5 Minute History: Rhodesia
Welcome back to 5 Minute History, where you can read about our past in just a few minutes.
This next installment is about Rhodesia, an unrecognized state that existed in southern Africa from 1965 to 1979, preceding modern Zimbabwe.
Colonial Occupation
In 1889, British mining magnate Cecil Rhodes helped charter the British South Africa Company, which sought to colonize the fertile and mineral-rich Zambezi River basin for the empire.
The next year, the first whites settled what is now Harare, which they called Salisbury. The surrounding area was in turn named after Rhodes, and secured for Britain after wars with the indigenous Shona and Ndebele peoples.
In 1923, the area south of the Zambezi was formally organized as the colony of Southern Rhodesia. Immigration picked up after World War II, with the government marketing Rhodesia as an attractive destination for working class British veterans with young families.
By 1965, Southern Rhodesia was home to around 200,000 prosperous white settlers and over four million Black Africans, who were systematically dispossessed of the country’s best farmland.
Though in theory anyone with enough money or education could vote, in practice few Blacks could realistically hope to meet the standards. The few Black parliamentary seats were reserved for appointed tribal chiefs.
UDI
As Africa decolonized, the whites of Southern Rhodesia were determined to resist Black majority rule, and elected Ian Smith of the hardline Rhodesian Front.
London refused to grant independence as long as 95 percent of the population were disenfranchised, so on 11 November 1965, Smith unilaterally declared independence as Rhodesia. It was the first UDI against the British since the United States in 1776.
This act was immediately condemned by the international community, and Britain led a campaign of sanctions on the rebel regime. However, Western public opinion was broadly supportive, and it soon became evident London would not forcibly depose Smith.
The Bush War
The two main Black nationalist parties opposing Smith were the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU).
ZANU represented the Shona majority and was led by Robert Mugabe, with support from China. ZAPU drew from the Ndebele minority and was led by Joshua Nkomo, who allied with the Soviet Union. Each distrusted the other, but formed an uneasy alliance called the Patriotic Front.
Beginning in the north around Centenary, their fighters used guerrilla tactics, attacking isolated white targets from camps across the Zambian border before retreating. Smith branded Mugabe and Nkomo terrorists and imprisoned them.
Black civilians were naturally caught in the middle, and anyone suspected of informing for the other side was subject to retribution.
While the Rhodesian army recruited many Black soldiers, the guerrillas propagandized the rural Black population, following Maoist teachings. The government responded by fencing off Black villages.
In failed bids for Western support, Smith argued that he was really fighting communism, not Black rule. To domestic audiences, he vowed to maintain minority rule for a thousand years.
Despite being outnumbered, the more professional Rhodesian security forces held on for several years, using aggressive seek-and-destroy helicopter raids similar to those employed by the US in Vietnam.
Rhodesia was also able to evade most of the sanctions with the help of neighbouring South Africa and Portuguese Mozambique. Chromium and tobacco exports funded excellent social services for the white population, which peaked at around 300,000 in 1975.
The Black population of over six million had decent living conditions by African standards, but suffered from racial segregation, nightly curfews, and restrictions on land ownership.
However, that year, the tide started to turn in the Patriotic Front’s favour. Portugal’s right-wing junta fell and Mozambique gained independence, cutting off Rhodesia’s easiest port access at Beira and doubling the length of border the overstretched security forces had to guard.
White flight to South Africa, Britain, and Australia drained crucial manpower and capital. Almost every white man between the ages of 17 and 60 was eventually pressed into months of compulsory military duty.
Internal Settlement
As minority rule had clearly become untenable, South Africa withdrew its military aid and pushed Smith to enter talks. They hoped conceding Rhodesia to Black rule would stabilize their own apartheid regime.
In 1978, Smith reached an internal settlement with non-armed Black nationalists led by Bishop Abel Muzorewa. For the first time, most of the Black population was enfranchised.
The next year, Muzorewa was elected the ostensible new Prime Minister, and the country was renamed Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. Smith claimed gradual steps were needed to prevent the sort of chaos that other African states experienced when they were abruptly handed over to an unprepared Black majority.
However, the international community rejected this paternalistic approach, which protected white community’s disproportionate wealth and power.
Last Days
With Mugabe and Nkomo out of prison, they made progress toward a military victory and carried out bomb attacks in Salisbury, including on a department store and the country’s main fuel depot.
ZAPU even shot down two civilian airliners, as the government lost effective control of growing swaths of the countryside.
Muzorewa commenced negotiations of his own in London with Mugabe and Nkomo, leading to the Lancaster House Agreement of 21 December 1979. The rebel colony briefly reverted to British rule, pending fresh elections in which ZANU and ZAPU could run if their forces disarmed.
The subsequent campaign was marred by accusations that Mugabe broke his end of the deal by intimidating voters and assassinating political rivals, but Britain looked the other way and he won in a landslide.
Zimbabwe finally gained recognized independence under Mugabe on 18 April 1980. The war had claimed over 30,000 lives, including 10,000 guerrillas, a thousand Rhodesian troops, and the remaining two-thirds civilians.
Smith retired to his farm; before his death in 2007 he argued that the continued poverty of the Black population under Mugabe’s corrupt and repressive rule had proven him right all along.
Of course, had Smith recognized the inevitable before it was too late, a more competent Black leadership might have peacefully assumed power.
