A Colony in Africa

Abstract

Southern Rhodesia in the early 1950s was not a colony in the usual sense of the term, and its history was relatively short. The land first came into the orbit of Britain’s African Empire when the pioneer column of adventurers, traders and would-be farmers travelled north in 1890. It was given its name in 1895 by the administrator of the British South Africa Company, which virtually owned the territory, and ran it until 1923. The impetus to drive north from South Africa (into what are now Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia) came from Cecil Rhodes who, by the 1890s, had created a huge business empire based on the diamond mines of Kimberley and the gold mines on the Witwatersrand.

On the political scene two events deserve mention. First, there was the visit of the Royal Family in 1947. Secondly, there was the movement for closer association with Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland which has become a very live issue. The post-war period has by no means been free from difficulties, but there can be little doubt that the past few years have brought Southern Rhodesia to a position far in advance of anything she has known before.

Official Year Book of Southern Rhodesia 1952 (Salisbury 1952), p 37