African Diaspora: History Of Zimbabue

African diaspora: History of Zimbabue

Introduction

The primary approach of this essay is to investigate the policies of the country of Zimbabue, which is experiencing a political and social change because this year a candidate of an independent party was postulated with ideals opposed to the party that has governed 37 years; being a dictatorship disguised as democracy at the mercy of his pseudo president. Which made this in the elections unleashed a chain of actions. The people looking for a radical change in their government system, to be able to see them represented with dignity and be taken into account in the changes that affect them.

How has this point of discontent in society come to this point? He has had a long history of oppression, especially since it was a colony of Great Britain. In this way to have a better understanding of the subject, it is essential to know its roots. Since when it began and how it began to shape the country and its people.

History of Zimbabue

Very few people know the life of Africans, their culture and history. Many African countries existed as the colonies of the British Empire, France or the Netherlands. Zimbabue is one of the countries that were under the government of Great Britain. For more than 90 years, Zimbabue suffered European exploitation and civil war. Fortunately, the country proclaimed its independence in 1980. However, the new authoritarian regime did not improve Zimbabue’s financial condition.

On the contrary, President Robert Mugabe is known for his love for socialist ideas and government -controlled economy. Under his government, Zimbabue’s coin has become the most unstable. The economy suffers from hyperinflation and reduction of social norms. In fact, independence is more important than financial stability. Therefore, we pay attention to the efforts that have been taken to make Zimbabue an independent state.

It is reasonable to analyze the history of Zimbabue’s independence from the British government period. In the 1880s, the British company of South Africa arrived in the current territory of Zimbabue. This company was directed by the British businessman Cecil Rhodes, who was a great supporter of imperialism. He arrived in Africa to investigate the territories according to their usefulness for mining. In addition, he wanted to expand the British empire to the huge extensions. According to the idea of ​​Cecil Rhodes, the British Empire controlled the production of precious metals and other resources, as well as work in this colony. In the 1890s, BSAC obtained the new name ‘Rodesia’ in honor of Cecil Rhodes. Very soon the name changed to ‘South Rhodesia’ that occupied the territory of modern Zimbabue.

Rhodesia del Sur was known for his typical colonial lifestyle. The whites seized Zimbabue’s vast lands and developed agriculture there. The local black population moved to the so -called reservations. They remained without land and could not maintain their life. There were laws that prohibited local Africans from having land in white areas. This racial division of the Earth was very harmful to the local population. Second, Africans were excluded from the political process. They could not vote and occupy notable public office. Finally, they could not send their children to good schools and had to live in special non -white areas. Thus, the colony lived according to the laws of apartheid that existed in South Africa. Rhodesia del Sur had to fight the forces of the axis during World War II.

Half of the twentieth century is known for the growing influence of African nationalism. Local Africans organized numerous groups that struggled for their self-determination. The postwar period is associated with the colonial system collapse in Africa. Many colonies received independence and opportunity for the future prosperous. The native prime minister of Rhodesia, Ian Smith, decided to independent his country. Without a doubt, the British refused to give independence to South Rhodesia; Therefore, Ian Smith set out to proclaim independence unilaterally. The Unilateral Declaration of Independence of 1965 declared that Rhodesia del Sur was no longer under British domain. This document announced the first breakdown of the United Kingdom since the United States declaration of independence. The United Kingdom and the entire UN did not treat Rhodesia del Sur as a legal state. The country occurred in international isolation by its anti -colonial movement. Very soon, in 1970, the country called itself a republic, but it was not yet recognized by anyone. The United Kingdom did not restore its control over South Rhodesia with the help of brutal force and the country remained in greater isolation and suffered international sanctions.

The weakness of the Rhodesia government was perfect for African nationalists who wanted to expel whites from the continent. The Bush War of Rodeesia began. This civil war lasted from 1964 to 1979 and its objective was to create a black majority in the state government. African nationalists were not satisfied with the predominance of whites in the political and economic life of Rhodesia. The most fertile lands belonged to white farmers, while blacks had to work on poor lands. Therefore, Ian Smith’s government had to fight the forces of the African National Union of Zimbabue and the African Popular Union of Zimbabue. The most influential personality of the radical wing of the African nationalists was Robert Mugabe. The nationalists were supported by free African states, China and the USSR. Ian Smith and his Rhodesia security forces were supported by the South Africa Army. Therefore, it is impossible to say that Bush’s Rhodes War was a local military conflict of civil war. Many countries were interested in the result of this war that was won by leftist nationalist forces.

