Introduction

In the early 1960s, successive white-settler regimes blocked proposals by British governments even for majority rule in Southern Rhodesia (called 'Rhodesia' by the illegal Smith regime of 1965-80) in the distant future.

African nationalist leaders of the period had a misplaced trust in Britain's intentions to decolonize. Britain was the nominal colonial power; although it had granted internal self-government to the settlers in 1923, it had retained the right (never exercised) to amend or veto any legislation the settlers passed. Leaders like Joshua Nkomo persisted in pursuing the path of non-violent semi- constitutional protest and concentrated on lobbying the United Nations and friendly African and other governments to put pressure on Britain to intervene directly in Salisbury.

Joshua Nkomo, a former social worker, trade unionist and Protestant lay preacher was the undisputed leader of Zimbabwean nationalism until 1963. When his ANC (African National Congress) was banned in 1959 he formed a successor party along similar lines: the NDP (National Democratic Party).

In December 1961 the settler regime banned the NDP for allegedly organizing a campaign of urban violence. Nkomo immediately formed ZAPU (Zimbabwe African People's Union). When ZAPU was outlawed in September Nkomo left the country to set up a new ZAPU headquarters in Dar-es-Salaam.

He returned to Salisbury in October and was placed under restriction; but it was not long before he began to make arrangements to set up a government in exile in Dar-es-Salaam, in spite of President Nyerere's opposition. Nyerere felt Nkomo should concentrate on political action at home. Nyerere shared the views of a growing number of ZAPU supporters who opposed Nkomo's vacillating and indecisive leadership and his emphasis on pseudo-diplomacy.

Nkomo's opponents in ZAPU broke away and formed ZANU (Zimbabwe African National Union) on 8 August 1963, with the Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole as President and the brilliant ex-school teacher Robert Mugabe as Secretary- General- ZANU forced Nkomo to compete with it in radical campaigning at home.

Both ZAPU (for the second time) and ZANU were outlawed by the Smith government in August 1964. Meanwhile the leaders had been detained: Nkomo, Sithole, Mugabe and others were to stay in detention for ten years. Their lieutenants were to lead ZAPU and ZANU into caking up arms.

The extreme right-wing settler party, the Rhodesian Front, won the election of December 1962 and formed a government under Winston Field in 1963. Field was replaced as Prime Minister in 1964 by the more extremist Ian Smith, who broke off independence negotiations with the new Labour government in Britain led by Harold Wilson. The British Prime Minister had insisted that guarantees be included in a new constitution that would assure progress to eventual majority rule, before Britain could accept independence for Southern Rhodesia.

In November 1965 Smith announced, UDI (Unilateral Declaration of Independence) from Britain, an act of rebellion that was designed to perpetuate white-settler minority rule forever. Desmond Lardner-Burke, Smith's 'Minister for Law' expressed the purpose of UDI when he said ' African majority rule is no longer constitutionally attainable'.

Wilson's reaction to UDI was pusillanimous. He refused to send British troops to suppress the white-settler rebellion, ostensibly on two grounds: the Smith regime had control of the armed forces, police and administration of 'Rhodesia' and might successfully resist a British invasion; and Britain had never had troops in the country which had always been ruled by the settlers. Wilson also felt he had to consider racist British public opinion which would oppose military action against their white 'kith and kin' on behalf of Africans,

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especially in view of his small parliamentary majority.

Wilson was also put under pressure by the lobbying of the, powerful London financial and industrial interests which did not wish to see the Smith regime toppled. Instead Wilson had UDI declared illegal and persuaded the United Nations to impose economic sanctions against Rhodesia.

Sanctions against Rhodesia proved to be as ineffective as those imposed on Italy for invading Ethiopia in 1935. The Smith regime received considerable economic assistance from the Portuguese in Mozambique, who readily provided forged certificates of origin for Rhodesia's exports; and from South Africa, through whom Rhodesia managed to import oil in spite of the British naval patrol which stopped oil tankers unloading at Beira, formerly Rhodesia's main point of access to world trade. The South African subsidiary of Shell (the partly government-owned British oil company) stocked up Total, an oil- marketing company in South Africa, and Total transported oil from South Africa to Rhodesia.

