It is a well-worn adage that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (Santayana Reference Santayana1905, 284). In turbulent times, we probe the past for lessons that can help us build a better future. An understanding of history is especially critical in today’s world, which is threatened by the devastating effects of climate change, war, and poverty, and the mass human migrations that ensue. On nearly every continent, dictators have emerged, promising to right the wrongs of earlier eras and to restore law and order in increasingly chaotic societies. Rather than meet these life-threatening challenges head-on, however, they have shuttered archives, censored museums, erased official websites, and recrafted the historical narrative to glorify themselves and condemn others. With the less privileged as their foot soldiers, these autocrats and their cronies routinely blame the victims and rally those who have little against those who have not. By dividing, conquering, and deflecting the blame, they seize power and enrich themselves in the process.
Southern Africa, 1982. (Map by Philip Schwartzberg, Meridian Mapping, Minneapolis.).
Figure 1. Long description
The map displays the Southern African subcontinent with shaded relief indicating mountainous terrain.
In the North, countries include Congo with Brazzaville, Zaire with Kinshasa and Lubumbashi, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania. Major lakes in this region are Lake Victoria, Lake Tanganyika, and Lake Malawi.
In the Central region, Angola is on the West coast with Luanda and Huambo. Zambia is landlocked in the center with Lusaka. Malawi and Mozambique are to the East, with Mozambique bordering the Indian Ocean and the Mozambique Channel. Zimbabwe is labeled as Zimbabwe /Rhodesia with Harare/ Salisbury and Bulawayo.
In the South, Namibia borders the Atlantic Ocean to the West with Windhoek. Botswana is central, containing the Kalahari Desert and Gaborone. South Africa occupies the southernmost portion with cities including Pretoria, Johannesburg, Bloemfontein, Cape Town, and Port Elizabeth. The small nations of Swaziland and Lesotho are located within or bordering South Africa’s eastern side.
Key geographical markers include the Caprivi Strip extending from Namibia, the Zambezi River flowing through the center, and the Limpopo River in the South. A scale bar at the bottom left indicates 0 to 500 miles.
In the United States, the Donald J. Trump administration is recasting the historical narrative to exclude the role of immigrants, racial minorities, and women in building the country. To do this effectively, countervailing evidence must be secreted or destroyed. Hence, following his first term in office, President Trump refused to surrender documents that rightfully belong to the National Archives and Records Administration, spiriting them away to his Florida estate. In the opening months of his second term, he fired the keepers of the historical record—including the heads of the National Archives and the Library of Congress, their staffers, and the nonpartisan advisory board of historians who compile the multivolume compendium of official documents, Foreign Relations of the United States. Deprived of these records, the public is denied the ability to learn the lessons of history that can help us better understand the state of the world today, the pitfalls that might be in store, and how we might effectively deal with them.
This article is based largely on the evidence found in declassified documents read in the United States National Archives in 2024, just months before the beginning of Trump’s second term. It examines the case of Southern Rhodesia, a white minority-ruled settler colony in Southern Africa that was established in 1890 when Cecil Rhodes led the Pioneer Column from South Africa into the gold-rich land of the Shona people (Figure 1). Initially run by the British South Africa Company, chartered by the British crown, Southern Rhodesia was granted self-government in 1923. Modeling itself on South Africa, the all-white government seized African land and herded indigenous inhabitants into impoverished reserves, thus creating a ready labor force for white-owned mines and industries. After World War II, African populations in the colonies, who provided resources and personnel for the British war effort, began agitating for political independence. In 1965, the white minority government in Southern Rhodesia declared independence in order to escape the imposition of majority rule by a British monarchy under pressure from African States, organizations, and movements.Footnote 1
While Western powers publicly condemned Rhodesia’s illegal secession, which lacked Britain’s stamp of approval, they also enabled the continuation of white rule by violating United Nations sanctions and shielding the regime from the use of force. These events offer lessons for today as the erosion of democracy in the West evokes all-too-tepid responses and white supremacists have openly embraced Rhodesia as a model for the establishment of a white supremacist state in the United States (Robles et al. Reference Robles, Horowitz and Dewan2015; Ismay Reference Ismay2018).
In the United States today, as in Rhodesia’s past, the constitutional rights of people of color are not accorded the same respect as those granted to whites—whether it be freedom of speech, due process of the law, or immigration and residency status. In the 1960s and 70s, the persistence of officially sanctioned racism and discrimination were frequently denied and abuses covered up. Presidents of African governments, although patronized and demeaned behind closed doors, were courted in the diplomatic arena. Play-acting was deemed to be in the national interest. However, in Trump’s “America First” world, there is no longer shame or jeopardy in official racism. A compliant Congress and Supreme Court have helped Trump cast aside the constitutional checks and balances that have prevented the establishment of an autocracy for nearly 250 years. This serious constitutional crisis threatens the future of American democracy. Lessons from Rhodesia’s past can help us understand the urgency of the present situation and the devastating consequences of failure to bring about a just resolution.