Robert Mugabe, being the most recognizable representative of the African nationalists, became Prime Minister and then President of Zimbabue. He decided to act in the same severe way applied by British imperialists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He began processing the white population of Zimbabue instead of building a prosperous and socially equal state.

Robert Muagabe government

Tens of thousands of black families had been displaced by the new colonial government and the white population had exploited. The government denied the government of the black majority, which resulted in violent protests. Mugabe was also outraged by this denial of the rights of blacks. In July 1960, he agreed to address the crowd in the March 7 protest.000 people, organized at the City of Harare de Salisbury. The purpose of the meeting was that the members of the opposition movement protested the recent arrest of their leaders. After resisting police threats, Mugabe told protesters how Ghana had successfully achieved independence through Marxism.

A few weeks later, Mugabe was elected public secretary of the National Democratic Party. According to Ghana’s models, Mugabe quickly formed a militant youth league to spread the message about the achievement of black independence in Rhodesia. The Government prohibited the party at the end of 1961, but the remaining supporters joined to form a movement that was the first of its kind in Rhodesia. The Union of the African Peoples of Zimbabue (Zapu) soon grew up to 450,000 members.

The union leader, Joshua Nkomo, was invited to meet with the United Nations, who demanded that Great Britain suspend its constitution and re -deal the issue of the majority of the majority of the majority. But, as time passed and nothing had changed, Mugabe and others felt frustrated that Nkomo did not insist on a definitive date for changes in the Constitution. So great was his frustration, that in April 1961, Mugabe publicly discussed the beginning of a guerrilla war, even coming so far as to declare a policeman challenging: ‘We are taking control of this country and we will not endure these nonsense ‘.

ZANU formation

In 1963, Mugabe and other ancient supporters of Nkomo founded their own resistance movement, called the African National Union of Zimbabue (Zanu), in Tanzania. Back in Rhodesia del Sur that same year, the police arrested Mugabe and sent him to Hwahwa prison. Mugabe would remain in jail for more than a decade, being transferred from Hwahwa’s prison to the Sikombela detention center and then to Salisbury prison. In 1964, while he was in prison, Mugabe trusted secret communications to launch guerrillas to free Rhodesia from the southern British government.

In 1974, Prime Minister Ian Smith, who said he would achieve the true government of the majority but still declared his loyalty to the British colonial government, allowed Mugabe to leave the prison and go to a conference in Lusaka, Zambia (formerly rhodesia of the North). Instead, Mugabe escaped across the border to Rhodesia del Sur, gathering a troop of Rodeesia guerrillas along the way. The battles were extended throughout the 1970s. At the end of that decade, Zimbabue’s economy was worse than ever. In 1979, after Smith tried in vain to reach an agreement with Mugabe, the British agreed to monitor the change to the government of the black majority and the UN raised the sanctions.

N 1980, Rhodesia del Sur was released from the British government and became the Independent Republic of Zimbabue. Running under the flag of the Zanu party, Mugabe was elected prime minister of the new republic, after running against Nkomo. In 1981, a battle between Zanu and Zapu was unleashed due to its different agendas. In 1985, Mugabe was re -elected while fighting continued. In 1987, when Mugabe supporters murdered a group of missionaries, Mugabe and Nkomo finally agreed to fuse their unions into the Patriotic Front ZANU (Zanu-PF) and focus on the economic recovery of the nation.

Just a week after the unit agreement, Mugabe was appointed president of Zimbabue. He chose Nkomo as one of his main ministers. Mugabe’s first great objective was to restructure and repair the economy in the country’s crisis. In 1989, he set out to implement a five -year plan, which decreased price restrictions for farmers, allowing them to designate their own prices. For 1994, at the end of the five -year period, the economy had seen a certain growth in agricultural, mining and manufacturing industries. Mugabe also managed to build clinics and schools for the black population. Also throughout that time, Mugabe’s wife, Sarah, died, freeing him to marry her lover, Grace Marufu.

