Arno Rosenfeld State of Delusion: Miscalculations in Rhodesian Independence Rhodesias white-minority government, led by Prime Minister Ian Smith,

made its Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) in 1965. Various delusions and miscalculations sealed Rhodesias fate and ensured its white minority government would be forced to give up power well before the Republic of South Africa, its white minority-ruled neighbor to the south. From the moment of UDI, Rhodesia faced international condemnation, including sanctions and absolute pariah status, on a scale well above that facing apartheid South Africa. Rhodesia was unable to find the international acceptance it desperately needed to survive under white rule. While the reasons for this are many, the underlying problem was that the Rhodesian government was unable to convince the outside world of its utility. In fact, in cases where Rhodesia was sure it was to be thought of as useful to South Africa or powerful Western states it was actually seen as the opposite. Abandoned by the very countries it expected to be allied with, Rhodesia was forced to give into majority rule entirely by 1980. It is necessary to first describe the consequences of UDI. Rhodesia expected diplomatic recognition by South Africa, Portugal and France.1 It received none. Immediately following UDI, Britain imposed harsh sanctions, followed by

White, L. (2013). Book proposal. In Unpopular Sovereignty: Rhodesian Independence and African Decolonization. 4

Rosenfeld 2 mandatory sanctions imposed against Rhodesia at the United Nations.2 The Commonwealth of former British colonies called for military action to impose majority rule.3 While they provided material aid, South Africa and Portugal both avoided publicly supporting the embattled state.4 An arms embargo made it increasingly difficult to fend off an escalating guerilla war with black nationalist groups in what came to be known as the Rhodesian Bush War. Finally even South Africa, Rhodesias most obvious and crucial ally, pressured Smith to accept the principle of one man, one vote. Several factors contributed to a belief among the Rhodesias UDI-era political leaders that an independent Rhodesia could win enough support to maintain a stable regime. Rhodesia saw itself as a morally defensible meritocracy, a bulwark against the communist groups in the region and a natural ally of South Africa. Any of these three arguments alone could have conceivably staved off majority rule. But in every case the world perceived essentially the reverse to be true. Rhodesia was viewed not only as illegal and lacking legitimacy, but as having declared independence solely to maintain white supremacy. It was viewed not as a bulwark against communism but rather a liability prone to encouraging communism in the region. And, finally, it was viewed especially by South Africa as an unstable multiracial country and a diplomatic liability. When the political ground beneath
2

U.N. General Assembly and Security Council Resolutions on Rhodesia. (1966, January). International Legal Materials, 5(1), 161-168. 3 White, L. S. (2009). The State of Sovereignty: What does it take to be a state? Sovereignty and sanctions in Rhodesia, 1965-1980(pp. 148-163). Bloomington, IL: Indiana University Press. 155 4 de Meneses, F., & McNamara, R. (2012). The Last Throw of the Dice: Portugal, Rhodesia and South Africa 1970-74.Portuguese Studies, 28(2), 201-215.

Rosenfeld 3 Rhodesia shifted, as it was wont to do in southern Africa during the 1960s and 70s, the country had no true supporters. From the start, nobody took seriously Rhodesias claim that it was meritocracy. Rhodesia was, in some retrograde manner, more racially progressive than apartheid South Africa.5 Due to the small size of its white population, Rhodesia had a civil service and military filled with blacks. Its original constitution even backed the notion of universal suffrage.6 But none of that could hide the unadulterated racism of the countrys leadership. John Biggs-Davison, a British Conservative MP who was sympathetic to Smiths government recalled to the historian Michael Charlton a conversion he had with the Prime Minister about diversifying his cabinet in order to lend credence to the claim that Rhodesia was not a racist country. Why dont you have some black ministers? I could find you some black Africans whod do the job just as well as some of your white ministers, BiggsDavison recounted telling Smith, adding, I dont think [Smith] said anything. I think the temperature of the room fell.7 Smiths refusal to even symbolically include nonwhites in his government made it incredibly difficult for anyone to buy his claim that Rhodesias UDI was anything other than a cheap ploy to maintain white supremacy. Rhodesia had two voter rolls, with enrollment in both depending on varying amounts of wealth. Whites dominated the first roll, which elected the majority of parliamentthough a handful of wealthy black Africans were on the roll as well. Blacks dominated the second voter roll, with its lower wealth requirements, though given the lack of parity between the number of seats each roll could elect the white electorate effectively chose the government. (Nyerere, J. K. (1966, April). Rhodesia in the context of southern Africa. Foreign Policy, 44(3), 373-386.) 6 White, Book Proposal, 3 7 Charlton, M. (1990). The Last Colony: Diplomacy and the Independence of Rhodesia. Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell. 19
5

