The Electoral Institute of Southern Africa EISA sent five long-term and 20 short-term observers from eight countries to monitor the legislative elections from March 9 to March 30, On June 12, , Morgan Tsvangirai was arrested by government police in Gweru, but was not charged with a crime. O pposition presidential candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the MDC, withdrew from the second round of presidential elections on June 22, President Mugabe was re-elected with 86 percent of the vote in the second round of presidential elections held on June 27, , and he was sworn in for a five-year term on June 29, The PAP sent 34 short-term observers and 26 staff members led by Marwick Khumalo of Swaziland to monitor the second round of presidential elections from June 8 to June 28, President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa mediated negotiations between representatives of the parties in Pretoria, South Africa beginning on July 5, On July 11, , the governments of China and Russia vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that would have imposed economic sanctions against the government of Zimbabwe.
Former President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa facilitated further negotiations regarding the composition of the government beginning on October 13, On October 21, , the MDC called for new elections if the negotiations over the details of a power-sharing agreement are not successful.
The South African government imposed economic sanctions suspension of agriculture assistance against the government of Zimbabwe on November 20, The EU imposed additional economic sanctions travel ban on eleven Zimbabweans on December 8, The EU imposed additional economic sanctions travel ban against more than 60 Zimbabweans and companies on January 26, The EU travel ban included a total of Zimbabweans and 40 companies. More than individuals were killed and more than 35, individuals were displaced during the crisis.
On October 16, , the MDC decided to boycott the national unity government cabinet and council of ministers after the arrested of senior MDC member Roy Bennett on terrorism charges. On February 16, , the EU decided to renew economic sanctions assets freeze and travel ban on individuals and 40 companies for another year. The EU lifted economic sanctions assets freeze and travel ban against 35 individuals on February 15, The EU lifted economic sanctions assets freeze and travel ban on an additional 51 individuals and 20 companies on February 17, The EU lifted economic sanctions assets freeze and travel ban against 21 individuals and one company on February 18, A new constitution was approved by 95 percent of voters in a referendum on March , The new constitution limits future presidents to two five-year terms in office, prohibits the president from vetoing legislation, and abolishes the post of prime minister.
The EU lifted economic sanctions assets freeze and travel ban against 81 individuals and eight companies on March 25, President Robert Mugabe signed the new constitution on May 22, President Robert Mugabe was re-elected for a seventh term with 61 percent of the vote on July 31, , and he was sworn in for a seventh term on August 22, The African Union AU sent nine long-term observers and 60 short-term observers led by former President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria to monitor the legislative and presidential elections from June 15 to August 2, On August 9, , the MDC filed a legal challenge against the results of the presidential election.
On August 16, , the MDC dropped its legal challenge to the results of the presidential election because it did not feel that it could get a fair hearing. On August 20, , the U. The EU lifted economic sanctions assets freeze and travel ban against eight individuals on February 17, President Robert Mugabe was placed under house arrest by government soldiers.
President Robert Mugabe resigned on November 21, Emmerson Mnangagwa was sworn in as acting president in Harare on November 24, Legislative elections were held on July 30, Emmerson Mnangagwa was elected president with 51 percent of the vote on July 30, Government troops clashed with MDC supporters in Harare on August 1, , resulting in the deaths of six individuals. On August 24, , the Constitutional Court confirmed the election of Emmerson Mnangagwa as president.
Emmerson Mnangagwa was inaugurated as president in Harare on August 26, Department of State , March 14, ;. Barber, James P. Cefkin, J. Kriger, Norma. Laakso, Liisa.
McKinney, Robert. Rothchild, Donald. Crocker and Fen Osler Hampson, ed. UCA dedicates itself to academic vitality, integrity, and diversity. Political Science. Africa Civil Rights Decolonisation Political. Popular articles. He was the leader of the Khumalo clan and served under Shaka Zulu until they had a falling out at around He fled north after this and came to contemporary Zimbabwe where he seized power over the Ndebele there from Gundawe in 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 the once powerful Rozwi Kingdom had completely surrendered to the Ndebele. Mzilikazi died in and in the succession crisis from 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 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. King Lobengula son of Mzilikazi. The late 's was a time when the European colonial powers were increasing their efforts to conquer the African continent.
By 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 s, but the Portuguese had made several attempts to conquer resources inland since the s.
