A small number of people of European ethnic origin first came as settlers to the African country now known as Zimbabwe during the late nineteenth century. A steady immigration of white people followed after the end of WWII, and to avoid African rule (commonly referred to at the time as the Wind Of Change), Southern Rhodesia illegally broke away under a unilateral declaration of independence and the self-governing country known as Rhodesia was established. Up to the end of the 1970s, white people were the privileged ethnic group in the country, although their numbers never exceeded 300,000, or about 5.5% of the population.
As was the case (to varying degrees) in most European colonies in Africa and Asia, white immigrants took a privileged position in many areas of society. However, the position in Rhodesia was distinguished by the fact that the local white minority entrenched its political, economic and social dominance of the country. Extensive areas of prime farmland were reserved for white people only. Senior positions in the public services were reserved for white people, and white people working in manual occupations enjoyed legal protection against job competition from Africans. As time passed, this situation became increasingly unwelcome to the majority ethnic groups within Zimbabwe and also to wide sections of international opinion.
After the country's independence as Zimbabwe in 1980, white people had to adjust to being an ethnic minority in a country with an African government. Many white people emigrated in the early 1980s, being uncertain about their future, but many remained. Political unrest and the illegal seizure of farms resulted in a further exodus commencing in 1999. Two white farmers and an unknown number of African farmworkers were killed while defending their farms from these seizures. The 2002 census recorded 46,743 white people remaining in Zimbabwe. More than 10,000 were elderly and fewer than 9,000 were under the age of 15.
Background
Zimbabwe (then known as Southern Rhodesia and later just as Rhodesia) was selected as a settlement colony by South African, British and Afrikaner colonists from the 1890s onwards, following the subjugation of the Matabele, (Ndebele), and Shona nations by the British South Africa Company (BSAC). The early white settlers came in search of mineral resources, finding deposits of coal, chromium, nickel, platinum, and gold. They also found some of the best farmland in Africa. The central part of Rhodesia is a plateau which varies in altitude between 900 m and 1,500 m (2,950 and 4,900 ft) above sea level. This gives the area a sub-tropical climate which is conducive to European settlement and agricultural practices.
The white soldiers who assisted in the BSAC takeover of the country were each given 3,000-acre (or more) land grants, and black people living on this land became tenants. Later, Land Apportionment and Tenure acts reserved extensive low rainfall areas for either black only tribal trust lands and high rainfall areas for white ownership, which gave rise to cases of black people being excluded from their own land. White settlers were attracted to Rhodesia by the availability of tracts of stolen prime farmland that could be purchased from the state at low cost. This resulted in a major feature of the Rhodesian economy—the "white farm". The white farm was typically a large (>100 km² (>38.6 mi²)) mechanised estate, owned by a white family and employing hundreds of black people. Many white farms provided housing, schools, and clinics for black employees and their families. At the time of independence in 1980, over 40% of the country's farming land was contained within 5,000 white farms. It was claimed that these farms provided 40% of the country's GDP and up to 60% of its foreign earnings. Major export products included tobacco, beef, sugar, cotton, and maize.
The minerals sector was also important. Gold, asbestos, nickel, and chrome were mined by foreign owned concerns such as Lonhro and Anglo American. These operations were usually run by white managers, engineers, and foremen.
The Census of 3 May 1921 found that Southern Rhodesia had a total population of 899,187 of whom 33,620 were Europeans, 1,998 were Coloured (mixed races), 1,250 Asiatics, 761,790 Bantu natives of Southern Rhodesia, and 100,529 Bantu aliens. The following year, Southern Rhodesians rejected, in a referendum, the option of becoming a province of the Union of South Africa. Instead, the country became a self-governing British colony. It never gained full dominion status, although unlike other colonies, it was treated as a de facto dominion, with its Prime Minister attending the Commonwealth Prime Minister's Conference.
The growth of the white community
In 1891, before Southern Rhodesia was established as a territory, it was estimated that there were about 1,500 Europeans residing there. This number grew slowly to around 75,000 in 1945. In the period 1945 to 1955 the white population doubled to 150,000. During that decade, 100,000 black people were forcibly resettled from farming land designated for white ownership. It must be noted that some members of the white farming community opposed the forced removal of black people from land designated for white ownership and some even favoured the handover of underutilized white land to black farmers. For example, in 1947 Wedza white farmer Harry Meade unsuccessfully opposed the eviction of his black neighbour Solomon Ndawa from a 500-acre irrigated wheat farm. Meade represented Ndawa at hearings of the Land Commission and attempted to protect Ndawa from abusive, racist questioning.
Large-scale white emigration to Rhodesia did not begin until after the Second World War, and at its peak in the late 1960s Rhodesia's white population consisted of as many as 270,000. There were influxes of white immigrants from the 1940s through to the early 1970s. The most conspicuous group were former British servicemen in the immediate post-war period. But many of the new immigrants were refugees from communism in Europe, others were former service personnel from colonial India, others came from Kenya, the Belgian Congo, Zambia, Algeria, and Mozambique. For a time, Rhodesia provided something of a haven for white people who were retreating from decolonisation elsewhere in Africa and Asia.
Rhodesian white settlers were considered different in character to white settlers in other British colonies. Settlers in Kenya were perceived to be drawn from 'the officer class' and from the British land owning class. Settlers in Rhodesia were perceived to be drawn from lower social strata and were treated accordingly by the British authorities:
However, it should be noted that white people never amounted to more than 5.5% of the country's total population (that is, 270,000 white people divided by 5 million total population in 1970). Also, the white farming community never amounted to more than around 8% of the total white population and this proportion fell steadily after 1945 up to independence in 1980.
Various factors encouraged the growth of the white population of Rhodesia. These included the industrialisation and prosperity of the economy in the post-War period and the fact that the National Party victory in the 1948 South African general election made that country less friendly to British settlement and investment than was previously the case. It was also apparent as early as the 1950s that white rule would continue for longer in Rhodesia than it would in other British colonies such as Zambia (Northern Rhodesia) and Kenya. Many of the new immigrants had a "not here" attitude to majority rule and independence.
Rhodesia was run by a white minority government. In 1965 that government declared itself independent through a Unilateral Declaration of Independence ('UDI') under Prime Minister Ian Smith. The UDI project eventually failed, after a period of UN economic sanctions and a civil war known as the Chimurenga (Shona) or Bush War. British colonial rule returned in December 1979 (as 'The British Dependency of Southern Rhodesia'). The country then became the independent state of Zimbabwe in April 1980.
One characteristic of white settlement in Rhodesia was that the white community kept itself largely separate from the black and Asian communities in the country. Urban white people lived in separate areas of town, and white people had their own segregated education, healthcare and recreational facilities. Marriage between black and white people was possible, but remains to the present day very rare. The 1903 Immorality Suppression Ordinance made "illicit" (i.e. unmarried) sex between black men and white women illegal – with a penalty of two years imprisonment for any offending white woman. The majority of the early white immigrants were men, so many white men entered into relationships with black women. The result was a large number of mixed-race persons, some of whom were accepted as being white. A proposal by Garfield Todd (Prime Minister, 1953-1958) to liberalise laws on inter-racial sex was viewed as dangerously radical. The proposal was rejected and was one factor that led to the political demise of Todd.
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