Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence 1965 Explained

Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) was proclaimed on 11 November 1965, when the white-minority government of Prime Minister Ian Smith declared the British colony of Southern Rhodesia an independent state without Britain’s consent. The aim was to prevent a transfer of power to the country’s Black majority. No country recognised the new state, which survived fourteen years of international sanctions and a growing guerrilla war before becoming independent Zimbabwe in 1980.

Background: a self-governing settler colony

Southern Rhodesia had been colonised in the 1890s by Cecil Rhodes’s British South Africa Company. From 1923 it was a self-governing colony with its own parliament, police and army, controlled by white settlers, although Britain kept formal responsibility. Land was divided along racial lines, and voting depended on property and income qualifications that excluded the great majority of Africans.

From 1953 to 1963 Southern Rhodesia was joined with Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland in the Central African Federation. When the federation broke up, Britain granted independence in 1964 to Northern Rhodesia (as Zambia) and Nyasaland (as Malawi) under African majority governments. Southern Rhodesia, now usually called simply Rhodesia, was refused independence unless it accepted progress towards majority rule.

The road to UDI

In December 1962 the Rhodesian Front, a party committed to maintaining white rule, won the general election. In April 1964 Ian Smith, a farmer and former Royal Air Force pilot, became Prime Minister. African nationalist parties, the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) of Joshua Nkomo and the breakaway Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), were banned and their leaders detained.

Negotiations with Britain’s Labour government under Harold Wilson failed. Britain insisted on principles including unimpeded progress to majority rule and an end to racial discrimination. Wilson flew to Salisbury in October 1965 in a last attempt at a deal, but he publicly ruled out the use of military force, which removed the strongest deterrent.

The declaration

On 11 November 1965, Armistice Day, the Rhodesian cabinet signed a proclamation of independence, consciously modelled in places on the American Declaration of Independence of 1776. Smith announced it in a radio broadcast. The Governor, Sir Humphrey Gibbs, formally dismissed Smith and his ministers on London’s instructions, but he had no power to enforce this and remained isolated at Government House until 1969.

Britain declared the act illegal. The UN Security Council condemned UDI on 12 November and called on all states not to recognise the “illegal racist minority regime”.

Sanctions and diplomacy

Britain imposed oil and trade embargoes, and from 1966 the Royal Navy’s Beira Patrol tried to stop oil tankers reaching Rhodesia through Mozambique. In December 1966 the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 232, the first mandatory sanctions in its history, broadened in 1968 into comprehensive sanctions.

Sanctions damaged but did not break the economy. South Africa and Portuguese-ruled Mozambique kept trade flowing, and Rhodesian industry diversified to replace imports. Talks between Wilson and Smith aboard HMS Tiger in 1966 and HMS Fearless in 1968 failed. Rhodesia declared itself a republic in March 1970, and a 1971 settlement was abandoned after the Pearce Commission found in 1972 that most Africans rejected it.

War and the road to majority rule

African nationalists turned to armed struggle. A clash at Sinoia (now Chinhoyi) in April 1966 is often taken as the start of the Rhodesian Bush War, which intensified from 1972. ZANU’s forces, led politically by Robert Mugabe from the mid-1970s, operated from Mozambique after its independence in 1975, while ZAPU’s forces operated from Zambia.

Pressure grew from South Africa, which wanted a stable neighbour, and from the United States. In September 1976, after talks with US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and South African Prime Minister John Vorster, Smith publicly accepted the principle of majority rule within two years. In March 1978 Smith signed an “internal settlement” with moderate African leaders including Bishop Abel Muzorewa, who became Prime Minister of “Zimbabwe Rhodesia” in 1979. The war continued, and no country recognised the new arrangement.

Finally, at the Lancaster House conference in London, all parties signed an agreement on 21 December 1979. Britain resumed direct rule for a short transitional period, a ceasefire was arranged, and elections in February 1980 gave Mugabe’s ZANU-PF a clear majority. Zimbabwe became independent on 18 April 1980.

Life inside Rhodesia

Within Rhodesia, the Smith government kept tight control. Press censorship was introduced on the day of UDI, African nationalist leaders such as Nkomo, Ndabaningi Sithole and Mugabe spent much of the following decade in detention, and the Land Tenure Act of 1969 confirmed the division of land between white and Black Rhodesians, giving roughly equal areas to a white minority and to a population many times larger.

For many white Rhodesians, sanctions became a source of defiant pride. Shortages of imported goods encouraged local manufacturing, and the economy grew strongly in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The 1969 constitution, approved by an overwhelmingly white electorate, was designed to prevent African majority rule for the foreseeable future by tying African representation in parliament to the share of income tax paid by Africans.

As the war spread in the mid-1970s, the picture changed. Conscription was extended to most white men, emigration rose, and large numbers of rural Africans were moved into “protected villages” to cut guerrillas off from support. Both sides committed serious abuses against civilians.

Myths and facts

UDI is sometimes remembered as a break with the British monarchy. In fact Smith’s government at first continued to profess loyalty to Queen Elizabeth II, declaring her “Queen of Rhodesia” and appointing an “Officer Administering the Government” in place of the governor. Only in 1970 did Rhodesia declare itself a republic.

It is also often claimed that sanctions failed completely. They did not bring down the regime, but they reduced its trade, isolated it diplomatically and, combined with the war and South African pressure, helped force the settlement of 1979.

Key people

• Ian Smith – Prime Minister of Rhodesia from 1964 to 1979 and the leading figure of UDI.
• Harold Wilson – British Prime Minister in 1964–1970 and 1974–1976, who opposed UDI but ruled out force.
• Sir Humphrey Gibbs – Governor of Southern Rhodesia, who remained loyal to the Crown after UDI.
• Joshua Nkomo – leader of ZAPU and veteran nationalist.
• Robert Mugabe – leader of ZANU and first Prime Minister of Zimbabwe.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1923: Southern Rhodesia becomes a self-governing British colony.
• 1963, 31 December: The Central African Federation is dissolved.
• 1964, 13 April: Ian Smith becomes Prime Minister.
• 1965, 11 November: Rhodesia declares UDI.
• 1966, 16 December: UN Security Council imposes mandatory sanctions.
• 1970, 2 March: Rhodesia declares itself a republic.
• 1978, 3 March: The Internal Settlement is signed.
• 1979, 21 December: The Lancaster House Agreement is signed.
• 1980, 18 April: Zimbabwe becomes independent.

Why it matters

UDI is often described as the first unilateral break with the British Crown by a colony since the American Revolution. It challenged Britain, tested the power of UN sanctions and delayed majority rule in Zimbabwe by fifteen years, during which a costly war shaped the politics of the independent state. It also stood as a counter-current to the wave of independence sweeping the rest of the continent.