Rhodesia’s story
What follows is Rhodesia’s story. The Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) by Prime Minister Ian Smith and his all-white Rhodesian Front party on November 11, 1965 came amid widespread decolonization on the African continent.Footnote 2 Under pressure from mass movements for political change that arose after World War II, the United Kingdom had been forced to grant independence to most of its colonies by 1965. Although the nations were politically independent, Britain hoped to maintain access and influence through the Commonwealth, an organization that brought together former British colonies under the leadership of the British monarch.Footnote 3 The United States, although a staunch British ally, hoped that independence would allow it to increase its influence in the newly established African states which had become a formidable force not only in the Commonwealth, but also in the United Nations.
A good relationship was not preordained. Charles Runyon, assistant legal advisor for African Affairs in the State Department, noted in 1967 that the creation of thirty-four new states in Africa was a shock to many US diplomats. The fledgling nations promoted their own interests and were “no longer responsive to our arm-twisting.”Footnote 4 When white-ruled Rhodesia declared independence in 1965, African members of the Commonwealth rallied under the slogan, “No Independence Before Majority Rule,” commonly referred to as “NIBMAR” (Good Reference Good1973, chap. 7). Many threatened to leave the Commonwealth if London failed to impose this mandate. Although it was sympathetic to Rhodesian whites, most of whom had emigrated from the United Kingdom or South Africa after World War II, Britain denounced Rhodesia’s illegal action and refused to recognize its independence until it showed a willingness to move toward majority rule.Footnote 5
Despite its claims, the United Kingdom quickly undermined its public display of opposition. Describing the Rhodesian outlaws as “kith and kin,” London declared that it would not use force to bring Rhodesia back to legality. It also opposed all-out economic warfare. Instead, it proposed a set of limited economic sanctions, the purpose of which was not to bring Ian Smith to his knees, but to make the rogue prime minister “reasonable.” It urged the international community to do likewise (Schmidt Reference Schmidt1987, 8; 2013, 116).Footnote 6
African and Asian states in the Commonwealth and the UN demonstrated their agency by successfully opposing the preferred options of more powerful nations. However, their sphere of influence was limited. Only the UN Security Council had enforcement powers, and on the Rhodesia question, the Western-dominated Security Council followed Britain’s lead. The Security Council proceeded slowly, hoping that minimal measures would resolve the problem. The initial set of UN sanctions, imposed in November 1965, were voluntary. A series of limited but mandatory sanctions followed. It was not until May 1968 that the Security Council imposed comprehensive mandatory sanctions, prohibiting any diplomatic, economic, or military relationship with the rebel state.Footnote 7
Even then, the United States supported the imposition of stronger sanctions not for altruistic reasons, but rather only when it became clear that African states would support “more extreme measures” if it did not. State Department documents do not reveal concern about growing repression in Rhodesia, including press censorship, bans on political parties, and detention without trial. Instead, official correspondence focused on the fear that the longer the situation remained unresolved, the more likely it was that African states would gain UN support for their calls for military intervention and the extension of sanctions to South Africa and Portugal. Worse still, the new African nations might throw their allegiance to the Soviet Union and China, thus strengthening the communist bloc in the world arena.Footnote 8
The piecemeal way in which sanctions were instituted and the lag time of over two years before comprehensive mandatory sanctions were imposed gave Rhodesia time to restructure its economy, develop new markets, and devise sophisticated means of selling its products and purchasing oil and capital goods clandestinely. It found willing partners on several continents. Some UN member states openly flouted the sanctions resolutions. Apartheid South Africa and the Portuguese colonial regime in Mozambique served as conduits for Rhodesian imports and exports. They ignored the UN call for a boycott of Rhodesian goods—helping the outlaw state sell its products and supplying it with petroleum, military equipment, and foreign exchange.Footnote 9
The United States was aware of the duplicity. In April 1968, the State Department informed US National Security Advisor Walt Rostow that the selective mandatory sanctions imposed on Rhodesia after UDI were only “loosely observed.” White-ruled South Africa and the Portuguese colony of Mozambique were the biggest violators. As a result, African and Asian members of the UN General Assembly were pushing for the use of force against the Smith regime—or for “the imposition of broader sanctions backed by enforcement measures to assure South African and Portuguese compliance.” However, Britain and the United States were “adamantly opposed … to the use of force in Southern Rhodesia or to coercive measures which would entail an economic confrontation with South Africa and Portugal,” both of which were important allies. As tensions grew, Washington and London finally agreed to discuss the possibility of comprehensive mandatory sanctions in order to deflect “more radical measures” promoted by the Global South.Footnote 10 As a result, in May 1968, when the UN Security Council voted unanimously to impose comprehensive mandatory sanctions on Rhodesia, neither country vetoed the measure.Footnote 11
Despite the weakness in the Western response, the United States publicly claimed to support majority rule. However, behind the scenes it cast aside democracy, orchestrating the replacement of “radical nationalist” leaders with moderate US allies. Washington’s ultimate objective was not democracy, but rather to placate the US civil rights movement and to thwart communist encroachment in Africa. If it failed to oppose the white minority regime, the Lyndon Johnson administration feared that it might drive newly independent African states toward the communist powers and away from its own orbit.
