Public holidays in Rhodesia weekend". Shangani Day was replaced as a public holiday by Occupation Day in 1920, but continued to be unofficially marked thereafter. Occupation Day, held on 12 September each year, marked the anniversary of the arrival of the Pioneer Column at Fort Salisbury in 1890, and their raising of the Union Jack on the kopje overlooking the site. It was renamed Pioneers' Day in 1961. Southern Rhodesia effectively became the entirety of Rhodesia in 1964 when Northern Rhodesia became independent as Zambia. After Southern Rhodesia's colonial government unilaterally declared independence from Britain on 11 November 1965, the anniversary became celebrated as
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