Operation Refugee: the Congo Crisis and the end of humanitarian imperialism in Southern Rhodesia, 1960

ABSTRACT

Thousands of whites fled the former Belgian Congo in the weeks after independence. This movement had a significant impact on the politics of Southern Rhodesia. Disquieted whites in Rhodesia feared they might face a similar fate. They apprehensively mobilised in an effort known as Operation Refugee to support the displaced. Conversely, black nationalists were energised by the disruption. Their ranks increased and their rhetoric became more confrontational. While the transnational Congo Crisis is routinely evaluated through the framework of the Cold War, in the region’s white settler territories, the decolonisation imperative was another critical perspective through which the events in the Congo were perceived.

KEYWORDS:

• Race
• Zimbabwe
• Democratic Republic of the Congo
• refugees
• decolonisation
• transnationalism

Acknowledgments

Sara Rich Dorman, Emma Hunter, George Karekwaivanane, and Lazlo Passemiers all provided helpful comments and feedback on my research and writing about the Congo Crisis in Southern Rhodesia. The Research Council of Zimbabwe and the Institute of Development Studies at the National University of Science and Technology, Zimbabwe, facilitated access to the National Archives of Zimbabwe and fieldwork in the country. Financial support from the New York Public Library, British Institute in Eastern Africa, the Hoover Institution, and the Royal Historical Society facilitated aspects of this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Today’s Democratic Republic of the Congo. Hereafter, the ‘Congo’.

² ‘Long Live Lumumba Cries at Meeting’, Central African Daily News [hereafter ‘ADN’], (Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia), July 2, 1960.

³ John Reed Diary, July 2, 1960, Vol. 88, no page, Chetham’s Library, Manchester, UK; ‘Rhodesia Should Also Have Celebrated Ghana Independence’, Bantu Mirror (Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia), March 23, 1957.

⁴ Contemporary Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi, respectively.

⁵ Madzimbamuto to Ranger, June 30, 1960, S3330 T1/1/8A, National Archives of Zimbabwe (hereafter ‘NAZ’), Harare, Zimbabwe.

⁶ Alessandro Iandolo, ‘Imbalance of Power: The Soviet Union and the Congo Crisis, 1960–1961’, Journal of Cold War Studies 16, no. 2 (2014): 43.

⁷ Lise Namikas, Battleground Africa: Cold War in the Congo, 1960–1965 (Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2012), 79.

⁸ Donal Lowry, ‘The Impact of Anti-communism on White Rhodesian Political Culture, ca. 1920s–1980’, Cold War History 7, no. 2 (2007): 169–94.

⁹ Southern Rhodesia Debates of the Legislative Assembly (unrevised edition), August 3, 1960, col. 928.

¹⁰ Guy Vanthemsche, Belgium and the Congo, 1885–1980 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 60.

¹¹ ‘40,000 European Refugees Have Left Congo – 50,000 Remain’, Rhodesia Herald (Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia), July 20, 1960.

¹² ‘Refugees: 900 Cars Noted at Chirundu’, African Weekly (Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia), July 20, 1960; ‘Salisbury Now Has About 2,500 Refugees’, Rhodesia Herald, July 19, 1960. While most fleeing whites maintained direct ties to their countries of origin in the West, they were described as ‘refugees’ at the time. This paper follows that convention but deploys quotation marks to denote their tenuous ties to the Congo.

¹³ The relief effort was initially (and fleetingly) dubbed ‘Operation Mercy’. The dynamics behind the evolution of the nomenclature are unclear, but the terms likely originated from the Salisbury Mayor’s relief committee, which drew its membership from the capital’s municipality as well as numerous civic bodies.

¹⁴ Josiah Brownell, The Collapse of Rhodesia: Population Demographics and the Politics of Race (London: I.B. Tauris, 2010), 75.

¹⁵ I borrow the term from Anthony King, ‘Identity and Decolonisation: The Policy of Partnership in Southern Rhodesia, 1945–62’, (PhD diss., University of Oxford, 2001), 14. King does not define the expression.

¹⁶ H. Iden Wetherell, ‘Settler Expansionism in Central Africa: The Imperial Response of 1931 and Subsequent Implications’, African Affairs 78, no. 311 (1979): 210–27.