Regardless of this public stance, many in the US government were sympathetic to Rhodesian whites. The United States also had strong ties to Portugal, a NATO member that provided the United States with critical Cold War services, and to apartheid South Africa, where it had significant economic interests.Footnote 12
Washington’s two-pronged strategy
Faced with conflicting interests, Washington devised a two-pronged strategy. It would publicly denounce the breakaway state but privately engage in actions that prolonged its life and protected both South Africa and Portugal. Like many Western powers, the United States looked the other way as its businesses and industries engaged in covert sanctions busting.
Recently declassified documents cast light on Washington’s subterfuge. In a secret State Department memorandum issued prior to a January 1967 National Security Council meeting, National Security Advisor Walt Rostow was instructed to underscore US interest in retaining its political influence in Africa:
Continued lack of movement toward a Rhodesian solution could be exploited by extreme African elements as well as by the Communists … Our goals are to avoid a racial war in Southern Rhodesia and serious deterioration in race relations elsewhere in Africa …. We share the British view that a phased movement toward majority rule in Rhodesia is the best way to achieve our aims.
Furthermore, the United States must “continue its policy of non-recognition of the Smith regime in order to protect our credibility and position throughout Africa.”Footnote 13 These secret instructions, which prioritized US political and economic interests over concern for African struggles for civil rights, were not communicated to the general public.
Douglas MacArthur II, assistant secretary of state for Congressional relations, offered a similar assessment, proclaiming that “United States policy towards Southern Rhodesia is guided by a desire to see a peaceful transition to independence under a government based on the consent of the governed, regardless of race.” Only then could Rhodesia become “a stable member of the … free world.” The alternative, he argued,
is a frustrated majority of 4,000,000 Africans under the domination of less than 220,000 Europeans, ripe for Communist infiltration and very likely leading to the very chaos in Southern Africa that it’s our policy to avoid.
MacArthur concluded with the warning, “We know of no Communist threat to Southern Rhodesia at present, but we fear one may develop if the colony continues on its present course.”Footnote 14 Seemingly, MacArthur’s concern about race-based political repression was important primarily because it could lead to communist advancement in the “free world.”
Worries about the Organization of African Unity
The Commonwealth and UN General Assembly were not the only venues that posed a challenge to Western hegemony. The Organization of African Unity (OAU), established in 1963 by independent African states, was another arena of struggle. The OAU Liberation Committee promoted national liberation in African territories still under colonial or white minority rule and provided liberation movements with economic, military, and diplomatic support. OAU members did not hesitate to expose states that collaborated with the Rhodesian regime and to castigate them for their hypocrisy. Worried about their ability to retain the allegiance of African states if their collusion with the white-run states was exposed, both the United States and the United Kingdom considered the organization an existential threat.
