contestation within the settler community. As the interminable negotiations with the British dragged on, Rhodesia’s illegal independence became a fait accompli. This necessitated a process of ‘symbolic decolonisation’ and a ‘new nationalism’ for Rhodesia, in common with processes taking place in other ‘British’ settler societies around the world. Chapter 4 begins an investigation of these phenomena by considering the process through which Rhodesia redesigned its flag. In 1967, the Rhodesian government established a ‘Committee on Honours and Awards’ to investigate the potential of creating a new flag, national anthem and a new system of honours to replace Rhodesia’s old colonial-era British ones. The same year, a new flag was designed. The purpose of this flag was twofold: it was a unifying symbol of independence behind for the divided Rhodesian settler populace and a signal to potential international allies that Rhodesia was a legitimate state. Though the new flag emerged from an opaque process and seemed to have been adopted for functional reasons, RF politicians and white Rhodesians subsequently imbued this ambiguous symbol with a wide range of meanings. The changing of the Rhodesian flag, and how it was received in Parliament and wider society, offers a lens onto white nationalism in the early UDI period, as the RF began to make tentative moves towards a more permanent independence. In the five years after UDI, Rhodesia moved from being a staunchly monarchist enclave of Southern Africa to declaring a Republic in March 1970. The British Monarchy, perhaps the ultimate transnational imperial

68 See Schofield, Enoch Powell for a comparative example of how the right in Britain used memories of the Second World War in post-war politics.

1 INTRODUCTION 

25

symbol, had a particular salience in settler societies around the world.69 Historically, this imperial monarchy had provided an alternative means for settlers to assert their rights and grievances against the British government of the day. Discursively, UDI drew upon these historic discourses of ‘loyal rebellion’, with the proclamation of independence being signed beneath a large portrait of Queen Elizabeth II and ending with the words ‘God Save the Queen’. Chapter 4 charts Rhodesia’s move towards a republic between 1965 and 1970, arguing that this process illustrates the commonalities that the rebellious state shared both with other settler societies and with newly independent African states. Like the African colonies before it, Rhodesia’s abandonment of the monarchy suited both a palace and anxious Whitehall mandarins keen to insulate the Queen from any post-colonial controversies. As Chapter 5 shows, though the declaration of a republic was heralded as a decisive break with Britain, white Rhodesia remained a curiously British society. The final colonial symbol to be replaced by the RF was the national anthem, a full decade after UDI—the result of an extended and unsatisfactory competition to find new lyrics and music to replace ‘God Save the Queen’. Even as the government’s Committee on Honours and Awards despairingly rejected composition after composition, alternative visions of the nation began to be expressed through white Rhodesian folk music. This music, often heavily militarised and gendered, contrasted with the anodyne anthems by which the RF chose to represent Rhodesia through the ages. The stories of these different musical expressions of the nation show both the contestation and challenge between state-sponsored and popular nationalisms, but also how the two bled into and were constitutive of each other. Chapter 6 explores the tortuous search for a new national anthem and the songs that really captured white Rhodesians hearts. Processes of symbolic decolonisation largely took place in a white echo chamber, with Rhodesia’s black population either ignored or unrepresented in the creation of new national symbols. The debates surrounding these changes and the discourses that emerged from them were deeply racialised, unable (and largely unwilling) to consider how the rebellion’s raison d’être of preventing majority rule would impact upon Rhodesia’s black population. Chapter 7 considers how the RF and its 69 P. Murphy, Monarchy and the End of Empire: The House of Windsor, the British Government, and the Postwar Commonwealth (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013).

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allies deployed historical narratives which reified Rhodesia’s racial hierarchies and structured the way in which black challenges to the state were understood. This was particularly true of the 1972 African rejection of a series of Anglo-Rhodesian settlement proposals, the closest the rebel state came to securing a negotiated minority-rule independence. The exclusion and stereotyping of the African population meant that when the RF concluded an ‘internal settlement’ designed to bring about majority rule with a group of internally based nationalist leaders in 1978, many whites could no longer understand what was happening. Though carefully designed to ensure that the key levers of economic and military power remained in white hands, the internal settlement brought the abandonment of all the new symbols created in the past decade and presaged the ultimate collapse of Rhodesia. This exploration of Rhodesia’s rebellion has significance for our understandings of global Britishness, the history of Zimbabwe and the history of decolonisation. It explores why the RF’s nationalist project, which doomed the settler state to failure, proved surprisingly successful in creating a sense of community and identity that sustained the rebellion in its early years against all expectations, and which has endured into the present day, long after Zimbabwean independence. Capturing a moment in time, it challenges the multiplicity of competing histories and memories of Rhodesia that still hold a powerful sway over some— including those who were too young to directly experience Rhodesia or imperialism. The story of the RF’s nationalist project after 1965 demonstrates how its experiment in minority-rule independence was not a narrow, nationally bound anomaly but was instead both grounded in and had wider implications for global and transnational trends in the era of decolonisation.

CHAPTER 2

White Rhodesian Society ca.1950s–1980s

No society, even one as small and ostensibly tightly knit as white Rhodesia, was completely uniform. Though commentators of the time talked of the settlers as a monolithic, homogenous bloc, the everyday life of Rhodesia rarely reflected such stereotypes. Rhodesian settlers were divided in myriad ways. Illustrating these divisions provides a sense of the imperatives underlying the Rhodesian Front’s (RF) nation-building efforts and some of the challenges that the party had to contend with. The challenges such divisions posed were ones familiar to all nationalist movements, but they were crucial in shaping the processes through which white Rhodesian nationalism evolved before, during and after UDI. The story of Rhodesia’s post-Second World War development is the story of a small society whose fluidity of composition was reflected in the amorphous and elusive nature of what it meant to be ‘Rhodesian’. Dramatic demographic change was affected by a relatively large wave of post-war European migration, mainly from Britain, and the impact that these new migrants had upon Rhodesian political and social life. This chapter sketches the contours of Rhodesia’s fundamentally fractious white society. At the dawn of the 1960s, newly independent states across Africa faced a whole raft of challenges, not least of which was the reconciliation of disparate and divided populations inherited as a result of arbitrary colonial cartography. The nationalists leading these young nations were forced to confront bespoke demographic, economic and political © The Author(s) 2019 D. Kenrick, Decolonisation, Identity and Nation in Rhodesia, 1964–1979, Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32698-2_2

27

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challenges in order to proceed with the work of nation-building. These challenges were as diverse as the nations that faced them down: Kenyans sought to come to terms with the consequences of the civil war and ethnic strife of the Mau Mau insurgency, and Congolese were enveloped in an escalating crisis of secession and conflict.1 These conflicts had a knock-on effect across the continent, providing a contemporary frame of reference through which nationalists, both white and black, could conceptualise independence, nationhood and identity. Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) was nowhere near as dramatic or costly (for whites at least) as some of these conflicts and was facilitated by the continuity of settler rule before and after 11 November 1965. This continuity ensured that all the major mechanisms of settler control: economic, political, legal and military, simply continued to operate from 10 November to 11 November. Though cast in the rhetoric of a decisive and dramatic turning point, the moment of UDI was more notable for how little things changed: there were no radio stations to seize, no colonial oppressor to forcibly repel and—the governor excepted—no leadership positions to fill. While a great many challenges to the white Rhodesian nation were contingent and faced down in-the-moment after UDI was taken, the rebellion also had to contend with the historical legacies of societal transformation dating back to the Second World War.

White Rhodesian Demography In 1901, there were around 11,000 Europeans in Rhodesia.2 This number steadily increased until the Second World War, and thereafter the population grew from 82,000 (in 1946) to 221,500 (in 1961).3 Like all settler colonies in the British Empire, Rhodesia operated a vigorous propaganda campaign seeking to attract settlers from ‘back home’ to come to 1 B. Ogot, ‘Mau Mau & Nationhood: The Untold Story’, in E.S. Atieno Odhiambo & J. Lonsdale (eds.), Mau Mau and Nationhood: Arms, Authority & Narration (Oxford, Nairobi & Athens, OH, James Currey, 2003), pp. 8–36; C. Achebe, There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra (London, Penguin, 2013); I. Kabongo. ‘The Catastrophe of Belgian Decolonization’, in P. Gifford & Wm Roger Louis (eds.), Decolonization and African Independence: The Transfers of Power, 1960–1980 (New Haven & London, Yale University Press, 1988), pp. 381–400. 2 L. Bowman, Politics in Rhodesia: White Power in an African State (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1973), p. 13. 3 Ibid.

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a land of sunshine and opportunity, an argument which had a particularly strong appeal after the Second World War. At the same time, Rhodesia was always the poorer relation of Britain’s larger, more attractive, settler societies, often not even considered by tens of thousands of emigrants who instead flocked to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and especially South Africa. By 1965, there were some 224,000 whites (in Rhodesia and the population would reach a peak of around 277,000 by 1977, thereafter going into terminal decline).4 The white population was overwhelmingly concentrated in Rhodesia’s towns and the cities, many of which were located on the Highveld, a region running north-east to southwest which enjoyed the best climate and had the best agricultural land.5 In 1969, the only year a census was taken in rebel Rhodesia, the largest population concentrations of Europeans, Asians and ‘Coloureds’ (as the mixed-race population of Southern Africa was known) were in the capital Salisbury (96,764) Bulawayo (49,703), Umtali (8368), Gwelo (8347), Que Que (3153), Fort Victoria (2528) and Marandellas (2108).6 The defining characteristic of Rhodesian demography after the Second World War was not the rapidity of its growth but its impermanence.7 Throughout the entire period, there was a steady turnover of the European population. In the post-war boom years of 1955–1959, 74,000 immigrants arrived for a loss of 39,000 emigrants, and the economic strife of the late Federal period of 1960–1964 saw a net loss of 25,000 whites (with only 38,000 immigrants against 63,000 emigrants).8 4 Bowman, Politics in Rhodesia, p. 13; D. Lowry, ‘Rhodesia, 1890–1980 “The Lost Dominion”’, in R. Bickers (ed.), Settlers and Expatriates: Britons Overseas (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 122. 5 P. Godwin & I. Hancock, Rhodesians Never Die: The Impact of War and Political Change on White Rhodesia 1970–1980 (Northlands SA, Pan Macmillan South Africa, 2007), p. 28. 6 Rhodesia Central Statistical Office, 1969 Population Census (Interim Report) Volume I: The European, Asian and Coloured Population (Salisbury, Government Printer, 1971). These places are now known as Harare, Bulawayo, Mutare, Gweru, Kwekwe, Masvingo and Marondera, respectively. 7 Godwin & Hancock, Rhodesians Never Die, p. 145. 8 Figures from Mlambo, White Immigration, p. 5. Table 5: Net Balance of Migration of Europeans, 1921–1964. It is possible that these figures are taken from Federal statistics, which would also include immigration to and from Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Nevertheless, the bulk of European immigrants went to Southern rather than Northern Rhodesia, where the settler population was small, or Nyasaland, where it was almost non-existent.

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This turnover was due to several factors; better opportunities in South Africa and elsewhere or, later, to escape from the increasingly onerous war effort. This high turnover in the settler population complicated attempts to instil a sense of loyalty and community spirit among white Rhodesians.9 Many migrants barely had time to settle before they had left again, never mind becoming ardent ‘Rhodesians’. Their transience and the ease with which they moved across borders (particularly the South African one) presented a challenge to the RF as it struggled to maintain the Rhodesian state. The party had to ensure that Rhodesia remained an attractive alternative to immigrants’ home destinations. The complicated and sometimes confusing demographics of white Rhodesia have been the focus of several studies. Alois Mlambo and Josiah Brownell have explored Rhodesia’s ‘war of numbers’: the Rhodesian government’s battle to shore up its white population through immigration while promoting birth control among the African population as a way to reduce the racial ‘imbalance’ in the population in the UDI period.10 Brownell’s study illustrates the desperation of the white-minority regime as this imbalance became particularly acute during the conflict of the 1960s and 1970s. Brownell has since looked beyond this conflict and explore how changes in European immigration policy implemented by the RF might have impacted white society and the way whites understood the meaning and boundaries of the terms ‘Rhodesia’ and ‘Rhodesian’.11 In the 1970s, Barry Schutz argued for the importance of demographics in shaping Rhodesian society but only speculates as to the motives behind the RF immigration policy.12 Rhodesian cabinet papers from the period shed new light on Schutz’s theories about government policy.

9 J. Brownell, The Collapse of Rhodesia: Population Demographics and the Politics of Race (London, I.B. Tauris, 2011); Godwin & Hancock, Rhodesians Never Die. 10 A.S. Mlambo, White Immigration into Rhodesia; From Occupation to Federation (Harare, University of Zimbabwe Publications, 2000); Brownell, The Collapse of Rhodesia, p. 1. 11 See, for example, J. Brownell, ‘Out of Time: Global Settlerism, Nostalgia, and the Selling of the Rhodesian Rebellion Overseas’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 43, 4 (2017), pp. 805–824. 12 B.M. Schutz, ‘European Population Patterns, Cultural Persistence, and Political Change in Rhodesia’, Canadian Journal of African Studies, 7, 1 (1973), p. 20.

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In these years, Southern Rhodesia was joined with its neighbours Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Nyasaland (Malawi) as part of the Central African Federation. At this time, the settler state found itself on the horns of a dilemma. It was caught between the need to attract more whites to create a ‘white man’s country’ in Rhodesia and an inclination towards selective immigration policies that reflected a desire to attract the ‘right sort’ of immigrant.13 Such tension was born of an ethnic bias towards British immigrants on the part of Rhodesia’s ruling elite. NonBritish whites, such as the small number of Polish refugees taken in by Rhodesia’s government during the Second World War, found themselves treated as second-class citizens, subject to hostility and suspicion from ‘British Rhodesians’.14 Such ethnic prejudices, enshrined in legislation and selective immigration policies, actually hindered Rhodesia’s development as a white settler colony by turning away non-British whites who could have increased the number of whites in the colony and, as skilled workers, played a role in its economic development.15 Such selectivity was partly driven by fears of ‘poor whitism’, a phenomenon that threatened the very foundations of Rhodesia’s racialised settler society. Alison Shutt has demonstrated the critical importance of social codes of behaviour, manners and etiquette to Rhodesian society.16 White settlers sought to use codes of etiquette to justify their continued rule over Africans and used these discourses to socialise new white immigrants. In both Rhodesia and South Africa, the very existence of whites who lived in relative poverty and freely intermingled with Africans jeopardised these elaborate and fragile mechanisms of settler dominance. Like the settler reluctance to arm Africans to fight against white men, poor whites showed settlers to be less than they claimed to be, and there was a perpetual fear of poor whites succumbing to the lure of socialism or communism, or ‘going native’—living like (and with) Africans.17 13 Mlambo,

White Immigration, p. 40. Tavuyanago, T. Muguti, & J. Hlongwana, ‘Victims of the Rhodesian Immigration Policy: Polish Refugees from the Second World War’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 38, 4 (2012), p. 953. 15 Mlambo, White Immigration, pp. 70–71. 16 A.K. Shutt, Manners Make a Nation: Racial Etiquette in Southern Rhodesia, 1910– 1963 (Rochester, NY, Rochester University Press, 2015). 17 J. Darwin, The Empire Project: The Rise and Fall of the British World System (Oxford, 2012), p. 403. 14 B.

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These highly selective immigration policies ensured that white Rhodesian society was heavily influenced both socially and culturally by Britain. These policies were relaxed by the RF government in the 1960s but few have explored why. The RF’s relaxed immigration policy reflected a change in attitudes in white Rhodesian society and simple state realpolitik. Yet the broadening of white immigration did not necessarily make white Rhodesian society any more cosmopolitan than it had been before, as powerful methods of socialisation designed to foster ethnic solidarity were brought to bear on new immigrants and, despite the rhetoric, Rhodesia, like many other British settler societies, had always attracted chancers and adventure seekers from around the world. The open solicitation of potential white emigrants became illegal in the UK after UDI, though the Rhodesian government still sought to entice people with clandestine methods.18 A 1975 fact paper produced by a range of European anti-racist groups including the British AntiApartheid Movement demonstrated that Rhodesia was also secretly soliciting immigrants from European countries such as Belgium, Germany and Switzerland in direct contravention of UN sanctions prohibiting emigration.19 It also noted that a number of British emigrants to South Africa could then be moving onto Rhodesia, though this was difficult to prove.20 The RF’s less selective approach most likely stemmed from the increased restrictions placed on recruitment operations in the UK, rather than from an ideological shift against the desirability of British immigrants. Indeed, the UK remained the prime source for Rhodesian immigrants throughout the UDI period and a comfortable majority of white Rhodesians were always either of British, South African or, a distant third, Rhodesian origin.21 Though it was ostensibly a British possession, Britain’s position as a major source Rhodesia’s European immigrants was a relatively recent 18 Komittee

Zuidelijk Afrika et al., White Migration to Southern Africa (Geneva, 1975). pp. 69, 93, 226. 20 Ibid., p. 127. 21 International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa (hereafter IDAF), Southern Africa: Immigration from Britain—A Fact Paper by the International Defence and Aid Fund (London, The Fund, 1975); D. Lowry, ‘‘Shame Upon “Little England” While “Greater England” Stands!’ Southern Rhodesia and the Imperial Idea’, in A. Bosco & A. May (eds.), The Round Table, The Empire/Commonwealth and British Foreign Policy (London, Lothian Foundation Press, 1997), p. 328. 19 Ibid.,

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phenomenon, as historically Rhodesia had drawn most of its white population from South Africa. Since the arrival of Cecil Rhodes’ pioneer column in 1890, Rhodesia’s European population had been characterised by its closeness to English-speaking South Africa, which had freely shared its laws and culture, as well as some of its settler population, with its northern neighbour.22 Yet the European origins of many post-war white immigrants sometimes created dilemmas for new British migrants, who were unfamiliar with Rhodesia’s scrupulously maintained system of racial etiquette.23 In the 1960s, there was much speculation about the attitudes of these new immigrants, with some—such as former mayor of Salisbury Frank Clements—seeing them as a disruptive influence.24 Positing a divide between ‘old’ Rhodesians and post-War migrants, Clements bemoaned the ‘racial hatred’ of new immigrants as opposed to the ‘paternalistic… but broadly human’ attitudes of older Rhodesians.25 Clements’ thinking was firmly grounded in a settler colonial mode in which appearance and decorum were everything in race relations. This was, so the logic went, an innate knowledge that settlers only acquired after generations, and newcomers could upset this order through their ignorance. Doris Lessing, raised in Rhodesia but subsequently locally reviled for her communist sympathies, illustrated these differences in her novel The Grass Is Singing through the treatment of Tony Marston, castigated and threatened with ostracisation for not ‘understanding’ the country.26 Paradoxically, some ‘old Rhodesian’ fears about newcomers also centred upon the idea that they might be too liberal or familiar with black Africans. Fears of this sort had been voiced during the Second World 22 This has led to commentators such as Donal Lowry and Barry Schutz describing Rhodesian settler society as an English-speaking South African derived, rather than a British derived, settler society. B.M. Schutz & D. Scott, Natives and Settlers: A Comparative Analysis of the Politics of Opposition and Mobilization in Northern Ireland and Rhodesia (Denver, Social Science Foundation, 1975); D. Lowry to author, personal communication. For demographic data on Britain as the main source of migrants see IDAF, Southern Africa: Immigration from Britain, p. 17. 23 Shutt, Manners Maketh a Nation. 24 F. Clements, Rhodesia; The Course to Collision (London, Pall Mall Press, 1969), pp. 84–93. 25 Ibid, p. 20. 26 D. Lessing, The Grass Is Singing (London, Flamingo, 1994), p. 17; idem, Going Home (London, 1968).

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War, when thousands of Commonwealth servicemen came to Rhodesia as part of the Air Training Scheme (Chapter 3) bringing with them political views that jarred in ‘Rhodesia’s sleepy colonial society’.27 This potential for social ostracism was coupled with a proactive attempt on the part of the settler state to inculcate ‘proper’ modes of settler behaviour in newcomers.28 Alison Shutt notes the twofold aim of such efforts in the 1950s: to demonstrate that Rhodesians had worked hard to earn their privileged lifestyle and to show that—by treating ‘the natives’ with courtesy—the Rhodesians were not racist, but rather sensitive to the apparent cultural and civilisational gulf between themselves and Africans.29 This was a convenient fiction for Rhodesian settlers seeking to distinguish themselves from what they considered to be the naked and unseemly racism of the South African state’s programme of apartheid. Yet there were obvious cracks in this façade, as in so many settler societies, the potential for mixed-race relationships and miscegenation remained one of the greatest social taboos in Rhodesia, and the strict laws existing to prohibit them gave the lie to the liberality of Rhodesian race relations. Racialised sexual anxieties manifested themselves in a spate of ‘black peril’ scares—revealing for the light they shed on colonial gender politics as much as race—throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.30 In 1964, the sociologist Peter McEwan noted upon visiting Rhodesia that cultural and societal similarities between Britain and Rhodesia ensured that the racial attitudes and behaviour associated with living in a settler society were often the most alienating issue for new immigrants. Despite this, most of them apparently managed to assimilate relatively quickly.31 This ensured a large measure of cultural homogeneity and

27 Quote from A.R. King, ‘Identity and Decolonisation: The Policy of Partnership in Southern Rhodesia, 1945–62’ (Oxford University, D.Phil Thesis, 2001), p. 97. 28 See D. Kennedy, Islands of White: Settler Society and Culture in Kenya and Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1939 (Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 1987) for an exploration of these tensions in Rhodesia’s early colonial society. 29 Shutt, Manners Make a Nation, p. 81. 30 J. McCulloch, Black Peril, White Virtue: Sexual Crime in Southern Rhodesia, 1902– 1935 (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2000). 31 P. McEwan, ‘European Assimilation in a Non-European Context’, International Magazine, 2, 2 (1964), p. 125.

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familiarity for the incoming migrants from Britain and South Africa. This of course ignored any class or ethnic divisions which might have existed. However, as Enocent Msindo has cautioned, Rhodesian demographic data can be inconsistent and often misleading.32 Of note in this instance is that the bulk of emigrants from South Africa to Rhodesia were English-speaking South Africans, not Afrikaners. Similarly, as noted above, there was a trend among British-born emigrants to go first to South Africa and then subsequently move on to Rhodesia. It is likely that the social and cultural milieu of English-speaking South Africa and the experience of living in a racially divided society would have facilitated acculturation towards Rhodesian social norms.33 If some, like Frank Clements, grumbled at the new folk, most of Rhodesian society was welcoming, with McEwan noting that immigration was widely encouraged at all levels of white society.34 If Rhodesian society was easy to join, it was equally easy to leave. Another pertinent point demonstrated by the demographic data is the fact that at no point in its history did the proportion of Rhodesian-born individuals in the white population outnumber immigrants born elsewhere.35 While it was possible to socialise the overwhelmingly young Rhodesian population and the children of white immigrants through a high-quality schooling system, most of the adult population came from abroad and had grown up within different social and cultural contexts.36 The links retained by these immigrants facilitated their exit from Rhodesia and suggested that feeling ‘Rhodesian’ was not dissimilar enough from feeling ‘South Africa’, ‘Australian’ or even ‘British’.37 Individuals socialised in Rhodesia could easily move around this settler world because these other places were so similar. The relative shallowness 32 E. Msindo, ‘“Winning Hearts and Minds”: Crisis and Propaganda in Colonial Zimbabwe 1962–1970’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 35, 3 (2009), p. 667. 33 B. Schutz, ‘Homeward Bound? A Survey Study of the Limits of White Rhodesian Nationalism and Permanence’, Ufahamnu, 5, 3 (1973), p. 86; P. Brendon, The Decline and Fall of the British Empire 1781–1997 (London, Vintage, 2008), pp. 589–598. 34 McEwan, ‘European Assimilation’, p. 121. 35 Lowry, ‘Shame on Little England’, p. 328. 36 J. Francis, ‘The Formation and Nature of Identity in Rhodesian Settler Society from Colonisation to UDI’ (Institute of Commonwealth Studies, Ph.D. Thesis, 2012), pp. 99–153. 37 J. Brownell, ‘The Hole in Rhodesia’s Bucket: White Emigration and the End of Settler Rule’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 34, 3 (2008), pp. 591–610.

36  D. KENRICK

of this connection with Rhodesia would prove to be a major problem for the RF’s nation-building project. Other significant contingents in Rhodesia’s surprisingly multi-national white population in the 1960s came from Portugal, the Netherlands, Germany and the United States—with a combined population of 7136 in 1961.38 McEwan noted that the non-English-speaking ethnic groups of European immigrants tended to stick together, as their group identities were already well defined. While they often did not bother to assimilate into Rhodesian society, they were usually satisfied with it.39 Clements and historians such as Susie Jacobs have claimed that Greeks, owing to their inferior position within European society as shopkeepers and often as rivals to Asian traders, meant they were even more racist and closely knit, resentful of the British elite who denied them opportunities.40 Christopher Lee has noted how similar attitudes were adopted by some members of the country’s mixed-race communities, such as Eurafricans, who sought to use racism as a ‘weapon of the weak’.41 This involved marginal societal groups claiming membership of the white community (and the privileges attendant upon that membership) as a way to alleviate the everyday discrimination they suffered. While English-speaking South Africans formed a key source of Rhodesia’s white population, South Africa’s other major European population group, Afrikaners, were a significant minority who were notably reluctant to assimilate into Rhodesian society. They typically settled in tight-knit communities in rural areas such as Marandellas and Enkeldoorn and often retained their own language, religion and culture which led to clashes with ‘British’ Rhodesians.42 These cultural differences fuelled long-standing fears about loyalty and subversion which 38 Data

from 1961 Census, pp. 10–11 and 1969 Population Census, p. 19. ‘European Assimilation’, p. 110. 40 S. Jacobs, ‘Gender Divisions and the Formation of Ethnicities in Zimbabwe’, in D. Stasiulis & N. Yuval Davis (eds.), Unsettling Settler Societies: Articulations of Gender, Race, Ethnicity and Class (London, 1995), p. 252; Clements, Rhodesia, p. 73. 41 C.J. Lee, Unreasonable Histories: Nativism, Multiracial Lives, and the Genealogical Imagination in British Africa (Durham & London, 2014), p. 205. 42 R. Hodder-Williams, White Farmers in Rhodesia 1890–1965; A History of the Marandellas District (London, 1983); A. Letcher, ‘“You Expected Racialism and You Found It?” A Case Study of the Enkeldoorn and Schools Commission of Enquiry and Its Framing of Juvenile Delinquency, 1944–1945’ (Oxford University, MSc Thesis, 2014). These places are now known as Marondera and Chivhu, respectively. 39 McEwan,

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37

stemmed back to the award of settler self-government to Rhodesia in 1923, when Rhodesian voters had elected not to join their country with South Africa (Chapter 3).43 Rhodesian fears of Afrikaners were exacerbated by the disloyalty, pro-Nazi sentiments and outright sabotage of some Afrikaners, such as the members of the Ossewa Brandwag, during the Second World War, along with the association of Afrikaners with apartheid.44 This last point was critical, as apartheid was something against which Rhodesians frequently compared themselves, with many seeing it as inferior to their own ‘enlightened’ system of race relations. When Afrikaners refused to assimilate into Rhodesian society, they offered a challenge to the country’s system of race relations. The tensions between Rhodesians’ historical relationship with Afrikaners, and the country’s overweening reliance on its Southern neighbour after UDI was declared, would have a major influence on the development Rhodesian nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s.45 Gender in White Rhodesia Alongside its ethnic and racial components, the RF’s nationalism was deeply gendered, structuring possibilities (and offering opportunities for contestation) for men and women in rebel Rhodesia. Settlement in Rhodesia, like many early settler societies, was initially restricted only to men, a situation which gave rise to a rough and almost syncretic form of frontier masculinity.46 It also provided an oft-told story of the country’s first white female settler. Fanny Pearson was a parlour maid from London who eloped with a French aristocrat, Count Edmond de la Panouse, and 43 In his book on South African special forces operations in the ‘Border War’, Peter Stiff suggests that memories of 1923 also conditioned the attitude of top Nationalist politicians towards Rhodesians—claiming that they had never forgiven the Rhodesians for voting against joining the Union in 1922. P. Stiff, The Silent War: South African Recce Operations 1969–1994 (Alberton, SA, Galago, 1999), p. 258. 44 In contrast, John Lambert has suggested that the Second World War represented a high point of ‘South Africanism’ for English-speaking South Africans, who contributed significantly to the war in spite of strident Afrikaner opposition. See J. Lambert, ‘Their Finest Hour? English-speaking South Africans and World War II’, South African Historical Journal, 60, 1 (2008), pp. 60–84. 45 See this chapter. 46 J. Pape, ‘Black and White: The “Perils of Sex” in Colonial Zimbabwe’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 16, 4 (1990), p. 701.

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entered the country dressed as a boy in 1894. Pearson, later dubbed, ‘Countess Billy’ would be celebrated after UDI in Countless Billy ‘the latest, gayest, and most colourful all-Rhodesian musical’ released in September 1967.47 Over time, women came to be seen as essential for both domesticating the rough, masculine and racially porous frontier and also growing the white settler population. In Southern Africa in particular, women acted as ‘boundary markers, maintaining racial authority through their differential ways of life’.48 By 1961, gender ratios were relatively balanced in Rhodesia, with 39,288 European males and 38,165 females.49 In the 1950s, gender roles had evolved, as they did across the empire as settler populations became more embedded in the spaces that they had seized the previous century. As discourses of developing native populations gained greater currency, settler women were encouraged to reach across racial boundaries to share their knowledge of domesticity through bodies such as the Homecraft Movement and the Federation of African Women’s Clubs.50 At the same time, white women’s positions remained precarious, particularly where black male domestic servants were concerned, an anxiety captured in Doris Lessing’s The Grass Is Singing.51 Kate Law has shown how, in the 1960s and 1970s, a small group of ‘liberal’ white women were able to mount a challenge to the racial discrimination of the settler state, but were unable to secure greater sexual equality at a time when women’s rights were being asserted with a measure of growing, if uneven, success elsewhere in the West.52 UDI itself was invariably gendered, a celebration of Rhodesia’s heavily masculinised settler culture. A key component of rebel Rhodesia’s critique of contemporary Britain was the ‘permissive society’, of which 47 Rhodesian

Scene, 1968, pp. 9–11. Hall, ‘Of Gender and Empire: Reflections on the Nineteenth Century’, in P. Levine (ed.), Gender and Empire (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 70; K. Law, Gendering the Settler State, p. 35; S. Jacobs, ‘Gender Divisions and the Formation of Ethnicities in Zimbabwe’, in D. Stasiulis & N. Yuval-Davies (eds.), Unsettling Settler Societies: Articulations of Gender, Race, Ethnicity and Class (London, Sage, 1995), p. 249. 49 Rhodesia Central Statistical Office, 1961 Census of the European, Asian and Coloured Population (Salisbury, Government Printer, 1962), p. 36. 50 Law, Gendering the Settler State, p. 56. 51 Lessing, The Grass Is Singing; McCulloch, Black Peril, White Virtue; J. Pape, ‘Black and White’, pp. 699–720. 52 Law, Gendering the Settler State, p. 110. 48 C.

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greater sexuality equality was a symbol. In 1969, Ian McLean, Minister of Health railed against ‘the so-called permissive society’ as ‘nothing more than an inspired stalking horse for Communist infiltration… this type of society erodes standards… wherever it exists’.53 In the 1960s and 1970s, the Rhodesian male was a beer-swigging, sports-playing, straight-talking (and later, shooting) individual. Masculinity in Rhodesia was deeply shaped by the militarised nature of society and, as the rebellion went on, ever wider call-ups for military or police service. A famous Rhodesian Army recruiting poster exhorted potential recruits to be a ‘man among men’, and as we will see in Chapter 5, military masculinity was an important expression of what it meant to be Rhodesian. Demography and Immigration Policy After UDI Given the divided nature of Rhodesia’s tiny white society on numerous lines, to say little of class, occupation and age, the RF’s attempts to consistently unite these disparate groups behind the abstract banner of ‘Rhodesia’ after UDI were a Sisyphean task. The RF’s broadening of Rhodesia’s immigration policy was gradual and cautious, despite its desperation to win the racial ‘war of numbers’. This was due to age-old Rhodesian concerns about the homogeneity of white society and interracial sexual unions that had characterised the history of white settlement in Rhodesia. In a Cabinet Memorandum of 5 April 1967, Jack Howman, the Minister of Immigration, Information and Tourism, warned against an open door policy on immigration as it ‘could lead to the growth of a “white trash” element and could ultimately generate embarrassing problems in regard to segregation’.54 However, Howman conceded that difficulties recruiting openly in Britain would mean widening the net somewhat even though: ‘[t]here… [was] no doubt that considerable numbers of immigrants could still be obtained from that country…’.55 It was clear that some Rhodesians in the 1960s and 1970s still conceived of a racial hierarchy among Europeans and that new non-British groups continued to have trouble integrating. One particular ‘problem’ group was Portuguese immigrants, the number of whom coming 53 Rhodesian

Commentary, 3, 1, 13 January 1969, p. 6. Library, Rhodes University, Grahamstown (hereafter CL) (Smith Papers), Cabinet Memoranda, RC(S) (67), 70, ‘Immigration Policy’, 5 April 1967. 55 Ibid. 54 Cory

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into Rhodesia steadily increased during the late 1960s and the early 1970s.56 In February 1971, the Commissioner of Police and Officer Commanding, C.I.D., complained of a growing incidence of miscegenation and prostitution between Africans and new white immigrants, particularly Germans and Portuguese, noting that: ‘new immigrants to this country who undulged [sic] freely in these practices were undesirable as permanent residents’.57 It was clear from the cabinet’s response that rebel Rhodesia remained a place defined by its racial scruples. That August, the matter was again raised in cabinet, where it was noted that eleven per cent of immigrants in 1970 (1326) had been Portuguese and that this number was likely to rise by as much as twenty per cent in 1971 based on current trends. It is not clear whether or not these Portuguese immigrants were coming directly from Portugal or from the nearby Portuguese colonies in Angola and Mozambique.58 Some of these new Portuguese migrants undoubtedly made use of regional trends of labour migration and moved on to South Africa or Rhodesia seeking better opportunities.59 Nevertheless, the 1970 figure represented a significant increase on 1967’s 542 Portuguese migrants.60 A Cabinet Memorandum by I.F. McLean, Minister of Labour and Social Welfare, addressed the problem at length: This increasing influx of a certain type of immigrant, but particularly of Portuguese immigrants can only aggravate the problems of prostitution and miscegenation and the growth of the Coloured population, which already has a high reproductive rate and which creates more social problems per head of population than any other sector of the community. 8. From accounts and observations it appears that the assimilation rate of the Portuguese into the Rhodesian way of life is the lowest of all national groups… 56 (CL) (Smith Papers). Cabinet Minutes, RC(S) (71) Thirty-First Meeting, 24 August 1971. 57 (CL) (Smith Papers), Cabinet Memoranda, RC(S) (71) 24, ‘Miscegenation and Allied Problems’, 12 February 1971. 58 Jeanne Marie Pevenne, ‘Settling Against the Tide: The Layered Contradictions of Twentieth Century Portuguese Settlement in Mozambique’, in C. Elkins & S. Pedersen (eds.), Settler Colonialism in the Twentieth Century (New York & Abingdon, Routledge, 2005), pp. 79–94. 59 Ibid., p. 85. 60 RC(S) (71), Thirty-First Meeting.

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9. The position can only deteriorate if Government continues to encourage the importation of these low class immigrants, and I should like Cabinet to consider whether or not a greater measure of control and selectivity in this field is desirable.61

The Rhodesian government blamed the sexual proclivities of the Portuguese immigrants on the Portuguese colonial concept of the assimilado, which they erroneously believed was an officially endorsed policy of interracial sexual relations.62 Rhodesian reticence towards interracial relationships, considered as being ‘in direct contradiction to the Rhodesian way of life’, reflected the imperatives of the RF’s state and its brand of Rhodesian nationalism: preservation of minority rule and racial segregation.63 The continued solicitation and admittance of these ‘new’ immigrants and their attendant potential (in the RF’s view) for causing anxiety and moral panic within Rhodesian society illustrate the utilitarianism which informed the relaxation of immigration controls. In discussing McLean’s memorandum, cabinet noted: ‘Rhodesia had only been able to keep pace with building demands over the past few years as a consequence of immigration of lower-class Portuguese artisans and that immigration of these persons would probably be necessary for some time to come’.64 Thus, for short-term economic gain, the RF was willing to continue accepting ‘undesirable’ immigrants. This illustrated one of the fundamental paradoxes of white Rhodesia, where it was better to accept Portuguese immigrants despite the threat they ostensibly posed to Rhodesia’s racial hierarchies rather than to train, or permit, Rhodesia’s black population to do the very same jobs in the building trade. With the Portuguese migrants, the RF accepted that the actual threat to Rhodesia’s racially stratified economy trumped the potential threat 61 (CL) (Smith Papers), Cabinet Memoranda, RC (S) (71) 118, ‘Miscegenation, Prostitution and Allied Problems’, 15 August 1971. 62 P. Duara, ‘Between Empire and Nation: Settler Colonialism in Manchukuo’, in C. Elkins & S. Pedersen (eds.), Settler Colonialism in the Twentieth Century (New York & Abingdon, Routledge, 2005), p. 71. 63 RC(S) (71), Thirty-First Meeting. Despite what the Rhodesians thought Jean Marie Pevenne has demonstrated that this policy, also known as Lustotropicalism, was in fact warily received in metropolitan Portugal and its colonial possessions outside Brazil. Pevenne, ‘Settling Against the Tide’, pp. 88–91. 64 RC(S) (71), Thirty-First Meeting.

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of miscegenation. The economy’s racialised nature was enshrined in the 1934 Industrial Conciliation Act; this piece of legislation, the maintenance of which was a key plank of the RF’s political platform, was designed to foster racial, rather than class solidarity, among Rhodesia’s white workers.65 By the mid-1970s with the collapse of Portuguese colonial rule in Southern Africa, there was an increase in migration from the newly independent nations of Angola and Mozambique. The Ministry of Information, Immigration and Tourism actively sought out refugees and sent a promotion official to a South African refugee camp for Angolans in September 1975, securing sixty-five new Portuguese immigrants including eleven diesel mechanics and one surveyor.66 The desperation of the mid- to late 1970s is unsurprising given the wider context of white Rhodesian demography. It was in this period that the extent of Rhodesia’s demographic impermanence finally began to show as Rhodesia’s white population suffered consistent net losses.67 The high population turnover which had occurred throughout Rhodesia’s history was no longer masked by a significant inflow of new immigrants, as the luxurious and comfortable lifestyle with which Rhodesia marketed itself to potential white immigrants was eroded by an escalating war against nationalist guerrillas, decades of international isolation, economic privation and the existence of better and easily accessible opportunities elsewhere, particularly South Africa where white rule seemed more secure.68 One particular trigger of emigration for white Rhodesians was conscription, as state obligations became increasingly onerous over

65 G. Arrighi, The Political Economy of Rhodesia (The Hague, Mouton, 1967), p. 34. This racialised approach to labour rights was common across South Africa, see J. Hyslop, ‘The British and Australian Leaders of the South African Labour Movement, 1902–1914’, in K. Darian-Smith, P. Grimshaw & S. Macintyre (eds.), Britishness Abroad: Transnational Movements and Imperial Cultures (Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 2007), pp. 90–108. In contrast, African organised labour allowed for the development of a proto-nationalism seen in actions such as the 1945 railway workers strike and the revival of the Rhodesian Industrial and Commercial Union by Charles Mzingele in 1946. For more on African organised labour, see B. Raftopolous & I. Phimister, Keep on Knocking: A History of the Labour Movement in Zimbabwe 1900–97 (Harare, Baobab Books, 1997). 66 (CL) (Smith Papers), RC(S) (75), Thirty-Sixth Meeting, 2 September 1975. 67 Godwin & Hancock, Rhodesians Never Die, p. 149. 68 Ibid.

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Table 2.1 Net migration to Rhodesia, 1965–1967

Year 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 (to September)

43

Total net immigration 2290 –2120 2130 6210 5070 6330 9460 8840 1640 600 1920 –7023 –10,825 –13,560 –8219

Adapted from data in Rhodesia Monthly Migration and Tourist Statistics for December, 1975 (Salisbury, Government Printer, 1976), p. 3; Rhodesia—Monthly Migration and Tourist Statistics for December, 1977 (Salisbury, Government Printer, 1978), p. 3; Rhodesia—Monthly Migration and Tourist Statistics for December 1978 (Salisbury, Government Printer, 1979), p. 3; ZimbabweRhodesia—Monthly Migration and Tourist Statistics for September, 1979 (Salisbury, Government Printer, 1979), p. 3

time.69 Conscription had begun in 1960 and so pre-dated UDI, but it was extended throughout the period and by 1976 had been increased to a year’s service (it was soon raised again to eighteen months) for men aged eighteen to thirty-four. Those who had done their national service were then put on ‘continuous call up’ for service with the territorial units.70 These demands interrupted lives, studies and the day-to-day operations of business and thus were much-resented by whites. Though much mockery was made of those who chose to take the ‘chicken run’ or ‘gap it’ by those who stayed behind, it is revealing how pervasive this trend was (Table 2.1).71 69 L. White, ‘Civic Virtue, Young Men, and the Family: Conscription in Rhodesia, 1974– 1980’, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 37, 4 (2004), pp. 103–121. 70 Ibid., p. 105. 71 D. Pitman, You Must Be New Around Here (Bulawayo, Books of Rhodesia 1979), p. 38; C. Mears, Goodbye Rhodesia (Sussex, Antony Rowe Publishing Services, 2005), p. 222.

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White Rhodesian demography in the period 1953–1980 was highly fluid. Key developments included sizeable immigration in the 1940s and 1950s (at least relative to pre-1939 Rhodesia); a relaxation of immigration controls which facilitated the arrival of non-British or South African European national groups; and a rise in the Rhodesian-born population which nevertheless failed to trump migration as the premier source of white population growth. This was facilitated by the fact that large numbers came from familiar social and cultural environments which continued throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Indeed, the consistent predominance of British and English-speaking South Africans within the Rhodesian population perhaps accounted for the continuation of ethnic discrimination towards other groups of European immigrants such as Jews, Greeks, Afrikaners and Portuguese. At the same time, there were clear divisions among white society, and it is reductive to speak of ‘white Rhodesia’ as an amorphous, consenting mass as much contemporary analysis did. These divisions presented a significant obstacle to the success of attempts to promote a cohesive, homogenous, white Rhodesian national community as smaller ethnic communities established and reinforced their own group identities in response to discrimination. On the other hand, the RF faced an equally difficult problem with its British and South African immigrants, enjoying much greater mobility than these smaller communities. For these larger, wealthier, communities, it was easy to go home or move down south in pursuit of job and lifestyle opportunities. British and South African immigrants often retained some form of connection to the societies in which many of them had grown up, complicating their willingness to embrace a ‘Rhodesian’ identity and facilitating their rejection of it in the late 1970s. In short, even though the RF largely narrowed the focus of its nation-building to the tiny white community, even there it had significant obstacles to overcome in its attempts to instil a sense of national commitment and shared identity.

European Politics in Rhodesia, 1953–1980 From a relatively early stage, a classic narrative of the history of European politics in Rhodesia emerged in academic literature. The 1950s saw the advent of the policy of multiracial ‘partnership’, which became one of the key justifications for the founding of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in 1953. The failure of African nationalist

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parties such as the National Democratic Party (NDP) to participate in politics under the 1961 constitution and the subsequent electoral defeat of the United Federal Party (UFP) at the hands of the RF in December 1962 represented a rejection of the Federal Government’s half-hearted application of the ‘partnership’ policy by both Europeans and Africans and set the stage for the UDI and the subsequent bloody war of independence.72 After comprehensively defeating the remnants of the UFP by winning all fifty ‘European’ seats in the Legislative Assembly in May 1965, the RF was returned to power on large majorities in the subsequent elections of 1970, 1974 and 1977. According to some commentators, the political dominance of the RF reflected the overwhelming unity and almost monolithic nature of white society in Rhodesia.73 However, politics, even in a society as small as white Rhodesia, is rarely this simple and studies such as Colin Leys’ (which sought to explain unity in terms of race), Giovanni Arrighi (who cited class) and Richard Hodder-Williams (who argued that ‘cultural cleavage’ was the crucial factor), all missed the point by taking the appearance of white unity at face value.74 The divisions in Rhodesia’s white population manifested themselves in the colony’s political life and the election of the RF, though significant, represented less of a break from Rhodesia’s political past than some commentators have argued.75 Though broadly copying the Westminster model of parliamentary democracy, Rhodesian voters participated in a comparatively byzantine electoral system designed to minimise the electoral power of the African population, whose exclusion was meticulously construed in cultural and economic, rather than racial, terms. Electors in the 1960s belonged to 72 J. Barber, Rhodesia: The Road to Rebellion (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 305. 73 Bowman, Politics in Rhodesia. 74 C. Leys, European Politics in Southern Rhodesia (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1959); G. Arrighi, The Political Economy of Rhodesia (The Hague, Mouton, 1967); R. Hodder-Williams, ‘Party Allegiance Among Europeans in Rural Rhodesia: A Research Note’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 10, 1 (1971), p. 135. 75 As illustrated by Ian Henderson and Donal Lowry, who both noted that the RF appealed to a long-standing tradition of ‘populism’ in Rhodesian politics, especially among farmers. I. Henderson, ‘White Populism in Southern Rhodesia’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 14, 4 (1972), pp. 387–399; D. Lowry, ‘“White Woman’s Country”: Ethel Tawsie Jollie and the Making of White Rhodesia’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 23, 2 (1997), pp. 259–281.

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either the ‘A’ or ‘B’ Roll.76 The ‘A’ Roll, which elected fifty seats in the legislature, was exclusively white, though there were a token number of black voters on the ‘B’ Roll, which elected fifteen seats. Membership of these rolls was determined by a series of tortuously arrived-at property and income qualifications.77 In 1969, the RF introduced a new constitution after a popular vote (see Chapter 4), and this introduced a common roll (with qualifications that most black voters could not meet) and a bizarre innovation for African representation. The black population was represented by MPs chosen by a special electoral roll (in the urban areas) and by an electoral college of ‘traditional’ Chiefs and Headmen, a group whose status and income was guaranteed by the Rhodesian Ministry of Internal Affairs, in the rural Tribal Trust Lands.78 In 1923, Britain granted Rhodesian internal self-government, a more limited form of autonomy of the kind granted to other white dominions such as Australia and Canada, and from then until the December 1962 elections, Rhodesia enjoyed a remarkable level of political consistency. After the first settler government of 1924–1933 led by the Rhodesia Party (the successor to the Responsible Government Association detailed in Chapter 3), the country was ruled by the same party in one form or another which was named, consecutively, the Reform Party, the United Rhodesia Party and finally the Southern Rhodesian branch of the UFP. Indeed, between 1933 and 1953, the country had the longest-serving prime minister in Commonwealth history in the person of Godfrey Huggins.79 Though the longevity of its term of office suggests a political consistency in the colony, this was often not the case, and the party had to work hard to reconcile the interests of its varied constituencies.80 These included the major economic interest groups: the mining and agricultural sectors, commerce and industry and organised labour.81 David 76 A. Lemon, ‘Electoral Machinery and Voting Patterns in Rhodesia, 1962–1977’, African Affairs, 77, 309 (1978), p. 513. 77 For a detailed exploration of Rhodesia’s implicitly racialised franchises, see White, Unpopular Sovereignty; Bowman, Politics in Rhodesia; Lemon, ‘Electoral Machinery’, pp. 511–530. 78 White, Unpopular Sovereignty, pp. 159–164. 79 T. Bull (ed.), Rhodesian Perspective (London, Michael Joseph, 1967), p. 13. 80 These struggles are demonstrated in some detail in D.J. Murray, The Governmental System in Southern Rhodesia (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1970). 81 Ibid.

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Murray observed that these broad economic sectors were themselves often divided between different, sometimes opposed, interest groups. Consequently, it is better to think of Rhodesian governing parties as broad coalitions seeking to retain the support of multiple, often competing interests. With the growth of the population after the Second World War, it became increasingly difficult for the ‘government party’ to retain the support of most of these varied interests which formed part of the white electorate. The UFP’s loss of support in the 1960s was in part due to demographic changes, though it is important not to overstate the influence such changes had on Rhodesian politics—the A Roll electoral system had a residency requirement which disqualified the most recent migrants.82 Nevertheless, the post-war migrants who came to Rhodesia to work in the country’s developing secondary and tertiary industries brought with them new fears and attitudes about the consequences of minority or majority rule, and it was logical for the political parties in Rhodesia to court these growing groups. Similarly, economic change and urbanisation of the African population had created a small African middle class by the 1950s, which for the first time in the colony’s history threatened to test the ostensibly non-racial rhetoric that constituted the crux of European justifications for the maintenance of their economic and social superiority.83 The rise of African nationalism in Rhodesia coincided with the imminent end of European colonial empires elsewhere in Africa. Thus, it became pertinent for the governing party to also court these middle-class Africans in order to demonstrate a commitment to multiracialism which it was hoped would form the basis for greater autonomy within the British Empire (as embodied by the Federation) and later for some form of minority-rule independence for Southern Rhodesia. The basic dilemma for the Rhodesian government in the years of Federation, then, was a balancing act between the concerns of its European population, the aspirations of its African population and the expectations of its (nominal) colonial overlords in Whitehall. A policy of multiracial ‘partnership’, a term intentionally kept vague, was

82 The

author thanks Duncan Money for making him aware of this point. Mlambo, ‘From the Second World War to UDI, 1940–1965’, in B. Raftopoulos & A. Mlambo (eds.), Becoming Zimbabwe (Harare, Weaver Press, 2009), p. 77. 83 A.S.

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enshrined but not defined in the Federal constitution of 1953.84 Most of the Federation’s settlers could not countenance anything approaching racial equality. To many whites, an African, even one who met all of their own criteria for being ‘civilised’ and upholding Rhodesian ‘standards’, was still just an ‘African’, perennially incapable of true equality.85 Despite the misgivings of many whites, the UFP’s public acquiescence to ‘partnership’ represented an acceptance that firstly, Africans had a place, albeit a heavily circumscribed one, within the national political system— something which had never been accepted before—and also that, consequently, some changes would have to be made in order for European rule to continue in Rhodesia. The obverse of this approach formed the central tenet of the rightwing opposition—the Dominion Party (DP—formed in 1956)—which stood firmly for white interests and demanded immediate dominion status for most of the Federation (excluding Nyasaland and the Barotseland region of Northern Rhodesia) without any constitutional change as a prerequisite.86 By taking this stance, the DP obviated the UFP’s difficult, almost impossible, position of having to court the tiny African electorate while convincing the much larger European one that it was acting in their best interests. However, the UFP was far from a bastion of non-racial liberalism. In 1958, elements in the party ousted their leader Garfield Todd on the grounds that he was too liberal and replaced him with Edgar Whitehead.87 By advocating ‘partnership’, the UFP sought to preserve minority rule for the foreseeable future: it was merely more realistic about the need to co-opt the growing African middle class to achieve this. Indeed, by failing to implement partnership with a sincerity and speed that would have convinced its potential African allies and thus stimulating the rise of African nationalism, the UFP became the victim of its own policy. The late Federal period was typified by the rise of rightwing populism, prompted by the dissonance between the actions of the 84 Leys,

European Politics, pp. 272–273. Cohen ‘Settler power, African Nationalism, and British Interests in the Central African Federation 1957–1963’ (University of Sheffield, Ph.D. Thesis, 2008), p. 284. 86 Winston Field Papers, Rhodes House Library, Oxford University, Box 13, Dominion Party Summary of Policy August 1958 (place of publication unknown, 1958), MSS Afr.s.2344. 87 For a first-hand account of Todd’s fall, see H. Holderness, Lost Chance: Southern Rhodesia 1945–1958 (Harare, Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1985). 85 A.

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political elite (the UFP) and the electorate in general, who would have elected a DP government in 1958 were it not for the technicalities of the electoral system of preference voting.88 As the 1950s came to an end and the 1960s gusted in on ‘winds of change’, things went from bad to worse for the UFP. In 1959, prompted by fears of an imagined plot by African nationalists to start wantonly murdering white settlers, a series of States of Emergency were declared, with the colonial governments using the opportunity to take action against African nationalist movements in all three territories of the Federation. Fifty-one Africans were killed by the security forces in disturbances in Nyasaland during February and March and hundreds more were detained.89 In Britain, Harold MacMillan convened a Royal Commission, the Nyasaland Commission of Inquiry, more commonly known as the Devlin Commission after its chairman. The Devlin Commission went on to produce a damning report condemning the Federation as a ‘police state’.90 The Emergency is widely acknowledged as the death knell of the Federation, though it struggled on for another four years through an interminable series of conferences designed to dissolve it.91 The events in Nyasaland coincided with a wave of decolonisation and armed challenges to white settler rule across Africa. Southern Rhodesia itself was not immune from this in the early 1960s, wracked as it was with major rural resistance to the Native Land Husbandry Act (NLHA) among the African population. Severe civil disobedience took place in urban areas, with rioting across the African locations (as Rhodesian townships were called) in Bulawayo and Salisbury.92 88 King, ‘Identity and Decolonisation’, p. 221; J. Fraenkel, ‘“Equality of Rights for Every Civilised Man South of the Zambezi”: Electoral Engineering in Southern Rhodesia, 1957– 65’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 41, 6 (2015), pp. 1167–1180. 89 Report of the Nyasaland Commission of Inquiry, Cmnd. 814 (London, HMSO, 1959), pp. 4, 126. 90 Ibid., p. 2. The full quote reads: ‘Nyasaland is—no doubt only temporarily—a police state where it is not safe for anyone to express approval of the policies of the Congress party, to which before 3rd March, 1959 the vast majority of politically-minded Africans belonged, and where it is unwise to express any but the most restrained criticism of government policy…’. 91 J. Darwin, ‘The Central African Emergency, 1959’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 21, 3 (1993), p. 219. 92 See J. Alexander, The Unsettled Land: State Making and the Politics of Land in Zimbabwe 1893–2003 (Oxford, James Currey, 2006) for an account of African resistance to the NLHA and its consequences for Rhodesian policy.

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Faced with what appeared to be the imminent collapse of European colonial rule across the continent, white fears reached fever pitch and the right-wing opposition, crystallised into the Rhodesian Front in mid1962, was perfectly placed to exploit them in the upcoming December elections. Despite a huge and costly drive to register African voters through its ‘Build a Nation’ campaign, the UFP failed spectacularly.93 In November 1962, Whitehead promised the UFP’s party convention that he would repeal the Land Apportionment Act, another cornerstone of white rule and segregation which defined (racially) who could own land in different parts of the country, if he won the election. This was all the indication farmers, already a major source of funding for the RF, needed that the governing party was no longer acting in their interests. This shift coincided with the growing economic insecurity of the growing number of working- and middle-class white Rhodesians and the fears of other whites concerned about decolonisation and violence. The policies of the UFP had caused a new coalition of interests to form on the right of Rhodesian politics. Consequently, there were only a few sections of white society still inclined to support them, such as the wealthier whites and business owners who were more economically secure and stood to benefit from a less rigidly racialised economy. At the polls, the RF won a majority and set about on a more explicit path to independence than ever before under its new prime minister, Winston Field. Like Todd before him, Field was ousted in 1964 on account of appearing too moderate, probably because of his refusal to countenance an illegal declaration of independence from Great Britain. According to Larry Bowman: ‘[Field] basically shared the beliefs and orientations of Huggins, Whitehead and [Roy] Welensky that the British not only had to be dealt with but that they could be dealt with’.94 His successor, Ian Smith (the first Rhodesian-born prime minister), had no such concerns. The election of 1965 saw the RF take all the A Roll seats in 93 The activities and aims of the ‘Build-a-Nation’ campaign are well documented in Whitehead’s Papers at Rhodes House Library, Oxford. See in particular Box 1, File P2/A.14 ‘United Federal Party “Build a Nation” Tour January 1962 (General & Follow-Up Enquiries) (27th January, 1962 onwards), MSS Afr.s.1482/1 and File P2/ A3—United Federal Party “Build a Nation Campaign” Press Cuttings (General), MSS Afr.s.1482/1. 94 Bowman, Politics in Rhodesia, p. 68.

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the Legislative Assembly, destroying the remnants of the UFP, by then renamed the Rhodesia National Party. The RF remained the governing party for much of the UDI period, until the internal settlement of 3 March 1978 led to a short period of Executive Council and then United African National Council rule from 1978 to 1979.95 Many have sought to account for the electoral dominance of the RF. Bowman and Godwin and Hancock have highlighted the high levels of grassroots activity within the RF, which ensured that it represented a broad range of interests and obviated a need for multi-party electoral politics.96 Tony Kirk and Chris Sherwell suggested that a need to maintain white unity in the face of external pressures accounted for the electorate’s repeated returning of the RF to power. However, they also highlighted the intriguing fact that the white electorate was both relatively small and seemingly quite apathetic with as many as 50,000 white voters disenfranchised because they had not taken up Rhodesian citizenship or registered to vote.97 In 1975, they noted: ‘white Rhodesia is probably unique as an avowedly democratic community where the number of voters has actually declined over the past decade while the population has grown by some 23 per cent’.98 Though it is not known for certain why so many potential white electors never registered, it is likely as a consequence of unwillingness to take up Rhodesian citizenship—which would mean renouncing pre-existing citizenship at a time when travel on Rhodesian passports was severely restricted due to sanctions. In 1978, when thousands of white Rhodesians were trying to leave the country, a cabinet memo noted an increase of applications to renounce Rhodesian citizenship: ‘from persons resident in the country who advance as their reason the wish to obtain the passport of a country which will allow them the freedom of travel which is presently denied to Rhodesian passport holders’.99 The memo advised against allowing this to happen, pointing out that ‘[r]elaxation of the present policy

95 These

arrangements are explored in more detail in Chapter 7. Politics in Rhodesia; Godwin & Hancock, Rhodesians Never Die, p. 59. 97 T. Kirk & C. Sherwell, ‘The Rhodesian General Election of 1974’, The Journal of Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, 13, 1 (1975), p. 17. 98 Ibid., p. 17. 99 (CL) (Smith Papers), Cabinet Memoranda, RC(S) (78) 19, ‘Citizenship of Rhodesia Act (Chapter 23): Renunciation of Rhodesian Citizenship’, 17 March 1978. 96 Bowman,

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could well result in a considerable reduction in Europeans on the voters roll’.100 One of the keys to the RF’s electoral performance was the support it was given by elements within the farming and rural communities of Rhodesia. Larry Bowman noted that the party’s grassroots system was skewed in favour of rural interests, with one hundred and two rural branches as opposed to sixty-three urban ones.101 Farmers constituted the bedrock of the RF’s political machine, and key figures in the party such as chairmen Ralph Nilson and Desmond Frost and the two RF prime ministers—Winston Field and Ian Smith—were active farmers.102 Under the RF government, rural white Rhodesia enjoyed disproportionate levels of power. The RF won seventeen of the country’s nineteen rural constituencies in 1962.103 Support for the RF was not universal among farmers, however. Angus Selby and Rory Pilossof have demonstrated that some farmers were very much in support of a settlement with Britain or the externally based nationalist organisations, with delegations from their representative bodies the Rhodesia National Farmers Union (RNFU) and Rhodesian Tobacco Association (RTA) visiting Zambia in the 1970s to confer with the nationalists.104 Even within this small element of the white population, there were deep political divisions. Another key constituency for the RF was the white artisans, many of whom were more recent immigrants. These white artisans had the most to lose from the achievement of any sort of racial parity in the Rhodesian economy, and they flocked to the banner of the RF in order to ensure the preservation of their jobs and the luxurious lifestyles they had come to enjoy in Rhodesia.105 Many of them had left behind the bomb-shattered terraces of post-war Britain for a new life full of sunshine, swimming pools and servants. In a review of the recreational life of Salisbury’s non-African population in the 1970s, P.A. Hardwick of the University 100 Ibid. 101 Bowman,

Politics in Rhodesia, pp. 98–99. pp. 100–103. 103 Lemon, ‘Electoral Machinery’, p. 520. 104 A. Selby, ‘Differentiating Commercial Farmers: Land Reform in Zimbabwe’ (Oxford University, MPhil Thesis, 2002); R. Pilossof, The Unbearable Whiteness of Being: Farmers Voices’ from Zimbabwe (Harare, 2012), p. 24. 105 C. Legum in ‘Rhodesian UDI’, seminar held 6 September 2000 (Institute of Contemporary British History, 2002), p. 69. 102 Ibid.,

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of Rhodesia noted: ‘[a] detached single-storey house on a one-acre plot is the rule rather than the exception… a substantial proportion of properties had recreation improvements’.106 Like the farmers, they had seen the UFP’s courting of the African middle classes as a warning sign that things were about to change, probably to their detriment, and became the RF’s other major support base. Barber summed up the economic division between the two parties in 1962 thus: [t]he farmers and artisans… had the common overriding interest that their positions were challenged by African advancement. While business and commerce had interests in wider markets, in seeing that money flowed to all sections of the community, and had interests in the growth of an African artisan class to break the high labour costs of the white ‘guild system’, the farmers, anxious for their land and crop prices, the artisans, anxious for their jobs, drew together.107

It is not surprising, then, that business and commercial leaders were not well-disposed to the RF (though this did not preclude them, by and large, from co-operating with it). When the Associated Chambers of Commerce (ACCOR) and Association of Rhodesian Industries (ARnI) were commissioned to produce reports for the RF government determining the economic consequences of independence, they came out strongly against it. These findings were suppressed by the RF. John Parker, a journalist who came into possession of one of these incendiary documents, was promptly arrested and then deported.108 Businessmen, already losing profits due to the segregated economy, were hit harder by the effect of sanctions and later conscription, which robbed them of their white workforce. Consequently, they were constantly agitating for a settlement with the British government which would grant Rhodesia legally recognised independence. Likewise, wealthier constituencies in Rhodesia typically showed less support for the RF than others. The more affluent northern suburbs of Salisbury, such as Mount Pleasant, Arundel and

106 P.A. Hardwick, Aspects of Recreation Amongst Salisbury’s Non-African Population (Salisbury, University of Rhodesia, 1978), p. 18. 107 Barber, Rhodesia, p. 162. 108 See Parker’s account of this in J. Parker, Rhodesia: Little White Island (London, 1972).