The Smith regime had a record budget of £ 103 million for the year 1968-9, with a surplus from the previous budget - the result of an expanding economy, in which diversification of agriculture played an important part. There were large increases in the production of coffee, tea, cotton, wheat and livestock in the years after UDI. Wilson had said he hoped sanctions would topple Smith within months. The fact of UDI and the failure of even a Labour government in Britain to deal with it effectively drove ZAPU and, ZANU to the armed struggle when it was realized that Zimbabweans would have to liberate themselves.

After the outbreak of the Zimbabwean War of Independence in April 1966, Wilson persisted in his efforts to get a political solution by doing a deal with the settlers. He met Smith on HMS Tiger in December 1966 and proposed a Legislative Assembly with 50 European and 17 African seats and a Senate with 12 European seats and 16 for Africans (eight to be elected and eight to be government-appointed chiefs).

A young Robert Mugabe with the elder statesman, Joshua Nkomo from Ndebele tribe.

The Rhodesian Front rejected even this sell-out of the Africans, Wilson proposed a similar constitution to Smith on HMS fearless in October 1968; this again was rejected. Edward Heath's Conservative government (1970-4) fit November 1971 drew up proposals for a settlement similar to Wilson's. Smith this time accepted them; he realized that the controlled increase of African seats in the proposals would lead to majority rule sometime in the twenty-first century.

However Heath was so suspicious of Smith's acceptance that he attached a condition, that the proposals must be acceptable (b the majority of the Africans. The Pearce Commission was sent by the British Government in 1972 to test African opinion. Largely non-violent but vigorous opposition to the proposals was spearheaded by the African National Council, led by Bishop Abel Muzorewa and the Reverend Canaan Banana. The Commission reported that the Africans had rejected the proposals and the British government reluctantly did not ratify them. These dealings between London and Salisbury only confirmed the correctness of the decision of ZAPU and ZANU to take up arms in 1966.

As early as the middle of 1962 a group of ZAPU supporters had begun military training in Algeria, Ghana, China and Czechoslovakia. Some returned in 1963 and carried out isolated and limited acts of sabotage. ZANU guerillas made sporadic attacks on European farms in 1964 and 1965. The War of Independence really began on 29 April 1966 when thirty guerilla soldiers of ZANLA (Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army), the military wing of ZANU, operating from bases in Zambia, clashed with troops of the Smith regime at Sinoia- Seven freedom fighters and several police were killed. Sinoia marked the beginning of full-scale guerilla war. Several other ZANLA units were operating in Rhodesia at the same time.

For the next thirteen years the guerilla war against the Smith regime was continuous and expanding. Guerilla raids were supervised by the political - parties in exile in Lusaka, by ZANU, led by Herbert Chitepo, Zimbabwe's first black lawyer; and by ZAPU, led by James Chikerema. Guerilla recruitment was intensive from inside Rhodesia among unemployed school leavers and from the large migrant community in Zambia. ZANU was allowed to set up training bases in Zambia and Tanzania as well as China; ZAPU organized joint training with the African National Congress of South Africa (ANC-SA) in Zambia and the Soviet Union.

The ANC-SA were led in exile by Oliver Tambo. The guerillas found ranged against them the white-settler forces which at UDI numbered an army of 3400 men plus 4000 European reservists reinforced by the British South Africa police of 2000 Europeans and 5000 Africans. The army at UDI was composed of infantry, paratroops, armoured-car units and engineers. The Rhodesian air force consisted of a few dozen out-of-date fighters and bombers. In the course of the war the Rhodesian 'security forces' would be strengthened by an increase in conscription of whites, by the recruitment of mercenaries, mainly from South Africa but ' also from Europe and the United States, by the formation of new units like the Selous Scouts, and by direct military assistance from South Africa, which sent at least 3000 troops and several squadrons of aircraft to Rhodesia.

In August 1967 joint ZIPRA/ANC forces of about a hundred men crossed the Zambesi River into Rhodesia. ZIPRA (Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army) was the military wing of ZAPU. The guerillas' guides were double agents, who led them into a trap near Wankie in western Matabeleland, where many of the guerillas were killed after a battle with encircling Rhodesian and South African troops. ANC activity alongside ZAPU did not provoke South African intervention because some South African paratroops and, military police were already operating in Rhodesia; but it did give South Africa an excuse to send in reinforcements.