Immediately after Rhodesia’s declaration of independence, the OAU passed a resolution criticizing the UK’s weak response. When Prime Minister Harold Wilson declared that the United Kingdom would oppose the use of force and offered instead a handful of voluntary sanctions, the OAU warned that if Britain did not apply stronger measures, including the use of force permitted under a UN Chapter VII mandate, OAU members would break diplomatic ties.Footnote 15 They set December 15, 1965 as the deadline.Footnote 16 As a result, the month after Rhodesia’s secession, nearly a dozen African countries severed diplomatic ties with the United Kingdom. The US Embassy in Cairo noted that the countries that broke ties were the “most experienced in anti-colonial struggle and politically mature.”Footnote 17
There was more bad news for the West. Ethiopian Minister of State Mammo Tadessa, a staunch ally of the West, informed the US ambassador that no one in the Ethiopian government—or in Africa, for that matter—thought that sanctions alone could bring Rhodesia back into compliance. He noted that most Africans did not believe that either the United States or the United Kingdom would undertake actions that might hurt their “greater interests” by adversely affecting Portugal, a NATO ally, or South Africa, where the United Kingdom, especially, had significant economic and kinship ties. Finally, because both London and Washington had ruled out force unless law and order were threatened, even the moderate Tadessa proclaimed that “Africa must create such conditions.”Footnote 18 Edward M. Korry, the US ambassador to Ethiopia, worried that the United States was “about to embark upon a program of ... support of an operation that may have little chance of success and that has implicit risks” for Washington’s significant interests elsewhere on the continent. He concluded:
I confess that in the light of our record the past decade from Suez through the Congo, Dominican Republic, and Vietnam, it is difficult to explain to any intelligent African why [the United States] is aligning itself to the British principle that the use of maximum pressures would be immoral or ineffective.Footnote 19
Exceptions for Portugal and South Africa
Shortly after Rhodesia’s declaration of independence in November 1965, the UN Security Council urged member states to break economic ties to Rhodesia and to cease supplying the rogue regime with petroleum and petroleum products. South Africa and Portugal refused to comply.Footnote 20 In February 1966, South Africa’s Cape Argus newspaper published photographs of fuel tankers passing through the Beit Bridge border post that separated South Africa from Rhodesia.Footnote 21 The Security Council responded with a stronger resolution in April that called on the United Kingdom to stop the flow of oil through the Mozambican port of Beira, using force if necessary.Footnote 22 However, the flow continued unabated. Garfield Todd, a former prime minister of Southern Rhodesia and staunch opponent of the Smith regime, disclosed that from his ranch he could see daily trains of eighteen to thirty tankers carrying oil to Rhodesia from South Africa. He reported the traffic to the British government, not realizing that the government not only knew that these breaches were occurring, but that it was cooperating with the sanctions violators.Footnote 23
Like the United Kingdom, the United States said one thing but did another. In a secret State Department telegram, George Ball, undersecretary of state for economic and agricultural affairs, expressed his quandary. He believed that economic sanctions might not work absent the threat of force. However, he was concerned that force, authorized under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, might “poison” US relations with Portugal and South Africa—resulting in Portugal leaving NATO and jeopardizing US use of the Azores base, which serviced three-quarters of US military traffic to Europe and the Middle East during the Cold War. He also worried that the Security Council might expand the trade embargo to include Portugal and South Africa, threatening the United States’ and United Kingdom’s strategic and economic interests.Footnote 24
Washington’s determination to protect its allies—while publicly denouncing white minority rule in Rhodesia—was the essence of the two-pronged strategy. Between November 1965 and May 1968, neither Portugal nor South Africa responded to pleas to make concessions that might limit actions against them. In May 1966, Thomas McElhiney, director of the State Department’s Office of Eastern and Southern African Affairs, warned that “Portugal by helping break the boycott was calling African attention to itself and its African territories.” Unless the flow of goods was halted, McElhiney was certain that the Security Council would extend mandatory sanctions to include South Africa and Portugal—a move that “could be stopped only by a veto.” Given their desire to retain African allies and prevent an opening to the communists, he doubted that either the United States or Britain would veto such a resolution, which would expose the disjuncture between their words and actions.Footnote 25
Later that year, the US Consul General in Cape Town advised South African Prime Minister John Vorster to distance Pretoria from Rhodesia in order to evade the anger of “extreme Afro-Asians” in the Commonwealth, who would push for embargos on South Africa if it continued to support the rebel regime.Footnote 26 Vorster refused to budge, and the United States continued to protect South Africa as an ally.
The Rhodesian Information Office
If Washington’s protection of South Africa and Portugal was not sufficient evidence, subsequent events shredded even the facade of US support for majority rule. Before UDI, Rhodesians Kenneth Towsey and Henry J.C. Hooper were attached to the British Embassy in Washington, DC, where they served as diplomatic representatives for Rhodesia. When they threw their support to the breakaway regime, the United Kingdom revoked their diplomatic status. Nonetheless, they remained in the United States.Footnote 27 Towsey and Hooper subsequently opened the Rhodesian Information Office in Washington to promote the regime’s interests. They disseminated films and literature that promoted immigration, provided employment information for potential settlers, addressed groups of US citizens, and gave interviews to US radio and television stations. African countries protested vehemently.Footnote 28
As criticism mounted, Washington was forced to respond. The State Department argued that the Rhodesian Information Office had not broken any laws, so the government did not have the power to shut it down. In fact, it was incumbent on the United States to respect Towsey and Hooper’s freedom of speech, which the US Constitution granted to all persons in the United States. Finally, the United States “could not arbitrarily silence persons who stayed within the bounds of our democratic system.” State Department officials insisted that permitting the establishment of the Information Office in no way implied recognition of the Smith government.Footnote 29
Rather than expelling Towsey and Hooper when they no longer held British diplomatic status, the United States had permitted the pair to acquire new credentials as registered foreign agents of the Rhodesian Ministry of Information. This status permitted them to remain in the United States and to engage in propaganda on behalf of foreign interests—even though their foreign benefactor was not recognized by the United States.Footnote 30 Despite these concessions, both agents hoped to gain further protections and privileges as permanent resident aliens or as nonimmigrants with the right to work in the United States for a specified period of time.
