“We totally reject Southern Rhodesian constitutional agreement as treacherous to three million Africans.” – Leopold Takawira, National Democratic Party (NDP) Secretary for External Affairs in 1961 following attempts by some nationalists to accept a proposed new constitution.

THE most bizarre issue about Rhodesia’s treacherous rule was its systematic sidelining of blacks from participating in elections through their nauseating demands for such simple things like academic qualifications and property ownership among others.
This is despite the fact that opportunities for blacks to acquire the required qualifications were limited, hence Takawira and other nationalists’ understandable fury.
Without doubt, while the Constitution was about consolidating whites’ hegemonic control of the colony, it in fact perpetuated the sidelining of locals from taking part in the country’s political and economic affairs.
For instance, elections in Southern Rhodesia were used from 1899 to 1923 to elect part of the Legislative Council and from 1924 to elect the whole of the Legislative Assembly which governed the colony.
This Council was made up of whites, with token blacks accommodated into the governance system being used to give a semblance of dignity to the openly anti-black establishment.
From 1899 to 1962, the Rhodesian Assembly comprised members elected to represent constituencies on a first-past-the-post principle.
The 1961 Constitution, which sparked a furious reaction from aggrieved nationalists, was just the beginning of what was to become a trend in which stringent conditions were demanded from blacks for them to participate in elections.
The Constitution adopted what was a complex system intended to extend the franchise to wider sections of the community, including non-whites, but without immediately bringing white rule to an end.
Under the 1961 Constitution, the Rhodesian Assembly had 65 elected members: 50 constituency members and 15 district members.
The voters’ rolls were premised on education, property and income qualifications.
The main ‘A’ roll was for citizens who satisfied high standards in these regards and 95 percent of its members were white with five percent black or Asian.
The ‘B’ roll had lower qualification standards and 90 percent of its members were black while 10 percent were white or Asian.
Angry nationalist groups objected to the 1961 Constitution and urged those eligible to vote not to register, and those who had registered not to vote.
In response, few eligible Africans did register to vote, and ‘B’-roll voter turnout in the 1962 election was less than 25 percent.
For instance in the vast ‘B’ roll constituency of Highfield Dr Arhn Palley won with less than 100 votes
This marked the beginning of the ‘One-Man-One-Vote’ campaign.
The 1962 general election was a turning point for the worst for Zimbabweans since it resulted in the election of a Rhodesia Front Government led by Winston Field that was incredibly ‘committed to independence without majority rule and to the continued separate development of white and black communities in Rhodesia’.
The defeated Whitehead had ‘been committed to slow progress to majority rule’ it was claimed.
Then came the much maligned Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) on November 11 1965.
When Smith took over from Field on April 2 1964 he immediately got to the business of suppressing blacks, culminating in UDI the following year.
On March 20 1976, Smith gave a televised speech, including what became his most quoted utterance: “I don’t believe in majority rule ever in Rhodesia – not in
1 000 years.”
Talks with Britain in 1966, 1968 and 1971 came to nothing.
It was in 1969 that Smith finally sealed the fate of blacks with hostile proposals in the new Constitution.
The Constitution ‘permitted’ Africans to elect eight members to the Parliament of 66 seats.
Smith argued that blacks were not clever enough to make decisions for themselves and proposed that a further eight would be elected from chiefs and headmen.
The ‘A’ and ‘B’ rolls would be eliminated as would cross-voting. African representation would be determined by the payment of income tax to the national exchequer.
It was suggested that, in the far future, when Africans paid an amount of income tax equivalent to that paid by Europeans, they would have a parity of representation; 50 seats in the national Parliament of 100 members.
When that would happen would be determined by the whites whose leader had predicted 1 000 years.
The introduction of a Senate was envisaged with 23 members; 10 Europeans and 10 Africans who would all be chiefs.
The British, meanwhile, tried to knock sense into him (Smith), but with no success.
He argued he had done ‘enough’ for blacks and could not go beyond his 1969 proposals.
In 1971, he held talks with British Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary, Alec Douglas–Home and agreed to a settlement that would theoretically provide for majority rule in the longer term, in his mind a thousand years.
That yielded nothing.
On the last day of 1971, a commission chaired by Lord Pearce was dispatched to Rhodesia with instructions to conduct a ‘test of acceptability’, studying Rhodesian opinion in order to ascertain if the fifth principle had indeed been met and if the Home-Smith Agreement could be implemented.
There was a resounding ‘no’ vote from the blacks as the principle of one-person –one vote was non-negotiable.
But that only spurred nationalists to intensify the struggle against Smith which ended his anti-blacks stance and with it his wish for whites to rule Zimbabwe for
1 000 years.