UN news about Zimbabwe. Crisis Group reports on Zimbabwe. Image source, Getty Images. The 'crocodile' who snapped back. Control over the land has been a major issue in Zimbabwe. Read full timeline.
The ruins of Great Zimbabwe are the remains of a lost civilization. Related Topics. Robert Mugabe Emmerson Mnangagwa Zimbabwe. The first leader of the Ndebele in Zimbabwe was Gundwane, but his dynasty did not last long. The Ndebele was plagued by infighting after his death which halted their expansion in the s. After the death of Gundwane, another group of Ndebele entered the area under Mzilikazi Khumalo, who would quickly seize power over the local Ndebele people.
From to was a period in which the Ndebele focused on nation building and consolidating previous gains. This process was led by Mzilikazi and reached the Ndebele in Zimbabwe by the s. Mzilikazi is thought to have been born around in contemporary South Africa.
He was the leader of the Khumalo clan and served under Shaka Zulu until they had a falling out at around 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. Between and over a thousand activists were arrested by the Rhodesian state police.
Robert Mugabe was elected as General Secretary, although he was in Ghana at the time. As stated above in Ian Smith was elected Prime Minister, and declares Rhodesia an independent country under white minority rule in The election of Smith and his Patriotic Front brought with it more and increasingly severe repression.
After the murder of a white farmer the Rhodesian security forces attempted to arrest the leadership of both the major liberation parties. After this incident and the increased oppression of their political activities both ZANU and ZAPU decided that they could only achieve national liberation through armed struggle.
Joshua Nkomo was that same year arrested and imprisoned by the Rhodesian government until Another way for the Rhodesian regime to punish black people who took part in the organisations struggling for national liberation was to confiscate their property and make their families homeless.
For the next 15 years the two liberation armies would fight the Rhodesian security forces in what is known either as the Rhodesian Bush War or as the second Chimurenga. The first larger military engagements between Zimbabwean and Rhodesian forces was in In the beginning the war went well for the Rhodesian security forces.
They won most engagements and the liberation armies did not have a major impact on the economy nor could they take and hold significant territories. There was a strong cooperation between the colonial regimes in South Africa, Mozambique and Rhodesia, and in they formally created an alliance in what is called; 'the Alcora'.
After the armed struggle intensified and the Rhodesian state was beginning to struggle. The conscription of white men was extended in age and in the amount of time each man had to serve. This also became a drain on the Rhodesian economy as such a large part of the white work force was fighting in the war. By the mid's, as Mozambique gained its independence from Portugal and South Africa was withdrawing most of its military support, it was impossible to win for the Rhodesian forces.
ZANLA had two major internal insurrections by mainly the young and educated members of the organisation who joined up in the early 's. After the main mission of the Rhodesian regime was now to gain a negotiated settlement which would allow for the white people of Rhodesia to hold on to their privileges. In return a Woolworth's department store in Salisbury was bombed by liberation forces in September of In and over a thousand Zimbabwean refugees in Mozambique were killed by Rhodesian forces.
ZIPRA forces, in return, shot down two civilian planes one in and one in killing people in total. The agreement basically stated that there would be national elections held where all white people and some black people could vote for a new national government.
This election was held about a year after the agreement was made. If you have the chance you should consider going to the six-day Festival of Arts which takes place once a year and offers amazing music, dance performances and art. On your trip to Zimbabwe you should definitely consider visiting one of its 26 national parks and reserves to explore its unique nature and see animals like lions, elephants and giraffes in their natural habitat.
Hwange National Park is the largest park in Zimbabwe, located in the northwestern part of the country. An abundance of African wildlife can be observed here.
Fore more information please visit www. The world-famous Victoria Falls are a true highlight when travelling to Zimbabwe. Admire the natural spectacle from the Victoria Falls Bridge, go on a canoe ride on the mighty Zambezi River or simply enjoy a safari tour in the area.
The landlocked country of Zimbabwe lies to the south of the equator and is part of the African continent. It borders Zambia to the north-west, Mozambique to the north-east, South Africa and Botswana to the south. The Zambezi River is the northern border of Zimbabwe.
The landscape can be divided into three geographical regions: the inland plateau, the Highveld and the Escarpment. The 1, m high inland plateau takes up the majority of the country.
The peneplains extend between the cities of Harare and Bulawayo. The landscape sinks to the west into the Kalahari basin. The plateau falls away in the north and south towards the Lowveld. The landlocked Zimbabwe is located on the north east of the Kalahari basin. Especially for tourists, the Victoria Falls that are fed by the Zambezi River are a popular destination to visit.
Mainly Karoo-Basalt can be found in the region of the falls, which shows a system of orthogonal joints that are filled with sediment. As the filling is less resistant than the basalt, the water found its way into the joints and due to erosion of numerous joints the falls developed over time.
For the current exchange rate see Oanda. Train: Zimbabwe has several rail way lines that can be used e.
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