[2][3] Strict segregation in urban areas separated the black and white populations in hospitals, hotels and schools, and prevented Africans from drinking alcoholic beverages.
[8] On 12 September 1957, the largely dormant ANC and the City Youth League merged to found the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress.
[9] SRANC took on a multi-ethnic executive membership from across the country, which made for a unified national organisation, and included white members such as Guy Clutton-Brock, an anti-apartheid agriculturalist.
Nkomo successfully suspended the Land Husbandry Act and openly condemned the bill in a public statement saying: The Congress was successful in preventing government interference in traditional marriage customs, and was instrumental in the banning of Depo Provera (a birth control compound), and expressed “deep suspicion... that there is a political motive behind the scheme of birth control.”[15] Commitment to nonviolence, utilisation of civil disobedience, and Pan-Africanism created a likeness between SRANC and the civil rights movement happening at the same time in the United States.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. of the Congress: Until 1958, SRANC found an ally in Prime Minister Garfield Todd, who met with them regularly and attempted to introduce reforms to "advance gradually the rights of the 7,000,000 blacks without upsetting the rule of the 250,000 whites.
"[17] Under his administration the minimum wage for black workers was raised, restaurants and similar establishments were given the option of being multi-racial, and restrictions on alcohol consumption were relaxed.
[19] Despite changing international opinion about colonialism, the emergence of independent African states, and the increasing momentum of civil rights movements around the globe in the 1950s and 1960s, the settler government of Southern Rhodesia remained stubbornly resistant to imperial reform.
White settlers in Southern Rhodesia were threatened by the idea of advancing the black majority; the country being reliant largely on exports of cotton and tobacco, their livelihood necessitated access to cheap labour.
[20] In 1958, after a one-month holiday in South Africa, Todd returned to Southern Rhodesia to discover his cabinet had resigned in protest of his liberal racial policies, and only 14 of the 24 legislators in his party supported his remaining in office.
[21][22] On 29 February 1959[verification needed], the Whitehead administration declared a state of emergency and introduced the Unlawful Organizations Act, which banned several organisations including SRANC and allowed government seizure of property.
The bill was defended by the claim that SRANC had incited violence, government defiance, and “undermined [the] prestige of Native Commissioners and the loyalty of African Police," said a security intelligence report.
Constant repression by the white minority government contributed to the increasing militarisation of these splinter organisations, which culminated in a 15-year war, leading to the internationally acknowledged independence of Zimbabwe in 1980.
suggest that Ken Flower, a former MI6 agent, was instrumental in the formation of ZANU in the interest of preserving and perpetuating white dominance and imperial agenda over Africans.