Lonrho and Oil Sanctions Against Rhodesia in the 1960s

This article assesses how the British multinational company Lonrho, led by its buccaneering managing-director, Roland ‘Tiny’ Rowland, attempted to navigate oil sanctions against Rhodesia after the British colony had made its Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) in November 1965. Rowland had built, and possessed, a majority shareholding in the company which operated the oil pipeline that provided crude oil to Rhodesia's Feruka refinery near Umtali from the port of Beira on the Mozambique coast. After voluntarily ceasing to supply Ian Smith's rebel regime with oil soon after UDI, Lonrho became involved in a series of discussions with the British government over the future of the pipeline and oil sanctions more generally. In examining these discussions, I will argue that the pipeline was of too much symbolic importance for the British government to significantly allow Lonrho to influence its Rhodesia policy. Despite clear evidence that the Beira naval blockade was to all intents and purposes ineffectual, as petroleum products were still reaching Rhodesia via Lourenço Marques, the influential position of South Africa and more established British businesses operating in the area meant that Rowland's protestations went ignored. This further supports arguments made in recent literature that contend that the primary purpose of British sanctions against Rhodesia was to dissipate international calls for tough measures, rather than to bring about the end of white minority rule in Rhodesia.