After the Wankie disaster ZAPU/ANC sent in smaller contingents. The Zambesi escarpment battles from December 1967 to April 1968 involved 200 guerillas split up into small units. However the air power and mobility of the ', regime's forces led to the defeat of the freedom fighters. Ninety ZIPRA men suffered the same fate after the Kariba battles from July to August 1968. In neither campaign was ZAPU able to engage in political preparation of the peasants in the combat zone; its soldiers were constantly on the run. The open savanna of ZAPU's front m western Matabeleland and much of the Zambesi Valley were in any case unfavourable for guerilla warfare. From January to April 1970 ZIPRA redeemed itself with hit-and-run raids in the Victoria Falls area when it inflicted considerable damage on the airport. The fact remains, however, that by 1970 the Smith regime had contained the guerilla offensive.

Military defeats led to increased tension, demoralization and feuding within and between the guerilla movements, and ultimately to new strategies and tactics. Ethnic rivalries in the ZAPU camps in Zambia resulted in gunfights in Lusaka. Discipline improved in 1970 only because President Kaunda threatened to expel ZAPU. ZAPU- ANC relations also deteriorated. In ZANU the divisions tended to follow ideological rather than ethnic lines, with the more militant Marxists or 'scientific socialists' opposing the views of the moderate African socialists.

The rivalry between ZAPU and ZANU was both ethnic and ideological in inspiration. ZAPU had far more Ndebele than Shona recruits, preferred military operations in Matabeleland and relied on Soviet aid. ZANU, on the other hand, was composed largely of Shona-speakers, fought in Mashonaland, and had closer finks with China than with Russia. The Zimbabwean nationalists in exile (ended to brandish Marxist-Leninist or Maoist ideas according to the origins of their military supplies; in their exile-bases they became increasingly politicized. But they were not communists. Marxist sentiment became steadily stronger among the guerillas, especially those in ZANLA, but not among the political leadership as a whole.

The Zimbabwean war never became a revolutionary socialist war - a term that appealed to the communist bloc which supported the struggle morally and materially - but remained primarily a nationalist war intended to wrest political power from the Europeans. As Richard Gibson has pointed out, in his controversial and informative book African Liberation Movements:'. . . even right-wingers often use Marxist-Leninist revolutionary terminology to mask a totally different content. Ideology is frequently employed to mask conflicts of personality and interest. . . .'8

Attempts were made in 1971-2 to unite Zimbabwean nationalists. In October 1971 FROLIZI (Front for the Liberation of Zimbabwe) was formed when some members of both ZAPU and ZANU announced their merger into a new party. However, most members, notably Chitepo and his followers in ZANU, refused to join. Therefore, although FROLIZI hoped to replace two liberation movements by a single united one, there were now three movements. In January 1972 at the OAU Liberation Committee meeting in Benghazi, Libya, ZAPU and ZANU issued a declaration of intent to unite. The OAU had said it would give aid only to a united front. In March agreement was reached to form a Joint military command. In practice ZAPU-ZANU unity was a failure; ethnic, ideological and personality disputes saw to that. FROLIZI virtually collapsed in June 1973, when several leaders, rejoined ZANU; but ZAPU and ZANU would not come together for another four years.

The failure of the armed struggle up to 1971 forced ZAPU and ZANU to try new strategies and tactics, ZIPRA units now tried to avoid direct confrontation with superior enemy forces, and instead to concentrate on sabotage as a tactic. Both ZAPU and ZANU began to introduce a tight cell structure inside Rhodesia. There was now to be much less reliance on the cult of personality as an instrument to hold a movement together. From early 1972 ZANLA began to turn the tide in the war, when it organized a massive infiltration into the north-east. Equipment was brought in and a network of contacts and information posts were set up before ZANLA launched a military offensive in December. By 1974 ZANU was clearly making much more of an impact on the war than was ZAPU. The Smith regime was forced to create dozens of 'protected villages' in the north-cast in an attempt to isolate ZANLA from the people, as guerillas pressed ever further into the Rhodesian heartland.