Official US policy masked differences of opinion within the Johnson administration. Charles Runyon, the State Department’s assistant legal adviser for African affairs, argued that the attorney general was empowered, but not required, to change an applicant’s status from one category to another. If he determined that it was not in the best interest of the United States to accommodate Towsey and Hooper’s request, he could reject their applications even if they had not broken any law. If they did not leave voluntarily, deportation measures could begin.Footnote 31 US ambassador to the UN Arthur Goldberg concurred. Urging the government to close the Information Office and force its officials to leave, he noted that a growing number of African and other UN representatives were “expressing bewilderment and concern” about the contradictions in US policy. In an appeal to Washington he wrote, “I urge the USG to send a letter now requesting departure, followed if necessary by the initiation of formal deportation proceedings.” Finally, Goldberg concluded, “It would be particularly helpful if some concrete step could be taken before the February 27 OAU meeting.”Footnote 32
Matters were not settled before the OAU foreign ministers’ meeting in February 1966. In fact, officials in the State Department and other agencies battled out their differences for several years. In 1969, Elizabeth Engdahl, chief of the State Department’s Field Operations Division in the Visa Office, strongly opposed Hooper’s application for another adjustment of status to permanent resident, which would permit him both to remain in the United States and to come and go as he pleased. In a letter to the Department of Justice’s Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), she argued:
The Department of State believes that the exercise of the Attorney General’s discretionary authority to grant a change of status in this instance could place the United States Government in a position directly inconsistent with the requirements of the United Nations Security Council Resolution No. 253 of May 29, 1968. Therefore, the [State] Department recommends that the Department of Justice deny the application for adjustment of status.
According to the May 1968 Security Council resolution, Engdahl continued, all UN member states were required to bar from their countries individuals who “have furthered or encouraged the unlawful actions of the illegal regime in Southern Rhodesia.” Hooper’s activities clearly fell within this category, Engdahl noted. If he were granted permanent resident status, he would be able to travel to and from Rhodesia to consult with the Smith regime without fear of being denied reentry into the United States. This loophole, Engdahl concluded, “could not be reconciled with the requirements of the resolution.”Footnote 33
Towsey’s case had a different outcome. In contrast to Hooper, who had applied for a change of status shortly before the mise en place of comprehensive mandatory sanctions and whose request was not acted upon until after comprehensive sanctions were imposed, Towsey had applied for a change of status prior to the imposition of comprehensive sanctions. He was granted permanent resident status in 1967, primarily because the State Department did not “want to bring on the threat of a Congressional investigation of our Southern Rhodesian policy” by its fervent opponents in the legislative branch who supported the Smith regime. Nor did it wish to give Towsey “the publicity windfall that rejection of his request to adjust his status is almost certain to give him.”Footnote 34
Behind the scenes, another plot unfolded. Senator James Eastland, a staunch segregationist from Mississippi, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and a leader of the Congressional Rhodesia lobby, asked the INS to defer Hooper’s status denial. Under pressure from Eastland, the State Department requested that Hooper not be required to leave while his case was pending—and Eastland made sure that it remained unresolved indefinitely. Five years later, the case was still pending and Hooper stayed in the United States.Footnote 35
The Byrd Amendment: Busting sanctions
The transition from the Johnson to the Nixon administration in 1969 gave hope to the Rhodesian Front. Henry Kissinger, who served the Nixon and Ford administrations as both national security advisor (1969–75) and secretary of state (1973–77), had little knowledge about or interest in Africa and was notoriously sympathetic to the white regimes.Footnote 36 In the wake of UDI, a powerful Rhodesia lobby was formed. It included Senator Harry F. Byrd, Jr. of Virginia and other pro-segregation southerners in Congress, as well as US businesses with Southern African interests. The Rhodesia lobby made significant headway on Kissinger’s watch, and it was during the Nixon administration that the most egregious violations of UN sanctions occurred.Footnote 37
