History of Zimbabwe - Growth of Militant Nationalism

  The early African initiatives for the amelioration of the colonial conditions have been described by some scholars as proto-nationalist as they were targeted at encouraging the colonial authorities to provide a more tolerant and accommodating socio-political and economic dispensation and not at overthrowing colonialism. African political activity in this period manifested itself mainly in trade unionism. The Rhodesia railway Employees association agitated for better conditions for workers, its efforts culminating in the Railway Workers’ strike in October 1945, signaling the workers’ determination to improve their lot through organized action. In the following years, other workers organizations , notably the Federation of Bulawayo African Workers Union led by Jasper Savanhu, the African Workers Voice Association under Benjamin Burombo and the reformed Industrial and Commercial Workers Union under the leadership of Charles Mzingeli, were established. Burombo’s Voice Association appealed to both rural and urban constituencies. Mopore strikes were experienced throughout the country over these years.

  Other manifestations of African protest were the revival of the Southern Rhodesia Bantu Congress as the Southern Rhodesia African Native Congress, the Voters League and the creation of the African Methodist Church which was an African protest against both white religious and political domination. Students also expressed their disgruntlement through strikes, like the famous Dadaya Mission strike in 1947. However, this phase did not entail a ‘nationalist Movement’ as Africans were still generally thinking in terms of improving their conditions under white rule rather than attaining sovereignty and independence.

  Mass nationalism eventually began with the formation of the City Youth League in 1955 by such young activists like George Nyandoro, James Chikerema, Edson Sithole and Duduza Chisiza. The League’s new militancy was reflected in the Salisbury Bus Boycott it organized in August 1956 in protest at bus fare hikes by the United Transport Company. This was, however, overshadowed by the incidents in which several women were raped at Carter House in harari Township (Mbare) as punishment for breaking the strike, revealing the gender tensions in the urban African communities at the time. While black women participated with their male counterparts in the anti-colonial struggle, they also had to deal with patriarchy.

  In 1957, the City Youth League and the Bulawayo-based African National Council came together to form the country’s first national political party, the Southern Rhodesian African national Congress (SRANC, later simply called the ANC) under Joshua Nkomo. The birth of the City Youth League and subsequent nationalist parties at this time has to be seen in the context of the quickening pace of African nationalism in the post-Second World War era which resulted in the landmark and inspirational independence of Ghana in 1957. The ANC challenged destocking, the unpopular government-initiated soil conservation policies and the notorious Land Husbandry Act (1951), a loathsome piece of legislation that included reducing the size of African land units, the number of cattle individuals could hold and undermining the chiefs’ traditional control of the land.

  In February 1959, the colonial government of Rhodesia declared a state of emergency and banned the ANC under the newly created Unlawful Organisations Act. Party assets were confisticated while over 500 political leaders were arrested. However, the African nationalists, growing increasingly militant, were unrelenting and formed the National Democratic Party (NDP) on 1 January, 1960 under Joshua Nkomo. A landmark demand by the NDP was majority rule under universal suffrage. The NDP’s militancy, particularly the country wide protests from late 1960 that resulted in widespread destruction of property and some deaths of protestors, led to its banning in December 1961. The nationalists responded by establishing the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), again under Joshua Nkomo. The party was however soon riddled with serious divisions of an ethnic nature resulting in its split in 1963 when a new party, the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), was formed under Ndabaningi Sithole.

  In the meantime, the white community was also experiencing serious divisions. The Rhodesian government under Whitehead proposed a new constitution in 1961 that provided for the widening of the franchise to include more Africans on the voters’ roll. The thinking within the ranks of the liberal whites who spearheaded this new constitution was that it would pave way for Southern Rhodesia’s independence from Britain in line with developments in other British colonies. These moves were heavily criticized by conservative whites who were against any concessions to African nationalism. These conservatives were influenced by the need to protect their racial economic interests. This group won the 1962 elections under the banner of the Rhodesia Front under the leadership of Winston Field, who, however, lost the country’s premiership to Ian Douglas Smith ostensibly for failing to force Britain to grant white Rhodesia independence. Failing to gain independence from the British, Smith opted for a unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) on 11 November, 1965, setting the Rhodesian white community on a collision course with the black African majority.