¹⁷ See for example: Madeleine Kalb, The Congo Cables: The Cold War in Africa, from Eisenhower to Kennedy (New York: Macmillan, 1982); John Kent, America, the UN and Decolonisation: Cold War Conflict in the Congo (London: Routledge, 2010); Alanna O’Malley, The Diplomacy of Decolonisation: American, Britain and the United Nations During the Congo Crisis, 1960–1964 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018); Henning Melber, Dag Hammarskjöld, the United Nations and the Decolonisation of Africa (London: Oxford University Press, 2019); Sergey Mazov, A Distant Front in the Cold War: The USSR in West Africa and the Congo, 1956–1964 (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Press, 2010); and Stephen Weissman, American Foreign Policy in the Congo, 1960–1964 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974).

¹⁸ Alanna O’Malley, ‘Ghana, India, and the Transnational Dynamics of the Congo Crisis at the United Nations, 1960–1’, The International History Review 37, no. 5 (2015), 970–90; Jitendra Mohan, ‘Ghana, the Congo, and the United Nations’, The Journal of Modern African Studies 7, no. 3 (1969), 369–406; and Ebere Nwaubani, ‘Eisenhower, Nkrumah and the Congo Crisis’, Journal of Contemporary History 36, no. 4 (2001), 599–622.

¹⁹ Lazlo Passemiers, Decolonisation and Regional Geopolitics: South Africa and the “Congo Crisis”, 1960–1965 (London: Routledge, 2019), 8.

²⁰ ‘“UN Congo Effort a Shambles” – Sir Edgar Whitehead’, Rhodesia Herald, March 9, 1961.

²¹ ‘Guidance Notes for HBM Vice – Consul for Rhodesia and Nyasaland, Elisabethville’, 15 June 1960, CX/100/28/1, NAZ.

²² Edgar Whitehead, ‘Southern Rhodesia’, International Affairs 36, no. 2 (1960): 189.

²³ Josiah Brownell, ‘Diplomatic Lepers: The Katangan and Rhodesian Foreign Missions in the United States and the Politics of Nonrecognition’, International Journal of African Historical Studies 47, no. 2 (2014): 212.

²⁴ Matthew Hughes, ‘Fighting for White Rule in Africa: The Central African Federation, Katanga, and the Congo Crisis, 1958–1965’, International History Review 25, no. 3 (2003): 592–615.

²⁵ Timothy Scarnecchia, ‘The Congo Crisis, the United Nations, and Zimbabwean Nationalism, 1960–1963’, African Journal on Conflict Resolution 11, no. 1 (2011): 63–86.

²⁶ Lazlo Patrick Christian Passemiers, ‘South Africa and the ‘Congo Crisis’, 1960–1965’ (PhD Diss., University of the Free State, 2016), 64.

²⁷ Sue Onslow and Martin Plaut, Robert Mugabe (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2018), 41.

²⁸ Ian Smith, Bitter Harvest: The Great Betrayal (London: Blake, 2001), 44; and Roy Welensky, Welensky’s 4000 Days: The Life and Death of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (London: Collins, 1964), 199.

²⁹ Michael Auret, From Liberator to Dictator: An Insider’s Account of Robert Mugabe’s Descent into Tyranny (Cape Town: David Philip, 2009), 5.

³⁰ Edson Sithole, ‘Congo’s Two Years of Self-Rule’, ADN, June 30, 1962.

³¹ Frank Clements, Rhodesia: A Study of the Deterioration of a White Society (New York: Praeger, 1969), 175–6; and Luise White, Unpopular Sovereignty: Rhodesian Independence and African Decolonization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 69.

³² J R T Wood, The Welensky Papers: A History of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (Durban: Graham Publishing, 1983), 803.

³³ ‘75 More Arrive Here from the Congo’, Daily Graphic (Accra, Ghana), July 16, 1960; ‘Refugees Who Present a Problem’, East African Standard (Nairobi, Kenya), July 18, 1960.

³⁴ ‘All Sabena Planes for Refugees’, Rhodesia Herald, July 11, 1960.

³⁵ One of the more recent studies in English is: Elsa Peralta, ‘The Return from Africa: Illegitimacy, Concealment, and the Non-memory of Portugal’s Imperial Collapse’, Memory Studies (2019): 1–18.

³⁶ Roy Welensky, ‘Development of Central Africa through Federation‘, Optima 2, no. 4 (1952): 5.