In 1971, Congress passed the Byrd Amendment to the Military Procurement Authorization Act, which allowed the importation of “strategic and critical” materials from Rhodesia, including chrome and twenty-one other minerals, so long as there was no similar ban on such imports from communist countries. With the passage of the Byrd amendment, the United States became the only UN member to adopt a law that made sanctions-busting legal.Footnote 38
The Rhodesia lobby in Congress and a number of US businesses with investments in Rhodesia and South Africa had pushed hard for the amendment.Footnote 39 Supporters claimed that the loss of access to Rhodesian chrome, necessary for the production of stainless steel, aluminum, and other alloys, would force the United States to rely on the largesse of the Soviet Union for this mineral that was critical to US national security.Footnote 40
Their claim was not supported by evidence. A prominent white businessman, interviewed in Zimbabwe in 1986, scoffed at the notion. He asserted that the loss of Rhodesian chrome in no way jeopardized Western security:
The essentiality of Southern Rhodesian chrome ore … was always greatly exaggerated. We encouraged the exaggeration, obviously, because it was to our advantage to do so. … We did encourage the rumors that if we were excluded the world would go to hell in a boat, and the United States would become wholly dependent on the Soviet Union. But as I say, that was to some extent blarney—to safeguard our position.Footnote 41
The alleged communist threat was just a facade. The Congressional Record reveals that pro-segregation southerners were the primary backers of the Byrd provision and that protection of white-ruled Rhodesia was their primary objective. US businesses simply wanted to protect their profits. Since 1966, the Rhodesia lobby in Congress had introduced several bills that condemned US-Rhodesia policy and called for the lifting of sanctions. However, proposed at the height of the US civil rights movement, the bills had failed to pass. In 1970, the lobbyists changed their tactics. Instead of focusing on race, they homed in on a purported communist threat.Footnote 42
With Richard Nixon in the White House, the Rhodesia lobby found sympathizers at the highest echelons of the US government. Henry Kissinger, as Nixon’s national security advisor, had made it clear that he believed that the white regimes in Southern Africa were “here to stay and the only way that constructive change can come about is through them.” He had advocated relaxing the US stance toward the white-ruled governments—to “encourage” them to modify their racial practices (Mokoena Reference Mokoena and Mokoena1993, 198–218, esp. 211; Flower Reference Flower1987, chap. 9; Miller Reference Miller2016, chap. 7).
Sympathetic to the white regimes in Southern Africa, the Nixon administration did little to thwart the Byrd amendment’s passage.Footnote 43 However, career civil servants in the State Department’s Africa Bureau generally opposed it. They warned that blatant disregard for US obligations under the UN Charter would damage the US reputation in Africa and in the Global South more broadly. Moreover, the provision, if made into law, could adversely affect Washington’s relationship with European countries that complied with UN resolutions, no matter what the financial cost to themselves.Footnote 44
Tensions within the executive branch increased in 1973, when Kissinger assumed the office of secretary of state, while maintaining his position as Nixon’s national security advisor. Over the course of the next four years, Kissinger ran through four assistant secretaries of state for African affairs who objected to policies they were required to enforce.Footnote 45
When Jimmy Carter assumed the presidency in 1977, he knew that to regain trust and respect in Africa, the Byrd amendment had to be repealed. Andrew Young, a civil rights activist and Congressional representative from Georgia, introduced a repeal bill in the House shortly before Carter’s inauguration. Ten days after Carter took office Young assumed the position of US ambassador to the UN. Speaking to his former colleagues, he referred to the repeal measure as a referendum on US racism (Mitchell Reference Mitchell2016, 120–21, 137, 159; De Roche 2003, chap. 4).
In contrast to Nixon, Ford, and their administrations, high-level Carter officials and the president himself, lobbied hard for the Byrd amendment’s repeal. Together they called more than thirty recalcitrant legislators. Aware that the days of the Smith regime were numbered, Carter made a concerted effort to get on the right side of history—as an ally of Africans who sought majority rule (Mitchell Reference Mitchell2016, 120–21, 137, 159; De Roche 2003, chap. 4; see also De Roche 2001, chap. 7). The struggle was not easy. The Rhodesia lobby in Congress remained strong. Nonetheless, the Carter administration prevailed. On March 18, 1977, less than two months after the president took office, he signed the repeal bill into law. The Byrd provision was no more, and the United States was again in compliance with international law (Mitchell Reference Mitchell2016, 64, 728n235).