By 1996, Mugabe’s decisions had begun to create riots among the citizens of Zimbabue, who had once considered him a hero to take the country to independence. Many resented his election to support the confiscation of the lands of whites without compensation for the owners, which Mugabe insisted that it was the only way to level the economic playing field for the black majority without rights. Citizens were also outraged by Mugabe’s refusal to amend the constitution of a single Zimbabue party. High inflation was another painful issue, which resulted in a strike of public officials due to salary increases. The salary increases delivered by government officials only increased public resentment towards Mugabe administration.

Objections to the controversial political strategies of Mugabe continued to prevent their success. In 1998, when he called for other countries to donate money for the distribution of the land, countries said they would not do it unless he first designed a program to help the impoverished rural economy of Zimbabwe. Mugabe refused, and the countries refused to donate.

In 2000, Mugabe approved an amendment to the Constitution that made Great Britain pay repairs for the land that had confiscated blacks. Mugabe said he would take the British lands as restitution if they did not pay. The amendment put more pressure on Zimbabwe’s foreign relations.Until, Mugabe, a remarkably conservative dressingman who during his campaign had dressed in colorful shirts with his own face, won the 2002 presidential election. The speculation that he had filled the urn led the European Union to impose an embargo on weapons and other economic sanctions in Zimbabwe. At this time Zimbabwe’s economy was in ruins. Hungry, an AIDS epidemic, external debt and generalized unemployment plagars the country.

However, Mugabe was determined to keep the position of him and did so by any necessary means, including the alleged violence and corruption, which won the vote in the 2005 parliamentary elections. On March 29, 2008, when he lost the presidential elections against Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition movement for democratic change (MDC), Mugabe was not willing to leave the reins and demanded a count. A tiebreaker choice was going to be held that June. Meanwhile, Mugabe’s opposition members attack and violently killed MDC supporters. When Mugabe publicly declared that while he lived, he would never let Tsvangirai govern Zimbabwe, Tsvangirai concluded that the use of force by Mugabe would distort the vote in favor of Mugabe anyway, and retired.

Mugabe’s refusal to deliver presidential power led to another violent outbreak that wounded thousands of people and caused the death of 85 of TSVangirai supporters. That September, Mugabe and Tsvangirai agreed an agreement to share power. Always determined to maintain control, Mugabe still managed to keep most of the power controlling security forces and choosing leaders for the most important ministerial positions.

At the end of 2010, Mugabe took additional measures to take total control of Zimbabwe by selecting provisional governors without consulting Tsvangirai. A diplomatic cable from the United States indicated that Mugabe could be fighting prostate cancer the following year. The accusation raised public concerns about a military coup in the case of Mugabe’s death while he was in office. Others expressed concern about the possibility of a violent internal war within the ZANU-PF, if the candidates try to compete to become the successor of Mugabe.

On December 10, 2011, at the National Conference of the People in Bulawayo, Mugabe officially announced his candidacy for the 2012 presidential elections in Zimbabwe. However, the election was postponed, since both parties agreed to write a new constitution and rescheduled for 2013. The people of Zimbabwe said in favor of the new document in March 2013, approving it in a referendum of constitution, although many believed that 2013 the presidential elections would be affected by corruption and violence.

According to a Reuters report, representatives of about 60 civic organizations in the country complained about a repression by Mugabe and its supporters. Mugabe critics, members of these groups were subject to intimidation, arrest and other forms of persecution. There was also the question of who would be allowed to supervise the voting process. Mugabe said that he would not allow Westerners to monitor any of the country’s elections.In March, Mugabe traveled to Rome for the inaugural Mass of Pope Francis, who was recently appointed for the papacy. Mugabe told reporters that the new Pope should visit Africa and declared: ‘We hope it takes us all his children on the same basis, the basis of equality, the basis that we are all equal before God,’ according to a report from The associated press.

At the end of July 2013, in the midst of a discussion about the current and anticipated election of Zimbabwe, Mugabe, 89, arrived at the headlines when asked if he plans to run again in the 2018 election (he would be 94 then) by a reporter from The New York Times, to which the president replied: ‘Why do you want to know my secrets?’According to The Washington Post, Mugabe’s opponent, Tsvangirai, accused the electoral officials of throwing almost 70,000 tickets that were presented before.

