# data[].attributes.body
-From then, and now.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
RP activists considered that most of their support came from the business elite, the professional class and from second or third generation Rhodesians. The more recent white immigrants tended to vote overwhelmingly for the RF.

# data[].attributes.body
-Has the classic work suit changed at all since the 1800's?

# data[].attributes.body
-Just a little side note.

# data[].attributes.body
-Quick chart to help get a better picture of imperialism's affect on Africa geographically.

# data[].attributes.body
-Major civilization around 900CE in Zimbabwe.

# data[].attributes.body
-Imperialism definition, and importance.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Imperialism: Crash Course World History #35

# data[].attributes.body
-Quick review of missionaries in Africa

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Role of Missionaries in The Colonization of Africans

# data[].attributes.body
-Some politics from now just to know.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Robert Gabriel Mugabe (; Shona: ; 21 February 1924 - 6 September 2019) was a Zimbabwean revolutionary and politician who served as Prime Minister of Zimbabwe from 1980 to 1987 and then as President from 1987 to 2017. He served as Leader of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) from 1975 to 1980 and led its successor political party, the ZANU - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), from 1980 to 2017. Ideologically an African nationalist, during the 1970s and 1980s he identified as a Marxist-Leninist, and as a socialist after the 1990s.

Mugabe was born to a poor Shona family in Kutama, Southern Rhodesia. Educated at Kutama College and the University of Fort Hare, he worked as a schoolteacher in Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia, and Ghana. Angered by white minority rule of his homeland within the British Empire, Mugabe embraced Marxism and joined African nationalists calling for an independent state controlled by the black majority. After making anti-government comments, he was convicted of sedition and imprisoned between 1964 and 1974. On release, he fled to Mozambique, established his leadership of ZANU, and oversaw its role in the Rhodesian Bush War, fighting Ian Smith's predominately white government. He reluctantly participated in peace talks in the United Kingdom that resulted in the Lancaster House Agreement, putting an end to the war. In the 1980 general election, Mugabe led ZANU-PF to victory, becoming Prime Minister when the country, now renamed Zimbabwe, gained internationally recognised independence later that year. Mugabe's administration expanded healthcare and education and-despite his professed desire for a socialist society-adhered largely to mainstream economic policies.

Mugabe's calls for racial reconciliation failed to stem growing white emigration, while relations with Joshua Nkomo's Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) also deteriorated. In the Gukurahundi of 1982-1987, Mugabe's Fifth Brigade crushed ZAPU-linked opposition in Matabeleland in a campaign that killed at least 20,000 people, mostly Ndebele civilians. Internationally, he sent troops into the Second Congo War and chaired the Non-Aligned Movement (1986-1989), the Organisation of African Unity (1997-1998), and the African Union (2015-2016). Pursuing decolonisation, Mugabe emphasised the redistribution of land controlled by white farmers to landless blacks, initially on a "willing seller-willing buyer" basis. Frustrated at the slow rate of redistribution, from 2000 he encouraged black Zimbabweans to violently seize white-owned farms. Food production was severely impacted, leading to famine, economic decline, and foreign sanctions. Opposition to Mugabe grew, but he was re-elected in 2002, 2008, and 2013 through campaigns dominated by violence, electoral fraud, and nationalistic appeals to his rural Shona voter base. In 2017, members of his party ousted him in a coup, replacing him with former vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa.

Having dominated Zimbabwe's politics for nearly four decades, Mugabe was a controversial figure. He was praised as a revolutionary hero of the African liberation struggle who helped free Zimbabwe from British colonialism, imperialism, and white minority rule. Critics accused Mugabe of being a dictator responsible for economic mismanagement and widespread corruption and human rights abuses, including anti-white racism and crimes against humanity.

Childhood: 1924-1945

Robert Gabriel Mugabe was born on 21 February 1924 at the Kutama Mission village in Southern Rhodesia's Zvimba District. His father, Gabriel Matibiri, was a carpenter while his mother Bona was a Christian catechist for the village children. They had been trained in their professions by the Jesuits, the Roman Catholic religious order which had established the mission. Bona and Gabriel had six children: Miteri (Michael), Raphael, Robert, Dhonandhe (Donald), Sabina, and Bridgette. They belonged to the Zezuru clan, one of the smallest branches of the Shona tribe. Mugabe's paternal grandfather was Chief Constantine Karigamombe, alias "Matibiri", a powerful figure who served King Lobengula in the 19th century. Through his father, he claimed membership of the chieftaincy family that has provided the hereditary rulers of Zvimba for generations.

The Jesuits were strict disciplinarians and under their influence Mugabe developed an intense self-discipline, while also becoming a devout Catholic. Mugabe excelled at school, where he was a secretive and solitary child, preferring to read, rather than playing sports or socialising with other children. He was taunted by many of the other children, who regarded him as a coward and a mother's boy.

In about 1930 Gabriel had an argument with one of the Jesuits, and as a result the Mugabe family was expelled from the mission village by its French leader, Father Jean-Baptiste Loubière. The family settled in a village about 11 kilometres (7 miles) away; the children were permitted to remain at the mission primary school, living with relatives in Kutama during term-time and returning to their parental home on weekends. Around the same time, Robert's older brother Raphael died, likely of diarrhoea. In early 1934, Robert's other older brother, Michael, also died, after consuming poisoned maize. Later that year, Gabriel left his family in search of employment in Bulawayo. He subsequently abandoned Bona and their six children and established a relationship with another woman, with whom he had three further offspring.

Loubière died shortly after and was replaced by an Irishman, Father Jerome O'Hea, who welcomed the return of the Mugabe family to Kutama. In contrast to the racism that permeated Southern Rhodesian society, under O'Hea's leadership the Kutama Mission preached an ethos of racial equality. O'Hea nurtured the young Mugabe; shortly before his death in 1970 he described the latter as having "an exceptional mind and an exceptional heart". As well as helping provide Mugabe with a Christian education, O'Hea taught him about the Irish War of Independence, in which Irish revolutionaries had overthrown the British imperial regime. After completing six years of elementary education, in 1941 Mugabe was offered a place on a teacher training course at Kutama College. Mugabe's mother could not afford the tuition fees, which were paid in part by his grandfather and in part by O'Hea. As part of this education, Mugabe began teaching at his old school, earning £2 per month, which he used to support his family. In 1944, Gabriel returned to Kutama with his three new children, but died shortly after, leaving Robert to take financial responsibility for both his three siblings and three half-siblings. Having attained a teaching diploma, Mugabe left Kutama in 1945.

University education and teaching career: 1945-1960

During the following years, Mugabe taught at various schools around Southern Rhodesia, among them the Dadaya Mission school in Shabani. There is no evidence that Mugabe was involved in political activity at the time, and he did not participate in the country's 1948 general strike. In 1949 he won a scholarship to study at the University of Fort Hare in South Africa's Eastern Cape. There he joined the African National Congress youth league (ANCYL) and attended African nationalist meetings, where he met a number of Jewish South African communists who introduced him to Marxist ideas. He later related that despite this exposure to Marxism, his biggest influence at the time were the actions of Mahatma Gandhi during the Indian independence movement. In 1952, he left the university with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history and English literature. In later years he described his time at Fort Hare as the "turning point" in his life.

Mugabe returned to Southern Rhodesia in 1952, by which time-he later related- he was "completely hostile to the [colonialist] system". Here, his first job was as a teacher at the Driefontein Roman Catholic Mission School near Umvuma. In 1953 he relocated to the Highfield Government School in Salisbury's Harari township and in 1954 to the Mambo Township Government School in Gwelo. Meanwhile, he gained a Bachelor of Education degree by correspondence from the University of South Africa, and ordered a number of Marxist tracts-among them Karl Marx's and Friedrich Engels' The Condition of the Working Class in England-from a London mail-order company. Despite his growing interest in politics, he was not active in any political movement. He joined a number of inter-racial groups, such as the Capricorn Africa Society, through which he mixed with both black and white Rhodesians. Guy Clutton-Brock, who knew Mugabe through this group, later noted that he was "an extraordinary young man" who could be "a bit of a cold fish at times" but "could talk about Elvis Presley or Bing Crosby as easily as politics".

From 1955 to 1958, Mugabe lived in neighbouring Northern Rhodesia, where he worked at Chalimbana Teacher Training College in Lusaka. There he continued his education by working on a second degree by correspondence, this time a Bachelor of Administration from the University of London International Programmes through distance and learning. In Northern Rhodesia, he was taken in for a time by the family of Emmerson Mnangagwa, whom Mugabe inspired to join the liberation movement and who would later go on to be President of Zimbabwe. In 1958, Mugabe moved to Ghana to work at St Mary's Teacher Training College in Takoradi. He taught at Apowa Secondary School, also at Takoradi, after obtaining his local certification at Achimota College (1958-1960), where he met his first wife, Sally Hayfron. According to Mugabe, "I went [to Ghana] as an adventurist. I wanted to see what it would be like in an independent African state". Ghana had been the first African state to gain independence from European colonial powers and under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah underwent a range of African nationalist reforms; Mugabe revelled in this environment. In tandem with his teaching, Mugabe attended the Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute in Winneba. Mugabe later claimed that it was in Ghana that he finally embraced Marxism. He also began a relationship there with Hayfron who worked at the college and shared his political interests.

Revolutionary activity

Early political career: 1960-1963

While Mugabe was teaching abroad, an anti-colonialist African nationalist movement was established in Southern Rhodesia. It was first led by Joshua Nkomo's Southern Rhodesia African National Congress, founded in September 1957 and then banned by the colonial government in February 1959. SRANC was replaced by the more radically oriented National Democratic Party (NDP), founded in January 1960. In May 1960, Mugabe returned to Southern Rhodesia, bringing Hayfron with him. The pair had planned for their visit to be short, however Mugabe's friend, the African nationalist Leopold Takawira, urged them to stay.

In July 1960, Takawira and two other NDP officials were arrested; in protest, Mugabe joined a demonstration of 7,000 people who planned to march from Highfield to the Prime Minister's office in Salisbury. The demonstration was stopped by riot police outside Stoddart Hall in Harare township. By midday the next day, the crowd had grown to 40,000 and a makeshift platform had been erected for speakers. Having become a much-respected figure through his profession, his possession of three degrees, and his travels abroad, Mugabe was among those invited to speak to the crowd. Following this event, Mugabe decided to devote himself full-time to activism, resigning his teaching post in Ghana (after having served two years of the four-year teaching contract). He chaired the first NDP congress, held in October 1960, assisted by Chitepo on the procedural aspects. Mugabe was elected the party's publicity secretary. Mugabe consciously injected emotionalism into the NDP's African nationalism, hoping to broaden its support among the wider population by appealing to traditional cultural values. He helped to form the NDP Youth Wing and encouraged the incorporation of ancestral prayers, traditional costume, and female ululation into its meetings. In February 1961 he married Hayfron in a Roman Catholic ceremony conducted in Salisbury; she had converted to Catholicism to make this possible.

The British government held a Salisbury conference in 1961 to determine Southern Rhodesia's future. Nkomo led an NDP delegation, which hoped that the British would support the creation of an independent state governed by the black majority. Representatives of the country's white minority-who then controlled Southern Rhodesia's government-were opposed to this, promoting continued white minority rule. Following negotiations, Nkomo agreed to a proposal which would allow the black population representation through 15 of the 65 seats in the country's parliament. Mugabe and others in the NDP were furious at Nkomo's compromise. Following the conference, Southern Rhodesia's African nationalist movement fell into disarray. Mugabe spoke at a number of NDP rallies before the party was banned by the government in December 1961. Many of its members re-grouped as the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) several days later, with Mugabe appointed as ZAPU's publicity secretary and general secretary.

Racial violence was growing in the country, with aggrieved black Africans targeting the white community. Mugabe deemed such conflict a necessary tactic in the overthrow of British colonial dominance and white minority rule. This contrasted with Nkomo's view that African nationalists should focus on international diplomacy to encourage the British government to grant their demands. Nine months after it had been founded, ZAPU was also banned by the government, and in September 1962 Mugabe and other senior party officials were arrested and restricted to their home districts for three months. Both Mugabe and his wife were in trouble with the law; he had been charged with making subversive statements in a public speech and awarded bail before his trial. Hayfron had been sentenced to two years imprisonment-suspended for 15 months-for a speech in which she declared that the British Queen Elizabeth II "can go to hell".

The rise of African nationalism generated a white backlash in Southern Rhodesia, with the right-wing Rhodesian Front winning the December 1962 general election. The new government sought to preserve white minority rule by tightening security and establishing full independence from the United Kingdom. Mugabe met with colleagues at his house in Salisbury's Highbury district, where he argued that as political demonstrations were simply being banned, it was time to move towards armed resistance. Both he and others rejected Nkomo's proposal that they establish a government-in-exile in Dar es Salaam. He and Hayfron skipped bail to attend a ZAPU meeting in the Tanganyikan city. There, the party leadership met Tanganyika's president, Julius Nyerere, who also dismissed the idea of a government-in-exile and urged ZAPU to organise their resistance to white minority rule within Southern Rhodesia itself.

In August, Hayfron gave birth to Mugabe's son, whom they named Nhamodzenyika, a Shona term meaning "suffering country". Mugabe insisted that she take their son back to Ghana, while he decided to return to Southern Rhodesia. There, African nationalists opposed to Nkomo's leadership had established a new party, the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), in August; Ndabaningi Sithole became the group's president, while appointing Mugabe to be the group's secretary-general in absentia. Nkomo responded by forming his own group, the People's Caretaker Council, which was widely referred to as "ZAPU" after its predecessor. ZAPU and ZANU violently opposed one another and soon gang warfare broke out between their rival memberships.

Imprisonment: 1963-1975

Mugabe was arrested on his return to Southern Rhodesia in December 1963. His trial lasted from January to March 1964, during which he refused to retract the subversive statements that he had publicly made. In March 1964 he was sentenced to 21 months' imprisonment. Mugabe was first imprisoned at Salisbury Maximum Security Prison, before being moved to the Wha Wha detention centre and then the Sikombela detention centre in Que Que. At the latter, he organised study classes for the inmates, teaching them basic literacy, maths, and English. Sympathetic black warders smuggled messages from Mugabe and other members of the ZANU executive committee to activists outside the prison. At the executive's bidding, ZANU activist Herbert Chitepo had organised a small guerrilla force in Lusaka. In April 1966 the group carried out a failed attempt to destroy power pylons at Sinoia, and shortly after attacked a white-owned farm near Hartley, killing its inhabitants. The government responded by returning the members of the ZANU executive, including Mugabe, to Salisbury Prison in 1966. There, forty prisoners were divided among four communal cells, with many sleeping on the concrete floor due to overcrowding; Mugabe shared his cell with Sithole, Enos Nkala, and Edgar Tekere. He remained there for eight years, devoting his time to reading and studying. During this period, he gained several further degrees from the University of London: a masters in economics, a bachelor of administration, and two law degrees.

While imprisoned, Mugabe learned that his son had died of encephalitis at the age of three. Mugabe was grief-stricken and requested a leave of absence to visit his wife in Ghana. He never forgave the prison authorities for refusing this request. Claims have also circulated among those who knew him at the time that Mugabe was subjected to both physical and mental torture during his imprisonment. According to Father Emmanuel Ribeiro, who was Mugabe's priest during his imprisonment, Mugabe got through the experience "partly through the strength of his spirituality" but also because his "real strength was study and helping others to learn".

While Mugabe was imprisoned, in August 1964, the Rhodesian Front government-now under the leadership of Ian Smith-banned ZANU and ZAPU and arrested all remaining leaders of the country's African nationalist movement. Smith's government made a unilateral declaration of independence from the United Kingdom in November 1965, renaming Southern Rhodesia as Rhodesia; the UK refused to recognise the legitimacy of this and imposed economic sanctions on the country.

In 1972, the African nationalists launched a guerrilla war against Smith's government. Among the revolutionaries, it was known as the "Second Chimurenga". Paramilitary groups based themselves in neighbouring Tanzania and Zambia; many of their fighters were inadequately armed and trained. ZANU's military wing, the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA), consisted largely of Shona. It was based in neighbouring Mozambique and gained funds from the People's Republic of China. ZAPU's military wing, the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA), was instead funded by the Soviet Union, was based in Zambia, and consisted largely of Ndebele.

Mugabe and other senior ZANU members had growing doubts about Sithole's leadership, deeming him increasingly irritable and irrational. In October 1968 Sithole had tried to smuggle a message out of the prison commanding ZANU activists to assassinate Smith. His plan was discovered, and he was put on trial in January 1969; desperate to avoid a death sentence, he declared that he renounced violence and his previous ideological commitments. Mugabe denounced Sithole's "treachery" in rejecting ZANU's cause, and the executive removed him as ZANU President in a vote of no confidence, selecting Mugabe as his successor. In November 1974, the ZANU executive voted to suspend Sithole's membership of the organisation.

Fearing that the guerrilla war would spread south, the South African government pressured Rhodesia to advance the process of détente with the politically moderate black governments of Zambia and Tanzania. As part of these negotiations, Smith's government agreed to release a number of black revolutionaries who had been indefinitely detained. After almost eleven years of imprisonment, Mugabe was released in November 1974. He moved in with his sister Sabina at her home in Highfield township. He was intent on joining the ZANU forces and taking part in the guerrilla war, recognising that to secure dominance of ZANU he would have to take command of ZANLA. This was complicated by internal violence within the paramilitary group, predominately between members of the Manyika and Karange groups of Shona.

Guerrilla war: 1975-1979

In March 1975, Mugabe resolved to leave Rhodesia for Mozambique, ambitious to take control of ZANU's guerrilla campaign. After his friend Maurice Nyagumbo was arrested, he feared the same fate but was hidden from the authorities by Ribeiro. Ribeiro and a sympathetic nun then assisted him and Edgar Tekere in smuggling themselves into Mozambique. Mugabe remained in exile there for two years. Mozambique's Marxist President Samora Machel was sceptical of Mugabe's leadership abilities and was unsure whether to recognise him as ZANU's legitimate leader. Machel gave him a house in Quelimane and kept him under partial house arrest, with Mugabe requiring permission to travel. It would be almost a year before Machel accepted Mugabe's leadership of ZANU.

Mugabe travelled to various ZANLA camps in Mozambique to build support among its officers. By mid-1976, he had secured the allegiance of ZANLA's military commanders and established himself as the most prominent guerrilla leader battling Smith's regime. In August 1977, he was officially declared ZANU President at a meeting of the party's central committee held in Chimoio. During the war, Mugabe remained suspicious of many of ZANLA's commanders and had a number of them imprisoned. In 1977 he imprisoned his former second-in-command, Wilfred Mhanda, for suspected disloyalty. After Josiah Tongogara was killed in a car accident in 1979, there were suggestions made that Mugabe may have had some involvement in it; these rumours were never substantiated.