³⁷ Welensky, Welensky’s 4000 Days, 210–1; and ‘Katanga Leaves the Congo Republic’, Rhodesia Herald, July 12, 1960.

³⁸ ‘Bulwark or Bridge?’ Rhodesia Herald, March 6, 1952.

³⁹ Passemiers, Decolonisation and Regional Geopolitics, 225; and Brooks Marmon, ‘Pan-Africanism Versus Partnership: African Decolonisation in Southern Rhodesian Politics’ (PhD diss., University of Edinburgh, 2020), 178.

⁴⁰ ‘Rhodesia National Affairs Association – Lectures’, RH 20/7/1, NAZ.

⁴¹ Capricorn Africa Society, Handbook for Speakers, Capricorn Africa Society, 1955, ICS 8/1-17, CAS 6, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, London.

⁴² Ian Hancock, ‘The Capricorn Africa Society in Southern Rhodesia’, Rhodesian History: Journal of the Central Africa Historical Association 9 (1978): 51.

⁴³ ‘What Would Rhodes Have Done?’ (Salisbury, Capricorn Africa Society, undated pamphlet), Box 1s, MK/1/1/54, Peter Mackay Archive, University of Stirling, Scotland.

⁴⁴ Robert Rotberg, ‘The “Partnership” Hoax: How the British Government Deprived Central Africans of their Rights’, Journal of Southern African Studies 45, no. 1 (2019): 102; and Wood, Welensky Papers, 244.

⁴⁵ ‘St. Andrew’s Night Dinner – Gatooma and District Caledonian Society’, December 3, 1949, Box 91, Folder 8, Roy Welensky Papers (Mss. Welensky), Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, UK.

⁴⁶ Isebill V. Gruhn, ‘The Commission for Technical Co-Operation in Africa, 1950–65’, Journal of Modern African Studies 9, no. 3 (1971): 459.

⁴⁷ Nick McNally, interview by author, Johannesburg, South Africa, June 26, 2018.

⁴⁸ ‘The United Federal Party: Our Political Principles’, undated (handwritten note indicates prepared for 1958 by-election), SR/11/2/4, NAZ.

⁴⁹ ‘Rene MacColl Interviews Sir Roy Welensky’, Daily Express (London, UK), March 2, 1960.

⁵⁰ Debates of the Federal Assembly, March 29, 1960, col. 37; ‘Editorial’, Democratic Voice (Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia), July 2, 1960; and HGM Bass to FAK Harrison, July 2, 1960, DO 35/7694, The National Archives, Kew, United Kingdom.

⁵¹ Debates of the Federal Assembly, March 29, 1960, col. 41.

⁵² ‘The Congo – Our New Neighbour’, Samkange Newsletter (Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia), June 27, 1960.

⁵³ Clyde Sanger, Central African Emergency (London: Heinemann, 1960), 322.

⁵⁴ Peter Charles to Lorraine Charles, July 30, 1960, RHO I, File 15, Borthwick Institute, University of York, UK.

⁵⁵ Debates of the Legislative Assembly, April 16, 1959, col. 3166.

⁵⁶ ‘Federal Prime Minister Gives Interview’, Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland Newsletter, June 17, 1960.

⁵⁷ ‘Your Turn Next Said Congo Refugees’, The Citizen (Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia), July 1, 1960.

⁵⁸ ‘Federal Territorials Put on Stand-by’, Rhodesia Herald, July 13, 1960; and Michael Auret, From Liberator to Dictator: An Insider’s Account of Robert Mugabe’s Descent into Tyranny (Cape Town: David Philip, 2009), 3.

⁵⁹ ‘The Congo – Our New Neighbour’, Samkange Newsletter, June 27, 1960.

⁶⁰ ‘Congo Whites Stoned – Refugees Tell of Terror’, Rhodesia Herald, July 8, 1960.

⁶¹ ‘Tired, Baffled They Flock to Salisbury’, Rhodesia Herald, July 12, 1960; and ‘Rebel Road Block’, Rhodesia Herald, July 14, 1960.

⁶² ‘Salisbury Has More Than 1,500 Refugees’, Rhodesia Herald, July 14, 1960.

⁶³ ‘SR Expects Many More Refugees’, Rhodesia Herald, July 11, 1960. Virtually all of those travelling by car and train arrived in Southern Rhodesia overland via Northern Rhodesia.

