Did Rhodesia’s Salisbury Club prop up the Ian Smith regime?

An investigation into claims that the club formed a crucial part of governing the pariah state.

I type this with some apprehension. I have a sneaky suspicion that the moment I begin writing about institutions in Ian Smith-era Rhodesia, all manner of characters from some of the more questionable corners of the internet will start coming out of the woodwork. Nevertheless, I think this is an important area of study, which promises to offer some insight into the moulding of Zimbabwe today.

                It is hard to look at the governance of the former state of Rhodesia (and its predecessor colony, Southern Rhodesia) without encountering copious references to the Salisbury Club, named after the capital. These typically - often bombastically - repeat the line, “that Rhodesia was run from the Salisbury Club”, and that there was total overlap with the country’s government. I have long wanted to test whether that was true.

                Records from Smith-era Rhodesia are notoriously hard to come by. I’m therefore most grateful to one of my readers, Philipp Hass, for having unearthed in the archives of the Rand Club, Johannesburg, a complete members’ list from the Salisbury Club, dating to 1973; and for his granting my request to photograph the contents of the whole pamphlet.

The contemporary booklet which sourced several of the findings here.

                Old club membership books have been the bread-and-butter of a lot of my past research. I made extensive use of 19^th century membership lists for my original PhD research over a decade ago. Properly decoded and contextualised, such records can reveal all sorts of layers of club history, including patterns of membership that sometimes confirm, and sometimes challenge, our long-term impressions. And approached in a spirit of serious scholarly study – rather than the competing agendas which influence much of what has been written about Rhodesia – they can shed much light.

Background: the Rhodesian state

While the Shona majority had fought a series of wars against Portuguese colonists as early as the 17^th century, the British presence in what later became Rhodesia was relatively late, compared to neighbouring African countries. Significant British settlement followed Cecil Rhodes’s colonial wars of the 1890s, with the area previously ruled by the Matabele and Shona populations coming under the administration of Rhodes’ British South Africa Company, and being transformed into a lucrative agricultural colony, the region posthumously named after him as Southern Rhodesia. There were already attempted uprisings against the white colonists as early as 1896, during the First Chimurenga, but these remained unsuccessful, and as the European colonists increasingly seized the most productive farmland, this bred further long-term grievances. By 1923, Southern Rhodesia had been granted by the British government the status of a colony of the British Crown, giving its local administrators a sizeable measure of autonomy; and by the 1950s, talks were already underway around full independence. These talks hit deadlock in the early 1960s, over the ongoing rule of a country of over 4 million people, by a white minority population which then numbered little more than 200,000 – about 5% of Rhodesians. The British government refused to grant full independence without first establishing majority rule in the country; while the Southern Rhodesian government refused to commit to majority rule as anything more than a very long-term, distant prospect, suggesting it was “1,000 years” away. The talks became a moot point after UDI in 1965: a Unilateral Declaration of Independence, with the government of Ian Smith declaring itself to be Rhodesia, an independent nation – initially declaring its allegiance to the Crown, and then (from 1970) as a republic. The British government, the Commonwealth and the United Nations all denounced UDI as illegal.

                In its decade and a half of existence, the Rhodesian state was regarded as an international pariah: apart from its immediate neighbours of apartheid South Africa and the Portuguese colony of Mozambique, it had little international recognition, and was the first country to be subject to comprehensive United Nations economic sanctions. It was also something of a police state, suspending civil liberties, implementing press censorship, and being locked in a series of low-level, but escalating ‘Bush wars’ against Russian- and Chinese-backed black guerillas, also known as the Second Chimurenga.

                For the first decade of Rhodesia’s existence after UDI, the sanctions against it were conspicuously unsuccessful, and its white minority population continued to enjoy a high standard of living. This was mainly due to the number of firms prepared to discreetly carry out lucrative “sanctions-busting” trade on a large scale (such as Tiny Rowland’s Lonrho multinational), aided and abetted by secure trade routes through neighbouring Mozambique and South Africa.