Mugabe remained aloof from the day-to-day military operations of ZANLA, which he entrusted to Tongogara. In January 1976, ZANLA launched its first major infiltration from Mozambique, with nearly 1000 guerrillas crossing the border to attack white-owned farms and stores. In response, Smith's government enlisted all men under the age of 35, expanding the Rhodesian army by 50%. ZANLA's attacks forced large numbers of white landowners to abandon their farms; their now-unemployed black workers joined ZANLA by the thousands. By 1979, ZANLA were in a position to attack a number of Rhodesian cities. Over the course of the war, at least 30,000 people were killed. As a proportion of their wider population, the whites had higher number of fatalities, and by the latter part of the decade the guerrillas were winning.

Mugabe focused on the propaganda war, making regular speeches and radio broadcasts. In these, he presented himself as a Marxist-Leninist, speaking warmly of Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries like Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Fidel Castro. Despite his Marxist views, Mugabe's meetings with Soviet representatives were unproductive, for they insisted on Nkomo's leadership of the revolutionary struggle. His relationship with the People's Republic of China was far warmer, as the Chinese Maoist government supplied ZANLA with armaments without any conditions. He also sought support from Western nations, visiting Western embassies in Mozambique, and travelled to both Western states like Italy and Switzerland and Marxist-governed states like the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Vietnam, and Cuba.

Mugabe called for the overthrow of Rhodesia's predominately white government, the execution of Smith and his "criminal gang", the expropriation of white-owned land, and the transformation of Rhodesia into a one-party Marxist state. He repeatedly called for violence against the country's white minority, referring to white Rhodesians as "blood-sucking exploiters", "sadistic killers", and "hard-core racists". In one typical example, taken from a 1978 radio address, Mugabe declared: "Let us hammer [the white man] to defeat. Let us blow up his citadel. Let us give him no time to rest. Let us chase him in every corner. Let us rid our home of this settler vermin". For Mugabe, armed struggle was an essential part of the establishment of a new state. In contrast to other black nationalist leaders like Nkomo, Mugabe opposed a negotiated settlement with Smith's government. In October 1976 ZANU nevertheless established a joint platform with ZAPU known as the Patriotic Front. In September 1978 Mugabe met with Nkomo in Lusaka. He was angry with the latter's secret attempts to negotiate with Smith.

Lancaster House Agreement: 1979

The beginning of the end for Smith came when South African Prime Minister B. J. Vorster concluded that white minority rule was unsustainable in a country where blacks outnumbered whites 22:1. Under pressure from Vorster, Smith accepted in principle that white minority rule could not be maintained forever. He oversaw the 1979 general election which resulted in Abel Muzorewa, a politically moderate black bishop, being elected Prime Minister of the reconstituted Zimbabwe Rhodesia. Both ZANU and ZAPU had boycotted the election, which did not receive international recognition. At the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting 1979, held in Lusaka, the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher surprised delegates by announcing that the UK would officially recognise the country's independence if it transitioned to democratic majority rule.

The negotiations took place at Lancaster House in London and were led by the Conservative Party politician Peter Carington. Mugabe refused to attend these London peace talks, opposing the idea of a negotiated rather than military solution to the Rhodesian War. Machel insisted that he must, threatening to end Mozambican support for the ZANU-PF if he did not. Mugabe arrived in London in September 1979. There, he and Nkomo presented themselves as part of the "Patriotic Front" but established separate headquarters in the city. At the conference the pair were divided in their attitude; Nkomo wanted to present himself as a moderate while Mugabe played up to his image as a Marxist revolutionary, with Carington exploiting this division. Throughout the negotiations, Mugabe did not trust the British and believed that they were manipulating events to their own advantage.

The ensuing Lancaster House Agreement called for all participants in the Rhodesian Bush War to agree to a ceasefire, with a British governor, Christopher Soames, arriving in Rhodesia to oversee an election in which the various factions could compete as political parties. It outlined a plan for a transition to formal independence as a sovereign republic under black-majority rule, also maintaining that Rhodesia would be renamed Zimbabwe, a name adopted from the Iron Age archaeological site of Great Zimbabwe. The agreement also ensured that the country's white minority retained many of its economic and political privileges, with 20 seats to be reserved for whites in the new Parliament. By insisting on the need for a democratic black majority government, Carington was able to convince Mugabe to compromise on the other main issue of the conference, that of land ownership. Mugabe agreed to the protection of the white community's privately owned property on the condition that the UK and U.S governments provide financial assistance allowing the Zimbabwean government to purchase much land for redistribution among blacks. Mugabe was opposed to the idea of a ceasefire, but under pressure from Machel he agreed to it. Mugabe signed the agreement, but felt cheated, remaining disappointed that he had never achieved a military victory over the Rhodesian forces.

Electoral campaign: 1980

Returning to Salisbury in January 1980, Mugabe was greeted by a supportive crowd. He settled into a house in Mount Pleasant, a wealthy, white-dominated suburb. Machel had cautioned Mugabe not to alienate Rhodesia's white minority, warning him that any white flight after the election would cause economic damage as it had in Mozambique. Accordingly, during his electoral campaign, Mugabe avoided the use of Marxist and revolutionary rhetoric. Mugabe insisted that in the election, ZANU would stand as a separate party to ZAPU, and refused Nkomo's request for a meeting. He formed ZANU into a political party, known as Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF). Predictions were made that ZANU-PF would win the election on the basis of the country's ethnic divisions; Mugabe was Shona, a community that made up around 70% of the country's population, while Nkomo was Ndebele, a tribal group who made up only around 20%. For many in the white community and in the British government, this outcome was a terrifying prospect due to Mugabe's avowed Marxist beliefs and the inflammatory comments that he had made about whites during the guerrilla war.

During the campaign, Mugabe survived two assassination attempts. In the first, which took place on 6 February, a grenade was thrown at his Mount Pleasant home, where it exploded against a garden wall. In the second, on 10 February, a roadside bomb exploded near his motorcade as he left a Fort Victoria rally. Mugabe himself was unharmed. Mugabe accused the Rhodesian security forces of being responsible for these attacks. In an attempt to quell the possibility that Rhodesia's security forces would launch a coup to prevent the election, Mugabe met with Peter Walls, the commander of Rhodesia's armed forces, and asked him to remain in his position in the event of a ZANU-PF victory. At the time Walls refused.

The electoral campaign was marred by widespread voter intimidation, perpetrated by Nkomo's ZAPU, Abel Muzorewa's United African National Council (UANC), and Mugabe's ZANU-PF. Commenting on ZANU-PF's activities in eastern Rhodesia, Nkomo complained that "the word intimidation is mild. People are being terrorised. It is terror." Reacting to ZANU-PF's acts of voter intimidation, Mugabe was called before Soames at Government House. Mugabe regarded the meeting as a British attempt to thwart his electoral campaign. Under the terms of the negotiation, Soames had the power to disqualify any political party guilty of voter intimidation. Rhodesia's security services, Nkomo, Muzorewa, and some of his own advisers all called on Soames to disqualify ZANU-PF. After deliberation, Soames disagreed, believing that ZANU-PF were sure to win the election and that disqualifying them would wreck any chance of an orderly transition of power.

In the February election, ZANU-PF secured 63% of the national vote, gaining 57 of the 80 parliamentary seats allocated for black parties and providing them with an absolute majority. ZAPU had gained 20 seats, and UANC had three. Mugabe was elected MP for the Salisbury constituency of Highfield. Attempting to calm panic and prevent white flight, Mugabe appeared on television and called for national unity, stability, and law and order, insisting that the pensions of white civil servants would be guaranteed and that private property would be protected.

Prime Minister of Zimbabwe: 1980-1987

Statues atop the tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Heroes' Acre; the monument was designed by North Korean architects who reported directly to Mugabe.[166]

Southern Rhodesia gained internationally recognised independence on 18 April 1980. Mugabe took the oath of office as the newly minted country's first Prime Minister shortly after midnight. He gave a speech at Salisbury's Rufaro Stadium announcing that Rhodesia would be renamed "Zimbabwe" and pledged racial reconciliation. Soames aided Mugabe in bringing about an orderly transition of power; for this Mugabe remained grateful, describing Soames as a good friend. Mugabe unsuccessfully urged Soames to remain in Zimbabwe for several more years, and also failed to convince the UK to assume a two-year "guiding role" for his government because most ZANU-PF members lacked experience in governing. ZANU-PF's absolute parliamentary majority allowed them to rule alone, but Mugabe created a government of national unity by inviting members of rival parties to join his cabinet. Mugabe moved into the Premier's residence in Salisbury, which he left furnished in the same style as Smith had left it.

Across the country, statues of Cecil Rhodes were removed and squares and roads named after prominent colonial figures were renamed after black nationalists. In 1982 Salisbury was renamed Harare. Mugabe employed North Korean architects to design Heroes' Acre, a monument and complex in western Harare to commemorate the struggle against minority rule. Zimbabwe also received much aid from Western countries, whose governments hoped that a stable and prosperous Zimbabwe would aid the transition of South Africa away from apartheid and minority rule. The United States provided Zimbabwe with a $25 million three-year aid package. The UK financed a land reform program, and provided military advisers to aid the integration of the guerrilla armies and old Rhodesian security forces into a new Zimbabwean military. Members of both ZANLA and ZIPRA were integrated into the army; though, there remained a strong rivalry between the two groups. As Prime Minister, Mugabe retained Walls as the head of the armed forces.

Mugabe's government continued to make regular pronouncements about converting Zimbabwe into a socialist society. In contrast to Mugabe's talk of socialism, his government's budgetary policies were conservative, operating within a capitalist framework and emphasising the need for foreign investment. In office, Mugabe sought a gradual transformation away from capitalism and tried to build upon existing state institutions. From 1980 to 1990, the country's economy grew by an average of 2.7% a year, but this was outstripped by population growth and real income declined. The unemployment rate rose, reaching 26% in 1990. The government ran a budget deficit year-on-year that averaged at 10% of the country's gross domestic product. Under Mugabe's leadership, there was a massive expansion in education and health spending. In 1980, Zimbabwe had just 177 secondary schools, by 2000 this number had risen to 1,548. During that period, the adult literacy rate rose from 62% to 82%, one of the highest levels in Africa. Levels of child immunisation were raised from 25% of the population to 92%.

A new leadership elite were formed, who often expressed their newfound status through purchasing large houses and expensive cars, sending their children to private schools, and obtaining farms and businesses. To contain their excesses, in 1984 Mugabe drew up a "leadership code" which prohibited any senior figures from obtaining more than one salary or owning over 50-acres of agricultural land. There were exceptions, with Mugabe giving permission to General Solomon Mujuru to expand his business empire, resulting in his becoming one of the Zimbabwe's wealthiest people. Growing corruption among the socio-economic elite generated resentment among the wider population, much of which was living in poverty.

ZANU-PF also began establishing its own business empire, founding the M&S Syndicate in 1980 and the Zidoo Holdings in 1981. By 1992, the party had fixed assets and businesses worth an estimated Z$500 million (US$75 million). In 1980, ZANU-PF used Nigerian funds to set up the Mass Media Trust, through which they bought out a South African company that owned most of Zimbabwe's newspapers. The white editors of these newspapers were sacked and replaced by government appointees. These media outlets subsequently became a source of the party's propaganda.

At independence, 39% of Zimbabwe's land was under the ownership of around 6000 white large-scale commercial farmers, while 4% was owned by black small-scale commercial farmers, and 41% was 'communal land' where 4 million people lived, often in overcrowded conditions. The Lancaster House agreement ensured that until 1990, the sale of land could only take place on a "willing seller-willing buyer" basis. The only permitted exceptions were if the land was "underutilised" or needed for a public purpose, in which case the government could compulsorily purchase it while fully compensating the owner. This meant that Mugabe's government was largely restricted to purchasing land which was of poor quality. Its target was to resettle 18,000 black families on 2.5 million acres of white-owned land over three years. This would cost £30 million (US$60 million), half of which was to be provided by the UK government as per the Lancaster House Agreement.

In 1986, Mugabe became chair of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), a position that he retained until 1989. As the leader of one of the Front Line States, the countries bordering apartheid South Africa, he gained credibility within the anti-apartheid movement.

Race relations

The wrongs of the past must now stand forgiven and forgotten. If ever we look to the past, let us do so for the lesson the past has taught us, namely that oppression and racism are inequalities that must never find scope in our political and social system. It could never be a correct justification that just because the whites oppressed us yesterday when they had power, the blacks must oppress them today because they have power. An evil remains an evil whether practised by white against black or black against white.

Mugabe initially emphasised racial reconciliation and he was keen to build a good relationship with white Zimbabweans. He hoped to avoid a white exodus and tried to allay fears that he would nationalise white-owned property. He appointed two white ministers- David Smith and Denis Norman-to his government, met with white leaders in agriculture, industry, mining, and commerce, and impressed senior figures in the outgoing administration like Smith and Ken Flower with his apparent sincerity. With the end of the war, petrol rationing, and economic sanctions, life for white Zimbabweans improved during the early years of Mugabe's rule. In the economic boom that followed, the white minority-which controlled considerable property and dominated commerce, industry, and banking-were the country's main beneficiaries.

Nevertheless, many white Zimbabweans complained that they were the victims of racial discrimination. Many whites remained uneasy about living under the government of a black Marxist and they also feared that their children would be unable to secure jobs. There was a growing exodus to South Africa, and in 1980, 17,000 whites-approximately a tenth of the white Zimbabwean population-emigrated. Mugabe's government had pledged support for the African National Congress and other anti-apartheid forces within South Africa but did not allow them to use Zimbabwe as a base for their military operations. To protest apartheid and white minority rule in South Africa, Mugabe's government banned Zimbabwe from engaging South Africa in any sporting competitions. In turn, South Africa tried to destabilise Zimbabwe by blocking trade routes into the country and supporting anti-Mugabe militants among the country's white minority.

In December 1981, a bomb struck ZANU-PF headquarters, killing seven and injuring 124. Mugabe blamed South African-backed white militants. He criticised "reactionary and counter-revolutionary elements" in the white community, stating that despite the fact that they had faced no punishment for their past actions, they rejected racial reconciliation and "are acting in collusion with South Africa to harm our racial relations, to destroy our unity, to sabotage our economy, and to overthrow the popularly elected government I lead". Increasingly he criticised not only the militants but the entire white community for holding a monopoly on "Zimbabwe's economic power". This was a view echoed by many government ministers and the government-controlled media. One of these ministers, Tekere, was involved in an incident in which he and seven armed men stormed a white-owned farmhouse, killing an elderly farmer; they alleged that in doing so they were foiling a coup attempt. Tekere was acquitted of murder; however, Mugabe dropped him from his cabinet.

Racial mistrust and suspicion continued to grow. In December 1981, the elderly white MP Wally Stuttaford was accused of being a South African agent, arrested, and tortured, generating anger among whites. In July 1982, South African-backed white militants destroyed 13 aircraft at Thornhill. A number of white military officers were accused of complicity, arrested, and tortured. They were put on trial but cleared by judges, after which they were immediately re-arrested. Their case generated an international outcry, which Mugabe criticised, stating that the case only gained such attention because the accused were white. His defence of torture and contempt for legal procedures damaged his international standing. White flight continued to grow, and within three years of Mugabe's premiership half of all white Zimbabweans had emigrated. In the 1985 election, Smith's Conservative Alliance of Zimbabwe won 15 of the 20 seats allocated for white Zimbabweans. Mugabe was outraged by this result, lambasting white Zimbabweans for not repenting "in any way" by continuing to support Smith and other white politicians who had committed "horrors against the people of Zimbabwe".

Relations with ZAPU and the Gukurahundi

Under the new constitution, Zimbabwe's presidency was a ceremonial role with no governmental power; the first President was Canaan Banana. Mugabe had previously offered the position to Nkomo, who had turned it down in favour of becoming Minister of Home Affairs. While working together, there remained an aura of resentment and suspicion between Mugabe and Nkomo. Mugabe gave ZAPU four cabinet seats, but Nkomo demanded more. In contrast, some ZANU-PF figures argued that ZAPU should not have any seats in government, suggesting that Zimbabwe be converted into a one-party state. Tekere and Enos Nkala were particularly adamant that there should be a crackdown on ZAPU. After Nkala called for ZAPU to be violently crushed during a rally in Entumbane, street clashes between the two parties broke out in the city.

In January 1981, Mugabe demoted Nkomo in a cabinet reshuffle; the latter warned that this would anger ZAPU supporters. In February, violence between ZAPU and ZANU-PF supporters broke out among the battalion stationed at Ntabazinduna, soon spreading to other army bases, resulting in 300 deaths. An arms cache featuring land mines and anti-aircraft missiles were then discovered at Ascot Farm, which was part-owned by Nkomo. Mugabe cited this as evidence that ZAPU were plotting a coup, an allegation that Nkomo denied. Likening Nkomo to "a cobra in the house", Mugabe sacked him from the government, and ZAPU-owned businesses, farms, and properties were seized.

Members of both ZANLA and ZIPRA had deserted their positions and engaged in banditry. In Matabeleland, ZIPRA deserters who came to be known as "dissenters" engaged in robbery, holding up buses, and attacking farmhouses, creating an environment of growing lawlessness. These dissidents received support from South Africa through its Operation Mute, by which it hoped to further destabilise Zimbabwe. The government often conflated ZIPRA with the dissenters, although Nkomo denounced the dissidents and their South African supporters. Mugabe authorised the police and army to crack down on the Matabeleland dissenters, declaring that state officers would be granted legal immunity for any "extra-legal" actions they may perform while doing so. During 1982 he had established the Fifth Brigade, an elite armed force trained by the North Koreans; membership was drawn largely from Shona-speaking ZANLA soldiers and were answerable directly to Mugabe. In January 1983, the Fifth Brigade were deployed in the region, overseeing a campaign of beatings, arson, public executions, and massacres of those accused of being sympathetic to the dissidents. The scale of the violence was greater than that witnessed in the Rhodesian War. Interrogation centres were established where people were tortured. Mugabe acknowledged that civilians would be persecuted in the violence, claiming that "we can't tell who is a dissident and who is not." The ensuing events became known as the "Gukurahundi", a Shona word meaning "wind that sweeps away the chaff before the rains".

In 1984 the Gukurahundi spread to Matabeleland South, an area then in its third year of drought. The Fifth Brigade closed all stores, halted all deliveries, and imposed a curfew, exacerbating starvation for a period of two months. The Bishop of Bulawayo accused Mugabe of overseeing a project of systematic starvation. When a Roman Catholic delegation provided Mugabe with a dossier listing atrocities committed by the Fifth Brigade, Mugabe refuted all its allegations and accused the clergy of being disloyal to Zimbabwe. He had the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe suppressed. In 1985, an Amnesty International report on the Gukurahundi was dismissed by Mugabe as "a heap of lies". Over the course of four years, approximately 10,000 civilians had been killed, and many others had been beaten and tortured. Genocide Watch later estimated that approximately 20,000 had been killed and classified the events as genocide.

