The Australian government imposed diplomatic sanctions non-recognition against the Rhodesian government on November 16, The UN Security Council imposed military sanctions voluntary arms embargo and economic sanctions oil embargo against the Rhodesian government on November 20, The British government imposed economic sanctions assets freeze against the Rhodesian government on December 3, , and the British government imposed additional economic sanctions trade restrictions against the Rhodesian government on December 12, The British government imposed additional economic sanctions oil embargo against the Rhodesian government on December 17, On December , , Prime Minister Wilson of Britain and Prime Minister Ian Smith met on a warship off Gibraltar to discuss the matter of Rhodesian independence, but the parties failed to come to an agreement.
The UN Security Council imposed military sanctions mandatory arms embargo and economic sanctions selective trade restrictions and oil embargo against the Rhodesian government on December 16, The South African government deployed 2, paramilitary police in support of the Rhodesian government beginning in August The UN Security Council imposed mandatory economic sanctions comprehensive trade restrictions against the Rhodesian government on May 29, ZAPU rebels clashed with Rhodesian government troops as well as South African paramilitary policemen on July , , resulting in the deaths of at least 39 rebels and one South African paramilitary personnel.
Prime Minister Wilson and Prime Minister Smith met again on a warship off Gibraltar from October 9 to October 13, , but again failed to come to an agreement. A draft constitution for Rhodesia was approved in a referendum held on June 20, , and the constitution went into effect on September 11, The government of the Soviet Union condemned the Rhodesian government on March 7, On March 17, , the U.
Parliamentary elections were held on April 10, , and the RF won 50 out of 66 seats in the House of Assembly. Clifford Dupont was elected as president by the House of Assembly on April 14, After three Zambians were killed by landmines near the border with Rhodesia on January 11, , the Zambian government mobilized troops along the border on January 12, The Kenyan government condemned the Rhodesian government on January 12, The Egyptian government condemned the Rhodesian government on January 23, Three more Zambians were killed by landmines near the border on January 26, , and the UN Security Council condemned the Rhodesian government on February 2, On May 22, , the U.
Some rebels, 44 Rhodesian military personnel, and twelve white civilians were killed in clashes in Rhodesia in Parliamentary elections were held on July 30, , and the RF won 50 out of 66 seats in the House of Assembly. The ANC boycotted the parliamentary elections. The ICJ issued a report on December 17, John Wrathall was inaugurated as president on January 14, Rhodesian troops and PF rebels clashed near Chiredzi in southeast Rhodesia on May 9, , resulting in the deaths of 35 civilians and one rebel.
The UN secretary-general and the governments of the U. Parliamentary elections were held on August 31, , and the RF won 50 out of 66 seats in the House of Assembly. Rhodesian government troops attacked ZAPU rebels in Gwembe Valley in Zambia on February 7, , resulting in the deaths of some 50 rebels and eight Zambian government soldiers.
The UN secretary-general and the Kenyan government condemned the Rhodesian government on March 8, Rhodesian government troops and PF rebels clashed near Dombashawa on June 10, , resulting in the deaths of 22 civilians.
Rhodesian government troops attacked ZAPU rebels in Zambia on July 23, , resulting in the deaths of some individuals. President John Wrathall died on August 31, , and Lt.
Colonel Henry Everard became acting-president on September 1, The government imposed martial law in parts of the country beginning on September 10, The government of India condemned the Rhodesian government on October 24, , and the government of Angola condemned the Rhodesian government on October 26, President Wrathall resigned on November 1, , and Jack Pithey became acting-president on November 2, A new constitution was approved by the National Assembly on January 20, , and the constitution was approved in a referendum on January 30, Rhodesian military aircraft attacked ZAPU rebels near Livingstone and Lusaka, Zambia on February , , resulting in the deaths of 18 individuals.
Rhodesian government troops and military aircraft attacked ZAPU rebels near Lusaka and Mulungushi, Zambia on April , , resulting in the deaths of twelve individuals. The Cuban government condemned the Rhodesian government on April 14, The PF boycotted the parliamentary elections. The Rhodesian parliament was dissolved on May 4, , and the new parliament was sworn in on May 8, The new constitution went into effect on June 1 Rhodesian government troops attacked ZAPU rebels near Lusaka, Zambia on June July 1, , resulting in the deaths of some 50 individuals and one Rhodesian military personnel.
Rhodesian government troops attacked PF rebel bases in Mozambique on September , , resulting in the deaths of PF rebels and 15 Rhodesian soldiers.
Lord Soames of Britain was appointed as colonial governor in Rhodesia on December 7, The British government lifted economic sanctions trade embargo against Rhodesia on December 12, Representatives of the Rhodesian government and PF signed a ceasefire agreement in London on December 21, More than 20, individuals, including some 1, Rhodesian military personnel and more than 10, rebels, were killed during the conflict.