                This changed after Portugal’s ‘Carnation Revolution’ of 1974 directly led to Mozambique independence in 1975, and the establishment of a FRELIMO government in Mozambique that was hostile to Rhodesia – and cut off most Rhodesian supply routes. Against this economically devastating backdrop, and with the South African government of John Vorster increasingly regarding Rhodesia as a liability, plus the stepping-up of guerilla warfare from the military wings of Joshua Nkomo’s ZAPU and Robert Mugabe’s ZANU, the Rhodesian government of Ian Smith was forced to the negotiating table – something they had previously insisted would never happen. A series of negotiations in the late 1970s, and the interim installation of Bishop Abel Muzorewa as the country’s first black Prime Minister in 1979, paved the way to the first majority elections of 1980, which saw the landslide election of Mugabe in the newly-independent Zimbabwe.

The Salisbury Club

The Salisbury Club’s first clubhouse, from 1893-6. (Photo credit: Colin Black, ‘Sable’: The Story of the Salisbury Club (Salisbury: Salisbury Club, 1980).)

The Salisbury Club presents a revealing barometer of the mores of colonial rule in Rhodesia. Its establishment in 1893 went back to the early stages of Cecil Rhodes’ occupation, when the British presence was informal, company-led, and of questionable legitimacy. The Club itself was established by Colonel Frank Rhodes, Cecil’s older brother, with the younger sibling being a founder member.

                Cecil Rhodes was a keen club member, with three clubs in London - the Athenæum from 1895, the St. James’s Club for diplomats, and the Union Club from 1892 - and several more across southern Africa, including two clubs in Cape Town, the Civil Service Club from 1881, and the City Club from 1890. He was similarly preoccupied with establishing new clubs in strategic centres across southern Africa, founding the Kimberley Club in 1881, the Bulawayo Club in 1895, and announcing in 1887 “This will do for a club” when planning the expansion of the mining post of Johannesburg, setting out the site that would become the Rand Club.

The Salisbury Club’s second clubhouse, from 1896-1910, located at the junction of what was then Third Street and Gordon Avenue. (Photo credit: Colin Black, ‘Sable’ (1980).)

                Setting up a club for the male English colonists was therefore essential to the legitimisation of British rule, with the creation of genteel establishments, as well as providing a social and cultural centre for the leading colonists. It would also come to play a central role in the self-identification of the white Rhodesians, who emphasised “civilisation” in their justification of white minority rule. When asked to define “civilisation”, club life often featured prominently in the descriptions given.

The Salisbury Club’s third clubhouse, built on the site of the second clubhouse, from 1911-58. (Photo credit: ‘Rhodesian Study Circle’ website.)

                The Salisbury Club’s original home was a rather modest structure, superseded by a grander clubhouse in 1896, which was then wholly rebuilt in 1911 with a more palatial Edwardian colonial building. When this developed serious structural problems, including widespread woodworm, it was demolished in 1958 and replaced by a new building completed in 1961, which still stands as the clubhouse today. This was built on a new site, in the heart of Rhodesia’s capital, on Cecil Square (now Africa Union Square), and was opened by club member Godfrey Huggins, 1st Viscount Malvern, the long-serving former Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia (1933-56). The clubhouse’s position, diagonally opposite the 1899 building of the Rhodesian Parliament (which remained the Zimbabwean Parliament until November 2023) underlined its proximity to power. Although to today’s eyes, it is a somewhat utilitarian, brutalist pair of concrete blocks, at the time it was thought to represent the forefront of the ‘new Africa’, with state-of-the art facilities across two adjoining buildings. One building provides the main clubhouse, including smoking room, main dining room, private dining rooms, billiard room and library, plus premises designed to be sublet as commercial offices, generating a further income stream for the rest of the Club – in many ways, it foreshadowed the clubhouses that were to be fashionable in London in the 1960s, such as the (now-demolished) 1962 Constitutional Club on Northumberland Avenue, and the 1968 Junior Carlton Club, which can still be seen on Pall Mall. The other, taller skyscraper structure of the Salisbury Club provided “Club Chambers” - abundant accommodation for members and guests. As Rhodesia slid into a more militaristic direction through the 1970s, the Salisbury Club offered a secure compound for the country’s white elites to entertain.

