The story
On November 11, 1965 Rhodesia's prime minister Ian Smith went on the radio and announced that his country was independent of Britain. Rhodesia, a self-governing British colony in southern Africa, was ruled by about 210,000 white settlers who held power over several million Africans. Britain's government demanded progress toward majority rule before independence, and Smith's Rhodesian Front refused. The Unilateral Declaration of Independence, or UDI, borrowed phrases from the American Declaration of Independence.
Britain, under Harold Wilson, ruled out sending troops but imposed sanctions, and in 1966 and 1968 the United Nations made them mandatory, the first time it did so against a state. No country formally recognized Rhodesia, but South Africa and Portugal, then ruling Mozambique, kept trade links open and oil flowed in. Rhodesia declared itself a republic in 1970. Yet the African majority was excluded from power, and from 1972 the guerrillas of ZANU and ZAPU waged a growing war. Smith's decision came just as other British colonies were winning independence under majority rule, following the shift signaled in Macmillan's Wind of Change speech of 1960.
Why it mattered
- The declaration started 15 years of isolation, sanctions and civil war in Rhodesia.
- It ended only with the Lancaster House talks of 1979 and Zimbabwe's independence in 1980.
- UDI became a test case for the use of UN sanctions against a state.
- The conflict pushed Rhodesia's African nationalists toward armed struggle and the Soviet bloc and China for help.
Sources
- Intelligence Memorandum: The Republic of Rhodesia, Economic Status and Prospects for Growth CIA Reading Room
- 1965 Rhodesia UDI Fordham University Internet History Sourcebooks
- Rhodesia/Zimbabwe (1964-present) University of Central Arkansas
Drafted by AI (Claude) from the sources above and checked against them by AI; no historian has reviewed this page. Spot a mistake? Suggest a correction. How pages are made
Community notes
Loading notes…