  Social and economic developments in Rhodesia during the UDI period

  The Rhodesia Front (RF) government’s UDI ‘project’ shattered the African nationalists’ goal of attaining political independence as was happening in most African countries. This goal clashed with the long held aspirations of the generality of the white section of Rhodesian society to safeguard its privileged position. While the contests over nationhood, a recurrent feature of the UDI era, appear to be between the Africans and the white section of the Rhodesian society, they were in many ways complicated and transcended the citizen/subject binary. The political struggles of the period, often crossing the racial divide, were mainly about the social and economic interests of the various groups that formed the Rhodesian society. Notwithstanding the efforts of the RF government to create a sense of nationhood among whites, Rhodesian white society was divided along class and economic interests, among other variables. As the conflict intensified, some members of the white population were, by the mid-1970s, preaching a different gospel from that of the RF, admitting that majority rule was inevitable. At the same time, a number of Africans had, for economic and other reasons, defended white settler hegemony as soldiers in the Rhodesian army, Selous Scouts and policemen. The RF government put in place several measures as part of efforts to cushion white society in the wake of sanctions imposed on the country following the UDI. Although these measures were, in the short term, successful, the success was not without its own costs. By the mid-1970s, a combination of factors, chief of which was the intensifying civil war, resulted in an economic decline that adversely affected the many facets of Rhodesian society.

  The liberation War, 1965-1980

  The civil war/liberation struggle that engulfed Rhodesia in the wake of the socio-political and economic developments that occurred during the UDI period was a complex one. It marks how the crisis in Rhodesia escalated as opposition to white rule became increasingly militant. It is a war bedeviled by many ‘struggles within the struggle’. The final phase of the war was littered by many atrocities that culminated in all the contestants in the struggle agreeing on the peace modalities at the Lancaster House Conference in 1979, which in turn resulted in the February 1980 general elections that ultimately led to independence on 18 April 1980.

  Highlights of the escalating crisis in the early years of the UDI period were the famed Battle of Chinhoyi when ZANLA guerrillas engaged Rhodesia National Army soldiers and the 1967 Wankie Campaign which pitied Rhodesian soldiers against an alliance of ZIPRA and Umkhonto we Sizwe forces. Then there was also the 1969 Anglo-Rhodesia Agreement,  which was an attempt to ensure continued white rule while making token slow concessions to majority rule. This explains the huge “No” vote against those proposals during the 1972 Pearce Commission referendum that was set up to test the acceptability of the agreement. However, the intensifying conflict is marked by the ZANLA guerrillas’ infiltrating the north eastern side of the country with the major highlight being the attack on Altena Farm in December 1972. Henceforth, the whole country was soon engulfed in serious fighting as ZIPRA also infiltrated the country from Zambia.

  An important aspect of the escalating crisis was the ‘global’ nature that the Rhodesian crisis assumed. The crisis was not an exclusively Rhodesian affair. The neighbouring countries, notably Mozambique, South Africa and Zambia, and regional powers like Tanzania and Angola, continental powerhouse, Nigeria as well as Russia, China and the USA, among many others, all played significant roles in the crisis. Hence the détente period from 1974 that witnessed protracted efforts spearheaded by Kaunda and Vorster to bring about a negotiated settlement in Rhodesia between Smith and the nationalists. However, the efforts of the African countries in particular also extended towards achieving unity among Rhodesia’s nationalist parties. This saw the emergence of several formations involving the nationalists during the UDI period. These included FROLIZI, UANC, ZLC and ZIPA. This plethora of formations is indicative of the fragmented nature of the nationalist camp in their fight against the Smith regime. Manifestations of the disunity are also reflected in the split that rocked ZAPU in 1971, the Nhari Rebellion against the ZANU leadership from late 1974 and the events surrounding the assassination of Chitepo in 1975, among others.