The two buildings constructed to house the Salisbury Club, completed in 1961, pictured in 2018. (Photo credit: Google Maps, ‘Street View’.)

                The former Salisbury Club still exists to this day; changes such as its renaming as the Harare Club in line with the capital’s 1982 renaming are mainly cosmetic. Although the Club opened to non-white members shortly after independence in 1980, membership is reportedly still heavily skewed towards Zimbabwe’s white minority. The Club has been open to women since the 1990s. A wider change is in its operation as a commercial hotel; whilst parts of the main clubhouse are still operated as a members’ club, the bulk of the accommodation building is given over to commercial bookings. The buildings have changed very little since the 1960s. The Club continues to occasionally make headlines, as when Charles Kuwaza, former chair of Zimbabwe’s State Procurement Board and former deputy chair of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, fell from the 9^th floor, in a suspected case of suicide in 2017.

View of the Parliament of Rhodesia (and later, of Zimbabwe), taken from the roof of the Salisbury Club’s clubhouse. (Photo credit: Harare Club website.)

Analysing the 1973 list

The 1973 membership list for the Salisbury Club makes fascinating reading for colonial historians. 1,584 members of the Club were listed, of whom 439 were “absentee” members, i.e. living abroad - pointing to a registrable Rhodesian white diaspora maintaining a club membership in the capital.

                This left 1,145 members who were based in Rhodesia. Given that the country had a white population of around 270,000 in 1973, this suggests that some 0.8% of the white male population of the country belonged to the Club. This offers some basis for the suggestion that it represented “the 1%.”

                Membership was also highly centralised around Salisbury itself, with 926 town members, compared to 207 country members. (There was no place of residence assigned to the Club’s 12 life members.) This suggests the vast majority of the hundreds of guest bedrooms in the 1961 clubhouse were designed for members’ guests, rather than for out-of-town members, only a fraction of whom would have been envisioned visiting at any time - though it should not be ignored that they would have also catered to some of the 439 overseas members (with similar caveats about the limited number visiting at any given time).

               Membership of the Salisbury Club also wouldn’t have factored in membership of the other clubs of the time, whether the other white European “gentlemen’s clubs” of the capital such as the New Club, the Belgravia Sports Club, the Mashonaland Turf Club, the Royal Salisbury Golf Club, and the Salisbury Sports Club (the latter hosting sanctions-busting international cricket matches in the 1970s), or the major regionally-based social clubs such as the Bulawayo Club to the west, and the Umtali Club to the east. It is highly likely that there was some overlap in memberships, although it may not have been strictly necessary, given the documented existence of reciprocal arrangements between these clubs. Or to put it another way, it would not have been necessary for members of the Salisbury Club to overlap their memberships if they only made the occasional visit to other clubs once or twice a year; but more regular users of multiple clubs would have been more likely to have had multiple memberships – especially as disposable income amongst white Rhodesians remained high throughout the 1960s and 1970s, while club subscriptions remained modest, so cost is unlikely to have been a factor in deterring multiple memberships.

               Additionally, the membership was not necessarily uniform in outlook. “Absentee members” included figures such as Dendy Young - until 1968, a judge in Rhodesia’s High Court, who had resigned his judgeship in protest at the government’s refusal to recognise the Commonwealth’s Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. By 1973, he had moved to South Africa.

Interior of the Club’s main Centenary Room dining room, as it is today. (Photo credit: Harare Club website.)

Gauging government membership

A total of 47 individuals were ministers in Ian Smith’s Rhodesia from 1965-79; but my analysis focuses on the 31 white ministers, from 1965-78 – since the period 1978-9 saw the appointment of the first black ministers under the 1978 ‘Internal Settlement’ (aka the Salisbury Agreement), who by definition would not have been allowed to be members of the whites-only Salisbury Club. Therefore my research question here was to gauge the extent of Salisbury Club membership among the white ministers who made up Ian Smith’s government from UDI in November 1965, until the negotiation of the Internal Settlement in March 1978.