Margaret Thatcher's UK government was aware of the killings but remained silent on the matter, cautious not to anger Mugabe and threaten the safety of white Zimbabweans. The United States also did not raise strong objections, with President Ronald Reagan welcoming Mugabe to the White House in September 1983. In October 1983, Mugabe attended the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in New Delhi, where no participating states mentioned the Gukurahundi. In 2000, Mugabe acknowledged that the mass killings had happened, stating that it was "an act of madness ... it was wrong and both sides were to blame". His biographer Martin Meredith argued that Mugabe and his ZANU-PF were solely to blame for the massacres. Various Mugabe biographers have seen the Gukurahundi as a deliberate attempt to eliminate ZAPU and its support base to advance his desire for a ZANU-PF one-party state.

There was further violence in the build-up to the 1985 election, with ZAPU supporters facing harassment from ZANU-PF Youth League brigades. Despite this intimidation, ZAPU won all 15 of the parliamentary seats in Matabeleland. Mugabe then appointed Enos Nkala as the new police minister. Nkala subsequently detained over 100 ZAPU officials, including five of its MPs and the Mayor of Bulawayo, banned the party from holding rallies or meetings, closed all of their offices, and dissolved all of the district councils that they controlled. To avoid further violence, in December 1987 Nkomo signed a Unity Accord in which ZAPU was officially disbanded and its leadership merged into ZANU-PF. The merger between the two parties left ZANU-PF with 99 of the 100 seats in parliament, and established Zimbabwe as a de facto one-party state.

President of Zimbabwe

Constitutional and economic reform: 1987-1995

In late 1987, Zimbabwe's parliament amended the constitution. On 30 December it declared Mugabe to be executive president, a new position that combined the roles of head of state, head of government, and commander-in-chief of the armed forces. This position gave him the power to dissolve parliament, declare martial law, and run for an unlimited number of terms. According to Meredith, Mugabe now had "a virtual stranglehold on government machinery and unlimited opportunities to exercise patronage". The constitutional amendments also abolished the twenty parliamentary seats reserved for white representatives, and left parliament less relevant and independent.

In the build-up to the 1990 election, parliamentary reforms increased the number of seats to 120; of these, twenty were to be appointed by the President and ten by the Council of Chiefs. This measure made it more difficult for any opposition to Mugabe to gain a parliamentary majority. The main opposition party in that election were the Zimbabwe Unity Movement (ZUM), launched in April 1989 by Tekere; although a longstanding friend of Mugabe, Tekere accused him of betraying the revolution and establishing a dictatorship. ZANU-PF propaganda made threats against those considering voting ZUM in the election; one television advert featured images of a car crash with the statement "This is one way to die. Another is to vote ZUM. Don't commit suicide, vote ZANU-PF and live." In the election, Mugabe was re-elected President with nearly 80% of the vote, while ZANU-PF secured 116 of the 119 available parliamentary seats.

Mugabe had long hoped to convert Zimbabwe into a one-party state, but in 1990 he officially "postponed" these plans as both Mozambique and many Eastern Bloc states transitioned from one-party states to multi-party republics. Following the collapse of the Marxist-Leninist regimes in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, in 1991 ZANU-PF removed references to "Marxism-Leninism" and " scientific socialism" in its material; Mugabe maintained that "socialism remains our sworn ideology". That year, Mugabe pledged himself to free market economics and accepted a structural adjustment programme provided by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This economic reform package called for Zimbabwe to privatise state assets and reduce import tariffs; Mugabe's government implemented some but not all of its recommendations. The reforms encouraged employers to cut their wages, generating growing opposition from the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions.

By 1990, 52,000 black families had been settled on 6.5 million acres. This was insufficient to deal with the country's overcrowding problem, which was being exacerbated by the growth in the black population. That year, Zimbabwe's parliament passed an amendment allowing the government to expropriate land at a fixed price while denying land-owners the right of appeal to the courts. The government hoped that by doing so it could settle 110,000 black families on 13 million acres, which would require the expropriation of approximately half of all white-owned land. Zimbabwe's Commercial Farmers Union argued that the proposed measures would wreck the country's economy, urging the government to instead settle landless blacks on the half-a-million acres of land that was either unproductive or state-owned.

Concerns about the proposed measure-particularly its denial of the right to appeal-were voiced by the UK, US, and Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace. The US, UK, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank threatened that if Zimbabwe implemented the law, it would forfeit foreign aid packages. Responding to the criticisms, the government removed the ban on court appeals from the bill, which was then passed as law. Over the following few years, hundreds of thousands of acres of largely white-owned land were expropriated. In April 1994, a newspaper investigation found that not all of this was redistributed to landless blacks; much of the expropriated land was being leased to ministers and senior officials such as Witness Mangwede, who was leased a 3000-acre farm in Hwedza. Responding to this scandal, in 1994 the UK government-which had supplied £44 million for land redistribution-halted its payments.

In January 1992, Mugabe's wife died. In April 1995, Horizon magazine revealed that Mugabe had secretly been having an affair with his secretary Grace Marufu since 1987 and that she had borne him a son and a daughter. His secret revealed, Mugabe decided to hold a much-publicised wedding. 12,000 people were invited to the August 1996 ceremony, which took place in Kutama and was orchestrated by the head of the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Harare, Patrick Chakaipa. The ceremony was controversial among the Catholic community because of the adulterous nature of Mugabe and Marufu's relationship. To house his family, Mugabe then built a new mansion at Borrowdale. In the 1995 parliamentary election -which saw a low turnout of 31.7%-ZANU-PF gained 147 out of 150 seats. Following the election, Mugabe expanded his cabinet from 29 to 42 ministers while the government adopted a 133% pay rise for MPs.

Economic decline: 1995-2000

By the mid-1990s Mugabe had become an irascible and petulant dictator, brooking no opposition, contemptuous of the law and human rights, surrounded by sycophantic ministers and indifferent to the incompetence and corruption around him. His record of economic management was lamentable. He had failed to satisfy popular expectations in education, health, land reform, and employment. And he had alienated the entire white community. Yet all the while Mugabe continued to believe in his own greatness. Isolated and remote from ordinary reality, possessing no close friends and showing clear signs of paranoia, he listened only to an inner circle of conspiratorial aides and colleagues. Whatever difficulties occurred he attributed to old enemies-Britain, the West, the old Rhodesian network-all bent, he believed, on destroying his "revolution".

- Mugabe biographer Martin Meredith

Over the course of the 1990s, Zimbabwe's economy steadily deteriorated. By 2000, living standards had declined from 1980; life expectancy was reduced, average wages were lower, and unemployment had trebled. By 1998, unemployment was almost at 50%. As of 2009, three to four million Zimbabweans-the greater part of the nation's skilled workforce-had left the country. In 1997 there were growing demands for pensions from those who had fought for the guerrilla armies in the revolutionary war, and in August 1997 Mugabe put together a pension package that would cost the county Z$4.2 billion. To finance this pension scheme, Mugabe's government proposed new taxes, but a general strike was called in protest in December 1997; amid protest from ZANU-PF itself, Mugabe's government abandoned the taxes. In January 1998, riots about lack of access to food broke out in Harare; the army was deployed to restore order, with at least ten killed and hundreds injured.

Mugabe increasingly blamed the country's economic problems on Western nations and the white Zimbabwean minority, who still controlled most of its commercial agriculture, mines, and manufacturing industry. He called on supporters "to strike fear in the hearts of the white man, our real enemy", and accused his black opponents of being dupes of the whites. Amid growing internal opposition to his government, he remained determined to stay in power. He revived the regular use of revolutionary rhetoric and sought to re-assert his credentials as an important revolutionary leader.

Mugabe also developed a growing preoccupation with homosexuality, lambasting it as an "un-African" import from Europe. He described gay people as being "guilty of sub-human behaviour", and of being "worse than dogs and pigs". This attitude may have stemmed in part from his strong conservative values, but it was strengthened by the fact that several ministers in the British government were gay. Mugabe began to believe that there was a "gay mafia" and that all of his critics were homosexuals. Critics also accused Mugabe of using homophobia to distract attention from the country's problems. In August 1995, he was due to open a human rights-themed Zimbabwe International Book Fair in Harare but refused to do so until a stall run by the group Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe was evicted.

In 1996, Mugabe was appointed chair of the defence arm of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Without consulting parliament, in August 1998 he ordered Zimbabwean troops into the Democratic Republic of the Congo to side with President Laurent Kabila in the Second Congo War. He initially committed 3000 troops to the operation; this gradually rose to 11,000. He also persuaded Angola and Namibia to commit troops to the conflict. Involvement in the war cost Zimbabwe an approximate US$1 million a day, contributing to its economic problems. Opinion polls demonstrated that it was unpopular among Zimbabwe's population. However, several Zimbabwean businesses profited, having been given mining and timber concessions and preferential trade terms in minerals from Kabila's government.

In January 1999, 23 military officers were arrested for plotting a coup against Mugabe. The government sought to hide this, but it was reported by journalists from The Standard. The military subsequently illegally arrested the journalists and tortured them. This brought international condemnation, with the EU and seven donor nations issuing protest notes. Lawyers and human rights activists protested outside parliament until they were dispersed by riot police, and the country's Supreme Court judges issued a letter condemning the military's actions. In response, Mugabe publicly defended the use of extra-legal arrest and torture.

In 1997, Tony Blair was elected Prime Minister of the UK after 18 years of Conservative rule. His Labour government expressed reticence toward restarting the land resettlement payments promised by the Lancaster House Agreement, with minister Clare Short rejecting the idea that the UK had any moral obligation to fund land redistribution. This attitude fuelled anti-imperialist sentiment across Africa. In October 1999, Mugabe visited Britain and in London, the human rights activist Peter Tatchell attempted to place him under citizen's arrest. Mugabe believed that the British government had deliberately engineered the incident to embarrass him. It further damaged Anglo-Zimbabwean relations, with Mugabe expressing scorn for what he called "Blair and company". In May 2000, the UK froze all development aid to Zimbabwe. In December 1999, the IMF terminated financial support for Zimbabwe, citing economic mismanagement and widespread corruption as impediments to reform.

To meet growing demand for constitutional reform, in April 1999 Mugabe's government appointed a 400-member Constitutional Commission to draft a new constitution which could be put to a referendum. The National Constitutional Assembly-a pro-reform pressure group established in 1997-expressed concern that this commission was not independent of the government, noting that Mugabe had the power to amend or reject the draft. The NCA called for the draft constitution to be rejected, and in a February 2000 referendum it was, with 53% against to 44% in favour; turnout was under 25%. It was ZANU-PF's first major electoral defeat in twenty years. Mugabe was furious, and blamed the white minority for orchestrating his defeat, referring to them as "enemies of Zimbabwe".

Land seizures and growing condemnation: 2000-2008

The June 2000 parliamentary elections were Zimbabwe's most important since 1980. Sixteen parties took part, and the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)-led by trade unionist Morgan Tsvangirai-was particularly successful. During the election campaign, MDC activists were regularly harassed and in some cases killed. The Zimbabwe Human Rights Forum documented 27 murders, 27 rapes, 2466 assaults, and 617 abductions, with 10,000 people displaced by violence; the majority, but not all, of these actions were carried out by ZANU-PF supporters. Observers from the European Union (EU) ruled that the election was neither free nor fair. The vote produced 48% and 62 parliamentary seats for ZANU-PF and 47% and 57 parliamentary seats for the MDC. For the first time, ZANU-PF were denied the two-thirds parliamentary majority required to push through constitutional change. ZANU-PF had relied heavily on their support base in rural Shona-speaking areas, and retained only one urban constituency.

In February 2000, land invasions began as armed gangs attacked and occupied white-owned farms. The government referred to the attackers as "war veterans" but the majority were unemployed youth too young to have fought in the Rhodesian War. Mugabe claimed that the attacks were a spontaneous uprising against white land owners, although the government had paid Z$20 million to Chenjerai Hunzvi's War Veterans Association to lead the land invasion campaign and ZANU-PF officials, police, and military figures were all involved in facilitating it. Some of Mugabe's colleagues described the invasions as retribution for the white community's alleged involvement in securing the success of the 'no' vote in the recent referendum. Mugabe justified the seizures by the fact that this land had been seized by white settlers from the indigenous African population in the 1890s. He portrayed the invasions as a struggle against colonialism and alleged that the UK was trying to overthrow his government. In May 2000, he issued a decree under the Presidential Powers (Temporary Measures) Act which empowered the government to seize farms without providing compensation, insisting that it was the British government that should make these payments.

In March 2000, Zimbabwe's High Court ruled that the land invasions were illegal; they nevertheless continued, and Mugabe began vilifying Zimbabwe's judiciary. After the Supreme Court also backed this decision, the government called on its judges to resign, successfully pressuring Chief Justice Anthony Gubbay to do so. ZANU-PF member Godfrey Chidyausiku was appointed to replace him, while the number of Supreme Court judges was expanded from five to eight; the three additional seats went to pro-Mugabe figures. The first act of the new Supreme Court was to reverse the previous declaration that the land seizures were illegal. In November 2001, Mugabe issued a presidential decree permitting the expropriation of virtually all white-owned farms in Zimbabwe without compensation. The farm seizures were often violent; by 2006 a reported sixty white farmers had been killed, with many of their employees experiencing intimidation and torture. A large number of the seized farms remained empty, while many of those redistributed to black peasant-farmers were unable to engage in production for the market because of their lack of access to fertiliser.

The farm invasions severely impacted agricultural development. Zimbabwe had produced over two million tons of maize in 2000; by 2008 this had declined to approximately 450,000. By October 2003, Human Rights Watch reported that half of the country's population were food insecure, lacking enough food to meet basic needs. By 2009, 75% of Zimbabwe's population were relying on food aid, the highest proportion of any country at that time. Zimbabwe faced continuing economic decline. In 2000, the country's GDP was US$7.4 billion; by 2005 this had declined to US$3.4 billion. Hyperinflation resulted in economic crisis. By 2007, Zimbabwe had the highest inflation rate in the world, at 7600%. By 2008, inflation exceeded 100,000% and a loaf of bread cost a third of the average daily wage. Increasing numbers of Zimbabweans relied on remittances from relatives abroad.

Other sectors of society were negatively affected too. By 2005, an estimated 80% of Zimbabwe's population were unemployed, and by 2008 only 20% of children were in schooling. The breakdown of water supplies and sewage systems resulted in a cholera outbreak in late 2008, with over 98,000 cholera cases in Zimbabwe between August 2008 and mid-July 2009. The ruined economy also impacted the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the country; by 2008 the HIV/AIDS rate for individuals aged between 15 and 49 was 15.3%. In 2007, the World Health Organization declared the average life expectancy in Zimbabwe to be 34 for women and 36 for men, down from 63 and 54 respectively in 1997. The country's lucrative tourist industry was decimated, and there was a rise in poaching, including of endangered species. Mugabe directly exacerbated this problem when he ordered the killing of 100 elephants to provide meat for an April 2007 feast.

In October 2000, the MDC's MPs attempted to impeach Mugabe, but were thwarted by the Speaker of the House, Mugabe loyalist Emmerson Mnangagwa. ZANU-PF increasingly equated itself with Zimbabwean patriotism, with MDC supporters being portrayed as traitors and enemies of Zimbabwe. The party presented itself as being on the progressive side of history, with the MDC representing a counter-revolutionary force that seeks to undermine the achievements of the ZANU-PF revolution and of decolonisation itself. Mugabe claimed that the build-up to the 2002 presidential election represented "the third Chimurenga" and that it would set Zimbabwe free from its colonial heritage. In the build-up to the election, the government changed the electoral rules and regulations to improve Mugabe's chances of victory. New security legislation was introduced making it illegal to criticise the president. The defence force commander, General Vitalis Zvinavashe, stated that the military would not recognise any election result other than a Mugabe victory. The EU withdrew its observers from the country, stating that the vote was neither free nor fair. The election resulted in Mugabe securing 56% of the vote to Tsvangirai's 42%. In the aftermath of the election Mugabe declared that the state-owned Grain Marketing Board had the sole right to import and distribute grain, with the state distributors giving food to ZANU-PF supporters while withholding it from those suspected of backing the MDC. In 2005, Mugabe instituted Operation Murambatsvina ("Operation Drive Out the Rubbish"), a project of forced slum clearance; a UN report estimated that 700,000 were left homeless. Since the inhabitants of the shantytowns overwhelmingly voted MDC, many alleged that the bulldozing was politically motivated.

Mugabe's actions brought strong criticism. The Zimbabwe Council of Churches accused him of plunging the country into "a de facto state of warfare" to stay in power. Several Southern African states remonstrated with him at a summit in Harare in September 2001. In 2002, the Commonwealth expelled Zimbabwe from among its ranks; Mugabe blamed this on anti-black racism, a view echoed by South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki. Mbeki favoured a policy of "quiet diplomacy" in dealing with Mugabe, and prevented the African Union (AU) from introducing sanctions against him. The Africa-Europe Summit, scheduled to take place in Lisbon in April 2003, was deferred repeatedly because African leaders refused to attend while Mugabe was banned; it eventually took place in 2007 with Mugabe in attendance. In 2004, the EU imposed a travel ban and asset freeze on Mugabe. It extended these sanctions in 2008, with the US government introducing further sanctions this same year. The US and UK introduced a resolution at the UN Security Council calling for an arms embargo of Zimbabwe alongside an asset freeze and travel ban of Mugabe and other government figures; it was vetoed by Russia and China. In 2009, the SADC demanded that Western states lift their targeted sanctions against Mugabe and his government. ZANU-PF presented the sanctions as a form of Western neo-colonialism and blamed the West for Zimbabwe's economic problems. According to Carren Pindiriri of the University of Zimbabwe, sanctions did not negatively affect employment and poverty in the country.

British prime minister Tony Blair allegedly planned regime change in Zimbabwe in the early 2000s as pressure intensified for Mugabe to step down. British General Charles Guthrie, the Chief of the Defence Staff, revealed in 2007 that he and Blair had discussed the invasion of Zimbabwe. However, Guthrie advised against military action: "Hold hard, you'll make it worse." In 2013, South African President Thabo Mbeki said that Blair had also pressured South Africa to join in a "regime change scheme, even to the point of using military force" in Zimbabwe. Mbeki refused because he felt that "Mugabe is part of the solution to this problem." However, a spokesman for Blair said that "he never asked anyone to plan or take part in any such military intervention."

Power-sharing with the opposition MDC: 2008-2013

In March 2008, the parliamentary and presidential elections were held. In the former, ZANU-PF secured 97 seats to the MDC's 99 and the rival MDC - Ncube's 9. In May, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission announced the presidential vote results, confirming that Tsvangirai secured 47.9%, to Mugabe's 43.2%. As neither candidate secured 50%, a run-off vote was scheduled. Mugabe saw his defeat as an unacceptable personal humiliation. He deemed it a victory for his Western, and in particular British, detractors, whom he believed were working with Tsvangirai to end his political career. ZANU-PF claimed that the MDC had rigged the election.