The declaration of a republic and the US consulate in Salisbury
The ongoing presence of a US consulate in Salisbury caused a controversy that transcended the boundaries of the Johnson administration (1963–69) and the Nixon administration (1969–74). After UDI, the UN Security Council urged all member states to sever their diplomatic ties to Rhodesia.Footnote 46 Although these sanctions were not mandatory, the United States reduced its consular staff from twenty-one to eight and closed the office of the United States Information Service (USIS). In May 1968 the Security Council again asked all member states to withdraw their missions, although once more doing so was not required. The United States and eight other Western countries, along with South Africa, kept their offices open.Footnote 47
Following the passage of the May 1968 Security Council resolution, the Johnson administration balked again. Washington justified continued US presence as necessary for the service of some 1,100 US citizens living in Rhodesia, most of whom, the State Department claimed, were missionaries and their families.Footnote 48 There were also unspoken intelligence concerns. On June 15, 1969, as pressure to close the US mission mounted, the consul general in Salisbury warned that if Washington closed its consulate, “we would lose our eyes and ears in a situation which is virtually certain to become more critical over the coming years in terms of Southern Africa as a whole.” He predicted internal unrest that would result in “enhanced communist-aided guerilla and other activities” throughout the region, posing serious policy dilemmas. The CIA agreed, stressing the importance of maintaining a listening post in Southern Africa.Footnote 49
Days later, a new complication emerged. On June 20, 1969, a popular referendum, involving an electorate dominated by whites representing 1.1 percent of the Rhodesian population, approved constitutional proposals that would enshrine white minority rule for the foreseeable future and sever all remaining ties to the United Kingdom, establishing in its place an independent republic.Footnote 50 The new constitution also sanctioned press censorship, preventive detention without the right to bail or trial, and a deeply unequal division of land that granted 4.5 million Africans and 228,000 whites the same amount.Footnote 51 Under pressure from African states, London finally closed its residual mission on June 24, 1969 and pressed Washington to do the same.Footnote 52
The State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs recommended closure and repatriation of the remaining staff. Shutting the consulate would express official disapproval of Rhodesian political developments and strengthen US support for British policies, the advocates wrote. It would help maintain US credibility when it dealt with African and Asian states that were pushing for the “extension of the sanctions program to South Africa and Mozambique and the use of force against Rhodesia—actions which we cannot support.” Once again, the Africa Bureau warned that continued US presence in Rhodesia would be “read by Rhodesians, South Africans and Black Africans as an indication of our acceptance of the situation and de facto recognition of the regime.”Footnote 53 This time, the higher ups were on board. Nixon’s secretary of state, William P. Rogers, sided with the Africa Bureau and advised the president to close the consulate as soon as possible.Footnote 54 Brushing aside the State Department’s warning, President Nixon failed to act.
On March 2, 1970, Rhodesia declared itself a republic with a new constitution. Parliament was dissolved the following day, and new elections took place on April 10, 1970.Footnote 55 OAU foreign ministers immediately appealed to all states to sever their remaining ties to Rhodesia and called on the UN to use force if necessary to compel Rhodesia to return to subordinate status. State Department officials in Washington and in the New York UN mission warned that African states were virtually “unanimous in regarding the Consulate’s presence as a symbol of de facto, if not de jure, recognition of the Smith regime.”Footnote 56 A deeply worried State Department noted that the OAU also declared “that any kind of recognition constitutes an act of defiance and hostility toward Africa.” Moreover, the continued presence of the US consulate “has become the focus of the storm over the Rhodesian issue and our decision on the matter is being read by Africans as the signal of our over-all attitudes toward black/white issues.”Footnote 57
On March 17, 1970, two weeks after Rhodesia declared itself a republic, the United States, under pressure from African states and the United Kingdom, finally closed its Salisbury consulate. Other Western countries followed suit, eventually leaving South Africa and Portugal as the only states to retain consular representation in the renegade state.Footnote 58
The United States vs. the United Nations
Pressures on the United States continued to come from many quarters. Increasingly, the UN General Assembly was the site of enormous criticism. Dozens of African colonies that had won their independence in the 1960s used their positions in the UN to call out US policies that gave preference to white-ruled states over their African majorities. They were joined by Asian nations that had also suffered from European colonialism.
