The Bush War was a civil war that took place from July to December in Rhodesia, in which three forces were pitted against one another: the mostly white Rhodesian government and two black nationalist parties. Nationalist guerrillas had been unable to make serious military inroads against Rhodesia. In the early s, the two main nationalist groups faced serious internal divisions. The black nationalists continued to operate from secluded bases in neighboring Zambia and from the Portuguese colony of Mozambique, making periodic raids into Rhodesia.
By guerrilla activity was increasing in the aftermath of the Altena Farm raid, particularly in the northeast part of the country where portions of the African population were evacuated from border areas. But it would take the collapse of Portuguese rule in Mozambique to create new military and political pressures on the Rhodesian Government to accept the principle of immediate majority rule.
The war and its subsequent Internal Settlement, signed in by Smith and Muzorewa, led to the implementation in June of universal suffrage and end of white minority rule in Rhodesia, renamed Zimbabwe Rhodesia under a black majority government. However, this new order failed to win international recognition and the war continued. The country returned temporarily to British control and new elections were held under British and Commonwealth supervision in March ZANU won the election and Mugabe became the first Prime Minister of Zimbabwe on 18 April , when the country achieved internationally recognised independence.
The origins of the war in Rhodesia can be traced to the colonization of the region by white settlers in the late 19th century and the dissent of black African nationalist leaders who opposed white minority rule. Rhodesia was settled by Britons and South Africans beginning in the s and while it was never accorded full dominion status, white Rhodesians effectively governed the country after Many white Rhodesians were concerned that decolonization and majority rule would bring chaos, as in the former Belgian Congo in Though Rhodesia had the unofficial support of neighboring South Africa and Portugal, which governed Mozambique, it never gained formal recognition from any country.
Many white Rhodesians viewed the war as one of survival with atrocities in the former Belgian Congo, the Mau Mau Uprising campaign in Kenya, and elsewhere in Africa fresh in their minds. Many whites and a sizable minority of black Rhodesians viewed their lifestyle as under attack, which both groups had considered safer and with a higher standard of living than in many other African countries. Eight seats were reserved for tribal chiefs.
Amidst this backdrop, black nationalists advocated armed struggle to bring about independence in Rhodesia under black majority rule. Resistance also stemmed from the wide economic inequality between blacks and whites. In Rhodesia, whites owned most of the fertile land while blacks were crowded on barren land following forced evictions or clearances by the colonial authorities.
Robert Mugabe rose to prominence in the s as the leader of the Zimbabwe African National Union ZANU and has ruled the nation as its president since , establishing a dictatorship that has caused widespread human rights violations and economic depression. His year rule has been characterized by gross human rights violations, resulting in placement on the world list of dictators.
Mugabe rose to prominence in the s as the leader of the Zimbabwe African National Union ZANU during the conflict against the conservative white-minority government of Rhodesia. Mugabe was a political prisoner in Rhodesia for more than 10 years between and Upon release Mugabe, along with Edgar Tekere, immediately left Rhodesia with the assistance of Rekayi Tangwena in to launch the fight during the Rhodesian Bush War from bases in Mozambique. On November 12, , the Rhodesian appeals court ruled that it was illegal for the government to hold Joshua Nkomo and 16 other African nationalists in prison without trial.
On November 16, , Joshua Nkomo and 16 other African nationalists were released from prison in Gweru Gwelo and moved to the Gonakudzingwa detention camp near the Mozambique border. On December 7, , the Rhodesia parliament approved a bill making possession of a bomb punishable by death or up to 20 years in prison. Parliamentary elections were held on May 7, , and the RF won 50 out of 65 seats in the House of Assembly. Prime Minister Smith demanded independence for Southern Rhodesia during meetings in London on October , , but the British government refused the demand for independence.
The U. The Canadian government refused to recognize the independence of Rhodesia on November 11, The Zambian government mobilized troops near the border with Rhodesia on November , The governments of India and Ceylon imposed diplomatic sanctions non-recognition against the Rhodesian government on November 12, 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. 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.
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