⁶⁴ ‘Exinform No. 91, The Congo Situation’, July 14, 1960, CX100/28/1, NAZ.

⁶⁵ ‘Stone Kills Child’, Rhodesia Herald, July 15, 1960.

⁶⁶ The sister papers were produced in Salisbury and Bulawayo, respectively.

⁶⁷ ‘Congo Whites Stoned’, is one such example.

⁶⁸ Eugene Wason, Banned: The Story of the African Daily News, Southern Rhodesia, 1964 (London: Hamilton, 1976), 26.

⁶⁹ Ibid.

⁷⁰ Elaine Windrich, ‘Rhodesian Censorship: The Role of the Media in the Making of a One-Party State’, African Affairs 78, no. 13 (1979): 526.

⁷¹ ‘The Congo Refugees’, The Citizen, July 15, 1960.

⁷² ‘The Fighting: A Picture of Confusion’; ‘Train “Lost” on Way to Border’; and ‘“Mass Murder” SOS Heard in Rhodesia’, Rhodesia Herald, all July 11, 1960.

⁷³ ‘Refugees Arrive’, The Chronicle (Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia), July 14, 1960.

⁷⁴ ‘Desperate Relatives Seek News’, Rhodesia Herald, July 11, 1960.

⁷⁵ ‘Her Home Phone Rang 400 Times in One Day’, Rhodesia Herald, July 19, 1960.

⁷⁶ Telegram, External, Salisbury to Britain, June 29, 1960, CX/100/28/1, NAZ; Towsey to Welensky, March 19, 1963, F136/CX100/28F, NAZ.

⁷⁷ R. Hill, letter to the editor, Rhodesia Herald, July 14, 1960.

⁷⁸ Nigel Philip, letter to the editor, Rhodesia Herald, July 28, 1960.

⁷⁹ ‘Refugees Shout Down Appeal for Return to Congo’, Rhodesia Herald, July 18, 1960.

⁸⁰ ‘Message from Mr. Tshombe, Head of the Katanga Provincial Government, to the British Consul Elisabethville: 14^th July, 1960’, CX100/28/1, NAZ.

⁸¹ Marmon, ‘Pan-Africanism Versus Partnership’, 207.

⁸² ‘Welensky Dashes from Kariba – Ministers Meet’, Rhodesia Herald, July 11, 1960.

⁸³ ‘Volunteers Tackle Refugee Flood’, Rhodesia Herald, July 12, 1960.

⁸⁴ ‘Mayor’s Congo Refugee Fund: Minutes of a Meeting of the Interim Finance Committee Held in the Committee Room, Town House, on 20^th July, 1960 at 5PM’, SA 18/2/1, NAZ.

⁸⁵ ‘Congo Fund Launched by Mayors’, The Chronicle, July 13, 1960.

⁸⁶ ‘Mayor’s Congo Refugee Committee’, archival finding aid summary, SA 18/2/1, NAZ.

⁸⁷ ‘“Marvellous” Help for Refugees’, Rhodesia Herald, July 15, 1960.

⁸⁸ ‘Convoys Heading South’, Rhodesia Herald, July 12, 1960.

⁸⁹ ‘“Marvellous” Help’.

⁹⁰ ’Marandellas Farmer’s Wife “Distributed” Refugees to Homes’, Rhodesia Herald, July 22, 1960; ‘Viscount Stop at Gwelo’, Rhodesia Herald, July 20, 1960.

⁹¹ ‘Congo Flashes’, Rhodesia Herald, July 16, 1960.

⁹² ‘More Than 1,500 Refugees’.

⁹³ ‘“Magnificent Work” Says Minister’, Rhodesia Herald, July 19, 1960.

⁹⁴ ‘Volunteer Teams Swing into Relief Action’, Rhodesia Herald, July 12, 1960.

⁹⁵ Gertrude Cripwell, letter to the editor, Rhodesia Herald, July 25, 1960.

⁹⁶ Debates of the Federal Assembly, July 19, 1960, col. 1527.

⁹⁷ ‘Magnificent Response by Salisbury to Refugee Aid’, Rhodesia Herald, July 13, 1960.

⁹⁸ Isaac Benatar, Song of Africa (Bloomington: iUniverse, 2000), 33.

⁹⁹ ‘Magnificent Response’; Benatar, Song of Africa, 31.

