Edgar Whitehead

Sir Edgar Whitehead

Sir Edgar Cuthbert Fremantle Whitehead KCMG OBE (born February 8, 1905 in Berlin , Germany , † September 22, 1971 in Hamstead Marshall , Great Britain ) was Prime Minister of South Rhodes from 1958 to 1962.

Whitehead was born the son of a British diplomat in the British Embassy in Berlin. After studying at Shrewsbury School and Oxford University , he went to Southern Rhodesia in 1928 for health reasons. There he worked in Gwelo . Later he went to a farm in Bvumba near Umtali .

Politician

Whitehead was elected to the South Rhodesian Parliament in 1939, but World War II interrupted his political career. In 1946 he returned to Salisbury and was appointed Treasury and Postal Secretary. When Prime Minister Garfield Todd was forced to resign in 1958 , Whitehead succeeded him on February 17.

His tenure saw the rise and fall of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland and rapid economic growth. A relaxation of the racial laws goes back to him. In 1961, for example, he was involved in drafting a constitution that would allow the black population to send representatives to parliament. This led to his being voted out of office in the 1962 election. Whitehead remained in Parliament as opposition leader until 1964. Whitehead later returned to Britain. There he died in 1971 of lung and esophageal cancer .

Awards

• In 1944, Whitehead was inducted into the Order of the British Empire as an officer .
• In 1954, he was made Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George by Queen Elizabeth II .
• In 1972, a memorial plaque was unveiled in the cloister of Salisbury Cathedral in honor of former Governor General Sir Humphrey Gibbs.

literature

• Robert Blake : A History of Rhodesia. Knopf, New York 1977, ISBN 0-394-48068-6 .
• R. Kent Rasmussen (Ed.): Historical Dictionary of Rhodesia / Zimbabwe (= African Historical Dictionaries. Volume 18). 1st edition. Scarecrow Press, Metuchen / London 1979, ISBN 0-8108-1187-1 .
• Peter Bridger, Mary Akers, David Yates, Felicity Wood (Eds.): Encyclopaedia Rhodesia. College Press, Salisbury 1973.
• Sir Edgar CF Whitehead , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 49/1971 of November 29, 1971, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of article freely available)