By Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu

THE period between the beginning of 1963 when the Rhodesia Front (RF) replaced the United Federal Party (UFP) as the Southern Rhodesian administration, up to November 11 1965 when the RF made a unilateral declaration of independence was most trying to all progressive anti-imperialist nations.
Joshua Nkomo had since 1958 internationalised the Southern Rhodesia decolonisation issue, making Southern Rhodesia’s independence an important United Nations (UN) Security Council matter.
The British Government had, meanwhile, shown at the UN that it would repeatedly use its veto to block any attempt to democratise its controversial colony that is Southern Rhodesia.
For their part, the oppressed people of that British territory realised that the British government had no wish to grant them majority rule soon.
That was very much unlike the protectorates of Northern Rhodesia (later Zambia) and Nyasaland (later Malawi) for which processes were underway to grant them independence sooner than later.
That would be preceded, of course, by the break-up of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland on December 31 1963, leaving Southern Rhodesia groaning under white minority settler rule, and the painful possibility that, the regime would seize independence illegally.
As time ticked away, the RF piling more and more political pressure on Britain for independence, a section of the RF national leadership lost confidence in its leader, Winston Joseph Field, whom it replaced with Ian Douglas Smith in 1964.
In Britain, meanwhile, a general election that same year ushered in the Labour Party at the head of which was Harold Wilson, a university don, who became the Prime Minister.
He stunned the entire world by publicly ruling out the use of military force in Southern Rhodesia, not even in the event of UDI.
The militant, newly-formed Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), had repeatedly declared that the black people of Zimbabwe must realise and accept that they were their own liberators.
That had been strengthened by the British Government’s handing over of the Royal Rhodesia Air Force (RRAF) combat aircraft to the RF regime at the dissolution of the Federation on December 31 1963.
That was in effect a practical way of arming the white minority settler-regime against the oppressed black majority of Zimbabwe. That happened in spite of very loud and strong protests by Zambian and Malawian leaders, as well as those of both ZANU and ZAPU.
Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda actually publicly told the world at large and Britain in particular, that the Rhodesian Front regime would use those aircraft against Zambia and other independent neighbouring African states sooner or later.
It is important to remember how callously the British Government favoured the Rhodesian white minority regime with that military hardware whenever we talk about bombing by the Rhodesia Airforce of Nyadzonia, Chimoio in Mozambique, and that of Mkushi, Freedom and JZ camps in Zambia, and two or three other refugee centres in Angola and Botswana.
The shooting down later of two-or-so civilian aircraft by ZIPRA combatants along the Zambezi River should be appreciated in that context.
The ZANU slogan: ‘We are our own liberators’ had a lot of common sense because it was utterly unrealistic to expect the British Government to use military force against its very own white sons and daughters in order to free us, black people, who were oppressed and exploited by those British sons and daughters.”
There was some preparations for Britain to grant Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland independence shortly after the imminent dissolution of the Federation.
But there was no sign or indication that Southern Rhodesia would progress in the same or similar political direction sooner or later.
The British Government, in fact, insisted that the black people of that colony should use the 1961 Constitution to achieve their political independence goals.
However, those were not achievable in the foreseeable future on the basis of the 1961 constitution.
As for the Rhodesia Front regime, its objective was to be granted independence by Britain more or less in the same year as Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland or to seize it unilaterally.
The RF was determined to turn Southern Rhodesia into another white settlers’ heritage just as was done to Australia, New Zealand and Canada by Britain.
Earlier, South Africa also had been treated as a white-ruled dominion of the British Commonwealth, but had ignominously withdrawn from that club because of its unacceptable apartheid racialistic policy and practices in 1961.
The RF regime had the support of Portugal which is Britain’s oldest military ally, having signed an alliance with England as long ago as 1373.
The South African Boer dictatorship under Johannes Balthazar Vorster, a self-confessed fascist, also offered to stand by the RF administration, even in the event it made a UDI.
Having categorically ruled out military intervention, the British Government told the world that if the Rhodesian regime seized independence illegally, it would ask the UN to impose sanctions, including an oil embargo under the UN Charter.