Several factors account for the growing success of ZANU/ZANLA. In the first place ZANU paradoxically benefited from being initially unable to match ZAPU's popular appeal based on the cult of the personality of Joshua Nkomo. ZANU therefore found it easier to escape from the politics of personality and develop the more anonymous and more democratic leadership structures which are more suitable to a prolonged guerilla war.

Secondly. the intellectual background of ZANU's leaders now came to pay dividends in its superior organization and conduct of the was.

Thirdly, ZANU put greater emphasis than ever before on the political education of the people in its areas of operations; many small groups of guerillas were sent into villages specifically to politicize the people (and gain more recruits) rather than engage in premature military operations.

Fourthly, ZANU's front of operations, the wooded highlands of the north-east, were far more favourable to prolonged guerilla warfare than the open savanna of ZAPU's north-western front. Moreover, it was easy for ZANLA to infiltrate from Mozambique because there was no physical barrier there like the Zambesi on ZAPU's Front.

Fifthly, ZANU's links with China considerably assisted the theory and practice of ZANLA's guerilla strategy and tactics.

Sixthly, ZANU's links with FRELIMO not only gave ZANLA soldiers bases in Mozambique close to its front in north-eastern Rhodesia but also enabled it to train effectively by fighting alongside FRELIMO.

Seventh factor is that FRELIMO's successes in Mozambique convinced many Zimbabweans that guerilla resistance could succeed in their country too. Zimbabweans were less fearful of the Smith regime, more confident and more ready to help ZANLA with food, shelter and supplies and recruits.

Another factor is the support ZANLA received from the Shona spirit mediums who accompanied the guerillas (just as their forefathers had done in the Great Chimurenga war of resistance of 1896-7). The spirit mediums helped to convince traditionally-minded people to support ZANLA, and served as useful sources of local information over a wider area than their own villages. Even so in spite of all these advantages, ZANU still suffered from internal problems such as political infighting centred upon personalities, intrigues and ethnic identifications based on Shona sub-groups. Early in 1975 Herbert Chitepo, ZANU's national chairman, was murdered in Lusaka. Chitepo came from the Manika Shona sub-group; his murderers were from the Karanga, a rival Shona sub-group. A new leader emerged: Robert Mugabe, from the neutral Zezuru Shona sub-group. • Mugabe was totally non-ethnic in outlook, and far from representing an ethnic com- promise he transcended ethnicism.' ZANU was fortunate to have at its helm a man of Mugabe's great intellectual ability, personal charm, efficiency and considerable political skill.

The intensification of the guerilla struggle, notably by ZANLA, from the end of 1972, led to a loss of morale among the white settlers. Many hundreds of guerillas were killed. but the whites were depressed by the steadily growing number of guerillas and by their increasingly better armament. White immigration significantly fell to almost zero by 1974; thereafter emigration of whites was consistently higher than immigration. The economy continued to flourish, with agricultural diversification and booms in mining and manufacturing, though there were problems in the construction, tobacco and tourist industries. There was no economic slump until 1976.

But the mobilization into the armed forces of a large number of white civilians from farming, industry and business was a major personal difficulty for many of them. As Herbert Chitepo put it in November 1973: 'This would have a psychologically damaging effect on the morale of the whites, most of whom had come to Zimbabwe, lured by the prospect of the easy, privileged life promised by the regime.") There is a clear link between the increase in military service for whites and rising emigration. In 1976 the white population fell by seven thousand.

The Lisbon coup and preparations for the independence of Mozambique were further , blows to the morale of Rhodesian whites and a boost to the confidence of the African people and the guerillas. Important trade routes were jeopardized and the sanctions abusing partnership was endangered. Rhodesia could no longer count on the security of even part of its eastern border with Mozambique. Most of all, Rhodesia was no longer strategically important to South Africa as a buffer zone, because it no longer presented a border which could easily be defended. The south- African Prime Minister, Johannes Vorster, now regarded white Rhodesia as expendable.

