gaining the independence of Nyasaland and
Northern Rhodesia under black majority rule.
The Federation had been imposed on the
Africans in 1953, but there was a promise to
review its workings after ten years. The national-
ist movement in Northern Rhodesia was led by
Henry Nkumbula and Kenneth Kaunda, and that
in Nyasaland by Dr Hastings Banda. In London
the prime minister Harold Macmillan was deter-
mined to settle what could be settled. Britain
already had enough trouble on its hands with
Kenya and the Mau Mau rising. It had required
a major and costly British effort to suppress it.
Southern Rhodesia presented severe problems
with its many white settlers, but the position was
different in Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia. A
few thousand white settlers in those two countries
would not be allowed to stand in the way of a
settlement with African nationalism there. A
British fact-finding commission was sent to the
two territories and found the majority of Africans
opposed to the Central African Federation. In
December 1963 the Federation was dissolved. In
July 1964 Nyasaland, later called Malawi, was
granted independence and in October of the same
year so too was Northern Rhodesia, renamed
Zambia by the African leadership.
This left the intractable problem of Southern
Rhodesia. The federal armed forces now fell under
the command of Southern Rhodesia and, although
small, they were formidable, equipped with
Hunter jets, Vampire and Canberra bombers,
artillery, armoured cars and helicopters. The army
consisted of 3,500 men of whom 1,000 were black
Africans. It is one of the worst features of white
supremacy that it pitted the indigenous peoples
against each other, blacks against blacks. This force
could maintain white rule for years. The struggle
for supremacy in Rhodesia was waged in the 1960s
and 1970s between black nationalists (who were
themselves split but were aided by black African
neighbours) and the white settlers. Britain’s im-
perial role was invidious. London could deny
Rhodesia formal independence but no govern-
ment, whether Conservative or Labour, was in a
position to use military force against the Rhodesian
authorities. British public opinion would not have
tolerated fighting white Rhodesians, the men who
during the Second World War had rallied to
Britain’s side. However racist this attitude may
now be judged, it was an inexorable fact facing suc-
cessive prime ministers – Macmillan, Home,
Wilson, Heath, Callaghan and Thatcher. The next
best thing was to try to mediate a general constitu-
tional settlement which the settlers and the black
Africans could be persuaded to accept. The only
pressure that could be exerted from outside was
economic sanctions through the United Nations
and the Commonwealth.
From 1961 to 1971, repeated efforts were
made by British governments to grant Southern
Rhodesia independence on terms acceptable to a
black majority and the Rhodesian whites. Ian
Smith, an ex-RAF fighter pilot, was the tough set-
tler leader of the Rhodesian Front Party. A settle-
ment acceptable to him would have to fall short of
equal votes for all Rhodesians and immediate black
majority rule. Would the African nationalists
accept less? Nkomo made the mistake of doing just
that at a constitutional conference held in 1961
under British auspices. The proposed constitution
that emerged would have delayed African majority
rule for many decades, perhaps for ever. But the
British government seized this opportunity to give
up practically all its reserve powers, except for the
final acceptance of Rhodesian independence. The
African nationalists, who had organised themselves
into a new party – the National Democratic Party
- repudiated the agreement and Nkomo was
forced to accept this reverse. One man one vote
now became the unyielding demand of the black
nationalists. When the Smith administration then
banned the National Democratic Party, this simply
led to the creation of a new African grouping, the
Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU). In
1963 distrust of Nkomo’s leadership caused a split - Ndabaningi Sithole formed a more radical
Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU). The
split gravely weakened African political influence
during the struggle for independence. In 1965
Smith decided to cut the Gordian knot and
declared Rhodesia unilaterally independent
(UDI). It appeared intolerable to the white settlers
that their two neighbours should have been
granted independence in 1964, as Zambia and
Malawi, but their own country had not.