After the election, Mugabe's government deployed its "war veterans" in a violent campaign against Tsvangirai supporters. Between March and June 2008, at least 153 MDC supporters were killed. There were reports of women affiliated with the MDC being subjected to gang rape by Mugabe supporters. Tens of thousands of Zimbabweans were internally displaced by the violence. These actions brought international condemnation of Mugabe's government.[citation needed ] UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon expressed concern about the violence, which was also unanimously condemned by the UN Security Council, which declared that a free and fair election was "impossible". 40 senior African leaders-among them Desmond Tutu, Kofi Annan, and Jerry Rawlings -signed an open letter calling for an end to the violence.

In response to the violence, Tsvangirai pulled out of the run-off. In the second round, Mugabe was pronounced victor with 85.5% of the vote, and immediately re-inaugurated as president. The SADC oversaw the establishment of a power-sharing agreement; brokered by Mbeke, it was signed in September 2008. Under the agreement, Mugabe remained President while Tsvangirai became Prime Minister and the MDC's Arthur Mutambara became Vice Prime Minister.[citation needed ] The cabinet was equally divided among MDC and ZANU-PF members.[citation needed ] ZANU-PF nevertheless displayed unwillingness to share power, and were anxious to prevent any sweeping political changes. Under the power-sharing agreement, a number of limited reforms were passed. In early 2009, Mugabe's government declared that-to combat rampant inflation-it would recognise US dollars as legal tender and would pay government employees in this currency. This helped to stabilise prices. ZANU-PF blocked many of the proposed reforms and a new constitution was passed in March 2013.

Later years: 2013-2017

Declaring that he would "fight like a wounded animal" for re-election, Mugabe approached the 2013 elections believing that it would be his last. He hoped that a decisive electoral victory would secure his legacy, signal his triumph over his Western critics, and irreparably damage Tsvangirai's credibility. The opposition parties believed that this election was their best chance for ousting Mugabe. They portrayed him as a feeble old man who was being told what to do by the military; at least one academic observer argued that this was untrue.

In contrast to 2008, there was no organised dissent against Mugabe within ZANU-PF. The party elite decided to avoid the violence that had marred the 2008 election so as not to undermine its credibility, particularly in the eyes of the SADC, thus allowing Zimbabwe's government to consolidate its rule without interference. Mugabe called upon supporters to avoid violence, and attended far fewer rallies than in past elections, in part because of his advanced age and in part to ensure that those rallies he did attend were larger. The ZANU-PF offered gifts, including food and clothing, to many members of the electorate to encourage them to vote for the party.

ZANU-PF won a landslide victory, with 61% of the presidential vote and over two-thirds of parliamentary seats. The elections were not considered free and fair; there were widespread stories of vote rigging and many voters might have been fearful of the violence that had surrounded the 2008 election. During the campaign, many MDC supporters had remained quiet about their views out of fear of reprisals. The MDC was also negatively impacted by its time in the coalition government, with perceptions that it had been just as corrupt as ZANU-PF. ZANU-PF had also capitalised on its appeals to African race, land, and liberation, while the MDC was often associated with white farmers, Western nations, and perceived Western values such as LGBT rights.

In February 2014, Mugabe underwent a cataract operation in Singapore; on return he celebrated his ninetieth birthday at a Marondera football stadium. In December 2014, Mugabe fired his vice-president, Joice Mujuru, accusing her of plotting his overthrow. In January 2015, Mugabe was elected as the Chairperson of the African Union (AU). In November 2015, he announced his intention to run for re-election as Zimbabwe's president in 2018, at the age of 94, and was accepted as the ZANU-PF candidate. In February 2016, Mugabe said he had no plans for retirement and would remain in power "until God says 'come'". In February 2017, right after his 93rd birthday, Mugabe stated he would not retire nor pick a successor, even though he said he would let his party choose a successor if it saw fit. In May 2017, Mugabe took a weeklong trip to Cancún, Mexico, ostensibly to attend a three-day conference on disaster risk reduction, eliciting criticism of wasteful spending from opposition figures. He made three medical trips to Singapore in 2017, and Grace Mugabe called on him to name a successor.

In October 2017, the World Health Organization (WHO) appointed Mugabe as a goodwill ambassador; this attracted criticism from both the Zimbabwean opposition and various foreign governments given the poor state of the Zimbabwean health system. Responding to the outcry, WHO revoked Mugabe's appointment a day later. In response, foreign minister Walter Mzembi said the United Nations system should be reformed.

Coup d'état and resignation: 2017

On 6 November 2017, Mugabe sacked his first vice-president, Emmerson Mnangagwa. This fueled speculation that he intended to name Grace his successor. Grace was very unpopular with the ZANU-PF old guard. On 15 November 2017, the Zimbabwe National Army placed Mugabe under house arrest at his Blue Roof mansion as part of what it described as an action against "criminals" in Mugabe's circle.

On 19 November, he was sacked as leader of ZANU-PF, and Mnangagwa was appointed in his place. The party also gave Mugabe an ultimatum: resign by noon the following day, or it would introduce an impeachment resolution against him. In a nationally televised speech that night, Mugabe refused to say that he would resign. In response, ZANU-PF deputies introduced an impeachment resolution on 21 November 2017, which was seconded by the MDC-T. The constitution stipulated that removing a president from office required a two-thirds majority of both the House of Assembly and Senate in a joint sitting. However, with both major parties supporting the motion and controlling all but six seats in both houses between them (all but four in the lower house and all but two in the upper house), Mugabe's impeachment and removal appeared all but certain.

As per the constitution, both chambers met in joint session to debate the resolution. Hours after the debate began, the Speaker of the House of Assembly read a letter from Mugabe announcing that he had resigned, effective immediately. Mugabe and his wife had negotiated a deal before his resignation, under which he and his kin were exempted from prosecution, his business interests would remain untouched, and he would receive a payment of at least $10 million. In July 2018, the Zimbabwe Supreme Court ruled that Mugabe had resigned voluntarily, despite some of the ex-president's subsequent comments.

Post-presidency

Late in December 2017, according to a government gazette, Mugabe was given full diplomatic status and, out of public funds, a five-bedroom house, up to 23 staff members, and personal vehicles. He further was permitted to keep the business interests and other wealth which he had amassed while in power, and he received an additional payment of about ten million dollars.

On 15 March 2018, in his first interview since removal from the presidency, Mugabe insisted that he had been ousted in a "coup d'état" which must be undone. He stated that he would not work with Mnangagwa and termed Mnangagwa's presidency "illegal" and "unconstitutional". In a lawsuit brought by two political parties, the Liberal Democrats and the Revolutionary Freedom Fighters, and others, the court found that the resignation was legal, and that Mnangagwa, as vice-president, duly took over the presidency.

The state media reported that Mugabe had backed the National Political Front, which was formed by Ambrose Mutinhiri, a former high-ranking ZANU-PF politician who resigned in protest against Mugabe's removal from the presidency. The NPF posted a picture of Mutinhiri posing with Mugabe and issued a press release in which it said that the former president had praised the decision.

On the eve of the 29 July 2018 general election, the first in 38 years in which he would not be a candidate, Mugabe held a surprise press conference, in which he stated that he would not vote for President Mnangagwa and ZANU-PF, the party he founded. Instead, he intended to vote for Nelson Chamisa, the candidate for his long-time rivals, the MDC.

Illness, death and funeral: 2019

Mugabe was unable to walk, according to Emmerson Mnangagwa in November 2018, and had been receiving treatment in Singapore for the previous two months. He was hospitalised there in April 2019, making the last of several trips to the country for medical treatment, as he had done late in his presidency and following his resignation. He died at Gleneagles Hospital on 6 September 2019 at about 10:40 am, aged 95 ( Singapore Standard Time), according to a senior Zimbabwean diplomat. Although the cause of death was not officially disclosed, Mnangagwa, his successor, told ZANU-PF supporters in New York City that Mugabe had advanced cancer and his chemotherapy treatment had ceased to be effective.

On 11 September 2019, his body was flown back to the Harare airport in Zimbabwe, where 1,000 had gathered to wait for the body and listen to a speech from Mnangagwa. Mugabe's body was then driven to the family residence in Borrowdale for a private wake attended by his friends and family, but not Mnangagwa. The Associated Press reported that no supporters had gathered along the procession route, but 500 mourners gathered in his birthplace of Zvimba. On 13 September 2019, it was announced that the Mugabe family had accepted the Mnangagwa government's request to have Mugabe buried at Heroes Acre Cemetery and to have his burial be delayed for 30 days. The Mugabe family had initially rejected the government's burial plan and intended for him to be buried in Zvimba on either 16 or 17 September, a day later than the government's proposal.

On 14 September 2019, Mugabe's state funeral, which was also open to public attendance, was held at the National Sports Stadium, with an aerial photo showing the 60,000 capacity stadium to be about a quarter full. The funeral was attended by leaders and former leaders of various African countries, among them were Mnangagwa, Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, Sam Nujoma, Hifikepunye Pohamba and Hage Geingob of Namibia, Joseph Kabila of DR Congo, Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya and Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa.

On 26 September 2019, Nick Mangwana stated that Mugabe would be buried in his home town of Kutama "to respect the wishes of families of deceased heroes". The burial took place on 28 September in a courtyard of his family home.

Mugabe embraced African nationalism and anti-colonialism during the 1960s. Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni characterised " Mugabeism" as a populist movement that was "marked by ideological simplicity, emptiness, vagueness, imprecision, and multi-class character", further noting that it was "a broad church". He also characterised it as a form of "left-nationalism", which consistently railed against imperialism and colonialism. He also argued that it was a form of nativism, which was permeated by a strong "cult of victimisation" in which a binary view was propagated where Africa was a "victim" and the West was its "tormentor". He suggested that it had been influenced by a wide range of ideologies, among them forms of Marxism like Stalinism and Maoism, as well as African nationalist ideologies like Nkrumaism, , Garveyism, , Pan-Africanism, and African neo-traditionalism. Mugabeism sought to deal with the problem of white settler racism by engaging in a project of anti-white racism that sought to deny white Zimbabweans citizenship by constantly referring to them as " amabhunu/Boers", thus enabling their removal from their land.

ZANU-PF claimed that it was influenced by Marxism-Leninism; Onslow and Redding stated that in contrast to the Marxist emphasis on the urban proletariat as the main force of socio-economic change, Mugabe's party accorded that role to the rural peasantry. As a result of this pro-rural view, they argued, Mugabe and the ZANU-PF demonstrated an anti-urban bias. The English academic Claire Palley met Mugabe in 1962, later noting that "he struck me as not so much a doctrinaire Marxist but an old-fashioned African nationalist", while Tekere claimed that for Mugabe, Marxism-Leninism was "just rhetoric" with "no genuine vision or belief behind it". Carington noted that while Mugabe used Marxist rhetoric during the Lancaster House negotiations, "of course he didn't actually practise what he preached, did he? Once in office he became a capitalist". Mugabe has stated that " socialism has to be much more Christian than capitalism". The Zimbabwean scholar George Shire described Mugabe's policies as being "broadly-speaking" social-democratic.

During the 1980s, Mugabe indicated his desire to transform Zimbabwe from a multi-party state into a one-party state. In 1984 he stated that "the one-party state is more in keeping with African tradition. It makes for greater unity for the people. It puts all opinions under one umbrella, whether these opinions are radical or reactionary". The political scientist Sue Onslow and historian Sean Redding stated that Zimbabwe's situation was "more complex than pure venial dictatorship", but that it was an "ideo-dictatorship". Mugabe openly admired Nicolae Ceaușescu of Romania, praising him just before he was overthrown in December 1989.

Ndlovu-Gatsheni argued that since the mid-1990s, Mugabe's rhetoric and speeches came to be dominated by three main themes: an obsession with a perceived British threat to re-colonise Zimbabwe, to transfer the land controlled by white farmers to the black population, and issues of belonging and patriotism. References to the Rhodesian Bush War featured prominently in his speeches. The scholar of African studies Abiodun Alao noted that Mugabe was determined to "take advantage of the past in order to secure a firm grip on national security".

David Blair stated that "Mugabe's collected writings amount to nothing more than crude Marxism, couched in the ponderous English of the mission school", remarking that they were heavily informed by Karl Marx, Mao Zedong, and Frantz Fanon, and displayed little originality. Blair noted that Mugabe's writings called for " command economics in a peasant society, mixed with anti-colonial nationalism", and that in this he held "the same opinions as almost every other African guerrilla leader" of that period. Mugabe argued that following the overthrow of European colonial regimes, Western countries continued to keep African countries in a state of subservience because they desired the continent's natural resources while preventing it from industrialising.

Personal life

Mugabe measured a little over 1.70 metres (5 ft 7 in), and exhibited what his biographer David Blair described as "curious, effeminate mannerisms". Mugabe took great care with his appearance, typically wearing a three-piece suit, and insisted that members of his cabinet dressed in a similar Anglophile fashion. On taking power in 1980, Mugabe's hallmark was his wide-rimmed glasses, and he was also known for his tiny moustache. Unlike a number of other African leaders, Mugabe did not seek to mythologise his childhood. He avoided smoking and drinking, and-according to his first biographers, David Smith and Colin Simpson-had "enormous affection for children". During his early life he had an operation on his genitals which generated rumours that he had only one testicle or half a penis; such rumours were used by opponents to ridicule him and by supporters to bolster the claim that he was willing to make severe sacrifices for the revolutionary cause.

Mugabe spoke English fluently with an adopted English accent when pronouncing certain words. He was also a fan of the English game of cricket, stating that "cricket civilizes people and creates good gentlemen". David Blair noted that this cultivation of British traits suggested that Mugabe respected and perhaps admired Britain while at the same time resenting and loathing the country. Heidi Holland suggested that these Anglophile traits arose in early life, as Mugabe-who had long experienced the anti-black racism of Rhodesian society-"grasped Englishness as an antidote" to the "self-loathing" induced by societal racism.

The academic Blessing-Miles Tendi stated that Mugabe was "an extremely complex figure, not easily captured by conventional categories". Similarly, David Blair described him as an "exceptionally complex personality". Smith and Simpson noted that the Zimbabwean leader had been "a serious young man, something of a loner, diligent, hard-working, a voracious reader who used every minute of his time, not much given to laughter: but above all, single-minded". Blair commented that Mugabe's "self-discipline, intelligence and appetite for hard work were remarkable", adding that his "prime characteristics" were "ruthlessness and resilience". Blair argued that Mugabe shared many character traits with Ian Smith, stating that they were both "proud, brave, stubborn, charismatic, deluded fantasists".

Meredith described Mugabe as having a "soft-spoken demeanour, ... broad intellect, and ... articulate manner", all of which disguised his "hardened and single-minded ambition". Ndlovu-Gatsheni characterised him as "one of the most charismatic African leaders", highlighting that he was "very eloquent" and was able to make "fine speeches". Jonathan Moyo, who briefly served as Mugabe's information minister before falling out with him, stated that the President could "express himself well, that is his great strength". Tendi stated that Mugabe had a natural wittiness, but often hid this behind "an outwardly pensive and austere manner and his penchant for ceremony and tradition". Heidi Holland suggested that due to his "dysfunctional" upbringing, Mugabe had a "fragile self-image", describing him as "a man cut off from his feelings, devoid of ordinary warmth and humanity". According to her, Mugabe had a "marked emotional immaturity", and was homophobic, as well as racist and xenophobic.

According to Meredith, Mugabe presented himself as "articulate, thoughtful, and conciliatory" after his 1980 election victory. Blair noted that at this period of his career, Mugabe displayed "genuine magnanimity and moral courage" despite his "intense personal reasons for feeling bitterness and hatred" toward the members of the former regime. Following his dealing with Mugabe during the 1979 negotiations, Michael Pallister, head of the British Foreign Office, described Mugabe as having "a very sharp, sometimes rather aggressive, and unpleasant manner". The British diplomat Peter Longworth stated that in private, Mugabe was "very charming and very articulate and he's not devoid of humour. It's very difficult to relate the man you meet with the man ranting on television". Norman stated that "I always found him personable and honourable in his dealings. He also had a warm side to him which I saw quite clearly sometimes".

Colin Legum, a journalist with The Observer, argued that Mugabe had a "paranoidal personality", in that while he did not suffer from clinical paranoia, he did behave in a paranoid fashion when placed under severe and sustained pressure. Mugabe biographer Andrew Norman suggested that the leader may have suffered from antisocial personality disorder. Several Mugabe biographers have observed that he had an obsession with accruing power. According to Meredith, "power for Mugabe was not a means to an end, but the end itself." Conversely, Onslow and Redding suggested that Mugabe's craving for power stemmed from "ideological and personal reasons" and his belief in the illegitimacy of his political opposition. Denis Norman, a white politician who served in Mugabe's cabinet for many years, commented that "Mugabe isn't a flashy man driven by wealth but he does enjoy power. That's always been his motivation".

Marriages and children

According to Holland, Mugabe's first wife, Sally Hayfron, was Mugabe's "confidante and only real friend", being "one of the few people who could challenge Mugabe's ideas without offending him". Their only son, Michael Nhamodzenyika Mugabe, born 27 September 1963, died on 26 December 1966 from cerebral malaria in Ghana where Sally was working while Mugabe was in prison. Sally Mugabe was a trained teacher who asserted her position as an independent political activist and campaigner.

Mugabe called on Zimbabwe's media to refer to his wife as "Amai" ("Mother of the Nation"), although many Zimbabweans resented the fact that she was a foreigner. She was appointed as the head of ZANU-PF's women's league, and was involved in a number of charitable operations, and was widely regarded as corrupt in these dealings. During Mugabe's premiership she suffered from renal failure, and initially had to travel to Britain for dialysis until Soames arranged for a dialysis machine to be sent to Zimbabwe.

While married to Hayfron, in 1987 Mugabe began an extra-marital affair with his secretary, Grace Marufu; she was 41 years his junior and at the time was married to Stanley Goreraza. In 1988 she bore Mugabe a daughter, Bona, and in 1990 a son, Robert. The relationship was kept secret from the Zimbabwean public; Hayfron was aware of it. According to her niece Patricia Bekele, with whom she was particularly close, Hayfron was not happy that Mugabe had an affair with Marufu but "she did what she used to tell me to do: 'Talk to your pillow if you have problems in your marriage. Never, ever, humiliate your husband.' Her motto was to carry on in gracious style". Hayfron died in 1992 from a chronic kidney ailment.

Following Hayfron's death in 1992, Mugabe and Marufu were married in a large Catholic ceremony in August 1996. As First Lady of Zimbabwe, Grace gained a reputation for indulging her love of luxury, with a particular interest in shopping, clothes, and jewellery. These lavish shopping sprees led to her receiving the nickname " Gucci Grace". She too developed a reputation for corruption. In 1997, Grace Mugabe gave birth to the couple's third child, Chatunga Bellarmine. Robert Mugabe Jr. and his younger brother, Chatunga, are known for posting their lavish lifestyle on social media, which has drawn accusations from opposition politician Tendai Biti that they are wasting Zimbabwean taxpayers' money.