Rosenfeld 4 Yet South Africa, also recognized as racist, escaped the punishing sanctions and isolation of Rhodesia during the same time period. That is because South Africa was seen as a sovereign and sanctioning it could have set a dangerous precedent.8 Rhodesia, however, was not viewed as sovereign because its independence came about illegally. While Rhodesia might have anticipated this issue, they saw it differently. Since 1923, Britain had allowed Rhodesia to have its own military and manage its foreign relations.9 Rhodesia somewhat reasonably saw itself in the mold of South Africa, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.10 However, by the 1960s Britain was conditioning colonial independence on the principle of NIMBR: No independence before majority rule.11 As Josiah Brownell writes in The Collapse of Rhodesia, Rhodesias application for dominion status was postmarked several decades too late.12 Despite perceiving itself as on par with Canada or Australia, a convincing case can be made that Rhodesia had at least made peace with its illegal status.13 Rhodesia was a political imaginary, as the historian Luise White has argued, more concerned with swimming against the tide of decolonization than in being a

Onslow, S. (2005). A question of timing: South Africa and Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence, 1964-65. Cold War History, 5(2), 129-159. 132 9 White, Sovereignty and Sanctions, 148 10 Brownell, J. (2011). The Collapose of Rhodesia: Population demographics and the politics of race. New York, NY: I.B. Tauris. 10 11 Brownell 11 12 Brownell, 12. 13 The Rhodesian High Court, its justices appointed pre-UDI, actually ruled that Rhodesian independence came about illegally and that the country was not sovereign. However, it said for practical purposes the Rhodesian constitution should still be upheld and its laws enforced. While the justices expected to be forced to resign, Smith was apparently satisfied with this type of de facto recognition of legitimacy. (White, Sovereignty and Sanctions, 152)

Rosenfeld 5 conventional sovereign state.14 Nonetheless, the government thought that in the Cold War context with socialist states popping up in independent Africa, that they would be aided by Western states involved in the war against communism. At first blush this appears a reasonable assumption, as the two black nationalist groups attempting to overthrow the RF governmentthe Zimbabwe African National Union and the Zimbabwe African Peoples Unionespoused a communist ideology. Washington, Rhodesia knew, happily backed undemocratic regimes that were aligned with the Cold War interests. Rhodesia also saw itself as a stalwart defender of white minority rule and a natural ally of apartheid South Africa. Rhodesia believed that even if the world rejected it morally and legally, support from the United States and South Africa would allow it to survive and conceivably thrive.15 It was wrong on both counts. Rhodesia expected they could earn the same Western support South Africa had by fighting communism in southern Africa. This strategy failed for several intertwined reasons. First, due to its relatively small white population minority governance was seen as unsustainable and bound to collapse without major outside assistance. Secondly, those seen as likely to replace the white minority government in Rhodesia were not believed to pose a significant threat to Western interests. Thirdly, it was believed that such outside assistanceor even a prolonged period of minority rule in the face of war with black nationalist groupswould spur outside powers, specifically Russia and Cuba to intervene and that those powers might in fact post a significant threat to Western interests. These three factors not only
14 15

White, Sovereignty and Sanctions, 153 Charlton, 3

Rosenfeld 6 rendered Rhodesia useless in the fight against communism, it encouraged communist powers to intervene in the conflict in the country and damaged Western interests. You have got to remember is sort of a village in terms of white population, Michael Palliser, a senior British diplomat involved in negotiating Rhodesias transition to majority rule, said in an oral history.16 In fact, while Rhodesia faced the international pressure detailed earlier in this paper as well as a more active military threat than apartheid South Africa at the time, Brownell convincingly argues that it was Rhodesias failure to establish and grow a stable white population which sealed its fate. Whites never broke 6% of the population and peaked at just 277,000 total and that was before UDI.17 By 1980, when Robert Mugabe took control of the government whites had fallen to less than 3% of the population.18 Granting recognition of an independent Rhodesia where less than 6% of the population had a say in the government was seen not only as morally improper but also unrealistic. Such a minority, it was believed, could scarcely maintain control over a country. And the Rhodesian Front knew it. While racial demographics in the territory had long been imprecise, the censuses of 1962 and 1969 made plain to the Rhodesian government just how lopsided and unsustainable the countrys racial balance was if whites were to maintain control and gain any legitimacy.19 Brownell details the governments definition of victory in the demographic war as moving from a white Rhodesian majority similar to Australia, to a sizable minority as existed in South Charlton, 22 Brownell, 3 18 Brownell, 3 19 Brownell, 25
16 17