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Borrowdale, typically showed the greatest support to the RF’s main rival, the Rhodesia Party (RP).109 Rhodesia after 1962 was not without a small number of ‘liberal’ whites either, as Ian Hancock and Kate Law have shown.110 While it was often difficult for these disparate few to agree on anything, one of the most prominent groups was the Centre Party (CP) led by the farmer Pat Bashford, which contested the 1970 and 1974 elections (though it only contested a single European seat in the latter).111 However, the CP, whose only elected MPs were Africans, was caught in a similar situation to the UFP before it. Namely, they had to contend with the fact that the RF had captured the electorate on the promise of security for white rule and had delivered on it. Blueprint for Rhodesia, the 1969 manifesto of the CP, was a model of cautious compromise; it called for the eventual removal of racial discrimination but also promised that ‘Europeans must be guaranteed permanent security, maintenance of standards, firm government’.112 This was merely a watered-down version of what the RF claimed to be offering and therefore doomed to have limited electoral appeal. The RF was also skilful in its use of propaganda. Frank Clements noted that the party’s rhetoric was so strong that ‘[i]t became difficult to challenge the Rhodesian Front without also appearing to resist the struggle for Rhodesian sovereignty…’.113 In contrast to previous accounts by Elaine Windrich and Julie Frederiske which emphasised the strength of the RF propaganda machine, Enocent Msindo has argued that the sheer volume of RF propaganda was a sign of weakness rather than strength. He argues that the RF put too much stock in propaganda and that the messages that the RF tried to spread about Rhodesia for both domestic and international audiences failed to take hold.114 While the impact of 109 Lemon,

‘Electoral Machinery’, p. 526. Hancock, White Liberals, Moderates and Radicals in Rhodesia 1953–1980 (London & Sydney, 1984). Law, Gendering the Settler State. 111 Lemon, ‘Electoral Machinery’, p. 526. 112 The Centre Party, Blueprint for Rhodesia (Salisbury, 1969), p. 2, 4. 113 Clements, Rhodesia, p. 206. 114 Msindo, ‘Winning Hearts and Minds’, pp. 677–681. For the accounts Msindo criticises, see E. Windrich, The Mass Media in the Struggle for Zimbabwe (Gwelo, Mambo Press, 1981); J. Frederikse, None But Ourselves: Masses Versus the Media in the Making of Zimbabwe (Harare, Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1982). 110 I.

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RF propaganda may have been overstated, it clearly helped define UDIera Rhodesia’s political landscape. An opposition party (the Rhodesia Party) pamphlet of 1974 felt obliged to begin with an exhortation that; ‘[w]e acknowledge that Europeans must remain united to enable us to survive as a minority. Unity amongst the Europeans does not, however, mean everyone must be RF’.115 Mirroring white society, the RF itself was riven with internal divisions, which have been best explored by Godwin and Hancock.116 As early as the late 1960s, the RF was divided on the ‘fundamental’ issue of the maintenance of majority rule and what UDI represented.117 Hard right-wingers, often former DP members like W.J. Cary and William Harper, believed that indigenous African civilisations were so backward that whites should rule Rhodesia forever. To them, UDI was a bulwark against the existential threat of majority rule, heralding the implementation of complete political and social segregation on apartheid lines.118 On the other hand, Ian Smith and others like Andrew Dunlop—a former soldier with many close connections to the British establishment—came from the Rhodesia Reform Party which had advocated separate facilities for the races and opposed ‘forced integration’ but was not as stridently racist as the DP.119 They initially saw UDI as a tactic in a battle with the British government for independence. These internal party divisions meant that the very character of the future Rhodesian nation was at stake. What imperatives would drive the nation-building project? Even within the governing party, there were contested visions of the nation: a Rhodesia devoted to quasi-apartheid separation of the races and permanent minority rule or a more gradualist (but still exclusionary and discriminatory) policy of white rule for the foreseeable future. This fractious coalition was held together by a combination of selfinterest and the skilful politicking of the party leadership. Yet throughout the 1970s, the RF faced several challenges from the ‘white right’ of Rhodesian politics, which were often more significant than those 115 Rhodesia Party, “If You’re Planning to Stay”: A Guide to Some of the Important Principles and Policies of the Rhodesia Party and a Contrast with RF Attitudes (Salisbury, Rhodesia Party, 1974). 116 Godwin & Hancock, Rhodesians Never Die, pp. 53–84. 117 Ibid., p. 59. 118 Ibid., pp. 60–61. 119 Ibid.

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from the ‘left’ because of their potential to capture the RF voting base. In 1977, twelve RF MPs crossed the floor over amendments to the Land Tenure Act (the RF’s successor to the Land Apportionment Act) and formed the Rhodesia Action Party (RAP). They gained some measure of support among the RF grassroots, particularly white artisans, and some of its more extreme supporters.120 Smith, his position threatened, was forced to call a general election to reassert his authority. Though the party won easily, with all twelve of the RAP rebels losing their seats, the challenge clearly unsettled the RF.121 It considered these small right-wing organisations to be such a threat to it that it mobilised Special Branch in support of its campaign, and the British South Africa Police also worked against extreme right-wing organisations such as the Southern African Solidarity Conference (SASCON) and the Candour League, who were vocal critics of the RF and Smith in particular in the late 1970s, with their views finding voice in periodicals such as The Rhodesian Patriot.122 Writing in the Patriot in November 1977, ‘A Political Analyst’ mused on ‘the only way’ to settle Rhodesia’s problems: [I]t will be necessary for the White man to announce quite firmly that policy has changed and that he, and he alone, will henceforth rule. It will have to be made clear that the word “Rule” means what it says and excludes such nonsensical concepts as “power-sharing” and even such confusing euphemisms as “An African voice at top governmental level” – and any other confusions of thought that cloud the issue and prevent everyone from knowing exactly where he stands. As the country was created by the White man, exists because of the White man, and can continue only if the White man rules, there must be no havering over the argument that the preservation of white interests is for the good of all – and that those interests must prevail…123

120 Ibid.,

pp. 193–198. & Hancock, Rhodesians Never Die, p. 204; Lemon, ‘Electoral Machinery’, p. 529. The RAP contested forty-six of the fifty white seats, winning 9.7% of the vote. 122 H. Ellert, ‘The Rhodesian Security and Intelligence Community 1960–1980: A Brief Overview of the Structure and Operational Role of the Military, Civilian, and Police Security and Intelligence Organizations Which Served the Rhodesian Government During the Zimbabwean Liberation War’, in N. Bhebe & T. Ranger (eds.), Soldiers in Zimbabwe’s Liberation War (London, James Currey, 1991), p. 91. 123 ‘A Political Analyst’, The Rhodesian Patriot, 4 (November 1977), p. 7. Italics in original. 121 Godwin

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Thus, though the RF retained high support among the white population through the UDI rebellion, Rhodesian politics were more divided than the continued electoral success of the RF seemed to suggest. The rule of the Front was also less of a radical departure in the country’s politics than some have argued. It was an expression of the populism which Ian Henderson has noted was a hallmark of Rhodesian politics in times of crisis.124 This was an old tactic adapted to meet a new situation: the collapse of Federation and the European colonial withdrawal in Africa. Though it was a product of the wider context of the late 1950s and 1960s, the RF was another broad-based coalition united primarily by its resistance to immediate majority rule and divided on innumerable other issues. After a few years, these divisions began to tell as struggles erupted in the party, forcing it to be more responsive and adaptable than the classic narrative suggests. Similarly, the Rhodesian electorate was less monolithic than it was mutable. Wealthier and more liberal Rhodesians saw their best interests lying in a less-rigidly segregated society. The captains of Rhodesian industry saw a way to save money by hiring African workers who could be more easily forced to work for less, and so they supported the parties they felt would best deliver on this. Some of the old RF stalwarts, the farmers and artisans were willing to desert the RF in the end in favour of more extreme right-wing political parties like the RAP or considered coming to accommodation with the nationalist movements when they felt that minority rule was finished. Indeed, rather than the unchallenged dominance of the RF, the UDI period was characterised by the party’s attempts to quell internal party disturbances over policy direction and unite as much of the white population of Rhodesia as possible behind it. As the 1970s dragged on and the nature of these tasks became increasingly Sisyphean, the seemingly impermeable edifice of white rule began to crumble.

Conclusion The sections above have revealed the fractious nature of white Rhodesian society, the origins of the RF’s nation-building project and the difficulties it faced in carrying it out successfully, uniting a divided white

124 Henderson,

‘White Populism’, p. 389.

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society behind its vision of minority-rule independence. It is impossible to understand the RF’s approach without first appreciating the society it was trying to shape and mould in the 1960s and 1970s. ‘White’ Rhodesia was a society in flux after the Second World War. In a relatively short period of time, the country underwent considerable change. Demographically, the European population of Rhodesia grew exponentially (though it remained tiny compared to the African population) as large numbers of new immigrants arrived from South Africa and Britain. This left white Rhodesians with a much greater number of people to attempt to assimilate and ‘Rhodesianise’, and it did so with varying levels of success. As the UDI period dragged on, the Rhodesians widened their traditionally rather stringent immigration criteria in order to accept previously less ‘desirable’ Europeans such as the Portuguese. However, the way they were viewed by the cabinet and the authorities shows that intra-European discrimination, long a problem in Rhodesia, was still as prevalent as ever and acted as an obstacle to a wider sense of community. On the obverse side, the desire of individuals among the smaller groups like Jews and Greeks to assimilate into white Rhodesian society often meant that the predominant British/English-speaking South African basis of white Rhodesian society and culture was never seriously challenged. Politically, the RF seemed to rule the roost from its initial electoral victory in 1962 until the advent of majority rule independence in 1980. However, its electoral dominance belied the complicated nature of white Rhodesia. Like the political parties before it, the RF was a broad coalition of interests, whose attitudes towards African advancement were a product of the geopolitical context in which it appeared, namely decolonisation. The RF faced challenges from the right and left throughout its lifetime, and the party could only head them off by having a shifting set of priorities in an attempt to present as broad of an appeal to the white Rhodesian electorate as possible. The RF, far from the monolith some see it as, had to be fluid and adaptable in order to accommodate a range of people (and exclude others like the liberals and the far-right) whose only common ground was the immediate preservation of white rule. It was in the context of these major developments that white Rhodesians sought to make sense of their place in the world. In the era of decolonisation, the need to create a white Rhodesian nation became more urgent—the settler government had to justify its rule not just to the world at large, which refused to grant it official recognition, but to

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its own people in order to retain their electoral support. The RF and Ian Smith remained a strong grip on power for fifteen years, and while the challenges outlined above never seriously threatened the party, they did require it to be responsive and adaptable to Rhodesia’s ever-changing circumstances. That the diverse range of individuals and groups that constituted ‘white Rhodesia’ were brought and held together through the years of UDI was remarkable, given the circumstances. Yet, the RF’s commitment to maintaining minority rule at any cost was the party’s electoral strength and the state’s terminal weakness, as the following chapters will show.

CHAPTER 3

Blood and Referendums: Nationalist History and the Case for a Unilateral Declaration of Independence

History played a crucial role in white Rhodesian nationalism after the colony unilaterally declared independence (UDI) from Britain on 11 November 1965. Rhodesia was relatively young, just 75 years old at UDI, yet supporters of independence repeatedly drew upon a teleological understanding of the past as a path towards settler independence. UDI was portrayed as a reassertion of ‘Rhodesian-ness’ in the face of an encroaching and ignorant colonial power. These understandings of history would play a vital role in the processes of symbolic decolonisation that took place between 1967 and 1975. The Rhodesian Front (RF) party, which had governed in Southern Rhodesia since 1962, pivoted decolonising discourses of independence and sovereignty towards a defence of white-minority rule.1 Central to the RF’s nationalist historical narratives were two related notions: the exercise of democratic power by voting in referendums and the sacrifice of citizen-soldiers in imperial wars.

1 See J. Miller, An African Volk: The Apartheid Regime and Its Search for Survival (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2016), for an exploration of how Johannes Vorster’s South African government was pursuing a similar approach around the same time.

© The Author(s) 2019 D. Kenrick, Decolonisation, Identity and Nation in Rhodesia, 1964–1979, Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32698-2_3

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The 1922 Referendum On 17 October 1922, Southern Rhodesia’s small white electorate participated in one of the most important plebiscites in the colony’s history.2 Voters were asked to choose either settler self-government or the incorporation of Rhodesia into the Union of South Africa as a fifth province. Two organisations were formed to campaign for the different options. The Rhodesia Unionist Association (RUA) supported a merger with South Africa and the Responsible Government Association (RGA) sought settler self-rule, also called ‘responsible government’. Formed in 1919 by Afrikaner farmers, the RUA enjoyed the support of the Imperial Government in Westminster, the British South Africa Company (BSAC, Cecil Rhodes’ chartered company that still ruled Rhodesia in 1922), and South African premier and popular imperial statesman Jan Smuts.3 The RGA, meanwhile, had been founded in 1917 in response to fears of Afrikaner domination of the ‘British’ Rhodesians and was fronted by local political stalwarts such as Charles Coghlan (who would become Rhodesia’s first prime minister) and the remarkable Ethel Tawse Jollie (the Empire’s first female parliamentarian).4 The Unionists argued that Rhodesia, which Donal Lowry notes had ‘inherited its legal system, franchise, and civil service traditions from the Cape Colony and… Natal’, ultimately belonged within the South Africa.5 In support of their cause, Smuts toured Rhodesia and promised sweeteners in the form of millions of pounds of compensation to the BSAC for the loss of its charter, ten Rhodesian seats in the Union Parliament, and the South African purchase of Rhodesian railways (which would foster 2 L. Bowman, Politics in Rhodesia; White Power in an African State (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1973), p. 7. 3 J.A. Mutambirwa, The Rise of Settler Power in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) 1898– 1923 (London, Associated University Presses, 1980), pp. 202–203, 206. 4 For biographical information on Tawse Jollie, see D. Lowry, ‘“White Woman’s Country”: Ethel Tawse Jollie and the Making of White Rhodesia’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 23, 2 (1997), pp. 259–281; D. Lowry ‘Making Fresh Britains Across the Seas: Imperial Authority and Anti-Feminism and Rhodesia’, in I.C. Fletcher, L.E.N. Mayall, & P. Levine (eds.), Women’s Suffrage in the British Empire; Citizenship, Nation and Race (London, Routledge, 2000), pp. 175–190. 5 Lowry, ‘White Woman’s Country’, p. 264; B. Schutz, ‘European Population Patterns, Cultural Persistence, and Political Change in Rhodesia’, Canadian Journal of African Studies, 7, 1 (1973), pp. 3–25.

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economic growth by considerably reducing rates).6 The RGA’s case, meanwhile, focused upon white Rhodesian settler capability and the Afrikaner threat to the Rhodesia’s British imperial society at a time when memories of the Anglo-South African Wars remained raw. The referendum campaign played out amidst a context of rising and increasingly assertive Afrikaner nationalism. In 1924, former Boer general J.B.M. Hertzog’s National Party came to power in South Africa and a nationwide controversy over the Nationalist government’s attempts to replace the Union Jack as the national flag would erupt several years later.7 As Donal Lowry explains, Tawse Jollie in particular ‘wanted the settler community to be in effect a loyal imperial barracks in south-central Africa which could intervene to contain nationalist and socialist sedition on its southern flank’.8 On polling day the miniscule, predominantly white, Rhodesian electorate found the RGA’s arguments more compelling than those of the RUA, choosing self-government by 8774 votes to 5989.9 On 1 October 1923, Southern Rhodesia formally became a self-governing colony within the British Empire. The BSAC ceased to be the colony’s administrator, and a settler legislative chamber took control, with a governor appointed to act as the sole, and largely powerless, representative of Britain.10 This constitutional arrangement was unique within the British Empire. From 1923 onwards, white Rhodesians lacked the formalised autonomy of Canada but also the Colonial Office constraints of Kenya. In practice, a distinctly laissez-faire approach to colonial governance from Britain ensured a significant degree of settler autonomy. The settlers’ choice in 1922 was critical not only for the future administration of the colony, but also for the development of a nascent Rhodesian identity. Ethel Tawse Jollie, the influential RGA supporter, elucidated this in rhetoric which combined notions of imperial ‘Britishness’ with a sense of Rhodesian uniqueness. Speaking of the ‘national spirit’ during the campaign, Jollie stated: 6 Mutambirwa,

The Rise of Settler Power, pp. 201, 206. D. Moodie, The Rise of Afrikanerdom: Power, Apartheid, and the Afrikaner Civil Religion (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1975); H. Saker, The South African Flag Controversy 1925–1928 (Cape Town, Oxford University Press, 1980). 8 Lowry, ‘White Woman’s Country’, p. 268, quote p. 271. 9 Bowman, Politics in Rhodesia, p. 7. 10 Ibid., p. 8 7 See

64  D. KENRICK Rhodesians put forward their freedom from racial [i.e. Afrikaner and British], Asiatic, colour and industrial problems which could not be shut out under Union [with South Africa]… and finally their desire to keep the essential quality conveyed in the word Rhodesian – a sort of super-British imperialism, a loyalty to the Flag and Empire which appears to be old-fashioned in Great Britain to-day, combined with conviction that Rhodesia is the finest spot in the Empire or under the Flag – in short, a local patriotism so strong and so disinterested as to merit the title of National.11

The events of 1922–1923 echoed through Rhodesian history. As the Central African Federation, in which Southern Rhodesia had been united along with Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Nyasaland (Malawi) began to collapse in the early 1960s, these events gained a renewed salience for Rhodesians of all political persuasions.12 With winds of change sweeping the continent, those who favoured Dominion-style independence for Rhodesia harked back to 1923 as a justification for greater autonomy. When the other Federal territories gained majority-rule independence in 1964, opponents and supporters of a UDI seized upon 1923 as the starting point in a teleological narrative of national progress in which the ship of state had been steered by a succession of heroic (white) captains towards the creation of a modern, developed nation.

Talking About Talks: Independence in Settler Political Discourse 1959–1964 In the 1960s, there was a broad political consensus in favour of greater Rhodesian independence, but there were deep divisions over the manner in which to achieve it. The two most popular options were a negotiated settlement or a unilateral declaration of independence. For the pro-independence movement, achieving a UDI required a mobilisation of Jollieesque rhetoric, an articulation of what it meant to be Rhodesian and why this necessitated greater autonomy. Arguments in favour of UDI were bolstered by persuasive narratives that drew upon a nationalist interpretation of the past. The first was that of ‘good governance’. 11 Quoted

in Lowry, ‘White Woman’s Country’, p. 271. A. Cohen, The Politics and Economics of Decolonization: The Failed Experiment of the Central African Federation (London, I.B. Tauris, 2017) for a succinct analysis of the collapse of the Federation. 12 See

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The concept of ‘good governance’ related to the administrative record of European settlers since 1923. It had its origins in older British rhetoric of colonial development, in which benevolent colonists struggled against the odds to improve and civilise indigenous populations. In the 1960s, this discourse, originally used to justify imperialism, became an important part of successive British governments’ attempts to rationalise the timing of decolonisation. This linguistic component of decolonisation was as critical for the imperial powers as it was for the nationalist movements in former colonies. It allowed the British to portray their haphazard colonial withdrawal in terms of granting independence to colonies when they became ‘ready’ for it. Along with the dizzying panoply of post-imperial pageantry, such discourses provided decolonisation with a veneer of order and intentionality, casting it as the culmination of a long-held plan. In the context of African decolonisation, the RF used this narrative to invert British rhetoric to claim that they were just as deserving of independence as their rapidly decolonising northern neighbours. The second was a ‘blood price’ narrative arguing that Rhodesians had earned their independence at the cost of sacrifices to the imperial cause in a series of wars, in particular the First and Second World Wars. This narrative had already proven itself to be persuasive and had been used to win greater autonomy by other settlers in Canada, Australia and South Africa following the First World War.13 Contradictions between imperial and national loyalties were somewhat ameliorated by decolonisation, as the end of empire made notions of ‘super-Imperial loyalty’ increasingly redundant. Yet the teleological historical narrative of steady progress towards autonomy also had to address Rhodesia’s economic, political, cultural, social and demographic closeness to the UK. Tara Brabazon, studying the Antipodes, has written of the immense cultural baggage that complicated attempts by settler societies to move beyond older imperial frameworks and establish themselves as independent nations.14 This cultural baggage repeatedly frustrated the 13 A. Stewart, Empire Lost: Britain, the Dominions and the Second World War (London, Continuum, 2008). Douglas Cole complicated this story by positing that nationalist demands for greater autonomy and imperial loyalty in settler societies were not dichotomous in British settler societies and showed how the two positions could be held simultaneously. D. Cole, ‘The Problem of “Nationalism” and “Imperialism” in British Settlement Colonies’, The Journal of British Studies, 10, 2 (1971), pp. 160–182. 14 T. Brabazon, Tracking the Jack: A Retracing of the Antipodes (Sydney, University of New South Wales Press, 2000).

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RF’s early efforts at nation-building, and its later manifestations illustrated the limits of the white nationalist project as it began to crumble in the late 1970s. Minority-rule independence was debated in Southern Rhodesia’s small Legislative Assembly from the 1950s onwards, but the topic acquired a new urgency with the dissolution of the Federation and the impending independence of Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland in the early 1960s. While the other constituent territories of the Federation were on their way to independence, the Rhodesian government was still locked in negotiations with Britain over the future status of the colony. These negotiations were conducted in an atmosphere of increasing domestic bitterness which was exacerbated by events in 1961. On 26 July 1961, the United Federal Party (UFP) government of Edgar Whitehead had sought support from the white electorate for a new constitution for Southern Rhodesia. A key aspect of the constitutional proposals was the proposed removal of a number of so-called ‘reserved clauses’ which had been enshrined in its predecessor. The reserved clauses were a mechanism that allowed Britain to prevent certain legislation from being passed. They had been introduced as a means of protecting the indigenous population from the settler dominated legislature. Though seen by many as ineffective, Claire Palley has argued that the clauses were an effective psychological deterrent towards successive Rhodesian governments.15 The UFP’s election material presented a ‘Yes’ vote in favour of the constitutional proposals as ‘the key to independence’ and the electorate supported the new constitution by 41,949 votes to 21,846.16 James Barber observes that the result engendered a widespread, but false, belief that Britain had agreed to grant Rhodesia independence based upon the 1961 constitution if the Federation ever broke up.17 This misconception caused much resentment on the part of many white Rhodesians, who subsequently considered themselves to be victims of a British ‘betrayal’ as the Federation went into terminal decline. Acrimony was stoked by settler politicians such as Sir Roy Welensky, the 15 C. Palley, The Constitutional History and Law of Southern Rhodesia: 1888–1965 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1966), p. 248 16 Quoted in J. Barber, Rhodesia: The Road to Rebellion (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 94; Ibid., p. 95. 17 Ibid., p. 95.

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Federation’s prime minister between 1956 and 1963, who wove a narrative of British treachery in his memoirs which were published in 1964.18 Meanwhile, the right-wing Dominion Party (DP) were unconvinced by the UFP’s claims of independence, and felt that the 1961 constitution, which provided for eventual parity between white and black representatives in the legislature, would inevitably lead to majority rule. As the Federal dream died and black and white nationalism became more strident in Southern Rhodesia, an alliance of conservative politicians known as the Rhodesian Front (RF) swept to power in December 1962. From then on, the RF government tried repeatedly to secure independence, by arguing that if the two former Colonial Office territories of Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia had met the criteria for independence, then white-ruled Rhodesia had too. Weeks turned to months, months turned to years, and the AngloRhodesian negotiations began to seem interminable. The argument within the RF’s ranks for an illegal UDI gained ground and Winston Field, an old Dominion Party hand, was ousted as prime minister in favour of Ian Smith.19 Smith, who was the son of a Scottish dairy farmer from Selukwe in the Rhodesian Midlands, became the country’s first Rhodesian-born prime minister in April 1964. He had been involved with a number of political parties, at one time serving as UFP’s Chief Whip, but had most recently helped to found the RF coalition through his Rhodesia Reform Party. Upon gaining office Smith immediately set up two opaquely named cabinet committees to explore independence.20 Committee ‘A’ was tasked ‘to consider all aspects of a unilateral declaration of independence with a view to the eventual publication of a white paper for public information’.21 Committee ‘B’ was more narrowly 18 R. Welensky, Welensky’s 4000 Days: The Life and Death of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (London, Collins, 1964); B. Schwarz, The White Man’s World (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 341–393; Barber, Rhodesia, p. 86. 19 As a broad coalition of interests, there were always differences among RF politicians. See P. Godwin & I. Hancock, Rhodesians Never Die: The Impact of War and Political Change on White Rhodesia c.1970–1980 (Northlands SA, Pan Macmillan South Africa, 2007) for more on these divisions during the UDI era. 20 Cory Library, Rhodes University, Grahamstown (hereafter CL) (Smith Papers), Cabinet Memoranda S.R.C. (S) (64) 329—‘Committees on Independence: Committee “A”’, 9 November 1964; (CL) (Smith Papers), S.R.C. (S) (64) 330—‘Committees on Independence: Committee “B”’, 9 November 1964. 21 S.R.C. (S) (64) 329—‘Committees on Independence’.

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focused upon the economic aspects of a UDI.22 Unlike his predecessors, Smith was prepared to carry out the often-repeated threat of settler secession.

‘A People’s Progress’: Rhodesia’s Record of Good Governance Broad agreement within the RF Cabinet that UDI represented the only way forward was the first step, the second was public legitimation. For this, the RF opted to hold yet another referendum. The referendum asked voters ‘Are you in favour of independence based on the 1961 Constitution?’23 At the Referendum Bill’s Second Reading in October 1964, William Harper, the ultra-right-wing Minister of Internal Affairs argued that: ‘Government believes that it is the fervent wish of the people of this country that Southern Rhodesia should be independent… this feeling and desire for independence has been manifest since 1923…’.24 Harper invoked the decision of 1923 to present a UDI as the next logical step in Rhodesia’s progression from self-governing colony to independent nation. In the ensuing debate, Rhodesia’s record of good governance was cited time and again by settler politicians, even by opponents of the RF. One opposition member, J.R. Nicholson (Rhodesia National Party member for Salisbury City), noted: ‘all national parties would have felt that after forty years of self-government the administrative record was at least as good, if not better than, many countries who had also been granted sovereign independence in British Africa in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s’.25 Government backbenchers repeatedly invoked the settlers’ record of ‘good governance’ 1923 in the ensuing debates. It was deployed in response to criticisms about the push for independence, particularly the timing of the referendum which was to take place in November 1964, just a month after the Bill was being introduced. In response to opposition complaints, J.A. Newington (RF Member for Hillcrest) responded

22 S.R.C.

(S) (64) 330—‘Committees on Independence’. Wood, So Far and No Further!: Rhodesia’s Bid for Independence During the Retreat from Empire 1959–1965 (Victoria, BC, Trafford, 2005), p. 249. 24 Southern Rhodesia Legislative Assembly Debates, 59, 1964–1965, 1512. 25 Southern Rhodesian Legislative Assembly Debates, 58, 1964, 1589–1590. 23 J.R.T.

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‘[w]e have been waiting 41 years for this and it is about time that we had it without any more time slipping by’.26 RF stalwart Mark Partridge argued that independence ‘will be given, and should be given’ irrespective of the result of the referendum. For Partridge Rhodesia had earned its independence ‘by right of our history, by right of our good Government…’.27 This ‘good governance’ narrative was firmly rooted in an imperial past and a decolonising present. It presented the 1922 referendum as evidence that settlers were capable and civilised enough to discharge the responsibility of self-government. It was inherently comparative and showed how white Rhodesian nationalism was both stuck in the past, but also constantly adapting to engage with events taking place around it. As minority rule became increasingly anachronistic during the era of decolonisation, good governance offered a counterpoint to the perceived excesses and maladministration of other ex-colonies. When African colonies achieved majority-rule independence, the RF argued that the ‘Westminster system’ of one man, one vote, was untested in African societies and liable to cause violent political instability. The settlers felt that their narrative was justified by events taking place elsewhere in Africa such as the bloody decolonisation of the Belgian Congo and the Mau Mau Emergency in Kenya. These events had a huge influence upon white Rhodesian mentalities in the 1950s and 1960s.28 Closer to home, a State of Emergency had been declared in Nyasaland in 1959 in response to fears of a secret plot to massacre white settlers. Though no such plot existed, the Emergencies led to deaths, mass detentions, and a critical denunciation from a British Royal Commission chaired by Lord Devlin that helped seal the fate of the Federation by stating that it had temporarily become a police state.29 Throughout this period the Southern Rhodesians had to contend with the rise of populist black nationalism and violence and disorder in African communities.30 Many white Rhodesians understood these developments as 26 Ibid.,

1609. 1610. 28 T.O. Ranger, ‘The Reception of Mau Mau in Southern Rhodesia, 1952–61’, in P. Konings, W. van Binsbergen, & G. Hesseling (eds.), trajectories de liberation en Afrique contemporaine: homage a Robert Buijtenhuijs (Paris, Karthala, 2000), pp. 49–68. 29 Schwarz, The White Man’s World, pp. 350–351. 30 J. Darwin, Britain and Decolonisation (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1988), p. 249. 27 Ibid.,

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communist-inspired criminality rather than genuine anti-colonial sentiment and so they were able to continue to use the good governance narrative sincerely, even as it began to lose its credibility in the wider world. Race, power, and entitlement were imbricated within the good governance narrative. It was a typically colonialist and paternalist discourse, one which pointed to rapid advances in healthcare, agricultural expertise, industrialisation, education, and housing to suggest that Rhodesia’s Africans should be grateful rather than restive. In support of these arguments, the RF’s formidable propaganda machine churned out purportedly informative pamphlets for international audiences. Typical of these was A People’s Progress which claimed: When the white and black races met, their contact brought with it problems that are still with us today. The backward society of the African was violently disrupted and is gradually being adapted to the sophisticated society of the European…the advancement of the African is encouraged in Rhodesia. This advancement must be seen against a background of belief in witchcraft and magic, ancestor worship, the lowly status of women and rigid set of family and community laws which restrict reciprocity with wide groups.31

The RF excoriated the rise of black African nationalism across the continent as little more than a vehicle for self-serving, violent, nationalist leaders. Through the continued use of the good governance narrative, the settler state sought to circumscribe and discredit the evolution of black nationalist politics. Reinforcing draconian laws that curtailed any possibility of legitimate expression of political grievance, it promoted the government’s own system of chiefs and headmen as the true voice of African opinion.32 This belief was reflected in the parallel means by which black and white Rhodesian opinion on independence was tested in 1964. Shortly before the Rhodesian electorate went to the polls for a referendum on 5 November 1964, the RF solicited African opinion 31 Rhodesian Ministry of Information, Immigration and Tourism, A People’s Progress (Salisbury, Government Printer, 1969), p. 1. 32 See J. Alexander, The Unsettled Land: State Making and the Politics of Land in Zimbabwe (Oxford, James Currey, 2006), p. 75 for an explanation of the role of chiefs, and J. Alexander, ‘“Hooligans, Spivs and Loafers?”: The Politics of Vagrancy in 1960s Southern Rhodesia’, The Journal of African History, 53 (2012), pp. 345–366 on the restriction and detention of the black nationalist leadership.

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through the means of an indaba (meeting) between the government and all of Rhodesia’s African chiefs at Domboshawa from 22 to 26 October. The chiefs, who were given their authority and their income from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, unanimously endorsed independence on the basis of the 1961 constitution, and 89% of voters in the referendum favoured it shortly afterwards.33 In response, the British government refused to accept the result of the indaba as a reflection of the view of Rhodesia’s black population.34 The British government’s dismissal incensed the Rhodesian government. It responded with a white paper on ‘Consultation with Tribal and Tradition Leaders’. The paper, which functioned more broadly as a defence of minority rule, illustrated the influence of history on RF thinking. It summarised the history of the relationship between the settler state and tribal leaders in Rhodesia, citing that Rhodes himself had successfully used an indaba to end hostilities between settlers and indigenous African polities in 1893.35 Arguing that African society was communistic and that it was more suitable for Africans to have decisions made for them by ‘tribal leaders’ than by one-man, one-vote plebiscites. It argued that: ‘tribal society cannot be regarded as an aggregate of individuals able, expecting or willing to draw their own independent conclusions and who, for voting purposes, can be given equal weight, as democratic theory accords to the individualistic societies of Europe and America’.36 As well as the white paper Ian Smith also brought a motion before the Legislative Assembly in response to the British dismissal of the Domboshawa indaba, arguing that Rhodesia’s right to independence rested ‘not so much on the principle of conquest but on the record of sound government that we have produced in this country over the last 40 years’.37 Smith further argued that Britain had promised Rhodesia to the settlers in 1923 that this had attracted white settlers to 33 Wood,

So Far and No Further!, p. 249. The referendum had a 61% turnout. Todd, Rhodesia (London, MacGibbon & Kee, 1966), p. 133; Alexander, The Unsettled Land; A.K.H. Weinrich, Chiefs and Councils in Rhodesia—Transition from Patriarchal to Bureaucratic Power (London, Heinemann, 1971). 35 (CL) (Smith Papers), S.R.C. (S) (64) 360, ‘Draft White Paper: Consultation with Tribal and Traditional Leaders: Chiefs and Headmen’, 30 November 1964, p. 15. 36 Ibid., p. 27. 37 Southern Rhodesia Legislative Assembly Debates, 59, 421. 34 J.

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the country, and that Rhodesian good faith thereafter had helped make it the country it was in 1964.38 The debate also illustrated the complications of articulating Rhodesian identity and nationhood, which was fundamentally settler colonial in nature, in a decolonising age. This contradiction required some intellectual gymnastics by the RF whose thinking was nevertheless facilitated by repeated British obstinacy over minority-rule independence. In the face of this, the RF began to argue that the Britain of the 1960s had lost the right to Rhodesian allegiance. This was articulated by RF representatives such as S.A. Wilmot (RF Member for Matobo) who stressed: ‘the time has come when… the dependence upon what people call the “home country” is over… this is home, here, where we are. 6,000 miles across the sea, I regret, ceased to be “home” some time ago’.39 Emphasising differences between the imperial centre and the colonial periphery had been a common tactic in settler-colonial nationalism, but it elided the significant social, cultural and economic links between the two societies. Wilmot’s musings illustrated the final comparative strand of the ‘good governance’ narrative, between Rhodesia and Britain. As J.A. Newington claimed in the Legislative Assembly: ‘most of the determination which… [Britain] used to have is now emigrated to the colonies and to the dominions…Britain today no longer has the will to rule or the capacity to rule…’.40 This was borne out for white Rhodesians in their experience of the collapse of the Central African Federation. In a Britain suffering from a period of late imperial ‘declinism’, typified by fears of a stagnant and moribund society, it was a persuasive element of Rhodesia’s case for independence among its supporters in the imperial metropole.41 In propagating the good governance narrative, the RF and supporters of Rhodesian independence drew a direct line between 1923 and 1965. UDI became the next logical step on the path to Rhodesian nationhood. It drew explicit comparisons with other ex-colonies as undesirable and unworkable, positioning a UDI as a deliberate white settler response to majority-rule decolonisation in Africa. Comparing a vigorous, outgoing, 38 Ibid.,

421. 498. 40 Ibid., 59, 636. 41 See S. Ward (ed.), British Culture and the End of Empire (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2001), for the myriad ways in which these fears were expressed in Britain including through playwriting and the rise of satirical comedy. 39 Ibid.,

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positive Rhodesia with a weakened and disinterested Britain, the settlers placed themselves as inheritors of the British imperial ideal. This ideal had motivated soldiers from Rhodesia to fight and die for the Empire in a range of conflicts throughout the twentieth century. These sacrifices formed the second major pillar of the historical case for independence.

‘Rhodesia’s Finest Hour’: Rhodesia and the World Wars Rhodesian soldiers fought for the empire from the very beginning. From the Anglo-South African War at the turn of the century, to the Malayan Emergency in the 1950s, Rhodesians had been deployed around the world in defence of Britain’s Empire. Rhodesian settlers were fiercely proud of that fact. Both World Wars were in living memory for the Rhodesians of the 1960s and Rhodesian service in them was perceived as a transnational ‘blood sacrifice’ at the altar of Empire. In 1966, RF stalwart Desmond Lardner-Burke opened his personal narrative of the UDI crisis by stating baldly that ‘Rhodesia gave her treasure and her men to die in both world wars fighting alongside Britain’.42 Many Rhodesian politicians in the 1960s had fought in these conflicts and so arguments invoking military service as justification for independence were often deeply personal. Blood sacrifice is an important component of nationalism. It was particularly potent in settler societies, where it was used to explain how white settlers had ‘won’ their lands from indigenous populations.43 As Will Jackson notes of Kenya, ‘[f]or those who had sunk… their own flesh and blood making “white man’s country” work… Attempting to rationalise their presence became the perennial colonial endeavour’.44 War also acted as an intra-imperial solvent, particularly for smaller settler communities. The formative experience of shared suffering drew disparate colonial communities closer together and in Kenya and South Africa, the memorialisation of conflict was critical to settler identity.45 42 D.

Lardner-Burke, Rhodesia: The Story of the Crisis (London, Oldbourne, 1966), p. 2. Moodie, The Rise of Afrikaner Nationalism, for the South African example. 44 W. Jackson, ‘White Man’s Country: Kenya Colony and the Making of a Myth’, Journal of Eastern African Studies, 5, 2 (2011), p. 347. 45 J. Lambert, ‘“Tell England, Ye Who Pass This Monument”: English-Speaking South Africans, Memory and War Remembrance Until the Eve of the Second World War’, South African Historical Journal, 66, 4 (2014), p. 683; J. Lonsdale, ‘Kenya—Home Country and African Frontier’, in R. Bickers (ed.), Settlers and Expatriates: Britons Over the Seas (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 94. 43 See

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War service was often a catalyst for calls for greater political autonomy within the empire. Andrew Stewart has shown how the Dominions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa successfully used war service as leverage to renegotiate their relationship with Britain in this period.46 Decades later white Rhodesian nationalists drew upon these same settler discourses about sacrifice and entitlement to bolster their case for independence. The Rhodesian contribution to the First and Second World Wars was undoubtedly significant. The relatively small Rhodesian settler population made a disproportionate contribution in terms of manpower, supported by thousands of African auxiliaries.47 Some 5500 whites and 2700 African troops fought for Rhodesia in the First World War. Deployed mainly in East Africa to fight Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck’s forces, the relatively small contingent of Rhodesians served with British and South African units too. A high proportion of Rhodesia’s European troops were officers (1720), a fact that reinforced settler self-images regarding white Rhodesian capability and leadership.48 To nationalists in many British settler societies, the First World War provided a watershed moment. Bloody battles, such as Gallipoli, Delville Wood and Vimy Ridge, became the grisly foundations on which ‘new’ nations were built.49 While colonial subjects elsewhere were transformed into ‘Canadians’, ‘New Zealand ers’, and ‘South Africa ns’, the more diffuse contribution of the Rhodesians ensured that the First World War diluted its impact in nationalist memory. The less prominent nature of the war in white nationalist narratives during the UDI period was acknowledged by military historian and former reservist Peter McLaughlin, who justified the publication of his book Ragtime Soldiers (1980) partly in terms of the fact that the war had faded from

46 Stewart,

Empire Lost. Blake, A History of Rhodesia (London, Methuen, 1977), p. 168. 48 Ibid., p. 168. 49 Popular histories often eulogise these blood sacrifices as the birth of the nation, a notable example is Canadian historian Pierre Berton’s Vimy (Barnsley, Pen & Sword Press, 2012). For academic analysis of Delville Wood see Bill Nasson’s Springboks on the Somme: South Africa in the Great War 1914–1918 (Johannesburg, Penguin, 2007). For Gallipoli see M. Hearn, ‘Writing the Nation in Australia: Australian Historians and the Narrative Myths of Nation’, in S. Berger (ed.) Writing the Nation: A Global Perspective (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. 105. 47 R.

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popular memory.50 McLaughlin, writing shortly after the UDI period, made a case for the significance of the war in Rhodesia’s national story. To him the war marked a break point in the development of British and Rhodesian societies and helped to ossify the sense of ‘super-British imperialism’ that would be articulated by Ethel Tawse Jollie in the referendum just four years after the war ended. Rhodesian experiences in the Second World War were much more influential in the UDI period. This was unsurprising given their relative closeness. Robert Blake, writing in 1977, noted the war’s centrality to white Rhodesian consciousness; ‘[t]he attitudes engendered by it shaped much that lay ahead, and its memory has been a potent factor in the events of the last thirty years’.51 The centrality of the Second World War to white Rhodesian national consciousness had a contemporary analogue back in Britain, where the mythology of Enoch Powell created a narrative of war in which the white working-class’ war service was betrayed in favour of the needs of ‘new Commonwealth’ immigrants (a narrative that conveniently ignored the fact that many of the same immigrants had served in great numbers).52 In the war, twelve contingents of Rhodesians (of all races) fought across many theatres. The total Rhodesian contribution to the war effort was around 10,000 white men and women, and 14,000 Africans. Blake admitted that ‘compared with that of the major, or even most of the minor combatants, the Southern Rhodesian contribution to the war was miniscule…’.53 Yet, as a proportion of Rhodesia’s settler population, which stood just shy of 69,000 in 1941, these numbers were once again significant.54 A particularly notable Rhodesian contribution to the imperial war effort was in the air. The most prominent of Rhodesia’s Royal Air Force (RAF) pilots was the UDI-era prime minister, Ian Smith. Flying Officer 50 P. McLaughlin, Ragtime Soldiers: The Rhodesian Experience in the First World War (Bulawayo, Books of Zimbabwe, 1980), preface. It is notable that McLaughlin’s book remains the only dedicated treatment of Rhodesian society in the First World War. Even more remarkable, given its centrality to white nationalism and identity, is the fact that there are no dedicated studies of the ‘Rhodesian Experience’ of the Second World War at all. 51 Blake, A History of Rhodesia, p. 235. 52 C. Schofield, Enoch Powell and the Making of Postcolonial Britain (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 19–22. 53 Ibid., p. 235. 54 A.S. Mlambo, White Immigration into Rhodesian: From Occupation to Federation (Harare, University of Zimbabwe Publications, 2000), p. 3.

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Smith served with 237 (Rhodesia) Squadron, flying a Hawker Hurricane fighter plane. Smith’s flying career was marked with misfortune, in 1943 he crashed while taking off in the Western Desert, his dour face forever marked by the signs of the plastic surgery he received following the crash.55 In 1944, he was shot down over Italy, forced to hide with the locals and then flee across the border to France to link up with invading American forces.56 Like other old soldiers back in Britain, Smith’s war service was central to his political appeal and image, with one scholar noting that: ‘[n]o white Rhodesian kitchen in the 1960s and 1970s was complete without an illustrated dishcloth featuring ‘Good Old Smithy’ and his trusty spitfire’.57 Two other ‘Rhodesia’ squadrons flew with the RAF; 266 Squadron was another fighter unit that supplied air cover during the Dunkirk withdrawal, fought in the Battle of Britain and provided ground support during the D-Day landings, 44 Squadron flew Lancaster bombers in raids over continental Europe.58 In the colony itself some 10,107 Commonwealth airmen were trained as part of the Air Training Scheme (ATS) alongside similar initiatives in the United States, Canada and Australia. Rhodesia was chosen to host an ATS because of the country’s favourable climate and its remoteness from the fighting.59 The ATS was a transformational event in Rhodesian society, with large numbers of young servicemen from around the world arriving, a number of whom later migrated to the colony because of their experiences during the war.60 Against white reservations, African soldiers also made a significant domestic contribution. The Air Askari Corps was formed to guard airfields and the African Internment Camp Corps to

55 F.R.

Metrowich, Rhodesia: Birth of a Nation (Pretoria, Africa Institute, 1969), p. 141. Berlyn, The Quiet Man: A Biography of the Hon. Ian Douglas Smith, I.D., Prime Minister of Rhodesia (Salisbury, M.O. Collins, 1978), pp. 53–66. 57 M. Francis, The Flyer: British Culture and the Royal Air Force 1939–1945 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 192. 58 R. Conyers Nesbit & D. Cowderoy with A. Thomas, Britain’s Rebel Air Force: The War from the Air in Rhodesia 1965–1980 (London, Grub Street, 1998), pp. 7–11. 59 I.E. Johnston, ‘The British Commonwealth Air Training Plan and the Shaping of National Identities in the Second World War’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 43, 5 (2015), p. 918. 60 A.R. King, ‘Identity and Decolonisation: The Policy of Partnership in Southern Rhodesia 1945–62’ (Oxford University, DPhil Thesis, 2001), pp. 94–97. 56 P.

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guard prisoners of war.61 Black troops from the Rhodesia African Rifles (RAR) fought as infantry against the Japanese in the Burma campaign.62 Though these African units were swiftly disbanded in 1946, the RAR was later reformed as a Cold War unit.63 The Second World War served to cushion the settlers from the realities of imperial decline. Lowry notes that the conflict galvanised Rhodesians for years afterwards: ‘[t]he Second World War in particular had tied the white Rhodesians to imperial illusions. The great victory of 1945 heightened the Rhodesian belief that the Empire was still powerful, and into the early 1960s Rhodesia still lived off the memory of the [sic] Britain’s “Finest hour”’.64 The experience of participating in and winning global, imperial wars shaped white Rhodesians’ understanding of global politics. It made subsequent narratives of British decline all the more jarring and impactful. At the heart of this was the oft-cited belief that Britain had lost the will to govern. As Desmond Lardner-Burke put it: ‘[i]t became obvious that there had been a striking volte-face in Britain’s policy towards Africa in that she seemed bent… on ridding herself of her responsibilities in Africa…’.65 The narratives of sacrifice bled into those of good governance and betrayal; Ian Smith remarked in January 1964 that Rhodesia had been promised independence by Britain during the Second World War, but had selflessly focused on fighting the war first.66 The Second World War had a particularly powerful emotional resonance among white settlers in Southern Africa. English-speaking South Africans, to whom white Rhodesian culture, society, and demography owed so much, often participated in the conflict because of strong

61 T. Stapleton, African Police and Soldiers in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1923–1980 (Rochester, NY, University of Rochester Press, 2011), p. 8. 62 Ibid., p. 8. 63 P. McLaughlin, ‘Victims as Defenders: African Troops in the Rhodesian Defence System 1890–1980’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 2, 2 (1991), pp. 247, 259. 64 D. Lowry, ‘Shame Upon “Little England” While “Greater England” Stands! Southern Rhodesia and the Imperial Idea’, in A. Bosco & A. May (eds.), The Round Table, The Empire/Commonwealth and British Foreign Policy (London, Lothian Foundation Press, 1997), p. 327. 65 Lardner-Burke, Rhodesia, p. 11. 66 I.D. Smith, ‘Southern Rhodesian and Its Future’, African Affairs, 63, 250 (1964), pp. 13–22.

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personal or familial sentiment towards the ‘mother country’.67 The conflict was also characterised by the opportunity for white Commonwealth soldiers to feel as though they were part of a global, imperial community through service with other English-speaking Dominion or Colonial troops in pan-Commonwealth military formations.68 When the Rhodesians went to war, there was always a transnational, typically imperial, dimension. It is telling that in its whole existence Rhodesia never went to war alone. From the ‘Matabele Wars’ of the 1890s to the ‘Bush War’ of the 1960s, Rhodesian troops always stood side by side with allies, a stark reflection of the values of militarism and a wider sense of belonging and community which remained at the heart of white nationalism.69 In the 1940s and 1950s, Rhodesia was able to exploit these transnational connections formed on the battlefields of Europe, Africa and Asia. The shared experience of conflict provided Rhodesians with a means to easily socialise many of the new British post-war migrants, especially those who had first encountered Rhodesia during their time on the ATS. These men and women took advantage of post-war settlement opportunities to escape a bombed-out, ration-fed Britain. Rhodesian political life in 1965 was full of ex-servicemen, many of whom proudly retained their military titles. The eleventh Rhodesian Parliament (the first after UDI was declared) contained two Brigadiers, two Lieutenant Colonels, a Colonel, and recipients of the Distinguished Conduct Medal and Air Force Cross from a crop of 65 representatives.70 After UDI Rhodesia’s war record took on the duality so characteristic of Rhodesian nationalism, as it was used by the RF and its supporters to both invoke Rhodesia’s ‘Britishness’, its loyal and steadfast contribution to a greater imperial endeavour, and the colony’s national uniqueness. Rhodesia’s contribution to the British war effort in the Second World War formed a critical part of overseas propaganda efforts to generate support for the settler regime, particularly in Britain. Here, in the old mother country, the Rhodesian rebels—and particularly Ian Smith—could play up their war service to appeal to powerful emotive images of the RAF ‘flyer’ that had emerged from the conflict to point 67 J. Lambert, ‘“Their Finest Hour?” English-Speaking South Africans and World War II’, South African Historical Journal, 60, 1 (2008), pp. 69–72. 68 Ibid., p. 74. 69 Both of these terms were the ones Rhodesians themselves would have used. 70 Rhodesia Legislative Assembly Debates 63, 1966, iv–v.

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to the justness of their cause (even if such attempts elided the contribution of non-white pilots and ground crew to the Battle of Britain).71 Rhodesia’s Case for Independence, a booklet of government propaganda issued in October 1965, argued; ‘[i]t hurts when people whose way of life is our way of life, people whose blood is our blood, people with whom we have stood in adversity and triumph – it hurts when our own family turns on us without fairly examining our case’.72 Rhetoric of ‘kith and kin’ completely overlooked the black contribution to the war effort, but it was emotive and powerful and would resurface frequently after UDI. In Britain, the Rhodesian High Commission, at Rhodesia House on The Strand, reported that a window display ‘showing photographs of the Rhodesian Cabinet Ministers with biographical notes on their war records’ was one of the most popular exhibits it had held in 1965.73 The Second World War was enshrined within the rituals of Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence, signed at the highly symbolic time of 11 a.m. on 11 November. At the time, when two minutes of silence were normally observed for British and Commonwealth war dead, the RF government signed a declaration that stated: ‘the people of Rhodesia having demonstrated their loyalty… through two world wars… now see all that they have cherished about to be shattered on the rocks of expediency’.74 A pamphlet released to mark UDI was titled Rhodesia’s Finest Hour, borrowing from Churchill’s description of the Battle of Britain. After UDI Rhodesians reconfigured British discourses of war heroism into ones of Rhodesian self-determination and the Battle of Britain became a Battle with Britain. This denigration of the former colonial power was, like the good governance narrative, reactionary and comparative, part of the wider white settler response to decolonisation. By invoking the war, the RF and its supporters sought to cast UDI in a rubric that potential immigrants and overseas supporters in Britain could understand. RF politicians like Desmond Lardner-Burke were explicit in linking the two causes together. He wrote, ‘[t]he attitude of Rhodesia today is the same 71 Francis,

The Flyer, p. 193. Ministry of Information, Immigration and Tourism, Rhodesia’s Case for Independence (Salisbury, 1965), p. 2. 73 Report of the Secretary for Information, Immigration and Tourism for the Year 1965 (Salisbury, 1966), p. 10. 74 Anon., Rhodesia’s Finest Hour (Salisbury, 1965). 72 Rhodesian

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as that adopted by Britain after Dunkirk. Then Sir Winston Churchill stated that the British would fight on the beaches and in the streets; we have no beaches, but we will fight in the streets, we will fight in the open…’.75 After UDI, when UN sanctions were imposed, a ‘keep calm and carry on’ mentality pervaded society as Rhodesians were encouraged to hunker down and prepare for trying times, with the implication of eventual victory in sight. Seizing on any opportunity to castigate contemporary Britain for failing to live up to its glorious Second World War image, the Rhodesian Accredited Diplomatic Representative in South Africa, John Gaunt, remarked that Britain’s refusal to send a representative to the Rhodesian cenotaph on the day of UDI was an insult to Rhodesia’s war dead.76 On 15 November, Ian Smith was praised in the letters pages of the Rhodesia Herald as ‘our Rhodesian Churchill’.77 The next week Eleanor Laurie of Concession wrote to the newspaper to express her disgust at Britain’s betrayal, claiming ‘[t]his insult to the dead can never be forgotten’.78 Others pointed to the cynicism in Gaunt’s claims, such as Mrs. J.F. Johnson, who wrote that she was ‘sick to death’ of hearing about Rhodesian blood sacrifices. ‘[I]f my memory serves me right I believe there were a few million British soldiers interspersed among the Rhodesians…’ she remarked tartly.79 In all of the letters published in the Herald in November 1965, Johnson was a lone dissenting voice. Though censorship possibly played a role in skewing the narrative emerging from these letters, it was as likely to be a demonstration of the RF’s ability to both reflect and direct popular opinion in Rhodesia’s European society. Before and after UDI the British Prime Minister Harold Wilson was explicit that a military response to Rhodesian recalcitrance was not an 75 Lardner-Burke,

Rhodesia, p. 65. formal diplomatic recognition from even its closest allies—Portugal and South Africa—Rhodesia had to resort to Accredited Diplomatic Representatives, who acted as unofficial ambassadors of the illegal regime in Lisbon and Pretoria. ‘Rhodesians IllRewarded, Says Gaunt’, The Rhodesia Herald, 15 November 1965, p. 1. 77 W.H. Roberts, ‘Rhodesia Might Become a New “Mother-Country”’, The Rhodesia Herald, 15 November 1965, p. 7. 78 Eleanor Laurie, ‘They Died for England’, The Rhodesia Herald, 24 November 1965, p. 9. 79 Mrs. J.F. Johnson, ‘Tired of Reading About Those Who Fought’, The Rhodesia Herald, 30 November 1965, p. 9. 76 Lacking

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option.80 Why Wilson was so unequivocal on this point remains a matter of dispute. It has been mooted that the logistical problems inherent in an airborne invasion (not to mention Rhodesia’s strong air defences in the form of the Royal Rhodesian Air Force) were a critical factor.81 On the other hand, British military leaders repeatedly warned Wilson that British troops would refuse orders to attack their Rhodesian ‘kith and kin’. This proved ironic given that there were significant elements of the Rhodesian military, particularly at the higher levels, who opposed UDI.82 Philip Murphy has suggested that Wilson’s announcement may have been a tactic to force recalcitrant black nationalist leaders to negotiate with the settler government.83 Whatever the reason, Wilson’s public disavowal of force proved something of a coup for the RF. Britain’s desire to avoid a military stand-off with the Rhodesians helped to prolong UDI. Given the tortuous renegotiation of Rhodesian nationhood and identity that followed, it is by no means clear that the settlers would really have fought in the streets as Lardner-Burke claimed. By avoiding open conflict and resorting to indirect measures that the RF could portray as petty and under-handed, Britain strengthened the RF’s nationalist narratives, giving the Rhodesians both a raison d’être (as the true inheritors of the Empire) and an early bête noire in the rebel state’s search for international legitimacy. Britain’s dual role as antagonist and inspiration continued to be reflected in white Rhodesian discourse throughout the UDI period. In the absence of marauding British paratroopers, it was towards UN sanctions that Rhodesian ire was directed. Adopting a war mentality after UDI was declared, Rhodesians transplanted their imaginings of the ‘mother country’ firmly in Central Africa expressed themselves in the idioms of an aerial battle fought thousands of miles away and decades

80 See C. Watts ‘Killing Kith and Kin: The Viability of British Military Intervention in Rhodesia, 1964–65’, Twentieth Century British History, 16, 4 (2005), pp. 382–415; P. Murphy, ‘“An Intricate and Distasteful Subject”: British Planning for the Use of Force Against the European Settlers of Central Africa, 1952–65’, Twentieth Century British History, 141, 492 (2006), pp. 746–777 for a more detailed discussion of early British responses to UDI. 81 Carl Watts has questioned this interpretation, noting that the RAF was much stronger than the RRAF. Watts, ‘Killing Kith and Kin’, p. 399. 82 See Chapter 4. 83 Murphy, ‘An Intricate and Distasteful Subject’.