Although an important stage for solidarity and criticism, the General Assembly had no enforcement powers. These powers were confined to the Security Council, comprising five permanent members and ten nonpermanent members elected by the General Assembly for two years. The Security Council was controlled by the five permanent members that were the victors in World War II: the United States, the United Kingdom, France, the Soviet Union, and the Republic of China.Footnote 59 Only the permanent members wielded veto power, which permitted them to subvert the will of the majority. However, the nonpermanent members could sometimes defeat resolutions they opposed by abstaining. Nine affirmative votes were required to pass a Security Council resolution. Seven abstentions by permanent or nonpermanent members could sink a resolution.Footnote 60
The use of force was a major focus of dispute. On March 17, 1970, the Afro-Asian bloc in the Security Council proposed a resolution that condemned the United Kingdom for failing to use force against the recalcitrant regime.Footnote 61 Instead of abstaining as Washington expected, Spain, a loyal defender of Portugal’s interests, broke ranks and voted for the resolution—in exchange for the elimination of a clause that would have extended sanctions to South Africa and Portugal.Footnote 62 The Spanish vote gave the proponents the votes needed to pass the resolution, barring a veto by a permanent member.
Stunned by the audacity of the new UN members, the United Kingdom vetoed the resolution and the United States, to show support for its ally, followed suit, vetoing a Security Council resolution for the first time. The political fallout was immediate, weakening the positive impact of the closure of its Salisbury consulate on the same day.Footnote 63
On March 18, hoping to regain some of the goodwill it had lost, the US delegate to the UN voted in support of a new resolution that barred all transport to and from Rhodesia.Footnote 64 Washington worried, however, that this compromise would not placate the Afro-Asian bloc. African delegates were pushing the Security Council to act against white minority rule in the Portuguese territories, Apartheid South Africa, and South African-occupied Namibia.
Conclusion
The failure to enforce Rhodesian sanctions—and to extend them to countries that violated them—added years to the life of the white-ruled enclave by providing it with the foreign currency needed to buy weapons and petroleum on the black market (Schmidt Reference Schmidt1987, 18–22). The refusal of the United States and other Western powers to hold Rhodesia to account culminated in a fourteen-year war between Africans fighting for liberation and the Rhodesian security forces—a conflict that cost some thirty thousand lives (Ross Reference Ross1979; Jordan Reference Jordan2000; Mlambo Reference Mlambo2014, 168). However, even with outside support, Rhodesia was in dire straits by the late 1970s. The economic toll of sanctions, plus the liberation war, the emigration of an increasing number of skilled workers, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) oil embargo followed by a worldwide recession and the plummeting of commodity prices, forced Rhodesia to the bargaining table. In 1979, the rebel regime was compelled to accept a settlement that eventually led to majority rule (Mitchell Reference Mitchell2016, chap. 15; Minter and Schmidt Reference Minter and Schmidt1988).
The parallels between Rhodesia sixty years ago and the United States today are troubling. Today, the United States is faced with a constituency of whites who feel threatened by the advancement of US-born racial and ethnic minorities and of immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers from the Global South. State and federal laws have severely restricted the voting rights of citizens from these racial and ethnic groups, while both citizens and noncitizens are increasingly denied due process, no matter what their legal status. Some whites supremacists have openly embraced Rhodesia as a model for preserving white domination (Robles et al. Reference Robles, Horowitz and Dewan2015; Ismay Reference Ismay2018). Others, including President Trump, his South African-born trillionaire advisor, Elon Musk, and White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, have looked to apartheid South Africa for ideas (Mac and Casselman Reference Mac and Ben2026). Suspending the US refugee resettlement program on the first day of his second term, Trump made an exception for white South Africans who, he claimed, were suffering from race-based discrimination, plagued by land seizures, and murdered in state-approved genocidal violence—claims that have been widely discredited. Meanwhile, some 100,000 refugees from the Global South who were fleeing wars, famines, and natural disasters and who had been vetted and approved for resettlement into the United States, were summarily denied entry.Footnote 65
In both Rhodesia and the United States, extremist politicians, including Prime Minister Ian Smith, President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance, have manipulated working-class whites, frightening them with rumors of replacement by nonwhite populations. In both cases, extremist political and business leaders have aligned with anti-democratic forces that do their dirty work. The blind support of this constituency was, and continues to be, vital to the success of the regime’s ultimate objective: protecting the interests of wealthy white populations in business and industry.
The case of Rhodesia has much to teach us about the ways in which self-proclaimed critics of a renegade regime professed to support human rights, democracy, and respect for the rule of law, but in fact prioritized their own self-interest and prolonged the regime’s life, which ultimately led to civil war. In the United States, the ultra-right’s objectives have been laid bare in the right-wing Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a white supremacist, Christian nationalist document that outlines its plans to “make America great again”—for the super-rich. Those who value equality, justice, and democracy would do well to study the case of Rhodesia and harken to the lessons it offers.Footnote 66
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