Public image and legacy

By the twenty-first century, Mugabe was regarded as one of the world's most controversial political leaders. According to The Black Scholar journal, "depending on who you listen to...Mugabe is either one of the world's great tyrants or a fearless nationalist who has incurred the wrath of the West." He has been widely described as a "dictator", a "tyrant", and a "threat", and has been referred to as one of Africa's "most brutal" leaders. At the same time he continued to be regarded as a hero in many Third World countries and received a warm reception when travelling throughout Africa. For many in Southern Africa, he remained one of the "grand old men" of the African liberation movement. Mugabe was known to have close ties with former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.

According to Ndlovu-Gatsheni, within ZANU-PF, Mugabe was regarded as a "demi-god" who was feared and rarely challenged. Within the ZANU movement, a cult of personality began to be developed around Mugabe during the Bush War and was consolidated after 1980. Mugabe had a considerable following within Zimbabwe, with David Blair noting that "it would be wrong to imply that he lacked genuine popularity" in the country. Holland believed that the "great majority" of Zimbabwe's population supported him "enthusiastically" during the first twenty years of his regime. His strongholds of support were Zimbabwe's Shona-dominated regions of Mashonaland, Manicaland, and Masvingo, while he remained far less popular in the non-Shona areas of Matabeleland and Bulawayo, and among the Zimbabwean diaspora living abroad.

At the time of his 1980 election victory, Mugabe was internationally acclaimed as a revolutionary hero who was embracing racial reconciliation, and for the first decade of his governance he was widely regarded as "one of post-colonial Africa's most progressive leaders". David Blair argued that while Mugabe did exhibit a "conciliatory phase" between March 1980 and February 1982, his rule was otherwise "dominated by a ruthless quest to crush his opponents and remain in office at whatever cost". In 2011, the scholar Blessing-Miles Tendi stated that "Mugabe is often presented in the international media as the epitome of the popular leader gone awry: the independence struggle hero who seemed initially a progressive egalitarian, but has gradually been corrupted through his attachment to power during a long and increasingly repressive spell in office." Tendi argued that this was a misleading assessment, because Mugabe had displayed repressive tendencies from his early years in office, namely through the repression of ZAPU in Matabeleland. Abiodun Alao concurred, suggesting that Mugabe's approach had not changed over the course of his leadership, but merely that international attention had intensified in the twenty-first century. For many Africans, Mugabe exposed the double standards of Western countries; the latter had turned a blind eye to the massacre of over 20,000 black Ndebele civilians in the Gukarakundi but strongly censured the Zimbabwean government when a small number of white farmers were killed during the land seizures.

During the guerrilla war, Ian Smith referred to Mugabe as "the apostle of Satan". George Shire expressed the view that there was "a strong racist animus" against Mugabe within Zimbabwe, and that this had typically been overlooked by Western media representations of the country. Mugabe himself was accused of racism; John Sentamu, the Uganda-born Archbishop of York in the United Kingdom, called Mugabe "the worst kind of racist dictator", for having "targeted the whites for their apparent riches". Desmond Tutu stated that Mugabe became "increasingly insecure, he's hitting out. One just wants to weep. It's very sad." South African President Nelson Mandela was also critical of Mugabe, referring to him as a politician who "despise[s] the very people who put [him] in power and think[s] it's a privilege to be there for eternity".

Writing for the Human Rights Quarterly, Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann claimed that there was "clear evidence that Mugabe was guilty of crimes against humanity". In 2009, Gregory Stanton, then President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and Helen Fein, then executive director of the Institute for the Study of Genocide, published a letter in The New York Times stating that there was sufficient evidence of crimes against humanity to bring Mugabe to trial in front of the International Criminal Court. Australia and New Zealand had previously called for this in 2005, and a number of Zimbabwean NGOs did so in 2006.

A 2005 article from the New American titled "Democide in Zimbabwe" says that Mugabe reduced the population of Zimbabwe by millions in just a few years.

In 1994, Mugabe received an honorary knighthood from the British state; this was stripped from him at the advice of the UK government in 2008. Mugabe held several honorary degrees and doctorates from international universities, awarded to him in the 1980s; at least three of these have since been revoked. In June 2007, he became the first international figure ever to be stripped of an honorary degree by a British university, when the University of Edinburgh withdrew the degree awarded to him in 1984. On 12 June 2008, the University of Massachusetts Amherst Board of Trustees voted to revoke the law degree awarded to Mugabe in 1986, the first time one of its honorary degrees has been revoked. In the month after being deposed, but before he died, many of the public references to Mugabe - street names, for example - had been removed from public places.

References

1. ^ "Mugabe's grandfather served King Lobengula". Bulawayo. 23 September 2017. Archived from the original on 7 November 2017.

2. ^ Marima, Tendai (24 November 2017). "Who is Emmerson Mnangagwa, Zimbabwe's 'Crocodile'?". Al Jazeera. Archived from the original on 25 November 2017.

3. ^ Martin, David; Johnson, Phyllis (July 1981). The Struggle for Zimbabwe (First ed.). Faber and Faber. pp. 70-71. ISBN 978-0-571-11066-7.

4. ^ "APF newsletter, "Appraisal of Rhodesia in 1975"". Archived from the original on 31 May 2009.

5. ^ Smith, David (6 September 2019). "Zimbabwe's intellectual despot: how Mugabe became Africa's fallen angel". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077.

6. ^ "Mugabe will rule until he is 100 from special wheelchair, claims wife". The Independent. ISSN 0951-9467. Archived from the original on 23 November 2015.

7. ^ "'Until God says come': turning 92, Zimbabwe's Mugabe refuses to relinquish power". Channel NewsAsia. 18 February 2016. Archived from the original on 19 February 2016.

8. ^ Michael, Dibie Ike (25 February 2017). "Zimbabwe: Mugabe Celebrates 93rd Birthday, Pledges to Remain in Power". Africanews. Archived from the original on 26 February 2017.

9. ^ Bulawayo, Philimon (25 February 2017). "Zimbabwe's Mugabe Says Will Not Impose Successor, Party Will Choose". U.S. News & World Report (from Reuters). Archived from the original on 26 February 2017.

10. ^ Gramer, Robbie (27 May 2017). "Mugabe and Entourage Live it Up in Cancún While Zimbabwe Suffers". Foreign Policy.

11. ^ "Mugabe 'not given chance to speak in Mexico'". news24. 26 May 2017. Archived from the original on 28 May 2017. Mugabe, 93, left Harare for Mexico last Friday, less than a week after he returned from a trip to see his doctors in Singapore.

12. ^ "Robert Mugabe's WHO appointment condemned as 'an insult'". BBC News. 21 October 2017. Archived from the original on 21 October 2017.

13. ^ Graham-Harrison, Emma; Burke, Jason (21 November 2017). "Impeachment proceedings against Mugabe begin in Zimbabwe". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 23 November 2017.

14. ^ "Zimbabwe's President Mugabe 'resigns'". BBC News. 21 November 2017. Archived from the original on 21 November 2017.

15. ^ Burke, Jason (26 November 2017). "Zimbabwe: Robert Mugabe to get $10m payoff and immunity for his family". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 28 November 2017.

16. "Zimbabwe Court Says Mugabe Stepped Down Freely, Voluntarily". Voice of America. 17 July 2018. Archived from the original on 18 July 2018.

17. ^ Bentley, Cara (14 September 2019). "'The end does not justify the means' say Zimbabwean bishops as Mugabe's funeral takes place". Premier Christian Radio.

18. ^ Martin Meredith, PublicAffairs, Feb 20, 2002, Mugabe Power And Plunder In Zimbabwe, p. 95

19. ^ "The offspring of Africa's strongmen are living it up". The Economist. 10 August 2017. Archived from the original on 17 October 2017.

20. Sentamu, John, ^ Saving Zimbabwe is not colonialism, it's Britain's duty Archived 28 November 2016 at the Wayback Machine, The Observer 16 September 2007. Retrieved 24 June 2008.

21. ^ McGreal, Peter (2 April 2007). "Corrupt, greedy and violent: Mugabe attacked by Catholic bishops after years of silence". The Guardian. London.

22. ^ Bentley, Daniel (17 September 2007). "Sentamu urges Mugabe Action". The Independent. ISSN 0951-9467. Archived from the original on 6 September 2012.

Bibliography

Blair, David (2002). Degrees in Violence: Robert Mugabe and the Struggle for Power in Zimbabwe. London and New York: Continuum. ISBN 978-0-8264-5974-9.

Chigora, Percyslage; Guzura, Tobias (2011). "The Politics of the Government of National Unity (GNU) and Power Sharing in Zimbabwe: Challenges and Prospects for Democracy". African Journal of History and Culture. 3 (2): 20-26.

Gallagher, Julia (2015). "The Battle for Zimbabwe in 2013: From Polarisation to Ambivalence" (PDF). Journal of Modern African Studies. 53 (1): 27-49. doi:10.1017/S0022278X14000640. S2CID 154398977.

Howard-Hassmann, Rhoda E. (2010). "Mugabe's Zimbabwe, 2000-2009: Massive Human Rights Violations and the Failure to Protect". Human Rights Quarterly. 32 (4): 898-920. doi:10.1353/hrq.2010.0030. S2CID 143046672.

Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Sabelo J. (2009). "Making Sense of Mugabeism in Local and Global Politics: 'So Blair, keep your England and let me keep my Zimbabwe'". Third World Quarterly. 30 (6): 1139-1158. doi:10.1080/01436590903037424. S2CID 143775424.

--- (2015). "Introduction: Mugabeism and Entanglements of History, Politics, and Power in the Making of Zimbabwe". In Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (ed.). Mugabeism? History, Politics, and Power in Zimbabwe. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 1-25. ISBN 978-1-137-54344-8.

Onslow, Sue; Redding, Sean (2009). "Wasted Riches: Robert Mugabe and the Desolation of Zimbabwe". Georgetown Journal of International Affairs. 10 (1): 63-72. JSTOR 43134191.

Shire, George (2007). "The Case for Robert Mugabe: Sinner or Sinned Against?". The Black Scholar. 37 (1): 32-35. doi:10.1080/00064246.2007.11413379. JSTOR 41069872. S2CID 147587061.

Sithole, Masipula (2001). "Fighting Authoritarianism in Zimbabwe". Journal of Democracy. 2 (1): 160-169. doi:10.1353/jod.2001.0015. S2CID 144918292.

Tendi, Blessing-Miles (2011). "Robert Mugabe and Toxicity: History and Context Matter". Representation. 47 (3): 307-318. doi:10.1080/00344893.2011.596439. S2CID 154541752.

--- (2013). "Robert Mugabe's 2013 Presidential Election Campaign". Journal of Southern African Studies. 39 (4): 963-970. doi:10.1080/03057070.2013.858537. S2CID 145432632.

Further reading

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Robert Gabriel Mugabe (; Shona: ; 21 February 1924 - 6 September 2019) was a Zimbabwean revolutionary and politician who served as Prime Minister of Zimbabwe from 1980 to 1987 and then as President from 1987 to 2017.

# data[].attributes.body
-All of Africa's resistance against Europe colonization

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Benjamin Talton - Temple University

While African resistance to European colonialism is often thought of in terms of a white and black/European and African power struggle, this presumption underestimates the complex and strategic thinking that Africans commonly employed to address the challenges of European colonial rule. It also neglects the colonial-era power dynamic of which African societies and institutions were essential components.

After the Berlin Conference of 1884-85, at which the most powerful European countries agreed upon rules for laying claim to particular African territories, the British, French, Germans, Italians, Spanish, Belgians, and Portuguese set about formally implementing strategies for the long-term occupation and control of Africa. The conquest had begun decades earlier-and in the case of Angola and South Africa, centuries earlier. But after the Berlin Conference it became more systematic and overt.

The success of the European conquest and the nature of African resistance must be seen in light of Western Europe's long history of colonial rule and economic exploitation around the world. In fact, by 1885 Western Europeans had mastered the art of divide, conquer, and rule, honing their skills over four hundred years of imperialism and exploitation in the Americas, Asia, and the Pacific. In addition, the centuries of extremely violent, protracted warfare among themselves, combined with the technological advances of the Industrial Revolution, produced unmatched military might. When, rather late in the period of European colonial expansion, Europeans turned to Africa to satisfy their greed for resources, prestige, and empire, they quickly worked their way into African societies to gain allies and proxies, and to co-opt the conquered kings and chiefs, all to further their exploits. Consequently, the African responses to this process, particularly the ways in which they resisted it, were complex.

The Complexities of Resistance

Adding to the complexity was the fact that rapid European imperial expansion in Africa did not necessarily change relationships among African communities. Those in conflict with one another tended to remain in conflict, despite the impending threat from the French, British, Germans, and other powers. There was, moreover, no broadly accepted African identity to unite around during this period. The strongest identities were communal and, to a lesser extent, religious, which begins to explain the presence of African participants in European conquests of other African societies. During the second half of the nineteenth century, for example, in what is now Ghana, conflict between the Fante and Asante, which predated British designs on the kingdom of Asante, motivated the Fante to join the British against the Asante, who at the time seemed to be their greatest threat.

The complexity of Africans' political relationships among themselves, then, influenced the nature of their resistance to colonial rule. As they resisted European invasions, they confronted both European and African soldiers. That is, they confronted a political hierarchy imposed by Western Europeans that included African proxies. The power was European, but the face of it on the local level was often African. Despite these seeming contradictions, it remains insufficient to speak of African responses to the imposition of colonial rule as a choice between either collaboration or resistance. It was possible to resist colonial rule through collaboration with the colonizers in one instance and in the next to resist European authority. It was also possible to limit European political control through some form of collaboration with European generals or colonial administrators. This is all to suggest that Africans evaluated their circumstances, assessed possible actions and consequences, to make rational responses. Some form of resistance, moreover, remained constant during the period of formal European political dominance. Ethiopia stands alone, however, as the one African society to successfully defend itself against an invading European army and remain free of direct European political domination.

Menelik II, emperor of Ethiopia, led his army to accomplish this unique feat in March 1896, defeating General Oreste Baratieri's Italian army and its Eritrean allies at the Battle of Adwa. Like Menelik II, Samory Touré, who created a large Mandinka empire in West Africa between the 1860s and the 1890s, was an inspiring political and military leader, but in the French he faced a far more capable, tenacious, and experienced adversary than Menelik had in the Italians. Samory's legacy remains controversial, yet he is a significant example of pragmatic resistance for the ways in which he contended with French aggression. He manufactured firearms, relocated his kingdom, and engaged in diplomacy with both the French and the British. Yet as he conquered African territory and engaged in conflicts with African competitors, the French pushed deeper into the West African interior from Senegal, under the direction of Louis Faidherbe and his Senegalese Tirailleurs-a corps of African soldiers-and the British pushed northward through Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast with a large contingent of Hausa soldiers. Each time the French attacked his territory or the trade routes and goldfields at the heart of his economy, he mounted a series of successful counterattacks, until he was captured by the French, dying in exile in 1900.Ethiopia's history and political structure fostered a broad-based, unified military response to the Italian invasion. Ethiopians rallied around Menelik II and took pride in the kingdom's glorious history. Between 1832 and 1842 in Algeria, Islam became another source of unity, as Abd al-Qadir led his resistance against the French.

Alliances and Divisions

In other territories conflicts among African societies hindered the effectiveness of their resistance. In the 1880s, for example, in what is today Zimbabwe, the British used existing disputes between the Ndebele and neighboring communities to foment a conflict in which the British would have to intervene and would ultimately gain a position to claim control over Ndebele land. Ndansi Kumalo, a Ndebele chief and a subject of Lobengula, the Ndebele king, described the events that took place between 1893 and 1896 when Cecil Rhodes and Lobengula disagreed about the terms of the treaty signed in 1888. Lobengula believed that he had extended only mineral rights to the diamond magnate; Rhodes argued that the entire territory had become his personal fiefdom, and gave his name to the territory: Rhodesia.

The British attacked, the Ndebele surrendered, and the British imposed Africans from a different territory to police the Ndebele.

They came and were overbearing and we were ordered to carry their clothes and bundles. They interfered with our wives and our daughters and molested them. In fact, the treatment was intolerable. We thought it best to fight and die rather than bear it.

There was much bitterness because so many of our cattle were branded and taken away from us; we had no property, nothing we could call our own. We said, "It is not good living under such conditions; death would be better-let us fight."

We knew that we had very little chance because their weapons were so much superior to ours. But we meant to fight to the last, feeling that even if we could not beat them we might at least kill a few of them and so have some sort of revenge.(Ndansi Kumalo)

The Ndebele fought tenaciously even though with each charge British Maxim guns mowed them down. Yet they managed to kill enough British soldiers to force them to retreat. "We made many charges but each time we were beaten off, until at last the white men packed up and retreated. But for the Maxims, it would have been different."

In a longer passage of which this quote is a part, we witness not only the overwhelming effects of European military technology, but also the tensions existing within African societies that inhibited their ability to withstand European incursions. The British succeeded in playing the Ndebele and neighboring Mashona against each other, and this, combined with the spread of smallpox, placed the Ndebele at a severe disadvantage.

Much to the detriment of African societies, the enmity between them often fostered alliances between Africans and Europeans against a common African enemy. Hendrik Witbooi, a Nama chief and early Germany ally against the neighboring Herero, in what is now Namibia, illustrates shifting European allegiances and the strategies that placed Africans at a distinct disadvantage. Initially, Witbooi and the Nama were allies of the Germans against the Herero. But after the Germans asserted increased control over the region, in 1901, Witbooi revolted and joined with the Herero to resist them. On August 17, 1894, Witbooi wrote a letter to the colonial administrator Theodor Leutwein, who had accused Witbooi of recalcitrance.

Since you have the guns, you force the right on your side. I fully agree with you in one thing: in comparison with you, we are nothing here. ...I guess this time I shall be forced to defend myself against you. I shall do so not so much in my own name but in the name of the Lord. Trusting in His aid and strength I shall defend myself. ...I have told you that I am fully in favor of peace and that I shall never be the one breaking such peace. But you say you intend to attack me. The responsibility for the innocent blood of my men and yours therefore cannot be mine since I am not the instigator of another war...

Please do leave us alone and withdraw! Call your troops back and withdraw. Please do withdraw! Please do so!

This is my very serious plea!

Despite Witbooi's pleas, the Germans defeated the Nama and the Herero. But Witbooi rose again, at the age of eighty, to fight once more. In 1905 he was killed leading a charge against a German column.

As the example of Hendrik Witbooi illustrates, African individuals and groups who resisted European colonial authority were aware of the challenges they faced. At the same time, the larger picture of European colonial rule and its implications were not always readily apparent; nor could they have been. Political and economic competition with neighboring communities remained the highest priority, particularly when the European presence appeared to be an economic and political advantage.

In the aftermath of their conquest of the Nama and Herero, the Germans waged a war of extermination. Those who survived hunger, thirst, and exhaustion were placed in concentration camps that foreshadowed the death camps of Nazi Germany. By 1911 the population of the Herero had declined by four-fifths in ten years, and there were half as many living Nama. Witbooi, never failing to inspire tenacious defense of the Nama, was killed in an attack against a German column.

