Breakdown and Restoration of Settler Cohesion

The increasing strain within the state over specific forms of repression and reform and over the proper mixture of the two coincided with a backlash within the dominant caste and heightened protest among the black majority. Reforms fueled white anxiety and opposition; repression further alienated African opinion. Of most consequence for the future of the Whitehead regime was its diminishing credibility within a settler population that had never given its leaders a mandate to open, even slightly, the window of social and political opportunity to Africans.

Serious electoral competition among settler parties was rare in Rhodesia. The only period in Rhodesian history when a white opposition party had any appreciable impact on security legislation was that of 1958 through 1962. During those years the United Federal party held a slim majority in Parliament and precarious support among the electorate. Unlike contests both earlier and later, the struggles over security policy from 1958 through 1962 were significant precisely because the Dominion party presented a serious challenge to the UFP's incumbency. The DP, not the African nationalists, had the capacity to bring the ruling party down. Champion of undiluted white domination and the fierce repression of African opposition, the DP sought to make political capital out of the UFP's "weakness" by stirring the pot of white fears. According to a minister in the Whitehead Cabinet, in the field of law and order, the Dominion party "influenced the UFP quite a bit."^[111]

[109] Former Minister of Labour, correspondence with author, 30 January 1984.

[110] Correspondence with author, 28 May 1984.

[111] Interview, 26 May 1983.

In 1959 Prime Minister Whitehead boasted that 99 percent of the whites and 85 percent of the blacks supported his administration^[112] —a gross exaggeration at the time, and the UFP's legitimacy in both quarters had all but collapsed by 1962.

The Government's new security measures did not assuage the white electorate, disturbed both by the regime's inadequate use of the iron fist and its experiment with conciliation and gradual African advancement. Staunch advocates of settler supremacy considered Whitehead's reforms treasonous: for example, plans to extend the franchise, appoint African Cabinet ministers and increase the number of African MPs, remove petty apartheid restrictions, and repeal the cornerstone Land Apportionment Act.^[113] In October 1962 the prime minister made the mistake of telling the United Nations' Trusteeship Committee that Africans "will have a majority [in Parliament] within fifteen years." Although the premier did not mean majority rule, his prediction was too much for the settler community to bear.^[114] A 1958 survey revealed that whites believed the franchise was already too generous toward Africans, and 86.5 percent opposed repeal of the Land Apportionment Act.^[115]

One barometer of white morale, migration rates, registered the falling confidence in the Government: in 1956 the country had eleven thousand immigrants; in 1961, it had two thousand emigrants. But the extent of white concern was most clearly evidenced in the December 1962 election when the DP's heir, the white supremacist Rhodesian Front (RF), won a surprise victory over the UFP.

The 1962 election was the first in which a white ruling party sought to broaden its base by enlisting African support. It failed. Of the 10,632 registered African voters (a fraction of voting-age blacks), only 2,577 voted.^[116] In a context of increasing racial polarization, Africans withheld support from a Government that had arrested their leaders, banned three of their political parties, and attempted to break their spirits. The use of the stick had canceled out the desired effect of the carrot. Similarly, the white electorate was not prepared to endorse a Government

[112] Assembly Debates, vol. 42, 24 March 1959, col. 3167.

[113] See "Southern Rhodesia Polarized: Fall of the United Federal Party," Round Table 53, no. 210 (March 1963): 137–66; and Samuel Speck, "The Gap Widens in Southern Rhodesia," Africa Report 8, no. 1 (January 1963): 10–13.

[114] Bowman, Politics in Rhodesia, p. 35.

[115] Rogers and Frantz, Racial Themes .

[116] In elections from 1962 to 1977, less than 0.3 percent of Africans of voting age were able to vote because of qualifications on property, income, and education (Anthony Lemon, "Electoral Machinery and Voting Patterns in Rhodesia, 1962–1977," African Affairs 77 [October 1978]: 511–30).

that seemed ready to capitulate to black pressures. In the election, the African boycott combined with a shift of white voters to the RF to defeat the UFP. The Rhodesian Front won 56.5 percent of the total vote and 35 seats; the United Federal party received 26.

Whitehead's predecessor, Garfield Todd, was removed in a Cabinet revolt in 1958 for his own slightly reformist gestures, which his colleagues considered altogether premature. But Whitehead's Cabinet could not bring itself to do its own housecleaning when he embarked on a more serious reform program than anything Todd had contemplated. It was thus left to the settler electorate to purge this deviating regime. The result of the 1962 election was convincing proof that a ruling party could attempt to reform this settler state only at its peril. A majority of white Rhodesians was simply not prepared to allow political leaders to modernize state institutions and promote serious racial conciliation. The year 1962 can thus be regarded as a "point of no return" in Rhodesia, one that soundly rejected an accommodationist solution and sharpened racial polarization.^[117] The RF victory signaled a dramatic return to the traditional Rhodesian pattern, in which "power tends to gravitate towards those who are least ready for change."^[118]

The coming to power of the Rhodesian Front under Premier Winston Field had a salutary effect on settler unity and state cohesion, which had so troubled the Whitehead Government. In Rhodesia, the transfer of power to an ultrarightist settler Government helped to ease strains within the state well into the 1970s. (It did not have this effect in Northern Ireland, discussed in Chapter 5.) Reunified, the Rhodesian state was better able to defend the cause of settler domination, which increased the whites' confidence in the country. The balance of power within the state shifted in favor of the hawks; moderate elites from the old regime were purged, converted, or ignored—much as occurred in South Africa after the National party's victory over the United party in 1948. In both cases the former ruling party lost all influence on security policy, ceased to offer a viable political alternative, and gradually faded from the scene.

It took time for the new regime to subdue African unrest. In August 1963 several leading nationalists broke with the banned ZAPU to form a new organization, the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU). Between August 1963 and August 1964, widespread violence between

[117] Kuper, The Pity .

[118] Leys, European Politics, p. 36.

ZAPU and ZANU supporters occurred in African townships. By 1965 this internecine rivalry had abated within the country (but continued between the exiled wings of each party), and domestic political violence had declined.

In line with the new regime's break with multiracialism, it made little attempt to cushion repression through reforms. The Government made full use of the inherited repressive machinery and introduced amendments to make the legislation even more severe; it also created an important new security agency in 1963, the Central Intelligence Organization (CIO). CIO became responsible for gathering external intelligence (and the police Special Branch then focused on domestic matters). The need for a special intelligence agency was growing with the possibility that the regime might soon unilaterally declare independence from Britain, and the international fallout that this might create.^[119]