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before. William J. Fanning, writing a letter to the editor of the Herald, proclaimed that ‘[t]he spirit of the Battle of Britain will once again… guarantee Rhodesia a safe and happy future’.84 These responses continued to mark out UDI as an assertion of settler-colonial control in the face of metropolitan retreat at the twilight of Empire. As one letter writer to the Rhodesia Herald in late November 1965 explained, after UDI it was up to her compatriots—the Rhodesians—to: ‘show the world the true meaning of being an Englishman’.85 The efficacy of the RF propaganda machine remains debatable. While Donal Lowry has explored its fundamentally anti-communist nature, studies of the political mythology and propaganda of the RF often overlook the extent to which it was infused by the spirit of the Second World War. The widely shared experience of participation in global imperial wars, particularly the Second World War, provided an anchor for Rhodesia’s otherwise peripatetic population, and historically grounded Rhodesia’s national story. This nationalist interpretation of past and present rationalised the economic and military conflicts of the 1960s and 1970s as a continuation of the British (and imperial) struggle against fascism in 1939–1945. The increasing militarisation of Rhodesian culture after UDI was reflected by the granting of a medal—the Independence Commemoration Decoration—to the RF members who signed the UDI in 1966. In August 1966, the cabinet agreed to make 11 November a public holiday. It would become a day of ‘thanksgiving and dedication’ with military parades of current and former servicemen in towns and cities across the nation.86

A Nation Under Arms In the years preceding independence, white Rhodesians often looked towards the past as a way to secure the future. In 1964, the RF government, using a teleological nationalist narrative, invoked the spirit of the decision of 1922 as a justification for independence from Britain. It 84 William J. Fanning, ‘Crushing Blow Against the Forces of Evil’, The Rhodesia Herald, 19 November 1965, p. 10. 85 Mrs. A. Whatling, ‘Let Us Show the World the True Meaning of Being an Englishman’, The Rhodesia Herald, 22 November 1965, p. 9. 86 (CL) (Smith Papers), Cabinet Memoranda, R.C. (S) (66) 223, ‘Independence Celebrations: 11th November 1966’, 25 August 1966.

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cast that referendum as a step on a path towards nationhood, with UDI as the next logical step. In doing so, the RF drew upon well-established nationalist discourses that had been historically used by settlers since the American Revolution and which were gaining new salience in the era of decolonisation. With colonies across Africa gaining their independence, the RF’s settler-colonial semantics sought to tap into the same discourses of independence, nationhood and good governance that Britain was using. Fiercely clinging onto their British heritage, the RF and its rebel Rhodesian supporters turned a transnational imperial identity into a signifier of Rhodesian-ness. The contradictions inherent in this hybridisation question the historical periodisation of Rhodesia in the era of decolonisation. Could a Rhodesia that openly modelled itself upon a past Britain truly be considered independent, decolonised or a nation? Violence, coercion and militarism are inherent characteristics of many settler societies. These qualities reflect such societies’ origins in the invariably bloody struggles between settler and indigenous populations for the control of the landscape—both geographical and psychological. In the context of UDI, violence and militarism took on new meanings. For both Rhodesian and Zimbabwean nationalists, such concepts were closely associated with performances of identity, notions of legitimacy and expressions of nascent nationhood. Rhodesia became increasingly militarised in the run-up to UDI and even more so afterwards. The politics of Rhodesian independence were expressed through the idioms of war. The RF was particularly astute at fear mongering, after all it had come into being in 1962 to address white anxieties about decolonisation, and it suited the party to portray Britain’s tepid response towards UDI as an existential threat to the Rhodesian ‘way of life’. The lack of a military challenge from the colonial power, coupled with amorphous notions of what the Rhodesian ‘way of life’ actually meant, ensured the circumstances post-UDI provided a nucleus around which notions of Rhodesian nationhood could be formed.87 Narratives of conflict acquired a new salience in the 1960s and 1970s, as opponents of colonialism increasingly questioned why white settlers still held power in Central Africa. In the 1950s, the settler rejoinder to such questions was that they had earned their place there and they formed a key part of the empire’s

87 See

Godwin & Hancock, Rhodesians Never Die, for a deconstruction of this concept.

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strategic networks, yet decolonisation prompted a search for new rationales. As decolonisation caused the Cold War to heat up in Asia and Africa, the RF fixed upon the conflict as means by which to justify their continued existence. In the language of their own Declaration of Independence, Rhodesians had taken UDI to preserve ‘Western Christian civilisation’.88 The discourses of imperialism proved easily adaptable to the Cold War and Rhodesia repeatedly tried to establish itself as an active participant on the side of the ‘West’. Many Rhodesians could point to Soviet and Chinese support of Zimbabwean nationalist guerrillas to illustrate the justness of their cause, especially when doing so glossed over the real, domestic reasons for the conflict.89 The RF fully played up to anti-communist fears. In February 1966, Smith gave a statement ‘to the American people’ linking Rhodesia’s cause to that of the United States’ in Vietnam. In the statement, which was ignored by the US government, Smith stated: ‘[t]oday we are holding the line in the battle against communism in Africa’.90 In May 1967, the cabinet discussed joining Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea in supporting the US war effort in Vietnam. The plan was to provide ambulances or some sort of small manned unit and the cabinet recognised the potential publicity and reputational gains that would result.91 Despite the Battle of Britain braggadocio, after UDI Rhodesia was once again seeking to rationalise its independent nationhood not simply as an individual, selfish, domestic endeavour, but as part of a greater, nobler whole. Craving international legitimacy, the ‘Bush War’ of the 1960s was portrayed as a transnational conflict, based on ideological rather than imperial ties. The way Rhodesian nationalists used the Cold War illustrates both the complexity and fragility of the RF’s nationalist project after UDI—a project that was simultaneously local and global, that incorporated a long-established set of (imperial) discourses and practices with newer ones emerging as a result of decolonisation and global ideological polarisation. And indeed, Rhodesian attempts to portray themselves as the front line of the Cold War in Africa won it some 88 E. Windrich, The Mass Media in the Struggle for Zimbabwe (Gwelo, Mambo Press, 1981), p. 17. 89 See Chapter 6. 90 (CL), (Smith Papers), Cabinet Memoranda, R.C. (S) (67) 103—‘Tangible Help in the Struggle Against Communism in Vietnam’, 12 May 1967. 91 Ibid.

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supporters overseas, Kyle Burke has shown that, for a time in the 1970s, Rhodesia became the focus of global anti-communist organisations and soldiers of fortune seeking to push back the encroaching red menace in Africa and Asia.92 The Rhodesian government’s use of its short history was remarkably effective given that most of the white Rhodesian population had grown up elsewhere and been socialised within other national historical traditions. It skilfully manipulated the past in the face of hostility of much of the Rhodesian academic establishment, which often gave active support to the Zimbabwean nationalists instead. Works such as Terence Ranger’s Revolt in Southern Rhodesia (1967) offered their own teleological narratives of struggle which became critical in subsequent guerrilla understandings of the past and the legitimacy that could be derived from it.93 One of the ways the RF overcame the problem of an immigrant population was by appropriating another country’s past, positioning themselves as inheritors of Britain’s imperial mantle in Africa. UDI demonstrated that white settlers in Rhodesia had not lost the will to rule, even if their ‘Mother Country’ had. To the rebels, independence secured Rhodesia’s future as a beacon of ‘civilisation’ on a continent darkening with decolonisation. History was used to justify white rule to domestic and international audiences and delegitimise black nationalist protests. However, by the late 1960s the settlers’ protestations were wearing increasingly thin. Though Rhodesia’s historical narratives provided a channel to individual groups of sympathetic Western supporters of the cause, they never gained purchase where it counted, in the critical fora of the United Nations and the Commonwealth—even the ‘old Commonwealth’ settler states of Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Though popular and easily subscribed to by white Rhodesians—despite their disparate origins—they were largely ignored by the majority of

92 K. Burke, Revolutionaries for the Right: Global Anticommunism and Paramilitary Warfare (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2018), p. 107. 93 Ranger was deported from the country in 1964. T. Ranger, Revolt in Southern Rhodesia: A Study in African Resistance (London, Heinemann, 1967). Ranger’s own later work would explore the legacies of this sort of history-writing, particularly through ZANU PF’s ‘patriotic history’, see T. Ranger, ‘Nationalist Historiography, Patriotic History and the History of the Nation: The Struggle Over the Past in Zimbabwe’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 30, 4 (2004), pp. 215–234.

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Rhodesia’s population—who developed their own historical narratives.94 Settler narratives of noble war sacrifice to the imperial cause overlooked the contribution of black and mixed-race soldiers, who had been critical in supporting settler rule since whites first arrived in Rhodesia. And if whites deserved independence based on their contributions, what of the black population which continued to be brutally repressed and denied any form of legitimate political expression?

94 See R. Charumbira, Imagining a Nation: History and Memory in the Making of Zimbabwe (Charlottesville & London, University of Virginia Press, 2015) for a nuanced exploration of black historical traditions in the colonial period.

CHAPTER 4

These Colours Don’t Fade: Changing Rhodesia’s Flag, 1967–1968

Shortly after Rhodesia unilaterally declared its independence (UDI) from Britain on 11 November 1965 Ian Smith, Rhodesia’s prime minister broadcast to the nation and the world: [W]hatever else other countries may have done or may yet do, it is our intention that the Union Jack will continue to fly in Rhodesia and the National Anthem continue to be sung.1

The image of white Rhodesians defending the Union Jack (or Union Flag) at a time when it was falling across the former colonies of the British Empire was a powerful one, carried in a cartoon published by The Rhodesia Herald, on 15 November 1965. In the cartoon, four stout, white Rhodesian men in the traditional settler garb of bush hats, shorts and long socks, tighten their belts (a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Rhodesian response to shortages resulting from the imposition of international economic sanctions imposed following UDI). The men stand on guard around a flagpole proudly flying the Union Jack, topped by a crown and silhouetted by a shining cross, symbolising Rhodesia’s monarchism and Christianity. Around them, to the north, a series of Union Jacks are falling in African countries as they become independent.2 1 Anon.,

Rhodesia’s Finest Hour (Salisbury, 1965). from The Rhodesia Herald, 15 November 1965, p. 9.

2 Cartoon

© The Author(s) 2019 D. Kenrick, Decolonisation, Identity and Nation in Rhodesia, 1964–1979, Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32698-2_4

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Historically, the Union Jack was a key signifier of Rhodesia’s place in the world. Across the world, the flag had lent legitimacy to white European rule in accordance with the tenets of British and European imperialism: discourses of European superiority, paternalistic notions of development, and civilising missions. In the nineteenth century, ‘the flag’ had become a signifier for a ‘British’ community of settlers around the globe and their ‘kith and kin’ back in the ‘home’ country. For the rebel Rhodesians, retaining the flag upon their independence was in no way paradoxical. It embodied the essence of UDI, an act taken in defence of an idealised, mythologised notion of what it meant to be white and ‘British’ (in the colonial sense). Keeping the Union Jack flying helped position Rhodesians as the true inheritors of Britain’s greatness, the only ones worthy of flying the cherished imperial/national flag. It also helped the Rhodesian Front (RF) to generate support for UDI among influential politicians in the Conservative Party in London, as well as the British general public, by signifying that the Rhodesians were truly the ‘kith and kin’ of the British people, with their shared flag a symbol of much wider social and cultural ties. Britain in the 1960s was a nation in flux, undergoing a period of great social and cultural change and struggling to come to terms with it’s place in a rapidly decolonising world. Rhodesians’ conscious evoking of British history, and their almost unrepentant Britishness in the face of continental decolonisation, was a powerful and emotive act, both within Rhodesia and the UK. Rhodesia’s retention of its old flag also spoke to more prosaic political realities. Josiah Brownell has argued that what the RF initially sought through rebellion was a form of independence within the British Empire/Commonwealth, to win dominion status of the type enjoyed by other settler nations such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand, rather than to leave it altogether.3 At the same time, Rhodesia was profoundly influenced by South Africa, its Southern neighbour and closest ally, which had left the Commonwealth just four years earlier. South Africa had adopted its own unusual flag in 1928, incorporating a Union Jack with the two Boer republic vierkleurs (four colours), an event which had

3 J. Brownell, ‘“A Sordid Tussle on the Strand”: Rhodesia House During the UDI Rebellion (1965–1980)’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 38, 3 (2010), p. 478.

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provoked emotions, mass demonstrations and even violence.4 Even as the Rhodesians desired to keep the Union Jack, the rebellion they had started on 11 November, and the context in which it took place, irrevocably changed what the Union Jack meant. In a decolonising world, it began to lose its wider significance for a number of settler societies, just as it eventually did for the RF government.5 The changing meaning of British imperial symbols and the RF’s failure to secure negotiated, dominion-style independence (described by Ian Smith as his first prize) meant that consequently the search began for a new symbol to replace it, representing white-ruled Rhodesia as an independent nation.6 The changing of Rhodesia’s flag was a process of what might be called symbolic decolonisation in the early UDI era. Symbolic decolonisation meant that, while the substance of settler colonialism remained fundamentally the same, the style and the symbols through which it expressed itself, began to change. Exploring these processes offers an opportunity to interrogate the content and character of the RF’s nation-building project. The flag was the first of Rhodesia’s colonial British imperial symbols to be replaced by the RF. The debates surrounding its replacement offer a window onto the multiplicity of white Rhodesian visions of the nation that emerged in the years after UDI and how they frustrated neat attempts at nation-building. The transition also highlighted Rhodesia’s peculiar place in between two broader experiences of decolonisation, those of settler societies and other post-colonial independent states. It also reflected the anxieties of decolonisation back ‘home’ in Britain, as the broader ongoing context of the Rhodesian rebellion provided an opportunity to interrogate Britain’s post-imperial identity. White Rhodesian debates drew upon the wider contexts of decolonisation at

4 See H. Saker, The South African Flag Controversy (Cape Town, Oxford University Press, 1980) for a detailed narrative on this change. 5 Though the examples of Australia, New Zealand and even (more unusually) Fiji have shown how remarkably resilient the Union Jack has been in some former colonies. In 2016, New Zealanders voted to retain the blue ensign with Union Jack over a new ‘silver fern’ design in a referendum that had been criticised as costly and pointless. ‘New Zealand Votes to Keep Flag’, BBC News, accessed at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worldasia-35888474 on 28 December 2018. 6 J.R.T Wood, A Matter of Weeks Rather Than Months: The Impasse Between Harold Wilson and Ian Smith; Sanctions, Aborted Settlements and War 1965–1969 (Victoria, BC, Trafford Press, 2005).

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centre and periphery, and the challenges facing ‘new’ nations, both settler societies and newly independent former colonies. The RF’s processes of nation-building came at a time when settler communities across the globe were beginning to reconsider their relationships with the former ‘mother country’. There was a tension inherent in these attempts to demonstrate independent nationhood, moving away from longstanding social and cultural ties to Britain. Neat nationalist teleologies spoke of colonies becoming nations and a historiographical approach and political rhetoric emerged in which a gradual, Whiggish path to national maturity culminated in a new, indigenous national symbolism. In 1964, after a long and controversial debate, Canada changed its flag from a traditional colonial ensign (see Fig. 4.1 below) to its present-day ‘maple leaf’ design.7 While some, such as Philip Buckner, have seen these debates as a conflict between ardent ‘Anglo-Canadians’ who saw Canada as a British nation, and those who wanted new national symbols with trans-ethnic appeal, C.P. Champion has shown how a national Canadian identity and transnational Britishness were ‘not opposites but deeply interpenetrated’.8 Rhodesia’s reconsideration of its imperial past, of which the flag debates were one of the earliest manifestations, was indelibly complicated by the circumstances of its independence. Debates about nationhood, identity and symbolism in other settler societies, such as Canada, lacked the urgency of those in Rhodesia, where the RF had proactively chosen to secede from the Empire. The British government, in an acknowledgement of the metropole’s diminished global status that was never shared by the population at large, passively acquiesced when countries such as Canada chose to abandon the Union Jack. For Australia, New Zealand, even apartheid-era South Africa, the Union Jack could signify settler heritage without jeopardising their political and economic independence in an innocuous way that would never be possible in rebel Rhodesia.9 7 See C.P. Champion, The Strange Demise of British Canada: The Liberals and Canadian Nationalism, 1964–1968 (Montreal, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010) for a detailed exploration of Canadian attempts to renegotiate identity contemporaneously with UDI. 8 P. Buckner, ‘Canada and the End of Empire’, in P. Buckner (ed.), Canada and the British Empire (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 124; Champion, The Strange Demise, p. 136. 9 See L. Witz, Apartheid’s Festival: Contesting South Africa’s National Pasts (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2003). In South Africa, the new flag was a compromise designed to unify the colony’s white settler populations just years after the bitter Anglo-South African Wars. The importance of this effort should not be understated.

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As Rhodesia’s rebellion moved from protest to permanence the seemingly paradoxical context of an independence seized to preserve a form of colonial heritage invariably provoked debates about being ‘British’ or ‘Rhodesian’, a reflection of the great emotive connection between rebel white Rhodesians and Britain. The nature of Rhodesian independence and the repeated failure of subsequent Anglo-Rhodesian settlement negotiations meant that the neat transition to independence accorded to other African countries in ceremonies of decolonisation and national independence was absent in the rebel colony.10 David Cannadine and others have demonstrated the artificiality of such handovers, which were typically hastily cobbled together pageants designed to project false impressions of national unity.11 Yet for all their theatricality, these final grand spectacles of empire had great significance for nationalist movements, not least for the domestic and international legitimacy they conferred upon the successor governments.12 The raising and lowering of flags were a central component of these independence ceremonies, which offered a launch-pad for nation-building projects in post-colonial Africa. Denied this pageantry by its illegal seizure of independence, the RF’s retention of British imperial symbols for several years after UDI created a great deal of ambiguity about its own legitimacy and the nature of the Rhodesian nation.13

At the start of the twentieth century, the conflict between ‘Boer’ and ‘Briton’ was considered more threatening to South Africa’s future than rivalries between white settlers and the indigenous population. 10 For accounts of these lengthy negotiations, see E. Windrich, Britain and the Politics of Rhodesian Independence (London, Croom Helm, 1978); J.R.T. Wood, A Matter of Weeks Rather than Months: The Impasse Between Harold Wilson and Ian Smith: Sanctions, Aborted Settlements and War, 1965–1969 (Victoria, BC, Trafford Publishing, 2008). 11 D. Cannadine, ‘Introduction: Independence Day Ceremonials in Historical Perspective’, in T. Barringer, R. Holland, & S. Williams (eds.), The Iconography of Independence: ‘Freedoms at Midnight’ (London & New York, Routledge, 2010), pp. 1–17. This was not always the case, as was demonstrated in the long suffering inflicted upon the Democratic Republic of the Congo following its independence from Belgium in 1960. 12 J. Gibbs, ‘Uhuru na Kenyatta: White Settlers and the Symbolism of Kenya’s Independence Day Events’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 42, 3 (2014), pp. 503–529. 13 J. Brownell, ‘The Magical Hour of Midnight: The Annual Commemorations of Rhodesia’s and Transkei’s Independence Days’, in T. Falola & K. Kalu (eds.), Exploitation and Misrule in Postcolonial Africa (Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2018), pp. 243–276.

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The move towards new national symbols was a belated attempt to address these ambiguities.

Rhodesia and Its Flags, 1953–1968 Between 1964 and 1980 Rhodesia had as many flags as it had names. The colony of Southern Rhodesia had its Royal Air Force blue ensign; rebel Rhodesia its green and white flag; the short-lived ZimbabweRhodesia its rather functional black, white, red and green flag; and finally the newly independent Zimbabwe adopted the flag it retains to this day. Yet between 1890, when the Pioneer Column first raised it at Fort Salisbury, and 11 November 1968, the third anniversary of UDI, the British flag (the Union Flag, or Union Jack) was considered by many to be the flag of Rhodesia. After the collapse of the Central African Federation in 1963, the self-governing colony of Southern Rhodesia reverted to its old pre-Federation flag. This was a blue ensign featuring the Union Jack in the top lefthand corner and an heraldic shield in the centre (Fig. 4.1). This style of flag is known by the technical term of ‘defaced ensign’, meaning that the ensign has been ‘defaced’ by another symbol (usually an heraldic design). This was in keeping with the standard British colonial design, which typically featured an heraldic design or symbol representing the colony (see the contemporary flags of Australia and New Zealand for examples of this).

Fig. 4.1  Flag of Southern Rhodesia, 1964–1965 and Rhodesia, 1965–1968 (Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Rhodesia#/media/File:Flag_of_ Rhodesia_(1964%E2%80%931968).svg)

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The use of a traditional colonial defaced ensign for the Southern Rhodesian flag placed Rhodesia firmly within the ambit of the British Empire. The flag’s heraldry featured a shield bearing a gold mining pick on a green background to symbolise the country’s mineral and agricultural wealth. A red lion and thistles were elements borrowed from the personal heraldry of the country’s founding father and namesake, the imperialist, businessman and politician Cecil Rhodes.14 The Central African Federation’s flag had also been a defaced blue ensign and the return to Rhodesia’s pre-Federal flag presented an element of continuity. Arguing for its re-adoption in November 1963 the prime minister, Winston Field, observed that the flag had already been used outside the country and was recognisable to others as the ‘Rhodesian’ flag.15 This question of international recognition and acceptance of the Rhodesian flag would emerge as a major theme in future debates, and it is significant that upon this basis the defaced ensign was re-adopted. In 1964, a slight amendment was undertaken, changing the flag’s shade of blue from the royal blue of the Australian and New Zealand flags to a lighter ‘Royal Air Force’ blue. Foreshadowing his party’s later rationale for a new flag, Field noted in November 1963 that: ‘[t]he only objection apparently is that the design of this flag is similar (with local variation) to that used by Australia and New Zealand and that what is required is a flag that will stand out among the national flags of the world’.16 In 1967, with the Rhodesian rebellion entering its second year, the RF cabinet sought to change the flag again. On 17 January 1967, it established a ‘Committee on Honours and Awards’. This committee included several high-ranking members of the RF government, chaired by the secretary to the cabinet, also present were the secretaries for law and order, internal affairs, information, immigration and tourism, and defence. These men (there was not a single female RF cabinet minister during the rebellion) were given a remit: ‘to go into the general question 14 An image of Rhodes’ crest can be found at: ‘Armorial Bearings of Rhodesia’, Rhodesia and South Africa: Military History accessed 17 April 2015 at http://www.rhodesia.nl/ armorial.htm. 15 Cory Library, Rhodesia University, Grahamstown (hereafter CL) (Smith Papers), Cabinet Memoranda, S.R.C.(F) (63) 403—‘Southern Rhodesia Flag’—25 November 1963. 16 Ibid., p. 1.

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of honours and awards for Rhodesia’.17 The committee were tasked to investigate the institution of a new system of military and civil honours, to look into the potential for a new national anthem and: ‘to consider the question of a special flag design for Rhodesia and to submit recommendations for the consideration of the government or suggestions for public competition on colours and design…’.18 In the spirit of the RF’s populism, the committee began by soliciting flag designs from the general public, receiving more than 50 designs. The first of several attempts by the RF to include the Rhodesian public in its nation-building efforts, this approach arguably reflected a desire to save money on hiring a professional herald, critical at a time of economic sanctions, as much as it did the Rhodesian Front’s populism.19 The flag design competition was advertised in a rather bland and easily missed advert in The Rhodesia Herald.20 Regrettably the cabinet documents outlining the process do not include any of the submitted designs.21 The committee members adopted a set of guiding principles to judge the submissions it received. These conditions were not outlined in the advert and were as follows: a. the design should be as simple as possible; b. the design should have unity and be agreeably composed; c. colours should be harmonious, with the dominant colour being the national colour—dark green; d. the design should preserve a reminder of the former administration of the country;

17 (CL) (Smith Papers), Cabinet Memoranda, R.C.(S) (68) 92—‘Rhodesian Flag— Second Report of the Committee on Honours and Awards’—8 May 1968, p. 1. 18 Ibid., p. 1. 19 I. Henderson, ‘White Populism in Southern Rhodesia’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 14, 4 (1972), pp. 387–399, 20 Advertisement for Honours and Awards, The Rhodesia Herald, p. 5. 21 Thankfully, the New Zealand government published a short list of forty designs including the now infamous ‘Fire the Lazar!’ depicting a Kiwi bird shooting a green laser from its eyes. The designer, James Gray of Auckland, explained: ‘The laser beam projects a powerful image of New Zealand. I believe my design is so powerful it does not need to be discussed’. see ‘The Colourful Contenders for New Zealand’s New Flag’, BBC News, accessed on 23 February 2019 at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-32751191.

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e. the design should indicate Rhodesia’s independence by depicting some distinctive Rhodesian emblem.22 The judging criteria are worth exploring in greater detail, with several key themes emerging from the guidelines which touched upon key elements of settler identity in UDI-era Rhodesia. Firstly, there was the idea of a ‘national colour’, in this case dark green. The origins of this ‘national’ colour remain obscure. The committee claimed the dark green was the ‘national colour’ because of its prominence on the existing arms of Rhodesia: ‘bottle green has come to be generally accepted as the national colour, being the dominant colour in the Arms of Rhodesia…’.23 An alternative interpretation, subsequently offered in Parliament, was that the colour of the new design was derived from the traditional Rhodesian sporting colours of green and white, in which the country’s Olympic team had recently competed at the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games.24 Sport often plays a critical role in fomenting feelings of community, identity and belonging, as Eric Hobsbawm has written: ‘[t]he imagined community of millions seems more real as a team of eleven named people’.25 The playing field was an important space on which white Rhodesians could socialise and for newcomers to acclimatise to settler society, facilitating the development of a shared settler culture and identity as happened on many a distant periphery of the British Empire.26 Physical activity and ‘the outdoors’ was a central part of the

22 R.C.(S)

(68) 92, ‘Rhodesian Flag’. p. 3. 24 B. Novak, ‘Rhodesia’s “Rebel and Racist” Olympic Team: Athletic Glory, National Legitimacy and the Clash of Politics and Sport’, The International Journal of the History of Sport, 23, 8 (2006), p. 1375. This would be the first, and only, time that Rhodesia would participate in the Olympics. 25 E.J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1870: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 143. 26 D. Keyworth Davis, Race Relations in Rhodesia: A Survey for 1972–73 (London, Rex Collings, 1975), pp. 335–348; B. Novak, ‘Rhodesia and the Olympic Games: Representations of Masculinity, War and Empire, 1965–1980’, Sport in Society: Cultures, Commerce, Media, Politics, 18, 7 (2015), pp. 853–867; P. Godwin & I. Hancock, Rhodesians Never Die: The Impact of War and Political Change on White Rhodesia, c.1970– 1980 (Northlands, SA, Pan Macmillan South Africa, 2007), p. 38. 23 Ibid.,

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white Rhodesian self-image.27 As one 1967 pamphlet by the National Federation of Women’s Institutes of Rhodesia gushed: ‘[a]t week-ends and during holidays Rhodesians answer the call of the sunshine and unlimited space. They seek freedom on the open road, on the lakes and dams or wandering on the veld enjoying the wonders of nature’.28 Like other settlers across the world, white Rhodesians privileged their relationship with the land and nature to give them a sense of belonging. The country’s stunning and varied landscape, including areas of natural beauty such as Victoria Falls, Wankie National Park or the Vumba Mountains, often featured in white Rhodesian writing alongside the country’s ‘exotic’ wildlife such as elephants and leopards. Yet sport was also a vital component of imperial notions of masculinity and settler power. Colonial administrators and officials were regularly selected for their sporting, rather than their intellectual prowess.29 An active, robust masculinity and the attitudes of fair play engendered by sport were contrasted favourably with the lazy indolence of the native; in this formulation, physical activity gave the British the right to rule. These discourses became even more imperative in settler societies such as Rhodesia, where healthy, virile men and dutiful women were needed to populate the land with future generations of settlers.30 In Rhodesia, these notions would be personified in the figure of Ian Smith whose worldview would be profoundly influenced by his experience as a keen sportsman.31 Sport also played a crucial role in white Rhodesians’ sense of regional identity, where the settlers’ close relationship to Republic of South African manifested itself in sporting links. In an echo of the wishes of Jan Smuts and the Unionists in the 1922 referendum campaign, Rhodesia frequently competed as a province of South Africa in team sports such 27 Godwin

& Hancock, Rhodesians Never Die, p. 38. of the Federated Women’s Institutes of Rhodesia (hereafter FWIR), Great Spaces Washed With Sun: Rhodesia (Salisbury, M.O. Collins, 1967), p. 178. 29 B. Bush, ‘Gender and Empire: The Twentieth Century’, in P. Levine, Gender and Empire (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 85. 30 C. Hall, ‘Of Gender and Empire: Reflections on the Nineteenth Century’, in P. Levine, Gender and Empire (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 65. 31 B. Schwarz, The White Man’s World (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 417; I. Smith, Bitter Harvest: Zimbabwe and the Aftermath of Its Independence (London, Blake, 2008). 28 Members

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as rugby, cricket, hockey and swimming, taking part in ostensibly ‘national’ competitions such as the prestigious Currie Cup for rugby.32 Rhodesians banned from participating in many sports could, and did, represent South Africa in cricket and rugby in international matches.33 Amidst the isolation of international sporting sanctions, the sporting relationship with South Africa provided an opportunity for national sporting rivalries to emerge. These relationships illustrate the inherently transnational nature of the RF’s conception of a Rhodesian identity, something initially defined through membership of the wider British imperial community and later through a regional Southern African one. Though couched in the language of culture, race was a key determinant in these relationships. There was even an element of racial segregation among sports which somewhat mirrored class divisions in sporting preference back in Britain, for example, football (or soccer) and boxing, sports much beloved of Rhodesia’s black population, were much less popular among whites, who preferred rugby and cricket.34 Yet as well as reflecting Rhodesia’s sporting prowess, the committee’s report also suggested a far more practical aspect to the adoption of dark green; it was a colour that was suitable to the Rhodesian climate. Their report noted: ‘[t]he existing Rhodesian flag… is of a colour that does not take well in the dyeing and, therefore, fades badly’.35 In contrast, green and white were hardier and could withstand the rigours of the much-vaunted Rhodesian sunshine. The second key theme which emerged from the report on the new flag was the need to demonstrate Rhodesian independence with ‘some distinctive Rhodesian emblem’ while also including a reminder of the country’s previous administration.36 These two conditions embodied the paradox of Rhodesia after UDI, a place that sought to secure a future 32 Leys, European Politics, p. 76; R. Hyam & P. Henshaw, The Lion and the Springbok; Britain and South Africa Since the Boer War (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 227; Godwin and Hancock, Rhodesians Never Die, p. 38. 33 C. Little, ‘Rebellion, Race and Rhodesia: International Cricketing Relations with Rhodesia During UDI’, Sport in Society: Cultures, Commerce, Media, Politics, 12, 4–5, p. 525. 34 B. Novak, ‘Rhodesia’s “Rebel and Racist” Olympic Team: Athletic Glory, National Legitimacy and the Clash of Politics and Sport’, The International Journal of The History of Sport, 23, 8 (2006), pp. 1369–1388. 35 R.C.(S) (68) 92, ‘Rhodesian Flag’, p. 2. 36 Ibid., p. 2.

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(for white rule) while obsessing over its past. Several former British colonies, such as Australia and New Zealand, had fulfilled these requirements by retaining the Union Jack somewhere on the design. However, for the Committee on Honours and Awards, the continued use of the Union Jack sent a clear message: [W]hether or not Rhodesia retains a connection with the Crown, the independence of the country must be seen to be a fact. Since the confrontation with Britain the Committee believe that sentiment in the country will be against the continued use of the Union flag. For these two reasons the Committee recommend that the Union flag should not be incorporated in the new Rhodesian flag.37

Based on the guidelines the committee recommended two similar designs of a three-panel green and white flag, both featuring the Rhodesian coat of arms, the heraldry traditionally used by the sovereign when in the country. Justifying their decision, the committee explained that the designs had incorporated the ‘national colour’. Secondly, their use of the Rhodesian arms could both ‘commemorate the former connections with the mother country’ while simultaneously acting as a distinctive emblem signifying independence.38 Though not as obvious as the Union Jack, the use of the coat of arms was a subtle reference to Rhodesia’s continuing allegiance to the British Monarchy (for the time being at least). These arms included the shield, pick and heraldry of Rhodes that had been used upon previous flags, supported by two Sable antelope and topped with a Zimbabwe Bird, based on the soapstone artefacts found in the ruins of Great Zimbabwe, a place that would become a key site both of academic controversy and the Rhodesian tourist industry. The use of the Zimbabwe Bird was a classic case of settler appropriation of indigenous symbolism, justified in the context of minority rule by the white Rhodesians’ assertion that the ruins had been built, not by black Africans, but by the Phoenicians.39 Furthermore, the Zimbabwe bird had a particular association with Cecil Rhodes, who had been 37 R.C.(S)

(68) 92, ‘Rhodesian Flag’, p. 2 p. 3. 39 D. Lowenthal, The Past Is a Foreign Country (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 335. 38 Ibid.,

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captivated by the artefacts (their design features heavily in Herbert Baker’s Rhodes House in Oxford). The crest also included the national motto: ‘Sit Nomine Digna’ roughly translated as ‘May She Be Worthy of the Name’. The ‘name’ was that of Cecil Rhodes. Rhodes’ mythos was that of a fiercely independent man, an arch-imperialist who had acted unilaterally and decisively to bring Rhodesia into the colonial fold under his British South Africa Company even as the imperial government prevaricated in the region. He had earned opprobrium in Britain, clashing with the government in London, and defended settler interests in the wake of the bloody 1893 and 1896 conflicts between settlers and the indigenous African population. And, crucially, he knew how to deal with ‘the native’. No settler history of Rhodesia was complete without the tale of how Rhodes had ended the fighting with the Ndebele in 1896 by calling an indaba (meeting) with the Ndebele leaders (see Chapter 3). In July 1968, the amateur historical periodical Rhodesiana reprinted an account of Rhodes’ interment in the Matopos Hills near Bulawayo which demonstrated his mastery over the African: We had arranged for the natives who wished to see the interment, to be stationed on the side of the mountain in a body, and they came to the number of 1000 chiefs and about 3,000 of their men… As the coffin went slowly up [to the burial place]… the [Ndebele] Royal Salute “Bayete”… was immediately taken up by the whole of the assembled multitude of natives. The salute has never been given since the death of Moselikatze [Mzilikazi]… the founder of the Matabele race…40

Independence, determination, power over ‘the native’; together these attributes made Rhodes the ideal progenitor for rebel Rhodesia. The country’s national symbolism was reconfigured around an individual with British, Rhodesian and South African links who could appeal to all the dominant strands of the white population. The designs were also considered to be more practically suitable since ‘the design is… easily produced and the colours are fast and will wear well, much better than the existing flag’.41 Finally, the committee argued: ‘the design will be cheaper and easier to produce than the

40 J.C.

Shee, ‘The Burial of Cecil Rhodes’, Rhodesiana, 18 (July, 1968), p. 43. p. 3.

41 Ibid.,

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Fig. 4.2  Flag of Rhodesia, 1968–1979 (Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Flag_of_Rhodesia#/media/File:Flag_of_Rhodesia_(1968%E2%80%931979).svg)

present flag’.42 Every penny counted in sanctions-hit Rhodesia, which would have its new flag, but only at the right price. Specimens of the chosen designs were supplied to the cabinet for viewing. Keen to push on with the transition the committee recommended that, if accepted, the new flag should be ordered in time for hoisting just six months later, on 11 November 1968, the third anniversary of independence.43 With a design selected (Fig. 4.2), the cabinet and its committee now considered the matter closed. The whole business of redesigning the Rhodesian flag had taken just seven months. Though the process had been opened to public engagement with a competition for the flag’s design, a relatively low number of entries were received; by comparison the South African, flag committee in the 1920s had received between three and four thousand designs.44 Furthermore, it later became clear that politicians had been submitting designs themselves. The cabinet documents do not reveal where the submissions came from or who, if anyone, won the competition. Perhaps it was the committee members who came up with the version that was ultimately adopted, rather than a budding Rhodesian amateur graphic designer. Indeed, the new design was remarkable for reflecting the key themes cited by the committee

42 Ibid. 43 Ibid., 44 Saker,

p. 3. The South African Flag Controversy, p. 104.

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(and not publicly shared). The broad outlines of the design appear to have been envisioned from the very start of the process. The purpose of this new flag was twofold, firstly it sought to provide Rhodesians with a new symbol; a banner of the rebellion around which to rally and an icon of independence. Secondly, and arguably more vitally, it sought to demonstrate to the world the RF’s belated recognition that a legal, negotiated minority-rule independence was impossible. The new flag was what Eric Kennes and Miles Larmer have called a ‘performance of statehood’—it was part of a suite of symbols (currencies, postage stamps, national anthems and so on) that signified sovereignty.45 In abandoning the defaced blue ensign and the Union Jack (the two of which were used relatively interchangeably in Rhodesia prior to 1968), one of the primary concerns of the cabinet had been to demonstrate Rhodesian independence. Beyond this, the committee expressed a desire for functionality and cost-effectiveness. Consequently, the processes of meaning-making which transform flags from colourful pieces of cloth into highly emotive and representative symbols were almost entirely absent from the technical language used by the Committee on Honours and Awards in its report. The flag appeared to have emerged from an opaque bureaucratic process, to be imposed upon Rhodesia’s white and African populations (the latter of whom had barely been considered in the design process at all). However, the array of sentiments which emerged in the subsequent parliamentary debates surrounding the new flag suggested that even this relatively mundane process could give rise to the most florid prose and passionate feelings. What was more, it soon emerged that the RF could not agree among themselves as to the suitability of the new design and the character of the new nation that it represented.

45 See also J. Brownell, ‘The Visual Rhetoric of Stamps—Rhodesia and the Projection of Sovereignty (1965–1980)’, accessed at https://www.academia.edu/29917552/The_ Visual_Rhetoric_of_Stamps-_Rhodesia_and_the_Projection_of_Sovereignty_1965-80_. docx on 19 November 2016.

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Colourful Bunting or National Banner? Rhodesia’s Flag Debates, 1968 It was in the chambers of Parliament, where the Flag of Rhodesia Bill was debated throughout September 1968, that the language surrounding the design of Rhodesia’s new flag shifted from the technical to the emotive. As Harry Saker and Chris Champion have shown in Canada and South Africa, respectively, flag debates were often about so much more than a coloured piece of cloth.46 They aroused fiery passions and heated arguments about the peoples they represented. This was especially true in the culturally fragile settler societies, and in South Africa in the 1920s there was rioting and even fears of civil war when the National Party government proposed abandoning the Union Jack.47 At the second reading of the Flag of Rhodesia Bill on 3 September, the notoriously right-wing Minister of Justice and RF stalwart Desmond Lardner-Burke called symbols such as the flag ‘sacred’.48 Lardner-Burke gave a length introductory discourse on the use of flags in general and Rhodesian flags in particular. He reassured parliamentary colleagues that, while criticism of the new design would be inevitable: ‘[t]his decision was not made without a great deal of prior thought and consideration… and there is clearly a rationale to [it]’.49 Lardner-Burke highlighted the common colonial heritage of the current Rhodesian flag’s design and noted that many other Commonwealth countries had changed their flags since independence. At the same time, Lardner-Burke recognised the deep history that lay behind the symbolism used in the ‘Southern Rhodesia flag’ and he presented the redesign as something that had been forced upon the Rhodesians by the British government: Rhodesia… has, until now, been quite willing to keep the Union flag in her own. Things have changed and we must accept that change, just as others must accept it, Rhodesia is a nation justly proud of her essentially British heritage but independent nonetheless.50 46 Saker, The South African Flag Controversy; Champion, The Strange Demise of British Canada. 47 Saker, The South African Flag Controversy, p. 211. 48 Rhodesia Parliamentary Debates, 72, 1968, 925. 49 Ibid., 936. 50 Ibid., 933.

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Lardner-Burke’s logic mixed an image of a bold, proactive independent nation with a meek and passive one, a Rhodesia acting both unilaterally and at the behest of Britain. Onto the canvas of the flag were projected Rhodesia’s political travails since UDI, as much a signifier of British intransigence (to Rhodesians at least) as it was of Rhodesian independence. Stating that ‘[t]he colours were chosen for a Rhodesian motif’, Lardner-Burke cited their history as popular Rhodesian sporting colours and specifically addressed the omission of the Union Jack.51 While Britain had been ‘historically great’, Lardner-Burke argued, the Rhodesian nation had since come of age, evolving beyond the need for such close historical associations.52 The changing relationship between Rhodesia and Britain necessitated a reframing of the country’s colonial past. Lardner-Burke argued: ‘It is because of this clearly identifiable separate character which we have acquired which makes it desirable and necessary to have our own separate and clearly identifiable flag…’.53 This doublespeak sought to rationalise the failure of the RF’s attempts to secure minority-rule independence within the Commonwealth and the move towards a form of symbolic decolonisation that the new flag represented. It was also a cautious strategy designed to reconcile those who still held some affection for the Union Jack and those who were happy to see it abandoned. This approach suggested the limits of the RF’s imaginative project for independent Rhodesian nationalism and a desire for cross-European racial harmony, akin to that pursued in South Africa, in the face of ever more strident black nationalist challenge. It was also the latest iteration of the narrative of British perfidy that had been circulating since the 1950s (see Chapter 3), emphasising that it was Britain who had betrayed its imperial obligations, its own kith and kin, and forced the RF’s hand over UDI. Reinforcing the RF’s political legitimacy as the strongest guarantor of (white) Rhodesia’s future, these discourses positioned the rebel state as the true inheritor of a global settler Britishness. David Kertzer has noted that national symbols such as flags are often ambiguous and multivocal, meaning that they can be understood by different people in different ways, acting as facilitators of political

51 Ibid.,

934. 935. 53 Ibid., 935–936. 52 Ibid.,

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consensus.54 The Rhodesian flag debates show how ambiguity also acted as a double-edged sword. It created a space for contestations of the nation which challenged the RF’s attempts to produce and control national symbols. The multivocality of the new flag design was seized upon by several parliamentarians in the subsequent debates, including some RF ones, who took issue with the new design. The objections to the flag raised by RF members give a sense of the range of views about what Rhodesia meant and how it should be represented which differed from those offered by government ministers. These views broaden our understanding of pro-UDI settler nationalism. Lt-Col. A.J.W. MacLeod (RF Member for Eastern) believed that the flag should have been more reflective of Rhodesia’s nature as a Christian country. Ian Smith had famously declared that UDI had been taken to preserve ‘western, Christian, civilisation’.55 In recognition of this MacLeod proposed that it should include a cross and colours which were commonly associated with Christianity such as scarlet, blue, white and purple.56 His appeal to Rhodesia’s Christianity was based on an interpretation of Rhodesia as the last bastion of civilisation: ‘[o]ne by one on this continent of Africa the lights of Christianity are going out. The Christian countries of the still-free West are being subverted and Christianity is being diluted’.57 MacLeod’s understanding of the importance of Christianity was also based on broader imperial notions, as Patricia Grimshaw has shown, a heavily mission-influenced notion of ‘civilising mission’ became a major justification for Britain’s acquisition of an Empire following its abolition of slavery in 1833.58 MacLeod also presented a list of complaints about the proposed design which had been compiled by an ‘heraldic expert’, Dr. Robert Gayre.59 Gayre’s criticisms ranged from the fact that the flag was too 54 D. Kertzer, Ritual, Politics and Power (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1988), pp. 7–12. 55 B. Moore-King, White Man, Black War (Harare, Baobab Books, 1989), p. 113. 56 Rhodesia Parliamentary Debates, 72, 937. 57 Ibid., 937. 58 P. Grimshaw, ‘Faith, Missionary Life and the Family’, in P. Levine (ed.), Gender and Empire (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 264. 59 As well as his heraldic hobbies, Dr. Robert Gayre, from Edinburgh, was an inveterate racist with close links to right-wing organisations in Britain and Southern Africa. He was a prominent supporter of scientific racism through his editorship of the journal The Mankind Quarterly. See ‘Psychology, Racism, and Fascism, an Online Edition’, accessed

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similar to the Nigerian one, that it used ‘the colours of Islam’, that the design was too amateurish, and finally that the use of Rhodesia’s ‘royal’ coat of arms was almost as blatant a demonstration of Rhodesian subservience to Britain as including the Union Jack.60 MacLeod’s denunciation of the new flag showed how Rhodesia’s new symbols were implicitly racialised: Such colours in a flag therefore are such a departure from the European tradition and so reminiscent of the amateurish flag-making of many countries in Africa that we would have thought they would be undesirable in the manner in which they are used in the proposed new flag for Rhodesia.61

For MacLeod, something so African threatened to elide the difference between independent ‘black’ Africa and white-ruled Rhodesia, differences that were held up as the raison d’être of the settler state. MacLeod closed his argument by professing his satisfaction for the current flag, which he considered to be ‘thoroughly Rhodesian’.62 Lt-Col. H.D. Tanner (RF Member for Braeside) was similarly doubtful about the new design. Tanner argued for a more cautious approach to national symbolism, noting that Rhodesia was still a member of the Commonwealth and that if it left and became a republic, then it would no longer be able to use the royal coat of arms on its flag.63 He called for a new design in a tone that echoed MacLeod’s: ‘I feel that our identity with Christendom and our present and past link with Britain could well be indicated in any new flag by the inclusion of a cross and the use of all or any of the colours red, white and blue’.64 For MacLeod and Tanner,

at https://web.archive.org/web/20000826221047/http://www.ferris.edu/ISAR/ archives/billig/ on 22 October 2018. Gayre had also written in support of the idea that the Zimbabwe ruins were built by the Phoenicians rather than black Africans. White, Unpopular Sovereignty, p. 153. 60 Rhodesia Parliamentary Debates, 72, 1968, 938–940. 61 Ibid., 938. 62 Ibid., 941. 63 Ibid., 947. 64 Ibid., 947.

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notably both ex-military men, Rhodesia’s new identity should primarily be based around its Christianity. These dissenters were joined from the far right by the former RF and now independent member for Salisbury City, Robin James. James’ complaints about the aesthetics of the new flag had a personal dimension, as he had submitted a design of his own to the competition which he felt had not been taken seriously. James appeared more relaxed about the invented nature of the symbol: ‘[w]hat does it matter? We are inventing our own flag, which will only have any meaning to this country when people have identified themselves with the flag, it does not matter what it is whatsoever’.65 That said, he was scathing of the new design and would later acidly observe: ‘it is the Nigerian flag with our own coat of arms superimposed in the centre’.66 Dr. Ahrn Palley, the independent white member for Highfield and longstanding liberal critic of the RF, provided a critique from the opposite end of the political spectrum. Palley was a scourge of the government benches in almost every debate and he presented an alternative view of national symbolism that privileged its supposedly organic nature over its arbitrary invention. Deftly inverting the RF’s own discourses against them, Palley observed that the Union Jack stood for Rhodesia’s ‘proud history… [and] civilization which the hon. Members talk so much about’.67 He portrayed the changing of the flag as a blatant attempt to deny Rhodesia’s British heritage and pave the way for a republican constitution by abandoning the old flag, with its association with the British Monarchy. In another example of the transnational context in which these debates took place, Palley’s argument echoed John Diefenbaker’s opposition to the prospect of a new Canadian flag imposed upon ‘the people’ by the government.68 It was an open challenge to the idea of ‘invented tradition’, of which the RF’s new flag was a relatively classic example:

65 Ibid.,

969. 1760. 67 Ibid., 942. 68 S. Ward, ‘The New Nationalism in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand: Civic Culture in the Wake of the British World’, in K. Darian-Smith, P. Grimshaw, & S. Macintyre (eds.), Britishness Abroad: Transnational Movements and Imperial Cultures (Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 2007), pp. 245–246. 66 Ibid.,

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If a flag is to have any meaning whatsoever to a nation and a people, that flag must grow out of the history of the people, that flag must grow out of the loyalties and the sentiments and the honour of a nation. One cannot thrust aside a national flag and replace it by the equivalent of a piece of bunting and say that now represents the sentiments and the emotions of a people; that now is your new emblem of honour and loyalty and affection and esteem which a national flag represents. But that is what the Minister proposes… Every nation must have its symbols… those symbols must reflect the feelings of the nation, they cannot be artificially created. Those symbols cannot be designed by somebody taking paint and saying this shall be the new representation, but that is all the Minister’s speech suggests.69

Attributing the redesign to an ‘almost neurotic… psycho-pathological state’ of anti-British sentiment among some RF MPs, Palley railed against the government’s argument that the new flag would demonstrate Rhodesian independence to the world.70 Palley was sceptical of symbolic decolonisation’s potential to win the RF the global recognition it so desperately craved. Harshly critiquing this belief, and the broader legitimacy of the RF, Palley questioned: ‘[h]ow does the substitution of our present flag by this suggested new flag change the position one iota? It does not matter what flag we have, it makes not a scrap of difference to our independence, to our recognition by other countries…’.71 A clearly impassioned Palley then moved an amendment to have Bill’s reading delayed by six months so that the national mood towards the new flag could be better understood. The amendment was seconded by Mr. P.E. Chigogo (Member for Gokwe), who stressed that it was important to take time over such significant changes to national symbols. Lt-Col. Tanner agreed, arguing that ‘until Rhodesia’s true position has been finally cast, the introduction of a completely new flag for our country at this stage is somewhat precipitate’.72 In Parliament, the flag was becoming symbolic of UDI itself, a means through which to reflect on what some felt was the rapid seizure of independence by the RF. Another argument was advanced by a former party heavyweight and one of the original signatories of the UDI proclamation, Lord 69 Rhodesia

Parliamentary Debates¸ 72, 943. 945. 71 Ibid., 947. 72 Ibid., 945–947. 70 Ibid.,

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Graham (RF Member for Gwebi). James Angus Graham, the 7th Duke of Montrose, was a Scottish aristocrat and former agriculture minister who had since fallen out of favour with the RF high echelons due to his relatively hard-line stance on racial separation (even by Rhodesian standards). Graham argued that the Union Jack should be retained since it symbolised a ‘family’ of settler societies around the world.73 Like MacLeod, he approved of the current ‘Southern Rhodesian flag’. Graham made a specific plea for the retention of the Union Jack in the flag based on its historical significance to the country: The whole history of our country is not very long but perhaps there has been no greater event since the arrival of the Pioneers than the assumption of independence, and this was the banner under which we took our independence. Already in defence of our country, some of our soldiers… and policemen who have lost their lives have been buried under this flag. I think it is a very sad thing, while we are still in the heat of battle, so to speak, to abandon the flag – our present national flag.74

Lord Graham’s familial metaphors reflected the strong pull that old imperial notions of community still had in Rhodesia. Denying that the Union Jack abrogated any sense of distinct nationality, arguing: ‘I certainly do not – and I do not think any other Rhodesians or Australians or New Zealanders for that matter – regard this great old flag as in any way a symbol of subservience to anyone or to any person’.75 In this formulation, the Union Jack, as the flag under which UDI had been taken, could continue to represent white Rhodesia’s place in a global community of settler societies, the ‘old’ (white) Commonwealth family of which Rhodesia had been a sort of cadet branch. This notion was somewhat disingenuous, given that none of these settler societies had recognised rebel Rhodesia, even if they did contain several pro-settler sympathisers. Yet this argument was also predicated on a particularly ethnic conception of international relations, where having and celebrating a shared heritage 73 Rhodesia Parliamentary Debates, 72, 1762; G. Passmore (ed.), H.R.G. Howman on Provincialisation in Rhodesia 1968–1969 and Rational and Irrational Elements (Cambridge, African Studies Centre, 1986). 74 Rhodesia 75 Ibid.,

Parliamentary Debates, 72, 1765. 1762.

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counted for more than formal diplomatic recognition. Graham’s argument highlighted the indelibly transnational aspects of the ostensibly nationally bounded project of white Rhodesian nationalism and its processes, such as the creation of new flags. Rhodesian opponents of the new flag design, or the RF and its nation-building project, acknowledged this by invoking settler states as comparisons to make their various points. Despite what James claimed about inventing new flags whose content was irrelevant, both Palley and Graham, arguing from opposite poles of the political spectrum, drew upon imaginations of what the Union Jack represented, of what it meant to be ‘British’, of what it meant to be part of a wider ‘family’ of settler communities around the globe. ‘Britain’, for Palley and Graham, represented particular political and legal notions, but also a shared history of sacrifice and the dwindling glory of imperial endeavour. These vague, lofty-sounding, notions were the lodestone around which settler communities across the globe had formed their own national identities, which were intrinsically linked as part of an imperial ‘whole’. How to renegotiate this relationship had become the major task of settler populations in these former colonies of settlement, seeking to acknowledge this subservient past while suggesting an independent future. The problem was amplified in Rhodesia, where UDI was ‘sold’ as a repudiation of contemporary Britain. UDI-era Rhodesia’s propaganda machine exploited to the full the post-war malaise that many Britons felt following the Second World War and in doing so became a prism through which some in the ‘Mother Country’ perceived their own national identity.76 In Enoch Powell’s infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, delivered in Birmingham on 20 April 1968, Powell referred to a Briton seeking to emigrate to Australia to escape non-white Commonwealth immigration; this idea that some form of racialised identity could be recovered in ‘the colonies’ reached its apotheosis in UDI-era Rhodesia.77 It drew upon Rhodesian rhetoric that their race relations were exemplary, particularly when compared with 76 Rhodesia would later play a similar role for Americans disaffected by what they saw as a post-Vietnam emasculation of the United States. See K. Burke, Revolutionaries for the Right: Anticommunist Internationalism and Paramilitary Warfare (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2018), p. 49. 77 C. Schofield, Enoch Powell and the Making of Postcolonial Britain (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2015), p. 234.

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the troubled integration of new Commonwealth immigrants into British society. Even as some settler societies sought to establish their own national identities, Rhodesia embraced these white exiles, actively recruiting the disaffected to build their ‘new’ nation in the image of a past Britain, a historicised home-from-home on the highveld. Unlike Graham, Tanner and McLeod, many of the RF members participating in the flag debates were eager to endorse the proposed design, imbuing Palley’s ‘bunting’ with myriad meanings. Since the canvas of the flag was to be the backdrop onto which visions of the nation were projected, RF praise also hinted at the wider impact of the act of changing the flag, beyond the technicalities of the design and instead focusing upon the ‘Rhodesia’ that it stood for. J.A. Newington (RF Member for Hillcrest) acknowledged Rhodesia’s historical links with Britain but rejected any sort of continuing symbolic association. He claimed that the Britain Rhodesians had once loved no longer existed and the Britain of the present was not worth associating with. Newington argued: There are many growing up to-day… who have no knowledge of the Britain that was great… They look upon the Union Jack as a modern representation of the great double-cross. I believe that these youngsters growing up have a place for one loyalty only, have a desire for one loyalty only, and that is for Rhodesia.78

Similarly, T.M. Ellison (RF Member for Greenwood) claimed that he was ‘100 per cent’ behind the new design: ‘[w]hen one sees it, one will think of Rhodesia, of the sunny skies, of the people in it, of the living conditions – everything appertaining to Rhodesia – and thus very quickly it will find its way into the affections of the people’.79 Ellison was enthusing about the famous ‘Rhodesian way of life’, a deliberately ambiguous concept that could mean anything to anybody (provided that they were white): from camping trips in the bushveld, permanent white-minority rule, ownership of a swimming pool and servants rather than a dreary post-war terrace in rainy and ration-hit England, to being the last bastion of Christian civilisation in Africa.80 Ellison believed that those wishing to 78 Rhodesia

Parliamentary Debates, 74, 1968, 18. 955. 80 Godwin & Hancock, Rhodesians Never Die. 79 Ibid.,

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retain the Union Jack were simply ‘ultra conservatives’ and as far as he was concerned: ‘we are a new country, we have not much history, but I think it is time that the newly independent country has its newly independent flag’.81 This was exactly the logic that underlay the pageantry of the colonial independence ceremonies, introducing new symbols to make a clear demonstration of national independence. Ellison’s rhetoric articulated the complicated cocktail of feelings many white Rhodesians still harboured for the old ‘mother country’ but ultimately came down on the side of the nation: ‘It is time we had our own flag, and it is time it was differentiated from the British flag. This does not mean that I hate Britain; I do not. It does not mean that I detest everything the Union flag stands for; I do not. But I do support the things that Rhodesia stands for, and I am a Rhodesian first’.82 RF members also made their own comparisons to other countries in support of the new flag. R.T.R. Hawkins (RF Member for Charter) also offered a unifying message (for whites) interpreting the new flag as a symbol that all could agree on. He presented an image of a Rhodesia characterised as a nation of multinational white immigration to counter the argument that white Rhodesians born under the Union Jack would resent its removal from the new national flag. He argued: ‘[i]n this country to-day there are many people who were born under many different flags, but this is immaterial. Today they are one with each other, as citizens of Rhodesia. On the 11th November, 1965, we, too, gave birth to a new nation on this continent of Africa, and it is essential that, as a new nation, we should choose a new symbol’.83 Citing the example of the last settler society to secede from the British Empire, the United States, which had replaced its colonial flag with the ‘star-spangled banner’ in 1777, Hawkins argued that Rhodesia was now in the same position.84 The United States was a particularly beloved example for the RF, who had modelled the UDI proclamation after the 1776 Declaration of Independence (minus the language about all men being created equal). The notions of rural, individualistic frontiersmen which held a central place in the mythology of the American past resonated with white 81 Rhodesia 82 Ibid.,

Parliamentary Debates, 72, 955–956.

956 83 Ibid., 979. 84 Ibid., 979.

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Rhodesians. The Americanised pioneer narrative was especially influential among the RF’s white farmers and powerful rural branch organisations (see Chapter 2). However, the rural image remained distant for the overwhelming majority of white Rhodesians, living in the two cities of Bulawayo and Salisbury.85 Yet this suburban living, replete with automobiles, refrigerators, swimming pools and milk bars, displayed a level of conspicuous consumption more akin to the contemporary United States than Britain, with one commentator in the early 1960s claiming that, in their lifestyles at least, Rhodesians lived more like Texans than Britons.86 Like other supporters and opponents of the new design, Hawkins’ use of comparative examples served to locate the debate about the changing flag within global discourses of nationhood in addition to a national one focusing upon the RF’s rebellion. The design and subsequent discussions about the new flag were conducted in an almost exclusively white echo chamber but the 15 African MPs who sat in the Rhodesian Parliament offered some alternative perspectives during the debates. Rhodesia’s African MPs have widely been denounced as unpopular quislings and stooges of the regime by subsequent nationalist narratives of history. But, as Jane Parpart has shown, these MPs played an important role in Rhodesia and their presence and courage in the utterly hostile environment of the Parliament chamber showed the range of ways in which Africans could oppose the regime, besides joining one of the guerrilla forces in their training camps beyond Rhodesia’s borders.87 The MPs brought their own perspectives and experiences as black citizens of Rhodesia to the debate, helping illustrate just how narrow the RF’s conceptualisation of the new flag and its wider nationalist programme really was. African MPs, such as S.M. Gondo (Member for Ndanga), drew upon Rhodesia’s pioneer history in a different way to their RF opponents. Gondo claimed that Rhodesia’s pioneers 85 In 1969, some 146,402 Europeans, Asians and Coloured lived in Salisbury and Bulawayo alone. The total population was 228,296. Data from 1969 Population Census (Interim Report) Volume I: The European, Asian and Coloured Population (Salisbury, Government Printer, 1971), pp. 9–12. 86 P. Keatley, The Politics of Partnership: The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (London, 1963), p. 226. 87 J. Parpart, ‘Silenced Visions of Citizenship, Democracy and Nation: African MPs in Rhodesian Parliaments, 1963–1978’, in S.J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni & J. Muzondidya (eds.), Redemptive or Grotesque Nationalism?: Rethinking Contemporary Politics in Zimbabwe (London and New York, Peter Lang, 2010), pp. 185–216.