Rosenfeld 7 Africa, to attempting simply to stabilize and finally just to slow white emigration and black population growth.20 The problem in achieving these was a nasty catch-22. The goal of maintaining white minority rule was to guarantee a high quality of life for whites. In order to rapidly increase the white population, however, major sacrifices would be required by whites. The more they pushed for such sacrifices, such as having more children, the more whites left. Rhodesias population problems were like those of a patient whose condition was such that both the underlying problem and the procedures to cure the problem were likely to kill the patient, Brownell writes.21 Unsurprisingly, the government failed to achieve victory in any of its diminished forms. The white population, then, could not be seen so much as the natural backers of a western-friendly regime in southern Africa so much as a curious, fleeting ethnic caste slowly losing their grasp on power and pleading for external support.22 Propping up the regime indefinitely was not feasible. How long it would be tolerated hinged on who would replace them. If Western powers had been convinced that the fall of white Rhodesia to black nationalists would threaten their Cold War interests, they might have propped Rhodesia up for the duration of the Cold War. But despite the propaganda pushed by the Smith government, Robert Mugabe and the Patriotic Frontthe alliance of nationalist groups fighting to overthrow the white governmentwere not seen as beholden to Russia or to China.23 Mugabe expressed support for socialism but this in and of itself did not terribly frighten pragmatic Western governments. There was a
20 21

Brownell, 4 Brownell, 3 22 Brownell, 2 23 Charlton, 6

Rosenfeld 8 belief that even a socialist Mugabe government would not halt export of chrome and other valuable Rhodesian resources, as such exports would be necessary to finance the government.24 The real fear during the Cold War was that countries would become Soviet or Chinese pawns, and there was little evidence that the groups vying to takeover in Rhodesia were anything other than genuine liberation movements based on leftist ideologies.25 Widely condemned today as not only a tyrant but as a belligerent political leader who has run his countrys economy into the ground, at the time of the Rhodesian civil war Mugabe was a relative unknown and certainly not feared by the west. Paradoxically, the southern African group causing the United States and Britain fear was actually Smiths RF government. The worry was that Smith and Rhodesias intransigence in moving toward majority rule would lead to a protracted military conflict and push Mugabe and other groups fighting the government into the waiting arms of the Russians and that Cuba might intervene on their side.26 The West believed there was a window of opportunity for a relatively friendly majoritybacked government to replace Smith. But the clock was ticking and the longer the conflict dragged on the more dangerous the situation became for the West.27 In 1975 the United States encouraged South Africa to intervene in Angola to fight the communist-aligned militant groups. South Africas involvement spurred Cuban

Charlton, 6 Charlton, 9 26 Onslow, S. (2006). 'We Must Gain Time': South Africa, Rhodesia and the Kissinger Initiative of 1976. South African Historical Journal, 56, 123-153. 125 27 Onslow, Time, 142
24 25

Rosenfeld 9 intervention on behalf of the communist groups.28 There was a chance of that happening in Rhodesia as well. Further, outside of the Rhodesian conflict the United States and Western powers were pursuing broader foreign policy strategies in Africa.29 While their foreign policies different, no Western country was aiming to alienate themselves from newly independent countries by propping up a doomed, racist regime. For those reasons United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, working with the support of London and Pretoria, applied pressure to Smith and eventually won the initial concession to majority rule in 1976.30 It has been argued, however, that even without Western support Rhodesia may yet have maintained minority rule. The pressure of Western governments could be dealt with, Smith believed, but the loss of South African support could not be.31 Especially after Mozambique received independence from Portugal in 1975, the landlocked Rhodesia relied on South African ports to receive material goods. The country also relied on South Africa for military intelligence, arms, financial assistance and moral support to staunch the trickle of whites from the country. When South Africa made clear they would not tolerate any more dawdling on the path to majority rule, Smith knew the game was over.32 But why did a country like South Africa, apparently strategically and ideologically aligned with Rhodesia, pull the rug out from beneath it? Because apartheid South Africa did not actually view

Onslow, Time, 125 Ex: Kissingers Africa initiative of 1976, as discussed in Onslow, Time, 124 30 Onslow, Time, 150 31 Charlton, 4 32 Charlton, 2
28 29