                The Salisbury Club members who were Rhodesian government ministers are set out in full in the appendix at the end. They included Ian Smith himself, his Deputy Prime Minister David Smith, Rhodesia’s first President Clifford Dupont, Internal Minister Lance Smith, and successive Foreign Ministers such as Jack Howman, P. K. van der Byl, and the 7^th Duke of Montrose.

                In total, I found that 11 out of the 31 white ministers in 1965-78 were Salisbury Club members. This is a significant number (35%). But it falls some way short of the usual charge levied of “complete overlap” with the Smith government; and it compares unfavourably with the phenomenon of 'Club Government' in mid-19^th century Britain, when over 95% of UK MPs (and 100% of cabinet ministers), were all members of a handful of central London clubs in the 1840s and 1850s.

                This figure neither confirms nor challenges the idea that informal conversations would have taken place in the Salisbury Club. It was perfectly located for this, so close to the Rhodesian Parliament building, and with tight security. But if such ‘overflow’ conversations were happening, it remains the fact that many of the participating cabinet ministers would have been there as guests, not as members. It therefore seems doubtful that it played anywhere near as central an institutional role as often claimed.

                Obviously, the usual customary disclaimers are necessary around the data, in reaching this conclusion: using the data from a single point, in 1973, only provides a snapshot; and it is always possible that other government ministers could have been elected later, or have lapsed their memberships earlier. Against that, the dates of election throughout the list point to most memberships of the era being very long-term (the earliest still-living club member listed in 1973 was elected in 1913, so would have been at least in his eighties; and there were plenty of members listed who had been elected in the 1920s and 1930s, with the vast majority having been elected prior to UDI in 1965). Indeed, there seems to be little discernible pattern among the period members were elected in, or the age of members when elected. The 11 cabinet ministers were all elected at ages varying wildly from 24 to 56 - though most tended to be in their 30s or 40s. It seems likely that social connection was the greatest determinant of election to membership, rather than seniority. It appears from these figures, however, that recruitment was slowing down by 1973, and that this trend pre-dated UDI, and may be attributable to the grandeur of the pre-1958 premises being a keener draw for recruitment than the more utilitarian facilities after 1961.

Front lobby of the clubhouse in 2018. (Source: Harare Club website.)

Beyond the Salisbury Club: Wider Clubland support for Smith’s Rhodesian regime

In light of the figure of 35% overlap, I am sceptical of the degree of the Salisbury Club’s active importance to the regime, beyond an informal background one, providing a convenient place to meet socially. Nevertheless, we should not rule out the scope for a significant role for Clubland as a whole, in supporting Ian Smith’s regime. This manifested itself in three ways.

                Firstly, there were the other clubs of Rhodesia, already alluded to above. These were not simply the institutions found in the capital, but lay further afield. They included a wealth of establishments in Rhodesia’s second city, including the Bulawayo Club (which is still very much preserved to this day), Bulawayo Athletic Club, Bulawayo Bowling Club, Bulawayo Country Club, Bulawayo Golf Club, Bulawayo Theatre Club, Bellevue Recreation Club, City Club, Empire Club, Hillside Bowling Club, Hillside Bridge Club, Hillside Tennis Club, Lions Club of Bulawayo, MacDonald Sports Club, Matabeleland Turf Club, Matopos Sailing Club, Ncema Power Boat Club, Old Miltonians’ Sports Club, Parkview Weizman Country Club, Portuguese Association of Bulawayo, Queen’s Sports Club, Raylton Rereation Club, Umgusa Yacht Club, and Waterford Country Club; and other regional clubs such as those in Umtali (now Mutare) in the east, that included the Umtali Club, and the Umtali Sports Club. These provided a social and organisational hub for the white minority population, fostering a strong associational culture that was entirely separate from the black majority.  