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had ‘cheated’ Lobengula, the Ndebele monarch at the time of the colonial occupation. Because of the profoundly unequal and exploitative nature of this past, Gondo was adamant that the flag ‘must represent the people of Rhodesia – all people, the black people and the white people, the Coloured people and the Asian people of Rhodesia’.88 C.M. Chipunza (Member for Bindura) echoed Palley’s complaint that the flag was being introduced as a fait accompli: ‘all that Government has done is to tell the country. Behold your flag’.89 Chipunza suggested that a national referendum be held and lamented that Rhodesia’s black population had not been consulted or represented in the new design whereas ‘In the Union Jack we still have something which reminds us of the multiracial nature of this country’.90 Chipunza’s comments on the Union Jack illustrate the aspirations of an earlier generation of colonial nationalists that Britain, and particularly the British Crown, would protect ‘native’ interests against rapacious settlers (see Chapter 4). This logic was explicitly enshrined (if not always followed) in Britain’s African settler colonies, particularly through Kenya’s Devonshire Declaration (1923), and even the ‘reserve powers’ of Rhodesia’s 1961 constitution. Even though UDI was a repudiation of this mentality the actions of the settler government and Britain’s acknowledgement of its own powerlessness to intervene had led the major Zimbabwean nationalist groups to abandon any hope of British intervention. Yet Chipunza’s speech in 1968, long after this seemed clear to others, is revealing for showing the symbolic and emotive hold that older, rights-based (rather than ethnically based) narratives of British imperialism possessed, as well as their deeply personal manifestations. C. Hlabangana (Member for Mpopoma) explained that ‘the man on the street’ would be have been baffled by the byzantine bureaucracy of the committee and the fairest way to let ordinary people have their say was through a vote.91 These critiques illustrated how the RF had structurally excluded black Africans from its nationalist project under the cloak of an ‘open’ competition. They were part of a wider disingenuous and highly cynical settler rhetoric in which ‘civilisation’, ‘standards’ or

88 Rhodesia 89 Ibid.,

Parliamentary Debates, 72, 950.

964.

90 Ibid. 91 Ibid.,

972–973.

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education and property qualifications excluded black people, rather than their race. Finally, P.H. Mkudu (Member for Manicaland and leader of the opposition) explained that the RF’s actions were ‘trying to divert people’s minds from the realities to a sort of life of Alice in Wonderland’.92 To believe Rhodesia was now independent, Mkudu argued, was ‘fantasy. We are no more independent than we were before November 11, 1965’.93 Even though Mkudu’s concerns about moving too fast with new symbolism echoed those of some RF MPs, his argument was interrupted throughout by white parliamentarians, including Lardner-Burke, but his focus upon the broader issue remained sharp, as shown by the following exchange: [Mkudu]: Settle the country’s difficulties and the other issues that will entitle us to say we are free and independent. Then we will decide on a flag. I think that is fair enough. – [MR. MILLAR: Aren’t you free and independent now?] – I wish I was free – [MR. MOSELEY: Free of what?] – [MR. GONDO: Of the Rhodesian Front.] – Free from Rhodesian Front discriminatory laws, Mr. Speaker – [AN HON. MEMBER: Name five.]94

As with many debates in UDI-era Rhodesia, parliamentary dissent proved futile and the RF’s design easily made its way through Parliament. Finally closing the debates on 1 October 1968, LardnerBurke declared that the green and white design presented by the government would not be changing. In reference to the Union Jack, he argued that its exclusion reflected the fact that less than ten per cent of the submissions that the committee had received since first soliciting designs had included it.95 He neglected to mention that the Cabinet Committee had ruled out its inclusion from the start. To Lardner-Burke and the government: ‘the position of the Union Jack… [was] obvious, subservience to the British Government’.96 Yet his statement belied the range of opinions and interpretations of the flag and the nation it represented that had been revealed in the preceding debates. 92 Ibid., 93 Ibid.,

973. 974.

94 Ibid.,

976. Parliamentary Debates, 73, 1968, 22. 96 Ibid., 22. 95 Rhodesia

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The Rhodesian debates about symbolism and nationhood, though framed in the specific context of UDI, were part of wider general trends in which settlers around the world renegotiated their relationship with Britain. They also addressed different theoretical approaches to studying nationalism, specifically invented traditions and imagined communities. Invented traditions, defined by Terence Ranger and Eric Hobsbawm in their seminal 1983 text The Invention of Tradition, are: ‘a set of practices normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past’.97 Typically invented by the state, invented traditions are a classic ‘top-down’ interpretation of nationalism, nuanced when combined with Benedict Anderson’s work on ‘imagined communities’, those shared collective consciousnesses enabled by distance-eliminating and homogenising technologies such as print media, faster methods of transport, shared concepts of time and other modernist developments which privilege the ‘community’ as a wellspring of constitutive ideas.98 The Rhodesian flag shows the complex interplay of these interpretations; it began as a messily invented tradition that went onto become the symbol of an imagined community. The series of different interpretations of Rhodesia and Britain which emerged from the flag debates demonstrated that the flag could represent any number of things. Like settlers across the globe, and the new governments in the now independent nations across the African continent, the white Rhodesians were going through processes of post-imperial soul-searching. These processes added layers of meaning to the relatively functional purpose of the new flag: creating a symbol of Rhodesian independence that would foster white unity and courage international recognition. Such debates did not end with the parliamentary vote and as the flag was revealed to the nation on the third anniversary of independence, they continued in the nation’s media.

97 E. Hobsbawm, ‘Introduction: Inventing Traditions’, in E. Hobsbawn & T. Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 1. 98 B. Anderson, Imagined Communities (London, Verso, 2006).

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The New Flag Unfurled On the evening of 10 November 1968, the Union Jack (in its official capacity) was lowered in Rhodesia for the final time.99 The Rhodesia Herald described the moment: ‘[u]nheralded and without fuss, the African sun finally set on the Union Jack at 6.07 p.m. yesterday when two African constables belatedly lowered the flag in Salisbury’s historic Cecil Square’.100 Three years to the day after UDI, Rhodesia had a series of its own, muted ‘flag lowering’ ceremonies. The flag change demonstrated the importance to the RF of ‘performing statehood’ with new symbolism but also highlighted the continuing ambiguities of UDI. Unlike other former colonies, Britain did not participate in the symbolic handover on Cecil Square, and it had no international legitimacy.101 Though the artificiality of such ceremonies, and post-colonial nationhood more generally in Africa had long been accepted, the challenges facing Rhodesia were especially acute.102 It also suggested the complicated currents of Rhodesian sovereignty. This reflected the fact that UDI’s early success was predicated on Rhodesia’s strong military, the support of regional allies such as South Africa and Portugal, and the international community’s willingness to break sanctions. Luise White has suggested that Rhodesian sovereignty during UDI derived from UN sanctions, yet this sort of sovereignty came at a cost: expensive, clandestine trade operations.103 Only a ‘handful’ of spectators came to watch the old flag come down, with the Herald quoting ‘an elderly European woman’ as saying

99 The Union Jack continued to be raised and lowered for annual ‘Pioneer Day’ ceremonies on 12 September, to symbolise the occasion on which the pioneer column had raised it at Fort Salisbury in 1890. 100 ‘Flag in Square was Last’, The Rhodesia Herald, 11 November 1968, p. 1. 101 Brownell, ‘The Magical Hour of Midnight’. 102 D. Cannadine, ‘Introduction: Independence Day Ceremonials in Historical Perspective’, in T. Barringer, R. Holland, & S. Williams (eds.), The Iconography of Independence: ‘Freedoms at Midnight’ (London and New York, Routledge, 2010), p. 10; E. Kennes & M. Larmer. The Katangese Gendarmes and War in Central Africa: Fighting Their Way Home (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2015). 103 L. White, ‘What Does It Take to Be a State? Sovereignty and Sanctions in Rhodesia, 1965–1980’, in L. White & D. Howland (eds.), State of Sovereignty: Territories, Laws, Populations (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2009), pp. 148–168.

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the occasion was ‘desperately sad’.104 Elsewhere on the front page the paper reported that Ian Smith had watched the official lowering of the Union Jack and the ‘Southern Rhodesian flag’ at the British South Africa Police’s Morris Depot in Salisbury at 5:30 p.m. Its report of that ceremony was similarly subdued: ‘[i]n spite of the pomp and the pageantry, it was a sombre occasion for many in the crowd, who had been born, fought and lived under the Union Jack and who had come to revere the Rhodesian Flag’.105 Meanwhile, the Rhodesian Treasury promoted the new design by taking out a full-page colour advert showing the new Rhodesian flag unfurled near the monument to the Shangani patrol, a group of pioneer heroes who had been wiped out during the military conquest of the country in the 1890s, and encouraging readers to ‘Save’ and ‘Prosper with Rhodesia’.106 The next day, on 11 November, Rhodesia’s Independence Day, large public ceremonies inaugurated the new Rhodesian flag. Newspaper reports on 12 November were accompanied by photographs of the ‘thousands’ who had gathered in Salisbury to watch the flag-raising ceremony. The Herald reported that: ‘[s]pectators, some on rooftops, spontaneously applauded when the flag… fluttered in the breeze’.107 Ceremonies were held in major centres of the European population across the country, with flag-raisings in Umtali (with crowds of ‘several hundred’ to a thousand), Que Que (around three hundred), Wankie, Fort Victoria, Shabani, Belingwe, Selukwe, and Gwanda.108 Additionally ‘the most picturesque and informal of the day’s ceremonies’ were held at Rhodes’ grave in the Matopos Hills near Bulawayo, ‘where a crowd of 400 gathered in the rain to pray for Rhodesia’.109 The RF was careful to associate itself closely with these ceremonies by having government ministers present to lead them.110 The ministers all read out an identical speech, which was written for Clifford Dupont, the Rhodesian the head of state since UDI, at the main ceremony in Salisbury. 104 ‘Flag

in Square was Last’. of an Era as Crowd Sees Union Jack Lowered’, The Rhodesia Herald, 11 November 1968, p. 1. 106 Treasury Advert, The Rhodesia Herald, 11 November 1968, p. 5. 107 ‘Rhodesia Raises Her New Flag’, The Rhodesia Herald, 12 November 1968, p. 1. 108 ‘Clapping as Flag Flies in Umtali’, The Rhodesia Herald, 12 November 1968, p. 2. 109 ‘Rhodesia Raises Her New Flag’. 110 ‘Clapping as Flag Flies in Umtali’. 105 ‘End

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Dupont stated: ‘[t]oday when we fly our new flag for the first time, we reaffirm our determination to maintain our sovereign independence and to be responsible for our own affairs’. In a speech at a flag-raising party in Pretoria, John Gaunt, who was Rhodesia’s Accredited Diplomatic Representative to South Africa, made the claim that: ‘[t]he new Rhodesian flag was not the instrument to unite Rhodesians for the simple reason that the flag itself had grown from the desires of a united Rhodesian nation…’.111 Gaunt’s political triumphalism belied the genesis of a flag which had in fact mysteriously emerged from a relatively vague set of Cabinet Committee guidelines and deliberations. In among these triumphant speeches and images of thronging crowds were some voices of dissent. The Rhodesia Herald itself was one of them. On 12 November, its leader adopted a cautionary tone: ‘[a]s a political signal to the British Government, as much as to the people of Rhodesia, hoisting the new flag at this time is understandable. But it raises the question of how much more the British Government should be expected to stomach, after seeing the Union Jack lowered…’.112 The new flag’s inauguration came in the wake of the collapse of the latest round of Anglo-Rhodesian settlement talks in October 1968. The Herald’s comments considered the dual purposes of the flag change, which had been as much of a signal to British government negotiators, who met with Smith and a Rhodesian delegation on board the warship H.M.S. Fearless between 10 and 13 October, as it was to ordinary white Rhodesians. It reminds us that the flag change was also an act of diplomatic posturing as well as an expression of Rhodesian domestic nationalism (and also indicative of how these two phenomena were mutually constitutive). Indeed, that very week a representative of the British government, George Thomson, had been in Salisbury negotiating with the RF. The Herald believed that the RF government’s actions were jeopardising future chances of a negotiated independence with Britain at a time when such a settlement appeared more likely than ever before. This demonstrated how Rhodesia’s independence remained ambiguous and contested years after UDI—with some still arguing that only a negotiated independence could be considered legitimate. The Herald argued that ‘UDI was not a logical step, but landed the country in a mesh of difficulties from which

111 ‘End

Product of Nation’—Gaunt’, The Rhodesia Herald, 12 November 1968, p. 2. Not Yet Out of the Wood’, The Rhodesia Herald, 12 November 1968, p. 6.

112 ‘Rhodesia

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there is no escape without a settlement’.113 The Herald’s editorial line urged Rhodesians to be mindful of how close a settlement might be and not to ‘allow the champagne to go their heads [Rhodesia’s independence balls, in true settler fashion, were invariably boozy]’.114 The Rhodesia Herald’s warning went largely unheeded among the letter writers to the newspaper that November. Correspondents such as Diana Flynn, who argued that the changing of the flag was a betrayal by Smith of his promises of loyalty to the Queen and the retention of the Union Jack, were very much in the minority.115 Meanwhile, a range of arguments were advanced in support of the flag. These arguments often made comparisons with other countries and several of them touched upon themes that had been raised in the parliamentary debates. J.R.N. Higgs of Umtali argued that Rhodesia was only doing what was being done elsewhere and added a Cold War dimension to the argument by claiming that those opposing the change should be thankful that: ‘Rhodesia is one of the few countries in Africa which, having assumed its independence, has been able to progress without having to replace the Union Jack with a Chinese or Russian flag’.116 Later that month, C.S. Herud of Sinoia spoke in terms which would have no doubt pleased J.A. Newington by claiming that, as a young Rhodesian: ‘I feel that I do not owe any loyalty to the Queen or the Union Jack’.117 While Herud appreciated the emotional links, some older Rhodesians might have had with regard to the flag and Queen he argued: ‘I feel that these people should not try to influence the younger Rhodesian generation as they are to make up the independent Rhodesia of tomorrow’.118 The divergence of views between younger Rhodesians and some older settlers suggested that the very nature of the term ‘Rhodesian’ was constantly under contestation, particularly in the wake of UDI. 113 Ibid. 114 Ibid. 115 Diana Flynn, ‘Rhodesia’s Word Tarnished’, The Rhodesia Herald, 15 November 1968, p. 13. 116 J.R.N. Higgs, ‘Europeans Raised Flag, Entitled to Lower It’, The Rhodesia Herald, 18 November 1968, p. 7. 117 C.S. Herud, ‘Younger View of New Flag’, The Rhodesia Herald, 25 November 1968, p. 9. 118 Ibid.

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International Responses Throughout the process of replacing Rhodesia’s colonial-era flag, the international community had been as important an audience as Rhodesia’s white population. The flag was, after all, intended to symbolise Rhodesian independence to others, a key element of performative statehood. Yet this new national symbol failed to achieve any sort of international acceptance. A colourful piece of cloth was unable to conceal the fact that the RF ruled over a pariah state in 1968. By the end of that year, every one of Britain’s African colonies had gained its independence, and while Portugal’s African empire and Apartheid South Africa continued to hold out, the continent had changed beyond all recognition in less than a decade. Rhodesia remained an anachronistic throwback to settler colonialism masquerading as a bastion of enlightened freedom on the model of countries such as the United States. The limits of Rhodesian nationhood were demonstrated in 1972 when Rhodesia was controversially invited to compete in the Olympic Games to be held in Munich. Rhodesian athletes were permitted to participate under the condition that their team competed under: ‘the same flag (the Union Jack) and the same anthem (God Save the Queen) as it had done… in 1964’.119 Rather than protest this demand, which had been designed so as not to appear to give Rhodesia recognition, the RF government acquiesced and allowed the team to go to Germany in accordance with the International Olympic Committee’s conditions, though they were later disqualified from competing anyway due to international pressure.120 Smith and his cabinet colleagues had rationalised this as part of ‘a long-standing tradition in Rhodesia that politics should not interfere with sport’ but by allowing the athletes to compete under colonial symbolism they either misjudged or failed to appreciate what message this might send out and undermined the very point of changing the flag in the first place.121 This was, of course, rather ironic given the centrality of sport in informing the very design of the new flag. Commenting on the RF’s decision the British newspaper the Sunday Times argued that: ‘by agreeing that their athletes should observe all 119 Keyworth

Davis, Race Relations in Rhodesia, pp. 336–368. (Smith Papers) Rhodesian Cabinet Minutes, R.C.(S) (71), ‘Thirty-Fifth Meeting’, 21 September 1971. 121 Ibid. 120 (CL)

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the protocol – flag, national anthem and so on – which applied to the pre-U.D.I., colonial Rhodesia, the Smithites are emphasizing not their self-proclaimed independence but the lack of it…’.122 The flag also generated controversy back in Britain, where Rhodesia still maintained a diplomatic mission, Rhodesia House, on The Strand.123 As Josiah Brownell has shown, Rhodesia House became something of a performative space for British and Rhodesian attitudes towards the Rhodesian rebellion in which the new flag occupied a central, if farcical, position.124 On 9 December 1968, Sydney Brice, in charge of Rhodesia House, telephoned the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office telling them that he had been ordered by the RF government to fly the new flag in London, as Brownell relates: Brice was informed that this was deemed unacceptable by the British and that, were the flag to be flown, the government would find a means to bring it down. The British further warned that the flying of the flag jeopardised the prospects for settlement talks. Following these warnings, Salisbury instructed Brice to hold off flying the flag for the time being and Brice subsequently sent his flag-pole away ‘for repair’. During this waiting period, the Special Branch kept watch over Rhodesia House for any flag-related developments.125

When the new flag was eventually raised on new years’ eve, 1968, the British decided to ignore it. It did, however, become the target for a series of ‘flag raiders’ who would periodically shinny up Rhodesia House’s flagpole to pull down the new flag or replace it with the Union Jack.126 Internationally speaking, Rhodesia’s new flag acted as a symbol of its newfound independence, but for all the wrong reasons. It was the banner of a pariah state, determined to cling onto minority rule at any cost. Whereas the new flags of ex-colonies flew proudly at the United Nations, 122 Quoted

in Davis, Race Relations in Rhodesia, p. 338. building, formerly the headquarters of the British Medical Association, became the Rhodesian High Commission in 1923, and is now home to the Zimbabwean Embassy to the United Kingdom. 124 Brownell, ‘A Sordid Tussle on the Strand’, pp. 471–499. 123 The

125 Ibid., 126 Ibid.,

p. 485. p. 486.

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the Rhodesians could not even ensure that theirs flew over their own diplomatic mission in London. The international reaction to the flag gave the lie to Rhodesia’s comparisons with other settler colonies, whose autonomy and independence were not in doubt, whatever flags they flew.

Conclusion: Flagging up Difference The RF’s nation-building project had an unsteady start. The arguments which emerged from the flag debates illustrated the ambiguity of Rhodesian nationhood, and of what terms like ‘Rhodesia’, ‘Rhodesian’ and ‘Britain’ meant. Ambiguity would dog the RF’s subsequent attempts at symbolic decolonisation and its subsequent nationalist project until it collapsed in 1978–1979. This ambiguity was typified by the redesign of the flag, after three years, years in which the RF had been negotiating with the British in order to secure internationally recognised independence. As they had before UDI, the British refused to budge on the principle of majority rule, a position which was strengthening as global decolonisation gathered pace. Tired of fruitless negotiations, the RF acted quickly, as it had with UDI three years before, to demonstrate Rhodesia’s independence, initiating a period of symbolic decolonisation which drew upon broader settler debates in the ‘British world’ and the experience of other newly independent states in Africa. The new flag, then, represented a departure in the RF’s nationalist project, as it moved beyond seeking a form of independence within the Commonwealth to the performance of independent nationhood outside it. Yet it also reiterated the racialised nature of Rhodesia and, by celebrating UDI, it emphasised the backward-looking settler colonialism that the rebellion was defending. It showed an unwillingness, or perhaps an incapacity, to confront the challenges that minority rule presented to any sort of long-term vision for a Rhodesia nation. Even as the region’s other white-ruled state, South Africa, sought to articulate its own nationalism as equally ‘African’ under Prime Minister B.J. Vorster, Ian Smith and his cabinet remained unrepentantly European.127 This remained the central tension at the heart of the RF’s symbolic

127 See J. Miller, An African Volk: The Apartheid Regime and Its Search for Survival (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2016) for a detailed exploration of Vorster’s ‘African’ nationalism.

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decolonisation—it sought to jettison the styles of imperial domination while retaining the substance of it. Though Rhodesia’s debates were inevitably specific and peculiar to the circumstances of UDI, they took place at a time of wider global reassessments of imperial pasts, particularly among settler societies. Settler populations in South Africa, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand had all begun to reassess their sense of self in the wake of decolonisation, Britain’s turn from its former empire towards Europe, and the reassertion of indigenous rights prompted by global decolonisation. Rhodesia’s debates can be located within these wider trends, showing the enduring salience of these transnational settler networks, constituting a wider ‘family’ of nations that referred to each other when talking about their own nationalism. Historically, Rhodesia had positioned itself within these wider imperial communities and, like them, drew upon imperial symbolism and rhetoric to justify their dominance. However, in the 1960s and 1970s this was becoming a less viable strategy to pursue. Though Rhodesia was formally ostracised from the neo-imperial settler family it still drew upon transnational discourses, such as anticommunism, Christianity or ‘the West’ as the grit around which Rhodesian national identity could form. Despite this broader context, the retention of cherished imperial symbols like the Union Jack showed how emotive and significant the British (and imperial) connection were for white Rhodesians. By 1968 it was increasingly anachronistic for white Rhodesians to be claiming to be part of a wider British ‘family’, yet the comments of figures at both ends of the political spectrum, such as James Graham and Ahrn Palley, demonstrated the power that understandings of Britain, Britishness and the idea of a global settler family still held in Rhodesia in 1968. RF ministers like Lardner-Burke couched their arguments in terms of the self-determination of New Zealanders and Australians. If Rhodesians had a similar distinct, separate, character, the argument went, they deserved similar, independent, national arrangements. However, after symbolic decolonisation had begun in 1967 the RF’s nationalist project became more akin to that of an ex-colony than an old dominion. Like the majority-ruled former colonies that it held in such contempt, the RF found itself abandoning symbols associated with the imperial metropole. The new flag was intended to be a clear demonstration of Rhodesian independence, domestically and internationally. It was an attempt to end the ambiguities surrounding the legitimacy

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of Rhodesia’s independence (and, by association, the party that had declared it). Consequently, RF supporters of the flag often spoke in terms of the new nation and its right to independence. When comparisons with other African states were invoked, they were characteristically negative. White politicians, recognising the path Rhodesia had set out upon, argued for different symbols which would help distinguish Rhodesia from the majority-ruled states to the North: a more ‘sophisticated’ design, an emphasis on Christianity, and so on. Yet the method by which the RF tried to address this was to include a prominent reminder of Rhodesia’s colonial heritage on the new design, with the heraldry of the arch-imperialist Cecil Rhodes. This attempt to mark out difference created even greater ambiguities about the RF’s project. Unlike ex-colonies, where highly symbolic if falsely homogenising independence ceremonies made it clear that the new nation was independent, Rhodesia had to wait three years for its own, muted, flag-raising ceremony, three years in which the nature of the Rhodesian nation remained hotly contested. These comparative aspects of Rhodesian symbolic decolonisation have some wider implications for studies of nationalism, particularly in this period. The Rhodesian case demonstrates how membership of wider imperial networks was fundamental to smaller settler communities even as the empire began to fall apart in the 1960s and 1970s. It offered reassurance to small, outnumbered, populations of whites that they were part of something bigger (and that something bigger could back them up in their struggles against the majority). These networks were important to white Rhodesians’ sense of place in the world. Whereas Canadians and Australians were free to search their souls over nationhood at their own leisure, the Rhodesians’ hand was forced by UDI, and yet they still debated their colonial past. The flag debates show how difficult it was to create equally emotive alternatives to cherished imperial symbols like the Union Jack. While Rhodesia’s debates about nationhood were intrinsically related to its situation as a strange halfway house between settler colony and independent nation, they were part of wider global and transnational trends taking place across the collapsing ‘British world’ at the same time. Another key point that the flag debates suggest about the RF’s nationalist project was its essential contingency. The rapid nature of the RF nation-building illuminates the often-reactive character of its nationalism. The RF had tried to retain imperial symbols for the first three years of its rebellion and, when it realised the increasing absurdity of

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doing so, embarked on an ambitious programme of symbolic decolonisation. Rather than the logical progression that RF rhetoric made it out to be, the shift towards symbolic decolonisation represented the failure of the RF’s first phase of nation-building—an autonomous settler colony within the Commonwealth—and the start of a second phase in which the RF sought to build an independent nation outside it. These phases bled into each other, with consequences for the RF’s nationalist project. Indeed, Rhodesians were marking out difference from Britain even prior to UDI, even though they had continued to negotiate with Britain for some form of legitimate independence in the years following UDI. The Herald’s sombre leader was right; among other things, the new flag was designed to send out a message. Finally, the debates about Rhodesia’s new flag reinforced the profoundly racialised nature of the new nation; the voices of Rhodesia’s black, Asian and Coloured (as the mixed-race community was known) communities were almost completely absent from these debates. At no stage had anyone in government seemed to seriously consider whether there should be some representation of most of the Rhodesian population on the new flag. The only African symbol included was the Zimbabwe Bird, and even then, its very African-ness was denied by the RF, who preferred to believe it was part of a civilisation built by Phoenicians. Most of the parliamentary and media debates focused on symbolism which was predominantly associated with whites: Cecil Rhodes, the Union Jack and the (white) Rhodesian ‘way of life’. When blacks were mentioned, it was usually as a function of white prejudices. Though some African MPs supported the idea of a new flag for Rhodesia, many of them were not in favour of the new design and their complaints pointed to the structural exclusion of Rhodesia’s non-white communities. This deliberate exclusion reflected the incredibly narrow nature of the RF’s vision of the nation after UDI—a nation designed to privilege whites and subjugate blacks. The inadequacy of the flag was belatedly acknowledged in 1979. After an internal settlement with a group of black nationalist leaders (which excluded the major externally based parties of the Patriotic Front, see Chapter 7) the new, and very shortlived, nation of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia was created with its own flag and national symbolism. Though Smith and the RF claimed to have relinquished power in favour of Bishop Abel Muzorewa’s United African National Congress, they continued to control the key levers of military,

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Fig. 4.3  Flag of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, 1979–1980 (Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Rhodesia#/media/File:Flag_of_Zimbabwe_Rhodesia.svg)

economic and political power, meaning the state was never recognised. In the debates leading up to the introduction of the ZimbabweRhodesian flag in 1979 (Fig. 4.3), the need to design a flag that specifically addressed issues of multiracialism by including the colours black and white was emphasised.128 It also pointedly abandoned the royal coat of arms and Rhodes’ heraldry, having been consciously designed to reflect other post-colonial African flags. In 1968, Rhodesia’s new flag provided a canvas onto which white Rhodesians could project their myriad imagined nations. Deliberately ambiguous and exclusionary, it nevertheless successfully became the banner of Rhodesian independence, used in both Britain and Rhodesia. In many ways, it was as clear a symbol as the Union Jack had been. In others, it represented the continued ambiguities of Rhodesian independence, a project inextricably linked with its British origins. This tension would the RF’s attempts at symbolic decolonisation right up to the collapse of the settler state. What is more, despite its hurried genesis, the Rhodesian flag has enjoyed a remarkably enduring legacy. Though only flown in Rhodesia for a decade, the ‘old green and white’ remain at the heart of a thriving community of Rhodesians, and their sympathisers,

128 See the debates on the Flag of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia in Zimbabwe Rhodesia Parliamentary Debates, 100, 1979, 1141 onwards.

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online.129 One can purchase the flag either full size, in miniature to place upon a desk, or upon a wide range of ‘Rhodie’ merchandise such as mugs, car licence plates, stickers and blankets.130 To the protestors on The Strand back in the late 1960s, the Rhodesian flag was a symbol of white supremacy, a notion which has proved to have had a chilling afterlife in a world where white nationalism is resurgent. In June 2015, Dylann Roof massacred 9 black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina. After the event, Roof was found to have dabbled in the new, digital Rhodesian community, and photos emerged of him wearing a jacket onto which he had sewn Rhodesian and apartheid-era South African flags.131 There is evidence to suggest that this act of mindless racist violence has perversely spurred a renewed interest in the Rhodesian flag and nation among hardcore white nationalists, over half a century after UDI was first declared.132

129 Popular

Rhodesian folk singer John Edmond (see Chapter 6) released a song ‘Green and White’, on his Troopiesongs album in 1976. See J. Edmond, The Story of Troopiesongs and the Rhodesian Bush War (Johannesburg, Roan Antelope Music, 1982), p. 85 for lyrics and Edmond’s commentary on the song. 130 ‘Rhodesia Gifts’, Cafepress accessed on 16 February 2019 at https://www.cafepress. com/+rhodesia+gifts. 131 See John Ismay, ‘Rhodesia’s Dead, But White Supremacists Have Given It a New Life Online’, New York Times, 10 April 2018, accessed on 16 February 2019 at https://www. nytimes.com/2018/04/10/magazine/rhodesia-zimbabwe-white-supremacists.html. 132 Ibid.

CHAPTER 5

Sovereign Independence? Rhodesians and the Monarchy, 1965–1970

Eight months after Rhodesia’s new flag had been raised, Rhodesians went to the polls to vote in another referendum. As well as new constitutional proposals, the Rhodesian electorate was to decide whether the country would become a republic. The debates about republicanism and constitutional change show how white Rhodesian views of the nation developed in the years following UDI. If it was possible for some people to see the flag issue as insignificant, it was less easy to dismiss the significance of constitutional change. Indeed, after five years of failed negotiations with the British government, it was at this point that the RF really made its case for a new and independent Rhodesia, supported by an entirely new constitution in the spirit of the RF’s segregationist policies. Both supporters and opponents of a republic portrayed constitutional change as the cutting of the apron strings, the comprehensive ‘break’ with Britain that would finally see Rhodesia emerges sovereign and independent. It was a point of no return which seemed to slam shut the door on a negotiated independence. In 1969–1970, Rhodesia remained relatively stable despite five years of UDI; this gave the RF the opportunity to try to take its nation-building in a new direction with a new constitution, removal of selected old colonial symbolism and a sustained campaign of fierce Parts of this chapter originally appeared as D. Kenrick, ‘Settler Soul-Searching and Sovereign Independence: The Monarchy and Rhodesia, 1965–70’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 44, 6 (2018), pp. 1077–1093. © The Author(s) 2019 D. Kenrick, Decolonisation, Identity and Nation in Rhodesia, 1964–1979, Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32698-2_5

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anti-British rhetoric. The transition between these phases was neither clear nor smooth, leaving many debates unresolved, and significant questions about nationhood and Rhodesian identity remained contested half a decade after UDI. Rhodesia’s republican debates also located the country at a nexus between the ‘old’ settler colonies and non-settler ex-colonies. White Rhodesians made use of what might be called a rhetorical settler toolkit: a series of techniques and discourses that settlers used to talk about themselves and their place in the world. At the same time, they faced a dilemma familiar to many non-settler ex-colonies, how to definitively end the relationship with the former colonial power. This chapter shows how the choices the RF made weakened their endeavour by focusing too much on their colonial past at the expense of a multiracial post-colonial future, as well the essentially reactive character of the RF’s nation-building project as typified in its attempt to first retain the monarchy and then get rid of it. At all stages, the RF moved cautiously. It began by presenting the Rhodesian nation as staunchly monarchist and then changed tack to argue that a republic was the only way forward. The RF’s nationalism had all the ambitions of typical nationalist projects: it was exclusionary of a whole range of ‘others’, it sought to unify (some of) the population behind it, and it helped legitimate the RF’s authority by successfully associating the party with the nation. However, it was undermined by the fact that it was too narrow and exclusionary. It failed to unify even the tiny white community and had little appeal among Rhodesia’s majority black population. It legitimated the RF’s authority among some whites while simultaneously delegitimising anything to do with Rhodesia in the minds of most of the African population. Also, the close association of the RF with the nation, which was cemented in 1969, meant that white perceptions of the success or failure of Rhodesia shaped how they supported the RF and its state in the 1970s, leading to its ultimate collapse. Though presented as independent nationhood, what the RF had achieved in 1969 was merely a postponement of a serious national crisis at a time when the military and economic situation in the country was relatively favourable for the settler state.

Loyal Rebels and an Imperial Monarchy On 11 November 1965, shortly after Rhodesia declared independence from the UK, Prime Minister Ian Smith declared ‘[l]et there be no doubt that we in this country stand second to none in our loyalty to the

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Queen’.1 This loyalism was reflected in constitutional continuity. The new constitution (the ‘1965 constitution’) that Rhodesia adopted upon UDI was almost identical to its predecessor, which had been negotiated between Edgar Whitehead’s UFP government and the British and had been endorsed by the settler electorate in a referendum back in 1961. The main change was the removal of the so-called reserved powers which had been held by the British government. The reserved powers were the matters on which the UK Parliament could overrule the Rhodesian Legislative Assembly, most notably ‘African affairs’ (as policy affecting Rhodesia’s indigenous populations was known).2 In contrast to this significant change, one of the most notable elements of continuity in the 1965 constitution was the retention of the British Monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, as Rhodesia’s head of state. This was reconciled with UDI by appointing a new representative for the Queen in Rhodesia, replacing the erstwhile governor, Sir Humphrey Gibbs, with a clumsily titled ‘officer administering the government’.3 This position, an old colonial term for officials who ruled in periods when governors were not present, was awarded to the elderly RF stalwart Clifford Dupont.4 To reinforce the loyalty of the Rhodesian rebels, now technically traitors to the British Crown, the UDI proclamation was signed beneath a large portrait of the Queen and ended with the coda ‘God Save the Queen’. The seemingly paradoxical words and deeds of the RF government regarding the Queen were part of a global tradition of what was known as ‘loyal rebellion’ in the settler societies of the British Empire. Over a century before UDI, Australian settlers sought to protest the future transportation of convicts to the Antipodes.5 On 25 August 1851, a group of 1 Anon.,

Rhodesia’s Finest Hour (Salisbury, 1965). a relatively minor sop to ‘partnership’ the government ended official usage of the term ‘native’ in the mid-1950s. M.O. West, The Rise of an African Middle Class: Colonial Zimbabwe 1898–1965 (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2002), p. 30. 3 A. Megahey, Humphrey Gibbs Beleaguered Governor: Southern Rhodesia 1929–69 (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1998) provides the most comprehensive account of Gibbs’ difficult tenure as Governor during the UDI years. 4 The author thanks Donal Lowry for this point. 5 D. Lowry, ‘Ulster Resistance and Loyalist Rebellion in the Empire’, in K. Jeffery (ed.), ‘An Irish Empire’? Aspects of Ireland and the British Empire (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1996), pp. 191–215; P. Pickering, ‘Loyalty and Rebellion in Colonial Politics: The Campaign Against Convict Transportation in Australia’, in P. Buckner & R.D. Francis (eds.), Rediscovering the British World (Calgary, Calgary University Press, 2005), pp. 87–89. 2 As

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disgruntled settlers gathered in Hobart Town, Tasmania, and burnt an effigy of the Tasmanian Governor and British secretary of state for Colonial Affairs while cheering for Her Majesty. An accompanying band provided a jingoistic soundtrack to this conflagration by playing ‘God Save the Queen’.6 This concurrent celebration of the British royal family and excoriation of the British government were known by the oxymoronic term of ‘loyal rebellion’. Monarchism often lay at the heart of British settler identities in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and it was inextricably associated with acts of loyalist resistance.7 The practice of loyal rebellion stemmed from notions of an ‘imperial monarchy’, a highly symbolic and emotive concept with appeal across the racial divides of the Empire’s subjects. The imperial monarchy was a complex blend of ‘invented tradition’ and ‘imagined community’, simultaneously representing a transnational imperial identity while also providing an impetus for more localised nationalistic sentiment. This was precisely the role that Prince Albert had envisaged for the monarchy before his premature death in 1861.8 With the Crown under threat from an increasingly formalised constitutionalism in Victorian Britain, the Empire offered new opportunities to rejuvenate Britain’s ailing monarchy, and much of the pomp and ceremony which Britons have come to think of as ‘timeless’ stems from this relatively recent period.9 Settlers made a distinction between the British government and Britain itself, as represented by the monarchy, which was perceived to be above the capricious governments of the day (especially when both 6 Pickering,

‘Loyalty and Rebellion’, pp. 87–89. Buckner, ‘The Long Goodbye: English Canadians and the British World’, in P. Buckner & R.D. Francis (eds.), Rediscovering the British World (Calgary, Calgary University Press, 2005), pp. 181–207; J. Lambert, ‘An Unknown People: Reconstructing British South African Identity’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 37, 4 (2009), p. 604; J. Lambert, ‘“Their Finest Hour?” English-Speaking South Africans and World War II’, South African Historical Journal, 60, 1 (2008), p. 61. 8 Reed, Royal Tourists, pp. 8–9. 9 D. Cannadine, ‘The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual: The British Monarchy and the “Invention of Tradition”, c.1820–1977’, in E. Hobsbawm & T. Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 101–164; C. Reed, Royal Tourists, Colonial Subjects and the Making of a British World 1860–1911 (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2016) provides an excellent overview of the monarchy’s place in the empire from the late nineteenth century. 7 P.

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indigenous and settler groups were seeking to protect their rights). This ‘Britain’ was an idealised notion of Britain and Britishness which was exemplified and even magnified by settlers who felt a need to perform their Britishness (to the natives) more urgently than their metropolitan kith and kin.10 As Mark McKenna has noted: ‘[m]onarchy in the colonial setting was an act of imaginative recreation’.11 The plasticity and enigmatic nature of the British Monarchy were strengthened by the behaviour of the royals themselves who, Prince Albert aside, were relatively disinterested in the Empire. Victoria, revered by settlers around the world, never went further than Ireland, and the global imperial tours of her sons were seen by the princes as hunting trips or opportunities to spend time in a masculine community of naval men rather than solemn duties discharged to their imperial subjects.12 This insouciance, and some political manoeuvring by the very same governments against whom the monarchy was often contrasted, allowed the idea of an imperial monarchy to grow, and royal personages increasingly transformed into simulacra for British imperialism. This idea became so powerful that the second generation of imperial royals sought to fulfil these notions of duty by actively visiting the Empire.13 Rhodesia itself enjoyed a royal visit after the Second World War in 1947, by King George VI and the young princesses Elizabeth and Margaret as part of their South African tour.14 The monarchy, steeped as it was in tradition and history, provided an opportunity for white settlers, with their relatively short-lived colonial histories, to tap into something that felt broader, older, and which often provided a familiar reminder of home.15 Furthermore, the monarchy could play a unifying role in societies which had significant populations 10 A. Thompson, ‘The Languages of Loyalism in Southern Africa, c.1870–1939’, English Historical Review, 118, 477 (2003), pp. 617–650; B. Schwarz, The White Man’s World (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 22. 11 M. McKenna, ‘Monarchy: From Reverence to Indifference’, in D.M. Schreuder & S. Ward (eds.), Australia’s Empire (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 262. 12 Reed, Royal Tourists, pp. 14–18. 13 Ibid., p. 14. 14 H. Sapire & A. Grundlingh, ‘Rebuffing Royals? Afrikaners and the Royal Visit to South Africa in 1947’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 46, 3 (2018), pp. 524–551. 15 Reed, Royal Tourists, p. 276.

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of non-British white settlers, such as South Africa or Canada where, as John Darwin observes: ‘the lack of any consensus on the nature of the “state” made the monarchy the only available focus of national loyalty’.16 The power of the imperial monarchy was so great that it even appealed to, and was an oft-used tool of, indigenous nationalist movements. In Southern Africa, black nationalist associations in the early twentieth century sought to take advantage of their position as ‘subjects’ of the monarch to protest the abuses of white settlers.17 Yet indigenous attempts to use the language of British imperial ideals, which the monarchy came to embody, were not the same as the ethnic (white) discourses of kinship which underlay loyal rebellion. Though often a headache for metropolitan administrators, uppity settlers were never seen to present the same threat to imperial rule that indigenous protest did. The long and bloody history of colonial policing attests to the fact that an indigenous threat of rebellion would be viewed in an entirely different context to a settler one, revealing the importance of race to loyal rebellion. In this racially structured context, it is perhaps unsurprising that discourses of ‘loyal rebellion’ were central to RF rhetoric in the mid-1960s. As we shall see, throughout the early years of UDI distinctions were repeatedly drawn between the ‘Britain’, as represented by the Queen and the British people, and the British government to suit a fluid set of political needs. As Donal Lowry has observed: ‘the Rhodesians believed that they had the right to disobey the decisions of British governments if they believed it was in the true interests of the British Empire’.18 What made UDI novel was twofold: that the threat of rebellion was actually carried out and that the very notions upon which it was predicated quickly began to lose their salience after 1965.

16 J. Darwin, ‘A Third British Empire? The Dominion Idea in Imperial Politics’, in J. Brown & Wm. Roger Louis (eds.), The Oxford History of the British Empire Volume IV: The Twentieth Century (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 76; D. Lowry, ‘The Crown, Empire Loyalism and the Assimilation of Non-British White Subjects in the British World: An Argument Against Determinism’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 31, 2 (2003), pp. 96–120. 17 See P. Limb, ‘The Empire Writes Back: African Challenges to the Brutish (South African) Empire in the Early 20th Century’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 41, 3 (2015), p. 610 for an African example. 18 Lowry, ‘Ulster Resistance’, p. 195.

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Rhodesian Republicanism, 1965–1969 Rhodesian anxieties about the monarchy surfaced immediately before and after UDI. On 9 November 1965, the RF government sent a message to the Queen via Brigadier Andrew Skeen, the Rhodesian High Commissioner in London, explaining Rhodesian exasperation at repeated failures to reach a settlement, but stressing the settler population’s loyalty to the Queen.19 It was this message which alerted those in the know that the last-ditch negotiations between Ian Smith and Harold Wilson had broken down and that a unilateral declaration of independence was imminent. Soon after UDI, on 17 November 1965 the RF Minister of Justice Desmond Lardner-Burke tried to explain the new constitution with its oaths of loyalty to the Queen in The Rhodesia Herald: ‘You are loyal to your country and you are loyal to the person of Her Majesty the Queen’. Lardner-Burke went on to state that ‘his loyalty was to the Queen and to Rhodesia’.20 After UDI, the position of the Queen was problematic given her role as the British head of state. Ian Smith articulated the RF’s position on the monarchy in a debate on independence negotiations in September 1965, shortly before UDI: As far as we are concerned the Queen [is Queen] of Rhodesia… not the Queen of anyone else. We accept her as the Queen of Rhodesia and we are loyal to her in that category, in that definition.21

The distinction between the ‘Queen of Rhodesia’ and the ‘Queen of anyone else’ was formally known as ‘divisibility of the Crown’ and became increasingly important to settler societies in the twentieth century. Divisibility of the Crown enabled Britain’s former settler colonies to retain symbolic ties with the UK while demonstrating their political autonomy, especially as the British Empire was replaced by the much more loosely bound Commonwealth. One of the earliest settler societies to promote divisibility of the Crown was South Africa, where the National Party government of 1924–1929’s ‘two-stream policy’ had 19 Peter Joyce, Anatomy of Rebel: Smith of Rhodesia (Salisbury, Graham Publishing, 1974), p. 223. 20 ‘Constitution is “Interim”—Lardner-Burke’, The Rhodesia Herald, 17 November 1965, p. 1. Italics added by author. 21 Rhodesia Parliamentary Debates, 62, 1965, 991.

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promoted a distinct South African monarchy.22 In Canada, Queen Elizabeth II became ‘Queen of Canada’, a role distinct from her position as ‘Queen of the United Kingdom’, upon her coronation in 1952.23 This divisibility, enshrined in law in the Royal Titles Bill of 1953, has remained significant today, with Queen Elizabeth II acting as the Monarch of sixteen ‘Commonwealth realms’, including the former settler colonies of Canada, Australia and New Zealand.24 Others were less committed to monarchism. Eleven days after UDI, on 22 November, Mrs. A. Whatling displayed an indifference to the Queen, pledging herself instead to the prime minister: ‘As thousands of others, I am behind you all the way Mr. Smith, and as long as you say “God save the Queen” I will repeat it, but in my heart I will say God save our Prime Minister…’.25 Some letter writers advocated going the ‘whole hog’ and declaring Rhodesia a republic.26 For ‘A Loyal Rhodesian’, the monarchy was redundant: ‘[o]ur Government has inherited a youthful, virile, modern country… It should also be realised that allegiance to the Crown is not to any person but to an outmoded form of monarchy, which by its very dependence on servility and rule by fear makes a mockery out of the accepted concepts and tenets of democracy’.27 Meanwhile, the anonymous correspondent ‘Shovel’ of Salisbury claimed that many were ‘torn between conflicting loyalties’.28 ‘Shovel’ 22 Moodie,

The Rise of Afrikanerdom, p. 78. ‘Canada and the End of Empire’, p. 115. 24 See ‘The Queen and the Commonwealth’, accessed on 25 August 2015, at http:// www.royal.gov.uk/MonarchAndCommonwealth/Overview.aspx, for explanations of the Queen’s relationship with the individual Commonwealth Realms. Besides the UK and those listed above, the other realms are Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Grenada, Jamaica, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu. C. Schofield, Enoch Powell and the Making of Postcolonial Britain (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2015), p. 99. 25 Mrs. A. Whatling, ‘Let Us Show the World’, The Rhodesia Herald, 22 November 1965, p. 9. 26 Iain Braid-Smith, ‘Go Whole Hog and Declare Us an Independent Republic’, The Rhodesia Herald, 25 November 1965, p. 13. 27 ‘A Loyal Rhodesian’, ‘Monarchy Outmoded’, The Rhodesia Herald, 24 November 1965, p. 9. 28 ‘Shovel’, ‘Many Are Torn Between Conflicting Loyalties’, The Rhodesia Herald, 22 November 1965, p. 7. 23 Buckner,

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wrote of a loyalty to Rhodesia which conflicted with a loyalty to ‘heritage and traditions of fair play and good faith’ which were being eroded by the Rhodesian government’s censorship policies and suppression of bad news in the wake of UDI.29 For Shovel and others Britain, as personified through the Queen, represented a particular way of life and standard of conduct which UDI threatened to jeopardise. Shovel’s letter shows how a sense of specific national loyalty to Rhodesia had been compatible with a wider imperial loyalty to Britain but gives a sense of the tensions that resulted when the two identities were forcibly disassociated through UDI. Iain Braid-Smith, who sought to ‘go the whole hog’, felt that a Rhodesian republic would be unifying, a way to end divisions between white Rhodesians torn between supporting the RF and those remaining loyal to the Queen or the British government. He claimed that: ‘[w]ith a republic established we would only have to be loyal to Rhodesia, not any one person or group of people’.30 However, Braid-Smith recognised that some Rhodesians still had strong feelings about the Queen and believed that UDI had been couched in terms of loyal rebellion: ‘because many Rhodesians did not want to break the bond of loyalty they felt towards the Queen, Mr Smith was not sure of their loyalty to him or the Queen in the event of a republican Rhodesia emerging from the declaration of November 11’.31 These conflicts expressed themselves in peculiar ways, such as the ‘battle of the books’. Shortly after UDI, several white Rhodesians had queued up to sign the visitors’ book at Government House in Salisbury as a public show of support to the now-deposed, Governor Sir Humphrey Gibbs, and Britain in defiance of the RF’s actions. Sir Humphrey, following British government instructions, had declared the RF rebel government illegitimate, maintaining that he represented the Queen and the ‘legitimate government’ in Rhodesia. In response to this unconventional act of resistance, the Rhodesian government set up their own visitors’ book in Parliament in an attempt to attract a larger number of signatures than the governor.32 Typical of early white Rhodesian responses

29 Ibid. 30 Braid-Smith,

‘Go Whole Hog’, The Rhodesia Herald, p. 13. p. 13. 32 Ibid. It is not known which book managed to attract the most signatures. 31 Ibid.,

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to UDI, the reasons for signing these books were manifold and could even be contradictory. The books generated a flurry of correspondence to The Rhodesia Herald from writers seeking to understand or explain the motives of those who signed Gibbs’ book. On 19 November, Meg Becker of Salisbury railed against the ‘traitors to our country’ who were signing Gibbs’ book.33 The following day Elizabeth Adams of Borrowdale urged people to recognise that the signatures were most likely a reflection of personal support for Gibbs rather than the British government. Though as Governor Sir Humphrey was the Queen’s representative in the country, he was also Rhodesian-born and generally popular among white Rhodesians. The writer and later biographer of Ian Smith, Philippa Berlyn, who was personally acquainted with Gibbs, called him ‘A knight in shining armour… a gentleman of the old school…’.34 H. Bendyshe Walton, another letter writer to The Herald, thought along similar lines and felt compelled to explain why they had signed Gibbs’ book, not out of disloyalty to Ian Smith ‘for whom I have the greatest respect and admiration’, but rather ‘purely to express my unswerving loyalty and devotion to my Queen (most emphatically not the British Government)’.35 A day later ‘D.P.’ of Salisbury wrote to praise Sir Humphrey Gibbs and lament the ‘tragic conflict of loyalties’ existing in Rhodesia in late 1965: We have produced a situation where this dichotomy now exists and while we print the head of the Queen on our new stamps and openly affirm our loyalty to her and yet remove all honour from the person of her chosen representative, no honest Rhodesian can know where his loyalty lies.36

Despite the emotions he inspired, Gibbs was hardly an active opponent of the regime, and his actions immediately preceding and following UDI arguably facilitated the rebellion. On 3 November, Gibbs enacted a State of Emergency at the RF’s request, as Bill Schwarz notes: 33 Meg Becker, ‘These Traitors to Our Country’, The Rhodesia Herald, 19 November 1965, p. 10. 34 See P. Berlyn, Rhodesia: Beleaguered Country (London, The Mitre Press, 1967), pp. 106–109; quote from p. 106. 35 H Bendyshe, ‘The Book—Why He Signed’, The Rhodesia Herald, 26 November 1965, p. 15. 36 ‘D.P.’, ‘Tragic Conflict of Loyalties’, The Rhodesia Herald, 27 November 1965, p. 7.

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‘[i]n doing so, he signed the means by which he himself was effectively to be deposed’.37 Similarly, in a move that would come in for some criticism later, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson had also instructed Gibbs to ask civil servants to remain at their posts noting that ‘it is the duty of all citizens to maintain law and order in the country and carry on with their normal tasks. This applies equally to the judiciary, the armed services, the police, and the public service’.38 Despite issuing this proclamation, which almost immediately poured cold water on any hopes of a counter-rebellion, after UDI Gibbs was ostracised by the RF government. He swiftly lost his official car (which became the property of the officer administering the government) and had his telephones cut off. Gibbs spent four years living in Government House in a sort of demimonde, regularly visited by Hugh Beadle, the Chief Justice who would later grant the RF de jure authority over Rhodesia. Though Government House was just down the road from Ian Smith’s family residence in Salisbury, the RF censorship machine sought to erase the governor from existence.39 Gibbs became a personification of Rhodesia’s post-UDI identity crisis. Like the British imperial system he represented and from which he derived his authority, Gibbs was left awkwardly at the heart of a Rhodesian society torn between its colonial past, its rebellious present and its independent future. In this peculiar context, it was unsurprising that some, like Bendyshe Walton, felt obliged to sign the governor’s visitors’ book out of sympathy. Despite the early exhortations from some white Rhodesians for republican status, the government continued to profess its loyalty to the Queen. There were both strategic and emotive dimensions to this paradox, chiefly the RF’s objective of seeking to follow the conventional path of Britain’s former colonies by securing independence within the Commonwealth. The question of loyalty was repeatedly addressed by RF politicians, in both parliamentary exchanges and public broadcasts. In early 1967, Smith was asked about his thoughts on the Queen in an interview with the state-owned Rhodesian Broadcasting

37 Schwarz,

The White Man’s World, p. 413. in L. Bowman, Politics in Rhodesia: White Power in an African State (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1973), p. 118. 39 Berlyn, Rhodesia: Beleaguered Country, p. 107; P. Berlyn, The Quiet Man: A Biography of the Hon. Ian Douglas Smith, I.D. Prime Minister of Rhodesia (Salisbury, M.O. Collins, 1978). 38 Quoted

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Corporation (RBC) radio service. This interview was republished in the news magazine Rhodesia Commentary, a propaganda organ run by the Rhodesian Ministry of Information for international and domestic consumption. Smith repeated the position he had held in October 1965, claiming that: ‘Queen Elizabeth is our Queen under our Constitution’.40 Repeating his stock condemnation of British government officials for trying to bring the monarchy into disrepute by involving the Queen in Rhodesian politics, Smith stressed the divisibility of the Crown: ‘I am grateful that whenever I take my oath… I take it to the Queen of Rhodesia, not to the Queen of Britain’.41 Yet the same year the RF dropped an oath of loyalty to the Queen from its party constitution, and by October, Smith was arguing for new symbolism for the country, claiming that: ‘the whole concept of the Queen has been distorted by party politicians’.42 As had been the case with the Union Jack, despite historical sentimental links, the RF and some white Rhodesians were beginning to see the retention of the Queen as head of state as impractical, and a barrier to the international recognition they sought. This was exacerbated by the behaviour of the Queen herself who, despite caution on the part of a palace reluctant to see the monarch manipulated and exploited by either side, made some public pronouncements in opposition to UDI which supported the British government’s negotiating position.43 This shifting position was reflective of broader global trends. As recently as the 1950s, the Rhodesians had been able to play up the threat of an expansive and irresistible Afrikaner nationalism to provoke the British into creating the Central African Federation.44 But by 1965, loyal rebellion was no longer a viable tool, when there was little at stake for a Britain committed to majority-rule independence elsewhere in Africa.

40 Rhodesian Ministry of Information, Rhodesian Commentary, 1, 27 (27 January 1967), p. 6. 41 Ibid. 42 Rhodesian Ministry of Information, Rhodesian Commentary, 1, 45 (9 October 1967), p. 1. 43 Murphy, Monarchy and the End of Empire, pp. 101–102. 44 P. Murphy, ‘Government by Blackmail: The Origins of the Central African Federation Reconsidered’, in M. Lynn (ed.), The British Empire in the 1950s—Retreat or Revival? (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 53–57.

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The world was changing; Britain was weakened by the Second World War and its misadventures in Suez and was angling to join the fledgling European Economic Community; the settler societies of Canada, Australia and New Zealand had begun to move closer to the United States, the new guarantor of global security and trade; South Africa had left the Commonwealth and become a republic; Kenya had gained its independence, and the old colonials from places like India had come home (or fled to outposts like Rhodesia) just as the first Carribean and South Asian immigrants began to arrive back ‘home’ in Britain in numbers. Bill Schwarz has described how this felt to many like the end of an era, the collapse of a world that only a decade before had seemed built on an unshakeable edifice: a British world, an imperial world.45 Settler communities across the globe shared a dilemma in the 1960s and 1970s. Though settler-colonial nationalism and a sense of broader, imperial belonging were by no means as mutually exclusive as later nationalist accounts suggest, there was clearly a change taking place.46 J.G.A. Pocock, the New Zealander and historian, famously captured this sense of loss and dislocation when Britain joined the European Economic Community: ‘you threw your identity, as well as ours, into a condition of contingency’.47 In this broader context of transitions and realignments, the fact of Rhodesian autonomy and Harold Wilson’s publicly stated disavowal of the use of military force in Rhodesia meant that there was nothing that Britain could do to prevent UDI.48 In 1960, South Africa’s white electorate voted for the country to become a republic. The British Monarchy had always had an ambiguous

45 Schwarz,

The White Man’s World, p. 7. D. Cole, ‘The Problem of “Nationalism” and “Imperialism” in British Settlement Colonies’, The Journal of British Studies, 10, 2 (May, 1971), pp. 160–182 for an early dispelling of this imperial versus national binary. 47 J.G.A. Pocock, ‘Conclusion: Contingency, Identity, Sovereignty’, in A. Grant & K.J. Stringer (eds.), Uniting the Kingdom: The Making of British History (London, Routledge, 1995), p. 297. 48 P. Murphy, ‘An Intricate and Distasteful Subject: British Planning for the Use of Force Against the European Settlers of Central Africa, 1952–65’, English Historical Review, 121, 492 (2006), pp. 746–777; C. Watts, ‘Killing Kith and Kin: The Viability of British Military Intervention in Rhodesia, 1964–65’, Twentieth Century British History, 16, 4 (2005), pp. 382–415. 46 See

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quality in South Africa, where a significant number of the settler population, the Afrikaners, associated it and other British imperial symbols with the defeat of the Boer republics in the Anglo-South African wars.49 In South Africa, the achievement of a republic had long been a central tenet of Afrikaner nationalism, which first won power in South Africa with J.B.M. Hertzog’s government in 1924.50 In an electorate of 1,763,291, some 1,602,005 voted in the referendum, which produced a majority in favour of a republic in all of South Africa’s provinces except Natal, which even then remained a bastion of British imperial sentiment.51 That it took the Nationalist Party, elected again in 1948, twelve years to establish a republic in a country where there was strong anti-British sentiment suggests the power that old imperial symbols such as the monarchy continued to hold in Britain’s former settler colonies. Elsewhere, in Australia, a steady decline in support for the monarchy during the 1960s and 1970s resulted in the royals being satirised and the emergence of a serious republican movement.52 In the 1960s, Canada, Prime Minister Lester Pearson toyed with the idea of abandoning the monarchy altogether as a demonstration of Canada’s new united nationhood in the face of Quebecois separatism.53 Settler societies around the world were renegotiating the position of imperial cultural icons such as the monarchy in a post-imperial age. Rhodesians, tied as they were into broader settler networks, were part of this trend taking place in settler societies and African colonies across the globe in the 1960s and 1970s as much as it was a purely Rhodesian issue. These processes had roots stretching back to the First World War, when countries such as Canada sought greater independence from Britain. Changes within the wider English-speaking world were a result 49 L.

Witz, Apartheid’s Festival: Contesting South Africa’s National Pasts (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2003), pp. 93–94. See also P. Buckner, ‘The Royal Tour of 1901 and the Construction of an Imperial Identity in South Africa’, South African Historical Journal, 41, 1 (1999), pp. 324–348. 50 See D. Moodie, The Rise of Afrikanerdom: Power, Apartheid, and the Afrikaner Civil Religion (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1980), pp. 111, 285. 51 Figures from P.S. Thompson, Natalians First: Separatism in South Africa 1909–1961 (Johannesburg, Southern Book Publishers, 1990), p. 166; See also J. Lambert, ‘The Last Outpost—The Natalians, South Africa, and the British Empire’, in R. Bickers (ed.), Settlers and Expatriates: Britons Over the Seas (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 173. 52 McKenna, ‘Monarchy: From Reverence to Indifference’, pp. 279–281. 53 Buckner, ‘The Long Goodbye’, p. 202.