¹⁰⁰ ‘More Than 1,500 Refugees’.

¹⁰¹ ‘Clothes Surplus’, The Chronicle, July 20, 1960.

¹⁰² ‘Newsletter No. 1: Women’s Voluntary Services of Central Africa’, August 1960, Capricorn Africa Society, File 37, Borthwick Institute. The NDP was SRANC’s spiritual successor.

¹⁰³ ‘Bulawayo Will Remember Day of Help to Congo Refugees’, The Chronicle, July 13, 1960.

¹⁰⁴ Debates of the Federal Assembly, July 19, 1960, col. 1529.

¹⁰⁵ Debates of the Legislative Assembly, July 6, 1960, col. 240.

¹⁰⁶ Robert Blake, History of Rhodesia (New York: Knopf, 1978), 274.

¹⁰⁷ Philip Aitken-Cade, interview by author, Locust Grove, Virginia, United States, October 30, 2018.

¹⁰⁸ Debates of the Legislative Assembly, July 19, 1960, col. 360.

¹⁰⁹ William Joseph John Cary, interviewed by D. Hartridge, September 1971 – February 1972, 44, Oral/CA4, NAZ.

¹¹⁰ Debates of the Legislative Assembly, July 19, 1960, col. 360.

¹¹¹ Ibid.

¹¹² Ibid.

¹¹³ On the ‘unholy alliance’ of Rhodesia, South Africa, and Portugal see: Filipe Riberio De Meneses and Robert McNamara, The White Redoubt, the Great Powers and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1960–1980 (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

¹¹⁴ Debates of the Legislative Assembly, July 19, 1960, col. 373.

¹¹⁵ Ibid., 375.

¹¹⁶ Debates of the Legislative Assembly, July 20, 1960, col. 415.

¹¹⁷ ‘Split in Dominion Party’, Rhodesia Herald, July 6, 1960.

¹¹⁸ ‘Lessons of the Congo’, Federal Outlook (Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia), August/September 1960.

¹¹⁹ Athol Evans, interviewed by EG Gibbons, April 1978 – September 1979, 62, ORAL/E1, NAZ.

¹²⁰ Margaret West, Catching the Bag: Who’d Be a Woman Diplomat (Durham: Pentland Press, 2000), 207.

¹²¹ ‘Refugees: Africans Also Help’, ADN, July 16, 1960; ‘Africans Give £5 to Fund’, The Chronicle, July 22, 1960.

¹²² Reed Diary, July 12, 1960, Vol. 88, no page.

¹²³ ‘Africans Called on to Help Refugees’, ADN, July 13, 1960.

¹²⁴ Reed Diary, July 12, 1960, Vol. 88, no page.

¹²⁵ ‘Mugabe Joins NDP Ranks’, African Weekly, July 6, 1960; ‘Chitepo and Rev. Sithole Have Joined the NDP’, ADN, June 6, 1960.

¹²⁶ Terence Ranger, ‘The Reception of Mau Mau in Southern Rhodesia, 1952–61’, in Trajectories de Liberation en Afrique Contemporaine: Homage a Robert Buijtenhuijs, eds. Piet Konings, Wim van Binsbergen, and Gerti Hesseling (Paris: Karthala, 2000).

¹²⁷ Joey Power, ‘Building Relevance: The Blantyre Congress, 1953 to 1956’, Journal of Southern African Studies 28, no. 1 (2002): 46.

¹²⁸ John Day, International Nationalism: The Extra-territorial Relations of Southern Rhodesian Nationalists (New York: Humanities Press, 1967), 55; Gikonyo Kiano, ‘The Pan-African Freedom Movement of East and Central Africa’, Africa Today 6, no. 4 (1959): 11–4.

¹²⁹ Sergey Mazov, ‘“A Fragile Alliance”: The Congo Crisis and Soviet-Ghanaian Relations, 1960–61’, Twentieth Century Communism 15 (2018): 14.

¹³⁰ ‘Mawema Back From Nyasaland Trip’, ADN, July 12, 1960.

¹³¹ ‘Belgian Refugees “An Embarrassment”’, ADN, July 15, 1960.

¹³² Ibid.

¹³³ Richard Hughes, Capricorn: David Stirling’s Second African Campaign (London: Radcliffe Press, 2003), 152.

¹³⁴ Leopold Takawira, ‘Congo Lessons’, Central African Examiner (Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia), July 30, 1960.

