‘More a Cause than a Country’: Historiography, UDI and the Crisis of Decolonisation in Rhodesia

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Notes

¹ Although UDI was declared on 11 November 1965, the Rhodesian Front party that declared it had been voted into government in December 1962 on the basis of maintaining white minority rule indefinitely. It would demand its minority independence vociferously but unilaterally cease it as Britain was unwilling to grant it.

² See, for example, Colin Stoneman and Lionel Cliffe (eds), Zimbabwe’s Prospects: Issues of Race, Class, State and Capital in Southern Africa (London, Macmillan, 1988).

³ Munyaradzi B. Munochiveyi, Inmates and Detainees in the Struggle for Zimbabwean Liberation, 1960–1980 (New York, Palgrave MacMillan, 2014), p. 8. See also Ian Phimister, ‘Narratives of Progress: Zimbabwean Historiography and the End of History’, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 30, 1 (2012), pp. 27–34; Brian Raftopoulos, ‘Problematising Nationalism in Zimbabwe: A Historiographical Review’, Zambezia, 26, 2 (1999), pp. 83–115; Tinashe Nyamunda, ‘Insights into Independent Zimbabwe: Some Historiographical Reflections’, Strategic Review for Southern Africa, 36, 1 (2014), pp. 72–89.

⁴ See, for example, Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Do ‘Zimbabweans’ Exist? Trajectories of Nationalism, National Identity Formation and Crisis in a Postcolonial State (Oxford, Peter Lang, 2009); Brian Raftopoulos and Alois Mlambo (eds), Becoming Zimbabwe: A History from the Pre-Colonial Period to 2008 (Harare, Weaver Press, 2009); Brian Raftopoulos, ‘Nation, Race and History in Zimbabwe’, in Sarah Dorman, D. Hammett and Paul Nugent (eds), Making Nations, Creating Strangers: States and Citizenship in Africa (Leiden, Brill, 2007), pp. 145–89. Alois Mlambo, ‘Becoming Zimbabwe or Becoming Zimbabwean: Identity, Nationalism and State Building’, Africa Spectrum, 33, 1 (1998) pp. 78–102; Henning Melber, ‘Liberation Movements as Governments in Southern Africa – On the Limits of Emancipation’, Strategic Review for Southern Africa, 33, 1 (2011), pp. 78–102.

⁵ See Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Empire, Global Coloniality and African Subjectivity (New York, Berghahn Books, 2013).

⁶ Jeremy Jones, ‘“Nothing is Straight in Zimbabwe”: The Rise of the Kukiyakiya Economy’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 36, 2 (2010), pp. 285–99; Lloyd Sachikonye, When a State Turns on its Citizens: Institutionalised Violence and Political Culture (Harare, Weaver Press, 2011); JoAnn McGregor and Ranka Primorac (eds), Zimbabwe’s New Diaspora: Displacement and the Cultural Politics of Survival (New York, Berghahn Books, 2010).

⁷ Ian Phimister, ‘“Rambai Makashinga [Continue to Endure]”: Zimbabwe’s Unending Crisis’, South Africa Historical Journal, 54, 1 (2005), pp. 112–26.

⁸ Ibid., p. 120.

⁹ T. Nyamunda, ‘The State and Black Business Development: The Small Enterprises Development Corporation and the Politics of Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment in Zimbabwe’, Historia, 61, 1 (2016), pp. 41–65; T. Nyamunda, ‘Did Zimbabweans Take their Land Back?’, review of J. Hanlon, J. Manjengwa and T.Smart, Zimbabwe Takes Back its Land (Virginia, Kumarian Press, 2012), Journal of Southern African Studies, 40, 4 (2014).

¹⁰ Phimister, ‘Narratives of Progress’, p. 28.

¹¹ Luise White,Unpopular Sovereignty: Rhodesian Independence and African Decolonization (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2015), p. 1.

¹² Martin Meredith, The Past is Another Country: Rhodesia UDI to Zimbabwe (London, Pan Books, 1980).