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of evolving national and regional consciousness in Britain and its colonies which gave rise to a new set of priorities in the post-war period. This era, which John Darwin has called the ‘Fourth British Empire’, saw a brief attempt by Britain to adapt to a post-war world in which its power was severely curtailed by a shifting global situation which meant the ‘British world system’ could no longer operate as it had for almost a century and a half.54 The decline and fall of the British Empire inevitably went some way towards undermining the significance and emotive effect of the ‘imperial monarchy’, which was fast reconstituting itself as a Commonwealth entity. As Rhodesia seceded from the British Empire, the Commonwealth was in a period of transition. It was shifting from a small, informal coterie of settler states (sometimes known as a White Man’s Club) to a much larger, formalised organisation with regular meetings, and a structure of governance, joined by former British colonial possessions upon their independence.55 Queen Elizabeth took her responsibilities as Head of the Commonwealth (a position she still holds today) very seriously, and her public commitment to the organisation and its ideals has been a key part of her reign. While the efficacy of the Commonwealth as an organisation has been questioned, there was clearly an opportunity in the 1960s for British governments to use it as a vehicle for projecting ‘soft power’ during and after decolonisation.56 In this context, and as the organisation’s increasingly non-white membership used it as a platform to attack the settler regimes in Rhodesia and South Africa, the Queen’s role as Head of the Commonwealth had implications for Rhodesia’s ability to retain her as its head of state.57 In the newly independent African and Asian colonies, many of which adopted republican status, the problem of the old ‘imperial monarchy’ was generally moot. Many were keen to demonstrate their newfound 54 J. Darwin, ‘Was There a Fourth British Empire?’, in M. Lynn (ed.), The British Empire in the 1950s—Retreat or Revival? (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 16–31. 55 Later, some states that had not been British colonies, such as Rwanda and Mozambique, would also join. 56 P. Murphy, The Empire’s New Clothes: The Myth of the Commonwealth (London, Hurst and Company, 2018). Murphy’s book provides a witty and insightful deconstruction of the organisation. 57 C. Watts, Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence: An International History (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

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independence with constitutional arrangements that eschewed overtones of imperialism or neo-colonialism. Philip Murphy has shown how this suited Whitehall mandarins, keen to disassociate the monarchy from the more controversial consequences of independence in many former colonies. Officials ‘assumed that loyalty to the Crown was strongest amongst those of “British stock”; that it emerged not so much from an abstract identification with the Empire-Commonwealth as from a more concrete sense of racial-national identity’.58 Rhodesia after UDI found itself somewhere in between these two broad trends of anticolonial republicanism and settler-colonial commemoration. On the one hand, it had historically made much of its ultra-loyalty to the British Crown and had a large settler population, some of which closely identified with the royal family. On the other hand, UDI had placed the settlers in a similar position to the Afro-Asian colonies that wanted to break all links with Britain (of which the monarchy was the strongest and most visible). Once again, it was minority rule that proved to be the complicating factor, and for the independent white Rhodesian nation to be established, the issue of the monarchy had to be confronted somehow. Although for the most part the Queen remained studiously aloof from the Rhodesian issue, in the shifting context of world politics it was increasingly difficult for her to support a minority-rule independence deal in Rhodesia given her transnational capacity as Head of the Commonwealth. The RF’s intransigence on minority rule remained a critical barrier to any sort of constitutional arrangement incorporating the monarchy. Whenever the Queen did mention Rhodesia in public it was widely reported in local media, and there were two particular instances that galled white Rhodesians. Firstly, in 1966 she read a speech at the opening of the Jamaican Parliament that expressed a desire to see majority-rule independence in Rhodesia.59 This was seen as so provocative to white Rhodesians that Smith felt the need to comment upon it at length in a television broadcast on 27 March 1966 in which he 58 P. Murphy, ‘The African Queen? Republicanism and Defensive Decolonisation in British Tropical Africa 1958–1964’, Twentieth Century British History, 14, 3 (2003), p. 262; see also P. Murphy, Monarchy and the End of Empire: The House of Windsor, the British Government, and the Postwar Commonwealth (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013). 59 Though this speech will have been drafted by the anti-settler Jamaican government and was given in her capacity as Queen of Jamaica, Murphy’s work outlining how cautious the Palace was regarding this issue suggests that they could have requested that the speech be amended if they had wanted to. I thank Josiah Brownell for raising this point.

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argued that the British government was trying to ‘provoke us into breaking these links [to the Crown]’.60 Ending on a cautionary note, Smith claimed that if the Queen was continually used in this way: ‘we may reluctantly be forced to this line of thinking’.61 White Rhodesian misgivings about the monarchy were seriously compounded in 1968 when the British Queen attempted to use the royal prerogative of mercy to commute the death sentences of several Africans convicted of murder. The Africans, members of the so-called ‘Crocodile Gang’ (led by Zimbabwe’s current President Emmerson Mnangagwa), had been convicted of killing a farmer, Pieter Oberholzer, in 1964.62 To anxious whites, the Queen’s interventions smacked of both endorsement for the violent overthrow of settler-colonial rule and the machinations of Harold Wilson’s much-loathed Labour government. These cases were particularly important for the Rhodesian state, as in one of them—the Madzimbamuto case—it was ruled by the Rhodesian judiciary on 29 January 1968 that the RF government had de facto sovereignty in Rhodesia, which the government saw as a huge coup for its domestic legitimacy.63 The Queen’s attempt to stay the executions was overruled on 4 March 1968 by the Chief Justice Sir Hugh Beadle, who had travelled a curious road from keeping Sir Humphrey company in his isolation to providing some belated judicial legitimation to the RF state. Manuele Facchini claims that Beadle did this because, despite his personal loyalty to the Queen (he was a member of her Privy Council) like several whites, he resented the way he felt she had been used by the British government in the years since UDI.64 While these events went on, the position of the white Rhodesian population at large remained difficult to gauge and it was unclear where most peoples’ loyalties lay. In particular, there was continuing uncertainty over the feelings of Rhodesia’s powerful military. Rhodesia’s 60 Cory Library, Rhodes University, Grahamstown (hereafter CL) (Smith Papers), Cabinet Memoranda, R.C. (S) (66) 107, ‘Constitutional Advance’, 28 March 1966, p. 2. 61 Ibid. 62 Megahey, Humphrey Gibbs, pp. 139, 145; T. Ranger, ‘Violence Variously Remembered: The Killing of Pieter Oberholzer in July 1964’, History in Africa, 24 (1997), pp. 273–286. 63 M. Facchini, ‘The “Evil Genius”: Sir Hugh Beadle and the Rhodesian Crisis, 1965–1972’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 33, 3 (September 2007), p. 684. 64 Ibid., p. 685.

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armed forces enjoyed extremely close links with their British counterparts, with whom they had only relatively recently fought in Malaya. While that closeness was sometimes cited as a reason that Britain could not militarily intervene against UDI (the so-called kith and kin argument), in the uncertain years after UDI there was the potential for the links to work the other way, fomenting anti-UDI dissent in the Rhodesian ranks.65 The military, who had sworn oaths of allegiance to the Queen and whose support was critical to the survival of the rebellion, undoubtedly played a role in staying Smith’s hand in declaring a republic.66 Indeed, there were loyal elements in the Rhodesian officer corps; Major General John ‘Jock’ Anderson, Chief of the Rhodesian General Staff, had been removed in 1964 after publicly stating he would oppose a UDI.67 Despite this purge, there remained loyal elements within the Rhodesian officer corps following independence and immediately after UDI four Army officers visited Humphrey Gibbs seeking a warrant to arrest Ian Smith as a rebel.68 However, Carl Watts’ extensive interviews of former Rhodesian servicemen suggest that there were large pro-RF elements within the Rhodesian Light Infantry, the Territorial Force and the reservists.69 Recognition from the highest echelons of the judiciary, another group sworn to the Crown, was another essential precursor for any declaration of a republic by the RF.70 Though this was belatedly received in 1968, there were a number of senior judges who were sympathetic to UDI from the beginning.71 The RF’s hesitancy demonstrated the limits of its power and the uncertainties generated by its nation-building endeavour in the years following UDI. In the years between coming to terms with 65 P. Murphy, ‘“An Intricate and Distasteful Subject”: British Planning for the Use of Force Against the European Settlers of Central Africa, 1952–65’, English Historical Review, CXXI, 492 (June 2006), pp. 746–777; C. Watts, ‘Killing Kith and Kin: The Viability of British Military Intervention in Rhodesia, 1964–65’, Twentieth Century British History, 16, 4 (2005), pp. 382–415. 66 M. Facchini, ‘The Evil Genius’, p. 675. 67 R. Blake, A History of Rhodesia (London, Methuen, 1977), p. 367. 68 Watts, ‘Killing Kith and Kin’, p. 394. 69 Ibid., p. 395. 70 L. Bowman, Politics in Rhodesia: White Power in an African State (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1973), p. 141. 71 C. Palley, ‘The Judicial Process: U.D.I. and the Southern Rhodesian Judiciary’, The Modern Law Review, 30 (May 1967), pp. 263–287.

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republicanism and the actual achievement of a republic, the RF had to proceed with great caution to preserve its fragile rebellion, testing the waters of public and institutional opinion, ensuring that the army, the judiciary and the people were on its side before it could advocate for a Rhodesian republic. At the same time, it would be callow to presume that some in the RF did not have their own emotional dilemmas to work through as they contemplated ostensibly abandoning a sociocultural framework they had rebelled in order to preserve. These contradictions, whether borne of cynical and deliberate ambiguities, fear of moving too far too fast, or genuine crises of identity, were reflected in the continuation of public ceremony surrounding the monarchy. In April 1967, the monarchy remained popular enough that the cabinet proposed to formally celebrate the Queen’s birthday with a 21-gun salute and a flypast of Canberra jet bombers (then still part of the ‘Royal’ Rhodesian Air Force). Though a military parade had been ruled out by the chiefs of staff on the grounds that precious manpower and fuel could not be spared, it was agreed that there would be a reception held by the officer administering the government in Salisbury. Other receptions were to be held in Bulawayo, Gwelo, Umtali and Fort Victoria, arranged by provincial commissioners and attended by government ministers.72 A year later, however, it was considered inappropriate to have a public holiday to celebrate on account of the security situation.73 Meanwhile, the Rhodesian government continued to negotiate with Harold Wilson’s Labour government in Britain. Ongoing dialogues had resulted in two major series of talks which took place on Royal Navy warships, proving that Britain could still exercise gunboat diplomacy of a sort in the era of decolonisation. The first round of talks in which the RF sought to secure negotiated independence took place on board HMS Tiger in December 1966 and had failed when the proposals accepted by Ian Smith and his negotiating team were rejected by the RF cabinet.74 Smith tried again, this time on HMS Fearless in October 1968 to no avail.75 72 CL (Smith Papers), Cabinet Memoranda, R.C. (S) (67) 74—‘Queen’s Birthday, 1967’—6 April 1967. 73 CL (Smith Papers), Cabinet Memoranda, R.C. (S) (68) 75—‘Queen’s Birthday’—8 April 1968. 74 Godwin & Hancock, Rhodesians Never Die, p. 62. 75 Ibid., p. 51.

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That same year, Rhodesians had taken their first tentative step towards symbolic decolonisation by abandoning the Union Jack (Chapter 4) and beginning their search for a national anthem (Chapter 6). These developments took place alongside what was to be the RF’s largest political project since UDI, the drafting of a new constitution. In 1968, a constitutional commission, the Whaley Commission, reported after a year’s research. The commission remained sensitive to the delicacy and emotiveness of the issue however (it dedicated a whole chapter to the question of the monarchy in its report). The commissioners concluded that many of their witnesses had favoured a republican constitution, arguing that the continuation of the monarchy: ‘would be seen as evidence that Britain still exercised some form of suzerainty over Rhodesia. Moreover, they [the respondents] contended that the Queen, by refusing to recognize the lawfully elected Government of Rhodesia, had in effect repudiated the people of Rhodesia’.76 The first part of the statement was a similar argument advanced by the leaders of the newly independent African states which had become republics immediately upon or shortly after independence, keen to shake off the symbolic shackles of colonial rule. It marked something of a shift away from the settler-colonial arguments about loyal rebellion which had dominated political discourse since UDI. Yet the commission’s work suggested that old habits died hard and the report stressed that many others it had heard from held the opposite opinion: Many urged strongly that a movement to declare a republic would lose Rhodesia the friendship of many people, especially in the United Kingdom, whose first loyalty is to the Queen. Her Majesty, they said, provides a focal point for loyalty which transcends party political loyalties and a link between English-speaking people throughout the world. Furthermore traditional ties of loyalty to the Crown are still strong among many Rhodesians and the present is a most inopportune time to break these ties.77

In addition to these two poles, there were other, more pragmatic responses suggesting that the Queen should be offered an opportunity 76 Report of the Constitutional Commission 1968 (Salisbury, Government Printer, 1968), p. 119. 77 Ibid.

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to recognise Rhodesia when the new constitution was brought in, and if she refused to do so, then a republic could be declared. This was the sort of situation that Smith had hinted at, something the commission acknowledged: ‘[i]n support of this proposal it was also urged that this would have the effect of making the British Government responsible for breaking Rhodesia’s link with the Crown’.78 Faced with a range of white Rhodesian opinions on the monarchy, the commission concluded that, if no agreement could be reached with the British government’s negotiators and: ‘no recognition by the Crown is forthcoming, the retention of the monarchy would in our view be impossible. We believe that if the breach with the United Kingdom becomes final, a republican form of government is inevitable’.79 While Smith’s proclamations about his hand being forced on a republic masked the RF’s growing confidence in its republicanism and shifting priorities of its nation-building project, the attitude of the white Rhodesian population remained unclear and the RF required popular sanction to act on such a sensitive topic. Consequently, the RF incorporated a separate question specifically about republican status into the national referendum on its constitutional proposals. A. Moseley (RF Member for Bulawayo District) explained the RF’s thinking behind this test of opinion in April 1969: we must come eventually to decide or acknowledge that the position of the Queen must one day be resolved. We cannot continue to claim that the Queen is our Queen when the Queen herself cannot acknowledge us. Therefore, Government is giving the electorate adequate opportunity to decide whether they want to cut the last apron string and come out in favour of a republic.80

The debates about the new constitutional proposals that followed were haunted by the ghosts of the imperial monarchy, with both supporters and opponents of a republic turning to the past to reinforce their arguments for or against a republic. In 1969–1970, this language was ramped up as the referendum campaign became the battleground for Rhodesia’s future. The use of these temporal discourses is an integral element of 78 Ibid.,

p. 120. p. 121. 80 Rhodesia Parliamentary Debates, 73, 1968–69, 1146. 79 Ibid.,

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nationalism, but they had a particular salience in settler societies like Rhodesia. Discourses of past and future demonstrated Rhodesia’s ambiguous relationship with the ‘home’ country, a place it was attempting to reject and reflect at the same time. Time was invoked as a cushion between the contradiction of Rhodesia, a country which continued to practise white-minority rule and a form of British imperial settler colonialism while disavowing all connections with the Britain of present day.81 These temporal discourses also demonstrate how the RF’s rhetoric changed over time, evolving from a set of discourses in which settlercolonial political arguments provided appropriate tools to preserve white privilege, to a more universal rhetoric of independent nationhood. D. Divaris (RF Member for Belvedere) believed that it was time for a break with the past. Divaris argued that the retention of the monarchy would lead to an embarrassing symbolism which denied Rhodesian suzerainty: ‘[f]ar too many countries look upon the situation between ourselves and England as that of a mother, England having a squabble with one of her children, Rhodesia. They do not realize that the time has come when Rhodesia has to branch out on its own and charter [sic] its own course…’.82 Discourses of parenthood and childhood reveal the diverse influences the RF drew upon in its nation-building project, as they invoked much older philosophies, most prominently used during the American Revolution, comparing colonial dependency with childhood.83 Lt-Colonel A.S.W. MacLeod (RF Member for Eastern) agreed, arguing that Rhodesia had now ‘come of age and… must go forward, take our destiny into our own hands’.84 The Minister of Internal Affairs, Lance Smith, was blunter: ‘I myself was born in Britain and never believed the day would come when she would repudiate her kith and kin overseas but I am not such a fool as to hanker after a past that has disappeared’.85

81 J. Brownell, ‘Out of Time: Global Settlerism, Nostalgia, and the Selling of the Rhodesian Rebellion Overseas’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 43, 4 (2017), pp. 805–824. 82 Rhodesia Parliamentary Debates, 73, 1302. 83 D. Lowenthal, The Past Is a Foreign Country (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 106–108. 84 Rhodesia Parliamentary Debates, 73, 1335. 85 Ibid., 1488.

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To Lance Smith and his RF colleagues, a republic could serve as both a repudiation of Rhodesia’s ‘disappeared’ British past and an attempt to consolidate a rebellion that sought to transplant an idealised form of British settler colonialism in 1960s central Africa. The monarchy, which had once been representative of shared values and culture, of bonds between ‘kith and kin’ thousands of miles apart, was now cast as just another marker of Britain’s post-war degeneration. As much as it was an exercise in realpolitik, this change in position marked both the RF’s belated recognition of how the world had changed and its growing confidence in its position as the rebellion went on. It reflected a Rhodesia straddling the boundaries of coloniality and post-coloniality, oscillating between settler ‘loyal rebellion’ and anticolonial rhetoric of independence. Despite the changing international context of a decolonising world in which the RF undertook UDI, they chose to present the UDI as a ‘loyal rebellion’. Their insistence that Rhodesia remained loyal to the Queen in the four years that followed marked out space for a debate on the monarchy when the time came to introduce a republican constitution in 1969. In these debates, the Queen was depicted as a symbol of the country’s British past, in both negative and positive terms. The way the RF spoke about the Queen was shaped by the demands of minority rule and the shifting priorities of its nationalist project. First, in order to justify UDI they presented it as an act taken out of loyalty to the Queen and what the RF claimed she represented then, when it became clear that the Queen would not associate herself with a minority-rule regime, they changed tack and began to openly argue for republicanism as the best constitutional method for preserving minority rule. Though there had been a brief but half-hearted attempt to make the imperial monarchy national as had been successfully done in Canada and Australia, the Queen’s continued existence as Rhodesian head of state was no longer tenable. The irony of this was that the very ethnic, transnational logic that gave the Queen meaning in Rhodesia had ostracised it from what she now represented. Rhodesia was now more like one of the African states where post-independence activities and their potential reputational impact upon the monarchy had so concerned British officials. Having spent years preparing ground, the RF now believed that instead of ‘Rhodesianising’ the Queen, they could ‘Rhodesianise’ the nation by breaking the link with the Crown and, by association, Britain. In a classic example of the RF’s nationalising teleology, a Rhodesian republic became the logical, if belated, conclusion of UDI.

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As with the flag debates the previous year, the RF’s domination of the Legislative Assembly made the result of these debates a foregone conclusion and a referendum was tabled. With the parliamentary battle over, Ian Smith went to the nation to lay out the RF’s stall. Speaking on the RBC on 20 May 1969, on the eve of the publication of the government’s white paper on the constitutional proposals, Smith told RBC listeners that they were sharing ‘a moment in history which finds Rhodesia poised to make one of the most far-reaching decisions in its short existence as a nation’.86 Smith’s speech focused mainly upon the fact that Britain would not reach a settlement which did not include majority rule and that the Rhodesians were left with no alternative but to accept the RF’s constitutional proposals. Believing the referendum to be ‘momentous historically’, Smith argued that the issues of the constitution and a republic were ‘matters of national as well as international character’ and would affect the lives of generations of future Rhodesians.87 While Smith acknowledged that ‘there is a deep and sincere sentiment towards the monarchy amongst many sections in Rhodesia…’, he claimed that the Rhodesians were left with no option but to sever the tie.88 Driving his point home, the prime minister claimed that the British had stated that, even in the event of a settlement being reached, the Afro-Asian members of the Commonwealth would never allow Rhodesia to remain a member without majority-rule independence. Given that minority rule was the Rhodesian nation’s raison d’être, Smith concluded, ‘the choice has been taken out of our hands’.89 Having neatly assuaged any lingering monarchist doubts by absolving Rhodesians of any responsibility for the issue, Smith turned towards the prosperous future that official republican status would guarantee, claiming:

86 BBC Monitoring Archive, Caversham Park, Reading (hereafter BBCMA) (Summary of World Broadcasts) SE ME 3080/B/1-5, ‘Ian Smith’s 20.5.69 Broadcast to the Rhodesians’, 22 May 1969. 87 Ibid. 88 Ibid. 89 Ibid.

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I have met many people from Europe, big industrialists and financiers, who claim that they are unable to comprehend the situation… They have no hesitation in saying that it would give them a greater feeling of security if we were to become a republic and completely sever our ties with Britain.90

Smith’s enigmatic pronouncements about skittish foreign businessmen who would only be placated once Rhodesia’s constitutional position was fully resolved were another indication of the twofold nature of symbolic decolonisation—even if the Commonwealth would refuse to grant Rhodesian recognition other trading partners would. It was a tacit, if low-key reminder of the economic precariousness of rebel Rhodesia. If it also belied years of sanctions dodging since UDI, it perhaps acknowledged that these same foreign businessmen (including British ones) had been taking Rhodesia for a ride, the clandestine nature of the enterprise allowing them to name their prices to the Rhodesian government.91 Stressing the fact that the RF had played the decisive role in saving the nation since it had come to power in 1962, Smith ended with a populist flourish, warning voters about the apparently nefarious opponents of the proposals and the ‘powerful forces’ at their disposal, and offered the hope that this would be the last of ‘our growing pains on our journey towards full nationhood’.92 If 1965 was the birth of the new Rhodesia, 1969–1970 could be its coming of age.

Popular Reaction to the Constitutional Proposals Seizing upon the RF’s rhetoric of the final break with Britain, some white Rhodesians were galvanised into opposition by the familiar complex of reasons around identity, kinship and belonging. Sir Humphrey Gibbs, who had been largely silent since his isolation, released a statement of his own on 11 June 1969 which provoked further debate and challenged Smith’s confident assertions about foreign recognition several

90 Ibid. 91 H.R. Strack, Sanctions the Case of Rhodesia (Syracuse, 1978); L. White, ‘What Does It Take to Be a State? Sovereignty and Sanctions in Rhodesia, 1965–1980’, in L. White & D. Howland (eds.), State of Sovereignty: Territories, Laws, Populations (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2009), pp. 148–168. 92 BBCMA (Summary of World Broadcasts) SE ME 3080/B/1-5, ‘Ian Smith’s 20.5.69 Broadcast to the Rhodesians’, 22 May 1969.

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weeks before. Promising to resign from his post if the public voted in favour of a republican constitution, he announced: I cannot predict what effect, if any, my going would have on the country’s future: but it is possible that my departure, and the loss of what I stand for, could push us [Rhodesians] into even greater isolation from the rest of the world.93

On 12 June 1969, Mrs. R. Archdale of Umvukwes wrote that: ‘I am English born and bred and very proud of the fact, as no doubt are many good Rhodesians like myself… Great Britain may be going through a bad time, but we can still call ourselves fortunate to be British’.94 In response to Gibbs’ statement, the pro-settlement Rhodesia Herald’s leader on 13 June 1969 suggested that the Queen, communicating through Sir Humphrey, was in fact trying to send a message to her Rhodesian subjects: ‘[i]t is not the people of Rhodesia but Rhodesia’s Government that the queen has declined to recognize’.95 On the same day, the old guard of settler politics, former Federal Prime Ministers Godfrey Huggins and Sir Roy Welensky issued a joint statement opposing the constitutional proposals as a major break with the past, urging Rhodesian voters to respect the spirit of both Cecil Rhodes and Winston Churchill (colonial secretary at the time of the 1922 referendum and idol of white Rhodesians). Like the RF before UDI, they invoked memories of the Second World War, claiming that: ‘only a totalitarian Executive [sic] would need the powers that a “Yes” vote would grant a government elected under these proposals’.96 This intervention showed how much the goalposts of settler nationalism had moved in the years since UDI. Roy Welensky, as Federal Prime Minister between 1956 and 1963, had been the settlers’ champion as the Federation fell apart; his actions and his worldview were firmly in the tradition of loyal rebel, willing to fight the British government to uphold ‘British’ values, despite his pronounced lack of ethnic British heritage (Welensky had grown up in abject poverty and came from a Lithuanian Jewish background). 93 Quoted 94 Mrs.

in Megahey, Humphrey Gibbs, p. 167. R. Archdale, ‘Still Fortunate to Be British’, The Rhodesia Herald, 12 June 1969,

p. 11. 95 ‘Significance of Sir Humphrey’, The Rhodesia Herald, 13 June 1969, p. 14. 96 ‘A Break with the Past—Malvern, Welensky’, The Rhodesia Herald, 13 June 1969, p. 2.

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But after an abortive attempt to challenge the RF in a by-election for the seat of Arundel in 1964, a campaign in which he suffered vitriolic anti-Semitic abuse from RF supporters, his star had rapidly faded.97 Prompted by Sir Humphrey’s intervention, a debate now began in the letters pages of the Herald over the Queen’s true feelings towards Rhodesia, and Robert W. Fynn of Arundel took up the Herald’s point the next day. He pointed to the regular Christmas and birthday messages that the Queen sent to the Rhodesians through the governor as proof that she had not abandoned them and condemned the hypocrisy of the RF’s retention of royal symbols over the past few years.98 E.G. Cook of Melfort went further, criticising the ‘Nazi mentality’ of the RF and claiming that its proposals would: ‘insult the thousands of Rhodesians who are closely associated with the old country, with its proud heritage and traditions’.99 These expressions of dissatisfaction suggested that monarchist sentiments may have been more enduring among the white population than the RF had bargained for. The RF advertisements peppering the Herald throughout June focused on the question of constitutional sovereignty rather than the monarchy, perhaps in recognition of the fact that individuals’ views on the monarchy were so personal and varied as to be beyond the capacity to influence. The RF line focused upon how the new constitution would put an end to British prevarication over a settlement, with a liberal dose of scaremongering about majority rule thrown in for good measure. The old spectres of the Congo and Kenya were invoked as they had been seven years earlier in the 1962 election, with appeals to peoples’ personal safety and prosperity, as one advert warned: ‘If you value your home, your family’s future and the Rhodesian way of life, you must vote YES!’100 The main opponents of the RF, the liberal (by Rhodesian standards) Centre Party (CP), countered this by claiming that the new constitution would be ‘The Point of No Return’ where a settlement with Britain was concerned.101 97 Blake,

A History of Rhodesia, pp. 364–366. Difficulties Gibbs Has Pursued Loyal Way for Good of Rhodesia’, The Rhodesia Herald, 14 June 1969, p. 7. 99 Eric G. Cook, ‘Disastrous RF Policy Has Created Fear Complex, Distrust and Disharmony’, The Rhodesia Herald, 18 June 1969, p. 18. 100 ‘No Fooling!’, The Rhodesia Herald, 17 June 1969, p. 8. 101 ‘The Point of No Return’, The Rhodesia Herald, 9 June 1969, p. 4. 98 ‘Despite

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That summer, the referendum campaign dominated Rhodesia’s government-owned media services: the RBC’s radio network and Rhodesia Television (RTV). In May and June, a series of talks were broadcast in the RBC’s 5 p.m. slot from several individuals across the political spectrum including the government and the Centre Party. This debate was rigorously policed however, circumscribed to ‘legitimate’ political organisations. In keeping with Rhodesian censorship of the time, the banned African nationalist parties ZANU and ZAPU were not given an opportunity to speak. Likewise, representatives of the government stated their case several times whereas opposing organisations’ speeches were broadcast only once.102 The radio broadcasts were an attempt to pit the heads of any wavering monarchists against their hearts, focusing upon the practical realities of a republican Rhodesia’s place in the world. Opponents of the constitutional proposals such as Pat Bashford, white farmer and leader of the Centre Party, argued in his 18 June speech that the republican issue was a matter for personal choice. Yet Bashford was unequivocal about its wider effect on Rhodesia’s status as an independent nation: ‘I should like to make it quite clear that the declaration of a republic will not bring recognition by other states any closer… the declaration of a republic can only be just another step on the road to total isolation if we make the declaration before we get recognition. Recognition must come first’.103 While international recognition featured less explicitly in the RF’s arguments, its spokesmen still argued that republican status would demonstrate Rhodesian independence and that its statehood would then be recognised as a fait accompli by other nations. The ministers who put the RF’s case to the people also relied heavily upon emotive language about Rhodesia’s past, albeit in very different ways. David Smith spoke of an historical tradition of constitutional

102 These speakers included P.H. Mkudu, leader of the opposition in Parliament (28 May 1969); Minister of Agriculture David Smith (2 June 1969); Independent MP Robin James for the Conservative Association of Rhodesia (6 June 1969); P.K. van der Byl for the government (9 June 1969); GL Chavunduka for the Democratic Party (13 June 1969); Jack Howman for the government (16 June 1969); and Pat Bashford for the Centre Party (18 June 1969). (BBCMA) (Summary of World Broadcasts), SS ME 3086-3104, 30 May–20 June 1969. 103 (BBCMA) (Summary of World Broadcasts) SS ME 3104/B 1-3, ‘Rhodesia: Bashford’s Referendum Campaign Broadcast’, 18 June 1969.

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independence which had been used to justify UDI (see Chapter 3).104 P.K. van der Byl demonstrated some of the RF’s international influences when he offered a ‘blood price’ narrative comparing the sacrifices made by Rhodesian soldiers fighting guerrillas in the Zambezi valley to historic martial assertions of independence in the United States, Greece, the Boer republics and the then-current conflict in Biafra. Despite their differences, all speakers, opponents and supporters of the new constitutional proposals agreed that Rhodesia was now at a turning point and the result of the forthcoming referendum would lead either to ruin or reward. The republican issue was partially subsumed into the RF’s inferno of majority rule or the CP’s cold and lonely wasteland of permanent international pariah status and racial discord. At the heart of these debates were understandings of Rhodesia’s place in the world, its paradoxical harking after a mythologised British golden age while paying lip service to independence and its complicated relationship with its colonial past, of which the monarchy was arguably the most prominent symbol. The question of who the future head of state would be was an important element of this debate about what Rhodesia and Rhodesians themselves were going to become. Doing away with the monarchy would be a key aspect of the processes of symbolic decolonisation through which, the RF claimed, Rhodesia would become a nation. The radio speeches of June 1969 demonstrated different parties’ wider conceptions of this process of becoming. They showed that even at this late stage, Rhodesia’s future path was not inevitable, and there were always other ways to conceive of Rhodesia, other ways to practise race relations. The CP and the African speakers warned the predominantly white electorate not to reject multiracialism; the RF and Conservative Association of Rhodesia spoke of preventing black domination. Finally, after years of uncertainty and prevarication, the RF was about to find out which of these interpretations white Rhodesians supported.

104 (BBCMA) (Summary of World Broadcasts), SS ME 3090, ‘The Rhodesian Referendum: Agriculture Minister’s Broadcast’, 4 June 1969.

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Referendum Result Roundly Repudiates Regent The referendum on 20 June 1969 was a resounding success for the RF. Some 54,724 (seventy-three per cent) voted in favour of the new constitutional proposals, and 20,776 voters opposed them.105 On the republican question, the result was even more decisive, with eighty-nine per cent of voters in favour of scrapping the monarchy.106 Reporting the RF’s ‘Sweeping Victory’ on June 21, the Herald reflected that: The electoral verdict in favour of a Republic is so overwhelming that even dissident Rhodesians will feel there is little point in quarrelling with it… Loyalty to Crown and kinship die hard and can still be cherished in the heart. But to kick against the will of the voting majority would only perpetuate divisions, weakening Rhodesia and serving no purpose.107

Just a week later, Parliament was moving swiftly on. Ahrn Palley, the independent MP for Highfields who had been a thorn in the side of the RF government since UDI, attempted to add an amendment to the speech from the throne stating that a republican government would reduce Rhodesia’s chances of recognition and was predictably overruled. In response, Lord Angus Graham (RF Member for Gwebi) noted: ‘the Crown and the Union Jack had at one time stood for something in the World, but conditions in the World had changed…’.108 Graham’s journey from enthusiastically supporting Rhodesia’s old colonial symbols (as he had done in the flag debates of the previous year) to repudiating them was a reflection of the RF’s broader policy shift away from negotiated independence to processes of symbolic decolonisation. Though the RF’s settler nationalism had been mobilised in opposition to decolonisation and majority rule, former party grandees like Graham were now agitating for similar symbolic demonstrations of independence to those which were taking place in former African and Asian colonies. Several months later, on 2 March 1970, Rhodesia followed the path of so many of the former colonies it disdained and officially became a republic, ‘an event which passed almost without notice in the 105 Bowman,

Politics in Rhodesia, p. 139. p. 140. 107 ‘Decisive on Both Counts’, The Rhodesia Herald, 21 June 1969, p. 1. 108 ‘In Parliament Yesterday’, The Rhodesia Herald, 28 June 1969, p. 4. 106 Ibid.,

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country’.109 The Herald noted the business-like changing of symbolism: Clifford Dupont lost his clumsy title and became Rhodesia’s inaugural president; legal cases were now decided in the name of ‘the State’ instead of ‘the Queen’; and the Royal Rhodesian Air Force altered its name, flag and the roundel displayed upon its aircraft.110 Rafts of legislative minutiae were changed in accordance with the new constitution which covered thirty-nine pages of small type in the government notice in which they were published.111 Meanwhile, the letters pages of the Herald focused on the banal issue of where Sir Humphrey Gibbs’ loyalties lay and whether or not he would make a good president.112 Sir Humphrey had no intention of serving in that role and in response to the result he carried out his promise and promptly resigned, moving back to his farm and ending five years of effective house arrest. The British withdrew their residual diplomatic mission in Salisbury, and Rhodesia House in London had already been closed down shortly after the referendum result on 14 July 1969. For the time being at least, the door had closed on the possibility of an Anglo-Rhodesian settlement and legal independence.113 The muted response to the new constitutional status was perhaps a consequence of the fact that a republic was something of a fait accompli in Rhodesia. For some, it had been almost four years coming. For the thousands of staunch monarchists who did support the Queen’s retention the referendum result was a damning indictment of their loyalty, showing them to be in a clear minority. The Rhodesian royalists quietly faded away in the months after their defeat at the polls. The interpretation of Rhodesia as a nation negatively defined as a repudiation of decolonisation and majority-rule independence had triumphed at the (predominantly white) ballot box. Since 11 November 1965, the white Rhodesians had found themselves in an odd halfway house between 109 Godwin

& Hancock, Rhodesians Never Die, p. 51. & Hancock, Rhodesians Never Die, pp. 51–52; ‘“The State” Not “The Queen” Is Prosecutor’, The Rhodesia Herald, 4 March 1970, p. 1; ‘RRAF Alters Flag, Signs’, The Rhodesia Herald, 6 March 1970, p. 1. 111 ‘Terms After Change to Republic’, The Rhodesia Herald, 7 March 1970, p. 7. 112 H.J.W. Roberts, ‘As President, Gibbs Would Carry Out Duties Loyally’, The Rhodesia Herald, 7 March 1970, p. 5. 113 J. Brownell, ‘“A Sordid Tussle on the Strand”: Rhodesia House During the UDI Rebellion (1965–1980)’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 38, 3 (2010), p. 487. 110 Godwin

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the older settler colonies and newly independent African and Asian states, throwing off the symbolic shackles of colonialism. Ultimately, and ironically given the rhetoric which had been used to justify UDI, white Rhodesians found themselves pursuing a similar course to the latter, seeking complete symbolic independence from the former colonial power. In the latter years of the 1960s, the RF began to claim that its hand was being forced on the issue of a republic. This discursive shift showed that the short-term aim of preserving minority rule was ultimately more important than any claims to be upholding British values in a wayward world. Adapting the rhetoric deployed during the flag debates, the RF sought to reconstitute the monarchy from being a shared, cherished symbol of global belonging, to a hindrance—a symbol of continuing subservience to Britain and a stumbling block on Rhodesia’s progression to a bright future. Like other African countries, the Rhodesians became an independent republic, even if some of them would have preferred a ‘Queen of Rhodesia’.

The Rhodesian Republic, 1970–1979 On 3 March 1970, Clifford Dupont, hitherto ‘Officer Administering the Government’, became Rhodesia’s first president, a position he held until 1975, when he was succeeded by John Wrathall (1975–1978). Dupont, born in London, had emigrated to Rhodesia after the Second World War to become a cattle rancher, becoming involved in Dominion Party politics and winning the election as the MP for Fort Victoria in 1958.114 Wrathall, who hailed from Lancaster in England, was a former long-serving Finance Minister, key in introducing decimalisation and the Rhodesian dollar in 1970. He died in office in August 1978. Though a Rhodesian presidency had now been created, it was somewhat less compelling than the new Rhodesian flag, which by this point had become popular. The presidential post was largely ceremonial and, for a whole range of reasons, never held the same authority as the monarchy had. Instead of a head of state like the Queen, the practical focus of Rhodesian loyalty became not the newly instituted office of president, but the nation of Rhodesia itself. This shift achieved

114 C.

Dupont, The Reluctant President (Bulawayo, 1978).

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a similar effect to the RF’s ambiguous flag design, as it was possible for white Rhodesians of all political persuasions to express a loyalty to ‘Rhodesia’ as a nation, and by removing the Queen from the equation, the RF believed it had eliminated a dual focus of loyalty which had existed at UDI. Furthermore, as the RF had worked hard to associate itself closely with ‘Rhodesia’, presenting its own party political interests as synonymous with those of the nation (see Chapter 2), it could now further shore up its own legitimacy and power in the white community. 1969 was a watershed moment in Rhodesia’s history in the sense that the fate of the state (and the nation) became inextricably linked to the Rhodesian Front party. Like other one-party post-colonial nations in African, the party was the state. Rhodesians had not just abandoned their Queen in 1970, but their British constitutional tradition. Between 1965 and 1970, the country had operated under an essentially British constitution but, as Luise White and Richard Hodder-Williams have observed, the 1969 constitution was a Rhodesian Front document.115 It articulated RF racial logic about Africans (see below) in ways which would prove fatal to the settler state’s attempts to acquire legitimate independence (as detailed in Chapter 7). Yet most ordinary white Rhodesians were unconcerned with constitutional minutiae, and they experienced in the intersection of party and state in a more personal and human way, through their great leader. For no one better personified this relationship than Rhodesia’s Prime Minister Ian Smith.

‘Smithy’: Father of the Rhodesian Nation? David Kertzer notes ‘[r]ites of new nations… often revolve around the image of the heroic figure leading his people to the promised land’.116 Of the many colourful characters who emerged during Rhodesia’s rebellion, few could excite as much emotion, running the gamut from reverence to revulsion, as Ian Douglas Smith, prime minister from 1964 to 1978. The mythology which has grown to surround Smith, helped in no small part by his own memoirs, released at a time when he pointed 115 White, Unpopular Sovereignty, pp. 149–176; R. Hodder-Williams, ‘Rhodesia’s Search for a Constitution: Or, Whatever Happened to Whaley?’, African Affairs, 69, 276 (July 1970), pp. 217–235. 116 D.I. Kertzer, Ritual, Politics & Power, p. 178.

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to worsening conditions in Zimbabwe to justify his attempts to prolong white-minority rule, was equally strong in the 1960s and 1970s.117 This fame was ironic for a man who, his own sympathetic biographers agreed, was relatively devoid of charisma. Throughout the UDI rebellion, Smith remained a contradictory figure, quintessentially British but indisputably Rhodesian. As Bill Schwarz has noted, ‘[e]ven as Smith dealt the empire a mortal blow he remained a militant advocate of Greater Britain’.118 Ian Smith, the country’s first and only Rhodesian-born white prime minister, was born in 1919 in the small town of Selukwe, to parents of Scottish extraction. Smith’s two great loves, besides maintaining white supremacy, were sport and farming.119 Smith’s biographers presented him as a man formed on the playing fields of Chaplin School, Gwelo and then Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa.120 Smith interrupted his degree to join the RAF in 1940, where he fought as both a pilot and a partisan in North Africa and Italy. A crash in the Western Desert in North Africa left Smith with serious injuries that required plastic surgery and a skin graft.121 This was itself a very Victorian British origin story, redolent of Henry Newbolt’s 1892 poem Vitai Lampada with its comparisons between a cricket match and distant colonial warfare and its exhortations to ‘Play up! play up! and play the game!’122 In 1946, Smith returned to finish his studies at Rhodes, met and married his wife Janet and entered Parliament in 1948 as the Liberal Party Member for Selukwe.123 He joined the United Federal Party in 1953, rising to the position of Chief Whip (a traditional precursor to a ministerial position) before resigning in protest at the 1961 constitution and ultimately helping to found the Rhodesian Front in 1962, initially as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance.124 Smith’s biography, typified by his 117 I. Smith, Bitter Harvest (London, Blake, 2008). See Schwarz, The White Man’s World, pp. 414–415 for an analysis of these memoirs. 118 Schwarz, The White Man’s World, p. 396. 119 Berlyn, The Quiet Man, p. 35. 120 Ibid., pp. 42–45. 121 Ibid., pp. 48–79. 122 Anthem for Doomed Youth, Writers and Literature of The Great War, 1914–1918, ‘Vitai Lampada’, accessed at http://exhibits.lib.byu.edu/wwi/influences/vitai.html on 2 July 2019. 123 Ibid., pp. 80–81. 124 Ibid.

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sense of duty, physical prowess and love of family and farming, made him an archetypal settler male. Like all nationalist heroes, Smith’s life story invariably involved as much myth as truth. The inspirational character of Smith’s biography was perpetuated and strengthened by valedictory literature produced at the time. Perhaps as a concession to his meticulously mundane lifestyle, two major Rhodesianpublished biographies of the time both cast Smith’s personal story as a narrative of something much wider, the story of the nation. In these works and in popular imagination around the world, Smith became the personification of UDI.125 In this sense, Smith was cast as the true inheritor of Rhodes, a fact commemorated in John Edmond’s song ‘The Last Word in Rhodesian’ (1979), a jaunty ballad celebrating the fortuitous combination of Rhodes and Ian in the settler state’s name.126 Philippa Berlyn, who also wrote the pro-UDI polemic Rhodesia: Beleaguered Country (1967), wrote The Quiet Man: A Biography of the Hon. Ian Douglas Smith, I.D. Prime Minister of Rhodesia for the Rhodesian Historical Association in 1978. The Quiet Man, as its cumbersome title suggests, provided an officially endorsed narrative and portrays Smith as he was seen by many of his compatriots in the 1960s and 1970s. The author biography upon the book’s dust jacket provided an interesting, almost desperate, attempt to assert the neutrality of Berlyn as an author claiming she was: ‘frequently an outspoken critic of the Rhodesian Front and indeed of Ian Smith himself’.127 Yet Berlyn was also described as ‘a Rhodesian with a fierce love of her country’, and the book was fully endorsed not just by Smith, who actively cooperated in its writing, but by the Ministry of Information and the Rhodesian Army. In a reflection of the tiny nature of Rhodesia’s white elite, Berlyn was a family friend of Smith through her husband, who had taught one his sons at the University College of Rhodesia, and her biography painted a picture of a selfless, unassuming, decent man more content with the quiet times he spent at his cattle ranch near Selukwe, his family, and simple, honest love of his country than anything else.

125 Berlyn, The Quiet Man; P. Joyce, Anatomy of a Rebel: A Biography of Smith of Rhodesia (Salisbury, 1974). 126 J. Edmond, Story of Troopiesongs, p. 104. See Chapter 5 for the lyrics to ‘The Last Word in Rhodesian’ and for more on Edmond. 127 Berlyn, The Quiet Man.

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The Quiet Man drew heavily upon interviews with those who knew Smith, including his chauffer, some of his black farm workers and particularly his wife Janet, weaving a narrative which was a very light touch on his politics—Smith almost appears as paradoxically apolitical, a man for whom politics was a dirty business which he had to indulge in because of his deep love of his country. The interviews with Smith’s employees are particularly relevant, demonstrating Smith to be someone who ‘knew’ the African and was therefore respected by him. Though Berlyn claimed not to agree with Smith’s politics, she was clearly pro-settler, and the book wore its prejudices (in the style of an older paternalistic racism) lightly in observations such as: ‘[t]he Rhodesian black is an astute judge of character. If he does not like a man he does not work for him. He certainly does not work for him for thirty years’.128 Though Berlyn professed to focus upon the ‘man’ rather than the ‘politician’, her book helped to normalise the image of Smith as Rhodesia’s everyman. There was also a timelier imperative to Berlyn’s book, arriving as it did in the late 1970s when UDI became increasingly threatened. As we saw above, in the mid- to late 1970s Smith was subject to political challenges from the left and right, and the book was a timely reminder that it was ‘Smithy’ who had led Rhodesians through strife since UDI and could do so again. As Berlyn reminded her readers early on in the book: ‘it is largely due to Ian Smith that Rhodesia has managed to withstand the economic and military siege with which she is surrounded’.129 Peter Joyce’s Anatomy of a Rebel, published slightly earlier in 1974, is interesting for the slightly more critical line it adopted of Smith (who did not collaborate in its production). Joyce, the former supervisor of an African township on Zambia’s Roan Antelope mine, moved to Southern Rhodesia in 1964 and helped launch the publication Illustrated Life Rhodesia (which he edited between 1968 and 1972).130 Joyce wrote of Smith’s ‘rare, slow-burning anger which occasionally flares with bright intensity’ and how the prime minister struggled to distinguish attacks upon Rhodesia with attacks upon himself.131 Perhaps with less primary source material to draw upon, two-thirds of the book’s length

128 Ibid.,

p. 88. p. 25. 130 Joyce, Anatomy of a Rebel. 131 Ibid., pp. 18–19. 129 Ibid.,

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is essentially a history of the UDI rebellion rather than a biography of Smith, with little to say on his life after the almost obligatory description of his Second World War exploits. Yet Anatomy of a Rebel, which has the distinctly late Victorian subtitle of ‘A Biography of Smith of Rhodesia’ (echoes of ‘Gordon of Khartoum’ or perhaps even ‘Sanders of the River’ here), is revealing for showing how the discourses of Smith as nation and Smith as man were mutually constitutive. The Prime Minister actively fostered the connection for his own political gain, but it was clear from his own memoirs written decades later that he also began to believe it, particularly after Zimbabwean independence.

This New Rhodesia, Sovereign and Independent: The 1969 Constitution The seeds for the refocusing of white Rhodesian loyalties had been sown even before UDI by the RF and its supporters, but they achieved their final codification with the new constitution and the declaration of a republic. Together, these events signalled a concerted attempt to move from a broadly transnational British imperial settler identity to a more localised national one. Though this was meant to put the conflicted loyalties of white Rhodesians to rest, conceptions of the new ‘Rhodesia’ remained contested and ambiguous. This did not prevent triumphalism on the part of the victors, however, as the state-owned RBC reported in its celebration of the fourth anniversary of UDI in November 1969, the first under the new constitution: A nation consisting of both blacks and whites has been born. A new nation with its new flag and a new Rhodesian written Constitution… A nation with four years of history in its own right behind it. The battles have been won as they occurred, though no one can tell how long the war may last. But on those four years of history Rhodesia can look back in pride.132

The RBC’s proclamation of a united multiracial nation was typically disingenuous, as the 1969 constitution took segregation between races further than ever before by enshrining in law the RF’s agenda of separate development or petty apartheid. Bill Schwarz has written of the 132 (BBCMA) (Summary of World Broadcasts) SS ME 3227/B/12, ‘Rhodesia: “Look Back in Pride”, Commentary on UDI Anniversary’, 10 November 1969.

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settler-colonial discourse of ‘knowing’ the native, which was a key part of the Rhodesian ‘good governance’ narrative explored in Chapter 3.133 Through its new, republican constitution the RF promised to put this knowledge into practice, largely through more rigid and systematic segregation of the races. A key part of this quasi-apartheid approach was the system of chieftainship, a sort of parallel government for Rhodesia’s African population. Smith portrayed the constitution as a multiracial compromise with Rhodesia’s African chiefs when it effectively provided for the establishment of a separate government for the black population. Indeed, the chiefs themselves represented a curious Rhodesian form of royalty, an ersatz pageantry which was restricted to black Africans while white Rhodesians became republicans. It was typical RF doublespeak that while they argued whites must ‘go forward’ into republicanism, they were sending blacks ‘backward’ by extending and consolidating the power of chiefs. The prominence of the chiefs in RF thinking was wrapped up in language about tradition and timelessness but was in fact a consequence of 1960s policy orientation. The chiefs and their authority were a classic colonial ‘invented tradition’, an imposed mechanism for control which was designed to neutralise the popular impulses that were expressed by the African nationalist movements and loathed by the RF. A 1964 draft white paper on consultation that explained the principles that underlay the RF’s thinking throughout the UDI rebellion with tribal and traditional leaders had noted: ‘A Tribal African lives in an intricate network of kinship bonds, of rights and duties assigned by that network, and he does not exercise his freedom of choice as an individual to make his own self-interested judgements [sic] and choices’.134 The RF’s conceptualisation of African politics and society was a shift from the modernising rhetoric of the administrations of the 1950s, in which technological progress would ultimately bring Africans up to Europeans’ civilisational level, and the glacial reality of the policy of ‘partnership’. This position was contrasted with the European who was ‘master of his own fate’.135

133 Schwarz,

The White Man’s World, p. 22. (Smith Papers) Cabinet Memoranda—S.R.C. (S) (64) 360—‘Draft White Paper: Consultation with Tribal and Traditional Leaders: Chiefs and Headmen’, 30 November 1964, p. 16. 135 Ibid. 134 (CL)

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The RF policymakers believed that inherently ‘tribal’ Africans could only properly express themselves through the government-maintained system of chieftainship, and a granting of greater authority to these chiefs, whom Jocelyn Alexander has called ‘the chosen intermediaries of the state’, was a key element of the RF’s constitutional proposals.136 The RF put an enormous amount of faith in chiefs as a panacea to what they considered highly dangerous changes in African society since the 1960s: increasing urbanisation, rising political consciousness and, most recently, violent nationalist resistance to the white state.137 While chiefs appeared to be a silver bullet for the RF, the practical realities of chieftainship were less about blind collaboration with the state than they were about balancing a wide range of competing interests in order to retain power and authority, with varying degrees of success.138 By enshrining the primacy of African traditional authority through the chieftainship system and restricting future African representation in the legislature to parity with Europeans, the 1969 constitution eliminated the potential for a majority-ruled future altogether. Legislation like the much-maligned Land Tenure Act (LTA) actively prevented any form of meaningful racial equality in Rhodesian land ownership. The LTA reserved fifty per cent of Rhodesia’s land for the country’s quarter of a million or so Europeans and fifty per cent for between four and five million Africans. Though the RF was seriously invested in using the 1969 constitution to promote the chiefs, giving them greater powers and authority than ever before and setting them up as representatives of the African people, its refusal to recognise the legitimacy of Rhodesia’s African nationalist movements severely limited the new nation’s appeal to most of its population. This made the success of the state and the nation largely dependent upon the morale of Rhodesia’s white population. This hypocrisy was clearly articulated by the African Parliamentarian C.M. Chipunza (Centre Party Member for Bindura), who highlighted the problems of the RF’s nation-building project during the debate to enact the new constitution: 136 J. Alexander, The Unsettled Land: State Making and the Politics of Land in Zimbabwe 1893–2003 (Oxford, James Currey, 2006), p. 9; T. Ranger, ‘Tradition and Travesty: Chiefs and the Administration in Makoni District, Zimbabwe, 1960–1980’, Journal of the International African Institute, 52, 3 (1982), pp. 20–41. 137 Ranger, ‘Tradition and Travesty’, p. 23. 138 Alexander, The Unsettled Land; Ranger, ‘Tradition and Travesty’.

168  D. KENRICK If we stress division, how are we going to build a nation? How are we going to have people who will think first and foremost as Rhodesians? How can we instil the sense of patriotism when our whole trend in the Bill is division and disunity… I believe that unless we realize that racial co-operation here is essential without it we will get nowhere at all. Both races need each other and if they realize it then they may as well start working together… and not planning for other people and then forcing them to accept it.139

Like the debates over the flag, those about the constitution and the monarchy had been largely carried out in a white Rhodesian echo chamber. Chipunza had put his finger on the bigger problem in Rhodesia in 1969–1970; questions about symbolism distracted from the basic failure of Rhodesian nationalism to appeal beyond the country’s white population. Most of Rhodesia’s population had been excluded from consideration despite, or because of, the fact that it was they who would be most profoundly affected by the provisions of the new constitution. Though black nationalists by the mid-1960s had lost faith in the ability of the Crown as a route to protest grievances and had never accepted the legitimacy of the RF government, the switch to a republic seemed to close the door on any hope of British support for the nationalist cause. The RBC’s belated celebration of Rhodesia’s short history of nationhood, beginning with UDI, was a marked contrast with other African nations. In these new states, rather than see independence as ‘year zero’, nationalist leaders attempted to hark back to a whole range of pre-colonial traditions (of varying authenticity and applicability) to mould the disparate cultures into something that could be called ‘Nigerian’ or ‘Kenyan’ or (more pertinently for the Rhodesian case) ‘Katangese’ or ‘Biafran’.140 One such example of the rows which erupted over the minutiae of national symbolism took place in nearby Botswana. The Botswanans introduced a new currency, the Pula, in the 1960s, which triggered a fierce debate over whether the shape of the shield in Botswana’s coat of arms was a Tswana one or actually based on a Zulu/

139 Rhodesia

Parliamentary Debates, 75, 1969, 1118. Cooper, Africa Since 1940: The Past of the Present (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 89. See Larmer & Kennes, The Katangese Gendarmes; C. Achebe, The Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra (London, Penguin, 2012) for Katanga and Biafra respectively. 140 F.

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Ndebele one.141 Meanwhile, in neighbouring Rhodesia white nationalists were less concerned with the fine details of national symbolism than they were with scrapping its British imperial predecessors. The implications of this ‘year zero’ approach and Rhodesia’s isolation were a particularly brittle nationalism which had shallow roots in a small section of the country’s population.

Conclusion After March 1970, Rhodesians were encouraged to look forward to the country’s supposedly shining future rather than backwards to the imperial past. Context was everything to this evolving nationalism; for whites in 1969–1970, Rhodesia’s future seemed bright. The country had weathered sanctions well, the economy had suffered less than business leaders had feared, and new trading partners rushed into clandestinely fill the gaps Britain had left in commerce. The Rhodesian military was able to easily dominate the battlefield, straightforwardly repelling the divided and disorganised bands of guerrillas making tentative forays across the Zambezi with an efficiency that led Rhodesians to proudly proclaim that they had the best counter-insurgency force in the world. Yet, by refocusing loyalty and devotion from the Monarch onto the prime minister, the party and the nation of Rhodesia, the RF sowed the seeds for the ultimate failure of their nationalist project. Fealty to ‘Rhodesia’ was possible in the prosperous late 1960s and early 1970s, when the RF’s UDI gamble seemed to have paid off, but as the 1970s went on, with the nation groaning under increasing military and economic hardship, more and more of the critical white population lost faith and voted with their feet. The monarchy issue also shows the reactive and contingent nature of the RF’s nation-building project; reacting to the consequences of UDI, reacting to popular imaginations of the Rhodesian past, present and future, rather than being directed and managed by an omnipotent party machine, it was largely cobbled together on the hoof. The 1969 constitution and the associated debates about the monarchy were portrayed as a logical break point in Rhodesian history. It seemed like independence had finally come, after five years of debate and delay. 141 C.J. Makgula, ‘Neil Parsons, National Coat of Arms, and Introduction of the Pula Currency in Botswana, 1975–1976’, South African Historical Journal, 66, 3 (2014), pp. 504–520.

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Before the new constitution took effect in 1970, Rhodesia was a rebellious colony; afterwards it was an independent nation. As was often the case with new states in Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, the reality was inevitably messier.142 The intervening years between UDI and a republic had seen a discursive and political struggle among white Rhodesians trying to come to terms with their imperial past and to define their post-colonial future. These debates were undergirded and complicated by Rhodesia’s status as an international pariah state, which left it halfway between a settler society in the mould of Canada or Australia and an independent nation akin to Ghana or Burma. This awkward position complicates neat narratives of decolonisation in which colonial ‘Rhodesia’ became post-colonial ‘Zimbabwe’, allowing us to recognise that rebel Rhodesia was not simply the colonial holdover that its opponents often derided. These narratives were further complicated in 1979, as Britain briefly resumed control of what was by then Zimbabwe-Rhodesia in order to manage the transition to majority-rule independence. On 21 December 1979, the country was officially renamed ‘The Colony of Southern Rhodesia’ and British imperialism in southern Africa made the briefest resurgence as the old symbols of colonial rule were re-introduced. The resumption of colonial rule was met variously with relief and resignation by those white Rhodesians who had stayed behind.143 The contestation of Rhodesianness even as the rebellion came to a close and the state blinked out of existence suggests that, despite the RF’s best attempts, questions about what Rhodesia meant to whites remained unresolved even in the twilight of the nation. Nevertheless, the fact remained that white Rhodesians had overwhelmingly voted to make the ‘break with Britain’. In doing so, they had provided the impetus for the new direction of the RF’s nationalism, agreeing that Rhodesia should now try to make it on its own rather than wait for the seal of approval of the British government. Negotiations would continue, but the constitutional change of 1970 reflected a white population growing in confidence. This was facilitated by the propitious circumstances in which the referendum took place. It became increasingly clear during the economic decline and escalating conflict of the 1970s that white Rhodesians would accept any constitutional

142 Larmer 143 See

& Kennes, The Katangese Gendarmes, p. 5. the introduction for an indication of these differing views.

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circumstances (ultimately, even the long-dreaded majority rule) if it led to peace and the return of some semblance of normality to their everyday lives. This erosion of morale represented the collapse of everything that Rhodesia stood for, and it had its tentative beginnings in the republican turn, which at least ostensibly disavowed the Britishness that UDI had claimed to preserve. What it, and the 1969 constitution, left behind was the more crudely racial imperative of defending permanent white-minority rule. Yet this change in direction further cemented Rhodesia’s international isolation, reflected by its continued lack of recognition, even by Portugal and South Africa, its closest allies. By separating Rhodesia from the wider ‘British World’, that ‘global family’ of settler societies which retained strong social and cultural ties to Britain, it further demonstrated how the RF’s nationalism was influenced, both consciously and unconsciously, by transnational and global trends, both in settler societies and also in former colonies. The events of 1970 also show how the rhetorical techniques of the RF’s nationalism evolved over time. ‘Loyalty’ formed a useful element of a RF rhetoric when it could be employed in order to win concessions and support in the UK. But the monarchy meant something more than that. Settlers’ power and influence were boosted both locally and internationally by the monarchy, which helped to anchor them into political, social and cultural transnational networks. The monarchy was dear to many settlers’ hearts, and it was pliable enough to be adapted and moulded to suit local settler agendas. It was for this reason that the RF had been forced to move cautiously to remove the monarchy in the years following UDI, and its continued sensitivity to white popular opinion on the subject meant that it did not replace the Queen with an equally powerful and emotive symbol. 1970 paved the way for a renewed, concerted effort by the RF and its supporters to build and consolidate their imagining of the Rhodesian nation. The sense of continuity and reliability which made the monarchy so enduring in the UK, especially during its turbulent decades of post-war change, became its Achilles’ heel in Rhodesia, where it was successfully portrayed as a redundant holdover of the colonial past. The RF convinced white Rhodesian voters to realign one of the major focuses of their loyalty away from what they portrayed as an indifferent and outdated institution, with its colonial overtones unsuitable for a new, independent nation.

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Despite Rhodesia’s republican turn, after 1970 many elements of British symbolism remained in place until Zimbabwean independence, demonstrating the new Rhodesia’s ambiguous relationship with its imperial past.144 This reflected the limits of the RF’s nation-building project, as even after the ‘apron strings’ tying Rhodesia to Britain were cut the country remained fundamentally British. Rhodesia’s republican status had no legal weight beyond the country’s borders, and internationally— where the Queen remained the legal sovereign and Rhodesia remained a British possession—the declaration of a republic was seen as a political act, not a legal one.145 As well as the fact that most of its white population remained of British or English-speaking South African extraction, like many other African colonies, Rhodesia’s British legacy was preserved in the names of schools, libraries, museums, roads and other public buildings. The peculiarly named British South Africa Police (BSAP) force—Rhodesia’s ‘senior service’—was one of the most striking holdovers. When Rhodes’ British South Africa Company had claimed Rhodesia for the British in 1890, it brought its’ own paramilitary police force (the BSAP) with it and the name had stuck. Amidst talk of new flags, constitutions and national anthems, there was never a systematic attempt to change the name of the BSAP, suggesting colonial nostalgia’s power to limit Rhodesian republican zeal. By March 1970, the RF’s white nationalism had entered a recognisably new phase. Rhodesia had new national symbols, but the process of creating them had been painful and contested. It forced the RF to codify Rhodesian independence in recognition of the failure of negotiations with the British government. It continued to be racist and exclusionary in character, reinforcing the idea that the continuation of armed struggle was the fastest (and after 1969, the only) way for Rhodesia’s African population to achieve the equality it sought. Yet it also brought white Rhodesians together around a shared collection of national symbols, even if those symbols went unrecognised by the rebel state’s closest allies. For the Union Jack, there was the ‘Green and White’.146 For the distant and symbolic figure of Queen Elizabeth II, there was the 144 D.