  The escalating crisis is further highlighted by the manner in which the war became bloodier as the years went by. Serious atrocities were perpetrated by both sides as the war escalated. The Rhodesians carried out both air and ground attacks on mainly ZANU and ZAPU refugee camps in Mozambique and Zambia respectively. Some of these brutalities involved the covert poisoning of guerrilla sources of water and food supplies. Civilians were not spared either. There was the anthrax poisoning of livestock and the movement of thousands of rural villagers into concentration camps euphemistically called “protected villages,” among other atrocities. Equally, the nationalist armies attacked white farmers in their isolated homesteads, assaulted centres of colonial power and blew up infrastructure.

  This was not a struggle informed merely by racial differences. There were numerous conflicts that were a result of various levels of tensions. Some of the conflicts were due to purely personality clashes while others were caused by class, ideological and ethnic tensions. It was not unusual for a given crisis to be explained on the basis of a combination of two or more of these variables. The many tensions that beset the nationalist war were not only because of the heterogeneous nature of the black society, but also a result of the individual motivations for joining the war. While there are the usual ‘heroic’ motivations highlighted in nationalist historiography, there were many who found themselves in the war through coercion and press-ganging. Even peasant support for the guerrillas was not always voluntary while relations between the guerrillas and other stakeholders in the war were also not always rosy. Some missionaries, for example, were brutally murdered, this notwithstanding the many sacrifices they made towards the welfare of the guerillas in particular and the rural communities in general.

  The war also had a serious gender dimension. Women, particularly rural women, made heroic sacrifices in the war. However, some women took advantage of the presence of the guerrillas to report their abusive husbands. In the camps, for example, women guerrillas were subjected to all forms of sexual exploitation while chimbwidos in the fighting zones were sometimes raped. Then there was the ‘struggle’ by women combatants not to be restricted to serving only as porters, nurses and cooks, but also to be allowed to “handle the gun” as well. Thus, among the blacks, the fight against colonial oppression also co-existed with the struggle against male oppression of females. Within the white community, the war brought about a degree of emancipation to women since the escalating war meant the continued absence of their husbands and hence the need for them to be trained in self-defence methods like how to handle a gun.

  Other levels of tensions experienced during the war include the generational tensions in the rural areas as the mujibhas and chimbwidos assumed more authority over their elders because of their daily contact with the guerrillas. There were also the young DAs who controlled the peasants in the so-called protected villagers. These also wielded too much power as they were armed. Then there is also the spiritual element of the war in which, for instance, the ideological differences that affected the ZIPA period also impacted on guerrilla relations with traditional religion, albeit for a very short time. Another element of the tensions in the struggle is how the chiefs found themselves between a hard rock and a hard place as they had to please two masters, the RF government and the guerrillas. Ultimately, there was a shift in the balance of power in the rural areas as these traditional leaders generally lost power to the guerrillas.

  The escalating cost of the war, the breakdown of civil administration, a collapsing economy, a failed Internal Settlement and increased pressure from allies all forced Smith to concede to the general elections that brought about majority rule. On the other hand, the nationalist leaders were also desperate to end a war that claimed thousands of lives in wanton bombings of refugees in neighbouring countries by the Rhodesian forces. The guerrilla armies were also confronted by strained logistics. Further to this, pressure from leaders of African countries, particularly the Frontline States, whose economies were also suffering the brunt of the war, also contributed to the nationalists conceding to unsatisfactory ceasefire arrangements whose effects continued to assail the new nation in the post-liberation war era. The war thus ended with the signing of the Lancaster House Agreement that resulted in national elections overwhelmingly won by Robert Mugabe’s ZANU (PF) party.