From Dreams of Dominion to Aspirations for a New Africa: Ahrn Palley’s Political Re-invention in Southern Rhodesia, 1959–1961

Abstract

Just one year after entering the Southern Rhodesian parliament in 1958, Ahrn Palley resigned from the right-wing Dominion Party and embraced an increasingly independent political position, culminating in 1961 with a founding role in the New Africa Party, a progressive white political structure aligned with the colony’s African nationalist movement. The genesis of this transformation arose from Palley’s heightened sensitivity to international opinion, engendered by the disastrous fall-out emanating from the declaration of a state of emergency in Nyasaland, then federated with Southern Rhodesia. While Palley’s political reversal was sui generis among elected Rhodesian officials, the fitful progression of his ideological realignment and the harsh reactions to it from his parliamentary colleagues illuminate the difficulty that Southern Rhodesian settler politicians faced in coming to grips with the emerging programme of African decolonisation. Palley’s political re-invention points to the prominent role of African liberation in shaping Southern Rhodesia’s domestic politics, illustrates the force of pan-African unity and highlights the extent to which even sympathetic white politicians of the era struggled to adjust to a period of rapid change and reconcile themselves with mainstream black political opinion.