In the broader context of decolonisation, corporate asset expropriation and nationalisation were widespread. Yet, in a notable departure, the British South Africa Company (BSAC) agreed to transfer its Northern Rhodesian mineral rights to Zambia's incoming government just hours before independence in 1964. The settlement represented only a fraction of the value the company had previously attached to the rights. Drawing on the obsolescing political legitimacy (OPL) framework, this paper examines how competing actors assessed and negotiated the legitimacy of the BSAC's mineral rights during the transition to independence. It argues that the settlement cannot be understood solely as a bargaining dispute over compensation. Using archival evidence, the paper shows how disputes over the legitimacy of colonial property rights shaped negotiations among colonial, imperial, corporate, and nationalist actors during the transition to independence, offering a reinterpretation of the BSAC settlement as a struggle over the legitimacy of colonial capitalism during decolonisation.
- Black power vs. white capital: Obsolescing political legitimacy and the unravelling of colonial capitalism in Northern Rhodesia
- Kondwani Happy Ngoma - Stockholm School of Economics, Center for Statecraft and Strategic Communication
- Business History
- Taylor & Francis Group
- © 2026 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
- Center for Statecraft and Strategic Communication; Department of Marketing and Strategy
- English
- Journal article