Campaign
There was a robust campaign, which all understood as leading to a watershed election. Political meetings saw a great deal of heckling. The RF was keen to reassure nervous voters that it supported some continued links with Northern Rhodesia, and campaigned for tougher enforcement of law and order and security. Both the UFP and the RF supported moves to independence but the RF was more keen, and stated that independence could be either within or without the Commonwealth.
The principal division was on race relations. The UFP leader Sir Edgar Whitehead pledged to appoint Southern Rhodesia's first African Minister should he be re-elected. The RF insisted that the UFP's moves were reckless and endangered Rhodesian society. They saw the 1961 constitution as opening the door to African dominance of Europeans "before the former has acquired adequate knowledge and experience of democratic government" and pointed to Kenya where Europeans had been forced out of the country as an example of what might happen. The UFP regarded the RF as reactionaries and throwbacks, and a UFP poster depicted a white man identified as an RF supporter with his head literally in the sand.
Read more about this topic: Southern Rhodesian General Election, 1962
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