Rhodesia declared independence in 1965, yet Britain kept calling it Southern Rhodesia
On 11 November 1965, the white-minority cabinet of Southern Rhodesia declared independence from Britain rather than accept a path to black majority rule. The state it created, Rhodesia, lasted until 1979 without international recognition, while London kept using the old colonial name throughout. It ended as the Republic of Zimbabwe.
The territory's path diverged early from most colonies. Many Europeans settled permanently as farmers and traders, and in 1922 voters rejected joining the Union of South Africa as a fifth province. Britain annexed it on 12 September 1923, and a constitution weeks later granted an elected thirty-member legislature, though London kept a veto over measures affecting Africans. Rich deposits of chromium and manganese, plus a large skilled immigrant workforce, drove growth almost unmatched in sub-Saharan Africa.
From 1953 it joined Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland in a federation, dissolved at the end of 1963 as decolonisation gathered pace. Britain's policy, known as no independence before majority rule, covered colonies with large politically active settler populations, and Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home set five principles for talks, including unimpeded progress to majority rule and an end to official racial discrimination. Harold Wilson's Labour government took an even harder line.
Even the name was contested. When Northern Rhodesia became independent as Zambia in October 1964, the government in Salisbury decided Southern was redundant and legislated to become simply Rhodesia, after Cecil Rhodes. Britain refused, arguing the name was fixed by British law, and the standoff over the label lasted through the whole period of unilateral independence.
After the declaration, UN Security Council resolution 216 urged all states to withhold recognition and assistance. Two African nationalist movements, ZAPU and ZANU, launched an armed insurgency known as the Rhodesian Bush War. The state became a republic in 1970, replacing its mostly white single-chamber assembly with a House of Assembly and a Senate, a structure Zimbabwe later kept. The Lancaster House Agreement of 1979 and universal-suffrage elections in 1980 finally brought recognised independence.
Source: Rhodesia
