Josiah Gondo

Josiah Moses Gondo (died 1972) was a Rhodesian politician, and a member of parliament (MP) from 1962 to his death. In May 1965, as leader of the United People's Party, he became the first black politician to serve as the Rhodesian House of Assembly's Leader of the Opposition.

Initially a member of the multiracial United Federal Party, Gondo first entered the Rhodesian House of Assembly as a member of parliament (MP) in 1962, soon after he won the "B"-roll seat for Ndanga in that year's general election. Within three years, following the break-up of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland at the end of 1963, Gondo had become leader of the all-black United People's Party, which won 10 of the 15 "B"-roll seats in the May 1965 general election. Since the governing, all-white Rhodesian Front had concurrently won all 50 "A"-roll seats, Gondo thereupon entered parliament opposite Prime Minister Ian Smith as the new Leader of the Opposition in the House of Assembly; he was the first black Rhodesian to hold this position.

During 1965, the British and Rhodesian governments quarrelled over the terms for the latter's full independence from Britain. Gondo opposed the sympathy widely held in the Rhodesian Front that a unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) might be necessary to preserve Rhodesian interests, predicting that a nationwide spate of lawlessness and violence would result. Speaking in early October that year, he suggested that he might withdraw his party from parliament in the event of UDI. "To lead the people of Rhodesia to think UDI would create a paradise is ludicrous," he said. Later that month, when British Prime Minister Harold Wilson was in the Rhodesian capital Salisbury for talks with Smith, Gondo urged Wilson to call a new constitutional conference.

After Salisbury declared independence unilaterally on the morning of 11 November 1965, Gondo continued as leader of the opposition, keeping his party in the House of Assembly. In stark contrast to his predictions of a chaotic bloodbath following UDI, life continued as normal in almost all corners of the country. A week after UDI, Smith invited Gondo to talk, but Gondo refused. On 25 November, the Rhodesian Legislative Assembly recognised the new constitution attached to the independence declaration, prompting protests from amongst the opposition; the independent "B"-roll MP for Highfield, Dr Ahrn Palley, a white man, was particularly clamorous in his interjections, prompting the Serjeant-at-Arms to eject him from the chamber. Gondo then led a walk-out of opposition MPs: eight other "B"-roll members followed him out. All ten of them returned in February 1966.

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