¹³ I have examined literature discussing these issues in T. Nyamunda, ‘Complexities of Decolonization: The Political Economy of Independence and Development’, Afriche e Orienti, 3 (2014), pp. 209–21.

¹⁴ Random examples range from Frank Clements, Rhodesia: The Course to Collision (London, Pall Mall, 1969), to Donal Lowry, Settlers and Expatriates: Britons Over the Seas (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010), among others.

¹⁵ My own PhD thesis adds a hitherto neglected perspective of Rhodesia’s financial policy and exchange control as the main basis upon which the delinquent colony sustained its rebellion for a decade and a half: Tinashe Nyamunda, ‘Financing Rebellion: The Rhodesian State, Financial Policy and Exchange Control’, PhD thesis, University of the Free State, 2016.

¹⁶ White, Unpopular Sovereignty, p. 4.

¹⁷ Ibid.

¹⁸ Ibid.

¹⁹ Ibid.

²⁰ Ibid, p. viii.

²¹ White’s bibliography attests to the vast historiography available on Rhodesia’s UDI. Literature produced in the course of UDI includes the following examples: Robert Blake, A History of Rhodesia (London, Eyre Methuen, 1977); Larry W. Bowman, Politics in Rhodesia: White Power in an African State (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1973); Robert C. Good, U.D.I.: The International Politics of the Rhodesian Rebellion (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1973); John Handford, Portrait of an Economy: Rhodesia under Sanctions (Salisbury, Mercury Press, 1976); Eshmael Mlambo, Rhodesia: The Struggle for a Birthright (London, Hurst, 1972); Harry B. Strack, Sanctions: The Case of Rhodesia (Syracuse, Syracuse University Press, 1978); Judith Todd, The Right to Say No (London, Sidgwick and Johnson, 1972). Including books reviewed here, example of UDI works produced after 1979, when Rhodesia seized to exist, include: Kate Law, Gendering the State: White Women, Race, Liberalism and Empire in Rhodesia, 1950–1980 (New York, Routledge, 2016); David Caute, Under the Skin: The Death of White Rhodesia (London, Allen Lane, 1983); Ken Flower, Serving Secretly: Rhodesia into Zimbabwe (London, John Murray, 1987); Michael Charlton, The Last Colony in Africa: Diplomacy and the Independence of Rhodesia (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1990); Jackie Cilliers, Counter Insurgency in Rhodesia (London, Croom Helm, 1985); Miles Hudson, Triumph or Tragedy: Rhodesia to Zimbabwe (London, Hamish Hamilton, 1981); David M Rowe, Manipulating the Market: Understanding Economic Sanctions, Institutional Change, and the Political Unit of White Rhodesia (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2001).

²² See White, Unpopular Sovereignty, p. 105.

²³ See Peter Godwin and Ian Hancock, ‘Rhodesians Never Die’: The Impact of War and Political Change on White Rhodesia (Harare, Baobab Books, 1995).

²⁴ Richard Wood, So Far and No Further! Rhodesia’s Bid for Independence during the Retreat from Empire 1959–65 (Victoria, BC, Trafford Publishing, 2005); see also R. Wood, A Matter of Weeks Rather than Months: The Impasse between Harold Wilson and Ian Smith 1965–1979 (Victoria, BC, Trafford, 2008).

²⁵ White, Unpopular Sovereignty, p. 11.

²⁶ Ibid., p. 12.

²⁷ Ibid., p. 27.

²⁸ On responsible government and accommodating imperialism, see Ian Phimister, An Economic and Social History of Zimbabwe 1890–1948: Capital Accumulation and Class Struggle (Harlow, Longman, 1988); I. Phimister, ‘Accommodating Imperialism: The Compromise of the Settler State in Southern Rhodesia, 1923–1929’, Journal of African History, 25, 2 (1984), pp. 279–94; on the concept of ‘imperial effect’, see Andrew Dilley, Finance, Politics and Imperialism: Australia, Canada and the City of London, c. 1896–1914 (Basingstoke, Palgrave MacMillan, 2012).

