Page "Ian Smith" Paragraph 14

White minority rule originated in property and education qualifications for voting that were in place when the British government introduced self-government in 1923.

Such qualifications were unexceptional by the standards of the 1920s, and, although slightly modified over the years, they ensured a situation up to 1979 in which whites had 95 % of the votes in national elections, while they were never more than 5. 5 % of the population.

Despite this imbalance in the Rhodesian electoral system, Smith and other white politicians argued there was nothing fundamentally racist about it: They stated that improvements in black education and wealth would, over time, ensure a gradual move to majority rule.

The Rhodesian government retained the African community's traditional tribal structure, and regularly consulted the tribal chiefs – seen by the government as the legitimate voice of the country's black people – to gain an insight into the feelings of those parts of the population that were difficult to reach by other political means.

This was often done by the calling of an " indaba ", a large scale conference of tribal leaders to air opinions and concerns.

However, critics argued that the entire political arrangement in Rhodesia was poised deliberately to entrench indefinite economic and political privilege for the country's whites, and that the maintenance of the tribal system was done to discourage blacks from participating in mainstream politics.