The British Government then vetoed several times UN attempts to pass resolutions for Britain to use military force if the RF administration made a UDI.
For their part, pioneer freedom-fighters had realised that Zimbabwe (Southern Rhodesia) would come into being only through armed struggle and not through the usual, traditional constitutional negotiations.
Zimbabwean freedom-fighters had established and maintained offices in four countries since about 1959 when Joshua Nkomo stopped for a while in Cairo, Egypt, where he opened a representative’s office in that city.
He later opened a second office in London, and much later in Dar es Salaam in the then Tanganyika (later Tanzania) in 1961.
Stand-alone Zimbabwean freedom-fighters’ offices were opened in Lusaka, Zambia, in 1963 when that country’s government was virtually entirely African-controlled.
Initial preparations had been made by Joshua Nkomo for six volunteers to be trained in rudimentary military training in Ghana in 1959.
Those were Mark Nziramasanga from Zvimba, Zephaniah Sihwa and Sikwili Kohli Moyo from Gwanda, Edward ‘Mzwayi’ Bhebhe from Kezi, a Mudavanhu from the then Salisbury (now Harare), and a Mtisi from the Midlands.
It was while Jason ‘Ziyapapa’ Moyo (JZ) was in Ghana for the official passout parade of these six first military recruits of Zimbabwe’s Second Chimurenga that JZ spoke to Cde Robert Mugabe about joining the struggle, and Cde Mugabe came back home the following year.
Criticism against the leadership of Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle become quite common soon after Nyasaland (Malawi) and Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) achieved independence in 1964.
Two countries in which the narrator of this account met scathing criticism from some political leaders were Kenya and Cyprus.
In Kenya, the feeling was that Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) was still under white minority rule because the black people of that land would rather be called ‘boy, girl or nanny’ by white people (including little children ) as long as they were assured of a plate of ‘ugali’ (sadza) at the end of the day.
We were accused of having not heard about or learned from the Mau Mau of 1952 to 1960 in Kenya.
Some Kenyan critics said many white settlers had left Kenya to settle in Southern Rhodesia because the black people of that land were ‘too timid’ to free their country.
“Why did we ask and expect Britain to send its soldiers to fight its soldiers in our country for our freedom?” some of them asked rhetorically.
In Cyprus, the criticism was based on a perception that unlike people of Greek extraction and cultural background, the black people of Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) could not produce an equivalent of Colonel George Grivas, leader of the underground Eoka military uprising.
Our critics were also of the opinion that we lacked the courage and self-esteem of the Greek philosophers such as Socrates who would rather stoically drink a cup of the deadly hemlock than gainsay himself.
That opinion was later strengthened by Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole’s denial in a Salisbury court that he was opposed to an armed revolution because, as a man of God, he was ‘against violence, in word, thought and deed’.
Needless to say that as a result of that anti-revolutionary declaration in a magistrate’s court, other ZANU leaders immediately replaced him with his deputy president, Leopold Takawira, as the top most ZANU leader.
The criticism stated above did not, however, take into objective consideration the difference of the type of colonialism Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), Nyasaland (Malawi), and Kenya on one hand were under, and the one under which Southern Rhodesia was on the other.
Zambia, Malawi and Kenya were protectorates whose effective laws were enacted at the colonial office in London.
Those of Southern Rhodesia were made in that country proper.
Only the Governor was appointed by the British monarch.
That was why the Southern Rhodesian prime minister was invited to the Commonwealth heads of state conferences, although he did not participate in discussions.
If Britain’s colonial policy had not been overtaken by what one of its successive prime ministers, Harold Macmillan, termed ‘winds of change’, Southern Rhodesia could have sooner or later become another ‘dominion’, joining New Zealand, Australia and Canada.
In fact, one of the developments that worked in the political favour of the black people of Southern Rhodesia was that the country became a component of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, a situation that stopped it from drifting in the early 1950s towards South Africa, then another ‘dominion’ of the Commonwealth.
Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu is a retired, Bulawayo-based journalist. He can be contacted on cell 0734 328 136 or through email: sgwakuba@gmail.com