                Secondly, there were the international clubs that continued to honour pre-existing reciprocal arrangements with clubs like the Salisbury Club and the Bulawayo Club, all through the years of international sanctions. In researching this piece, I have come across strong evidence – in the form of reciprocal club contracts, and exchanges of club gifts – which suggest that warm relations continued throughout the years of sanctions, particularly with some military-themed clubs in the UK and across the Commonwealth. It is debatable whether or not the continuation of these reciprocal relationships technically breached the letter of international sanctions on Rhodesia; but I would suggest that they were not in keeping with their spirit. (I have not been able to find a copy of the Salisbury Club’s contemporary full reciprocals list during the years of UDI, but it may be indicative to look at the more recent 2018 tally of its reciprocals list: 19 in England, 8 in Australia, 6 in Scotland, 4 apiece in New Zealand and the USA, 2 apiece in the Channel Islands, Hong Kong and Ireland, and one each in Canada and Switzerland. This gives a sense of the distribution. Admittedly, reciprocation of a club in 2018 does not guarantee reciprocation in the 1970s; though research elsewhere - which I hope to expand upon in due course - suggests that many of the major reciprocal arrangements of African clubs date to the early 1950s; but that digresses into another area...)

                Thirdly, as has already been documented, senior members of the Rhodesian government continued to be welcome in (and indeed were members of) several major London clubs, with documented instances of their frequenting them through the years of UDI, when visiting London. Two of Smith’s Foreign Ministers, the 7^th Duke of Montrose and P. K. van der Byl, were both members of White’s (the former listing it in his contemporaneous Who’s Who entry, and the latter’s membership reported by the Evening Standard); whilst it has been reported in The Independent that van der Byl was subsequently proposed for membership of the Turf Club by the then-Lord Cranborne (later the 7^th Marquess of Salisbury, after whose ancestor the capital was named, who declared when first taking his seat as an MP in 1979, “a small financial interest in that country, which…is dwindling rapidly.”). The ongoing London club memberships of Rhodesian cabinet ministers would not have constituted any kind of institutional endorsement or recognition (in the way that ongoing reciprocation with Rhodesian clubs might have done); but it may be seen to point to a measure of contemporary sympathy for those governing Smith’s Rhodesia, found in some corners of ‘Clubland’. At a time when the Rhodesian state was widely considered an international pariah, this was highly unusual.

Bar area in the main clubhouse. Note the seating, some of which appears to have been retrieved from the previous clubhouse. (Photo credit: Tripadvisor listing for the Harare Club.)

Conclusion

Whilst members of the Salisbury Club maintained that it represented “liberal opinion” among white Rhodesians, there is little evidence to support this. Amidst a white supremacist regime, it continued to enforce a colour bar on membership until after independence. Indeed, it remained a bulwark of colonial rule, supporting its white members in some splendour whilst black Rhodesians were barred even as guests, and could only access the premises as servants. Unlike the major colonial clubs of India half a century earlier, there was no attempt at appointing even a smattering of non-white honorary members. It is hard to see the Salisbury Club as anything but the embodiment of imperialism and racial segregation. Nevertheless, its reputation as a centre of government seems hugely overblown. At best, it is likely to have been a convenient watering-hole for some figures of the government of the day, offering solace and (increasingly faded) grandeur. Nevertheless, I would not entirely disregard the scope for it having provided some limited institutional contacts internationally. Moreover, there is some evidence that certain sections of ‘Clubland’ more broadly harboured some sympathy with the Smith regime.

Interior of the Club’s Flame Lily Room as it is today. (Photo credit: Harare Club website.)

APPENDIX: LIST OF RHODESIAN MINISTERS, 1965-78, WHO WERE SALISBURY CLUB MEMBERS

Dates after names are the year of election to the Salisbury Club.

·         Andrew Dunlop, 1963. (Minister Without Portfolio, 1965; Minister of Transport & Power, and Minister of Roads & Road Traffic, 1966-70).

·         Clifford Dupont, 1953. (Officer Administrating the Government, 1965-70; President of Rhodesia, 1970-5).

·         James Graham, 7th Duke of Montrose, 1931. (Minister of Agriculture & Minister of Natural Resources, 1962-6, Minister of Foreign Affairs & Minister of Defence, 1966-8).

·         Roger Hawkins, 1966. (Minister of Transport & Power and Minister of Roads & Traffic, 1970-7; Minister of Posts, 1973-7; Minister of Defence and Minister of Combined Operations, 1977-9).

·         Jack Howman, 1953. (Minister of Information, Immigration & Tourism, 1965-8; Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Defence, 1968-74; Minister of Public Service, 1968-75).