Lowry, ‘The Lost Dominion’, p. 115. author thanks Josiah Brownell for this point. 146 Popular Rhodesian folk singer John Edmond released a song named ‘Green and White’ in 1976, see J. Edmond, The Story of Troopiesongs and the Rhodesian Bush War (Johannesburg, 1982), p. 85 for lyrics and Edmond’s commentary. 145 The

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new office of president, and for the stoic and determine wartime leader of Churchill, there was Ian Smith, Rhodesia’s very own Churchill. For empire, there was anticommunism, white rule and Rhodesia. Yet for Rhodesia to survive, there had to be more than this. International recognition was essential, and it was through Rhodesia’s final major act of symbolic decolonisation, the new national anthem, that the RF sought it achieve it.

CHAPTER 6

‘The Last Word in Rhodesian’: Visions of the Nation in White Rhodesian Music

In 1970s Rhodesia, music was an important means of articulating competing visions of the nation, both within and between black and white nationalist organisations. The Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA), which penetrated Rhodesia’s north-east from its bases in Mozambique from the early 1970s onwards, recognised the critical importance of music in mobilising the people.1 To help win support among the local populace, ZANLA instituted a programme of cultural nationalism. It broadcast chimurenga (struggle) songs on its radio network and made singing and dancing an integral part of the allnight pungwes (meetings) that it held in rural African settlements across Rhodesia.2 Music was an important facilitator of social and communal cohesion, capable of providing entertainment and morale boosts. It provided a similar role to Rhodesian whites during their fifteen-year rebellion. This chapter looks at two musical expressions of Rhodesia—the national anthem and folk music.

1 ZANLA was the armed wing of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU). T. Turino, Nationalists, Cosmopolitans, and Popular Music in Zimbabwe (Chicago & London, University of Chicago Press, 2000), pp. 190–219. 2 Ibid., pp. 203–207.

© The Author(s) 2019 D. Kenrick, Decolonisation, Identity and Nation in Rhodesia, 1964–1979, Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32698-2_6

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‘Guide Us Lord, to Wise Decision’: Choosing the Rhodesian National Anthem UDI generated its own corpus of political rituals centred upon the seizure and defence of Rhodesian independence. These rituals were reinforced by the development of a new national symbology that harked back to Rhodesia’s colonial past and looked forward to its future as an independent nation. This symbolic decolonisation, in which the RF and its supporters sought to transform the colony of ‘Southern Rhodesia’ into the independent state of ‘Rhodesia’, remains contentious. Some scholars, such as Luise White, have seen the RF’s inconsistent attempts to create new, ersatz national symbolism as proof of a lack of sincerity in white Rhodesian nationalism.3 The search for Rhodesia’s new national anthem, to replace ‘God Save the Queen’, which lasted eight years (1967–1975), seemed to typify this narrative of disinterested decolonisation. In their classic study of white Rhodesia between 1970 and 1980, Peter Godwin and Ian Hancock remarked wryly upon the futility of ‘an anthem which was meant to express and inspire a sense of national identity… [that was] produced just before the nation itself was about to disappear’.4 Others, like Josiah Brownell, who has explored Rhodesian postage stamps, have argued that the RF took seemingly banal signifiers of statehood incredibly importantly. The long and meandering story of Rhodesia’s national anthem complements Brownell’s research and encapsulates the RF’s obsession with legitimacy and wider recognition.5 The old national anthem, like the flag, was closely tied to the monarchy. After 1970, official events were often marked with an awkward silence in place of ‘God Save the Queen’. As with UDI, the RF argued that Rhodesians had been forced to abandon this cherished tradition. In an interview with the state-produced Rhodesia Commentary magazine in 1967, Ian Smith explained:

3 L. White, Unpopular Sovereignty: Rhodesia and African Decolonization (Chicago, Chicago University Press, 2015). 4 Godwin & Hancock, Rhodesians Never Die, p. 146. 5 J. Brownell, ‘The Visual Rhetoric of Stamps—Rhodesia and the Projection of Sovereignty (1965–1980)’, accessed at https://www.academia.edu/29917552/The_ Visual_Rhetoric_of_Stamps-_Rhodesia_and_the_Projection_of_Sovereignty_1965-80_. docx on 19 November 2016.

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The British national anthem has been used for many years. We were very happy. There weren’t any problems. We were proud. But… [w]e have been denied the right to use this symbol and this person because the whole concept of the Queen has been distorted by party politicians… But while it was appropriate in the past… the time would have come when Rhodesians would have thought of something more in spirit with the African continent.6

Smith’s thoughts reflect Maria Benedita-Basto’s contention that national anthems aim to represent ‘a … fiction of the people …’.7 Recognising this, in 1967 the RF sought the involvement of the Rhodesian public in the production of a new national anthem. The government announced a competition, inviting submissions of lyrics and music to be adjudicated by an independent panel. Though this was in keeping with the RF’s populist bent, public competitions are a common strategy for selecting national anthems, and both Mozambique and Nigeria were taking a similar approach in the 1970s.8 Unlike the lacklustre public response to the flag re-design competition, which was taking place at the same time, the national anthem competition received several hundred submissions from the public. Responsibility for devising and implementing Rhodesia’s postUDI symbology lay with the Cabinet Committee on Honours and Awards, which was comprised of several high-level cabinet members.9 Submissions were first invited in October 1967, but in such a vague way that the thirty-eight responses received by May 1968 prompted the committee to formalise the competition. It asked the cabinet to create separate competitions for lyrics and music. Requesting £900 of prize money ‘in order to attract the best talent’, the committee argued ‘this is a modest price to pay for something which will be of permanent value to the country’.10 6 ‘New Anthem, Flag and Awards’, Rhodesian Commentary, 1, 45 (9 October 1967), p. 1. 7 M. Basto, ‘The Writings of the National Anthem in Independent Mozambique: Fictions of the Subject-People’, Kronos, 39, 1 (2013), p. 185. 8 A. Marshall, Republic or Death! Travels in Search of National Anthems (London, Windmill Books, 2015), pp. 85, 203, 313. 9 See Chapter 4. 10 (CL) (Smith Papers), Cabinet Memoranda, RC(S) (68) 93, ‘National Anthem: Third Report by the Committee on Honours and Awards’, 8 May 1968.

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A number of suggestions were made to aid the competition’s judges, such as that the anthem should be ‘reasonably short’, in English, able to be sung by untrained voices, be ‘completely’ non-political and non-racial and ‘contain an element of prayer without being specifically related to any one religion’.11 Though the conditions appeared broad enough to be inclusive, they reflected Rhodesia’s British imperial heritage, ignoring chiShona and SiNdebele, the two major African languages in Rhodesia, which few whites knew or spoke. In this respect, it was similar to other settler anthems, all of which were or are sung in the language of the settler: English, French and Afrikaans.12 Yet the very ambiguity of the conditions was reflective of national anthems more generally and the image that they seek to project, particularly to the international community. Domestically, such an anthem had the potential to foster ‘solidarity without consensus’.13 Rhodesians could project their own visions of Rhodesia into the anodyne words of an anthem, as they had done with the flag. By July 1969, with the new flag flying since November 1968 and the public having voted in favour of a republic the month before, the anthem was being handled by its own committee. Four hundred and ninety-two submissions had been distilled into a shortlist of five by the commissioners, who reported that ‘none… in their present form, could be regarded as suitable texts…’.14 The commissioners offered to revise or alter some of the submissions ‘beyond what was envisaged under the terms of reference’ to make them suitable anthems.15 After years of

11 RC(S)

(68) 93, ‘National Anthem’. South Africa’s anthem is now remarkable for being in five languages, English, Afrikaans, Sesotho, and isiZulu and isiXhosa and, though not without controversy, it became common to sing the first verse of ‘God Defend New Zealand’ in both English and Te Reo Maori. Accessed at https://www.gov.za/about-sa/national-symbols/national-anthem and http://www.mch.govt.nz/nz-identity-heritage/national-anthems/history-god-defend-new-zealand on 8 September 2017. Full lyrics to each anthem can be found at the following links: https://www.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/files/pmc/Honours/ anthem_words.pdf; https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/anthems-canada.html#a1; http://www.mch.govt.nz/nz-identity-heritage/national-anthems/god-defend-new-zealandaotearoa; and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Stem_van_Suid-Afrika all accessed on 8 September 2017. 13 Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power, p. 69. 14 (CL) (Smith Papers), RC(S) (69) 130, ‘The National Anthem’, 23 July 1969. 15 Ibid., p. 2 12 Though

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effort, it seemed that the Rhodesian populace was unable to represent itself in a way that suited the RF’s intentions for the anthem. The commissioners created a composite set of lyrics from these five submissions that they felt had ‘a charm of description most apt to Rhodesia’: Lift up your voices in praise of Rhodesia, Whose granite boulders lie warm in the sun, Tints of our trees when the leaves are unfolding, Splendid our skies when the daylight is done. Proud are our hopes and worthy our labour, Shining our cities arise from the plains, May God be our help in the tasks that await us, Teach us the faith that inspires and sustains. Onward Rhodesia, go forward with pride, Clear be our vision as skies are above, Deep as a mine be our true understanding, Warm be our fellowship, perfect our love. CHORUS: Onward Rhodesia, go forward with pride, Glory your beacon and honour your guide, May you shine brighter yet, May your star never set, Onward, onward Rhodesia.

With its ‘refreshing depth of literary quality… full of the right sentiments and invocations’, the judges felt it had ‘all the qualities’ they were seeking in a national anthem.16 The hybridised version included several key themes which would run through the lyrical compositions which were shortlisted in the coming years. Its praise of the landscape reflected the centrality of geography to settler mentalities, as Nicholas Thomas has noted, ‘[pioneering discourse] privileges the landscape as the raw material for a divinely ordained work, in which there is a kind of opportunity for growth and progress that seems lacking in the old world’.17 The image of ‘empty land’ that needed to be tamed or developed by European settlers had 16 Ibid.,

Annex B; ibid., Annex C. Thomas, Colonialism’s Culture: Anthropology, Travel and Government (Oxford, Polity Press, 1996), p. 156 17 N.

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long provided a justification for conquest, allowing settlers to possess a guilt-free sense of place and purpose, privileging their relationship with landscape and nature over that with the indigenous populations over which they ruled.18 Mastery of the land was often associated with ideas of progress and development, overseen by benevolent and capable settlers, and this is reflected in the composition’s language of marching forward to meet ‘the tasks that await us’, which echoed the ‘good governance’ narrative seen in Chapter 3, the implication being that Rhodesia was a developing country with a bright future, which could only be assured by the guiding hand of responsible and civilised (white) people. Finally, the anthem invoked God, reflecting the professedly religious nature of Rhodesian society, after all Ian Smith claimed to have declared UDI in defence of ‘Western, Christian civilisation’. Christianity was closely linked to anticommunism in Rhodesian political mythology, and the RF could rely upon religious legitimacy from figures such as the Anglican Father Arthur Lewis, ‘the high priest of the RF’ who declared that Rhodesia was a ‘lifeboat from the sinking ship of Christian civilisation’.19 The content of the anthem’s lyrics suggests that submissions were shaped informally through a shared rubric of settler colonialism that permeated white Rhodesian society. While the committee tinkered with the words of the anthem, the question of what it would sound like remained unanswered. In September 1970, it was decided to test the waters of public opinion with a composition by a Mr. Ascough of Fort Victoria which was to be recorded by the British South Africa Police Band and broadcast on radio and television.20 The cabinet, keen to ‘avoid public criticism that an anthem is being forced upon Rhodesians’, suggested that no announcement about the anthem should be made. The piece was simply to be played prior to the Independence Day parade on 11 November and at the end of Rhodesian Broadcasting Corporation (RBC) and Rhodesian 18 Brabazon, Tracking the Jack, p. 55; C. Elkins & S. Pedersen, ‘Introduction—Settler Colonialism: A Concept and Its Uses’, in C. Elkins & S. Pedersen (eds.), Settler Colonialism in the Twentieth Century (New York & Abingdon, Routledge, 2005), pp. 1–20. 19 Godwin & Hancock, Rhodesians Never Die, p. 129; A. Lewis, Rhodesia Live or Die (Salisbury, 1973), p. 12. 20 (CL) (Smith Papers), Cabinet Memoranda, RC(S) (70) 182, ‘National Anthem’, 23 September 1970.

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Television (RTV) transmissions.21 This rather circumspect approach was felt to be the best way to gauge public opinion. The commissioners were optimistic, believing that ‘after a few such playing the anthem will receive enthusiastic acceptance by the majority of Rhodesians’.22 This optimism proved misplaced, and in December 1970, the competition for lyrics for the anthem had re-opened. It was now suggested that contacting Rhodesia’s community of poets might help improve the quality of entries.23 A new set of guidelines sought a short, English anthem that would ‘express the aspirations of all Rhodesians as one people before God’.24 It was also noted that ‘the verses should have a timeless quality and… not contain any reference to current affairs or depend upon topicality; the words should possess dignity and good taste’.25 Though UDI, the plucky ingenuity of illegal sanctions-busting and the fight against communism were all key elements of the RF propaganda machine they were deemed unsuitable for a national anthem. The focus on timelessness suggested a different aspect of Rhodesian nation building, one that focused upon the long-term viability of the Rhodesian nation and jarred with many other elements of white nationalism, which drew most of its meaning from its particular geographical and temporal context. Three years later, the issue of the national anthem was still unresolved. Much had changed in Rhodesia since 1970, with the guerrilla war against ZANLA and the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) in full swing.26 The international recognition Ian Smith had promised during the 1969 constitutional referendum had proved elusive, and Rhodesia remained unrecognised by any other state, even its closest allies South Africa and Portugal. In 1972, the Rhodesian government acquiesced to the demands of the International Olympic Committee to compete in the Munich Olympic Games using the Union Flag and God Save the Queen and would have done so had the team not been disqualified at the last minute due to a threatened boycott from a number of African

21 Ibid.,

p. 2.

22 Ibid. 23 (CL) (Smith Papers), Cabinet Memoranda, RC(S) (70) 229, ‘Guide Lines for the Lyrics of the Rhodesian National Anthem’, 3 December 1970. 24 RC(S) (70) 229, ‘Guide Lines for the Lyrics’, pp. 1–2. 25 Ibid. 26 ZIPRA was the armed wing of the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU).

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nations.27 This humiliating concession suggested that, despite their best efforts, the RF had failed to convince the international community with their Rhodesian rebranding. Yet still the committee persevered with the anthem, despite the continual failure of the Rhodesian public to produce anything that satisfied them. On 3 July 1970, the cabinet suggested using a classic hymn as a basis for the tune, as this was the hallmark of some the most familiar anthems.28 This was hardly in keeping with Smith’s 1967 desire for ‘something more in spirit with the African continent’, a sentiment that seemed to have been forgotten all too quickly. The musical shortcomings of Rhodesia’s amateur lyricists between 1967 and 1973 call to mind Robert Blake’s description of Rhodesia as a ‘cultural desert… [where] neither literature, music, nor the visual arts flourished in its arid soil’.29 Yet it also suggests that their visions of the nation, as expressed in their lyrics and music, were at odds with that of the government and its commission. Ever-escalating war and failed negotiations meant that Rhodesia’s fortunes in 1975 were somewhat less propitious. As the New Year dawned, the search for the national anthem ground on. By this time, the music of the anthem, Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’, had been selected, but none of the 793 sets of lyrics the committee had seen since 1967 had satisfied them. In a reflection of the generally farcical nature of the proceedings, the music of the anthem had to be recorded by the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s orchestra, as Rhodesia lacked its own national orchestra.30 In March 1975, the committee recommended adopting a composition which they had once again amalgamated from a series of submissions with key amendments underlined: God almighty, bless Rhodesia, May her firm 27 A. Novak, ‘Rhodesia’s “Rebel and Racist” Olympics Team: Athletic Glory, National Legitimacy and the Clash of Politics and Sport’, The International Journal of the History of Sport, 23, 8 (2006), pp. 1369–1388. 28 RC(S)

(70) (229) ‘Guide Lines for the Lyrics’, p. 6. Blake, A History of Rhodesia (London, 1977), p. 278. 30 (CL) (Smith Papers), Cabinet Memoranda, RC(S) (75) 42, ‘National Anthem’, 3 April 1975; (CL) (Smith Papers) RC(S) (75) 35, ‘National Anthem’, 25 March 1975. 29 R.

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foundation be, Liberty for all her people, Justice and equality. May her children stand united, Striving for the common good, May their onward march be lighted, By the torch of brotherhood.

Unlike those of the hybrid suggested in 1969, the new lyrics focused more heavily on unity among Rhodesia’s people. The amendments included replacing a reference to unity between ‘the races’ with ‘her children’, as the panel felt that such a direct mention of race ‘was inappropriate in a national anthem and could, in the future if not now, have a divisive effect’.31 The editing was another indication of the committee’s preoccupation with finding an ‘appropriate’ anthem. In the same month that the committee recommended its latest set of lyrics, another Cabinet Committee was created, this one to investigate Independence Celebrations for the tenth anniversary of Rhodesian independence. After meeting six times, it reported back to cabinet on 27 May with its recommendations for celebrating rebel Rhodesia’s independence, noting: …as the current economic difficulties facing the country have emerged more distinctly and their effects do not seem likely to abate before the end of 1975, the staging of wholesale elaborate functions in November, 1975, would be likely to produce an unfavourable reaction from many sectors of the community and this would be counter productive to the objective of the celebrations.32

In an annex to its report, the commission outlined a range of the proposals it had considered and its views on them which provide a revealing portrait of state of the Rhodesian nation in mid-1975. The issue of coins was discounted because ‘Gold and silver is required for use elsewhere in the economy’ and, because coins would need to be minted in South Africa, precious foreign exchange currency would be required. Likewise, 31 Ibid. 32 (CL) (Smith Papers), Cabinet Memoranda, RC(S) (75) 71, ‘Independence Anniversary Celebrations: First Report of the Cabinet Committee’, 27 May 1975, p. 2.

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issuing stamps would be impossible because of short notice, the need to inform the International Postal Union, and the fact that ‘any proposed issue would be viewed from a political aspect, however subtle the theme of the stamps, and would provoke retaliatory action against Rhodesia’s Postal and Telecommunications Services’.33 Military parades were out because ‘the men and materials required for parades in the main centres are fully committed on defence’.34 The need to use foreign currency also scotched plans for commemorative medals or buttonhole badges for school children. A proposal for a commemorative message from Ian Smith to Rhodesian school children was hampered because ‘[n]o suitable paper is available and foreign currency would… be required for its import’.35 There were ‘No fireworks… available at present in Rhodesia’ for any kind of display and ‘an erstwhile manufacturer requires a foreign currency allocation as well as provision of a building and financial assistance from Government’.36 Independence bonds were counselled against as they would put more pressure on ‘building societies whose resources are already feeling the strain’.37 Reflecting this rather sorry state of affairs, the committee advised that celebrations be ‘low key unless there is a significant change of circumstance before [11 November]…’.38 The cabinet approved the committee’s request to continue investigating some of its more low key options, including static displays in the National Archives, sporting events and the usual ceremonies such as independence dances.39 It was in this broader context of the shrinking of the Rhodesian state that the new national anthem finally came into being. Ultimately, it was a truncated version of submission number 489 that eventually became the Rhodesian national anthem on 24 September 1975. This was very much a last-minute decision, as Rhodesian Cabinet minutes show that at the thirty-sixth meeting of cabinet on 2 September 1975, the Minister for Immigration, Information and Tourism was still 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid. 39 (CL) (Smith Papers), Cabinet Minutes, R.C.(S) (75) Twenty-First Meeting, ‘First Report of the Cabinet Committee on Independence Anniversary Celebrations’, 17 June 1975; Cabinet Memoranda R.C.(S) (75) 71 ‘Independence Anniversary Celebrations’.

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seeking a cabinet discussion on the ‘outstanding matter of the words for the national anthem’ at the next meeting on 9 September.40 These lyrics were originally composed by Mary Bloom, a South African born resident of the central city of Gwelo, who received her prize money in Rhodesian dollars rather than pounds for ‘Rise O Voices of Rhodesia’.41 By the time it was introduced, the national anthem had become something of a national joke. The process, while claiming inclusivity, had its origins in the musical traditions and discursive frameworks of settler colonialism. It failed to express the aspirations of Rhodesia’s black population in the way that Chimurenga songs or even regional protest songs like the hymn Nkosi Sikelel’iAfrika (Lord Bless Africa) did.42 The torturous process by which the anthem was arrived at also demonstrates the complicated genesis of ‘white Rhodesian nationalism’, a term that often fails to capture the disaggregated and messy nature of white nationalism in Rhodesia at this time. The anthem was ostensibly a ‘bottom-up’ imagining of the nation, but one that had been managed and amended through a ‘top-down’ process of state-driven nationalism. It was designed to reflect a particular vision of the nation that could be ‘performed’ at an international, as well as domestic, level.43 As Thomas Turino notes, ‘[t]o be recognized as a nation, nationalists must construct their new social entity to be recognizably like other nations – with national languages, anthems, flags…’.44 It reflected an idealised imagining of Rhodesia, a timeless place almost completely disconnected from the Rhodesia of the UDI period. In this sense, the anthem was at odds with the short-termism inherent in much RF propaganda and white Rhodesian cultural expressions more broadly.

40 (CL) (Smith Papers), Cabinet Minutes, R.C.(S) (75) Thirty-Sixth Meeting, ‘National Anthem’, 2 September 1975. 41 The full lyrics of the anthem are quoted in Godwin & Hancock, Rhodesians Never Die, pp. 145–146. 42 M.O. West, The Rise of an African Middle Class: Colonial Zimbabwe 1898–1965 (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2002), pp. 33–34; Turino, Nationalists, Cosmopolitans, and Popular Music, pp. 190–219. 43 See E. Kennes & M. Larmer, ‘Rethinking the Katangese Secession’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 42, 4 (2014), pp. 741–761 for an exploration of this concept in relation to the short-lived secessionist state of Katanga. 44 T. Turino, Nationalists, Cosmopolitans, and Popular Music in Zimbabwe (Chicago & London, Chicago University Press, 2000), p. 216.

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In its search for a new national anthem, Rhodesia had again revealed its place in a global community of settlers seeking to come to terms with the end of empire and its consequences for national identity. It took place at a time of global reassessment of national anthems among the settler societies of the former British Empire. In 1977, ‘God Defend New Zealand’ gained equal status to ‘God Save the Queen’, Canada adopted the poem ‘O Canada’ in 1980, and four years later, Australia selected ‘Advance Australia Fair’ after a competitive process even more farcical than Rhodesia’s.45 The Australians, similarly searching for a post-imperial identity, held a competition that received over 4000 entries for lyrics and music. The judging panel reluctantly put forward a shortlist of six (they were meant to choose 12 but considered the entries of such poor quality that they could not), which were themselves so poor that the Australian public was called in December 1973 to vote on either ‘Waltzing Matilda’, ‘Advance Australia Fair’ and ‘Song of Australia’.46 Meanwhile, Rhodesia’s southern neighbour had set an early precedent for anthem changing, when the Afrikaans poem Die Stem van Suid Afrika (The Call of South Africa) was adopted as a joint national anthem as early as 1938.47 The failure of ordinary Rhodesians to express themselves appropriately in their submissions for the national anthem suggests that, like the RF propaganda, their focus was more on the divided present than the shining, unified future. If the new anthem failed to demonstrate Rhodesian independence to the wider world, it also found limited purchase domestically. On 11 November 1976, at the annual Independence Ball held in Salisbury to mark UDI, the American journalist Michael Kaufman observed that few attendees knew the words to the anthem and ‘had to

45 Accessed at http://www.mch.govt.nz/nz-identity-heritage/national-anthems/ history-god-defend-new-zealand; http://www.australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-story/austn-national-anthem, and https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/anthems-canada.html#a3 on 8 September 2017. See S. Ward, ‘The “New Nationalism” in Australia, Canada and New Zealand: Civic Culture in the Wake of the British World’, in K. Darian-Smith, P. Grimshaw & S. Macintyre (eds.), Britishness Abroad: Transnational Movements and Imperial Cultures (Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 2007), pp. 231–263 for more on the Australian national anthem competition. 46 Ward, ‘The New Nationalism’, pp. 250–251. 47 L. Thompson, The Political Mythology of Apartheid (New Haven & London, 1985), p. 37.

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read from cards left at each place setting’.48 The several hundred attendees at the Ball were some of the most ardent rebel Rhodesians, yet even they struggled to remember the anthem. Later that evening, Kaufman noted, ‘[t]he crowd was more familiar with the words of a popular song called “Rhodesians Never Die”… [which] the guests sang enthusiastically’.49 Popular and populist enthusiasms characterised white Rhodesian music in the UDI period.

Alternative Visions: Rhodesian Folk Songs of the 1970s While a successive series of cabinet committees agonised over the music and words of Rhodesia’s national anthem, other artists produced different musical expressions of the Rhodesian nation. Their music reflected different priorities and self-conceptions, ones that were more focused and explicitly incorporated notions of race and gender. Alfred Musvoto, comparing the national anthem and these songs, argued that together they constituted a white Rhodesian musical discourse.50 It would be more accurate to say that they reflected the multifaceted nature of white Rhodesian nationalism, a nationalism that flickered between images of Rhodesia as a cause and Rhodesia as a country. Less hidebound by a need to seem timeless and ‘appropriate’ for representing Rhodesia on the international stage, the songs reflected an identity relevant to a particular moment (UDI and the war against nationalist guerrillas) and to a particular, narrow listenership (white Rhodesians). They complicate arguments about nation and identity, suggesting multifarious origins of visions of the nation and offering a glimpse of the wellsprings from which such visions draw their power. The folk songs that white Rhodesians enjoyed in the 1970s were part of a much larger corpus of cultural expression inspired by UDI. This popular culture reflected a moment in time, and songs, like the white Rhodesian literature that has been explored by Luise White, Anthony 48 Michael Kaufman, ‘Rhodesians Celebrate 11th Anniversary of Breakaway’, New York Times, 12 November 1976, p. 1. The author is grateful to Josiah Brownell for making me aware of this article. 49 Ibid. 50 A. Musvoto, ‘Filling the Void in Our National Life: The Search for a Song That Captures the Spirit of Rhodesian Nationalism and National Identity’, Muziki: Journal of Music Research in Africa, 6, 2 (2009), p. 162.

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Chennells and others, reveal a Rhodesian settler population saturated in the discourses and practices of conflict.51 Rhodesian identity and nationalism were suffused with notions of military struggle, in spite of the fact that the fighting remained relatively remote for the many Rhodesian whites who were not subject to conscription and who lived in the cities.52 As Tara Brabazon has argued for Australians and New Zealanders with Gallipoli, Rhodesians’ very distance from the conflict served to ‘fetishise the idea of war’.53 Unlike the national anthem, which had studiously to remain aloof from the events of the UDI rebellion, the folk songs illustrate how years of war had affected Rhodesian settler society. White Rhodesian folk songs were unashamedly located in the realities of a divisive here-and-now and some of them proudly flaunted Rhodesia’s pariah status. They represented a different Rhodesia from the one in the national anthem: one that was masculine, militarised and racialised. This Rhodesia was a battleground on which a valiant white minority fought the rear-guard action of the British Empire against the forces of decolonisation, communism and permissiveness. As well as being domestically popular, such songs conveyed an image of Rhodesia that appealed to its international sympathisers—right-wingers in Britain, the United States and elsewhere in the Western world. They sought to tap into wider discourses not just of settlement and pioneering, but also of the Cold War and the fight, by both states and private organisations against global communism.54 As with the apartheid regime in South Africa, anticommunism was a central part of Rhodesians’ self-image, and they repeatedly sought to appeal to potential Western allies in the parlance of the Cold War. Though this met with limited success, it remained a central part of Rhodesian discourse throughout the whole UDI period. 51 White, Unpopular Sovereignty, pp. 146–147; L. White, ‘“Heading for the Gun”: Skills and Sophistication in an African Guerrilla War’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 52, 2 (2009), pp. 236–259; A. Chennells, ‘Rhodesian Discourse, Rhodesian Novels and the Zimbabwe Liberation War’, in N. Bhebe & T. Ranger (eds.), Society in Zimbabwe’s Liberation War (Oxford, 1996), pp. 102–129; A. Chennells, ‘The Treatment of the Rhodesian War in Recent Rhodesian Novels’, Zambezia, 5 (1977), pp. 177–202. 52 White,

Unpopular Sovereignty, p. 16. Brabazon, Tracking the Jack: A Retracing of the Antipodes (Sydney, 2000), p. 28. 54 See K. Burke, Revolutionaries for the Right: Anticommunist Internationalism and Paramilitary Warfare in the Cold War (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2018) for an exploration of how private organisations created an ‘anticommunist international’ to parallel the global Marxist movement. 53 T.

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With the empire disappearing and the Commonwealth hostile, white Rhodesians sought to retain membership of a transnational group of Western nations by casting itself as one of the frontlines of the Cold War. The themes of the folk songs were also central tenets of the propaganda circulated by the Rhodesian Ministry of Information, which had a hand in creating and promoting them. Even before UDI, the Rhodesian settlers (through the Federal Government) had believed strongly in the value of a good public relations campaign. In the early 1960s, seeking supporters in Britain, the Federation had hired the Voice and Vision company to promote the Federation and raise its profile in the UK.55 The RF continued this tradition and, believing propaganda should be aggressive and widespread, spent heavily upon it.56 The scope of RF propaganda was considerable and included regular periodicals for domestic and international consumption such as Rhodesian Commentary, control of the media by encouraging self-censorship among newspapers and direct control of television and radio channels. There were also numerous bespoke propaganda efforts including music. The songs represented a confluence between RF propaganda and popular understandings of Rhodesia. They showed how strongly discourses of race, gender, nation and conflict resonated throughout white Rhodesian society. Clem Tholet and John Edmond were two of the most famous singers. Their music was the soundtrack to the Rhodesian rebellion, as Pete Shout, administrator of the website ‘Rhodie Music’, explains: The White population were desperately looking for encouragement and morale boosting and this came in the form of material written and recorded by artists such as Clem Tholet and John Edmond. Their songs spoke to the fears and aspirations of the population and added a strong “gung-ho” element of defiance and resilience. Rhodesians, denied such boosting from any other quarters, took the songs to their hearts and, for many, they became anthems of sorts.57

55 Cohen,

‘Settler Power, African Nationalism’, pp. 119–123. ‘Winning Hearts and Minds’, p. 666. 57 Personal communication from Pete Shout to author, 26 November 2015. 56 Msindo,

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The Troubadours of UDI Clem Tholet and John Edmond, both active in Rhodesia in the 1970s, offered alternative musical visions of the nation through their catchy corpus of songs. Tholet was a ‘hugely popular performer’ who was prominent in the local music scene as the founder and manager of the Rhodesian Folk Music Club.58 Through the Club, Tholet helped other folk singers launch their careers and ‘was a local icon so had a captive audience for his material’.59 He was also Ian Smith’s son-in-law and worked closely with the Rhodesian Ministry of Information to create pro-Rhodesian music as part of its propaganda offensive during UDI. Tholet had a background in advertising and so was well aware of the propagandistic merit of his songs. Together with Andy Dillon, he was responsible for creating what Godwin and Hancock have described as Rhodesia’s unofficial national anthem, ‘Rhodesians Never Die’.60 ‘Rhodesians Never Die’ was bullish and militaristic, expressing the defiance with which many white Rhodesians responded to early global condemnations of UDI. By proclaiming that ‘we’ll keep our land a free land, stop the enemy coming in’ the song lionised the contributions of Rhodesian soldiers, out in the ‘bush’ fighting. It was released in 1973, at a time when the cost of ‘keeping our land free’ was still relatively low (for whites at least). Endorsing the illegal act of UDI, ‘Rhodesians Never Die’ is a simple ballad celebrating the defence of the home country against a faceless external enemy. The song was hugely popular in Rhodesia. In 1973, the Rhodesian ‘Bush War’, as it was known to the settlers, had been going on for the best part of seven years.61 The 58 Pete

Shout to author, 26 November 2015. Shout to author, 14 May 2019. 60 Godwin & Hancock, Rhodesians Never Die, p. 14. For full lyrics see Frederiske, None but Ourselves, p. 51. 61 The conflict went by many names, to the nationalist guerrillas it was the ‘Liberation War’ or the ‘Second Chimurenga’. Chimurenga comes from the Shona for ‘struggle’ and has an enormous importance in Zimbabwean history which echoes down to the present day. The first Chimurenga was the indigenous resistance to early settlers in the 1890s, the veterans of the second were instrumental in removing Robert Mugabe from power in November 2017, and the third Chimurenga was the name given by Robert Mugabe to the forcible seizure of land from white farmers in the early 2000s. Here, following settler usage, it is referred to as the Bush War or simply the war. 59 Pete

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Rhodesians, with the aid of the Portuguese and South Africans, were fighting against two major guerrilla armies: the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) and the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA).62 ZIPRA, the armed wing of the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), was a conventionally equipped force based out of Zambia and enjoying material support from the Soviet Union.63 ZANLA, the armed wing of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), was supported by the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO) and supplied by China, a reflection of the Sino-Soviet rift of the time.64 At first, the war was treated by the Rhodesians as a police action, a classic colonial term that had been applied in Kenya, Malaya and elsewhere. Accordingly, it was fought primarily by Rhodesia’s paramilitary police force—the British South Africa Police (BSAP).65 Guerrillas were treated as common criminals in order to delegitimise their cause. Small, isolated engagements were fought by parties of guerrillas infiltrating into Rhodesia from the north, across the Zambezi escarpment. The fact that ZANLA and ZIPRA operated from external base camps in Zambia and Mozambique allowed the RF to portray them as external communist front organisations dedicated to the overthrow of Western civilisation rather than nationalist forces with more prosaically Rhodesian concerns. The chorus of ‘Rhodesians Never Die’, with its exhortations to ‘stop the enemy coming in’, reflected this argument. These battles were almost always won by the Rhodesians, who enjoyed superior mobility to the guerrillas, deploying small squads of four men (known as ‘sticks’) from a fleet of Alouette III helicopters maintained and often flown by South Africans.66 These early military successes led the Rhodesians to believe that in their military, they possessed the best counter-insurgency force in the world.67 It was these soldiers who were celebrated in ‘Rhodesians Never Die’.

62 See

Ellert, The Rhodesian Front War, pp. 54–79 on relations with Portugal. McLaughlin & P. Moorcraft, The Rhodesian War: Fifty Years On (Barnsley, Pen & Sword, 2015). 64 Ibid. 65 Ibid., p. 47. 66 Ibid., p. 105. 67 Godwin & Hancock, p. 9. 63 P.

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Another popular musician in 1970s Rhodesia was John Edmond. Born in Northern Rhodesia, by the time of UDI he was based in South Africa. A prolific singer-songwriter with a military background, Edmond was (and remains) famous in both South Africa and Rhodesia as a military balladeer. Edmond released four albums of ‘troopiesongs’ so-called for ‘Troopie’, the Rhodesian slang for soldier, between 1976 and 1979.68 After Rhodesian independence, Edmond began to release ‘Troopiesongs RSA’ albums for the soldiers in the South African Defence Force (SADF).69 In both instances, Edmond worked closely with the military to help produce these songs and normalise a military ideal of masculinity. His song ‘The Last Word in Rhodesian’ provides a good impression of how Rhodesian nationalism could be expressed in highly militarised terms: The Last Word in Rhodesian R is for the regiments who fight the winning fight H is for the homefires that the folks are keepin’ bright O is for the other ranks, and officers as well And D is for the die-hards, who will even fight in Hell E is for the enemy that just won’t ever win S is for the spirit of our men that won’t grow dim I is for the independence that we have to share And A is for the arms that we will always have to bear Chorus And the first word in Rhodesian is ‘Rhodes’, that’s a name that everybody knows It may be as Rhodesian as the flag of white and green But the last word in Rhodesian is ‘Ian’.70 68 Troopiesongs Phase 1 was released on the M A P Label in 1976, Phase 2 also on the M A P Label in 1977, Phase 3 was released in 1978 on the Joburg Label, and Phase 4 in 1979 on the Phillips Label. Personal communication from John Edmond to author, 7 April 2015. 69 M. Drewett, ‘The Construction and Subversion of Gender Stereotypes in Popular Cultural Representations of the Border War’, in G. Baines & P. Vale (eds.), Beyond the Border War: New Perspectives on Southern African’s Late-Cold War Conflicts (South Africa, Unisa Press, 2008), p. 97. 70 I am grateful to John Edmond for allowing me to reproduce the song in full. Lyrics to ‘The Last Word in Rhodesian’, John Edmond, CD ALUM Troopie Songs Complete (2011).

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The Rhodesia depicted in the ‘Last Word in Rhodesian’ was one defined primarily through military experience. The perception of shared military service and hardship proved to be a source of cohesion in white Rhodesian society. ‘The Last Word in Rhodesian’ briefly invoked the settler heritage of the country’s founding father, Cecil Rhodes, linking him explicitly to the current premier Ian Smith through the fortuitous structure of the word ‘Rhodesian’. It had little to say about the rest of Rhodesia’s history and nothing to say about what happened beyond the parameters of the conflict or when the fighting ended. The idea of history as an Orwellian perpetual conflict that defined the nation emerged in Edmond’s other works. One of the most popular was ‘The U.D.I. Song’, which Edmond wrote for the South African singer Nick Taylor in 1966. ‘The U.D.I Song’ went to the top of the Rhodesian charts on the first anniversary of UDI in 1966 and remained there for four weeks.71 It served as another of white Rhodesia’s ‘unofficial’ anthems and was similar in tone and sentiment to ‘Rhodesians Never Die’. The focus of ‘The U.D.I. Song’ was upon the military prowess of white settlers in Rhodesia, starting with the ‘founding myths’ of a series of late nineteenth-century conflicts with Africans which left settlers firmly in control of the country. It moves on to highlight Rhodesian service in the First World War (‘Flanders Field’) and the ‘desert sand’ of North Africa in the Second World War, along with the Rhodesian contribution to the counter-insurgency campaign in the ‘steaming jungles’ of Malaya in the 1950s. The song then presents UDI as the latest in a long line of battles fought by Rhodesian settlers. The Rhodesian past in ‘The U.D.I. Song’ is little more than a series of unending wars. It was these wars that defined the (white) nation, demonstrating Luise White’s point that UDIera Rhodesia was ‘more of a cause than a country’.72 The national past presented in the song is also quite explicitly white. Rhodesia was founded by hardy (white) pioneers who fought black Africans. These whites had ‘built and run’ the country and had defended it ever since. ‘The U.D.I. song’ was a hymn to settler colonialism and European military might. The depiction of Rhodesia as a shared white military experience was the central theme of many of Edmond’s other troopiesongs, which immortalised decades of violent colonial repression 71 BBMCA (Summary of World Broadcasts) (2503–2568 ed.). For full lyrics see Emond, The Story of Troopiesongs, p. 16. 72 White, Unpopular Sovereignty, p. 28

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and Rhodesian masculinity as expressed through combat. The song ‘Daddy is a Trooper’ described generations of military service. In the song, the narrator’s great grandfather fought in the 1890s, his grandfather in the First World War, his father in the Second and himself in the ‘Bush War’ of the 1960s.73 Edmond sang songs about Rhodesia’s early colonial past such as ‘The Shangani Patrol’, referring to an episode in which a patrol of troopers were surrounded and wiped out while trying to capture, Lobengula, King of the Ndebele, in 1893. There were also songs about Rhodesia’s isolation (‘We Stand Alone’) and what amounted to a personal paean to each individual unit of the Rhodesian military.74 As well as the militarisation of white society, and how war affected white Rhodesian morale, Edmond’s songs explored the very themes of race and gender that the national anthem committee was scrupulously trying to avoid. In several of his Troopiesongs, Edmond sang specifically about black soldiers. These included ‘Black Boots’, a tribute to the white-officered Police Support Unit, or ‘The Happy Safari’, a song written in Chilapalapa. Chilapalapa, or ‘kitchen kaffir’ as it was more crudely called, was a pidgin language that emerged from South African mining communities.75 To most whites, who lacked any knowledge of the major African languages, it was their primary means of communication with their African employees and servants.76 The forces offered another, more atypical, opportunity for white Rhodesians to interact with black people in an atypical setting, one in which Europeans’ lives literally depended on African soldiers. One of the great ironies of the time was that the majority of the Rhodesian settler state’s police officers and soldiers, those who fought and gave their lives in the defence of minority rule, were black Africans.77 The Rhodesian 73 J. Edmond, The Story of Troopiesongs and the Rhodesian Bush War (Johannesburg, Roan Antelope Music, 1982), p. 7. 74 More unit-based songs included ‘Sweet Banana’ for the Rhodesian African Rifles, ‘The Incredibles’ for the Rhodesian Light Infantry, and ‘Let’s Have a Hooley’ for the Selous Scouts. A ‘Hooley’ was Rhodesian slang for a raucous party, for which the Scouts were infamous. Ibid., pp. 29, 31, 33. 75 D. Kennedy, Islands of White: Settler Society and Culture in Kenya & Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1939 (Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 1967), p. 157. 76 Frederikse, None but Ourselves, pp. 58–59. 77 T. Stapleton, African Police and Soldiers in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1923–1980 (Rochester, University of Rochester Press, 2011), p. 10; P. McLaughlin, ‘Victims as Defenders: African

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Cabinet candidly admitted this at a meeting on 6 August 1975 where it was stressed that ‘the relationships between the races in the Forces were extremely good and a sense of brotherhood and of racial understanding existed to a degree probably not repeated elsewhere in Rhodesia’.78 Despite this, racial hierarchies were strictly preserved through rank structures, and it was only with great hesitancy that these were amended. There were no black unit leaders in the Rhodesian military until the very end of settler rule, and it was only in late 1975, in the face of serious recruitment issues, that the cabinet decided to allow Africans to join the British South Africa Police at the rank of ‘patrol officer’ (a rank previously reserved for Europeans).79 In his songs about black soldiers, Edmond reflected an idealised, white, view of Rhodesia in which Africans and whites fought side by side against a common, communist aggressor. Edmond believed that the African recruits to the Rhodesian African Rifles (RAR) joined out of revenge for families killed by nationalist soldiers, though Timothy Stapleton’s work has shown that the personal motivations of black soldiers were far more nuanced and complicated than this.80 Presenting the terms in which his vision of the nation allowed black people to participate, Edmond claimed: ‘[m]any critics, ignorantly labelled the Rhodesian struggle as a racial one. The struggle was fought against communism by Black and White side by side. The conflict was planned and engineered by White people in Moscow and carried out by Africans against united Rhodesians’.81 Like ‘Rhodesians Never Die’, Edmond’s justification reflected the belief that Rhodesia’s enemies were external communists rather than internal nationalists. His view also reflected the imperatives of Edmond’s patrons in the Rhodesian military, who would have wanted

Troops in the Rhodesian Defence System 1890–1980’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 2, 2 (1991), pp. 247, 259. 78 R.C.(S) (75) Thirtieth Meeting, 6 August 1975, p. 2. 79 Ibid., R.C.S 30th Meeting, pp. 2–4; Stapleton, p. 175 for army. 80 Edmond, The Story of Troopiesongs, pp. 66–67; Stapleton, African Police and Soldiers. African soldiers in Rhodesia fought for a variety of reasons: prestige, family traditions of service, and lack of other employment opportunities. Karanga Shona, from the Victoria district in South-East Rhodesia, were frequently the largest ethnic group in the BSAP and Rhodesian Army, as there were few economic opportunities in the area. 81 Edmond, The Story of Troopiesongs, pp. 66–67.

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to promote cross-racial harmony in a combat environment to maintain discipline among Rhodesia’s multiracial armed forces. Edmond’s close relationship with the Rhodesian military was reflected in his wartime role as an entertainer for the troops. In this role, Edmond was issued with ‘[m]ock call up papers… and… a rifle’.82 He worked with the state-owned Rhodesia Television making documentaries about the military, and his role as a forces entertainer gave him considerable access to the military at a time when movement around the operational areas into which the country had been divided was strictly curtailed for other whites, such as journalists.83 He was involved in key fundraising efforts for soldiers and those affected by the war, events such as Forces ’73 (along with Clem Tholet, the SADF Band and others) where he was part of a line up which wowed a 22,000 strong crowd in Salisbury Police Grounds in aid of the Terrorist Victims’ Relief Fund.84 As well as supporting the Rhodesian military and providing a sanitised cultural expression of race relations, Edmond’s songs were also highly gendered. They told of a Rhodesia in which men and women had specific roles to perform in (military) service to the nation. As Michael Drewett has noted of South Africa, popular cultural representations of militarised society ensured women’s roles were highly circumscribed.85 Kate Law has highlighted that ‘[g]endered as well as racialised discourses… were integral to the imagining of Rhodesia as a white man’s country…’.86 Edmond’s songs reflected this, with women cast as sweethearts, wives, mothers, daughters and, in one case, a gun. The song ‘Mother, A Lady’ was typical of these tropes of femininity, describing a stoic old woman waiting at home while her male sons served out in the bush.87 Anne McClintock observed that even where women have played active roles in nationalist projects, ‘women’s potential military power 82 Ibid.,

p. 36. Commission for Justice & Peace in Rhodesia, Rhodesia—The Propaganda War (London, Catholic Commission of International Relations, 1977); Edmond, The Story of Troopiesongs, p. 94. 84 Outpost, 51, 11 (November 1973), pp. 14–15. 85 Drewett, ‘The Construction and Subversion of Gender Stereotypes’, p. 101. 86 K. Law, Gendering the Settler State: White Women, Race, Liberalism and Empire in Rhodesia 1950–1980 (Abingdon, Routledge, 2016), p. 35. 87 See Edmond, The Story of Troopiesongs, for full lyrics p. 71. 83 Catholic

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is muted and contained within an infantilized and sexualised ideology of the family…’.88 In the SADF, such women were known as ‘Botha’s Babes’, in the Rhodesian military they were called ‘Brown Birds’ in the Army and ‘Blue Birds’ if in the Air Force. Edmond noted that ‘[w] omen played a very important role in the Rhodesian war’ and paid tribute to them in a song: ‘Cammo Clad Angel’. In the song, the eponymous ‘angel’ is portrayed in the various roles in which she supported the (male) Rhodesian soldiery. Here, the woman is a soothing radio announcer—a classic forces sweetheart reading out messages from loved ones for the boys in the bush—or a nurse helping a wounded soldier back to health.89 The songs of John Edmond, then, were a popular cultural expression of the military’s vision of the nation. This was a nation where fighting was a cross-generational bond and masculine rite of passage for ‘Rhodesian’ men; a nation where black and white fought side by side against an external communist aggressor; a nation where women waited eagerly behind the lines to support the nation’s (male) warriors. Like the military, this vision of the nation was strictly hierarchical. Everyone in it—white men, black men, and white women—had a place and a function, and they knew it and performed it without complaint.

War Songs: Rhodesian Folk in the Late 1970s A few months before Tholet released Rhodesians Never Die, the ‘Bush War’ took a decisive turn. On 21 December 1972, a group of ZANLA guerrillas attacked Altena Farm in Mount Darwin, in north-eastern Rhodesia. Though Marc de Borchgrave, the farmer, and his family emerged relatively unscathed, the attack signalled a new phase in the war. In its aftermath, it was revealed that ZANLA, using Maoist techniques of guerrilla penetration, had successfully inserted troops across the northeast under the noses of the Rhodesians.90 The Rhodesian military took over from the BSAP, and an ‘Operational Area’ (Op. Thrasher) was declared in the north-east.

88 A. McClintock, ‘“No Longer in a Future Heaven”: Women and Nationalism in South Africa’, Transition, 51 (1991), p. 111. 89 Full lyrics at Edmond, The Story of Troopiesongs, p. 95. 90 McLaughlin & Moorcraft, The Rhodesian War, p. 35.

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In response to the guerrillas’ seizure of the initiative, the Rhodesians began an intensive campaign to cut off guerrilla support. In 1973, collective punishments were introduced for villagers found to be helping guerrillas, and thousands of rural Africans were forcibly moved into ringfenced ‘Protected Villages’ under the control of the notoriously poor quality Guard Force.91 Even though the military now had primacy, the RF’s relentless propaganda meant that ‘few white Rhodesians would accept that they were fighting a civil war… the guerrillas were perceived as some sort of communist-inspired band of stateless criminals’.92 This was reflected in the terminology used to describe the guerrillas, who were known as ‘Communist Terrorists’ (CTs or ‘terrs’ for short).93 While the Rhodesians continued to enjoy military victories, their failure to consider any sort of political dimension to their ‘hearts and minds’ campaign fatally undermined the war effort. Instead, they sought to apply purely military solutions in an ever-increasing theatre that eventually encompassed the entire country in a series of ‘Operational Areas’.94 The expansion of the war led to greater militarisation of white Rhodesian society and strained the RF’s control. As the stresses of conflict grew, existing divisions within white society were exacerbated. Conscription in Rhodesia had pre-dated UDI, but once the war began, it became ‘extensive and cumbersome’, becoming more onerous and broad-ranging.95 By 1976, almost all of Rhodesia’s adult males were expected to have completed at least one year’s national service and could subsequently be called up for periods as long as 84 days.96 These obligations prompted generational divides, causing resentment among soldiers such as Bruce Moore King, who would subsequently write bitterly of an uncaring RF gerontocracy sending its young to die on the veld.97 Expanded conscription led to loud complaints from business leaders about the economic impact of losing their white workforce for long periods of time. The impact of conscription on the Rhodesian economy led 91 Ibid., 92 Ibid.,

p. 62. p. 64.

93 Ibid. 94 Ibid.,

pp. 48–49, 63–65. White, ‘Civic Virtue, Young Men, and the Family: Conscription in Rhodesia, 1974–80’, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 37, 1 (2004), p. 105. 96 Ibid. 97 B. Moore King, White Man, Black War (Harare, Baobab Books, 1989). 95 L.

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to calls to open up jobs previously reserved for whites to Africans, who were not under conscription.98 Critically for Rhodesia’s demographically precarious settler population, the hardships of war also prompted increasing ‘white flight’. The RF’s promotion of Rhodesia as a land of sunshine, servants and swimming pools backfired in the face of an escalating and increasingly indiscriminate conflict.99 Mercenaries aside, very few people wanted to move into an active war zone. Faced with these hostilities, large numbers of Rhodesia’s immigrant population took advantage of their mobility and geographical closeness of South Africa, leaving to live in what appeared to be a more secure white-ruled state. This created a vicious circle of recrimination among those who stayed behind, some of these were die-hards who considered themselves ‘true’ Rhodesians and castigated those who fled as ‘gapping it’ or taking the ‘chicken run’.100 Others felt trapped by government restrictions on expatriating money and possessions, a desperate attempt to stymie the flow of emigration which by the late 1970s was killing off any possibility of a lasting settler society.101 Fault lines opened up between urban Rhodesians and the farmers, who were transforming their homes into fortresses, even as suburban housewives went to the supermarket armed with automatic weapons.102 Writing to the Herald in 1976, ‘Mrs Sally Brown’ bemoaned urban Rhodesian’s complaints, noting that rural dwellers ‘have been fighting this war a lot longer than the townees and with far greater commitment’.103 While some white Rhodesians fled, others flocked to the beleaguered nation’s banner. Like the colonial exiles that came in the 1960s, these individuals were stateless, thrill-seekers and veterans of a global war against communism. Many were former soldiers: Vietnam veterans from the United States, Australia and New Zealand, ex-Foreign Legionnaires from continental Europe and a large number of British

98 White,

‘Civic Virtue’, p. 106 ‘The Hole in Rhodesia’s Bucket’. 100 D. Pitman, You Must Be New Around Here (Salisbury, Books of Rhodesia, 1978), p. 38. 101 Godwin & Hancock, Rhodesians Never Die, p. 139. 102 Ibid., p. 112. 103 The Rhodesia Herald, 4 September 1976. 99 Brownell,

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former servicemen.104 US Army Reserve Lieutenant Colonel Robert K. Brown was inspired to create the infamous mercenary magazine Soldier of Fortune in 1975 after visiting an American friend who had joined the BSAP.105 These men, arriving through clandestine channels or answering adverts placed in Soldier of Fortune magazine, were driven by a complex cocktail of transnational motivations and ‘Rhodesia just happened to be in the right place at the right time’.106 For a time Rhodesia (and nearby Angola) became the nexus of a global network of anti-communist paramilitaries, a seeming paragon of order and racial harmony even as British and American societies seemed beset by systemic problems of racial integration.107 Yet the rootlessness of these soldiers of fortune was dangerous to the RF’s long-term nationalist vision. While their presence was in keeping with the spirit of the militaristic folk songs and served the short-term need of providing soldiers to fight in the Bush War, these were not the sort of immigrants who would make Rhodesia a long-lasting state. The foreign soldiers numbered around 1500 and were highly mythologised in the foreign press. Though they made for good newspaper copy, they were scorned by the Rhodesian Army, which scrupulously insisted upon treating them no differently to ordinary Rhodesian soldiers, though some found more lucrative employment as heavily armed private security guards for large landowners.108 The changes that the war wrought upon white Rhodesian society were reflected in its cultural output. As the war became increasingly bloodier and more futile, atrocities were set to music and used as propaganda by the RF government. In June 1978, nine British missionaries and four children were murdered at the Elim Pentecostal Mission 104 White, ‘Civic Virtue’, p. 114; K. Burke, Revolutionaries for the Right: Anticommunist Internationalism and Paramilitary Warfare in the Cold War (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina, 2018), pp. 107–113. 105 Burke, Revolutionaries for the Right, p. 108. 106 White, ‘Civic Virtue’, p. 117. 107 Ibid., p. 109. 108 White ‘Civic Virtue’, pp. 114–118. The behaviour of the Rhodesian Army actually muddies the waters somewhat where ‘mercenaries’ are concerned, as the men had to join the ordinary forces on the same rates of pay and did not form a dedicated mercenary force. Kyle Burke argued that ‘the Rhodesian government’s attempts to lure mercenaries to its country unfolded in an extralegal gray area, as it helped subsidize ostensibly private recruitment efforts organised by U.S. or British nationals’. Burke, Revolutionaries for the Right, p. 112.

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in the Vumba Mountains in Eastern Rhodesia. The Rhodesian military was quickly on the scene to exploit it for maximum propaganda value and to demonstrate the justice of white Rhodesia’s cause.109 Clem Tholet found out about the massacre the day he was recording a new song, ‘Another Hitler’, and recalled ‘I was immediately told that the footage of the massacre would have to go in the movie, by a Ministry of Information guy. The decision was then made to use the song over that footage’.110 ‘Another Hitler’ provided an apt reflection of the shift in white Rhodesian attitudes as the war ground on in the late 1970s, while it incorporated long-established white Rhodesian discourses of anticommunism and a ‘blood price’ narrative of Rhodesian participation in conflict, but it was tonally very different from ‘Rhodesians Never Die’.111 Gone was the bullish defiance, to be replaced by a weary bitterness. The song bemoaned the isolation of a beleaguered white Rhodesia. The idea that Rhodesia would last into the future disappears amidst the recriminations which pepper the lyrics. Meanwhile, Tholet, and by implication the Ministry of Information who had hired him, attacked Britain and America for their hypocrisy. These two countries were singled out for both their poor domestic race relations and their failure to help white Rhodesians in their struggle against communism. The Ministry of Information’s selection of ‘Another Hitler’ in its propaganda suggested a state exulting in a kind of righteous martyrdom rather than attempting to make its national project more inclusive and enduring (though by this point, it is questionable whether there were any compromises that could have ended the war and preserved the Rhodesian state). It presented a message of despair rather than the hope and possibility that characterised early UDI period propaganda. Its bitter recriminations were a far cry from the morale-boosting ‘Rhodesians Never Die’. Indeed, by June 1978, the Rhodesian rebellion was looking more precarious than ever before. On 3 March 1978, the Internal Settlement Agreement had been reached between the RF and a coterie of internally based black leaders of limited popularity and credibility. As part of this settlement, the RF was ostensibly giving up power and ‘Rhodesia’ was 109 D. Maxwell, ‘Christianity and the War in Eastern Zimbabwe: The Case of Elim Mission’, in N. Bhebe & T. Ranger (eds.), Society in Zimbabwe’s Liberation War (London, James Currey, 1996), pp. 58–90. 110 Quoted in Frederikse, None but Ourselves, p. 133. 111 See Frederikse, None but Ourselves, pp. 133–134 for full lyrics.

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about to be replaced by the short-lived compromise state of ‘ZimbabweRhodesia’. Zimbabwe-Rhodesia would be a state with its own symbolism and mythology. By the time ‘Another Hitler’ was released, the RF’s nation-building project had come to a premature halt leaving something in which neither whites nor blacks could invest. In the desperate late stages of the war, the Rhodesian military came increasingly to rely on ‘hot pursuit’ raids. These involved pursuing ‘CTs’ across Rhodesia’s borders into neighbouring states. Rhodesian troops had been operating beyond Rhodesia’s borders with impunity since the 1960s, but the late 1970s saw a series of large-scale raids attempting to destroy guerrilla training camps and boost white morale. On 3 September 1978, Air Rhodesia Flight 825, en route from Victoria Falls to Salisbury, was shot down by a cadre of guerrillas using a surface-to-air missile. Thirty-eight of the passengers and crew died in the crash, and a further 10 were killed by the guerrillas at the crash site. Joshua Nkomo, leader of ZAPU, claimed in a BBC interview that ZIPRA guerrillas were responsible (though denied they had shot the 10 survivors at the crash site).112 The Viscount attack prompted a vociferous backlash from white Rhodesians who, baying for nationalist blood, wanted to ‘walk into bloody Zambia and kill the lot of them’.113 On 20 October 1978, the Rhodesian military struck back against the guerrillas. Operation Gatling, a combined-forces operation between the Army and the Air Force, saw the Rhodesian military strike deep into Zambian territory at Westlands Farm. Westlands, also known as ‘Freedom Camp’, was 12 miles north of the Zambian capital of Lusaka and acted as ZIPRA’s headquarters and main training camp.114 During the operation, the Rhodesians suffered minor casualties and claimed to have killed around 1500 ZIPRA personnel.115 The accompanying air raid furnished one of the most infamous pieces of Rhodesian propaganda of the war. The strike was led by a pilot named Chris Dixon, using the pseudonym ‘Green Leader’, and Frederikse described it as ‘[t]he ultimate in media-military collaboration’.116 During the raid, Dixon read 112 Godwin

& Hancock, Rhodesians Never Die, pp. 228–229. Hills, The Last Days of White Rhodesia (London, Chatto & Windus, 1981), p. 61. Quote from Pitman, You Must Be New Around Here, p. 144. 114 McLaughlin & Moorcraft, The Rhodesian War. 115 Ibid., p. 155. 116 Frederikse, None but Ourselves, p. 169. 113 D.

