In African countries with substantial minorities of
white settlers, resistance to African majority rule
led to savage conflicts and wars. By the early
1990s the white settlers had lost power in all but
one country; the future of South Africa still hung
in the balance as turmoil threatened. Two decades
earlier another powerful group of ruling white
settlers in Rhodesia had fought to resist an early
end to their dominance. Despite their over-
whelming military resources, they had to accept
defeat in the end. Southern Rhodesia became
Zimbabwe, Nyasaland was renamed Malawi and
Northern Rhodesia, Zambia.
Cecil Rhodes had first conquered these terri-
tories towards the close of the nineteenth century
for the British South Africa Company. White set-
tlers soon came to the healthy highlands of
Southern and Northern Rhodesia. Nyasaland,
administered directly by the Colonial Office in
London, attracted fewer settlers. Northern
Rhodesia, which in 1924 likewise fell to direct
administration by the Colonial Office, had a single
rich resource to exploit – the Copperbelt, whose
mines produced the second-largest quantity of
copper in the world. At the time, with only 4,000
whites among 900,000 Africans, there could be
no question of handing over power to the set-
tlers. In 1929 a British colonial secretary declared
that in Northern Rhodesia, as in the East African
territories, the interests of the Africans were para-
mount. In practice this meant little. The land dis-
tribution favoured the white minority at the
expense of the expanding African population. But
the white settlers in Northern Rhodesia wanted
to make their position more secure. That was the
logic behind their desire to create a union between
Northern and Southern Rhodesia, with its larger
white-settler community.
The conquest of Rhodesia in the 1890s had
been brutal. As the railway moved further inland,
settlers followed. There was some gold, but agri-
culture gradually became far more important. The
assumption always was that when the white set-
tlers were ready to govern the country they would
take over from the Chartered British South Africa
Company. The decisive year was 1923, when the
34,000 settlers of Southern Rhodesia rejected
union with South Africa and were granted full
internal self-government, which meant ruling
over 900,000 Africans. Constitutionally, South-
ern Rhodesia became a Crown colony with the
imperial government reserving to itself the right
to veto legislation affecting the African majority.
During the next three decades London allowed
the Southern Rhodesian whites to run the country
as they thought fit. The African majority had to
accept white rule and subservience to unjust laws.
The best lands went to the white settlers, a social
system that effectively amounted to apartheid was
enacted. The Land Apportionment Act in 1931
forbade Africans to occupy land in white areas;
50,000 whites were to receive 49 million acres
and nearly 1 million Africans were to receive 29
million acres. Pass laws, taxes, control of AfricansChapter 66
SOUTHERN AFRICA
FROM WHITE SUPREMACY TO DEMOCRACY