In exchange for wealth and arms, Lobengula approved several franchises to the British. The most far reaching one was the 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 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 , 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 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 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 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 the whole country of Zimbabwe was a British colony.
The colony was named Rhodesia after Cecil Rhodes who was instrumental in its creation. In 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 , 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 The early years of company rule was tumultuous and marked by the Ndebele-Shona rising or what is also known as the first Chimurenga 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 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 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 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 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 s in an effort to get their cooperation. 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 s Ndebele and Shona people were forced into reserves to dispossess them of their land. 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 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. 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 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 In , 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. The idea of a federation of colonies in southern Africa was one which the British Empire had long played with.
As early as 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 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 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, The various African political movements for national liberation were divided on the question of a 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 's the various movements for national liberation in Nyasaland Malawi and Northern Rhodesia Zambia were gaining momentum. The independence of Ghana in became an inspiration to other liberation movements on the continent. In the British government relented to the demands of national independence for Zambia and Malawi.
The two countries would become independent states in 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.
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. The late s 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 colonial authorities, frightened by the momentum towards independence, began to arrest struggle leaders and ban organisations. As even a democracy like the United States has shown, waging war can benefit a leader in several ways: it can rally citizens around the flag, it can distract them from bleak economic times, and it can enrich a country's elites.
In August of Robert Mugabe sent 11, soldiers—a third of his army—into the most menacing country in Africa: the Congo. He justified the invasion on the grounds that he was defending the sovereignty of an African country being invaded by Rwandan, Ugandan, and Burundian forces, which were backing a rebellion against the Congo's President, Laurent Kabila. In reality, just as Saddam Hussein went after the oil in Kuwait, Mugabe had his eye on the Congo's riches.
But the war was extremely unpopular at home. As casualties mounted, some army officers grew restless and began plotting a coup, which was foiled in its planning stages. Mugabe dismissed his critics as "black white men wearing the master's cap. Mugabe thought he might placate the war veterans by offering up the white farms, but in the end, although the vets were the ones who expelled the white farmers, it is the country's elites who got the farms.
Zimbabwe's troops are thought to have withdrawn from the Congo in September of last year, but the consequences of the war are more durable. In addition to unleashing the war veterans as a powerful political force, the Congo war consumed vast sums of money that would have been better spent on medicine for the country's dying people. Zimbabwe's only real surplus is HIV, which has infected a third of the population, causing life expectancy to drop from fifty-six years in the early seventies to a deeply distressing thirty-five years today.
In Mugabe's government actually did something that no other African government had tried: it introduced an "AIDS levy"—a three percent tax on every Zimbabwean's salary, which was to be used to fund AIDS prevention and treatment. Predictably, most of the money disappeared. AIDS illnesses and deaths, in turn, further wreck the economy, reducing the number of communal farmers who can produce in the countryside, and forcing factories and mines to hire almost twice as many workers to secure the same amount of labor.
Zimbabwe's neighbors have begun to treat patients with anti-retrovirals, but Mugabe can't afford the drugs. We say 'go buy' and 'go buy,' but it is just cruel theater. Ignorance and misinformation persist. When an AIDS death occurs in a rural area, it is still common to hear the deceased described as having been "bewitched.
Gukurahundi refers to the seasonal Zimbabwean rains that wipe out the debris of the previous year's crop. It signifies a purging of the old, a purification. In January of Robert Mugabe, a member of the ethnic Shona majority, ordered his North Korea-trained Fifth Brigade to carry out what he called a gukurahundi against the Ndebele people. The Ndebele account for about a fourth of the country's population, and Mugabe felt that they threatened him because his chief political rival at the time, Joshua Nkomo, was a Ndebele.
The Nazis gave us the Final Solution; the Serbs gave us "ethnic cleansing"; the Zimbabweans have given us "wiping away. Public discussion of the gukurahundi is forbidden in Zimbabwe. But George Mkwananzi, thirty-three, is the self-anointed keeper of Ndebele memory. Wearing thick spectacles that keep sliding down his nose, he doesn't fit the image of a would-be rebel leader.
But that is what he says he and others will become if Mugabe is not punished for the murder of the Ndebele. Rhodes's conquest left some 5, Ndebele dead. Mugabe's forces are thought to have killed 25, If Mugabe and his henchmen are not prosecuted, we will break away and create our own country, and we will find a way to make revenge against Mugabe. It will happen.
