When White Minority Declared Independent State

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

A photo of Dylann Roof, the man who murdered nine people at an African American church in Charleston, South Carolina on June 17, shows him wearing a jacket adorned with the flags of Apartheid-era South Africa and Rhodesia, two now defunct white supremacist states . The latter is today’s Zimbabwe.

Founded by Cecil Rhodes in 1889 and ruled by his British South Africa Company, it became the self-governing British colony of Southern Rhodesia after the end of Company rule in 1923, though it never gained full Dominion status.

White settlers were a minority of the population, which comprised mainly the African Shona and Ndebele peoples, but they retained the levers of economic, political and social control.

By the 1960s, much of Africa had attained independence, and London made plans to institute

Black majority rule in the colony. In a pre-emptive move, Rhodesia’s white government, under Ian Smith, issued a Unilateral Declaration of Independence on Nov. 11, 1965. Some 220,000 white Rhodesians would continue to enjoy privileges over nearly four million black Rhodesians.

Sanctions against the unrecognized state were imposed by most of the world community, though neighbouring South Africa and the Portuguese colony of Mozambique continued trading with it. 

Rhodesia descended into a war fought between the regime and two resistance movements, Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), mainly Shona, and Joshua Nkomo’s Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), supported by the Ndebele. 

Black political leaders were arrested and jailed en masse and the regime routinely employed torture to obtain information from real or suspected political activists.

But armed resistance from the guerrilla movements continued. One of the biggest rebel victories was a 1978 rocket attack on Rhodesia’s strategic oil reserve. The rockets hit the fuel tanks in Salisbury (today’s Harare), wiping out the reserve in a single blow.  

The resistance movements were supported by the UN and most of Africa’s sovereign countries, including, after 1975, newly-free Mozambique. The government finally conceded to forming a bi-racial government in 1978. 

In December 1979, Smith was replaced by the moderate Bishop Abel Muzorewa, a Shona and leader of the United African National Council, and the country was renamed Zimbabwe-Rhodesia.

But ZANU and ZAPU refused to accept this and the war continued. Britain used its formal position as the colonial power to convene a peace conference in London in 1979. Elections held in 1980 brought Mugabe to power as prime minister of the newly-independent Zimbabwe.

The new constitution reserved 20 out of 100 seats for whites in the House of Assembly and 8 out of 40 seats in the Senate. The government in 1987 eliminated the seats set aside for whites and replaced the office of prime minister with an executive president. In 1990 the government abolished the Senate.

Mugabe has ruled the country ever since.