Where is rhodesia

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 Canadian government imposed economic sanctions suspension of development assistance against the government of Zimbabwe on May 11, Two individuals were killed in political violence in Harare Township on July 3, Two militants were killed during an attack against a white farm in Hwedza district on September 17, Three members of the MDC were killed in political violence on December , Three supporters of the MDC were killed in political violence in Masvingo province on January , President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria mediated negotiations between the parties beginning on January 20, The EU deployed 26 short-term observers from six countries led by Pierre Schori to monitor the upcoming presidential election, but the EU decided to withdraw the observers from the country on February 18, The EU imposed military sanctions arms embargo and economic sanctions assets freeze and travel ban against President Mugabe and other government officials on February 18, On February 25, , Morgan Tsvangirai was arrested by government police.

President Robert Mugabe was re-elected for a six-year term with some 56 percent of the vote on March 11, Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition MDC, claimed election fraud. The South African government sent 60 observers led by Sam Motsuenyane to monitor the presidential election from February 13 to March 12, The government of Norway sent 25 short-term observers led by Kare Vollan to monitor the presidential election from February 15 to March 13, The government of Namibia sent five short-term observers to monitor the presidential election from February 15 to March 13, Ashton is more sympathetic than many other farmers, but the story of his eviction is fairly typical.

In , about 4, large-scale commercial farmers owned some 70 percent of Zimbabwe's arable land. Nearly two thirds of these farmers had bought their farms after independence, and thus held titles issued not by Ian Smith or the British colonial regime but by the Mugabe government. Mugabe had long pledged land reform as a way of redistributing farmland to black peasants and dismantling what many saw as the country's "mini-Rhodesias.

Mugabe decided on what he called "fast-track land reform" only in February of , after he got shocking results in a constitutional referendum: though he controlled the media, the schools, the police, and the army, voters rejected a constitution he put forth to increase his power even further.

A new movement was afoot in Zimbabwe: the Movement for Democratic Change—a coalition of civic groups, labor unions, constitutional reformers, and heretofore marginal opposition parties. Mugabe blamed the whites and their farm workers who, although they together made up only 15 percent of the electorate, were enough to tip the scales for the growth of the MDC—and for his humiliating rebuff. So he played the race card and the land card.

In the immediate aftermath of his referendum defeat Mugabe announced a third chimurenga , invoking a valiant history to animate a violent, country-wide land grab. Initially, the farmers held their ground, but it became clear after several white farmers were murdered that they were too few and Mugabe's regime was too determined. Of the 4, large-scale commercial farmers in business three years ago, all but have been forced off their land.

Most Zimbabweans including white farmers say that land reform was both necessary and inevitable. The tragedy of Mugabe's approach is that it has harmed those whom a well-ordered, selective redistribution program could and should have helped.

Generally the farms have not been given to black farm managers or farm workers. Indeed, because of their association with the opposition, more than a million farm workers and their dependents have been displaced, and they are now at grave risk of starvation. In fact, the beneficiaries of the land seizures are, with few exceptions, ruling-party officials and friends of the President's.

Although Mugabe's people seem to view the possession of farms as a sign of status the Minister of Home Affairs has five; the Minister of Information has three; Mugabe's wife, Grace, and scores of influential party members and their relatives have two each , these elites don't have the experience, the equipment, or, apparently, the desire to run them. About , formerly landless peasants helped the ruling elites to take over the farms, but now that the dirty work is done, many of them are themselves being expelled.

The drop-off in agricultural production is staggering. Maize farming, which yielded more than 1. Wheat production, which stood at , tons in , will hover at 27, tons this year. Tobacco production, too, which at , tons accounted for nearly a third of the total foreign-currency earnings in , has tumbled, to about 66, tons in Mugabe's belief that he can strengthen his flagging popularity by destroying a resented but economically vital minority group is one that dictators elsewhere have shared.

Paranoid about their diminishing support, Stalin wiped out the wealthy kulak farming class, Idi Amin purged Uganda's Indian commercial class, and, of course, Hitler went after Jewish businesses even though Germany was already reeling from the Depression. Whatever spikes in popularity these moves generated, the economic damage was profound, and the dictators had to exert great effort to mask it.

Zimbabweans get their news from state television, "the first and permanent media choice for every Zimbabwean. Many are wearing yellow and green, the colors of the ruling party. One is wearing a T-shirt bearing the number 23, signifying Mugabe's years in power. 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.