He no longer saw the Smith regime as stable. Vorster's overriding desires in foreign policy were for diplomatic relations and expanding commercial links with black Africa and for improving South Africa' standing in the international community. In order to achieve these aims Vorster was no longer prepared to defend white minority rule in Rhodesia. Late in 1974 Vorster made a joint diplomatic move with President Kaunda to bring Smith and the nationalist leaders to the conference table. Kaunda wanted a settlement for three reasons. First, he was a man of peace. Secondly, Zambia needed routes to export its copper through Rhodesia to the ports of Mozambique and South Africa, as the Tanzam Freedom Railway to Dar-es-Salaam was snarled up by the bottlenecks at the port, and the Benguela Railway was at risk because of fighting by rival Angolan nationalist forces. Thirdly, Zambia needed urgent imports of South African maize. In December 1974 the Lusaka Agreement was hammered out. The various nationalist parties were persuaded to form a common front under the umbrella of* Muzorewa's African National Council. Smith released Nkomo, Sithole, Mugabe and} other nationalist leaders. There was supposed to be a ceasefire followed by negotiations between the nationalists and Smith. However, ZANLA refused to observe a ceasefire. Mugabe joined the guerillas and soon emerged as the overall leader of ZANU. From December 1975 to March 1976 Smith made his first attempt at an internal settlement by holding talks with Nkomo, new head of the ANC-Zimbabwe, in effect the internal wing of ZAPU.

The talks failed because Nkomo wanted a two-year transition to majority rule while Smith wanted 15 years. Meanwhile, in February 1976, 800 ZANLA; guerrillas had entered from Mozambique, to be followed by successive waves in May, October and December, making two thousand in all. Also in March the FRELIMO government in Mozambique finally closed Mozambique's ports to Rhodesia which was now forced to rely on South Africa's over-congested ports and to pay higher freight charges for its exports.

Smith was alarmed at the deterioration in Rhodesia's military and economic situation- was Henry Kissinger, the American Secretary of State who, referring to Africa, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in May 1976 that 'we have a stake ... in not having the whole continent become radical and move in a direction that is incompatible with Western interests- That is the issue Kissinger like Vorster regarded Smith as a pawn to be sacrificed on the chess board of southern Africa if he could be replaced early by a moderate African leader. Delay would mean the whole game would be lost and the victor might be a ZANU completely radicalized like FRELIMO and the MPLA. So Kissinger and Smith met at Pretoria in South Africa in September 1976. Kissinger issued a virtual ultimatum to Smith who, having lost Vorster's support, gave way, and agreed to African majority rule within two years. Kissinger and Vorster now allowed Britain to take over the decolonization of Rhodesia. Smith and the nationalists met at a British-chaired conference in Geneva, Switzerland, in October 1976.

The Geneva talks broke down over the terms of independence and the time schedule leading up to it, but one gain came out of the talks: ZAPU and ZANU formed a Patriotic Front (PF) to conduct the negotiations and preserved the PF when they returned to the war. Late in 1977 the Anglo-American proposals, fashioned by Foreign Secretary David Owen and America's Ambassador to the UN, Andrew Young, proposed a six-month p re-independence interim period under a British Commissioner. The proposals were rejected by Smith because of their lack of safeguards for whites, and by the PF which opposed the powers of the Commissioner, Meanwhile the PF continued the war-

At the end of 1977 Smith played the last two cards in his campaign to preserve white domination in Rhodesia. In November, Rhodesian forces made massive raids on Mozambique, which left a thousand dead, mainly civilians and not ZANLA troops. The worst destruction of property and life was at Chimoio, which was not only a ZANLA base but a refugee camp. Hospitals and schools filled with patients aid pupils were attacked by helicopter-borne. troops, infantry and Mirage fighter- bombers. Smith's last card was the 'internal settlement'. Talks began in December and the Salisbury Agreement was signed H in March 1978.

A four-man Executive Council was set up, composed of Smith, Muzorewa of the United African National Council (UANC), Sithole of the African National Council, and Chief Chirau, leader of a new party of government-appointed chiefs. Ministers were to be black and white, two ministers per department; with a black Prime Minister.

Ian Smith was prime minister of the British colony of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) from 1962 to 1965 and prime minister of the independent, white-ruled state of Rhodesia from 1965 to 1979.

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National Movements and New States in Africa