Dupont, Clifford

A native of the Huguenot family, his father was engaged in the sale of consumer goods. He graduated from Bishops Stortford College and in 1929, the legal department of Cambridge Clare College . In 1933 he created his own company.

After graduating from the Royal Artillery Training Corps, he joined the British Army as adjutant commander of a light anti-aircraft battalion. During the Second World War he served in North Africa and was one of the employees of General Eisenhower in the campaign for the liberation of Europe in 1944; ended the war as an officer of the War Department.

In 1947, he went to Southern Rhodesia for a year, where he bought land at Featherstone, south of Salisbury, which he later turned into a successful cattle ranch. Finally emigrated to the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in the early 1950s. However, there he was harassed by personal tragedies: in 1957 his second wife died, and in 1958, his son and daughter died in a plane crash.

In the 1958 federal election, he was nominated as a candidate for parliament from the Dominion Party; in 1962, he won as a candidate from the Rhodesian-Nationalist Party of the Rhodesian Front and was appointed Minister of Justice. His significant political step was the nomination of a politician in one constituency, where Roy Velenski, the former prime minister of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland , tried to return to politics. Dupont inflicted a crushing defeat (1079 votes against 633).

Being dissatisfied with the policies of Prime Minister Winston Field , he participates in a party conspiracy that culminates in his resignation after refusing to accept parliament's initiative to unilaterally declare independence should Britain insist on equal voting rights to the African majority.

• 1964-1965 - Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Rhodesia, at the same time since June 1965 - Minister of Defense,
• 1965-1970 - Government Administration Officer, appointed by Prime Minister Ian Smith, as opposed to the appointment of Queen Governor Sir Humphrey Gibbs .

In 1970, after the final break with Great Britain and the proclamation of a republic, he was appointed president of Rhodesia. He resigned on December 31, 1975 for health reasons.

Dupont, Clifford (1978). The Reluctant President: The Memoirs of the Hon. Clifford Dupont, GCLM., ID. Bulawayo, Rhodesia: Books of Rhodesia Publishing Co. (Pvt) Ltd. ISBN 0-86920-183-2 .