In early August, Zimbabwe’s Electoral Commission declared Mugabe winner in the presidential contest. He obtained 61 percent of the votes, and Tsvangirai received only 34 percent, according to BBC News. Tsvangirai was expected to launch a legal challenge against the results of the elections. According to The Guardian newspaper, Tsvangirai said the election ‘did not reflect the will of the people. I do not believe that even those in Africa who have committed acts of electoral fraud have done it so shameless ’.

In November 2017, an American woman who lived in Zimbabwe was accused of subverting to the Government and undermining the president’s authority or insult. According to prosecutors, the defendant, Martha O’Donovan, coordinator of the Magamba Network activist project, had systematically sought to incite political discontent through the expansion, development and use of a sophisticated network of social media platforms, as well as execute some Twitter. ‘. She faced up to 20 years in prison for charges.The arrest raised the concern that the Mugabe government was trying to control social networks before the 2018 national elections.Meanwhile, a more serious situation was emerging in Zimbabwe with the beginning of what seemed to be a military coup. On November 14, shortly after the dismissal of Mugabe of Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, tanks were detected in the capital of the country, Harare. Early the next morning, an army spokesman appeared on television to announce that the military were in the process of stopping criminals who ‘were causing social and economic suffering in the country to take them to justice’.

The spokesman emphasized that this was not a military shot of the government and said: ‘we want. At that time, Mugabe’s whereabouts were unknown, but then it was confirmed that he had been confined in his house.The next day, The Herald, from Zimbabwe, published photographs of the old president at home, along with other government and military officials. According to reports, officials were discussing the implementation of a transition government, although no public statement had been made on the matter.

On November 17, Mugabe resurfaced in public in a university graduation ceremony, an appearance that is believed to mask the agitation behind the scenes. After initially refusing to cooperate with the plans proposed to withdraw it peacefully from power, the president, as reported, agreed to announce the withdrawal of him during a televised speech scheduled for November 19.However, Mugabe did not mention the withdrawal during the speech, but insisted that he would preside over a December Congress of the Zanu-PF ruling party. As a result, it was announced that the party would initiate a political trial process to expel it from power.

On November 22, shortly after a joint session of the Zimbabuense Parliament convened for the vote of the accusation, the speaker read a letter from the besieged president. "I resigned to allow a transfer of power without problems," Mugabe wrote. ‘Please give public notice of my decision as soon as possible’.The end of the 37 years of Mugabe’s permanence was received with applause from the members of Parliament, as well as celebrations in the streets of Zimbabwe. According to a Zanu-PF spokesman, former Mnangagwa vice president will assume the position of president and will occupy the rest of Mugabe’s mandate until the 2018 elections.

Just before the elections of July 30, 2018, Mugabe said he could not support his successor, Mnangagwa, after being expelled for the ‘party I founded’, and suggested that the opposition leader Nelson Chamisa of the MDC was the only candidate Viable presidential. That caused a strong response from Mnangagwa, who said: ‘It is clear to all that Chamisa has forged an agreement with Mugabe, we can no longer believe that his intentions are to transform Zimbabue and rebuild our nation’. The tensions about the elections also extended to the public, and the demonstrations became violent, so it was announced as the parliamentary victory of Zanu-PF and the triumph of Mnangagwa. The president of the MDC, Morgan Komichi, said that his party would challenge the result in court.

2018 elections

When the citizens of Zimbabue enter the voting box on July 30, they face an unknown view. For the first time in 38 years, the name of Robert Mugabe does not appear on the ballot. Last year, the 94 -year -old dictator was overthrown in a ‘Army assisted transition’: also known as a coup d’etat. However, his party, Zanu-PF, and many of his henchmen, remain in power. Emmerson Mnangagwa, the 75 -year successor of Mugabe and a partner for a long time, is postulated to maintain his work as president. His opponent, Nelson Chamisa, the 40 -year -old leader of the Alliance

After the announcement of the results of the parliamentary elections in Zimbabwe, who saw the Emmerson Mnangagwa Zanu-PF winning a clear major stating that the vote was falsified.In response, the soldiers of the Zimbabwe’s Defense Force (ZDF) fired the protesters and killed six people.Mnangagwa, who was declared the winner of the very disputed presidential elections a day later, requested calm, peace and unity and promised to establish a commission of research on mortal violence.But the call of the newly elected president did not do much to calm the tensions in the field. The ZDF continued to harass opposition supporters in the municipalities of Harare. Only a few hours before the start of violence after the vote, the Mission of Electoral Observers of the African Union in Zimbabwe (Aueom), the Mission of Electoral Observers of the SADC in Zimbabwe (SEOM) and the Mission of Electoral Observers of Comesa , three very important African organizations, all had published individual communications that supported the controversial electoral process.