²⁹ White, Unpopular Sovereignty, p. 30.

³⁰ Good, U.D.I.

³¹ See especially his Chapter 2, pp. 53–82; see also C.P. Watts, ‘Killing Kith and Kin: The Viability of British Military Intervention in Rhodesia, 1964–5’, Twentieth Century British History, 16, 4 (2004), pp. 225–46; White, Unpopular Sovereignty, p. 105–6, 109–13; see also Bowman, White Politics in Rhodesia, p. 111.

³² Watts, Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration, p. 5.

³³ White, Unpopular Sovereignty, p. 11. See also Larry W. Bowman, Politics in Rhodesia: White Power in an African State (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1973), pp. 105–11.

³⁴ M. Minter and E. Schmidt, ‘When Sanctions Worked: The Case of Rhodesia Re-Examined’, African Affairs, 87, 347 (1988), p. 212.

³⁵ Wood, So Far and No Further; Wood, A Matter of Weeks.

³⁶ Ken Flower, Serving Secretly: Rhodesia into Zimbabwe (London, John Murray, 1987), p. 73. Emphasis in original.

³⁷ Watts, ‘Killing Kith and Kin’, p. 383.

³⁸ Government of Rhodesia, Economic Survey for Rhodesia for 1966 (Salisbury, Government Printers, 1966), p. 1.

³⁹ Watts, Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration, p. 24.

⁴⁰ Ibid., p. 53.

⁴¹ Watts, ‘Killing Kith and Kin, p. 415.

⁴² Ibid.

⁴³ C. Dupont, The Reluctant President: The Memoirs of the Hon. Clifford Dupont, G.C.L.M., I.D (Harare, Books of Rhodesia, 1978), p. 256.

⁴⁴ S.A. de Smith, ‘Southern Rhodesia Act 1965’, Modern Law Review, 29, 3 (1966), p. 301.

⁴⁵ South Africa Central Archival Repository/Sentrale Argief Bewaarplek (SAB), TES 12/588, Report of the Special Committee on the Situation with Regards to the Implementation of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, UN General Assembly, p. 22.

⁴⁶ For example, the most comprehensive account of the sugar embargo is in Mlambo and Pangeti’, The Political Economy of the Sugar Industry in Zimbabwe, 1929–90 (Harare, University of Zimbabwe Publications, 1996), pp. 53–61; although the book offers interesting insights into the sugar industry in Rhodesia under UDI, it does so as part of a much broader, path-breaking work covering the development of the sugar industry during 60 years of colonial rule and 10 years of independence.

⁴⁷ Flower, Serving Secretly, p. 72.

⁴⁸ Kurebwa, Politics of Economic Sanctions, pp. 115–22.

⁴⁹ David M. Rowe, Manipulating the Market: Understanding Economic Sanctions, Institutional Change, and the Political Unity of White Rhodesia (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2001).

⁵⁰ White, Unpopular Sovereignty, p. 126.

⁵¹ Kurebwa, Politics of Economic Sanctions, pp. 271–92.

⁵² White, Unpopular Sovereignty, p. 129.

⁵³ William Minter and Elizabeth Schmidt, ‘When Sanctions Worked: The Case of Rhodesia Re-Examined’, African Affairs, 87, 347 (1988), pp. 207–37.

⁵⁴ Kurebwa, Politics of Economic Sanctions, p. 58.

⁵⁵ White, Unpopular Sovereignty, p. 29.

⁵⁶ Josiah Brownell, The Collapse of Rhodesia: Population Demographics and the Politics of Race (London, I.B. Tauris, 2011).

⁵⁷ Ibid., p. 9.

⁵⁸ White, Unpopular Sovereignty, p. 28.

⁵⁹ Brownell, The Collapse of Rhodesia, p. 52.

⁶⁰ White, Unpopular Sovereignty, p. 3.

⁶¹ Brownell, The Collapse of Rhodesia, p. 25.

