Sir Roy Welensky

Sir Roy Welensky (born Jan. 20, 1907, Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia [now Harare, Zimb.]—died Dec. 5, 1991, Blandford Forum, Dorset, Eng.) was a Northern Rhodesian trade unionist and statesman who helped found the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland and served as its deputy minister (1953–56) and prime minister (1956–63).

Welensky, of eastern European Jewish descent on his father’s side and South African Dutch on his mother’s, first gained prominence as a professional boxer, holding the heavyweight title for Southern and Northern Rhodesia from 1925 to 1927. He had previously joined the railway service (1924), and, as an active member of the Railway Workers Union, he won such significant concessions that he was elected to the union’s national council. He later served as the union’s chairman (1953–63). He entered politics, was elected as an unofficial member to Northern Rhodesia’s Legislative Council in 1938, and was named to the Executive Council in 1946. He founded the Northern Rhodesian Labour Party in 1941.

In 1953 (the year that he was knighted) Welensky and Sir Godfrey Huggins, prime minister of Southern Rhodesia, succeeded in establishing a federation made up of the two Rhodesias and Nyasaland. Their new Federal Party, dedicated to “racial partnership,” won 24 of the 26 elected seats. Huggins resigned as prime minister in 1956, and Welensky succeeded him. He served concurrently as minister of external affairs and for a time also as minister of defense. Welensky’s Federal Party won the federal election of 1958, but nationalist feelings mounted, and the federation was dissolved in 1963. Hoping to promote a multiracial society in gradual stages, Welensky tried to extend his political influence into Southern Rhodesia. In the October 1964 election there, however, his party suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the white-supremacist Rhodesian Front, led by Ian Smith.