It may sound like a dream, but ours is a brutalized past that has to be revisited. Five or ten years from now they will say, 'What that man was saying was true.
In an era of international justice, dictators with blood on their hands are afraid that if they relinquish power, they will end up prosecuted, like Slobodan Milosevic, or humiliated, like Augusto Pinochet. Mugabe knows that his massacres have been carefully documented by survivors and human-rights investigators, and he is right to be nervous.
Tsvangirai, for his part, might be willing to accept a deal in which Mugabe was given a golden parachute to Nigeria as Charles Taylor, of Liberia, was , but he knows that if he does so, his many Ndebele supporters may revolt. Following the lead of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the United States and Europe have imposed sanctions against Mugabe and seventy-four members of his inner circle, freezing their assets, imposing a travel ban, and forbidding arms sales. But other nations, including Malaysia, Libya, and Venezuela, have been openly supportive of the Mugabe regime.
Mugabe swats away American and European criticism by citing imperial sins. Like Castro in Cuba, Mugabe is admired in the developing world for flouting the Western powers. But Mbeki, who has insisted on a "softly, softly" approach, often seems simply to be stalling in Mugabe's behalf. In September, with Zimbabwe in its worst condition since Mugabe came to power, Mbeki said that things had normalized.
Although his African National Congress once benefited from sanctions in the fight against apartheid, he has called for the termination of those against Zimbabwe. President Mbeki and other African heads of state are torn. On the one hand, they know that an "African renaissance" can't come about while Mugabe and people like him continue to wield power.
On the other, they are power-hungry themselves, and they are terrified that their own liberation-era organizations will be left behind in such a renaissance. So they close ranks on racial and anti-imperial grounds. But although Mugabe's neighbors in Africa may applaud the President at international conferences, they are privately taking steps to protect themselves against the Zimbabwean catastrophe. His government also deports several thousand illegal Zimbabwean immigrants each week.
Botswana has found itself so overrun by desperate Zimbabweans that it is erecting an electric fence miles long. Meanwhile, Mugabe's anti-imperialist rhetoric, though an expedient balm at home, only deepens Zimbabwe's isolation from potential lenders, investors, and tourists. Still, Mugabe will have the last word on Zimbabwe's fate.
His cronies are clearly worried that if he clings to power indefinitely, the ruling party will sink with him. He is under pressure to choose a successor by the end of the year. But at seventy-nine, Mugabe may well decide to stick around, relying—though he would never admit it—on the United States and Britain to bail out his people with food aid.
If he hangs on, and if other African leaders don't force him out, Zimbabwe may go in one of two directions. Its destitute citizens might be so preoccupied with finding food and staying alive that they will increasingly tune politics out.
Over time their memory of—and sense of entitlement to—a better life will give way, and they will docilely submit to authorities whose power will only increase as the crisis deepens. Or the country's appalling conditions might stir a domestic revolution, a fourth chimurenga , which will bring down Mugabe and his ruling party. The stakes are not small. These men led necessary and bold opposition to colonial rule, but then grew addicted to power and its opulent trappings.
They began to see themselves less as rulers of their lands than as owners. As their support waned, the big men acted in ways that big men so often do, following a manual very much like Mugabe's—profiteering, stealing elections, torturing opponents, alienating professionals and foreigners, and ignoring the needs of their impoverished citizens. Because Zimbabwe had so much going for it, and because the country has come apart at such a frighteningly brisk pace, one can see the continent's worst tendencies in microcosm.
The lessons are clear. First, the contemporary skeptics of democracy—who argue that it enables tyrannies of the majority and that it ranks lower in priority than economic development—miss the central insight of the Zimbabwe experience: When a ruler operates without constraint, he can institute a tyranny of the minority, and he can plunder his country's economy and starve his people without any potential corrective.
Democratic accountability is the bedrock concept that no developed or developing state can live without. An outspoken press, a healthy opposition, periodic elections, and an independent judiciary are rightly valued for themselves, but their greatest virtue is practical: they deter and thwart top-down demolition.
Second, however distant the days of imperial rule or Cold War interventions in Africa, the residual resentments are a huge psychological impediment to sensible action by African leaders.
In many instances these leaders are simply deflecting attention from their own failings. But anti-colonial rants get a receptive hearing among ordinary citizens, because Western leaders have rarely acknowledged their past sins and still refuse to face up to the way the West's farm subsidies are ravaging African agriculture.
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