Some one million Rhodesians were internally-displaced, and , Rhodesians fled as refugees to Botswana, Mozambique, and Zambia during the conflict. The CON sent 63 observers from eleven countries led by Rajeshwar Dayal of India to monitor the parliamentary elections from January 25 to March 2, The governments of Australia, Denmark, Ireland, United Kingdom, and West Germany sent short-term observers to monitor the parliamentary elections.
Several non-governmental organizations, including Freedom House and the American Committee on Africa ACOA , send short-term observers to monitor the parliamentary elections. The government lifted martial law on March 20, The CMF was withdrawn from the country on March 16, Zimbabwe was proclaimed as an independent state on April 18, Prime Minister Robert Mugabe declared a state-of-emergency in July Zimbabwe joined the CON on October 1, The North Korean government agreed to provide military assistance military advisors, training, and weapons to the government of Zimbabwe in October North Korean military advisors arrived in Zimbabwe in August Government soldiers massacred 55 men and women in Lupane in western Zimbabwe on March 5, Joshua Nkomo took refuge in Botswana on March 8, , and later went into exile in Britain.
Some members of the ZAPU launched an insurgency the government in the southern province of Matabeleland beginning on March 8, Government troops attacked ZAPU rebels in Botswana on November 8 and December 20, , resulting in the death of one government soldier. The government adopted a new constitution on August 8, The London-based human rights non-governmental organization Amnesty International condemned the government for human rights abuses against members of opposition political parties on November 13, Joshua Nkomo was appointed as Vice-President of Zimbabwe.
Some 20, civilians, mostly members of the minority Ndebele ethnic group, were killed by government soldiers in Matabeleland province in the s. On April 19, , President Mugabe announced an amnesty for political dissidents and former rebels, and such individuals surrendered over the next few weeks.
President Mugabe was re-elected with 78 percent of the vote on March 30, President Mugabe lifted the state-of-emergency on July 25, President Mugabe was re-elected with 92 percent of the vote on March , Most opposition political parties boycotted the presidential election, and only 31 percent of the electorate voted in the elections.
A white farmer, Sylvia Jackson, was killed by an employee at her farm in Marondera on November 13, On April 29, , President Mugabe appointed a member constitutional commission to draft a new constitution. Vice President Joshua Nkomo died of cancer on July 1, The Japanese government imposed economic sanctions suspension of economic assistance against the government of Zimbabwe in A draft constitution for Zimbabwe was rejected in a referendum by 55 percent of the voters on February , A government policeman was killed in a clash with black squatters in a farm near Marondera on April 4, On April 7, , the House of Assembly approved legislation that provided the government with the authority to seized white-owned farms.
British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook condemned the killing of the white farmer. The British government imposed military sanctions suspension of military assistance and arms embargo against the government of Zimbabwe beginning on May 3, A white farmer, John Weeks, was killed by attackers at his home southwest of Harare on May 7, On May 14, , a white farmer, Alan Dunn, died as a result of an attack at his farm. One individual was killed in political violence in Harare on May 16, , and two individuals were killed in political violence in Mudzi district on May 18, A white farmer, Tony Oates, was killed along with an attacker at his home northwest of Harare on June 1, One supporter of the MDC was also killed in political violence in the town of Bikita on June 1, The European Union EU sent 13 election experts, 94 long-term observers, and 79 short-term observers from 17 countries led by Pierre Schori of Sweden to monitor the legislative elections from May 31 to July 4, The Japanese government sent six short-term observers to monitor the legislative elections on June , Government police raided MDC offices on September 15, The British government condemned the government of Zimbabwe on September 15, A white farmer, Gloria Olds, was killed on her farm near Bulawayo on March 4, The European Parliamentary condemned the government of Zimbabwe on March 15, One student was killed by government policemen during demonstrations in Harare on April 8, The maize is shucked to the beat, and the hoes land rhythmically in the rich red soil.
The commercial reminds starving Zimbabweans what they got from their liberation from white rule: Nike sneakers and crops aplenty. More representative of the country's actual situation is the state of the fertile crescent north of the capital.
If Zimbabwe is Africa's breadbasket, the Mazowe Valley is the breadbasket of the breadbasket. Yet driving through it today is like visiting a refugee camp that has been hit by a hurricane. Fields that should brim with knee-high, forest-green winter wheat now contain only the crackling yellow stubble of last year's crop. The barbed wire that once hemmed in cattle has been ripped away by squatters, who have plopped down cheap cement houses in the middle of arable fields and killed off cows and sheep for food.