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out a prepared statement to Lusaka’s air traffic control tower and then temporarily took control of Zambian airspace. The Zambians temporarily halted civil aviation traffic and followed Dixon’s instructions.117 The exchange was recorded and passed into Rhodesian legend after John Edmond used the audio in one of his troopiesongs, called ‘The Green Leader Theme’: Lusaka Tower, this is Green Leader. This is a message for the station commander at Mumbwa, from the Rhodesian Air Force. We are attacking the terrorist base at Westlands Farm at this time. This attack is against Rhodesian dissidents and not against Zambia. Rhodesia has no quarrel – repeat, no quarrel – with Zambia or her Security Forces. We therefore ask you not to intervene or oppose our attack. However, we are orbiting your airfield at this time and are under orders to shoot down any Zambian Air Force aircraft which does not comply with this request and attempts to take off. Did you copy all that? (Reply:) Copy. (Green Leader): Roger. Thanks. Cheers.118

This raid was seen by many whites as a triumph. Lauren St. John recalled years later that: ‘we listened to it [the recording] and laughed at the sheer daring of it and celebrated the way people in countries not at war celebrated the World Series or the FA Cup’.119 T-shirts were printed and sold showing caricatures of African guerrillas running in panic on the front bearing the slogan ‘The Rhodesians Are Coming’ and a heap of rubble on the back saying ‘The Rhodesians Have Been’.120 Yet the sanitised recording did not include the exultation of Dixon and his fellow pilots as they marvelled at the devastation they wreaked on the camp: ‘the fucking bombs are beautiful!’ The propagandic intent of the speech was made clear by Dixon’s recorded irritation at having to deliver the

117 McLaughlin 118 Quoted

& Moorcraft, The Rhodesian War, pp. 135–136. in Frederikse, None but Ourselves, p. 169; Edmond, The Story of Troopiesongs,

p. 27. 119 L. St. John, Rainbow’s End: A Memoir of Childhood, War & an African Farm (London, Penguin, 2008), p. 134. 120 Frederikse, None but Ourselves, p. 28.

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message: ‘just let me get onto the fucking tower and give them our bloody messages. Where’s this fucking piece of speech?’121 This white triumphalism, celebrating the deaths of hundreds of Africans whose status as combatants was never confirmed, alongside the awesome and terrifying power wielded by the white bomber pilots, was a perfect crystallisation of the exclusive, bloodthirsty nature of white Rhodesian nationalism in the late 1970s. It also encapsulated the stage-managed nature of Rhodesian warfare in which musicians actively collaborated with the Ministry of Information and the military to produce pro-settler propaganda. While triumphal, ‘The Green Leader Theme’ expressed a different view of combat to ‘U.D.I. Song’ which in some way presaged Rhodesia’s ultimate collapse. In the song, Edmond appeared to have gone through a similar transformation to Clem Tholet in ‘Another Hitler’. Again, the artist was collaborating closely with the Rhodesian establishment, in this case the military, which made the cockpit recording available to Edmond. The song immortalises ‘Green Leader’ but at the same time carries a tone of weariness reflecting years of warfare. This reflected the increasing militarisation of white Rhodesian society. It describes a Rhodesia at its wits’ end, striking out viciously as part of a destructive and pointless kill or be killed philosophy. The shared, folksy, image and determined tone of ‘The U.D.I Song’ is nowhere to be seen. Instead, like ‘Another Hitler’, Edmond’s ‘Green Leader Theme’ evokes a shared experience of isolation, betrayal and despair among white Rhodesians. At the same time, the whole thing was tinged with bitterness—as this same shared experience was causing whites to leave the country in ever-greater numbers by the late 1970s. Rhodesia’s militarised folk songs suggested that it was easier to look backwards than forwards and that ‘Rhodesia’ had become intimately associated with struggle and conflict. The songs used a particular interpretation of the past to make sense of the present while their shift in tone reflected the white Rhodesian experience of conflict, starting out ebullient and positive and becoming bitter, weary and negative. The songs demonstrated the underlying frailty of white Rhodesian society in a post-colonial world.

121 Ibid., p. 169. The full recording of the raid can easily be found on some unsavoury right-wing websites and YouTube channels (where it is often still celebrated).

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Conclusion: The Music of the Nation In December 1979, as Zimbabwe-Rhodesia became the British colony of Southern Rhodesia in preparation for the transition to independence as Zimbabwe, there was an odd clash of cultures in Salisbury. Christopher Soames, the interim British Governor, arrived at Government House and was greeted by a small crowd of white Rhodesians waving Union Jacks. The Herald reported: ‘When Lord Soame’s [sic] motorcade… passed by – the demonstrators cheered “legality at last” and then loudly and emotionally sang “God Save the Queen”’.122 At the same time, a ‘small group of young women passing by tried to drown the demonstrators’ singing with the Zimbabwe-Rhodesian national anthem’ (which was still ‘Rise O Voices of Rhodesia’).123 The debates of the late 1960s seemed to be repeating themselves. The ‘battle of the anthems’ suggests, for some white Rhodesians, the RF’s processes of symbolic decolonisation remained contested throughout the entire UDI period.124 By 1975, Rhodesia had all the symbols of nationhood but little of the substance. When ordinary whites thought of Rhodesia in the 1960s and 1970s, they tended to see it as an experience shared. In the years of plenty following UDI, when neither international sanctions nor guerrilla warfare were proving as effective as some had feared, the comfort and affluence of the ‘Rhodesian way of life’ ensured that many white Rhodesians were loud and proud advocates of the RF’s illegal rebellion. But as Josiah Brownell’s research on demographics has shown, when the going got tough, plenty of the ‘tough’ got going, their departure facilitated by dual citizenship and social and cultural links elsewhere.125 The national anthem and the folk songs represented two attempts to grapple with the same problem. The anthem sought to represent a ‘nation’ in a timeless and inclusive manner, which made it banal. The RF and the judging panel continually found the Rhodesian public’s efforts inadequate and perhaps too offensive or controversial. Despite seeking 122 ‘God Save the Queen—And an Old Union Jack’, The Herald, 13 December 1979, p. 19. 123 Ibid. 124 ‘Battle of the Anthems’, The Herald, 19 December 1979, p. 12. 125 J. Brownell, ‘The Hole in Rhodesia’s Bucket: White Emigration and the End of Settler Rule’, The Journal of Southern African Studies, 34, 3 (2008), pp. 591–610.

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a unique Rhodesian musical composition, the RF eschewed the public’s efforts and fell back on a widely recognised tune by a long-dead German composer. In its search for this national symbol, the RF sought to appeal to an international, multiracial audience, diluting the ‘national’ quality of the symbolism. The story of the national anthem suggests the precarious balancing act involved in inventing traditions: to succeed, they require a clear targeted audience, while remaining ambiguous enough to accommodate differences within that audience. While the anthem was supposed to be timeless, most white Rhodesians were focused upon the present. This found cultural expression not just through Rhodesian war fiction, but also through songs such as those of Clem Tholet and John Edmond. It was here that white Rhodesians could say things that were not acceptable in a ‘national anthem’ which had to satisfy the standards of an international and multiracial audience. It was here they could spit defiance in the face of the former colonial power and the rest of the Western world which had condemned UDI. It was here that they could exult in their individuality and invented traditions of bravery and struggle and their ideas of racial superiority. Yet they could also use this music as a way to position Rhodesia within transnational networks of anticommunism. This music was far from anodyne. It presented alternative visions of white Rhodesia which were militarised, gendered and racialised. The linkage of historical conflicts to present-day ones was not unique to white musicians during the ‘Bush War’. ZANLA cadres explicitly linked the very same conflicts of the 1890s that Edmond sang about with their fight against the settler state.126 Both sides made use of understandings of the past in their music that were used to weave a national narrative and serve as an anchor for contemporary identities. White Rhodesian songs also avoided looking forward to a future that proved impossible to imagine as other than an endless war, by looking back upon a more comforting, if also intensely violent, imagining of the past as a chain of conflicts stretching back into the late nineteenth century. These pasts linked ‘Rhodesia’ intimately to the idea of conflict and struggles in which whites continually proved themselves and their worth in winnable wars. These were themes that resonated with the RF regime’s propaganda offensive. There were few better advertisements for

126 Turino,

Nationalists, Cosmopolitans and Popular Music, p. 200.

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UDI than the likes of ‘Rhodesians Never Die’ and ‘The U.D.I. Song’. These songs were useful and remarkably popular rallying cries for an economically, socially and demographically diverse white community, many of whom had only been in the country for a short period of time. They promoted a gendered and racialised, conceptualisation of Rhodesian society that was amenable to both ordinary Rhodesians and their RF rulers, but it was a message that revealed the boundaries of Rhodesian nationalism’s appeal, with concomitant ramifications for the longevity and viability of the RF’s nation-building project. Basto has noted the attempts of national anthems to capture and represent the fictive people of a nation.127 The RF’s own ‘official’ effort represented no one. Its intense propaganda operations and support of white folk songs about war, minority rule and anticommunism showed that the RF’s conceptualisation of the Rhodesian nation was based around the narrow white electorate and how it failed to move beyond this constituency even in imaginative terms. This narrow focus was possible when white rule was relatively secure in the mid-1960s and early 1970s. The songs of the latter 1970s told a different story and suggested the limited success of symbolic decolonisation as a long-term strategy for viable state-building, even as they helped forge a community which continues to exist today around the world. The worldview of the RF and its supporters was conditioned by former imperial glories, preventing the government from generating solutions to the war in the 1970s and the raft of knock-on effects it had upon white society. Black Africans in Rhodesia remained excluded from any meaningful participation in the political process throughout the whole period of symbolic decolonisation. For all the rhetoric about the birth of a new nation, for Africans 1965 represented a dramatic change for the worse, an end the remote possibility of the multiracial ideas espoused in the 1950s. The lyrics of the new national anthem did nothing to assuage their fears or grievances because the true feelings of many white Rhodesians lay unabashed alongside them in the militaristic folk songs: white rule was a fact, and ‘Rhodesians’ were prepared to fight to maintain it, as the indigenous population who suffered the consequences in the rural areas or who joined the guerrilla armies were acutely aware.

127 Basto,

‘The Writings of the National Anthem’, p. 185.

CHAPTER 7

‘Now as Then’? Race, Remembrance and the Rhodesian Nation in the 1970s

In 1952, South Africans celebrated the tercentenary of Jan van Riebeeck’s landing at the Cape.1 The Afrikaner-dominated National Party government, elected four years earlier in 1948, oversaw a meticulously managed programme of events that sought to consolidate and legitimise its evolving programme of apartheid. This ‘festival of apartheid’ sought to reify racial hierarchies promoting unity among Afrikaner and English-speaking whites and demonstrating that South Africa was, and would remain, a ‘white man’s country’ in the face of rising African nationalist challenges.2 The festivities, which included a country-wide ‘trek’ of ox-wagons from locations across the country to the colossal Voortrekker Monument outside of Pretoria, were also intended to reflect the state’s role as ‘curator’ of the national past. Yet repeated challenges by South Africa’s black, Asian and Coloured populations showed the limits of state control over the country’s history.3 A year later, and partially in response to events further south, the Rhodes Centenary Exhibition opened in Salisbury.4 On the eve of the 1 L. Witz, Apartheid’s Festival: Contesting South Africa’s National Pasts (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2003). 2 Ibid., p. 15. 3 Ibid., pp. 11, 246. 4 T. King & A. Shutt, ‘Imperial Rhodesians: The 1953 Rhodes Centenary Exhibition in Southern Rhodesia’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 31, 2 (2005), pp. 357–379.

© The Author(s) 2019 D. Kenrick, Decolonisation, Identity and Nation in Rhodesia, 1964–1979, Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32698-2_7

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creation of the Central African Federation and the centenary of Cecil Rhodes’ birth, the festival’s objectives were threefold: the inculcation of the new post-war white migrants into the history of the colony, the display of Britishness in the face of strident and assertive Afrikaner power to the south and the response—in the spirit of partnership—to the rising black middle class who sought greater equality.5 The festival which, in a snub to the aspirations of middle-class Africans, included separate amenities and entrances for the different races also had a human zoo exhibit of a ‘traditional’ African village with a dance troupe, a fortune teller and an ‘African diviner’.6 While reinforcing these classic colonial stereotypes of backward and exotic Africans, even as it sought to co-opt the middle classes with the empty rhetoric of partnership, the exhibition celebrated the pioneer contribution to ‘building’ the country—with a range of cultural events that presaged the challenges of creating a distinctive white Rhodesian national identity after UDI: plays by Shakespeare, radio programmes narrated by thespian John Gielgud and orchestral performances by Manchester Halle Orchestra, designed to demonstrate white cultural superiority, also highlighted Rhodesia’s dependence upon Britain for cultural expression.7 1953 was also the year that the Rhodesia Africana Society (later renamed to the Rhodesiana Society) was formed.8 An amateur historical society with close links to the settler state, the Rhodesiana Society published a regular journal, Rhodesiana, which ran for forty issues between 1956 and 1979. The society could count many of white Rhodesia’s grandees as subscribers, including Godfrey Huggins, Roy Welensky, Humphrey Gibbs, the Rhodesian Army’s School of Infantry at Gwelo, Bulawayo’s Teacher Training College and the history textbook publisher Longmans of Rhodesia.9 Though it began as a sort of collectors club for items from Rhodesia’s pioneer history, the society soon broadened its purpose to become an adjunct of the settler state’s nationalist project. At the society’s first annual dinner on 2 June 1967, held at the 5 Ibid.,

pp. 357–358. pp. 366, 369 7 Ibid., pp. 365–368. 8 ‘Obituary, H.A. Cripwell and the Founding of the Rhodesiana Society’, Rhodesiana, 22 (July 1970), p. 1. 9 ‘List of Members of the Rhodesiana Society, As At 31st March, 1968’, Rhodesiana, 18 (July 1968), pp. 125–131; Rhodesia National Bibliography 1970 (Salisbury, 1971), p. 16. 6 Ibid.,

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Ambassador Hotel in Salisbury, W.V. Brelsford proposed a toast to the society and explained: [T]he publication of a journal such as Rhodesiana is of inestimable value to a young country especially one where a big proportion are newcomers. For it is essential to use every means in order… to try and build a nation. The journal helps show that Rhodesia is a country with a history, with traditions – that it is not just a collection of people from many parts of the world, that Rhodesia has its heroes, its legends, that in its creation there have been acts of bravery and gallantry, that hardships and dangers have been endured. To portray as much of this in word and picture is the task of Rhodesiana and the function of the Society is thus to help preserve for posterity the rich heritage of Rhodesia’s past.10

The work of the Rhodesiana society and its journal thus served to propagate the legends of hardy pioneers and pliant, duplicitous, or cowardly ‘natives’ throughout the UDI period. During the 1960s and 1970s, it gave unsettled whites a reassuring sense of historical rootedness and permanence, inspiring them with stories of the pioneer days in which the settler population had triumphed against indigenous uprisings and cemented its dominance over the Rhodesian landscape.11 Reflecting the deeply politicised nature of history writing in UDI-era Rhodesia, these amateur history writers repeatedly clashed with received academic wisdom in Rhodesia, expressed through the more conventionally academic journal Rhodesian History. In 1972, the historian John MacKenzie, who was then teaching at the University College of Rhodesia, welcomed the society’s work to popularise history but was scathing of some of its output, warning that: ‘popular history must take account of the results of detailed professional research, it must be presented in a lively and engaging way, above all it must of course be accurate’.12 Alongside the amateur historians, there were the archivists. Rhodesia’s National Archives were founded in 1935, established ‘as the result of a general interest in the country’s history which had been sparked by the 10 Rhodesiana,

16, p. 86. D. Kenrick ‘The Past Is Our Country: History and the Rhodesiana Society’, Newcastle University Historical Studies Postgraduate Forum E-Journal, accessed at https:// www.societies.ncl.ac.uk/pgfnewcastle/files/2014/11/The-Past-is-Our-Country-Historyand-the-Rhodesiana-Society-c.-1953-1970.pdf on 25 February 2019. 12 J.M. MacKenzie, ‘Review of Rhodesiana 29’, Rhodesian History, 2 (1972), p. 121. 11 See

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celebrations to commemorate the fortieth anniversary, in 1933, of the occupation of Matabeleland’.13 Though the principal role of the archives, the director wrote in 1976, was ‘the selection and preservation of the public archives, those official documents worthy of permanent preservation for research and record’, it also contained a large number of private bequests and a bewildering array of pioneer artefacts.14 This wide range of Rhodesian artefacts provided a physical as well as a discursive resource for Rhodesia’s national story. Much of the primary source material for articles in Rhodesiana was drawn from the collections of the National Archives of Rhodesia, as is evident from their bibliographies, but the relationship between the amateurs and the archives was personal as well as professional. A particularly illuminating article by E.E. Burke in Rhodesiana’s 1967 issue gives an impression of the close relationship between Rhodesiana’s contributors and the National Archives. Burke’s article reflects Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s contention that archives, ‘convey authority and set the rules for credibility and interdependence, they help select the stories that matter’.15 This is especially true of National Archives, the archives of the state. Burke argued that ‘[a]n archival collection… has some special quality that distinguishes it from other collections of documents’ and believed that documents contained therein possessed ‘authenticity, and a certain impartiality’.16 Admittedly, Burke had something of a vested interest given that he was the deputy director of the National Archives (he became director in 1970). The ‘notes’ in Rhodesiana number twenty-three (December 1970) demonstrate just how close the connections between the archives and the Rhodesiana Society were. The issue informed readers of several staff moves at the National Archives. T.W. Baxter, the director who had ‘always been a good friend and supporter of the Rhodesiana Society, and encouraged his staff to take part in Society activities’, was retiring to be replaced by the deputy director E.E. Burke

13 Report of the Director of National Archives for the Year 1976 (Salisbury, Government Printer, 1977), p. 3. 14 Ibid. 15 E.E. Burke, ‘Archives and Archaeology’, Rhodesiana, 17 (December 1967), pp. 64–70; M.-R. Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston, Beacon Press, 1995), p. 27. 16 Burke, ‘Archives and Archaeology’, pp. 64–65.

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(editor of Rhodesiana between 1963 and 1967).17 Burke himself was being replaced by the senior archivist, R.W.S. Turner, who was the society’s committee member in charge of advertising and membership and deputy chairman of the Mashonaland Branch, and the new senior archivist was C. Coggin, former society librarian and frequent book reviewer for the publication.18 Thus did the National Archives act as both an important location of primary source material and a means to amplify to society’s agenda through shared personnel at the highest levels. Both the archives and the articles exhibited a skewed view of Rhodesia’s past which was designed to emphasise a predominantly white Rhodesian ‘national’ story. In addition to providing documents and facilities for historical researchers, the National Archives also hosted special exhibitions for visitors. The visitors often outnumbered the dedicated researchers who came into the archives; in 1971, the director of the archives reported an annual total of 3124 researchers as opposed to 6175 visitors. These casual attendees included both local Rhodesians and foreign visitors, and a notable upsurge of American visitors was recorded in 1971. A regular rotation of exhibitions allowed visitors to experience such varied historical events and artefacts as Rhodesia’s UDI document (unveiled on 2 March 1971 by the prime minister) or a special exhibition that June commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Mazoe patrol.19 In 1973, special exhibitions were held for the 50th anniversary of the referendum securing responsible government and on the explorer-missionary and imperial hero David Livingstone, who had been active in neighbouring Zambia and Malawi.20 These selections of particular historical narratives, focusing upon the achievement of white settlers and imperial heroes, historicised the importance of whites in Rhodesia’s national development. Thus, much like Rhodesiana, the focus of the work of the National Archives was directed towards reinforcing the RF’s nation-building project, and these two sites of historical discourse production were closely connected on a personal and professional level. They curated exhibitions 17 ‘Notes’,

Rhodesiana, 23 (December 1970), p. 70. p. 70. 19 Report of the Director, National Archives for the Year 1971 (Salisbury, Government Printer, 1972), p. 3. 20 Report of the Director, National Archives for the Year 1973 (Salisbury, Government Printer, 1974), p. 3. 18 Ibid.,

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to fire the national imagination with stories of derring-do, sacrifice and white survival, seeking to paper over the cracks in white Rhodesian society to present Europeans with a united, historicised identity and nationality grounded in the source material they displayed and collected. A National Federation of Women’s Institutes booklet gave a sense of this in 1967: Rhodesian history comes to life [in the archives] in such relics as the Union Jack planted by the Pioneers in Salisbury in 1890; some of David Livingstone’s original diaries, Selous’ [Frederick Courtenay Selous, a famous pioneer hunter for whom the Selous Scouts special forces unit was named] elephant gun; an old chest in which the Moffat [Robert Moffat, an early missionary to Lobengula] papers were found; and an album of drawings by Lord Baden-Powell who was in Rhodesia in 1896 as Chief Staff Officer of the Imperial Force which came to our assistance in the Matabele Rebellion of 1896.21

Anna Laura Stoler has cautioned against the pitfalls of state-produced archives and the silences they generate by omitting certain voices from the historical record.22 We can see this literally though the Rhodesian National Archives oral history project, a wide-ranging endeavour throughout in the 1960s which only began to include African interviewees (and then only sporadically) from 1974.23 Similarly, dedicated research into African history did not take place until two posts were created in 1977, whereas there had long been a dedicated historian studying pioneer history.24 Together, the amateurs and the archivists created a historical complex in which Africans largely could not speak for themselves, and whites were presented with what Terry Goldie has called an image of the ‘indigene’, an archetypal ‘other’ more reflective of settler

21 National Federation of Women’s Institutes of Rhodesia, Great Spaces Washed with Sun: Rhodesia (Salisbury, M.O. Collins, 1967), p. 177. 22 A.L. Stoler, ‘Tense and Tender Ties: The Politics of Comparison in North American History and (Post) Colonial Studies’, The Journal of American History, 88, 3 (2001), pp. 829–865. 23 Report of the Director of National Archives for the Year 1974 (Salisbury, Government Printer, 1975), p. 4. 24 Report of the Director of National Archives for the Year 1976 (Salisbury, Government Printer, 1977), p. 4.

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anxieties than anything else.25 These images were the foundation upon which historical narratives like that of ‘good governance’ (see Chapter 3) were built. Throughout the 1970s, these images remained powerful but were subject to repeated confrontation as African political (and military) assertiveness grew.

Remembering Race: The Historicisation of Black Challenges to the Nation The 1970s saw the RF’s vision of the Rhodesian nation repeatedly under threat. African nationalist opposition throughout the decade, either through political protest or guerrilla warfare, repeatedly gave the lie to the RF’s discourses and the historical narratives which underpinned them, as the exclusivity of the politicians’ nation-building project came back to haunt them. Discourses of the past were discourses of power, deployed in the UDI era to provide lessons and messages of encouragement for white Rhodesians, seeking to generate the hope that they would triumph in their struggles to preserve minority rule in the 1960s and 1970s. A wide range of historical narratives about Africans were used to make sense of the present and to define what it meant to be Rhodesian. These discourses were mobilised by the RF and its supporters to defend their vision of the nation and to rationalise African challenges to minority rule. African challenges to the RF’s authority in the 1970s fractured the white community, creating spaces for white contestations of the nation alongside those of the predominantly black nationalist movements. These conflicts demonstrate that the debates which took place in the late 1960s about the new Rhodesian nation remained unresolved. The first major instance of this was the result of the Pearce Commission in 1972, an expression of widespread political dissent that took place just before the decisive escalation of the liberation war. In order to understand these challenges, we must take a step back from the exhausted, war-torn Rhodesia of 1978, the Rhodesia of ‘Another Hitler’ and ‘The Green Leader Theme’ and return to Rhodesia at the height of settler power, in the months before the ZANLA assault on Marc de Borchgrave’s Altena Farm in December 1972. 25 Ibid.,

p. 12.

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The 1970s were characterised by the RF’s desperate attempts to articulate what ‘Rhodesia’ meant, which led to the ultimately drastic action of abandoning the settler state of Rhodesia altogether in a last-ditch attempt to preserve the substance if not the style of minority rule. The phenomenon of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia in 1978–1979 demonstrated that the ‘performance’ of statehood as represented by the processes of symbolic decolonisation explored above was ultimately less important to the RF than the maintenance of some form of white rule. The African rejection of the Anglo-Rhodesian settlement proposals in 1972 was a major action of political resistance at a time when Rhodesia’s black population was being driven towards a military solution; the ‘internal settlement’ of March 1978, which led to the creation of ‘Zimbabwe-Rhodesia’, was an act of co-option. On both occasions, historical narratives were important weapons in the RF’s defensive arsenal as it struggled to preserve the continuation of minority rule and conserve the party itself.

The African Response to the Pearce Commission In 1971, after years of failed negotiations seeking to attain legality for white settler rule, Rhodesian negotiators led by the prime minister, Ian Smith, came to an agreement with Edward Heath’s Conservative government in Britain.26 Six years after international isolation and sanctions began, it seemed to whites that there might finally be a resolution in sight. However, the British government insisted that its acceptance and subsequent implementation of this agreement were subject to certain preconditions. There were five principles which had been imposed by Britain relating to any settlement between the two countries.27 The most important principle was the fifth, which stated that the proposals had to be acceptable to the people of Rhodesia as a whole.28 This included the black population, who had not been represented during the talks which produced the proposals. 26 See J.R.T. Wood, A Matter of Weeks Rather Than Months: The Impasse Between Harold Wilson and Ian Smith: Sanctions, Aborted Settlements and War, 1965–1969 (Victoria, BC, Trafford, 2008). 27 Rhodesia: Proposals for a Settlement (London, 1971). 28 E. Windrich, Britain and the Politics of Rhodesian Independence (London, Croom Helm, 1978), pp. 40–41.

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To ensure the fifth principle was satisfied, the British despatched a commission of inquiry under Lord Edward Pearce. Pearce and his team of commissioners were tasked to determine the opinion of Rhodesians of all races and report back on the suitability of the settlement proposals. The commissioners arrived in Rhodesia and their activities ‘opened against a background of mounting tension’, according to their official report.29 African unrest took place across the country in places such as the Shabani Asbestos Mine, where on 11 January 1972 four hundred African workers went on strike and demonstrated against the government; several were shot and killed by the state when it attempted to break up the protests.30 Holding a series of meetings around the country, small teams of commissioners spoke to large meetings of Africans, conducted interviews with individuals and received written correspondence and petitions. An interesting aspect of this exercise was a debate over who could speak for Africans as their political representatives. To Rhodesia’s ‘traditional’ African leaders—the chiefs, and the RF government, it was clear that the chiefs themselves were the true spokespeople for Rhodesia’s Africans. The commission, however, agreed with the urban and educated Africans that it met, who argued that it was they who provided the black community with its political leadership, that the chiefs only held a limited form of ‘tribal’ authority or, in some cases, that ‘the Chiefs’ temporal authority depended entirely upon recognition by the Government… and that as the Chiefs’ income was derived largely from Government sources… the Chiefs could be regarded as no more than paid Government servants’.31 In the event, Pearce and his commissioners found that while the European, Asian and Coloured populations of Rhodesia largely supported the proposals (though many Asians and Coloureds bemoaned the racial discrimination they regularly suffered), a large majority of Africans rejected them.32 Pearce’s report concluded ‘that the people of Rhodesia as a whole do not regard the Proposals as acceptable as a basis for

29 Rhodesia—Report of the Commission on Rhodesian Opinion Under the Chairmanship of the Right Honourable the Lord Pearce (London, HMSO, 1972), p. 12. 30 Ibid., p. 11. 31 Ibid., p. 48. 32 Ibid., pp. 79–80.

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independence’.33 The result stunned many white Rhodesians; Pearce’s comments regarding white respondents demonstrate why: Many Europeans accepted the Proposals in the hope that they would promote racial co-operation… But this view was often combined with the belief that the European was still, in the eyes of the African, a father, guide, doctor, friend. Such people said the rural African had a childlike and superstitious nature; “the white man’s hand seems to offer the safest and surest guide for the time being”; “they have to be ruled and reasoning is a sign of weakness”; “the only true natural resources of Rhodesia are white brains and black potential”.34

Race in Rhodesian Front Propaganda The views of the Europeans, over 95,000 of whom made their opinions known to the commission, were shaped in part by broader settler mentalities and partly by RF propaganda which had long relied upon stereotypical portrayals of whites and blacks. This propaganda portrayed Africans as infantile, little better than the savage and primitive bogeymen who had menaced the pioneers in the 1890s. This sort of propaganda formed one of the foundations of the ‘good governance’ narrative. Racialised historical narratives acted like a steel reinforcing rod for the concrete of government propaganda, and the two worked in concert to create a historically grounded definition of the white-ruled Rhodesian nation. A typical example of this was the pamphlet The Man and His Ways: An Introduction to the Customs and Beliefs of Rhodesia’s African People, which was published in 1969, the same year the RF introduced its segregationist constitution.35 The pamphlet, which was intended for domestic and foreign consumption, was based on a series of talks given by a senior official of the Ministry of Information, Immigration and Tourism. It promised readers ‘[i]t is published as your introduction to the man with whom you are in daily contact in your home and at work – the

33 Ibid.,

p. 2. p. 76. 35 The Man and His Ways: An Introduction to the Customs and Beliefs of Rhodesia’s African People (Salisbury, Government Printer, 1969). 34 Ibid.,

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African’.36 Drawing upon the settler-centric histories developed by the Rhodesiana Society and the National Archives, this received government wisdom about ‘the African’ noted that Africans had a collective, rather than individual, conscience, that they were influenced heavily by the spirits of their ancestors and that they were fatalistic and simple, infamously observing: ‘[t]he African loves laughter. His needs are few and simple and when he has satisfied them he is inclined to sit back’.37 The Man and His Ways included sections upon different aspects of ‘the African’; beliefs about spirits, marriage customs and relationships with chiefs, nature and his family, his manners and finally his ‘fears’. It painted a picture of Africans as highly superstitious and backward (especially when it compared with the much-vaunted ‘standards’ of white Rhodesia). In one example, it noted that witch doctors sometimes recommended remedies involving human body parts, describing recent occurrences of cannibalism and infanticide that had taken place in the past and continued to the present day.38 The stereotypes seen in The Man and His Ways, far from an accurate portrait of a people that time had left behind, were in fact components of a wider re-definition of Africans as part of the RF’s strategy of segregation and community development. This narrative was part of a broader reversal of government discourses of modernisation from the era of ‘partnership’ in the 1950s, which had emphasised the potential for modernising and ‘civilising’ the African population. Given the centrality of notions of ‘civilisation’ to the extension of political and civil rights in Rhodesia, this older rhetoric allowed for (admittedly distant) parity between the races. Yet it was precisely this sort of rhetoric, with its implication that one day white dominance would end, that precipitated the downfall of the United Federal Party and had allowed the RF to win power in 1962. In contrast to the ideas of the 1950s, the RF’s rhetoric accompanying its Internal Affairs strategy focused upon demonstrating the social and cultural differences between the races and using these as a justification for preserving minority rule and separate development, presented as the best way to guarantee the future for all of Rhodesia’s

36 Ibid.,

p. 1. p. 4. 38 Ibid., p. 32. 37 Ibid.,

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inhabitants, no matter their race. This was the RF’s definition of the Rhodesian nation, the demarcation of the boundaries between who could be ‘Rhodesian’ and who could not. In keeping with the RF’s fervent denial of decolonisation and any of sort of legitimate, well-informed African protests against white rule, The Man and His Ways omitted any information about the rapidly growing African middle class and increasing urbanisation among the black population in the 1960s and 1970s.39 Instead, propaganda portrayed Africans as a people apart—physically, culturally and psychologically—hence the reference to ‘Rhodesia’s African people’ rather than black Rhodesians. The Pearce Commission, and the space it allowed for Africans to express themselves through ‘normal political activities’, represented an almost unprecedented opportunity to challenge the RF’s conceptualisation of the nation.40 The RF’s response to its verdict helps illustrate the wider philosophies that drove its nationalism and also how these philosophies, through historical narratives, could be mobilised to try and defend the nation as well as create it. On 22 May 1972, with the official result still not released, The Rhodesia Herald reported that ‘The mood in Rhodesian Government circles ranges from anger over the result to resignation’.41 Two days later, the Herald was soliciting reactions from a range of prominent figures. Sir Ray Stockil, the chairman of Hippo Valley Estates Ltd, was dismissive about the test of acceptability, arguing that: ‘Generally speaking the African needs a certain amount of guidance and leadership and looks with some suspicion on people who are trying to ascertain his views’.42 The Herald’s leader for that day lamented the parlous state of race relations in Rhodesia and observed that ‘the initiative for remedying the situation – and it is urgent that a remedy be found – must come from the Government’.43 39 M.O. West, The Rise of an African Middle Class in Colonial Zimbabwe 1898–1965 (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2002); I. Phimister & B. Raftopoulos (eds.), Keep on Knocking: A History of the Labour Movement in Zimbabwe 1900–97 (Harare, Baobab Books, 1997). 40 See L. White, ‘“Normal Political Activities”: Rhodesia, The Pearce Commission, and the African National Council’, Journal of African History, 52 (2011), pp. 321–340 for an exploration of the peculiarity of this phraseology in the Rhodesian context. 41 ‘Little Doubt on Pearce “No” Verdict’, The Rhodesia Herald, 22 May 1972, p. 1. 42 ‘Reaction—What They Think’, The Rhodesia Herald, 24 May 1972, p. 1. 43 ‘Hard Lessons from the Pearce Debacle’, The Rhodesia Herald, 24 May 1972, p. 14.

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As soon as Pearce’s verdict became known on 23 May, the RF went on the offensive. It issued a statement picking apart the commission’s report and assuring the public that it had never really been convinced of its methods, arguing that it had not consulted enough Africans and that the reason given by most Africans for rejecting the proposals—a distrust of the government—demonstrated that they had not correctly understood what was being asked of them.44 This neatly reinforced pre-existing narratives of Africans as politically naïve, easily swayed by the rhythms of a crowd and unable to speak or think for themselves. Yet, as well as giving the lie to the RF’s racial logic, the challenge also opened up a space for contestation within the white community. In the May 24 edition of the Herald, there was a report of an extreme right-wing organisation called the ‘United Front’ that felt the RF’s opposition to majority rule was not robust enough and had advertised a meeting for 8 p.m. that evening to ‘UNITE AGAINST MAJORITY RULE’.45 Onehundred and twenty people attended the meeting at Rhodes Memorial Hall in Salisbury to hear Wynn Starling, Organising Secretary of the United Front, rail against Ian Smith for being too conciliatory towards Africans.46 The emergence of white challenges to the RF, and the divisions which opened up over the threat of majority rule, threatened the very raison d’être of the RF and UDI. The African rejection of the Anglo-Rhodesian settlement terms generated a range of responses among the white Rhodesian population that showed the RF under attack from the right and the left. Rather than recognise the scale of black dissatisfaction with how Rhodesia was run and seize the opportunity to address black grievances, some white Rhodesians withdrew further into the laager. The right wing of the RF began clamouring for the implementation of an apartheid-style policy of provincialisation.47 Some, like John Thompson of Highfields, blamed the African nationalist leaders ‘who just want naked power’. He lamented the fact 44 ‘Government

Queries Pearce Findings’, The Rhodesia Herald, 24 May 1972, p. 7. for UNITE AGAINST MAJORITY RULE Meeting, The Rhodesia Herald, 24 May 1972, p. 14. 46 The Rhodesia Herald, 25 May 1972, p. 2. 47 ‘Race Politics Harden—Divisions on Pearce “No”’, The Rhodesia Herald, 27 May 1972, p. 2; see G. Passmore (ed.), H.R.G. Howman on Provincialisation in Rhodesia 1968– 1969 and Rational and Irrational Elements (Cambridge, African Studies Centre, 1968) for a detailed explanation of debates within the RF surrounding provincialisation. 45 Advertisement

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that ‘moderates like me were hopelessly optimistic about the capacity of Africans to make sensible logical decisions and therefore to help govern our multiracial country’.48 For ‘moderates’ like Thompson, Rhodesia could only be multiracial in highly circumscribed terms, a place where multiracialism meant that blacks behaved as whites expected them to. In defence of minority rule, historical narratives were pressed into service, and once again, the RF’s arguments drew upon wider imaginative resources from beyond the party rank-and-file. One such convergence was seen on 27 January 1972; the Herald ran a story about Cecil Hulley and the statement he made to the Pearce Commission under the headline: ‘A pioneer remembers’.49 Hulley had arrived in the country in 1895 and claimed that: ‘Africans have been well cared for ever since Europeans occupied the country’.50 Lamenting the African desire for majority rule, which he believed would lead to intertribal bloodshed in the absence of white rule, Hulley complained that: ‘[n]ow they wish to take over, regardless of the development which has taken place entirely by the white settlers. So much effort has been made, so much money spent – and so little gratitude evinced’.51 These sorts of narratives about ‘ungrateful’ Africans were both constitutive and reflective of the RF’s own responses to the Pearce Report and explain some of the more indignant white responses to the commission’s verdict. The parliamentary debate on the commission’s verdict saw RF MPs direct a torrent of vitriol at the Africans who had rejected the settlement despite several moving speeches by the African Members of Parliament reiterating black grievances with minority rule. The RF retreated to its mental laager and the blame for the failure to achieve negotiated independence was placed squarely upon the Africans. RF members, such as C.D. Barlow (RF Member for Avondale), noted: ‘I… think, like many other hon. members of this House, that the African population as a whole will live to regret most sincerely that they turned down these proposals’.52 Many RF parliamentarians saw the whole exercise as a betrayal of trust and goodwill, arguing that the whites had made great 48 J. Thompson, ‘Half-Educated Africans “the Real Racialists”’, The Rhodesia Herald, 29 May 1972, p. 12. 49 ‘A Pioneer Remembers’, The Rhodesia Herald, 27 January 1972, p. 3. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid. 52 Rhodesia Legislative Assembly Debates, 81, 1972, 74.

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sacrifices in the national interest in order to support the proposals. J.A. Newington (RF Member for Hillcrest) explained that: ‘Rhodesian Europeans were quite prepared to give up so much of what they believed guaranteed their safety in order to reach a settlement… It showed our willingness to go just so far, only short of political suicide’.53 Notions of sacrifice and ingratitude became central to the RF’s rebuttal of the Pearce Commission’s verdict. The RF believed its willingness to make compromises that would affect the lifestyles of whites was a significant concession. It reinforced their view that Europeans governed in the interest of the black population. While this showed just how out of touch the RF was with African opinion, some in the Front were genuinely aggrieved by the strength of the rejection. Ian Smith, in closing the debate, was clearly affected. He rejected out of hand all the reasons that had been cited for African grievances and placed responsibility squarely on Rhodesia’s Africans to move forward: it is now up to the African people of Rhodesia to show that the verdict of the Pearce Commission was incorrect and that on reflection they prefer the terms of the settlement to retaining the status quo. That is the only way that this can be changed. Failing that, they will have allowed the opportunity to pass, and I do not believe it will recur.54

The RF’s parliamentary rhetoric was brimming with implicit definitions of the nation and the justifications of the minority-rule arrangements that the nation was created to preserve. It was also a response given from a position of strength. In mid-1972, after seven years of rebellion, the RF’s security forces were dominant in combat and sanctions were being beaten with regular fuel supplies arriving through Portuguese-ruled Mozambique and South Africa. The 1972 escalation of the liberation war, the 1973 oil crisis, which disproportionately affected Rhodesia’s clandestine trading networks, and the fall of Portuguese colonialism were all yet to come. Even as the RF mobilised historical narratives to meet the black challenge to the nation, its defence was, in turn, contested by other whites. The result of the Pearce Commission created divisions in Parliament, highlighting the unresolved tensions of the RF’s attempts at symbolic 53 Ibid., 54 Ibid.,

133. 221.

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decolonisation. Allan Savory—a former soldier and RF Member for Matobo—went on to leave the party and become a harsh critic of government policy in the 1970s. Savory saw the rejection in 1972 for the warning that it was and counselled for greater inclusion of Africans in Rhodesian national life. In Parliament, Savory offered a point-by-point deconstruction of Smith’s rejoinder to the Pearce Commission which was frequently interrupted by RF MPs such as Desmond Lardner-Burke yelling ‘Whose side are you on?’55 Savory warned: ‘I believe that the Government are – and this is a fact that must be faced for Rhodesia’s good – out of touch with the majority of African thinking in this country, even moderate African thinking; completely out of touch with it’.56 Similarly, a number of letter writers to The Rhodesia Herald spoke out passionately against racial discrimination in the wake of the result, arguing for changes to be made. On 4 May 1972, R.C. Haw lamented the everyday discrimination towards blacks in Rhodesia: ‘[n]othing stirs up ill-feeling and hatred more than affronts to human dignity. Nothing can store up more trouble for us in the future, no matter how much we may do in other directions to provide housing, schools, medical services and the like for Africans’.57 Hardwick Holderness, a former UFP politician who was a prominent ‘white liberal’ during the partnership era, wrote that whites would never learn from their mistakes: ‘[the white population, h]aving, like our leaders, no first-hand contact whatever with Africans (except for our servants) we believed the official view: that the Africans were in the Government’s pocket provided the Government had power to imprison “intimidators” without trial…’.58 These white writers, the journalists at the Herald and prominent figures in the Rhodesian community who had lost out from UDI—such as the captains of Rhodesia’s industries—all sought to press for some kind of political settlement to end Rhodesia’s pariah status.

55 Ibid.,

125. 118. 57 R.C. Haw, ‘Affronts to Human Dignity Stir-Up Ill Feeling’, The Rhodesia Herald, 4 May 1972, p. 12. 58 H.H.C Holderness, ‘Seems Whites Will Ever [Sic] Learn by Their Mistakes’, The Rhodesia Herald, 19 May 1972. For a more detailed exploration of Holderness’ life, see his autobiography H. Holderness, Lost Chance: Southern Rhodesia 1945–1958 (Harare, Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1985). 56 Ibid.,

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The range of white responses to the Pearce result showed that, in times of crisis, divisions in white Rhodesian society, divisions that the RF had struggled to overcome with its nation-building project, resurfaced. To respond to the challenge that the Pearce verdict offered to their national project, the RF deployed tried and tested historical discourses which had served them well since the early 1960s. However, in doing so, their actions opened themselves up to contestation from people on the right, who felt that the RF had offered too many concessions to the black population, as well as people on the left who argued for a more considered and sensitive response to the African rejection of the settlement proposals. It gave a glimpse of the fundamental problems with the RF’s nationalism, a nationalism that failed to confront black political consciousness and was unable to address white divisions beyond a shallow appeal to ethnic unity. These twin failures would have major ramifications six years later as the RF’s nationalism took a new direction that was bizarre and terminal.

War and Settlement in the 1970s Ann Stoler has illustrated the temporally and contextually structured way in which settlers perceive indigenous protest and resistance.59 Stoler has argued that when colonialism was in its infancy, its ‘pioneering’ period, some level of violence was seen as endemic to the process but later on, when the framework of the colonial state had been established, violence against Europeans was seen as much more serious. The response to the internal settlement of 3 March 1978 offers an opportunity to consider how war and violence shaped white Rhodesian mentalities over time. On the one hand, the experience of war had created a general societal malaise, a weariness that encouraged whites to reconsider the nature of the Rhodesian nation. One the other, it prompted feelings of die-hardism, centred on an impending, quasi-apocalyptic last stand for whites in Rhodesia. The central paradox of the internal settlement was that it was a paper tiger that had to be promoted as a substantive change in order to succeed. It allowed the RF and white Rhodesians more generally to retain much of their power, but it was not presented in that way. This had 59 A.L. Stoler, ‘Perceptions of Protest: Defining the Dangerous in Colonial Sumatra’, American Ethnologist, 12, 4 (1985), pp. 642–658.

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implications for the ambiguous symbolism and nationhood the RF had created for Rhodesia. The ‘new’ Rhodesia had proved broadly popular in the short term because of an ambiguity that allowed whites to read their own meanings into it—it could stand for sunshine, swimming pools and ‘standards’; military heroism; anticommunism; or a sort of vigorous frontier Britishness. In the years following UDI, the RF had enjoyed considerable success in removing older focuses of loyalty and encouraging whites to instead be loyal to ‘the nation’ (or more accurately the RF state). A large part of this success was due to the maintenance, and with the 1969 constitution, the entrenchment, of white privilege. Continued European support for the RF reflected the popularity of its individualistic mantra guaranteeing white security. By comparison, the swift removal of the nascent symbols of Rhodesian independence after March 1978 appeared relatively unambiguous. Whatever those symbols had meant to whites, whatever their purchase in the peripatetic settler community, their replacement seemed to signify something that looked a lot like the long-dreaded majority rule. Smith and the RF seemed to have performed an about-face after years of stoking racialised fears of Belgian Congostyle rapine and violence. Responding desperately to increasingly effective guerrilla incursions, the fall of Portuguese colonialism, and the turn of its closest ally, South Africa, towards a policy of détente with neighbouring Africa states, the RF took a final convoluted gamble to preserve its power. In doing so, the RF triggered the fault lines of white society, contributing to the ultimate collapse of white Rhodesia. Chapter 6 detailed the expansion of the ‘bush war’ from late 1972. The sudden emergence of Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA) guerrillas across North-East Rhodesia after months of clandestine infiltration seemed like a terrifying repeat of the conflict of 1896. It took the British South Africa Police’s Special Branch, and the Rhodesian Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO), who had relied on rural Africans for intelligence about the guerrillas, completely by surprise.60 60 Just some of the many detailed works dedicated to the war include: P. McLaughlin & P. Moorcraft, Chimurenga! The War in Rhodesia 1965–1980 (Marshalltown, Sygma/ Collins 1980); H. Ellert, The Rhodesian Front War: Counter-Insurgency and Guerrilla War in Rhodesia 1962–1980 (Gwelo, Mambo Press, 1989); J.K. Cilliers, Counter-Insurgency in Rhodesia (London, Croom Helm, 1985) which offer the Rhodesian view. For perspectives which focus more upon the guerrillas, see P. Johnson & D. Martin, The Struggle for Zimbabwe: The Chimurenga War (Harare, Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1981) or N. Bhebe & T. Ranger (eds.), Soldiers in Zimbabwe’s Liberation War (London, James Currey, 1991).

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It is hard to overstate the effects of the war on the white settler community and the liberation war continues to resonate in Zimbabwean politics today. The conflict remains a marker of political legitimacy and entitlement for ‘war veterans’. Conflict had profoundly shaped white Rhodesian nationalism through the shared experience of military service (either as a direct combatant or as a relative of a conscript), with militaristic songs envisioning the past as a series of never-ending conflicts, and historical narratives told stories about national and transnational blood prices. These cultural expressions showed how the shared experiences of conflict could have a cohesive potential for white Rhodesians and how these experiences changed over time. How the RF and white Rhodesians spoke more generally about conflict in the 1970s gives an insight into the limitations and stresses on the nation-building project, and the range of white responses to the internal settlement illustrates another unsuccessful attempt by the RF to mobilise history in defence of the nation. The multiracial nature of Rhodesia’s police and armed forces allowed the RF to use historical discourses about multiracial cooperation as part of its propaganda offensive during the war. The opportunity for contact between the races within the armed forces was a distinct environment from the workplace or the home, one where men’s lives literally depended upon each other.61 Luise White has written of how the ‘precarious conditions’ of the war called into question conventional racial logic.62 This was particularly true in the Selous Scouts, a notorious elite unit known for making extensive use of former guerrillas (or ‘turned terrs’) who came over to the Rhodesian side, and for conducting brutal false-flag operations. White members of the scouts would frequently ‘black up’ to infiltrate guerrilla camps, and White notes how this act ‘suggests that white rule could best be maintained by the mimicry of African qualities’.63 These very acts undermined the carefully constructed hierarchies of the historical narratives. Of course, such contact was circumscribed by the existence of all-white units such as the Rhodesian Light Infantry and the Special Air Service, as well as severe limits on African advancement in the police and armed forces, thus

61 Rhodesian

Cabinet Minutes, R.C.(S) (75), Thirtieth Meeting, 6 August 1975, p. 5. White, ‘Precarious Conditions: A Note on Counter-Insurgency in Africa After 1945’, Gender and History, 16, 3 (2004), pp. 603–625. 63 Ibid., p. 620. 62 L.

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ensuring the broad reproduction of the master-servant relationship.64 Rhodesian state propaganda often played upon this theme to note that the conflict was not simply white against black, but rather a clash of the colour-blind ideologies of capitalism and communism. This oversimplified dichotomy of capitalism/communism, which was to lead to decades of strife in the Congo and elsewhere in the region, was fully exploited by Southern Africa’s settler regimes. By the late 1970s, the South African Defence Minister (and later Prime Minister) P.W. Botha sought a militaristic retrenchment of white power by employing the rhetoric of a ‘total onslaught’ upon South Africa by communism.65 Similarly, the persistent fears of the Western powers about Cuban intervention in Central and Southern Africa following that country’s decisive role in the Angolan civil war allowed the RF to portray their conflict as part of a wider, regional clash of civilisations rather than the civil war that it actually was.66 The Ministry of Information propaganda publication Focus on Rhodesia, produced for domestic and foreign circulation, repeatedly emphasised this theme in the late 1970s. In March 1976, its front cover featured a black and a white soldier with the caption ‘Fighting Together’ and the next month showed a black policeman helping white children cross a road with the slogan ‘Towards Partnership’ (almost two decades after the rhetoric of partnership had been unfulfilled by the Federation).67 The black soldiers and policemen in the employ of the Rhodesian state were a resource that could be mobilised to demonstrate to the outside world the inclusivity of Rhodesian society. Older historical narratives, in which the white soldiers of the pioneer era were the true heroes, performing their settler masculinity in an empty, untamed land, had reduced Africans to nameless and faceless bit players. In contrast, Ministry of Information propaganda actively promoted the presence of

64 It was only in the mid-1970s that the idea of African officers in either the police or military was entertained. Rhodesia Cabinet Minutes, R.C.(S) (75) Thirtieth Meeting, 6 August 1975, pp. 2–4. 65 See J. Miller, An African Volk: The Apartheid Regime and the Search for Survival (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2016) on how the rhetoric and policy direction of ‘total onslaught’ developed. 66 Eric Kennes and Miles Larmer show how the spectre of communism cast a long shadow over the region in the 1970s in The Katangese Gendarmes and War in Central Africa: Fighting Their Way Home (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2016). 67 Focus on Rhodesia, 1, 1 (March 1976); Focus on Rhodesia, 1, 2 (April 1976).

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black soldiers and the job they were doing. Yet in a fashion typical of the complex and multi-layered nature of race relations in Rhodesia, these two trends were not mutually exclusive, and the propaganda was part of the wider ‘good governance’ narrative emphasising the development that had taken place among the Rhodesian African population under the tutelage of the whites. Recruiting material appealed to these supposedly Rhodesian ideals of multiracial cooperation while at the same time reinforcing the assumptions of white leadership and native inferiority that dominated settler historical writing of the time. One 1970s poster, for example, showed an African scout in stereotypically tribal dress pointing out the enemy to a white man in a typical pioneer-era military uniform and bore the tagline: ‘Now as then… co-operation is a feature of Rhodesian life’.68 If this reflected the realities of living in the Southern African colonial ‘contact-zone’ in which the very fact of colonialism meant that white and black had to live and work together, it did not reflect a broader white desire for a multiracial society.69 This explicit emphasis on racial cooperation was a showpiece for foreign audiences that revealed the extent of the RF’s continued delusion over the benefits of its minority rule. It was coupled with its assiduous promotion of the chiefs and, after 1978, the leaders of the internal settlement abroad. This promotion of black achievement, against all the barriers the RF had erected to stymie it, represented an evolution of the RF’s strategy for maintaining its political dominance in the 1970s and was demonstrative of the vast shift in circumstances which had taken place since the escalation of the war in 1972. The propaganda emphasis on multiracial cooperation sought to demonstrate that both whites and blacks were prepared to die in defence of ostensibly non-racial ideals such as ‘civilisation’, ‘justice’ and ‘fair play’. By highlighting the role that Africans played in Rhodesian society, the government and society at large sought to make only token gestures of multiracialism while resisting the arguments against white-minority rule. The legal, economic and social mechanisms and codes of discrimination that made Africans second-class citizens in Rhodesia continued to chafe upon the black population, providing an ever-increasing stream 68 H. Schmidt, Colonialism and Violence in Zimbabwe: A History of Suffering (Oxford, James Currey, 2013), pp. 169–170. 69 See S. Hall, Familiar Strangers: A Life Between Two Islands (London, Penguin 2017), p. 82 for an exploration of the contact zone in the Jamaican context.

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of recruits for the guerrilla armies and a growing refugee crisis across Rhodesia. The impact of this problem and how the RF proposed to deal with it shows a state falling apart in the late 1970s. In September 1976, Bill Irvine, the Minister of Local Government and Housing, presented the cabinet with a memorandum explaining a growing problem of ‘squatting… on unoccupied or inadequately supervised farms’ and efforts to move all itinerant Africans in the capital city of Salisbury into a ‘transit squatter camp’ at Zengeze.70 A year later, again stressing the inability of officials on the ground to comprehensively prevent ‘the “refugee” problem arising from the security situation’ a government Working Party had recommended against relaxing strict racial segregation restrictions as ‘any dispensation in this regard would inevitably involve children’ and threaten Ministry of Internal Affairs policies of ‘maintaining stability in the population of the tribal areas and preventing an exodus therefrom’.71 This refugee crisis, coupled with the tens of thousands of rural Africans being relocated to ‘Protected Villages’ across the country, was drastically changing the demography of Rhodesia.72 The conduct of the white-led Rhodesian military, typically heavy-handed and obsessed with tactics over strategy, contributed to a general loss of faith among rural black people subject to curfews, collective punishment, mass resettlement and an increasingly grim catalogue of atrocities.73 Thus, the war carried on and Rhodesia remained unrecognised, despite several further attempts at settlement. Then in 1978, everything seemed to change. On 3 March 1978, Ian Smith came to an agreement with three internally based ‘moderate’ African leaders—the Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole, formerly leader of the major African nationalist party Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU, led since 1975 by Robert Mugabe); 70 Rhodesian Cabinet Memoranda, RC(S) (76) 144, ‘Influx of Africans into European Areas’. 71 RC(S) (77) 90, ‘Influx of Africans into European Areas’, 22 July 1977. 72 The anti-regime Catholic Institute for International Relations and the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Rhodesia did much to publicise the plight of Africans moved into protected villages. See, for instance, M. Bratton, Beyond Community Development: The Political Economy of Rural Administration in Zimbabwe (London, Catholic Institute for International Relations, 1978). 73 See Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, The Man in the Middle: Torture Resettlement and Eviction (London, Catholic Institute for International Relations, 1975); Civil War in Rhodesia (London, Catholic Institute for International Relations, 1976).

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Bishop Abel Muzorewa, leader of the United African National Council (UANC) and the man who had been the figurehead of the African ‘No’ campaign during the visit of the Pearce Commission in 1972; and Chief Jeremiah Chirau, leader of the Zimbabwe United People’s Organisation (ZUPO) and former RF government minister. Crucially, the agreement excluded the Patriotic Front (PF), as the alliance between ZANU and the other major nationalist organisation, the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) was now known. The clue was in the name: the agreement became known as the ‘internal settlement’. The nationalist organisations of the PF remained locked in conflict with the government operating from their bases in neighbouring Mozambique and Zambia, respectively. The black leaders with whom Smith had treated had been discredited in the eyes of many nationalist supporters. They commanded limited support among the black population and, significantly given that the Settlement was sold as a means of ending the war, had no control over many of the guerrilla forces in the country and so were powerless to stop the fighting. Indeed, the possession of private armies by several of the leaders only served to further complicate the conflict. These three men, along with Smith, formed the Executive Council of a new Transitional Government. This agreement was the last throw of the dice for the RF and, given its direction to this point, a huge gamble—but this volte face was not totally unexpected. Two years previously in September 1976, Smith, tricked by Henry Kissinger into thinking a settlement with the presidents of the so-called frontline states (Tanzania, Zambia and Mozambique) was close at hand, had publicly conceded the principle of future majority rule on television. Godwin and Hancock noted that, by this point, many whites were so keen for a return to normality that ‘Smithy’s’ popularity was not significantly dented and he easily won an election called to quell right-wing dissent after 12 RF MPs resigned to form the right-wing Rhodesia Action Party in 1977.74 Yet the internal settlement was a case of deeds not words, and it proved how desperate the RF had become. It suggested that the party which had always claimed to defend white rule was willing to cast aside the fundamentals of the nation-building project it had been undertaking for the last thirteen years in one fell swoop. Despite what it had said (sincerely) in the past by 1978 nothing

74 Godwin

& Hancock, Rhodesians Never Die, pp. 176–179.

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about the new Rhodesian state, up to and including its name, proved sacred. Paradoxically, this was arguably because the sense of community and belonging that the project had created among white Rhodesians (which outlived the state) was so successful that it presaged any meaningful long-term racial accord. With the internal settlement, the RF seemed to be playing against its own type. Yet if the sincere pursuit of the internal settlement can be seen as a measure of the strength of the RF’s nationalism, it represented the ultimate failure of the RF state and the hollowness of symbolic decolonisation as a method by which to achieve domestic cohesion and international legitimacy. The RF’s rapid shift was compounded by the obfuscation and confusion that surrounded its new approach. In public, the RF declared that a significant step had been taken towards the achievement of majority rule. Yet if the whites appeared to have relinquished control of Parliament, they still ran the economy, the judiciary and, crucially, the security forces. This was reflected in the political arrangements for government, whereby the RF and the nationalist parties provided ‘joint ministers’ for each portfolio. As Rhodesia began to die, the military now assumed a critical leadership role in the country and Peter Walls, head of the armed forces, became as important as Ian Smith.75 The creation of ZimbabweRhodesia reflected the conflicting interests of the two major audiences for the RF’s nationalism: the international community (for whom the message was intended) and the domestic white population, many of whom—despite their war-weariness—would find this message deeply unsettling. The illusion of impending majority rule proved to be more important for some than the reality of continued white privilege. In the speech from the throne at the opening of Parliament in June (the first session after the agreement was reached), John Wrathall, Rhodesia’s second and final white president promised that ‘before the end of the year… a government truly representative of the majority will emerge’.76 Several months earlier, reporting on the establishment of the Executive Council, The Rhodesia Herald’s front page had proclaimed an ‘End to White Rule’.77

75 Godwin

& Hancock, Rhodesians Never Die, p. 262. Legislative Assembly Debates, 98, 1978, 2. 77 ‘End to White Rule’, The Herald, 22 March 1978, p. 1. 76 Rhodesia

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The news of impending ‘majority-rule’ opened another space for contestations of the nation. The agreement triggered a series of debates about personal property, job security, the nature of a majority-rule state and the name of the country. The whole gamut of early white responses to the internal settlement can be seen in microcosm in the letters pages of The Herald (as The Rhodesia Herald was renamed in 1978), suggesting that many peoples’ minds were on more mundane things than the concept of a multiracial community. T.G. Wood, of Salisbury, was a typical exponent of this view, writing that with majority rule looming: ‘history has shown that whites have every reason to be apprehensive, because all they have worked for in their lifetime, including their personal assets, could be at risk’.78 Mrs. D.B. Odendaal, who had been an ardent RF supporter for 12 years, now doubted her party and suggested that ‘they are the fatal wave that sweeps the white electorate off their feet and pulls them into a very black sea… We realise that change must come, but must it come so fast? Help – I’m drrrowning! [sic]’.79 J.R. Haw, of Salisbury, wrote on another theme, warning that: ‘I and many other [sic] like me will not fight for Zimbabwe, and it seems that paper guarantees and black majority rule may force me to become an emigrant’.80 Elsewhere Anglican clergyman Father Arthur Lewis, the ‘high priest of the RF’ was writing on the subject of potential new names for the country, arguing the case for the retention of ‘Rhodesia’ against what appeared to be the most popular alternative of Zimbabwe: ‘Those of us who believe Rhodesia worth keeping do so not from any adulation of a super imperialist but because it represents achievement by white and black together’.81 The resigned tone from some white Rhodesians reflected the changes that had taken place more broadly in white society during the 1970s. Those whites who in the late 1970s had not joined the growing numbers of emigrants fleeing Rhodesia with whatever they could take had suffered enormously from the war: sons, husbands and even grandfathers away from home on call-up, shortages of essential goods in the shops, 78 T.G.

