The cost of union : Smuts and the price for the Rhodesian 'Province'

Abstract

This article discusses the central role played by the prime minister of the Union of South Africa, General Jan Smuts, in the search of establishing a union between Southern Rhodesia and South Africa in the early 1920s. It begins by contextualising South Africa’s and Smuts’s ambition of incorporating Southern Rhodesia into South Africa. Southern Rhodesia’s constitutional future had come into question by 1914 when the British South Africa Company’s administrative term in the colony had ended. Though company rule was extended for another decade, Southern Rhodesia’s constitutional future remained unresolved. The two main political formations which advanced the future position of the country were the Responsible Government Association and the Rhodesian Union Association. The latter received support from Smuts. Smuts would ultimately use it and South Africa’s financial muscle to influence the political process in Southern Rhodesia for his benefit and that of those sympathetic towards the British Empire. The article demonstrates that Smuts’s financial offer to pay out the company for its administrative debts and his generous offer to Southern Rhodesia to join the union to its south failed when Southern Rhodesia was granted responsible government in 1923. This ended Smuts’s territorial expansionist ambition.