William John Harper was a politician, general contractor and Royal Air Force fighter pilot who served as a Cabinet minister in Rhodesia (or Southern Rhodesia) from 1962 to 1968, and signed that country's Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) from Britain in 1965. Born into a prominent Anglo-Indian merchant family in Calcutta, Harper was educated in India and England and joined the RAF in 1937.
Background
William John Harper was born on 22 July 1916 in Calcutta, British India, scion of an old and prominent Anglo-Indian merchant family that had been based in the subcontinent for generations, working with the East India Company during the 18th and 19th centuries.
Education
He was educated at North Point in Darjeeling, India, and in the English town of Windsor. He grew into a short but tough man who spoke with clipped diction. Nathan Shamuyarira wrote of him in 1966 that "his tight mouth rarely relaxes into a smile, so ... he seems always on the point of losing his temper".
Career
After service as a flight commander with the Royal Air Force in the 1939-45 war he emigrated to Rhodesia in April 1949. He started as a farmer, turned to mining and then became an earth-moving contractor. He entered the Southern Rhodesia Legislative Assembly in May 1958 as MP for Gatooma. Elected president of the Dominion Party in 1959, he resigned on February 2, 1962, to help coordinate opposition forces against Sir Edgar Whitehead’s United Federal Party government.
When the Rhodesian. Front won the elections on December 17, 1962, Premier Winston Field brought Harper into the cabinet as Minister of Irrigation and Minister of Roads and Road Traffic. In the government formed by Premier Ian Smith on April 13, 1964, he was promoted Minister of Internal Affairs and Minister of the Public Service.
The split came on July 4, 1968 when he challenged Smith over the draft constitution. He had strong support in the cabinet for a policy of phasing out elected Africans in Parliament and confining African representation to tribal chiefs. If his views had prevailed Harper would have been able to take over leadership of the government from Smith. But some of his supporters had second thoughts and decided to back Smith’s gradualism. He lost by only two votes in the cabinet, resigned as MP and left the Rhodesian Front Party. Smith branded him as “a security risk to government”.
Apart from occasional public speeches he remained in the shadows until criticism welled up again in February 1972 against Smith with accusations on the extreme right that the independence settlement proposals were a sell-out of European interests. He became one of the founders of the United Front Party launched on February 18, 1972, with the aim of ensuring that the white man’s position is “supreme for all time”.
Politics
Harper entered politics when he contested the Gatooma seat in the 1958 general election, running for the opposition Dominion Party (which called for full "dominion" or Commonwealth realm status). The Southern Rhodesian electoral system allowed only those who met certain financial and educational qualifications to vote—the criteria were applied equally regardless of race, but since most black citizens did not meet the set standards, the electoral roll and colonial Legislative Assembly were overwhelmingly drawn from the white minority (about 5% of the population). Harper won in Gatooma with 717 out of 1,300 votes. Holding strongly conservative views, he soon became seen as the voice of the party's right wing. He was elected president of the Dominion Party's Southern Rhodesian arm in October 1959, and by 1960 he was the official Leader of the Opposition in the Southern Rhodesian parliament.
Amid decolonisation and the Wind of Change, the Federation was looking ever more tenuous and the idea of "no independence before majority rule" was gaining considerable ground in British political circles. Harper called for Southern Rhodesia to abandon the Federation and "go it alone".In June 1960 he and the Southern Rhodesian branch of the Dominion Party adopted the policy of "Southern Rhodesia first", prompting strong protests from the party's Northern Rhodesian division; the Dominion Party splintered into separate Federal and territorial entities a month later. When black nationalist riots broke out in the townships in October 1960, Harper condemned the Southern Rhodesian Prime Minister Sir Edgar Whitehead and the governing United Federal Party (UFP) as too lenient on the protesters, and argued that giving concessions following political violence would make black Rhodesians believe that "trouble pays dividends". Arguing against black representation in the Legislative Assembly, he said that if there were black MPs "they will share the restaurant with us and they will share the bars with us. We will be living cheek by jowl with them, and what sort of legislation can the people of this country expect when we ourselves are being conditioned to living cheek by jowl with Africans?".
He was in Dominion Party (1958–62) and then in Rhodesian Front (1962–68).