Wood, ‘Guarantees Should Be Supported’, The Herald, 15 March 1978, p. 9. Odendaal, ‘No Chance to Catch Breath’, The Herald, 10 March 1978, p. 8. 80 J.R. Haw, ‘RAP and Military Service’, The Herald, 15 March 1978, p. 9. 81 Fr. Arthur Lewis, ‘Rhodesia or Zimbabwe? There’s Lots in a Name’, The Herald, 23 March 1978, p. 8. See Godwin & Hancock, Rhodesians Never Die, p. 129 for the ‘high priest’ quote. 79 D.B.

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the need to travel in convoys on the roads, businesses failing for lack of staff. In rural areas, farmers had turned their homes into fortresses with guard dogs, fencing, agric-alert communal radio networks and arsenals of weaponry. Even urban whites were no longer safe. In 1978, South African firemen had to be flown into help fight a huge blaze caused when Salisbury’s oil reserves were attacked with rocket-propelled grenades.82 Umtali, near the border with Mozambique, was attacked with rockets and mortar bombs.83 Denis Hills and David Caute, travelling around the country in the late 1970s, portrayed a society on the edge, its nerves frayed.84 In this context, growing numbers of whites simply wanted peace. Some white farmers, tired of being the RF’s first line of defence against the guerrilla armies, turned a blind eye to guerrilla activity on their properties or approached other African mediators such as Kenneth Kaunda, president of neighbouring Zambia, in an attempt to sue for peace.85 Defiant white voices were still shouting proudly about Rhodesians never dying but a growing number were coming to terms with the impending death of white Rhodesia. In Parliament, some RF MPs engaged in extended eulogising for minority rule, taking the opportunity to warn Africans not to spoil what they were shortly to inherit, reminding them that a ‘majority rule’ constitution would be subject to a referendum of the (predominantly white) electorate before being enacted. E.M. Micklem (RF Member for Sinoia/ Umvukwes) explained: ‘over the last 87 years we have been striving to bring about development and prosperity to this country… [when the pioneers arrived] a large proportion of the population… through fear and through witnessing the bloodshed that had taken place over generations of intertribal warfare, lived and spent most of their time in caves…’.86 The importance of not denigrating white achievements in the country after majority rule had been achieved was a variant on the RF’s 82 P. Stiff, The Silent War: South African Recce Operations 1969–1994 (Alberton, Galago, 1999), p. 9. 83 D. Hills, The Last Days of White Rhodesia (London, Chatto & Windus, 1981), pp. 30, 75. 84 Hills, The Last Days; D. Caute, Under the Skin: The Death of White Rhodesia (London, Allen Lane, 1981). 85 R. Pilossof, The Unbearable Whiteness of Being: Farmers’ Voices from Zimbabwe (Harare, Weaver Press, 2013), p. 24. 86 Rhodesia

Legislative Assembly Debates, 98, 242.

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narrative of black ingratitude, both prominent themes in the speeches of white parliamentarians over the next year and a half. Other white MPs expressed consternation, not just about the physical existence of whites in a majority-rule country, but about what it would mean for white identity, implying that the two were somehow incompatible. These challenges from within the RF presented nightmare scenarios that would attend the end of minority rule. In the debate on the President’s Speech in June 1978, T.C. de Klerk (RF Member for Shabani) observed that under the new constitution: Tribalism will not be encouraged. So will all tribal societies that whites like to belong to have to be disbanded? I am prepared to do many things. I also wish to survive, but I am not prepared to surrender my identity in the process of survival.87

Later on in the debate, J.C. Andersen (RF Member for Mount Pleasant) raised a similar point that: ‘[a]part from the maintenance of standards, white Rhodesians are concerned at the very question of the maintenance of their identity as a community, as a group…’.88 Quite apart from these existential concerns, Micklem succinctly summarised the more practical aspects of white fears, some of which were touched upon in the letters to the Herald seen above: When is there likely to be a reduction in terrorism?… is the Civil Service going to be secure in the future? Are pensions going to be secure? Is tenure of office going to be secure? What is the future of our security services? Is justice, law and order going to be impartial in the future? Are the rights of the individual going to be safeguarded? Is there going to be the maintenance of standards… is Rhodesia worth fighting for indefinitely with all that has taken place recently?89

Debates about ‘standards’ had always been a coded way for settlers to talk about race without explicitly mentioning it. As shown above, the RF had long claimed that African ‘standards’ were inferior to European ones and the way to resolve this was to allow the two communities to 87 Ibid.,

221. 491. 89 Ibid., 248. 88 Ibid.,

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develop separately under white rule, justifying UDI. To RF politicians like Andersen, de Klerk and Micklem, majority rule was incompatible with racial harmony, the maintenance of ‘standards’ and stable government. It was a threat to the security whites enjoyed under an RF system which had enshrined their racial privilege in law. The disruptive effect that internal settlement had upon white society can be best seen in the way the RF’s own MPs reacted to debates about the call-up of Africans. In the ‘new’ nation of ZimbabweRhodesia, despite the doubts of some whites about their martial capabilities, the black population were expected to pull their weight in the war. Historically, white fears about having Africans under arms had prevented them from being conscripted into the Rhodesian military machine, but these reservations no longer made sense now that ‘majority-rule’ had ostensibly been achieved.90 It was assumed that black people would willingly want to fight to defend ‘their’ new nation. Furthermore, the increasing demands of the war against ZANLA and ZIPRA meant that by late 1978, almost all able-bodied whites were already enrolled for military service.91 This ever-expanding eligibility for military service had a ripple effect through white society. It impinged upon the smooth operation of the economy and the very psychology of white Rhodesians, causing whites to leave the country in ever-growing numbers. This, combined with a lack of new immigrants due to the war, meant that the white Rhodesian population began to go into decline in the late 1970s. The effects of conscription, already a cause of great resentment, were exacerbated by the continuing intensification of the conflict after the internal settlement.92 This was due to the duplicity of the RF’s high echelons who had presented the black leaders of the Transitional Council as individuals who had the capacity to stop the war. Because of the way the RF sold the internal settlement, some whites could not understand why the nationalist guerrillas were still fighting. After all, the logic went, 90 See P. McLaughlin, ‘Victims as Defenders: African Troops in the Rhodesian Defence System 1890–1980’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 2, 2 (1991), pp. 240–275 for an account of white reservations about calling up African troops. 91 L. White, ‘Civic Virtue, Young Men, and the Family: Conscription in Rhodesia, 1974– 1980’, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 37, 1 (2004), pp. 103–121. 92 For analysis of the effect of conscription upon white Rhodesians, see White, ‘Civic Virtue’, pp. 103–121; J. Brownell, ‘The Hole in Rhodesia’s Bucket: White Emigration and the End of Settler Rule’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 34, 3 (2008), pp. 591–610.

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had majority rule not now been achieved? These responses to the internal settlement showed the strength of the white echo chamber of ideas about Africans, as well as the success of RF propaganda, nowhere was this more evident than the ranks of the RF itself, as the parliamentary debates on African conscription demonstrate. The debate was begun on 6 December 1978 by a motion from an African MP, E.S.G.M. Nyandoro (Member for Mabvazuwa), requesting that the call-up of Africans be delayed until majority-rule independence had been reached.93 The crux of the debate was upon the African contribution to Rhodesia. White MPs, many of whom like J.P. Thrush (RF Member for Hillcrest) believed the motion to be ‘totally racialistic and completely unpatriotic’, arguing that whites had made sacrifices to facilitate majority rule and continued to make physical sacrifices daily in the conflict.94 Wing Commander R.J. Gaunt (RF Member for Hatfield) once again drew on historical narratives of ‘good governance’ and development in his explanation of the nation: ‘[w]e [white Rhodesians] have had the responsibility of defending them [Africans] and their families and their kith and kin over the past six years, not to say the last ninety. When we came they were eating each other. They had not even thought about the wheel…’.95 These arguments were ironic, conveniently overlooking the fact that most of Rhodesia’s soldiers were already both black and volunteers, even though black people were expected to die defending a system that gave them nothing.96 Peter McLaughlin notes that while black soldiers had historically made up a majority of the armed forces, and they still represented a tiny proportion of the black population of the country.97 The fact that the internal settlement did not prompt a surge of black volunteers was a sign of its shallowness. Indeed, the ‘military forces’ of the leaders of the Transitional Council were often little more than private armies of ill-disciplined thugs, many of whom were lured or pressganged from the rapidly growing population of urban unemployed in the townships.98 These soldiers, initially called ‘Security Force Auxiliaries’ 93 Rhodesia

Legislative Assembly Debates, 99, 1978–1979, 1582. 1603. 95 Ibid., 1612. 96 Ibid., 1623. 97 McLaughlin, ‘Victims as Defenders’, p. 264. 94 Ibid.,

98 Ibid.,

p. 268.

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(SFAs) and later renamed Pfumo re Vanhu (chiShona for ‘Spear of the People’), caused even more confusion among whites who no longer knew why the war was continuing or what they were fighting for. Propaganda designed to bolster the legitimacy of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia as a non-racial state sometimes caused white morale to plummet. One particularly famous case was that of ‘Comrade Max’, purported to be a former guerrilla who had switched sides and now led a group of SFAs, who appeared on Rhodesian television declaring that he was now in charge of the Msana Tribal Trust Land (as the rural Africans-only areas were known). Godwin and Hancock explained the effect of this broadcast: While the aim of the programme was to prove that the cease-fire was working, the effect was a public relations disaster. The government had not explained the policy of employing former ‘terrorists’, nor did the programme explain that Comrade Max was under the command of the Security Forces… [it led to] White fears that the internal settlement would install the likes of Comrade Max in power.99

The legislative assembly debates and concerned letters to The Herald in 1978 and 1979 demonstrated how far many white Rhodesians were prepared to go in including Africans in their nation. The numerous white protestations during the debates on the removal of racial discrimination and constitutional change saw endless variations on the same themes. These included the contention that Africans were irresponsible and that majority rule would ruin the country or indeed bring about the ‘end of civilization’ as it had elsewhere in Africa.100 Another popular argument was the old UFP line that the African standard of living had benefitted immensely from white technical expertise, which they had a responsibility to maintain in a majority-rule country, as H.S. Elsworth (RF Member for Midlands) stated: ‘the stable future of this country depends on the retention of the confidence of the white people… if one fails to retain the confidence of the white people… there can only be one thing that will follow and that is complete and absolute economic disaster and chaos’.101 White representatives were casting all about them for any way to justify their continued rule. These responses, ranging from 99 Godwin

& Hancock, Rhodesian Never Die, p. 277. Legislative Assembly Debates, 99, 2540, 2490; Quote from 2543. 101 Ibid., 2398. 100 Rhodesia

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condescension to resentment, were the superstructure on which the veneer of multiracial cooperation had been thinly applied by the white ministers of Transitional Government. All the qualifications and quibbles evident in Rhodesia’s twilight years reified a dichotomy between white and black, between ‘African’ and ‘Rhodesian’. Indeed, the very term ‘black Rhodesian’ was typically used to demonstrate to the outside world that because blacks suffered in the guerrilla war the RF regime was not racist. The RF’s desire to give an aura of legitimacy to the new government was proven in April 1979 when the full force of the white state was mobilised for the country’s first ‘one-man, one-vote’ election.102 Every white who could be called up was called up, and over 70,000 troops were deployed to ensure that the election went smoothly. Though 18 polling stations (of 932) were attacked by guerrillas, the Army considered its handling of the election a huge success, and there was a 64% turnout with victory handed to Bishop Muzorewa’s United African National Council.103 Though some in the West, notably Conservative Party leader Margaret Thatcher, had made favourable noises towards such an exercise, the result was not ultimately endorsed by anyone and Zimbabwe-Rhodesia remained an international pariah. This chapter has demonstrated how challenges to the RF’s nation from the black population, through war and political protest, opened spaces for contestations from white voices to the left and right of the RF and how the RF tried to mobilise historical narratives in defence of the nation. It shows the precarious context of the RF’s nation-building project and the difficulty of appealing to a divided white population, to say little of the international community from whom it sought recognition and the black population from whom, as the 1970s went on, it demanded an increasing contribution. Illustrating that RF nationalism was hesitant, reactive and inconsistent, it has also shown how ambiguous nationalism and national symbols—Rhodesia’s short-term strength— contributed to the RF state’s long-term downfall. The rhetoric, if not the substance, of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia and impending ‘majority-rule’ helped to destroy the multifarious meanings of ‘Rhodesia’ that had taken 102 L. White, Unpopular Sovereignty: Rhodesian Independence and African Decolonization (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2015), as White notes, many in the RF saw the election as ‘a procedure that would provide the regime with a figurehead, nothing more’, p. 243. 103 P. Moorcraft & P. McLaughlin, The Rhodesian War: Fifty Years On (Barnsley, Pen & Sword, 2015), pp. 159–160.

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root among the white population as it did away with all the trappings of independent, white, statehood. By centring the focus of white loyalty upon the ‘nation’, and by association the RF itself, the party sowed the seeds of its own destruction by appearing to do away with the settler state altogether, meaning that many whites began to question just what it was they were fighting for. Zimbabwe-Rhodesia and the RF’s duplicity over it shattered the precarious, amorphous consensus that had allowed Rhodesia to endure for so long after UDI, and the nation began to fall apart.

CHAPTER 8

Conclusion: The Strange Afterlife of Rebel Rhodesia

This study has sought to relocate white Rhodesia’s short-lived nationalist project between 1965 and 1979 within a series of global and transnational trends. It has demonstrated the wider salience of the Rhodesian example for literatures on decolonisation and settler colonialism by examining the role of symbolism and history in nation-building projects using an ostensibly atypical case study of a white-ruled nation which sought to defy the end of empire in the 1960s and 1970s. In retrospect, the abnormality of white Rhodesia and the failure of the settler state have tended to make the RF’s nationalist project seem ill-fated from the start. Yet in 1965, the RF had regional and continental examples in its neighbours and allies in South Africa, and the Portuguese colonial regimes in Mozambique and Angola. These examples suggested that Rhodesia could pursue a path of minority-rule independence. That it managed to do so, in the face of nationalist guerrilla opposition, international economic sanctions and its own fractious population, for almost two decades is remarkable considering the flimsiness of the foundations upon which the RF tried to build its nation. Part of the reason for this was that the RF’s nationalism was neither static nor unchanging; it was amorphous and reactive, responding to internal and external developments. The RF’s nationalism in 1965–1979 went through three distinct but overlapping phases: minority-rule independence within the Commonwealth, symbolic decolonisation and Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. It was reliant upon a synthesis of top-down ‘invention of tradition’ and © The Author(s) 2019 D. Kenrick, Decolonisation, Identity and Nation in Rhodesia, 1964–1979, Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32698-2_8

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bottom-up conceptualisations of the ‘imagined community’ of Rhodesia, as much a mental as a geographical space. The relationship between the multiple sources of Rhodesian nationalism was complex and confusing, the boundaries between the top-down and bottom-up impulses indistinguishable from one another. At the same time, several key themes emerged from the period: the transnational contexts and implications of nationalist projects for imperial metropoles and other decolonising societies in the 1960s and 1970s, the fragile and pervasive negotiation of racial identities, the importance of the historical narratives to processes of decolonisation and the influence of militarism upon settler society. The RF’s nationalism was defined by its essentially racial character. This was unsurprising, given the circumstances in which the party came to exist, but given how fluid and contingent Rhodesian nationalism proved to be in its short existence, the RF’s unwillingness to recognise and address the circumstances which had given rise to growing political consciousness among the African population was fatal. To the RF, there were essentially two nations within the territorial confines of Rhodesia: a nation of settlers and a nation of ‘natives’. The experience of white Rhodesians testifies to what Damian Skinner has called the ‘two trajectories’ of decolonisation in settler societies: the settler effort to define themselves against their British past and the ‘indigenous’ effort to secure their place in the nation’s future.1 The artificiality of the RF’s settler nationalism was tested throughout the UDI period by vigorous black nationalist opposition up to and including armed struggle (dismissed by the RF as communist-inspired terrorism rather than the civil war it truly was), continued white contestations of the nation by Europeans who refused to accept the RF’s interpretation of the new Rhodesia, and the small Asian and ‘Coloured’ populations whose very existence, in a peculiar halfway house between ‘settler’ and ‘native’, gave the lie to the strict racial boundaries the RF claimed to defend. The RF’s mistake was to assume that its strong showing after 1965 would give it indefinite time to continue implementing a gradualist form of neo-colonial control, stressing a need for progressive development of ‘the native’ reinforced by legal sanction, social convention, cultural segregation and a powerful system of coercion. In this sense, the story of white Rhodesia adds to 1 D. Skinner, ‘Humanist Modernism: Ralph Hotere and “New Commonwealth Internationalism”’, in R. Craggs & C. Wintle (eds.), Cultures of Decolonisation: Transnational Productions and Practices, 1945–70 (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2016), p. 52.

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a growing body of work that problematises our notions of the nature, scope and chronology of decolonisation.2 The confidence that Rhodesia’s racialised structures, institutions and practices engendered in whites encouraged them to initiate processes of parallel development akin to (but, crucially, not identical to) apartheid South Africa. Thus, as white Rhodesians became a new nation after UDI, Rhodesia’s African population were yoked to an increasingly irrelevant system of ‘chieftainship’, said to represent a timeless rural authority and the inability of the indigenous population to think for themselves. This approach, given impetus by the 1969 constitution, was a redirection of settler processes of ‘nativisation’, in which the RF moved away from a paternalistic rhetoric of partnership in which educated Africans could, initially at least, ultimately aspire to be citizens of the Federation, to one in which Africans were reified as ‘natives’, unsuited to European systems of democracy.3 In a tried and tested invocation of settler-colonial discourse, the Rhodesians claimed to ‘know’ the native better than the British government and others who demanded independence upon the basis of a ‘one man, one vote’ system. The fact that RF parliamentarians supported such an election in April 1979 was less a consequence of a belated and more nuanced understanding of African politics in Rhodesia than it was a desperate last throw of the dice to secure the place of white settlers in whatever state came after Rhodesia. These images: settler and native, Rhodesia and Britain, black resistance and white dissent, were powerful but reductive. They were often deliberately ambiguous, failing to capture the complexities of Rhodesian society, even white Rhodesian society. Ethnicity was a critical part of being Rhodesian, but even in a society as small as Rhodesia’s white community, it was not the sole determinant of belonging. As Chapter 2 showed, demographics in Rhodesia were fluid and fragile, with the state treading a fine line between encouraging ‘the right sort’ of immigrant and desperately needing to grow the settler population, an imperative that became more acute after UDI. There were also any number of fault 2 See M. Thomas & A. Thompson (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Ends of Empire (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2018). 3 B. Schwarz, ‘“Shivering in the Noonday Sun”: The British World and the Dynamics of “Nativisation”’, in K. Darian-Smith, P. Grimshaw, & S. MacIntyre (eds.), Britishness Abroad: Transnational Movements and Imperial Cultures (Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 2007), pp. 19–44.

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lines on which Rhodesian society could split. The chapters above have primarily explored the distinction between those whites who considered themselves more ‘British’ and those were more stridently ‘Rhodesian’, but white Rhodesian society was riven with divisions: of class, of ethnicity, gender and, increasingly, age. Furthermore, Jean Smith has shown how white settler identities in Southern Africa were fluid and inconsistent. She interviewed one individual, Brien Bonynge, who was born in South Africa to Irish parents, raised in Rhodesia (where he fought with the BSAP in the 1970s) and then returned to South Africa in the 1970s. Though an ardent Rhodesian who remembered the patriotic fervour surrounding UDI and a desire to give the ‘poms’ what for when in the country, Bonynge later recalled fondly watching royal weddings and saluting the Union Jack at parties in South Africa, where he reassumed a more ‘British’ identity.4 Bonynge’s story, and the many letters to the Herald recounted in the chapters above, reminds us of the deeply personal and by no means logical nature of the processes of decolonisation as lived. They show decolonisation as an experience hard to pin down to fit academic theories, confounding the rigidity and fixedness implied by concepts such as the ‘British World’. In defying decolonisation to preserve settler colonialism, white Rhodesians proved to be a race against time, but the chapters above show that their experience was neither atypical nor monolithic. Rhodesia during UDI was the host to two parallel phenomena: the deeply individualistic processes of identity formation and the profoundly homogenising imperatives of nation-building. In between these two lay the settler population, working through a range of ever-shifting and overlapping performances of self and nation. Understandings of history were at the heart of these processes. The very act of UDI was portrayed as something deeply historicised, the natural culmination of decades of pioneer endeavour. By seizing white independence at a time of decolonisation, Rhodesia appeared to many beyond its borders to be a colonial holdover, but as Bill Schwarz notes, Rhodesia was a profoundly modern country.5 From its modern towns 4 J. Smith, ‘“I Still Don’t Have a Country”: The Southern African Settler Diaspora After Decolonisation’, in R. Craggs & C. Wintle (eds.), Cultures of Decolonisation: Transnational Productions and Practices, 1945–70 (Manchester, Manchester University Press), pp. 163–165. 5 B. Schwarz, The White Man’s World: Memories of Empire (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2012), p. 407; see also P. Keatley, The Politics of Partnership: The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (Penguin, London, 1963), p. 226.

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and cities, its high standards of living that were more akin to post-war America than Britain, to its fighter-bomber-equipped air force, Rhodesia was a highly technologically advanced nation. A good deal of the population were new arrivals too yet, as Erik Kennes and Miles Larmer have shown in the Katangese case, history retains the power to inspire and help shape identities even for those with no direct connection to it.6 Very few in Rhodesia could claim a direct link to the pioneers, even Ian Smith—the last word in Rhodesian—was only a second-generation immigrant. Yet it was here that the brevity of Rhodesia’s history was useful, few other nations could wheel out a genuine pioneer like Cecil Hulley to comment on the state of politics in 1972. Far from being an anomaly, Rhodesia’s story, and the way it used history, made it more similar to other post-colonial African nations than either its contemporary supporters or critics would have dared acknowledge. For all its naked artificiality, inauthenticity and inconsistency (exacerbated by the context of a decolonising continent that was explicitly challenging settler colonialism), the vision of ‘Rhodesia’ that the RF peddled was one that many whites bought into. Without it, they could not have sustained the settler state for almost a decade and a half. The pull of the pioneer past was used to repurpose older imperial narratives, particularly that of ‘good governance’, which drew upon the idea that settlers knew the African best. This narrative was reinforced by a meticulous (if haphazardly maintained) framework of segregation in which the daily contact that white settlers had with Africans: at home, at the workplace, serving in the military or police—reified white superiority. It was also self-destructive in a small settler society like Rhodesia’s, a society whose very success was predicated upon African labour, but which could not erode racialised barriers to employment, even as the white population fled. It was also seen at the very end of Rhodesia’s life, when white parliamentarians bemoaned impending majority rule and tried to force African MPs to promise not to ruin the country. Alongside these narratives, Rhodesia’s history of militarism was central to white understandings of the nation. How this evolved over time would drastically affect the character of the nation. Before UDI, the RF and its supporters pointed to a series of imperial conflicts in which Rhodesia had served and thus ‘earned’ independence, echoing white 6 E. Kennes & M. Larmer, The Katangese Gendarmes and War in Central Africa: Fighting Their Way Home (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2016).

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settler demands around the globe. Military prowess bred confidence and bought space and time for white Rhodesians and the RF to work through processes of nation-building, masking in the short term the fundamental fractures of white-ruled Rhodesia. Yet this emphasis on pioneer/settler military might mask the transnational influences upon Rhodesia, a country that had never been to war alone. Imperial forces had come to the rescue of settlers in 1896, Rhodesian contributions to the world wars had often been diffuse and spread across British and South African combat units, and the Rhodesian SAS was formed in the anti-communist crucible of Malaya. Even the so-called bush war was a joint effort between Rhodesia, Portugal and especially South Africa (whose support was critical by 1979). The war in Rhodesia, like the conflicts around it in Mozambique, Angola and the Congo/Zaire defied the logic of national borders and the authority of independent states. Though UDI was an attempt to differentiate Rhodesia from the lawlessness and conflict of independent ‘black’ Africa, it remained inextricably linked into wider regional networks of labour, culture and war. The inherent violence of settler colonialism towards indigenous populations has long been accepted, but the Rhodesian experience gives a sense of what this violence did to the settlers who wielded it. Shifting cultural expressions, as seen in the folk music of the 1970s, turned from triumph to despair. Invocations of the ‘blitz’ spirit began to wear thin after decades of privation and exhortations to come to Rhodesia to live the good life were contrasted with images of gun-toting housewives visiting the supermarket, ever-expanding call-ups, which saw septuagenarian farmers stomping around the bush looking for ‘terrs’, and the haggard appearance of Ian Smith as he stood before Salisbury’s burning oil supplies in December 1978. Violence and warfare were part of the daily rhythms of settler life, but so were comfort and leisure, only a few die-hards had moved to Rhodesia to fight communism. In a context of an expanding, ever more total, war the flimsy balance upon which Rhodesia rested, that is the easy enjoyment of ‘civilised’ life versus the messy maintenance of it, tipped in favour of the latter, prompting a white exodus. But while the military situation was under control, the RF was able to implement a limited nation-building exercise, which shifted in its imperatives over time. It created and introduced new ‘Rhodesian’ symbols in place of the Union Jack, the monarchy and ‘God Save the Queen’. Yet these new symbols, by tying the nation of Rhodesia ever closer to the

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RF state and its leader Ian Smith, typified the government’s blinkered approach and the symbols’ limited appeal, which was starkly shown by white responses to major black contestations of the nation in 1972 and 1978. Their introduction had prompted extensive settler soul-searching about the character of the Rhodesian nation, calling into question what Rhodesia meant and showing that even white Rhodesians were divided over what the country should and could be. The ambiguity of these symbols, which was initially their strength, became a weakness as notions of Rhodesia were tested by conflict and the population struggled to clearly articulate what exactly it was fighting for. Their genesis also represented participation in wider global and transnational debates among settler societies, and the British themselves, as to their place in a post-imperial world. Their creation, though inherently national, shows how Rhodesia was influenced by contemporary trends. In their creation, we can see Rhodesia as a nexus at which a complex of ideas about statehood, race and nation coalesced between 1965 and 1979. The fact that such a half-hearted attempt to build a nation did in fact manage to sustain Rhodesia for over a decade raises interesting questions about wider nationalist projects. The successes and failures of an anachronistic attempt to preserve white rule in an era of decolonisation may seem notable only for their eccentricity, but the chapters above show the wider relevance of UDI-era Rhodesia, with implications for several different literatures. In the first instance, the white Rhodesian debates surrounding new national symbols were clearly influenced by other debates taking place at the same time in settler societies across the globe. Debates about identity and nationhood during the period of decolonisation and Britain’s post-Second World War decline of the British Empire took place at a major epistemological moment in the history of settler societies (individually and collectively). They represented a significant trend in the transnational history of the English-speaking world, as countries such as Australia, Canada, and New Zealand became more autonomous and realigned their interests away from the former colonial power. The histories of this phenomenon often leave out those smaller communities of British settlers, those losers of empire, for whom Britishness was even more significant. Yet, as the history of Rhodesia shows, these debates were not resolved swiftly overnight with the changing of a flag, or a new constitution, or an anthem. As Tanya Brabazon has shown in Australia and New Zealand, and the gallons of ink spilled interrogating what it means to be British following the vote to leave the European Union in June 2016

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attest, these fundamental processes are as relevant today as they were over fifty years ago.7 We need to write Rhodesia back into these histories. The story of the RF’s use of symbolism illustrates how one small community of settlers tried to engage with the end of the British Empire in its own way, by defying decolonisation. At UDI, white Rhodesians were faced with the monumental dilemma of how to justify continued minority rule without the discourses of imperialism. Building a viable narrative of minority rule in the face of imperial withdrawal across the African continent was complicated, to say the least. The Rhodesians, despite their best efforts, were never able to truly disengage themselves from their imperialist past. It was, after all, the only past they had. The temporal context of UDI and the subsequent nation-building project illustrates the comparative potential of UDI-era Rhodesia, a place that was both profoundly of its time and yet out of it. UDI was an explicit repudiation of decolonisation and majority rule. In November 1965, white Rhodesians, encouraged by South Africa, sought to draw a line in the sand at the Zambezi. Despite this, their debates about nationhood were suffused with comparisons with other nations on the African continent. White Rhodesian nationalism after 1965 was a series of attempts to deal with the same challenges of independence that faced other ex-colonies across Africa. I have argued that, rather than marking off white Rhodesian nationalism as an anomalous hangover of the colonial period, the comparative value of Rhodesia with other post-colonial nationalisms should be recognised. Like other ex-colonies, white Rhodesians faced the problem of how to reconcile a disparate population, how to demonstrate independence and how to inculcate loyalties towards the new nation. The fact that the RF’s nation-building project was exclusionary, inconsistent and relatively short-lived does not make it worthy of compartmentalisation from comparison. It provides an example of a white nationalist alternative to majority-rule independence 7 T. Brabazon, Tracking the Jack: A Retracing of the Antipodes (Sydney, University of New South Wales Press, 2000). For a small selection of articles on British identity post2016, see T.J. Oliver, ‘A New British Identity Is Key to Brexit’s Success. So Who Do We Want to Be?’ The Guardian, August 16 2017, accessed on 24 February 2019 at https:// www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/16/british-identity-key-brexit-crisis-negotiations; S. Elranger, ‘No One Knows What Britain Is Anymore’. The New York Times, accessed on 24 February 2019 at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/04/sunday-review/britain-identity-crisis.html.

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in the 1960s, problematising notions of a neat transition from colony of Rhodesia to post-colony of Zimbabwe, and in a more global sense, it highlights the inherently transnational nature of even the most apparently insular national projects. The broader salience of the Rhodesian rebellion to these larger debates leaves many avenues open for further study. How Rhodesia’s black population engaged with the limited opportunities for participation in rebel Rhodesia (in local government, for instance) would provide a welcome and necessary counterpart to this study’s exploration of white society. Similarly, further studies of the way Rhodesia is memorialised among the disparate expatriate community of whites across the globe would yield greater insights into how ex-‘colonials’ have come to terms with the end of empire. This would complement the small literature on what might be called ‘Rhodesians after Rhodesia’.8 Rhodesia’s rebellion remains within living memory, and the power of the past in present-day Zimbabwe was acknowledged in the introduction. Like the Katangese gendarmes, who kept the memory of their short-lived secession alive into the present day, white Rhodesians fled across the borders and around the world. They went to America, Australia, South Africa, even the much-maligned mother country of Britain, taking their memories of Rhodesia with them. A raft of white memoirs, many self-published, has emerged since the turn of the century, and along with the commemorative YouTube channels and websites, they constitute a new image of ‘Rhodesia’. This digital afterlife has taken on a new and disturbing salience at a time of white nationalist resurgence across the globe, and the commercialisation and commemoration of Rhodesia’s flags, anthems, songs and histories in the digital spaces of the Internet mean that rebel Rhodesia has been reconstituted as a kind of cyber-nation. In this context, where national identities are once again questioned and nostalgia, imperial and otherwise, informs and underpins the rhetoric of contemporary Western politics (across the political spectrum), the need to 8 R. Pilossof, The Unbearable Whiteness of Being: Farmers’ Voices from Zimbabwe (Harare, Weaver Press, 2012); D.M. Hughes, Whiteness in Zimbabwe; Race, Landscape and the Problem of Belonging (London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); L. White, The Assassination of Herbert Chitepo: Texts and Politics in Zimbabwe (Cape Town, Double Storey Books, 2003); T. King, ‘Rhodesians in Hyperspace: The Maintenance of a National and Cultural Identity’, in K.H. Karim (ed.), The Media of Diaspora (London, Routledge 2003), pp. 177–188; W.G. Eaton, A Chronicle of Modern Sunlight: The Story of What Happened to the Rhodesians (Rohnert Park, CA, InnoVision, 1996).

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understand the origins of these debates has become more pertinent than ever before. As Rhodesia’s digital afterlife suggests, while the RF failed to build a white-ruled state in central Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, to some extent at least, its nation-building project helped to build a particular form of transnational community that lasts to the present day.

Bibliography

Manuscript and Archival Sources Cory Library, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa Ian Smith Papers, Rhodesian Cabinet Memoranda, 1963–1978. Ian Smith Papers, Rhodesian Cabinet Minutes, 1971–1978. BBC Monitoring Archive, Caversham Park, Reading, United Kingdom SE ME 3080-3227—Summary of World Broadcasts, 1969. Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, United Kingdom British Sulphur Corporation, Rhodesia: A Special Survey of the Mining Industry (London, 1972). Commission for the Preservation of Natural and Historical Monuments and Relics, Annual Reports, 1968–1970. Rhodesian Government, Department of Information, Immigration and Tourism, Annual Reports, 1965. Director of the National Archives, Annual Reports, 1970–1976. MSS Afr.s.1482—Papers of the Hon. Edgar Whitehead. MSS Afr.s.2344 —Papers of the Hon. Winston Field. Rhodesian Central Statistical Office, Monthly Migration and Tourist Statistics, 1975–1977. Rhodesia National Bibliography, 1970–1979. Economic Survey of Rhodesia, 1969–1976.

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Printed Primary Sources Newspapers and Periodicals Focus on Rhodesia, 1976. The Herald, 1978–1979. New York Times, 1976. Outpost, 1973. Rhodesian Commentary, 1965–1969. The Rhodesia Herald, 1965–1977. Rhodesian History, 1970–1976. Rhodesiana, 1956–1970.

Memoirs Cocks, C., Fireforce: One Man’s War in the Rhodesian Light Infantry (Johannesburg, Galago 2008). Dupont, C., The Reluctant President (Bulawayo, Books of Rhodesia, 1978). Godwin, P., Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa (London, Picador 2007). Lemon, D., Never Quite a Soldier (Stroud, Albida Books, 2000). Makunike, E., I Won’t Call You Sir!: A Black Journalist’s Encounters in WhiteRuled Rhodesia (Harare, SAPES Books, 1998). Mears, C., Goodbye Rhodesia (Sussex, Antony Rowe Publishing Services, 2005). Moore King, B., White Man, Black War (Harare, Baobab Books, 1988). Niesewand, P., In Camera: Secret Justice in Rhodesia (London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1973). Parker, J., Rhodesia: Little White Island (London, Pitman, 1972). Renwick, R., Unconventional Diplomacy in Southern Africa (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1997). Smith, I., Bitter Harvest (London, Blake, 2008). St John, L., Rainbow’s End: A Memoir of Childhood (London, Penguin, 2008). Welensky, R., Welensky’s 4000 Days: The Life and Death of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (London, Collins, 1964).

Books and Pamphlets Anon., 1890–1965 Seventy Five Proud Years—Pioneers and Progress of Rhodesia (Salisbury, 1965). Anon., Rhodesia’s Finest Hour (Salisbury, 1965). A Rhodesian, Pattern of Greatness: The Why, Whether and How, of Very Large Scale Immigration (Salisbury, 1954). Arnold, G. & Baldwin, A., Rhodesia: Token Sanctions or Total Economic Warfare (London, Africa Bureau, 1972).

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Austin, R., The Character and Legislation of the Rhodesian Front Since UDI (London, Africa Bureau, 1968). Berlyn, P., Rhodesia: Beleaguered Country (London, Mitre, 1967). Berlyn, P., The Quiet Man: A Biography of the Hon. Ian Douglas Smith, I.D., Prime Minister of Rhodesia (Salisbury, M.O. Collins, 1978). Bratton, M., Beyond Community Development: The Political Economy of Rural Administration in Zimbabwe (London, Catholic Institute for International Relations, 1978). Bull, T., Rhodesian Perspective (London, Michael Joseph, 1967). Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Rhodesia, The Man in the Middle: Torture, Resettlement and Eviction (London, Catholic Institute for International Relations, 1975). Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Rhodesia, Civil War in Rhodesia (London, Catholic Institute for International Relations, 1976). Cawston, E.P., The Truth About Rhodesia (no location, undated). Caute, D., Under the Skin: The Death of White Rhodesia (London, Allen Lane, 1981). Chesterton, C., The Real Case for Rhodesia (Honeydew, Transvaal, Janssonius & Heyns, 1973). Clements, R., Rhodesia: The Course to Collision (London, Pall Mall Press, 1969). Craufurd, R., Seeing Is Believing: Some Impressions of a Visit to Rhodesia 1968 (Tring, Lady Craufurd, 1968). Edmond, J., The Story of Troopiesongs and the Rhodesian Bush War (Johannesburg, Roan Antelope Music, 1982). Flower, K., Serving Secretly: An Intelligence Chief on Record: Rhodesia in Zimbabwe 1964 to 1981 (London, John Murray, 1987). Hardwick, P.A., Aspects of Recreation Amongst Salisbury’s Non-African Population (Salisbury, University of Rhodesia, 1978). Hills, D., The Last Days of White Rhodesia (London, Chatto & Windus, 1981). Holderness, H., Lost Chance: Southern Rhodesia 1945–58 (Harare, Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1985). Huffman, T.N., A Guide to the Great Zimbabwe Ruins (Salisbury, National Museums and Monuments of Rhodesia, 1976). International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern African, Rhodesia: Why Minority Rule Survives (London, Christian Action Publications, 1969). International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa, Southern Africa: Immigration from Britain—A Fact Paper by the International Defence and Aid Fund (London, The Fund, 1975). Joyce, P., Anatomy of a Rebel: Smith of Rhodesia (Salisbury, Books of Rhodesia, 1974). Komittee Zuidelijk Afrika et al., White Migration to Southern Africa (Geneva, Centre Europe-Tiers Monde, 1975).

254  Bibliography Lardner-Burke, D., Rhodesia: The Story of the Crisis (London, Oldbourne, 1966). Lessing, D., The Grass Is Singing (London, Flamingo, 2007). Lewis, A., Rhodesia: Live or Die (Salisbury, Rhodesia Christian Group, 1973). Lewis, A., Rhodesia Undefeated (Salisbury, Rhodesia Christian Group, 1976). Members of the Federated Women’s Institutes of Rhodesia, Great Spaces Washed with Sun: Rhodesia (Salisbury, M.O. Collins, 1967). Metrowich, F.R., Rhodesia: Birth of a Nation (Pretoria, Africa Institute, 1969). Mlambo, E.E.M., Rhodesia: The British Dilemma (London, Christian Action Publications, 1971). Peck, A.J.A., Rhodesia Accuses (Salisbury, Three Sisters Books, 1966). Pitman, D., You Must Be New Around Here (Bulawayo, Books of Rhodesia, 1979). Porter, R.C., Economic Sanctions: The Theory and the Evidence from Rhodesia (Ann Arbor, Center for Research on Economic Development, University of Michigan, 1977). Ransford, O., Rhodesian Tapestry: A History in Needlework, Embroidered by the Women’s Institutes of Rhodesia (Bulawayo, Books of Rhodesia, 1971). Rhodesia Government, Rhodesia’s Case for Independence (Salisbury, Government Printer, 1965). Rhodesia Party, “If You’re Planning to Stay”: A Guide to Some of the Important Principles and Policies of the Rhodesia Party and a Contrast with RF Attitudes (Salisbury, MP Doyle for the Rhodesia Party, 1974). Sparrow, G., Rhodesia in ‘Rebellion’ (London, Knightly Vernon, 1967). Stiff, P., The Silent War: South African Recce Operations 1969–1994 (Alberton SA, Galago, 1999). Todd, J., Rhodesia (London, MacGibbon & Kee, 1966).

Government Debates and Documents Bingham, T.H. & Gray, S.M., Report on the Supply of Petroleum and Petrol Products to Rhodesia (London, H.M.S.O, 1978). British Government, Report of the Nyasaland Commission of Inquiry (London, H.M.S.O, 1959). British Government, Rhodesia: Proposals for a Settlement (London, H.M.S.O, 1971). British Government, Rhodesia—Report of the Commission on Rhodesian Opinion under the Chairmanship of the Right Honourable the Lord Pearce (London, H.M.S.O, 1972). Rhodesian Legislative Assembly Debates, 1964–1979. Rhodesia Government, Report of the Constitutional Commission 1968 (Salisbury, Government Printer, 1968). Rhodesian Central Statistical Office, 1961 Census of the European, Asian and Coloured Population (Salisbury, Government Printer, 1962).

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256  Bibliography Buckner, P. (ed.), Canada and the British Empire (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010). Burke, K., Revolutionaries for the Right: Anticommunist Internationalism and Paramilitary Warfare in the Cold War (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2018). Cilliers, J.K., Counter-Insurgency in Rhodesia (London, Croom Helm, 1985). Champion, C.P., The Strange Demise of British Canada: The Liberals and Canadian Nationalism, 1964–1968 (Montreal, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010). Charumbira, R., Imagining the Nation: History and Memory in the Making of Zimbabwe (Charlottesville & London, University of Virginia Press, 2015). Clayton, P., Enemies and Passing Friends: Settler Ideologies in Twentieth Century Ulster (London, Pluto Press, 1996). Cohen, A., The Politics and Economics of Decolonization: The Failed Experiment of the Central African Federation (London, I.B. Tauris, 2017). Conway, D. & Leonard, P., Migration, Space and Transnational Identities—The British in South Africa (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). Conyers Nesbit, R. & Cowderoy, D. with Thomas, A., Britain’s Rebel Air Force: The War from the Air in Rhodesia 1965–1980 (London, Grub Street, 1998). Cooper, F., Africa Since 1940: The Past of the Present (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002). Darwin, J., Britain and Decolonisation: The Retreat from Empire in the Post-War World (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1988). Darwin, J., The Empire Project: The Rise and Fall of the British World System 1830–1970 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2012). Eaton, W.G., A Chronicle of Modern Sunlight: The Story of What Happened to the Rhodesians (Rohnert Park, CA, InnoVision, 1996) Ellert, H., The Rhodesian Front War: Counter-Insurgency and Guerrilla War in Rhodesia 1962–1980 (Gweru, Mambo Press, 1989). Frederikse, J., None but Ourselves: Masses Versus the Media in the Making of Zimbabwe (Harare, Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1982). Gellner, E., Nations and Nationalism (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1997). Godwin, P. & Hancock, I., Rhodesians Never Die: The Impact of War and Political Change on White Rhodesia ca.1970–1980 (Northlands, SA, Pan Macmillan South Africa, 2007). Goldie, T., Fear and Temptation: The Image of the Indigene in Canada, Australia and New Zealand Literatures (Montreal, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993). Good, R.C., U.D.I: The International Politics of the Rhodesian Rebellion (London, Faber & Faber, 1973). Hall, S., Familiar Strangers: A Life Between Two Islands (London, Penguin, 2017). Hancock, I., White Liberals, Moderates and Radicals in Rhodesia, 1953–1980 (London, Croom Helm, 1984).

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258  Bibliography Mason, P., The Birth of a Dilemma: The Conquest and Settlement of Rhodesia (London, Oxford University Press, 1958). McLaughlin, P. & Moorcraft, P., Chimurenga! The War in Rhodesia 1965–1980 (Marshalltown, Sygma/Collins, 1982). McLaughlin, P. & Moorcraft, P., The Rhodesian War: Fifty Years On (Barnsley, Pen & Sword, 2015). McCulloch, J., Black Peril, White Virtue: Sexual Crime in Southern Rhodesia, 1902–1935 (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2000). Megahey, A., Humphrey Gibbs, Beleaguered Governor: Southern Rhodesia 1929–69 (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1998). Miller, J., An African Volk: The Apartheid Regime and Its Search for Survival (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2016). Mlambo, A.S., White Immigration into Rhodesia: From Occupation to Federation (Harare, University of Zimbabwe Publications, 2002). Mlambo, A.S. & Raftopoulos, B., Becoming Zimbabwe: A History from the Precolonial Period to 2008 (Harare, Weaver Press, 2009). Moodie, D., The Rise of Afrikanerdom (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1980). Murphy, P. (ed.), Central Africa Volume I: Closer Association, 1945–1958 (London, TSO, 2005). Murphy, P. (ed.), Central Africa Volume II: Crisis and Dissolution, 1959–1965 (London, TSO, 2005). Murphy, P., Monarchy and the End of Empire: The House of Windsor, the British Government and the Postwar Commonwealth (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013). Murphy, P., The Empire’s New Clothes: The Myth of the Commonwealth (London, Hurst & Company, 2018). Murray, D., The Governmental System in Southern Rhodesia (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1970). Mutambirwa, J., The Rise of Settler Power in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) 1898–1923 (London, Associated University Presses, 1980). Nasson, B., Springboks on the Somme: South Africa in the Great War 1914–1918 (Johannesburg, Penguin, 2007). Palley, C., The Constitutional History and Law of Southern Rhodesia 1888–1965 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1966). Passmore, G. (ed.), H.R.G. Howman on Provincialisation in Rhodesia 1968–1969 and Rational and Irrational Elements (Cambridge, African Studies Centre, 1986). Pfister, R., Apartheid, South Africa and African States: From Pariah to Middle Power, 1961–1994 (London & New York, I.B. Tauris, 2005). Phimister, I., An Economic and Social History of Zimbabwe 1890–1948: Capital Accumulation and Class Struggle (London & New York, Longman, 1988).

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Interviews John Edmond, Musician, email, 2015. Pete Shout, Administrator of ‘Rhodie Music’ Website, email, 2015–19.

Index

A African Members of Parliament on flag, 112 Afrikaners, 36, 37, 44, 62 Air Training Scheme, 76, 78 Albert, Prince Consort, 132 Algerian War of Independence, 6 American Declaration of Independence, 11 Anderson, Benedict, 115 Anglo-Rhodesian settlement, 1971, 26 Anglo-South African War, 73 Arrighi, Giovanni, 13 Australia, 7, 29, 46, 65, 74, 85, 88, 106, 123, 131, 132, 141, 247, 249 as part of CANZUK, 21 during Second World War, 76 flag, 90 In the British World, 20 monarchism, 18, 136, 151 national anthem, 186 republicanism, 142 Australia flag, 92

B Bashford, Pat, 54 On 1969 Constitution, 156 Battle of Britain, 79 Beadle, Hugh, 139, 145 Belgian Congo, 69, 155 Belingwe, 117 Berlyn, Philippa, 138, 163 Biafran war, 157 black peril, 34 Botha, Pieter Willem, 228 Botswana, 168 Brexit, 21 British Government Anglo-Rhodesian negotiations, 118 attitudes towards post-colonial republicanism, 144 military response to UDI, 81 naming conventions for Rhodesia, 170 negotiations with Rhodesia, 91 response to Domboshawa indaba, 71 British Monarchy, 132 divisibility of crown, 135

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019 D. Kenrick, Decolonisation, Identity and Nation in Rhodesia, 1964–1979, Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32698-2

275

276  Index in Commonwealth, 136 British Royal Family, 24 in fiction, 18 British South Africa Company, 8, 10, 62, 99, 172 British South Africa Police (BSAP), 1, 117, 172, 191, 195, 197, 226 attitudes towards Portuguese migrants, 40 recording the national anthem, 180 Brownell, Josiah, 30 ‘Build a Nation’ Campaign, 50 Bulawayo, 117, 147 population of, 29 Bush War as Cold War conflict, 84 Green Leader Raid, 202–204 missionary murders, 200 Operation Gatling, 202 population displacement, 230 protected villages, 230 Salisbury oil reserve fire, 1978, 234 C Cabinet Committee on Honours and Awards, 177 Canada, 7, 20, 29, 46, 63, 65, 74, 85, 88, 102, 106, 123, 134, 136, 141, 247 as part of CANZUK, 21 during Second World War, 76 experience of First World War, 74 flag, 90, 102, 106 In the British World, 20 monarchism, 136, 151 national anthem, 186 republicanism, 142 CANZUK, 21 Central African Federation, 6, 11, 31, 44, 47, 64, 66, 92, 140, 210 constitution of, 48 flag, 93

Central Intelligence Organisation, 226 Centre Party, 54, 155 chiefs, 70, 166, 217 Chilapalapa, 194 Chirau, Jeremiah, 231 Christianity, 180 Coghlan, Charles, 62 Cold War, 84, 119, 188 Committee on Honours and Awards, 24, 93 Commonwealth, 18, 85, 108, 143, 152, 241 South African exit, 141 Commonwealth Monitoring Force, 3 Commonwealth of Nations. See Commonwealth Conservative Association of Rhodesia, 157 Conservative Party (UK), 88 1961 Constitution, 66 1969 Constitutional Proposals, 152–157 1964 constitutional referendum, 68 Countess Billy, 38 Crocodile Gang, 145 D decolonisation, 65, 84, 141 challenges of, 27 independence ceremonies, 91, 116 post-colonial republicanism, 143 Devlin Commission, 49, 69 Domboshawa indaba, 71 Dominion Party, 48, 67, 160 Dominions Office, 11 Dupont, Clifford, 117, 131, 159 E Edmond, John, 163, 190, 192–197 1958 election, 49 Elizabeth II, 131

Index

as head of Commonwealth, 143 on Rhodesian issues, 144 English-speaking South Africans, 35, 77 Eurafricans, 36 European Economic Community, 141 European Union, 247 F Fearless talks, 118 Field, Winston, 50, 52, 67 on Rhodesian flag, 93 First Chimurenga, 10, 99 First World War, 65, 142 Rhodesian contribution to, 74 Fort Victoria, 29, 117, 147 FRELIMO. See Mozambique Liberation Front frontline states, 231 G Gaunt, John, 80, 118 Gayre, Robert, 104 George VI, 133 Gibbs, Humphrey, 2, 137–139, 153, 159, 210 God Save the Queen, 4, 7, 25, 120, 176 good governance narrative, 65, 68 Graham, Angus, 107, 158 Great Zimbabwe, 98 Gwanda, 117 Gwelo, 147 population of, 29 Gweru. See Gwelo H Hall, Stuart, 17 Harper, William, 55, 68 HMS Tiger talks, 147 Holderness, Hardwick, 224

  277

Howman, Jack, 39 Huggins, Godfrey, 46, 154 I Industrial Conciliation Act (1934), 42 Internal Settlement, 26, 225–240 Internal Settlement Agreement, 201 International Olympic Committee, 120, 181 J Jameson, Leander Starr, 9 Jameson Raid, 9 Jollie, Ethel Tawse, 62, 63 Joyce, Peter, 164 K Kaunda, Kenneth, 234 Kenya, 63, 113 Kipling, Rudyard Rhodes’ eulogy, 10 Kissinger, Henry, 231 L Land Apportionment Act (1930), 50 Land Tenure Act (LTA) 1969, 56, 167 Lardner-Burke, Desmond, 73, 77, 79, 102, 103, 114, 135 Lessing, Doris, 33, 38 Lewis, Arthur, 233 Livingstone, David, 213 Lobengula, 9, 113, 194 M Madzimbamuto v Lardner-Burke, 145 Marandellas, 29, 36 Masvingo. See Fort Victoria Matopos Hills, 117

278  Index Mau Mau, 4, 28, 69, 155 McLean, Ian, 40 Migration Post-War Commonwealth Migration to Britain, 17 Ministry of Information, Immigration and Tourism, 70 Mnangagwa, Emmerson, 12, 145 Mobutu, Joseph-Désiré, 6 Mozambique Liberation Front, 191 Mugabe, Robert Gabriel, 11, 230 removal from power, 12 Mutare. See Umtali Muzorewa, Abel, 125, 231 N National Party (South Africa), 63, 142 Native Land Husbandry Act (1951), 49 New Zealand, 7, 29, 74, 85, 88, 94, 106, 123, 141, 178, 247, 271 as part of CANZUK, 21 experience of First World War, 74 flag, 89, 90 In the British World, 20 monarchism, 136 national anthem, 186 New Zealand flag, 92 No Independence Before Majority African Rule (NIBMAR), 7, 11 Northern Rhodesia, 11, 67. See also Zambia Nyasaland, 11, 29, 48, 49, 64, 66, 67, 69, 112, 244, 254, 272 state of emergency, 49 Nyerere, Julius, 14 O Oberholzer, Pieter, 145 Officer Administering the Government, 160 Organisation of African Unity, 16

P Palley, Ahrn, 106, 158 Parker, John, 53 partnership policy, 47 Partridge, Mark, 69 Patriotic Front, 231 Pearce Commission, 26, 215, 216– 225, 220, 222, 223 Pearson, Lester, 142 Pfumo re Vanhu. See Security Force Auxiliaries Pioneer Column, 92 poor whites, 31 Portugal migrants to Rhodesia, 39, 41, 42 Powell, Enoch, 18 President of Rhodesia, 159, 160 Protected villages, 2 Q Queen Elizabeth II, 25 Que Que, 29, 117 R railways, 62 Ranger, Terence, 13, 115 on nationalist history, 85 1922 Referendum, 62, 63 Responsible Government Association, 62 Rhodes, Cecil John, 8, 10, 93, 98, 193 Rhodes Centenary Exhibition, 210 Rhodesia 75th Anniversary, 23 African economy of, 47 at the 1972 Munich Olympics, 120 Attitudes towards non-British Europeans, 31 Christian nature of, 104, 106 citizenship, 51 conscription, 43, 236

Index

Contemporary nostalgia for, 17 declaration of a republic, 24 diplomatic service, 118 electoral rolls, 46 European electorate, 51 experience of First World War, 74 flag, 92, 100, 125, 172 gender balance, 37, 38 immigration promotion, 32 In the British World, 21 in white memory, 13 judiciary, 146 landscape and wildlife, 96 lifestyle, 52 masculinity, 39 militarisation of, 83 Military contribution to British imperial conflicts, 24 military service, 193 military service in public life, 78 monarchism, 144 national archives, 211–213 on the internet, 249 proclamation of republic, 158 racial boundaries, 39 sport, 95 tensions between immigrants, 33 traditions of military service, 73 white demography of, 28, 29, 36, 44 white emigration, 199 white memoirs, 249 white popular culture, 188 young people, 119 Rhodesia Action Party, 56, 231 Rhodesia Africana Society. See Rhodesiana Society Rhodesia Commentary, 140, 176 Rhodesia educational system, 35 Rhodesia House, London, 79, 121, 159 Rhodesiana, 99

  279

Rhodesian Air Force, 75, 81 Rhodesian armed forces, 145, 169 Air Askari Corps, 76 black soldiers, 237 conscription, 198 in the ‘bush war’, 78 loyalty to British crown, 146 mercenaries, 199 race relations, 195 Rhodesian African Rifles (RAR), 77, 195 Rhodesian Air Force, 147, 159 Rhodesian Light Infantry, 146, 194, 227 Selous Scouts, 194, 227 Special Air Service Special Air Service, 227 Territorial Force, 146 Rhodesiana Society, 210–213 Rhodesia National Farmers Union, 52 Rhodesia National Party, 51 Rhodesian Broadcasting Corporation, 139, 165, 180 on 1969 constitutional proposals, 156–158 Rhodesian Candour League, 56 1969 Rhodesian constitution, 165, 169 Rhodesian Front, 1, 50, 52 1962 election, 52 1965 election, 45 attitudes towards independence, 64 challenges from the right, 57 December 1962 elections, 46 during Internal Settlement, 234 Nationalist project, 22 on race relations, 229 racial policy, 55 republicanism, 140, 150 response to black nationalism, 70 support base, 52 use of propaganda, 54

280  Index views on 1960s Britain, 72 views on flag, 110 Rhodesian Patriot, 56 Rhodesian pioneer column, 33 Rhodesian Tobacco Association, 52 Rhodesia Party, 46, 55 Rhodesia Reform Party, 55, 67 Rhodesia Television, 156, 180, 196 Rhodesia Unionist Association, 62 Roof, Dylann, 127 S Salisbury, 49, 92, 116 foundation, 9 population of, 29 Savory, Allan, 224 ‘Second Matabele War’, 10, 99. See also First Chimurenga Second World War, 65 impact upon settlers, 78 Rhodesian Air Training Scheme, 34 Rhodesian contribution to, 75 Security Force Auxiliaries, 237 Selukwe, 117, 162 Settler-Ndebele conflicts, 78 Shabani, 117 Shangani patrol, 117 Shute, Nevil In The Wet, 18 Sithole, Ndabaningi, 230 Skeen, Andrew, 135 Smith, David, 156 Smith, Ian Douglas, 2, 4, 11, 50, 52, 55, 67, 71, 80, 89, 91, 96, 122, 135, 139, 147, 152, 153, 161, 193, 221, 230, 232, 247 education, 162 memoirs, 14 on 1969 constitutional proposals, 152 on flag, 87 on monarchy, 130

on national anthem, 176 Perceptions of Africans, 15 republicanism, 144 response to Pearce Commission, 223 war service, 75, 162 Smith, Ian Douglas, 161 Smith, Janet, 162 Smuts, Jan Christiaan, 62 Soames, Christopher, 1, 3, 205 South Africa, 29, 74, 123, 134, 209 1960 referendum on republic, 141 alliance with Rhodesia and Portugal, 6 experience of First World War, 74 flag, 88, 90, 102 In the British World, 20 military assistance to Rhodesia, 191 national anthem, 186 relationship with Rhodesia, 88 sporting links to Rhodesia, 96 South African Broadcasting Corporation, 182 South African Defence Force, 192, 197 Southern African Solidarity Conference, 56 Suez crisis, 141 symbolic decolonisation, 22, 122, 123 T The British World, 19 critiques of, 21 Tholet, Clem, 196, 201 Tholet, Clem, 190 Todd, Garfield, 48 U Umtali, 117, 147 population of, 29

Index

Unilateral Declaration of Independence, 28, 61, 79 cabinet committees on, 67 Union Flag. See Union Jack Union Jack. See Union Flag, 7, 88, 103, 116, 124 in Australia and New Zealand, 98 in South Africa, 63 United African National Congress, 125 United African National Council, 231 United Federal Party, 45–48, 66, 219, 238 1961 constitutional referendum, 66 United Nations, 121 United Party, 46 United States of America, 111 University College of Rhodesia, 163 University of Rhodesia, 13 V van der Byl, Pieter Kenyon, 157 Vietnam war, 84 Vorster, John, 122 W Wankie, 117 Welensky, Roy, 66, 210 opposition to RF, 154 Whaley Commission, 148–149 Whitehead, Edgar, 48 1962 Election, 50

  281

Wilson, Harold, 80, 135, 141, 145 Wrathall, John, 160, 232 Z Zambia, 11, 52, 64, 203, 213 ZANLA. See Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army ZAPU. See Zimbabwe African People’s Union Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army, 3, 175, 181, 197, 206, 226, 236 use of music, 175 Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army, 191 Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), 3, 12, 85, 175, 191, 230, 231 Zimbabwe African People’s Union, 181, 202, 231 Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army, 3, 181, 191, 202–204, 236 Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, 170, 202, 216, 241 April 1979 election, 239 flag, 126 Zimbabwe United People’s Organisation, 231 ZIPRA. See Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army ZUPO. See Zimbabwe United People’s Organisation