Cultural and Religious Resistance

Not all resistance during the early years of European colonial rule took the form of pragmatic violence. Most was more subtle and directed toward local issues of political and economic autonomy. Particularly in British territories, Africans commonly used local movements to resist European colonial policies or practices by the colonial administrations' African proxies. The 1929 Aba Women's Revolt, or Igbo Women's War, in southeastern Nigeria reflects this trend. What is unique about the movement that produced the revolt is that its leadership was composed entirely of rural women. It is also unique because it was the only mass protest to take place in Nigeria prior to the years leading to independence in 1960.

There was a history of economic and social autonomy among Igbo women, and they were well organized through communal associations. In 1929 Igbo women felt that their autonomy was threatened by an impending tax imposed by the local colonial administration. Rumors of this tax spread after the district administration's census of men, their wives, and cattle. Within days of the census's completion, up to ten thousand women reportedly confronted the Warrant Chief Okugo, who had overseen the census on behalf of the district administration, and demanded that he resign. The protests spread throughout the region and resulted in the death of fifty-five women.

The Aba Women's Revolt was an effort on the part of Igbo women to protect their economic and political interests. It was not a movement against European colonial rule; rather, it aimed at particular policies that the women perceived to originate with the British-imposed warrant chiefs.

Struggles with maintaining political autonomy and control over culture created tension within African societies and between the colonial administration and Africans throughout Africa, often leading to subtle forms of resistance as African individuals and groups sought to remove themselves from the colonial sphere of influence rather than challenge it. Yet doing so was in and of itself a challenge to the colonial order and a threat to European authority.

This phenomenon is seen in the work of Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba, a Muslim leader in Senegal who in 1883 founded the Mouride Brotherhood. Ahmadou Bamba aimed to sustain a level of social and economic autonomy, and his case illustrates the fear that colonial administrators had of Africans' continued capacity to organize themselves outside the European sphere of influence. During the 1880s and early 1890s he gained a broad following that included influential chiefs and their followers. The French feared Bamba's potential ability to organize a resistance. Yet his goal was to protect Islam from the corruptive forces of European rule. He waged war not on the French occupiers but on European culture and colonial politics. Still, as a safeguard against his potential political influence, the French repeatedly exiled Ahmadou Bamba between 1895 and 1907. Yet his exile enhanced his standing among Senegalese as stories of his miraculous survival of torture and attempted executions spread. The French allowed him to return to Senegal in 1887.

Political Resistance

After World War II most African leaders engaged the colonial state through formally organized political parties and trade unions. Between 1950 and 1963, many of these parties ushered in the transition to independence and became the ruling parties of independent Africa. As such, they had little alternative but to cooperate with the outgoing colonial powers. Yet there were parties and politicians that refused to compromise and sought to define their nation's transition to independence on their own terms.

One such example is Sékou Touré, the Republic of Guinea's first president from 1958 to 1984. Under Touré, Guinea was the only former French colony in favor of immediate independence rather than continued association with France, despite the consequences. He famously remarked, "We prefer poverty in liberty than riches in slavery." As was the case with earlier forms of resistance, Touré understood the political and economic implications of his position. He thoughtfully assessed his choices and made what he believed, considering the circumstances, to be the decision that best served the interests of his people.

The discussion of pragmatic resistance in Africa comes full circle with the former Portuguese colonies, South Africa, and Kenya. In these territories, violent resistance brought colonial rule to a close. It was guerrilla warfare in the case of the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya (1952-60) and Zimbabwe's war of independence (1965-79); it was all-out war in the Portuguese colonies of Mozambique, Angola, Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau (1961-74), and the South African colony of South West Africa (Namibia). There was no military confrontation within South Africa around apartheid, but mass uprisings and sporadic guerrilla attacks spurred the fall of the apartheid regime. The people of South Africa took to the streets in mass civil unrest to overwhelm the resources of the apartheid regime. The African protesters suffered severe consequences, but ultimately their mass movement was too much for the white minority government. Among the most awesome of the many examples of mass protest in South Africa is the Soweto uprising of 1976, in which African students boycotted schools and took to the streets in protest, rather than have Afrikaans, the language of the oppressive white minority, elevated to a language of instruction in their schools.

Many young people were beaten, arrested, and even killed, but the students assessed the problem and their options, and grew determined to move toward direct resistance and chart their own destiny. South Africa is also noteworthy for the often violent conflicts between Africans into the early 1990s that provided the apartheid regime with an opportunity to resist change.

These are some of the many examples that defined African resistance to European imperial expansion and colonial rule in Africa; and they in no way exhaust the methods Africans employed to contend with the reality of European colonial rule. They do, however, demonstrate that as Africans confronted European military superiority and political dominance-whether they aligned themselves with Europeans, sought protection, or responded with aggressive military resistance-they were mindful of their social and political environment as they saw it at the time. It would have been difficult for African societies to fully and accurately weigh the consequences of their decisions, or of the European presence, for that matter. Yet they possessed an understanding of their immediate reality, which they took into careful consideration as they attempted to protect their interests and survive in the midst of growing European military aggression and political dominance.

Bibliography

Anderson, David. Histories of the Hanged: The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2005.Boahen, A. Adu. African Perspectives on Colonialism. Baltimore: John's Hopkins University Press, 1987.

Cooper, Frederick. Africa Since 1940: The Past and the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Edgar, Robert, and Luyanda ka Msumza, eds. Freedom in Our Lifetime: The Collected Writings of Anton Muziwakhe Lembede. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1996.

Gerhart, Gail. Black Power in South Africa: The Evolution of an Ideology. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978.

Iliffe, John. A Modern History of Tanganyika. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.

Mba, Nina Emma. Nigerian Women Mobilized: Women's Political Activity in Southern Nigeria, 1900-1965. Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, 1982.

Wa Wamwere, Koigi. I Refuse to Die: My Journey for Freedom. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002.

Worger, William, Nancy Clark, and Edward Alpers, eds. Africa and the West: A Documentary History from the Slave Trade to Independence. Phoenix: Oryx Press, 2001.

Image Gallery

Scroll to the bottom of the page to see all images

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
While African resistance to European colonialism is often thought of in terms of a white and black/European and African power struggle, this presumption underestimates the complex and strategic thinking that Africans commonly employed to address the challenges of European colonial rule. It also neglects the colonial-era power dynamic of which African societies and institutions were essential components.

# data[].attributes.body
-Effects Of colonization on all of Zimbabwe's people

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
THE year 1960 symbolised hope and freedom for 17 states in Africa. For African states, independence signified the opportunity to adopt sovereignty and finally occupy equal footing with their former imperialists in the changing global arena. Beyond this, self-determination relayed the foresight of economic development and shared fiscal benefits.

Fifty years after independence, the hopes and prospects envisioned are far from visible. Colonialism in its pure sense is no more, but neither is the economic self-sufficiency envisioned. Five decades after tears, sweat and blood poured for African autonomy, the continent is plagued with a range of tragedies that threaten African peace and prevent economic development.
Volumes have been written about Africa's troubles; both from an Afro-centric and Western perspective. Some standpoints suggest the continued prevalence of colonialism after 50 years of independence and the resultant failure for African growth.
Others focus on the benefits of colonialism and its potential to outweigh the perceived costs.
The common thread in many of the viewpoints is the appalling state of African countries.
Cameroon received independence from France in January 1960. Reports of human rights violations and long presidential terms, coupled with endemic corruption and economic mismanagement persistently plague the state to this day.
Togo was next to gain independence in April 1960. Togo's history since independence from France has however, been littered by military coups and unconstitutional changes to government.
In June of 1960, Mali and Senegal ceased to be French colonies. Independence for Mali has been met with relative political stability and regular democratic elections.
Sporadic fighting between Tuareg factions and the military, however has led to deaths in the poorest region of Mali.
On the economic front, the Malian population has been faced with poverty, and threats to food security.
Although Senegal has experienced relative stability, conflict in the Casamance region of the state, remains a menace to overall peace.
Also in June of 1960, Madagascar and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) gained independence from France and Belgium respectively. Despite widespread poverty and traits of a fledgling democracy in Madagascar, the state was considered relatively peaceful until 2009. An uprising in January of 2009, instigated by Andry Rajoelina exposed the cracks of pervasive disgruntlement in the state.
Coups d'état and civil wars in the mineral rich DRC have marred its history since independence. While conflict has been quelled in most of the country, the eastern region of Congo remains racked by violence. Somalia achieved independence from Italy and Britain in July 1960. Clan-based factions, terrorism and the breakdown of the rule of law characterise the state, giving rise to the dual phenomena of piracy and warlordism.
In August 1960 there was a spate of independences, as eight African states joined the ranks of their independent counterparts. Benin, Niger, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Chad, Central African Republic (CAR), the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville) and Gabon all received independence from France. Benin's first 10 years of independence were marked by precariousness, caused by successive coups. With the transfer to multiparty democracy, relative equilibrium gradually returned.
Since independence in Niger, this poor West African state has been challenged by a history of rebellion and military coups. Added to this are extended periods of drought, which continue to challenge food security.
Like many states in the West African sub-region, Burkina Faso has spent a large portion of its independence under military rule. A politically unsteady state has been the consequence of Burkina Faso's succession of coups and the possible illegitimacy attached to its present ruler, Blaise Campaoré.
Ivory Coast may have commenced independence on positive economic and political notes, but a failed coup in 2002 plunged this state into political turmoil. Civil war broke out from 2003 until 2005 and despite a host of peace agreements, the state is faced with a fragile peace and the potential for the resumption of war.
Similarly, in Chad, the exhilaration surrounding independence was transitory, due to a swift turn to dictatorship and the preservation of authoritarian governance since then. CAR's history since independence has been characterised by military coups and civil unrest. A strong central government gives rise to concerns on the democracy of the state. The Republic of Congo has, like many of its African counterparts, struggled with a one-party system, civil war and one of Africa's longest serving presidents.
Its array of challenges since independence impede peace
and security in that state. Although Gabon has been confronted with autocratic rule since independence, it remains relatively stable and is one of the few states without a bloody past.
Nigeria's independence in October 1960 was next in line. Nigeria's political history has not differed much from its counterparts, in that a series of military dictatorships wrenched the state into political instability. Corruption in this oil-rich state continues to beset Nigeria's national institutions, giving rise to questions on the viability of the state's democratic practices. Mauritania rounded up the year 1960 with its independence in November. The state's 11 experiences of coups since then have threatened the prospect of political stability.
However, with the election of Mauritania's first-ever democratically elected president in 2009, the state has shown some signs of departure from its previous trends.
The overarching trend in all the states mentioned above is that poverty features prominently and contributes to many of the political complexities therein.
As with many other global issues, establishing the root cause of Africa's political and economic turmoil is fundamental for understanding the dynamics of the African continent. Arbitrary boundaries have been largely responsible for ethnic conflicts on the continent. This is due to the forced separation of ethnic groups across states and the forced assimilation of others within states. Colonialism also replaced the pre-colonial governance structures with Western ones and created the culture of kleptocracy. This was through the creation of hierarchical ruling structures.
Within these ruling structures, colonial rulers placed Africans in positions of leadership and enticed them with status and wealth. Economic rewards given to African elites were trapped within elite circles, creating a dominant class at the expense of other Africans and the continent's natural resources. Despite the demise of colonialism, the African elites maintained their relationships with former colonialists. In this way, elites were continually rewarded for draining their states' natural resources. Colonialism furthermore created single-crop economies, which sentenced African economies to market-based fluctuations. Forced integration of developing states into the international trading arena augmented the already prevalent inequality between developed and developing states.
Despite these undeniable effects of colonialism, Africans have a part to play in the current state of the continent. With the realisation that colonial systems were detrimental to African prosperity, the onus fell on Africans to systematically abandon predatory methods of governance, in favour of more equitable ones. The extensive record of African experiences with war and poverty should suffice in deterring the monopolisation of power or resources, which contribute to the appalling state of African states. Corruption instead, remains an overarching problem in a majority of the African states mentioned. Challenges experienced in the first 10 or 20 years of African independence could be dismissed under the pretext of growing pains -- in this case, the departure from the legacy of colonialism.
Despite the independence of African states, some governments of former French colonies are allegedly still linked to France. Chad and Ivory Coast for instance, are some of the cases wherein political interference from France continues to obstruct efforts at forging ahead from the legacy of colonialism.
France has been accused of neo-colonialist practices, and while this may be true, this continuing Afro-French relationship is unsustainable to the degree it exists, without the assistance of African elites. Colonialism undoubtedly initiated unfavourable practices, but how feasible is it to continue allocating blame of injustices against Africa, to past eras and present opportunists, while African leaders persist in power grabbing and economic greed?
Half a century after colonialism, if all Africa's ills are blamed on colonialism, the African state is in danger of allocating the blame of present government actions to the past era. In so doing, Africans play a prominent role in condoning corruption and maladministration on the premise of colonialism. This in itself is the replacement of Western domination with African-based domination, and continuing to refer to it as the legacy of colonialism. Persisting in using colonialism as an explanation for Africa's ills gives the perspective that despite having gained independence, African states are powerless to external influences, whether past or present. It follows that African states are capable of continuing with this negative legacy and not in changing it. This is arguable, given the positive developments in states like Ghana. At what stage in Africa, will it suffice for colonialism to no longer be given the fall for Africa's problems?
While the legacy of colonialism is an explanation for Africa's dire situation, 50 years after colonialism these negative effects in Africa should be fading away, instead of persisting or growing. An overall commitment to good governance and state well-being is fundamentally lacking in many African states. Africans therefore need to strike the right balance between the real legacy of colonialism 50 years later and the models of poor governance that exist on the continent in order to develop and progress. - CAI.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Legacy of colonialism: 50 years and counting

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
THE year 1960 symbolised hope and freedom for 17 states in Africa. For African states, independence signified the opportunity to adopt sovereignty and finally occupy equal footing with their former imperialists in the changing global arena. Beyond this, self-determination relayed the foresight of economic development and shared fiscal benefits.

# data[].attributes.body
-The effects of colonization on Zimbabwe women

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
BEFORE colonialism, a Zimbabwean woman was responsible for her home, the field, harvest, pottery-making and many other activities that she knew from childhood.
She held a strong position in the family as a mother, sister, aunt, grandmother cousin or great grandmother.
In spiritual terms, the Zimbabwean woman could have been a sprit medium or svikiro, midwife, traditional healer or a powerful elder and leader of the family group.
However, most of these roles were to be denigrated and dismissed when colonialism and Christianity came.
When the missionaries came, they did not see these powerful roles.
All they saw was an African woman who was in need of the so-called civilisation.
They wanted her to be submissive.
This idea resonated very well with the Victorian values, whereby women were seen as the weaker sex waiting for men to marry them and protect them.
Overall, colonialism provided a way for the British to produce a position that the Europeans represented a superior civilisation.
Gender difference and the idea of equality was a foreign concept to how women were viewed in African culture.
How can a senior aunt or tete be seen as playing a subjective role when yet she commanded her brothers and her male nephews to obey her orders?
While women continued to work in the fields, the growth of the mining and agricultural industries under colonialism offered men opportunities to work outside the rural areas.
The city became a domain for men, while women were expected to stay in the village and look after the family.
This meant that women were to preoccupy themselves with domestic issues and leave employment in urban cities to men.
But not all women stayed in the rural areas as peasant farmers and buyers of consumer goods.
With rapid urbanisation, women found themselves in the city.
Those who migrated to the cities worked in the informal sector as 'traders, petty commodity producers, sex workers or manufacturers and retailers of food and liquor'.
But the Europeans did not leave women's lives uninterrupted.
As part of that 'civilising' goal, one of the colonial aims was to introduce Western consumer products to African women.
European traders argued that African traditional products were primitive and useless.
They introduced consumer goods like Lifebuoy soap, Lux, Surf, Ambi Skin Lightening cream or Impulse perfume.
In a book titled Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women: Commodification, Consumption, and Cleanliness in Modern Zimbabwe, Timothy Burke writes about the effects of British colonisation on Zimbabwean women.
The key questions Timothy Burke asks are these: "How do people come to need products they never even knew they wanted?
"How, did indigenous Zimbabweans of the 1940s begin to believe that they required Lifebuoy soap?"
He investigates the role of cosmetic products and how the idea of cleanliness was seen in European terms.
The products are presented in such a way that a woman who does not use soap from the European traders is somehow uncivilised.
This campaign to encourage women to buy European goods was done through direct marketing or advertising on radio or with posters.
The most effective way to target Zimbabwean women as consumers of Western households and beauty products was mainly done through the formation of church groups and women's clubs.
The women were instructed to form many local and community-based women's groups in order to improve skills in domestic management and the production of handicrafts.
Naume M. Ziyambi in Traders and Wives, Shona Women in the History of Zimbabwe, 1870-1939, notes that the earliest women's groups in Zimbabwe were connected to missionary activity and the church.
Among them were the Wesleyan Women's Groups and the Zimbabwe Methodist Church Women's Ruwadzano which began in Southern Rhodesia around 1919.
Through these church groups and women's clubs, African women were taught about God and cleanliness.
The colonial assumption was that African women were not clean before the missionaries came.
Missionaries therefore relentlessly preached about the virtues of European womanhood and how that would somehow get transferred to the lives of African women.
Caroline Schmidt also notes the following: "The Victorian ideal of virtuous wife, selfless mother, and tidy, industrious housekeeper was the goal for which all African women should be taught to strive."
The clubs presented the Europeans with a strategic, but subtle way to impose colonial Western values.
Such ideas undermined the economic and political power of African women in traditional society.
Nigerian professor, Oyeronke Oyewumi argues that the Western concept of viewing women's bodies as being 'unclean' or 'clean' was not a feature of the African society.
In Sticks and Scones: Black and White Women in the Home Craft Movement in Colonial Zimbabwe, Carolyn Martin Shaw argues that white women, primarily British settlers from South Africa and the United Kingdom, formed groups to socialise among themselves.
Her book presents a historical view on how Shona women were organised into various Christian groups.
The concept of Homecraft clubs was part of a colonialist approach to gain the support and loyalty of literate rural and urban women.
Shaw writes: "During a period marked by the idea of progress and the fear of African nationalism, these middle and upper-class colonial women reached out to African women, forming Homecraft clubs that taught various domestic tasks such as sewing and cooking.
"In developing the very popular Homecraft clubs, white women placed their skills in the service of the colonial state on a scale never before seen."
Ironically, some of these Homecraft groups provided opportunities for women to mobilise themselves and secretly support the liberation struggle for independence.
The Zimbabwean women's role firstly as consumers of Western products and then as secret agents within the women's clubs presents a field of study yet to be researched and written about.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Effects of colonisation of Zimbabwean women

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
BEFORE colonialism, a Zimbabwean woman was responsible for her home, the field, harvest, pottery-making and many other activities that she knew from childhood. She held a strong position in the family as a mother, sister, aunt, grandmother cousin or great grandmother.