Although the three African observation missions promptly gave their approval stamps to the presidential and parliamentary elections of July 30, the comesa mission, had offered the most praiseful words of praise. He said that the controversial elections were ‘generally peaceful, transparent and adjusted to national, regional and international standards’.It is a pity that these eminent regional agencies have chosen to support leaders backed by the Zanu-PF army. His support for the objectively problematic and unfair electoral process of Zimbabwe, without a doubt, symbolizes the structural, political and electoral evils that affect African politics.

In contrast to African organizations, and rightly, the EU offered a much more gloomy evaluation than had happened in Zimbabwe before the election. He said that a ‘playing field without level, the intimidation of voters and the lack of confidence in the process undermined the pre -electoral atmosphere’.In fact, despite what African organizations had said, Zimbabwe’s choice was a farce, it was based on a military coup and won with the help of illiberal ideas and distortions and fanaticisms driven by the media that exceeded the Cambridge Analytica efforts during the 2016 presidential elections in the United States.

The improbable and still contested victory of Mnangagwa and Zanu-PF in the historic July 30 election was the joint result of several factors.First, the ZANU-PF benefited from the main role he played in the struggle for liberation and the Agrarian Reform Program: the faithful of the Rural Party voted once again in large numbers for the former Liberation Party.The power of incumbency also helped Manangowe and Zanu-PF. This year, the presidential contribution plan, an agricultural assistance program that generally begins in October, in a quite convenient way, began on June 13, six weeks before the election. The objective of the program is to provide assistance to 1.8 million small farmers throughout the country to help boost agricultural and livestock production. Most of these farmers are found in rural areas and agricultural peoples, all of them bastions of Zanu-PF.

The marked divisions within the MDC-T, the largest opposition party in the country, which arose after the death of Morgan Tsvangirai and led to the dismissal of veteran vice president Thokazani Khupe, also contributed to Mnangagwa’s victory by causing a number significant voters leave the party.In addition, the ZANU-PF implemented strong intimidation tactics to win this election: the army inexplicably deployed 5,000 soldiers in rural areas months before the polls.Add the estimate of three million citizens who live in the diaspora, who were denied the opportunity to vote in the historical elections as a result of a ruling of the Constitutional Court issued on May 30, to all the aforementioned factors, and it is clear that the election was manipulated against the MDC alliance from the beginning.

But Zanu-PF’s par excellence and Manangowe’s victory was the gigantic state media machinery. Although the government is no longer repressing journalists, bombing the independent media or closing the spaces of the media, it still uses influential state media and flatterers to shape public opinion.

The television stations, newspapers and state -owned radio stations that are under the Zimbabwe newspaper platform (Zimpapers) and the Zimbabwe (ZBC) broadcast corporation operate very similar to the information and advertising department of ZANU-PF 24 hours, throughout the year, nationwide.

These media have long denied most Zimbabuenses the benefit of having precise and valuable information, intriguing debates and sincere reflections on important social, economic and political issues. And in the pre-election period, once again they did everything possible to silence the critical views and cover up the many failures of the Zanu-PF government. In the period prior to the election, the state media often published stories and opinion articles that destroyed the credibility of the candidates and opposition policies and promoted government propaganda.

Meanwhile, Mnangagwa refused to maintain a public debate with the leader of the MDC-T and presidential candidate Nelson Chamisa, in a movement destined to protect Robert Mugabe’s confidant for a long time from the open analysis of open analysis. Then, despite the sad situation designed by ZANU-PF policies (without national currency, high unemployment, deteriorated health services, deteriorated roads and public infrastructure), voters, especially in rural areas, supported Mnangagwa and their Party on July 30. In the light of all this, it is impossible to say that Zimbabuenses were given the real opportunity to make an informed decision about their future in the elections last month. The fact that not one, but three African institutions considered that the election was credible, only demonstrates how low are the democratic and electoral standards currently established in Africa in Africa.