Between 1965, when the white minority regime in Rhodesia made a unilateral declaration of independence, and Zimbabwe's first democratic election in 1980, the Anti-Apartheid Movement campaigned as much on Zimbabwe as on South Africa. JEAN SMITH highlights these campaigns and argues that they demonstrate the shared colonial context of apartheid South Africa and white-dominated Rhodesia.
After the Rhodesian unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) in 1965, the British Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) expanded its geographic remit to include the whole of southern Africa. For the next 15 years until Zimbabwean independence in 1980, the AAM campaigned as much on Rhodesia as on South Africa. Crucially, in these campaigns, post-UDI Rhodesia was characterised as an expansion of apartheid and Rhodesia’s formal legal status as a British colony, albeit one with an unusual amount of self-governance even before 1965, provided a new means of critiquing British government policy towards Rhodesia and by extension South Africa.
From 1965, the AAM began a multi-faceted campaign which included calls for mandatory United Nations sanctions on Rhodesia and a petition which was signed by close to 10,000 people. As well as The Unholy Alliance, which connected the white minority regimes in South Africa, Angola, Mozambique and Rhodesia, the AAM published Crisis for Rhodesiaand covered the evolving situation in Rhodesia extensively in Anti-Apartheid News. The culmination of the campaign was a ‘Freedom for Rhodesia’ rally in Trafalgar Square on 26 June 1966, following a march from Marble Arch.[1]
The AAM collaborated with student groups and other left-leaning organisations, including the National Organisation of Student Rhodesia Action Groups, the Movement for Colonial Freedom and the Young Liberals.[2] AAM campaigning directly targeted negotiations between the Smith regime and the British government, advocating for genuine majority rule rather than a settlement with or ‘sell-out’ to the Smith regime, through press releases, public meetings and protests. Another tactic was to counter pro-Rhodesian propaganda by the so-called ‘kith and kin’ lobby. For instance, both the national AAM office and the Surrey AA group organised counter-demonstrations to those of the Anglo-Rhodesian Society.[3]
After the 1970 election, the AAM faced a Conservative government whose right wing supported the Smith regime and who they feared might push for a quick settlement on Rhodesia.[4] Just after the election, the AAM organised a day of action on Rhodesia and the campaign continued as the Heath government sought a resolution with the Smith regime, beginning negotiations in November 1970. [5] As well as briefings, meetings and demonstrations at both the Tory Party conference and at Rhodesia House, the AAM joined 45 other organisations to form a ‘Rhodesian Emergency Campaign Committee’. The Committee distributed publicity materials including leaflets, posters, stickers and badges and organised meetings and demonstrations leading up to a rally in Trafalgar Square on 13 February 1972, which drew 15,000 people.
In January 1973 the AAM joined the ‘Justice for Rhodesia’ campaign and after the election of a Labour government in 1974, formed a Zimbabwe working group, which called for sanctions, the withdrawal of South Africa troops from Rhodesia, and protested the Smith regime’s employment of detention without trial and execution.[6] The group organised a week of action in May 1977, hosted Joshua Nkomo, a leader of the Patriotic Front (the organisation formed from the two major liberation movements ZANU and ZAPU) and highlighted companies who had avoided sanctions, joining with the Haslemere group to publish the pamphlet, Shell and BP in South Africa.[7]
The AAM also campaigned against the talks between South Africa, the USA and the UK in August 1977, mistrustful of South Africa’s role in these negotiations. As well as producing two new leaflets and coverage in Anti-Apartheid News, the AAM held demonstrations at the Foreign Office and the residence of the Foreign Secretary. [8]
In 1978 the Salisbury Agreement or ‘internal settlement’ was agreed between the Smith regime and the moderate African nationalist leaders, Bishop Abel Muzorewa, Chief Jeremiah Chirau and Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole, which installed Muzorewa as premier. The AAM campaigned to expose this settlement as a ‘fraud’. Its publication Guardians of White Power argued that despite the internal settlement, the Rhodesian security forces would continue to keep the white minority in effective control. The AAM declared March 1979 a Month of Action on Zimbabwe, publishing a special supplement in Anti-Apartheid News and organising a national action conference held at the London School of Economics and many local meetings throughout the country.[9]
After the election of the Thatcher government in May 1979, the AAM organised a 'No Tory sell-out in Zimbabwe' demonstration in Trafalgar Square. Later that year the AAM set up the Zimbabwe Emergency Campaign Committee (ZECC), motivated by the concern that the Thatcher government would not renew sanctions. ZECC solicited support from trade unions, promoted the Patriotic Front, and campaigned for the arrest of Muzorewa for treason and judicial murder, on the grounds that executions initially halted had recommenced under his leadership.[10]
To coincide with the opening of the Lancaster House Conference on 10 September 1979, ZECC organised a march through London and a packed rally at Westminster Central Hall, addressed by the Patriotic Front leaders Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe. Once the Lancaster House agreement was reached, the AAM and ZECC campaign continued, with a focus on the perceived failure of the interim Soames administration to prevent intimidation during the elections and the continuing potential for South African military intervention.[11]After the elections, won by Mugabe’s ZANU, Zimbabwe became an independent state on 18 April 1980, bringing the AAM’s Rhodesia campaign to a close.
In their configuring of apartheid South Africa, Rhodesia and Portugal as ‘the unholy alliance’, these campaigns highlighted the ways in which the minority settler regimes of southern African supported each other. In parallel with its approach to South Africa, the AAM lobbied the British government to take a harsher stance on Rhodesia and also placed pressure on corporations with links in the region.
While these post-UDI campaigns against Rhodesian minority rule and the Smith regime have been overshadowed by the longer-running campaign against apartheid in South Africa itself, they were crucial for demonstrating the broader imperial and settler colonial context of both apartheid South Africa and the Smith regime.
Dr Jean Smith is Senior Lecturer in Liberal Arts and Interdisciplinary Education at King's College, London. She is the author of ‘The British Anti-Apartheid Movement and the UDI’ in Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence: National, Regional, International and Transnational Perspectives, edited by Hugh Pattenden, Carl P Watts and Sue Onslow, published by Bloomsbury Academic, 2025.
[1] AAM Annual Report, September 1966, p.5
[2] AAM Annual Report, September 1967, p.6; Fieldhouse, Roger. Anti-Apartheid, a History of the Movement in Britain: A Study of Pressure-Group Politics. London: The Merlin Press, 2005.
[3] Fieldhouse, Anti-Apartheid, 134.
[4] AAM Annual Report, September 1969/August 1970, p.1
[5] AAM Annual Report, September 1970/August 1971, p.17
[6] AAM Annual Report, October 1972/September 1973, p.14-16; AAM Annual Report, October 1974/September 1975, p.9-10
[7] AAM Annual Report, October 1976/September 1977, p. 13
[8] Fieldhouse, Anti-Apartheid, 137.
[9] AAM Annual Report, October 1978/September 1979, p. 7
[10] AAM Annual Report, October 1978/September 1979, p. 7
[11] AAM Annual Report, October 1979/September 1980, p. 5