·         Mark Partridge, 1959. (Minister of Local Government & Housing, 1966-73; Minister of Lands, 1973-7; Minister of Defence, 1977; Minister of Agriculture, 1977-9).

·         George Rudland, 1935. (Minister of Commerce & Industry, Minister of Transport & Power, and Minister of Roads & Traffic, 1965-6; Minister of Agriculture, 1966-8; Minister Without Portfolio, 1968-72).

·         David Smith, 1960. (Minister of Agriculture, 1968-76; Deputy Prime Minister & Minister of Finance, 1976-9).

·         Ian Smith, 1952. (Prime Minister, 1964-79).

·         Lance Smith, 1963. (Minister Without Portfolio, 1965; Minister of Internal Affairs, 1968-74).

·         P. K. van der Byl, 1955. (Minister of Information, Immigration & Tourism, 1968-74 & 1977-9; Minister of Foreign Affairs, 1974-9; Minister of Defence, 1974-6; Minister of Public Service, 1976-8).

Further reading

On the clubs of Rhodesia, these self-published histories have further details:

• Colin Black, ‘Sable’: The Story of the Salisbury Club (Salisbury: Salisbury Club, 1980).

• Peter Gibbs, The Bulawayo Club (Bulawayo: Bulawayo Club, 1970).

• Frank Rixom, History of the Salisbury Club, 1893-1953 (Salisbury: Salisbury Club, 1953).

On Rhodesia and Zimbabwe more generally:

• Robert Blake, History of Rhodesia (London: Methuen, 1977).

• Richard Bourne, Catastrophe: What Went Wrong in Zimbabwe? (London: Zed Books, 2011).

• Tom Bower, Tiny Rowland: A Rebel Tycoon (London: Heinemann, 1993).

• Harpal Brar, Chimurenga! The Liberation Struggle in Zimbabwe (London: privately published, 2004).

• Stephen Chan, Robert Mugabe: A Life of Power and Violence (London: I. B. Tauris, 2002).

• Michael Charlton, The Last Colony in Africa: Diplomacy and the Independence of Rhodesia (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1990).

• David Kenrick, Decolonisation, Identity and Nation in Rhodesia, 1964-1979: A Race Against Time (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).

• Anthony Lake, The ‘Tar Baby’ Option: American Policy Toward Southern Rhodesia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976).

• Kate Law (ed.), The Decolonisation of Zimbabwe (Oxford: Routledge, 2019).

• David Martin & Phyllis Johnson, The Struggle for Zimbabwe: The Chimurenga War (London: Faber & Faber, 1981).

• David Maylam, The Cult of Rhodes: Remembering an Imperialist in Africa (Cape Town: David Philip, 2005).

• Alois S. Mlambo, A History of Zimbabwe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

• Donald S. Moore, Suffering for Territory: Race, Place, and Power in Zimbabwe (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2005).

• Muchaparara Musemwa, Water, History, and Politics in Zimbabwe: Bulawayo's Struggles with the Environment, 1894-2008 (Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press, 2014).

• Abel Muzorewa, Rise Up and Walk: An Autobiography (Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon Press, 1978).

• Joshua Nkomo and Nicholas Harman, Nkomo: The Story of My Life (London: Methuen, 1984).

• Ian R. Phimster, Economic and Social History of Zimbabwe, 1890-1948: Capital Accumulation and Class Struggle (London: Longman Higher Education, 1988).

• Stanlake Samkange, The Origins of African Nationalism in Zimbabwe (Harare: Harare Publishing House, 1985).

• Ian Smith, The Great Betrayal: The Memoirs of Africa’s Most Controversial Leader (London: John Blake, 1997).

• Ndabaningi Sithole, African Nationalism (Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1959).

• ____________, Roots of a Revolution: Scenes from Zimbabwe’s Struggle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977).

• ____________, Hammer and Sickle Over Africa (New York: Vantage Press, 1991).

• Anthony Verrier, The Road to Zimbabwe, 1890-1980 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1986).

• Henry Wiseman and Alistair M. Taylor, From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe: The Politics of Transition (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1981).