Southern Rhodesia: The Ruination of Royboy

SOUTHERN RHODESIA

Sir Roy Welensky represented the white African dream. From humble beginnings (prizefighter and locomotive engineer) he rose to power on his dream of a vast Central African Federation composed of Southern Rhodesia, Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia. But last New Year’s Eve that dream went aglimmering when the federation collapsed after black majorities won rule in two of the three territories.

Last week the rest of the dream drained away. Attempting a political comeback in Salisbury, Welensky was whipped in a by-election at the hands of Prime Minister Ian Smith’s white-supremacist Rhodesian Front Party. Not that “Royboy” was all that sympathetic to the blacks. He simply wanted to prevent Smith from breaking openly with Britain. As he waited on a balcony to concede defeat, a crowd of Smith supporters beat him to it. The tune was Goodnight, Irene, but the words had a jeering lilt: “Goodbye, Sir Roy, Goodbye, Sir Roy, I’ll see you in my dreams.”