# data[].attributes.body
-When, and how Zimbabwe was colonized

# data[].attributes.body
-He kinda looks a little snooty.

# data[].attributes.body
-From before imperialism to after

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The earliest settlement of the area now known as Zimbabwe goes back about 100.000 years. Since then the area has been home to many great kingdoms and states. Great Zimbabwe was famous for its large stone structures. Other kingdoms include the Mapungubwe, Mutapa, Rozvi and Ndebele. In the 1880s the country became a British colony, called Southern Rhodesia, which lasted until 1965 when the white minority declared independence from Britain to avoid having majority rule. After this the country was known as Rhodesia. In 1980 the country gained independence after a 15 year long Civil War. Zimbabwe has since 1980 been led by Robert Mugabe.
Early History of Zimbabwe
The country which is now known as Zimbabwe does not have one single history, nor was it a single geographical entity before the colonial occupation by the British Empire. There were throughout history many different peoples, kingdoms and polities which inhabited the land. The earliest archaeological evidence of human settlements in the area dates back about 100.000 Years. Arrowheads and other artefacts point to San people being the first inhabitants of the area. They lived mainly of hunting and gathering food, and were to a large degree nomadic peoples moving from place to place. This meant that they had little in the way of material possessions, but at the same time gave them a mobility which meant that as soon as food ran out they could move to a richer and more fertile area. Some academics argue that this life style meant that they lived in relative abundance. The San people created rock paintings, many of which are still found across Southern Africa.

It is estimated that around 150 BCE cattle herding people from the north began to settle in the area. They spoke languages belonging to the Bantu linguistic group, and are often referred to as Bantu speaking peoples. Some of the San peoples migrated west to present day Botswana, while others integrated into the Bantu speaking communities. By about 400 CE the Bantu speaking peoples had established farms and village along rivers in central Zimbabwe. These peoples made a variety of jewellery and goods, as well as growing several different kinds of crops. The names of the earliest Bantu-speaking peoples in Zimbabwe is not known, but it is thought that many moved away because of droughts and a long period with a shortfall of rain.

Around 900 CE a people known as the Zhizo people had moved into southern Zimbabwe, in the area around the Shashe-Limpopo basin. This area is also known as Mapungubwe. Mapungubwe was at the time to dry for extensive agriculture, but could sustain cattle herding and large packs of elephants. The Zhizo people would hunt elephants for ivory which was a valuable trade good at the time. They would trade up the eastern coast of Africa as far as the Swahili coast of present day Tanzania. Through this trade the Southern African region was, by the 900s, connected in a system of trade which stretched all the way to Persia and India. In return for the ivory the Zhizo people would get glass beads which could in turn could be traded for grain by successful farmers in other more fertile areas. It is argued that it was in part accumulation of goods through successful trade which meant that some people had enough wealth to create for themselves positions of power. This created the first stratified polity in southern Africa, and began a process in which more power and wealth would be accumulated by a few families. This meant that where before the different kin-groups had internal power structures, yet had a high level of equality between each other, now there was a kin-group establishing itself as above the other. This is thought to have been the origin of hereditary kings in the area. Some argue that there was a similar process of stratification and centralisation of power happening in several locations, such as Mapela and Khami, in the same period.

The Zhizo people would be in control of the area and prosper through trade for a hundred years until about 1000 CE. It was at this time that a Kalanga (Western Shona) speaking people which is known as the Leopard Kopje or Karanga, people migrated to the area. They settled in several locations around the Shashe-Limpopo basin, but the most prominent settlement was at Mapungubwe Hill. Many Zhizo people would migrate away from the area, but the Zhizo people and the Leopard Kopje people would greatly influence each other, and many Zhizo people would become part of the new communities. Some Zhizo settlements remained in the area as late as the thirteenth century. By 1220 the settlement at Mapungubwe Hill is estimated to have sheltered between 1500 and 2000 people. It is around this time that the settlement at Mapungubwe Hill begins to be known as the Kingdom of Mapungubwe. The settlement was organised so that the royalty would live on top of the hill in a enclosure separated from the rest of the community. Archaeological evidence shows that there was a large herd of cows in Mapungubwe at the time showing the great wealth which had been accumulated.

The Kingdom of Mapungubwe would last for another 80 years, until early 1300. During this time large stone walls were constructed which separated the entrances to areas for elites by building stone walls, some of which still stands today. The walls created a material distinction between the royal elite and common people. It was at this time that the political leadership came to be seen as sacred. At the height of the Kingdom the settlement at Mapungubwe is estimated to have had a population of about 5000 people. After 1300 people began to abandon Mapungubwe after erratic weather and flooding made it difficult to farm in the area. The climate changes would also have the effect of weakening the royal dynasty as the King was seen as sacred and responsible for the weather. This movement away from the city would be the end of the Kingdom of Mapungubwe. With the decline of Mapungubwe another centre of power would emerge in the settlement of Great Zimbabwe
Kingdom of Zimbabwe and Great Zimbabwe
The Kingdom of Zimbabwe formed around the city of Great Zimbabwe and came about through a similar process as that of Mapungubwe. It is debated whether the system was set up and inspired by migrants from Mapungubwe or whether Zimbabwe established a similar social organisation independently. It is certain, however, that both Great Zimbabwe and Mapungubwe were founded by Kalanga speaking people. The first low stone walls of Great Zimbabwe was built in the 1200s and that it was at this time that the city became an important centre of trade and cultural production. Previously it has been thought that Great Zimbabwe only came about after the fall of Mapungubwe, but recent archaeological research shows that Great Zimbabwe was already a place of great importance when Mapungubwe began its decline.

At its largest the city of Great Zimbabwe housed an estimated 18.000 people and the stone walled parts of it covered about 78 ha of land. This makes it by far the largest of Zimbabwe's early stone walled cities. The city was made on a hill, which made it easier to defend against invasions, and it had walls dividing royalty and ordinary citizens. Much like with Mapungubwe the walls served to remind people of the elevated status of the royal dynasty. The Kingdom arouse out of the city of Great Zimbabwe between 1220 and 1290. The Kingdom consisted of the city of Great Zimbabwe and about 150 smaller tributary settlements which were allied with and paid tribute to the royal dynasty. The name "Zimbabwe" is derived from either one of the two Shona terms: dzimba dza mabwe (great stone houses) or dzimba woye (esteemed houses).

Trade was an important part of the Kingdom of Zimbabwe. Much like with the other kingdoms in the area Zimbabwe was connected to a vast network of trade which went up the east African coast and stretched as far as India. It is thought that the most important port in this trade network was first the city of Mogadishu in present-day Somalia, and later Kilwa, south of Zanzibar. Zimbabwe traded gold, ivory and leopard skins.

By the 1400s Great Zimbabwe was in decline. An increasing amount of people were migrating away from the city, and after 1450 the city, and the Kingdom, had been reduced to a minor settlement and shadow of its former self. The reason for the decline was that, much as what had happened to Mapungubwe, Great Zimbabwe had lost its importance to other centres of trade and power such as the city of Khami. It is also speculated that a change in climate and a natural disaster might have been the cause of the exodus from Great Zimbabwe.

At around 1430 Nyatsimba Mutota, a prince of Great Zimbabwe made the journey north, either to secure further trade routes from Arab-Swahili influence, or to gain control over vital salt deposits. As he arrived in the southern part of the middle Zambezi valley he and his followers conquered the Tawara peoples and founded the Mutapa Kingdom. A minor civil war broke out in the Kingdom of Zimbabwe sometime in the mid to late part of the 1400s and as a result a new Kingdom, the Torwa Kingdom was established in the south-western parts of Zimbabwe. By 1550 Great Zimbabwe had lost all autonomy and become a vassal of the Mutapa Kingdom.
The Mutapa Kingdom
A core factor in the growth of the Mutapa Kingdom was the large standing army which they used to exact tribute from neighbouring polities. This army was recruited amongst the nyai, the poorest young men who did not own any cattle to get a wife nor land. Their only way for them to start a family was to do military service with one of the noble households. Once their military service was done they would receive a wife from their patron. The army was not compensated by their patrons in any other way, and would often survive by robbing merchants and raiding neighbouring towns.

The Mutapa Kingdom was established around 1430 when, Nyatsimba Mutota, a prince of Great Zimbabwe made the journey north, either to secure further trade routes from Arab-Swahili influence, or to acquire salt deposits according to other sources. His capital was Zvangombe, close to the Zambezi River. The rulers who came after him also used the Monomutapa title and they conquered other lands and peoples, expanding the Kingdom. Monomotapa is a Portuguese conversion of the title Mwenemutapa (Owner of the conquered land), and Mutapa meaning (Territory). In the Shona language, kutapa means conquering and Mwenemutapa would mean 'one who conquers'. The title, Monomotapa came to be applied to the kingdom as a whole, and was used to indicate its territory on maps of the period.

Mutota's successor was Monomutapa Matope Nyanhehwe Nebedza. He extended this new kingdom into an empire encompassing most of the lands between Tavara, through what is now North Central Mozambique up to the Indian Ocean. The Monomutapa became very wealthy through copper and ivory exploits. (Although some historians argue that much of the power of the royalty was because of their monopoly on trade, while others dispute the very idea that the Kings of Mutapa ever had a monopoly on trade.) As a result of the great wealth and their large standing army, the Mutapa kingdom subjegated the kingdom of Manyika, the whole of the Dande area and the coastal kingdoms of Kiteve and Madanda. By the time the Portuguese arrived on the coast of Mozambique, the Mutapa Kingdom was the premier Shona state in the region. The arrival of the Portuguese had a significant effect on the Mutapa Kingdom however. Relations ranged from one of allies to that of Mutapa being a Portuguese vassal. The Portuguese would weaken the Mutapa Kingdom by pitting different claimants to the kingship against each other and thus creating instability in the Mutapa state.

In 1663 the Mutapa Makombwe became king of the Mutapa Kingdom. In 1674 after extensive warfare he managed to drive the Portuguese out of their fortresses and farms in the coastal interior. This severely weakened the power and influence of the Portuguese in the area. The conflicts with the Portuguese had weakened the Mutapa state as well, however, and a new and powerful Kingdom the Rozvi was emerging from the South-western part of the Zimbabwean plateau. This new and rapidly Kingdom would be the final nail in the coffin for the Mutapa state.

The Rozvi Kingdom

The Torwa Kingdom was established by the Torwa royal dynasty in the 1490s as a result of a civil war between different royal dynasties in the area around Great Zimbabwe. It was one of the two successor states to the Kingdom of Zimbabwe (the other being the Mutapa Kingdom). As a result of the internal strife and succession struggles the Torwa fled southwards and settled in Guruhuswa region. They settled in around the capital city of Khami. Khami, much like Great Zimbabwe, would emerge as a centre of trade where gold and ivory was traded for glass beads, china and other goods from Asia and Europe. The leadership structure of the Torwa was that any descendant of the King could succeed to the throne. This created a an unstable ruling system, and in 1644 the Torwa split in two during a civil war. The split caused the capital of Khami to be abandoned, and a new capital was established in Danangombe.

At the end of the between 1670 and 1690 a cattle owner in the Mutapa Kingdom, Changamire Dombo, put together an army and rebelled against the Mwami Mutapa (King of Mutapa). Dombo would attack Portuguese merchants and raid the Mutapa Kingdom as well. He then set up a Kingdom in the area previously controlled by the Torwa dynasty (who were severly weakened by internal conflict), and made the recently established Danangombe the capital of the new Rozvi Kingdom. With the establishment of his Kingdom Changamire Dombo moved his army north and counqured the central parts of the Mutapa Kingdom, reducing the latter to a small chieftancy west of Tete. In 1684 and in 1693 he won a victory against the Portuguese in the battle of Mahungwe and the battle of Dambarare, when the colonial power attempted to take control of gold mines in the interior of Zimbabwe. By 1695, Changamire Dombo's new Kingdom had replaced the Mutapa as the supreme kingdom in the region. After the death of Changamire Dombo that same year his successors would take up the title Mambo.

The succession of the Rozvi Kingdom was organised in a manner so that the eldest brother to the King would become the next Mambo. Although there were exceptions to the rule, Changamire Dombo was for example succeeded by his son. It is thought that the strict guidelines for succession laws were one of the reasons why the Rozvi Kingdom had a greater internal stability than the Torwa dynasty and Mutapa Kingdom (which were both riddled with succession struggles). The Mambo had a lot of authority, but he would also have to rule with the guidance and approval of his council, the Dare. In addition to this there existed a hereditary duty of the dynasty of Tambare, a noble family) of settling electing a ruler when there was no clear heir, and to collect tribute. The Tambare would be a check on both the excesses and power abuses of the Kings.

A prominent factor in the success of the Rozvi Kingdom was the establishment of a large and well organised standing army. The army could muster up thousands of men, and could sustain heavy losses while still continuing to be operational. The army would be organised into different regiments, each with their own commander. The Rozvi could field an array of different weapons such as spears, axes, clubs, bows, and sometimes guns. The army fought in formations which resembled those of Shaka Zulu, and they are said to have favoured close combat. The army made sure all vassal chiefs paid tribute and stayed loyal. Through collusion with religious authorities called Mwari cults the Kings of Rozvi kept control of their population and gained legitimacy through being seen as blessed by the gods.

By the early 1800s the Rozvi Kingdom had been severely weakened. The conflicts, migrations and political upheaval known as the Mfecane was destabilising the whole region at the time and the Rozvi Kingdom was not ready to withstand the external pressures. By this time the Mwari cult and the royal dynasty were in conflict, which threatened the legitimacy of the King, and civil wars within the dynasty itself had depleted the once powerful Rozwi military. There were several different peoples who migrated through Rozwi lands. Some, such as the Sotho of Mpanga, the Ngwana Maseko Ngoni, Zwangendaba's Ngoni, and the Nguni of Nyamazana, attacked the Rozwi Kingdom further weakening the power of the ruling dynasty. Last of the migrating peoples to the area was the Ndebele people who arrived in 1838-39 under the leadership of Gundwane. They settled in the south-western parts of present-day Zimbabwe. The Rozwi and the Ndebele were intermittently in conflict, but both Kingdoms existed for another 20 years. Many Shona people from the Rozwi Kingdom would settle in Ndebele villages over these years.

The struggle between the Ndebele and Rozwi was both militaristic and economic. The Ndebele had raided much cattle since they had settled in the area and the Rozwi had lost most of their cattle due the many raids in the early 1800s. The Rozwi needed cattle and the Ndebele needed people. As a result of this many young people from the Rozwi Kingdom moved to Ndebele lands and came to work for them in exchange for cattle. This exchange of cattle and people helped spread the Ndebele influence in the area. By this point the Rozwi ruling dynasty had retreated to the hills in the east, and they could not hold on to power long. The only choice was to fight back. The Rozwi dynasty attacked the Ndebele and a struggle ensued from 1854 to 1854. The war was a disaster for the Rozwi and in 1857 they surrendered to the Ndebele.
The Ndebele Kingdom
The Ndebele were descendants of the Khumalo people who lived under the rule of Shaka in present day South Africa around KwaZulu-Natal. They migrated into present-day Zimbabwe during the Mfecane around 1838. The name Ndebele is suspected to have come from the association with the short stabbing spears used by their warriors, which is called Litebele/ Kimatebele/ Tebele by the Sotho-Tswana. The first leader of the Ndebele in Zimbabwe was Gundwane, but his dynasty did not last long. The Ndebele was plagued by infighting after his death which halted their expansion in the 1840s. After the death of Gundwane, another group of Ndebele entered the area under Mzilikazi Khumalo, who would quickly seize power over the local Ndebele people. From 1811 to 1842 was a period in which the Ndebele focused on nation building and consolidating previous gains. This process was led by Mzilikazi and reached the Ndebele in Zimbabwe by the 1840s.

Mzilikazi is thought to have been born around 1790 in contemporary South Africa. He was the leader of the Khumalo clan and served under Shaka Zulu until they had a falling out at around 1822. He fled north after this and came to contemporary Zimbabwe where he seized power over the Ndebele there from Gundawe in 1838-39. Mzilikazi then began to conquer the various peoples and villages surrounding his Kingdom. Despite coming as conquerors and raiders the Ndebele would adopt many of the local customs and many of the local people already living in the area would assimilate into Ndebele villages. Some did this (as explained above) through the economic pressure due to a lack of cattle outside of the Ndebele state. One of the traditions which was the Ndebele took on was the Mwari cult.

By 1866 the once powerful Rozwi Kingdom had completely surrendered to the Ndebele. Mzilikazi died in 1868 and in the succession crisis from 1868-72 which followed his son Lobengula became the new King. Some historians argue that Lobengula needed the Mwari cult and the legitimacy they provided for his ascension to power. In 1873 the Ndebele was a consolidated state and at the height of their power. He needed this legitimacy as he did not have the legitimacy as a conqueror which his father enjoyed. The power of the Ndebele Kings were also reliant on the distribution of cattle and materials in exchange for services. This created a complex client-patron relationship between the people and the ruling elite. Land was not owned by anyone, but simply distributed by the King to anyone who needed it at the time. Cattle on the other hand was guided by two modes of ownership, one was communal and one was private.

The late 1800's was a time when the European colonial powers were increasing their efforts to conquer the African continent. By 1885 during the Berlin Conference European leaders had settled which Eurpoean nations would control what parts of Africa and the scramble for Africa had begun. There was of course a difference between drawing borders on a map and actually controlling the area. The British begun their incursions into the area in the 1880s, but the Portuguese had made several attempts to conquer resources inland since the 1600s. In exchange for wealth and arms, Lobengula approved several franchises to the British. The most far reaching one was the 1888 Rudd concession giving Cecil John Rhodes exclusive mineral rights in much of the lands east of his main territory. Rhodes used this concession to obtain a royal charter (a formal document issued by the British monarch granting him rights and power) to form the British South African Company, in 1889.

Lobengula thought that the arms and ammunition he received from the concession would help him repel the European invaders. Not only was Lobengula pressured by British incursions however, but the Portuguese was also giving a large amount of fire arms to smaller chiefs and kings in the area to undermine his authority. The large amount of fire arms made some of the smaller vassal chiefs of the Ndebele Kingdom more defiant. In June 1893, Lobengula sent warriors down to Fort Victoria (now Masvingo) to put down the rebellion led by a Shona chief in the area who had refused to pay tribute. In previous years the King of Ndebele had been cautious to not attack any of the white colonisers in the past, but the colonial authorities had for the previous three years looked for an excuse to begin a full scale war with the Ndebele. With the 1893 punitive raid they had that excuse. The colonial authorities claimed that they were in command of the area and any disputes should be settled by them. The Ndebele were met by soldiers from Fort Victoria who demanded that they left, the Ndebele leadership refused, and a struggle which left an unknown number of casualties ensued. This was the beginning of the First Matabele War.