Surviving cattle wander, emaciated, onto the roads. Untended, they are riddled with foot-and-mouth disease, dooming what was once a thriving cattle-export business. Irrigation equipment lies derelict and rusting; much of it has been dismantled and sold as scrap metal. Government food warehouses used to contain sacks of wheat and maize piled to the sky, but the warehouses, on which the vast majority of the population depends, now stand empty.
Mugabe designated the state-run Grain Marketing Board as the sole buyer and distributor of maize and wheat in the country, and he fixed prices at a fraction of market value.
In a country with moderate inflation this might have kept staples at affordable prices. But given that the prices of everything else in the country, including seed and fertilizer, are doubling each month, farmers can grow these vital crops only at a severe loss. As a result both commercial and small farmers have gotten out of the maize and wheat business, shifting to crops that are not price-controlled.
Mugabe handles the unprecedented food shortages the totalitarian way: he hides them, guarding the size of GMB stocks as carefully as he would military secrets. Longtime foreign correspondents have been expelled from the country, and local journalists dare not approach the GMB, for fear of arrest. Driving by one warehouse in Mvurwi, I observed a typically listless group of GMB workers in blue overalls lounging in the sunshine, smoking cigarettes, and stacking and restacking wooden pallets that would ordinarily be used to store the harvest.
Nothing too explosive there. Yet when the GMB overseers saw they were being watched, they dispatched a posse of young men to pursue my vehicle in a harrowing and, owing to their reluctance to waste scarce fuel, unsuccessful car chase. Zimbabweans are severely malnourished, and deaths from starvation occur even in the cities. The country has not yet suffered nationwide famine only because international donors have stepped in.
It maintained only a small procurement office in Harare, staffed by a dozen people. Last year, however, the WFP had to overhaul its operation, hiring hundreds of international and Zimbabwean aid workers to distribute food in the country. At the height of the Ethiopian famine, international donors fed just 20 percent of Ethiopia's citizens.
Shortages are expected to be far more severe in the coming year. But instead of disclosing the country's true needs and requesting a helping hand, Mugabe's cabinet has delivered a passive-aggressive screed to the international community. In a twenty-four-page "appeal" delivered this past July, it defended the land seizures for "economically empowering the poor," and criticized donors for their "skepticism [toward] pro-poor policies.
By exaggerating Zimbabwe's crop yields in Potemkin fashion, the cabinet downplayed its needs, making it impossible for the WFP to get from donors already stretched thin in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Liberia the food Zimbabwe will need to stave off widespread starvation in Zimbabweans are remarkably unshy about criticizing Robert Mugabe's rule.
Ask a taxi driver how he is doing, and he will answer without hesitation: "I am suffering. In March of last year, although the ruling party beat and tortured opponents, controlled media coverage of the campaign, and posted its armed watchdogs at election booths, the voters turned up—and by all unofficial accounts elected Morgan Tsvangirai, the head of the Movement for Democratic Change, to replace Mugabe as President.
Mugabe rigged the results, but Tsvangirai's supporters still call the opposition leader "Mr. Time will tell. For now, instead of leading protests at home, or mobilizing pressure abroad, Tsvangirai spends his days in court—fending off charges of treason, which carry the death penalty.
On the eve of Tsvangirai's stunning showing in the election, the government produced a grainy and unconvincing videotape showing him supposedly telling a shady Israeli businessman that he would like to "eliminate" Mugabe.
Stuck in court, Tsvangirai hasn't appeared much in public since. The MDC's message has been circulated by the Daily News , the country's only independent daily newspaper, which was launched in and quietly captured the highest newspaper readership in the country: it was so popular that it sold out by lunchtime. In January of Mugabe's Information Minister, Jonathan Moyo, described the paper as "a threat to national security which has to be silenced.
This past September the government denied the irreverent paper a license, and the police shut it down. Tsvangirai's international standing has thus far helped to keep him alive although he was once beaten unconscious , but some of his followers have not been so lucky. About Zimbabweans have died in political killings since the competition for power heated up, in According to Amnesty International, 70, incidents of torture and abuse took place in Zimbabwe last year alone.
The government's most pervasive form of intimidation is also its most effective: the denial of food. While international aid groups try to feed Zimbabweans in rural areas, city folk must buy their maize and wheat from the sole distributor—the Grain Marketing Board. In order to get food they are often forced to produce a ruling-party membership card or to chant such slogans as "Long live Robert Mugabe!
We don't want these extra people. The Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen has famously argued that no functioning democracy has ever suffered a famine, because democratic governments "have to win elections and face public criticism, and have strong incentive to undertake measures to avert famines and other catastrophes.