Rosenfeld 10 itself as ideologically aligned with the country and it also viewed support for Rhodesia as damaging its own interests in Africa.33 It is not without irony that Rhodesia was at once unable to convince the world it was a meritocracy and unable to convince South Africa it was a white minority government, but such was the case. The prevailing understanding of Rhodesia in the South African government was that of a country slowly transitioning to majority rule on its own accord.34 Under the 1961 constitution Rhodesia was, in fact, working toward full adult suffrage.35 South Africa saw Rhodesia as a multiracial, capitalist state whose intransigence at moving toward full majority rule faster was proving toxic to South African interests.36 Not only was it risking Cuban intervention in a country on South Africas border but it also made Rhodesia a deeply unpopular country to support at a time when South Africa had already burned through its diplomatic capital by fighting in Angola and refusing to cede control of South West Africa or roll back apartheid.37 In fact, South Africa thought a diplomatic victory in Rhodesiaconvincing Smith to move toward full majority rule in a matter of years rather than decadeswould be a boon to their international image and win them support among African states and the United States.38 South Africa even saw friendly relations as perfectly realistic given the economic needs of

33

Documents: South Africa and Zimbabwe-Rhodesian Independence, 1979-1980. (2007, May). Cold War History, 7(2), 305-325. Guide-lines to formulate a Total National Strategy for Rhodesia, 1979. 34 Charlton, 8 35 Notwithstanding that according to historian Luise S. White eligible black voters would not make up a majority in the country until 2015, 36 Onslow, Time, 142 37 Onslow, Time, 143 38 Onslow, Time, 147

Rosenfeld 11 neighboring independent African countries. Writing of Mozambique and Angola, a South African government policy paper in 1979 read, Cooperation with these two states can bring about their being weaned away from Russian imperialism and militarism.39 That shows the South Africans had not given up winning the support of black states, but they recognized Rhodesia as a roadblock to such cooperation. It should also be mentioned that South Africa did not see much option but to make nice with other African states and shore up American support. Especially into the 1970s, following the Soweto Uprising and the Angola intervention was desperate to regain American support. South Africa believed negotiating a settlement in Rhodesia, i.e. withdrawing South African support and forcing a peaceful transition to free elections, was the one clear thing they could do to gain American favor. As Sue Onslow writes, White minority rule in Rhodesia was the victim of South African weaknessnot, as Smith condemned Pretoria, the sacrificial lamb of South Africas dtente policy.40 In conclusion, while Rhodesia saw itself a meritocracy, an independent nation and an aid to Western powers in the fight against communism, the rest of the world saw it as an illegitimate racist regime. When even South Africa, a perceived natural ally due to their shared white minority government status, turned its back on the country due to differing ideologies and Rhodesia hurting its own foreign policy, the Smith government was forced to accept universal suffrage.

Documents, Guide-lines to formulate a Total National Strategy for Rhodesia, 1979 40 Onslow, Time, 153
39

Rosenfeld 12

Works Cited

Brownell, J. (2011). The Collapose of Rhodesia: Population demographics and the politics of race. New York, NY: I.B. Tauris.

Charlton, M. (1990). The Last Colony: Diplomacy and the Independence of Rhodesia. Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell.

Rosenfeld 13

de Meneses, F., & McNamara, R. (2012). The Last Throw of the Dice: Portugal, Rhodesia and South Africa 1970-74.Portuguese Studies, 28(2), 201-215.

Documents: South Africa and Zimbabwe-Rhodesian Independence, 1979-1980. (2007, May). Cold War History, 7(2), 305-325. Guide-lines to formulate a Total National Strategy for Rhodesia, 1979.

Nyerere, J. K. (1966, April). Rhodesia in the context of southern Africa. Foreign Policy, 44(3), 373-386.

Onslow, S., & Berry, A. (2010, October). Why did you fight? Narratives of Rhodesian identity during the insurgency 1972-1980.The Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Onslow, S. (2005). A question of timing: South Africa and Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence, 1964-65. Cold War History, 5(2), 129-159.

Onslow, S. (2006). 'We Must Gain Time': South Africa, Rhodesia and the Kissinger Initiative of 1976. South African Historical Journal, 56, 123-153.

U.N. General Assembly and Security Council Resolutions on Rhodesia. (1966, January). International Legal Materials, 5(1), 161-168.

Rosenfeld 14

White, L. S. (2009). The State of Sovereignty: What does it take to be a state? Sovereignty and sanctions in Rhodesia, 1965-1980(pp. 148-163). Bloomington, IL: Indiana University Press.

White, L. (2013). Book proposal. In Unpopular Sovereignty: Rhodesian Independence and African Decolonization.