In October 1893 the British colonialists attacked the Ndebele forces who was weakened since many of their soldiers had been sent off to attack King Lewanika of Barotseland, who was a puppet of the British authorities. The Ndebele could not hold back the colonial conquerors who advanced through their lands, pillaging, looting and burning as they went. The aim of the British colonial forces was to conquer the capital of the Ndebele Kingdom, called Bulawayo, and to kill or kidnap the King. The idea was that if they could capture the King then he would have to surrender the Kingdom. However, when the British reached Bulawayo November that same year, the city had been burned to the ground by its inhabitants and King Lobengula had fled north. The British chased after Lobengula as he moved north, and in the process a Ndebele force ambushed a patrol headed by Alan Wilson, and killed him and the 34 soldiers who came with him.

In early 1894 Lobengula died of an illness and with him crumbled much of the Ndebele resistance. The reason for this was that the King was an essential aspect of Ndebele identity and especially unity. Not long after this the conquest of the Ndebele people was complete, and by 1895 the whole country of Zimbabwe was a British colony. The colony was named Rhodesia after Cecil Rhodes who was instrumental in its creation.
The Colony of Rhodesia
In 1889 the British government decided that the colony, which would six years later be called Rhodesia, was to be governed by the British South Africa Company. The Company was controlled by Cecil Rhodes until 1902, when he died, and they governed present-day Zambia and Zimbabwe until the establishment of the Colony of Southern Rhodesia (which later became Zimbabwe) in 1923.

The early years of company rule was tumultuous and marked by the Ndebele-Shona rising (or what is also known as the first Chimurenga) 1896-97. While much of the colonial forces were assisting the ill fated Jameson Raid in the Transvaal Republic, the Ndebele people rose up in rebellion against the colonial conquerors in March 1896 and the Shona people in June that same year. It is debated whether this was a coordinated effort or two separate rebellions. What is known is that the rebellion took the white settlers by surprise. Many of the major settlements, such as Bulawayo, were under siege by Ndebele or Shona forces, but a direct attack on fortified settlements were difficult because of the settlers use of machine guns. In late May 1896 the siege of Bulawayo was broken by colonial forces from as far away as Kimberley and Mafikeng in present-day South Africa. Despite the end of the siege the war with the Ndebele continued until July 1896 when they negotiated a separate peace treaty with Cecil Rhodes. The various Shona leaders would continue their fight until they were defeated one after the other, and by 1898 all the leaders of the rebellion had been either captured or exiled.

Rhodesia was set up, not as an indirect rule colony (such as Nigeria or Egypt), but rather as a settler-colony in the style of Australia or Canada. This meant that land seizures, segregated colonial governance and attracting settlers through special white privileges, were central policies. The weakness of the early colonial state, and the long distance between London and Salisbury (present-day Harare), meant that the colonial administration was dependant on alliances with local African leaders to effectively govern the territory and to stifle rebellion. Central Ndebele chiefs were for example given back some of the cattle looted during the 1890s in an effort to get their cooperation. A complex cast system of racial segregation and hierarchy was also created to effectively control the local people, and through the notion of "citizenship" civil rights and urban spaces were reserved for the white population. This allowed the colonial authorities to exclude the African population from direct rule and keep them away from civil power. After the wars of the 1890s Ndebele and Shona people were forced into reserves to dispossess them of their land. Around 1922 64% of all African people were forced to live in one of these reserves.

Settler violence was commonly and arbitrarily meted out against African people and particularly common was the rape of black women by white men. White police officers were most frequently accused of raping black women. In 1903 it was made illegal for a black man to have an extramarital sexual relationship with a white women, but no such law was made for white men. It is therefore clear that the colonial state quietly condoned (if not encouraged) the sexual violence against black women. Land was taken away from Africans and heavy taxes imposed as a way of forcing them into wage labour. As small scale farmers the African people in Rhodesia were self sufficient and had no need for seeking wage labour in the white cities. Yet the settlers needed cheap labour to work in mines, farms and factories around the colony. By taking away land and imposing what is called a "hut-tax" local people were forced to get jobs in the colonial economy. There were also put into place laws which forced Shona and Ndebele people to sign long-term contracts which forced them to stay in labour compounds. The result of these laws were that black people become slave labour in the white economy.

In 1922 the settler population of Southern Rhodesia voted for becoming a colony ruled directly by the British Empire rather than being incorporated into the Union of South Africa. This prompted the creation of the Colony of Southern Rhodesia in August 1923. The colony would be closer tied to the British Empire and would actively participate on the side of Britain in World War II. In 1953, for geopolitical and logistical purposes, the three colonies of Nyasaland, Northern Rhodesia and Southern Rhodesia was amalgamated into one federation. African people and African political representatives in the three colonies rejected the federation, but were completely ignored.
From a Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland and back to Rhodesia
The idea of a federation of colonies in southern Africa was one which the British Empire had long played with. As early as 1915 there were talks about the possibility of a broader federation to minimise administration costs in the colonies. However Southern Rhodesian settlers desired a self-government and only after this was achieved in 1923 did they entertain the idea of a larger federation of colonies. By the time a commission began to work on how a federation could be a practical reality in 1927 it was Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia who was against it on the basis that they rejected the strict racial segregation of Southern Rhodesia. However, after decades of negotiations the federation became a fact on 3 September, 1953.

The various African political movements for national liberation were divided on the question of a federation. In Southern Rhodesia the African Voice Association (Voice), the Reformed Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (RICU) and the Southern Rhodesian African National Congress (SRANC) were all deeply opposed to the federation. To begin the struggle against the federation they organised the All African Congress to mobilise the opposition. Robert Mugabe, then a school teacher and a member of the African National Congress (ANC), denounced the federation as an instrument to suppress self-determination. On the other side future struggle icons such as Joshua Nkomo and Jasper Savanhu participated in the talks which made the federation a possibility, and black members of the United Rhodesia Party (URP) worked in the federation structures. The reason for their support was that it was thought that the legislation of the new federation would bring an end to the segregationist laws particular to Southern Rhodesia.

In the late 1950's the various movements for national liberation in Nyasaland ( Malawi) and Northern Rhodesia ( Zambia) were gaining momentum. Organisations such as the Zambian African National Congress (ZANC) was banned and their leader Kenneth Kaunda was arrested, but this did little to deter the African people struggling for liberation. In Southern Rhodesia in 1957 the SRANC merged with the African Youth League, and elected Joshua Nkomo their new leader. The independence of Ghana in 1957 became an inspiration to other liberation movements on the continent. In 1962 the British government relented to the demands of national independence for Zambia and Malawi. The two countries would become independent states in 1964 thus effectively ending the Federation of Rhodesia. The British government had demanded that they would not grant independence to any country which would not accept majority rule, which Southern Rhodesia refused. This caused Southern Rhodesia, under the leadership of Ian Smith and the Rhodesian Front (RF) to declare independence without British consent. The new country took the name Rhodesia and was ruled by a white minority government and was immediately condemned by both the United Nations (UN) and the British government.
Rhodesia and Zimbabwe: The Struggle for National Liberation
The late 1950s saw an increased amount of resistance to colonial rule in Southern Rhodesia and the other Southern African countries. New political parties fighting for the liberation from white minority rule were getting increasingly organised and militant. The SRANC led by Joshua Nkomo started mass resistance campaigns, but was based on a philosophy of non-violence. The colonial authorities, frightened by the momentum towards independence, began to arrest struggle leaders and ban organisations. Between 1960 and 1965 over a thousand activists were arrested by the Rhodesian state police. With the banning of SRANC the National Democratic Party (NDP) was formed to replace it that same year. In 1961 the NDP was banned by the government and a new party, still under the leadership of Joshua Nkomo, the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) was formed. In 1963 ZAPU had a split and the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) was formed and lead by Ndabaningi Sithole. Robert Mugabe was elected as General Secretary, although he was in Ghana at the time. It is debated whether the split between ZANU and ZAPU was originally because of ethnic tensions between Shona and Ndebele members of ZAPU, but it was as a part of this rift that ethnicity became a factor in Zimbabwean politics for Africans themselves.

As stated above in 1964 Ian Smith was elected Prime Minister, and declares Rhodesia an independent country under white minority rule in 1965. The election of Smith and his Patriotic Front brought with it more and increasingly severe repression. After the murder of a white farmer the Rhodesian security forces attempted to arrest the leadership of both the major liberation parties. After this incident and the increased oppression of their political activities both ZANU and ZAPU decided that they could only achieve national liberation through armed struggle. Joshua Nkomo was that same year arrested and imprisoned by the Rhodesian government until 1974. Another way for the Rhodesian regime to punish black people who took part in the organisations struggling for national liberation was to confiscate their property and make their families homeless.

In 1964 Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) was founded as the armed wing of ZAPU, and in 1965 the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA) was founded as the armed wing of ZAPU. For the next 15 years the two liberation armies would fight the Rhodesian security forces in what is known either as the Rhodesian Bush War or as the second Chimurenga.

The first larger military engagements between Zimbabwean and Rhodesian forces was in 1966. In the beginning the war went well for the Rhodesian security forces. They won most engagements and the liberation armies did not have a major impact on the economy nor could they take and hold significant territories. There was a strong cooperation between the colonial regimes in South Africa, Mozambique and Rhodesia, and in 1971 they formally created an alliance in what is called; 'the Alcora'. Exercise. After 1972 the armed struggle intensified and the Rhodesian state was beginning to struggle. The conscription of white men was extended in age and in the amount of time each man had to serve. This also became a drain on the Rhodesian economy as such a large part of the white work force was fighting in the war.

By the mid-1970's, as Mozambique gained its independence from Portugal and South Africa was withdrawing most of its military support, it was impossible to win for the Rhodesian forces. ZANLA made little progress until 1976, however, as the whole of 1975 was marked by infighting in ZANU/ZANLA. ZANLA had two major internal insurrections by mainly the young and educated members of the organisation who joined up in the early 1970's. After the internal struggles of ZANLA was over in 1976 they were back on the offensive. After 1976 the main mission of the Rhodesian regime was now to gain a negotiated settlement which would allow for the white people of Rhodesia to hold on to their privileges. This meant that in 1977 the conflict escalated further so that ZANU and ZAPU would be forced to come to the negotiating table.

The Rhodesian security forces launched several operations into Mozambique to attack ZANLA and ZIPRA camps in the country. In return a Woolworth's department store in Salisbury was bombed by liberation forces in September of 1977. The Rhodesian government also began to support the Mozambican rebel group called Mozambican National Resistance (RENAMO) which would help fuel the Civil war in that country. In 1977 and 1978 over a thousand Zimbabwean refugees in Mozambique were killed by Rhodesian forces. ZIPRA forces, in return, shot down two civilian planes one in 1978 and one in 1979 killing 107 people in total.

In March 1978 some of the so-called moderate black political leadership such as Abel Muzorewa and Ndabaningi Sithole, made what was called "the Internal Settlement" with Ian Smith and the Rhodesian regime. The agreement basically stated that there would be national elections held where all white people and some black people could vote for a new national government. This election was held about a year after the agreement was made. In March 1979 Abel Muzorewa and his United African National Council (UANC) won the elections and Muzorewa became Prime Minister. Rhodesia got a new flag and was now renamed Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, although the new country remained unrecognised internationally. The entire Internal Settlement was condemn by the United Nations.

After the elections the new government began negotiations with the various parties fighting for national liberation. The most important of which where ZANU and ZAPU. These negotiations led to what is called the "Lancaster House Agreement" which was signed on 21 December 1979. All the various militias would return to Zimbabwe and stay in camps supervised British soldiers and as soon as possible Zimbabwe would hold new national elections. In return for independence the new government would wait ten years before beginning any land reforms in Zimbabwe, and that all land transfers would be on the basis of a willing buyer/willing seller principle. Elections were held in February 1980 and ZANU won a decisive victory. Robert Mugabe then became the first Prime Minister of an independent Zimbabwe. ZAPU under Joshua Nkomo came in second with about a third of ZANU's votes. The two parties decided to enter into a coalition to ensure national cohesion and to avoid any violence between ZANU and ZAPU.
The First two Decades After Independence
The years after independence was politically turbulent in Zimbabwe. Already in 1982 tensions arose after ZAPU and ZIPRA leaders were being arrested by the Zimbabwean government. Joshua Nkomo and all other ZAPU leaders had to step down from their government positions. The reason for the arrests and the sackings was that arms-caches had been discovered on ZAPU owned properties. In all the police stated that they found 31 arms caches hidden in the Gwaai area and around Bulawayo. Robert Mugabe accused ZAPU, and Joshua Nkomo, of wanting to overthrow the government, but Nkomo denied this. He later explained that the existence of ZAPU arms storage around the country was because a large amount of ZANLA weapons had disappeared, and that both ZIPRA and ZANLA did not seem to trust each other. The exit of ZAPU members from the government meant the end of the National Unity government and more trouble was brewing on the horizon.

Several arms caches was found in Matabeleland on 30 April, 1982, and on 23 July several American and Australian tourists were kidnapped by "dissidents". The army was called in to put down any dissidents in the area in an operation called Gukurahundi. The infamous Fifth Brigade, trained by North Korean instructors and answerable only to the Prime Minister, was sent to Matabeleland. The army killed civilians which they claimed harboured dissidents, but it soon became obvious that it had become a campaign of indiscriminate killings of the Ndebele people in the area. Mugabe was seen as supporting these killings when he, on 8 April, 1983, proclaimed Matabeleland to be a "war-zone" and that they "cannot select who they fight in this kind of war because we cannot tell who is a dissident and who is not". He also stated that anyone who fed or hid dissidents was part of the war. These statements were understood as any person in Matabeleland was potentially a dissident and therefore a target for war. The killings continued until 1987 and by that time an estimated 20.000 civilians had been killed in the conflict, most of them by government troops. The conflict was settled when ZAPU and ZANU signed the unity agreement in 1987. In the agreement the two parties were merged to create a new party called Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF).

The 1990s would be no less politically turbulent. In the late 1980s and early 90s there were protests by university students against corruption and there was large scale pressure for an increased inclusion of black Zimbabweans into the economy. There had been few attempts at land reform so most of the arable land was still in the hands of white Zimbabweans. On top of all of this Zimbabwe is forced by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to go through Economic Structural Adjustment Programs (ESAP) in 1991. These structural adjustment programs came as a demand if developing countries wanted more loans from the international financial institutions. They included cuts in public spending, opening up the boarders for free trade, cutting of taxes, democratisation of the political system and privatising the economy. The measures were supposed to bring economic growth, but usually had disastrous effects. They also led to serious protests and strikes by particularly public sector employees, as this had a great effect on their salaries.

The effects of the government cuts would lead to protests and discontent amongst most Zimbabweans. To deal with the land issue, and for ZANU-PF to regain some popularity amongst the people, a land act was passed in 1992 which meant that the government could forcefully seize land for resettlement. The act was also introduced after accusations by the Zimbabwean government that the British government had never lived up to their part of the Lancaster House Agreement, in which they would fund a much larger part of the land reform program than they did. Zimbabwe could not afford to do land redistribution on a willing buyer/willing seller principle. There was also an issue that by 1985 most of the white farmers were no longer interested in selling any land, and as such driving the prices of land upward. The white farmers argued that they were a major driver in the economy and the largest employers in the country and that driving them out would have disastrous effects. ZANU-PF won a resounding victory in the 1990 elections and took this as popular support for land reform.
Land Reform and the Movement for Democratic Change
The land issue would however lay relatively dormant until 1997 when war veterans began to demand more monetary compensation for their part in the liberation struggle. The late 1990's was also marked by increasing civil society activities, general strikes, and rioting over increasing food prices. The government begins to print money to pay the war veterans and by 1999 they can no longer cover their loans to the IMF and the World Bank. That same year the opposition party Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) is formed under the leadership of Morgan Tsvangirai. Meanwhile between 1997 and 2000 in the face of droughts, food price increases and a nation wide economic meltdown, many black Zimbabweans and war veterans had begun to occupy farm land on their own accord. International backers promised to support the program for land reform financially, and on 16 April, 2000, Mugabe decried the land invasions as a "problem". The parliamentary elections on 24 and 25 of June, 2000, went badly for ZANU-PF however, and the MDC won 47% of the vote against ZANU-PF's 48,6%. The elections were marred by violence against the opposition including the killing of several MDC members.

On June 28 that same year the government announced that it would begin to seize white owned farms. 3000 white owned farms were seized and thousands of black Zimbabweans were resettled on the land. This program of farm seizures became known as the third Chimurenga. Protests erupted in the capital city of Harare, and in return there was extensive violence against members of the opposition party. The political turmoil, the bad economic planning and the printing of money led to runaway inflation, and by 2010 Zimbabwean dollars were practically worthless. In 2005 whole neighbourhoods in Harare were demolished in what the government called slum clearance, but the opposition claimed that it was targeted violence against their supporters.

The March 2008 the elections saw ZANU-PF loosing their majority in parliament for the first time since the country's independence. The election was again marred by political violence against the opposition. ZANU-PF and Robert Mugabe refused to accept the results and a new election was held, but it was boycotted by the opposition parties. Because of the economic problems in the country the living standard for average Zimbabweans were plummeting in 2008, people did not have enough to eat and at the same there was a major cholera outbreak. In August 2009 ZANU-PF and MDC sign a power sharing agreement, and formed an inclusive government. The new government brought an halt to some of the major issues facing Zimbabwe and 2008-2013 saw an increase in the general living standard in the country.

After the 2013 elections in which there were suspicions of election fraud ZANU-PF again took power alone as they won 61,09% of the votes. In March 2013 there was a referendum on constitutional changes which would allow Robert Mugabe to remain as Head of the Government until 2023. In August 2016 major protests broke out all across Zimbabwe against the ZANU-PF government. The protesters were demanding electoral reform and was a reaction to low economic growth, bad governance, and persistent high unemployment. Another reason for the protests was attempts at bringing back the Zimbabwean dollar and attempting to block imports coming in from South Africa.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The earliest settlement of the area now known as Zimbabwe goes back about 100.000 years. Since then the area has been home to many great kingdoms and states. Great Zimbabwe was famous for its large stone structures. Other kingdoms include the Mapungubwe, Mutapa, Rozvi and Ndebele.

# data[].attributes.body
-Zimbabwe African People's Union definition, and effects

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Zimbabwe African People's Union - Wikipedia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
needs additional citations for verification .improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

# data[].attributes.body
-Ian Smith's Backstory, and effect on Zimbabwe

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Ian Douglas Smith (8 April 1919 - 20 November 2007) was a politician, farmer, and fighter pilot who served as Prime Minister of Rhodesia (or Southern Rhodesia; today Zimbabwe) from 1964 to 1979.

# data[].attributes.body
-A chronology of key events

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
1200-1600s - Rise and decline of the Monomotapa domain, thought to have been associated with Great Zimbabwe and to have been involved in gold mining and international trade.

1830s - Ndebele people fleeing Zulu violence and Boer migration in present-day South Africa move north and settle in what becomes known as Matabeleland.

1830-1890s - European hunters, traders and missionaries explore the region from the south. They include Cecil John Rhodes.

1889 - Rhodes' British South Africa Company obtains a British mandate to colonise what becomes Southern Rhodesia.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A chronology of key events in the history of Zimbabwe

# data[].attributes.body
-To get a feel of the area