For all the lawlessness in Zimbabwe, the country in fact suffers from an overabundance of laws. Indeed, Mugabe has introduced so many economic edicts in the past year that most citizens have found it impossible to keep track. He fixed the price of a loaf of bread at half the bakers' break-even price, and levied astronomical fines on any baker who charged more.
Bakers stopped making bread until somebody noticed that sesame bread, a "luxury item," wasn't price-controlled; by sprinkling a few sesame seeds on their standard loaves, bakers were able to get back in business.
A pair of mortuary workers were arrested recently for running a profitable "rent-a-cadaver" business: because Mugabe had decreed that drivers in funeral processions would get privileged access to the trickle of fuel coming into the country, these entrepreneurs had begun leasing bodies to Zimbabwean drivers.
Inflation in Zimbabwe is expected to surpass percent by year's end. Unemployment is at 70 percent. When Tsvangirai was arrested, several men were needed to carry his bail money to the Harare high court in huge cardboard boxes.
Newspapers advertise "money rubber bands" and electronic money counters that "count 1, bills per minute. Because the rate of inflation is astronomical in comparison with the interest rates offered by banks, Zimbabweans are desperate to withdraw their savings in order to spend the money while it still has value. The banks say they would be happy to oblige—but they don't have the cash. The government has so little foreign currency that it can't pay to import the ink and the paper needed to print more bills or bills of higher denominations.
In July desperate Zimbabweans began sleeping outside banks so as to be there when the doors opened. Mugabe has kept the official exchange rate fixed at Zimbabwean dollars to one U. Businessmen thus do their best to bypass official banks and government institutions, and the black market has become the only market of relevance.
The state requires Zimbabweans who export goods to change 50 percent of their foreign earnings into local money at the official exchange rate. This means that every dollar converted loses almost all of its value—giving companies no incentive to bring money home, and worsening the severe cash shortage. Forlorn Zimbabwean pensioners whose savings have vanished in a matter of months are reminiscent of the doleful Yugoslavs and Argentines who have endured similar implosions.
The economic dynamic in Zimbabwe is perversely robust: while ordinary people suffer, black-market dealers and people with foreign bank accounts prosper, making them powerful stakeholders in the perpetuation of devastating economic policies. When Mugabe took over as President, fewer than half of Zimbabweans could read and write.
He transformed the country—producing a literacy rate higher than 85 percent. Yet he may be remembered less for his education drive than for creating the "Green Bombers," the youth militia that emerged from the National Youth Service Training Program, introduced after the ruling party's dismal showing in the parliamentary elections.
Some 50, Zimbabweans aged ten to thirty have passed through the training program since it started. The youth academies initially advertised themselves as offering training in agriculture, construction, and other occupations, but they have morphed into a paramilitary and indoctrination enterprise.
When dictators feel their support slipping among adults, it is not unusual for them to alter school textbooks in the hope of enlisting impressionable youths in their cause.
And because tyrants never stop worrying about the loyalty of their militaries, they often establish ruling-party militias to act as personal guarantors of their safety in the event of assassination or coup attempts. In the service of the third chimurenga in Zimbabwe, students are taught how to make gasoline bombs and set up roadblocks.
Elliot Manyika, a hard-line ruling-party official who now runs the program, says the training will teach youths to "change their mind-set Clad in green fatigues and red-and-green berets, those graduates who become Green Bombers vandalize MDC offices, harass Zimbabweans waiting for food, seize whites' farms, confiscate newspapers, and intimidate voters and candidates. The Mbare market, in Harare, is Zimbabwe's largest bazaar. It contains more than a hundred stalls, selling African carvings, tapestries, and sculptures.
In normal times at least four tourist buses and dozens of taxis visited the market every day. Yet when I arrived one Sunday, the vendors looked at me as though they were seeing the ghost of Cecil Rhodes.
After a moment's pause they rushed behind their stalls and hurriedly began polishing and propping up their wares. One of them told me I was his first customer of the month; it was July The murder of white farmers, the attacks on the opposition, and the theft of an election have obviously done nothing to help tourism.
Nor has the disappearance of two indispensable travel items: cash and fuel. One Air Zimbabwe flight attendant recently explained a two-hour delay by telling passengers that the plane was waiting for a flight arriving from London "so we can siphon from its tank.
But many of the fences around the parks have been destroyed by squatters, and amid starvation, poachers have begun hunting even rare wildlife. Farm invaders running out of white commercial farms to seize have begun taking over wildlife preserves, creating safari parks for their personal viewing. Foreign capital is disappearing faster than the wildlife. When Mugabe called for the "indigenization of the economy," he asserted pointedly that some Zimbabweans were "more indigenous than others.
In "war veterans" invaded white-owned urban businesses—everything from hotels and department stores to the offices of foreign corporations. The remaining investors are running scared. 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.
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