Pattern, Puzzle, and Peculiarity: Rhodesia’s UDI and Decolonisation in Southern Africa

Abstract

On 18th April 1980, the Union Jack was finally lowered at Government House, Harare. Presiding over this muted piece of imperial theatre, Lord Soames, who had been appointed interim governor of Rhodesia at the end of 1979, was flanked by Prince Charles, with both men mustering the appropriate level of solemnity that befitted the occasion. i Ninety years after the pioneer column had raised the Union Flag, its lowering in April 1980 symbolised the formal end of British control in the country, the birth of Zimbabwe, and had so lved one of the most intractable episodes in the history of Britain's decolonisation. Some twenty years earlier, the British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, had spoken of the 'Wind of Change' blowing through the African continent. 'Whether we like it or not', he opinedopined the Edwardian poseur, 'this growth of national consciousness is a political fact'. ii Despite this, however, one place that the wind seemingly skirted was central and Southern Africa. Just as Macmillan's speech received its second airing in Cape Town in February 1960, Walter Monckton commenced his tour of the Central African Federation being ostensibly charged by the British government to assess its health. Seven years after Federation had been inaugurated, it was becoming increasingly clear that the impulses that first simulated the territorial amalgamation between Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland were diminishing. Created as a 'counterpoise to Afrikaner nationalism' and promoted as a way to satisfy both white and black nationalism, Federation was theoretically supposed to bring 'partnership' between black and white within the three territories. iii Yet, 'partnership' was 'purposefully vague, with its opacity lending itself to a variety of meanings'. iv As leading African nationalist, Joshua Nkomo, recalled in his memoirs, 'Huggins . . . explained what Federation was really about. He stated that his aim was to create in Central Africa a new partnership like that of the rider and the horse. That was very honest. The white man was to ride, the black man was to carry him'. v Finally published in October 1960, the Monckton Commission's report concluded that the only way to maintain Federation was through force. As Philip Murphy has demonstrated, while the British government were not prepared to commit themselves militarily to quell the rising tide of African nationalism, they were also not