Rhodesia has invalid stamps

Who has heard of Rhodesia? Raise your hand. You have? You are showing your age. Today people know it as Zimbabwe.

We will use Rhodesia from here on because philatelically that is where the fun is. Now we all know that the Digital Philatelist and his award winning site was once head of the Rhodesian Study Circle so why the great interest? The truth is that first and foremost there are not many issues and second of all the name changes make it an exciting period of history to learn and enjoy.

Through no fault of his own, Cecil John Rhodes was born with a weakness of the lungs and so was kept at home and also stopped him from going to university. His father sent him to South Africa to join his brother, out of sight, out of mind perhaps? Anyway Cecil got involved in the diamond industry there and with some friends created a mining company which turned out to be very successful.

He believed in the British Empire and had dreams of building a railroad from Cape Town to Cairo. I dream of going to Australia but I am not doing anything about that. However others also had designs on the middle of Africa - the Germans, Belgians, and Portuguese. But to start with, he had to go through the area now known as Zimbabwe. Somehow he got King Lobengula, the head of the local tribe,  the Matabeles, of the southern part of Rhodesia,  to sign a treaty with him giving him full rights and he convinced the British government, to grant a charter to a new company, the British South Africa Company (BSAC), to develop the new territory. Poor King Lobengula did not really know what he was signing away.

Now what do they need? Mail! The first post was established by the British South Africa Company (BSA) consisting of a route from Bulawayo to Mafeking. Initially British South Africa Company stamps were not recognized for international mail but this was changed a year after the first stamps arrived. Over the next few years the area the BSA had control of increased and included land north of the Zambezi River, an area known today as Zambia.

The area was named Rhodesia after Cecil John Rhodes. Not bad for a kid who was sent out in the world by his dad. Anyway the name "Rhodesia" was then added to BSA stamps.

Around 1923 Rhodesia was divided into two and the Zambezi River was the separation point, Southern Rhodesia and Northern Rhodesia.

In 1953 The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland was created which included Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland. This ended in 1963 when Northern Rhodesia gained independence from the United Kingdom becoming Zambia and Nyasaland became Malawi. At this time, Britain, France and Belgium were speeding up their withdrawal from Africa believing that colonial rule was no longer sustainable in Africa. Southern Rhodesia was left out of this and was still controlled by the British.

Southern Rhodesia wanted independence from Britain but all Britain had to offer was a deal on par with Australia, Canada and New Zealand. The British refused to offer independence and the Rhodesian were a tad angry. World opinion was not exactly with Britain but they were in a quagmire because if they offered independence, then this would have a domino effect throughout the commonwealth.

In 1964 Ian Smith became prime minister and here is when it gets juicy. In June 1964, Britain informed

Smith that Southern Rhodesia would not be represented at the year's Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference. How insulting can you get? Southern Rhodesia held a referendum and there was a majority of support for a declaration of independence from Britain.

Cutting out a lot of politics, Rhodesia declared independence in 11th November 1965 which was actually Armistice Day. This became known as the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI). This was condemned by

the UN as well as the Security Council and sanctions were imposed. Southern Rhodesia subsequently renamed itself Rhodesia.

So what about the stamps? After all this is a blog about stamps! As part of the sanctions, Rhodesian postage stamps were considered "illegal" and therefor "invalid" and that mail carrying the invalid stamps was treated as if they were posted without stamps.

Mail arriving in England and some other commonwealth countries were subjected to additional payment. They received a cancel of "Stamps not valid" and the amount to pay. This means that the letter was paid for twice, once by the sender and once by the person who received the letter. 

In April 1970 the British also attached a red label about Southern Rhodesian stamps and you can see an example below:

This is another example of what is known as Postkrieg or Postal War, a war waged by Britain against Rhodesia. For another example, check out my video on YouTube.

Edit: Strangely today (29th November 2021) I just saw a video by Graham Beck of Exploring Stamps in which he talks about stamps from Zimbabwe. Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEWv3BTAXc8