⁶² Alois Mlambo, White Immigration into Rhodesia: From Occupation to Federation (Harare, University of Zimbabwe Press, 2002); Godwin and Hancock, ‘Rhodesians Never Die’.

⁶³ White, Unpopular Sovereignty, p. 25.

⁶⁴ Ibid., p. 27.

⁶⁵ Ibid.

⁶⁶ Brownell, The Collapse of Rhodesia, pp. 75–80.

⁶⁷ White, Unpopular Sovereignty, p. 28.

⁶⁸ Ibid., p. 30; for part of this background, see also Phimister, Economic and Social History.

⁶⁹ White, Unpopular Sovereignty, p. 28.

⁷⁰ Ibid., p. 29.

⁷¹ Ibid., p. 33.

⁷² Ibid., p. 35.

⁷³ Munochiveyi, Prisoners of Rhodesia, p. 2.

⁷⁴ Maurice Nyagumbo, With the People: An Autobiography of the Zimbabwean Struggle (Denver, Graham Publishing, 1980).

⁷⁵ Munochiveyi, Prisoners of Rhodesia, p. 2. See also his ‘Historiographical Context’, pp. 7–13. Discourse about more alternative histories has been a source of challenge to official nationalist historiography; see, for example, Masipula Sithole, Zimbabwe: Struggles within the Struggle (Harare, Rujeko Publishers, 1999; Wilfred Mhanda, Dzino, Memories of a Freedom Fighter (Harare, Weaver Press, 2011); Norma Kriger, Zimbabwe’s Guerrilla War: Peasant Voices (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992).

⁷⁶ See, for example, Jocelyn Alexander, ‘Nationalism and Self Government in Rhodesian Detention: Gonakudzingwa, 1964–1974’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 37, 3 (2011), pp. 551–69. For a later period, which could have provided analytical and historical comparisons, see P. Alexander, ‘Militarisation and State Institutions: Professionals and Soldiers inside the Zimbabwe Prison Service’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 39, 4 (2013), pp. 807–28. What gives Munochiveyi’s book greater depth is his comprehensive study based on prisoner narratives from most of: Khami maximum security prison, Gwelo prison, Gonakudzingwa detention centre, Sikombela detention centre, and WhaWha prison. See p. 3.

⁷⁷ White, Unpopular Sovereignty, p. 11.

⁷⁸ Ibid., pp. 214, 218–19, 220, for example.

⁷⁹ Munochiveyi, Prisoners of Rhodesia, p. 121.

⁸⁰ Ibid., pp. 65–120.

⁸¹ Ibid., p. 178.

⁸² Ibid., pp. 117–19.

⁸³ Ibid., pp. 125–9.

⁸⁴ Ibid., pp. 185–7.

⁸⁵ A few examples of the autobiographies the author significantly relies on include: Joshua Nkomo, The Story of My Life (London, Methuen, 1984); Didymus Mutasa, Rhodesian Black Behind Bars (London, Mowbrays, 1974); Maurice Nyagumbo, With the People: An Autobiography from the Zimbabwean Liberation Struggle (London, Allison and Busby, 1980); Edgar Tekere, A Lifetime of Struggle (Harare, SAPES, 2007).

⁸⁶ Munochiveyi, Prisoners of Rhodesia, pp. 187–90.

⁸⁷ White, Unpopular Sovereignty, p. 10.

⁸⁸ Munochiveyi, Prisoners of Rhodesia, p. xi.

⁸⁹ Ibid., p. 69.

⁹⁰ This is effectively captured by Blessing-Miles Tendi, Making History in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe: Politics, Intellectuals and the Media (New York, Peter Lang, 2010).

⁹¹ Ibid., pp. 27–64.

⁹² White, Unpopular Sovereignty, p. 28.

⁹³ See, for instance, Mlambo, ‘Becoming Zimbabwe or Becoming Zimbabwean?’

⁹⁴ Law, Gendering the Settler State.

⁹⁵ Nyamunda, ‘Financing Rebellion’.