History of rugby union matches between the British and Irish Lions and other countries and 1938 Lions tours, North-Western and North-Eastern Rhodesia had been merged to form the protectorate of Northern Rhodesia; the colony of Southern Rhodesia still existed. For the 1955 and 1962 tours, these two territories had been combined and, along with modern-day Malawi, made up the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. In 1964 Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland were granted independence and became Zambia and Malawi respectively. Southern Rhodesia remained a colony and called itself Rhodesia (between 1964 and 1979) and Zimbabwe-Rhodesia (in 1979), though this name was not accepted by the British government who, until the independence of Zimbabwe in 1980,
Northern Rhodesia Northern Rhodesian settlers were only prepared to join Southern Rhodesia if there were no other way to achieve minority rule. When Northern Rhodesia's mining industry suffered a major downturn in the 1930s, its representatives pushed for amalgamation in January 1936 at Victoria Falls, but the Southern Rhodesian Labour Party who blocked it, because the British government objected to Southern Rhodesian policies of job reservation and segregation being applied in the north. Shortly after the Copperbelt strike of 1935 there was an election to the legislative council, in which all candidates supported investigating the amalgamation of Northern and Southern Rhodesia. After