¹³⁵ ‘Takawira Raps Headmasters’, ADN, July 19, 1960.

¹³⁶ ‘NDP Says Participation in Government Only Solution to Problems’, ADN, July 19, 1960.

¹³⁷ ‘NDP Meeting on Sunday, August 28^th, 1960 at Highfields (sic)’, undated, Box 51, Terence Ranger Papers, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.

¹³⁸ ‘Congo Refugees May Worsen Unemployment, Says Congress’, ADN, July 19, 1960.

¹³⁹ ‘July 19 Meeting: NDP’, undated, Box 51, Terence Ranger Papers.

¹⁴⁰ ‘Police Take Equipment and Files in Swoop on NDP Office’, Rhodesia Herald, July 8, 1960.

¹⁴¹ ‘Central Africa: Clearing for Action?’ The Economist, July 23, 1960.

¹⁴² ‘Samkange Spoke of the Congolese Not SR Africans – Defence’, ADN, August 24, 1960.

¹⁴³ Debates of the Legislative Assembly, July 19, 1960, col. 373.

¹⁴⁴ Nathan Shamuyarira, Crisis in Rhodesia (London: Andre Deutsch, 1965), 64–5.

¹⁴⁵ Francis Nehwati, ‘The Social and Communal Background to “Zhii”: The African Riots in Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia in 1960’, African Affairs 69, no. 276 (1970): 253.

¹⁴⁶ ‘SR Police Use Tear Gas on Riot Gangs’, Rand Daily Mail (Johannesburg, South Africa), September 8, 1960.

¹⁴⁷ ‘New Rioting Breaks Out in Rhodesia’, Rand Daily Mail, October 10, 1960.

¹⁴⁸ Jocelyn Alexander, ‘“Hooligans, Spivs and Loafers”? The Politics of Vagrancy in 1960s Southern Rhodesia’, Journal of African History 53, no. 3 (2012): 349–50.

¹⁴⁹ Debates of the Legislative Assembly, July 22, 1960, col. 564.

¹⁵⁰ Ibid., October 27, 1960, col. 2516.

¹⁵¹ Hughes, ‘Fighting for White Rule’, 602.

¹⁵² The RF was established in March 1962 following an amalgamation of the two wings of the Dominion Party, the Southern Rhodesia Association, and the Rhodesia Reform Party.

¹⁵³ Ruth Weiss with Jane Parpart, Sir Garfield Todd and the Making of Zimbabwe (London: I.B. Tauris, 1998), 141.

¹⁵⁴ Susan Woodhouse, Garfield Todd: The End of the Liberal Dream in Rhodesia (Harare: Weaver Press, 2018), 306.

¹⁵⁵ ‘Mass Resignation from CAP: End of Party in Sight’, ADN, September 2, 1960.

¹⁵⁶ Shamuyarira, Crisis in Rhodesia, 164.

¹⁵⁷ Brooks Marmon, ‘“One Who Preferred Death to Imperialism”’, Review of African Political Economy (Blog), http://roape.net/2020/01/17/one-who-preferred-death-to-imperialism/ (accessed December 19, 2020).

¹⁵⁸ Ibid.

¹⁵⁹ ‘Letter SP-16’, March 21, 1959, Box 6, Folder 19, George Loft Papers, Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Marmon, ‘Pan-Africanism Versus Partnership’, 141–6.

¹⁶⁰ ‘Southern Rhodesia Political Press Notes: Referendum Public Meetings’, July 14, 1961, Box 1692, 745c.00/7-361, Record Group 59, Department of State Central File, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, USA.

¹⁶¹ Examples include: Desmond Lardner-Burke, Rhodesia: The Story of the Crisis (London: Oldbourne, 1966), 79; Andrew Skeen, Prelude to Independence: Skeen’s 115 Days (Cape Town: Nasionale Boekhandel, 1966), 4.

¹⁶² Jeffrey James Byrne, ‘Africa’s Cold War’, in The Cold War in the Third World, ed. Robert J. McMahon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 112.

Additional information

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Brooks Marmon

Brooks Marmon is a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Historical and Heritage Studies, University of Pretoria. He received his PhD from the Centre of African Studies at the University of Edinburgh. His research focuses on pan-African diplomacy and anti-colonial liberation struggles in Southern Africa.