Fearing the implementation of a majority-black government in Salisbury by Britain, the white Rhodesian community were now also interested in independence, but under their current political system.

However, negotiations between Field and the British government in London in June 1963 and January 1964 did not reflect a great deal of common ground between Salisbury and Whitehall.

Many within the Rhodesian Front felt that Field was not fighting hard enough for independence, even thinking that he was allowing himself to be deceived over British promises of sovereignty.

John Gaunt, a former Federal MP for Lusaka and a former District Commissioner in Northern Rhodesia, had been stoking up discontent amongst members of Field's cabinet, which he was a part of.

Field was replaced as leader of the Rhodesian Front and as Prime Minister of Rhodesia by Ian Smith on 14 April 1964, despite the Governor Sir Humphrey Gibbs urging him to fight against the rebels in his party.

[5] Most of the Southern Rhodesian press predicted that Smith would not last long; one column called him "a momentary man", thrust into the spotlight by the RF's dearth of proven leaders.

His only real rival to replace Field had been William Harper, an ardent segregationist who had headed the Dominion Party's Southern Rhodesian branch during the Federal years.

[8] Ian Smith revealed his new cabinet on his first day in office, increasing the number of ministers from 10 to 11, making three new appointments, and redistributing portfolios.

One of the first actions of the new government was to crack down hard on the black nationalist political violence that had erupted following the establishment of a second black nationalist organisation, the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), by disgruntled ZAPU members in Tanzania (where, in Dar es Salaam, ZAPU's main base of operations was located) in August 1963.

The rival movements were split tribally, with ZAPU predominantly representing the Ndebele people and ZANU the Shona, and politically—ZAPU, which had relabelled itself the People's Caretaker Council (PCC) within Southern Rhodesia to circumvent its ban, was Marxist–Leninist and backed by the Warsaw Pact and its allies, while ZANU had aligned itself with Maoism and the bloc headed by communist China.

Smith stated that he was not opposed to talks—on the contrary, he saw them as ‘very important’—but that he found the timing ‘a little premature’, given that Rhodesia had begun the campaign period for an independence referendum on 5 November 1964.

Smith also called an indaba of more than 600 chiefs and headmen to gauge the native population's support for Rhodesian independence under the current constitution, and the tribal leaders voted unanimously in favour.

Salisbury offered the British government the opportunity to send observers to the indaba, but they rejected the proposal and refused to accept the results as representative of the native opinion on Rhodesian independence.

The Rhodesian Front, which campaigned for independence in the 1964 referendum, won all 50 constituency seats, granting it a supermajority in the Legislative Assembly of Rhodesia.