The national anthem lost its legal status in December 1979, when the United Kingdom retook interim control of the country pending its internationally recognised independence as Zimbabwe five months later.

[citation needed] A dispute over the terms for the granting of full statehood to the self-governing colony of Rhodesia led its predominantly white minority government, headed by Prime Minister Ian Smith, to unilaterally declare independence from the UK on 11 November 1965.

As Whitehall had been insisting on majority rule as a condition for independence, this declaration went unrecognised and caused the UK and the United Nations to impose economic sanctions on Rhodesia.

[3] Though this was intended to demonstrate Rhodesia's enduring loyalty to the Queen, the retention of a song so associated with the UK in the midst of the Anglo-Rhodesian constitutional struggle soon gave Rhodesian state occasions "a faintly ironic tone", in the words of the London Times.

[6][7] Republican Rhodesia was without an anthem for over four years before the chosen music was announced on 28 August 1974: the Fourth Movement, commonly called "Ode to Joy", from Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

The anthem's inaugural instrumental performance in Salisbury provoked mixed reactions: some were enthusiastic—including a coloured sergeant musician who proudly told the Rhodesia Herald that "it's just like 'God Save Our Gracious Queen'"[10]—but many others were disappointed that the government had not commissioned an original tune.

Rhys Lewis, music critic for the Herald, wrote that he was "stupefied"[10] by the government's choice, which he said was not only unoriginal, but also so associated with supranational brotherhood that it risked making internationally isolated Rhodesia the subject of ridicule.

[13] During the 1980s, Derek Hudson, the long-time conductor of the Bulawayo Philharmonic Orchestra, had considerable difficulty securing official permission to give the first Zimbabwean performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.