Zimbabwe, formally known as Southern Rhodesia, is a country in Southern Africa. It gained its independence from the United Kingdom in 1965. It also later changed from a country led by a white minority to an African leadership. These political changes brought many economic and social changes with them.
Before the arrival of the British, native African tribes called the Shona and Ndebele populated Zimbabwe. In 1888, colonist Cecil Rhodes came to the region and purchased mining rights from the Ndebele people. By 1898, the region became known as Southern Rhodesia in honor of Cecil Rhodes and a British sphere of influence. The colony gained self from the British in 1922 but remained apart of the British Empire for another thirty years.
By the 1960’s, Southern Rhodesia’s neighbor, Northern Rhodesia had gained its independence and is now known as Zambia. This event increased the Africans’ demands for more political rights and the whites’ demands for independence. The Prime Minister at that time, Winston Field, was accused of moving too slowly towards independence and was later replaced by his deputy, Ian Smith. During the 1965 election, Smith led the Rhodesian Front Party to win majority vote over the moderate Europeans who opposed a move for independence.
With Rhodesians having most of the power, the UK was more inclined to grant it independence but was still hindered because of their unwillingness to give the black
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majority rule, a policy used in the British colonies at the time This led to many negotiations with the UK that tu...
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...pering with the votes. Mugabe is now in his 80’s and still in power.
The Zimbabwean economy is currently in a very poor state with half the population unemployed and the value of a Zimbabwean dollar has declined. The main reasons the for the decline is the problems in the agricultural sector caused by land distribution, many droughts, and the mass infections of HIV/AIDS in the workforce (iExplore). The failed economy also led to a failed education system. Many teachers have quit their jobs and students do not have proper school supplies.
This is how Zimbabwe has changed politically, economically, and socially since 1945. Like many other African nations, these changes came after it gained independence from an imperialistic country. Unfortunately, like other African nations, the country was left with a weak economy and government.
Images of whiteness in Zimbabwe projected in the media have been of white population as victims being disposed of land and exposed to violence. In the award-winning documentary, Mugabe and the White African, the film focuses on white Zimbabwean family who challenges the Fast Track land redistribution program. David McDermott Hughes’ interprets the perspectives of land and landscape and its origins. In Whiteness in Zimbabwe, David McDermott Hughes principal argument is that European settlers identified themselves with the African landscape rather than with the social characteristics of the native Africans. The importance of landscape to white identity led to the engineering and structural development of the landscape. Hughes contends that the white colonizers used the land, nature and ecology to escape the social problems, to avoid ‘the other’ which in this case was the black Zimbabweans that were sharing the same living space. Through such landscape engineering, the white Zimbabweans believed that they would belong to Zimbabwe and Africa. However, Hugh argues that “by writing themselves to single-mindedly into the landscape, many whites wrote themselves out of society (p. 25).” Furthermore, Hughes argues that this was not a form of racism, but rather escaping the social surrounding to avoid conflict. This concept has led to Hughes to wanting to stop romanticizing of land in order to avoid social issues.
Throughout the twentieth century, Rhodesia from 1960’s to the late 1970’s have always been in a struggle to fight for their independence. They had to deal with the British colonist that settled into their land and had taken over control of the country for the past couple of years. Due to the decolonisation of African countries after the second world war it gave many influences and reasons for Rhodesia to search to become an independent country. That all changed when they fully receive their independence in 1980 and during that time they fought for the control of their country, Rhodesia. The name was later changed to Zimbabwe due to a revolutionary struggle they had in their country. The battle to govern Rhodesia and also by the agreement of the Internal Settlement between the fighting forces to find and create peace
It took over one hundred years for Africans to reclaim the continent that was stolen and occupied from European imperial powers that were pushed by greed. It was a major step in the year 1994 when Nelson Mandela became the first president of an independent South Africa. For many years they had to fight for equality and justice in their own homeland. In the year 2000 Africa was recognized as a continent full of independent nations, and were self-ruled by their own indigenous people.
For nearly forty-six years whites ruled South Africa with licit supremacy under Apartheid laws. With roots in its history, the segregation of races reigned from its colonization by the Dutch to the late 1900's when it was weakened by social unrest and financial burden, and finally abolished by Nelson Mandela. The impact of apartheid stood after apartheid's abolition, as non-whites still had unresolved feelings towards those who supported apartheid, but with Mandela's election and the renouncement of apartheid laws, the country could move forward toward creating a "rainbow nation."
Africa in all its existence to Europe has relied on others to decide what’s best for them. Africa is now in a Western style mode. This does not mean it should be there but it is now. The government has to start taking advantage of today’s capitalist economy. Money tends to keep people of all nations happier. With money everyone is guaranteed food, a home and a better chance at democracy.
...abwe is an independent and self-sufficient. Zimbabwe has plenty of fertile lands on which to grow crops, and the area, much like other African countries, is full of mineral wealth. Rhodes’ racist, imperialistic form of government seems to have almost disappeared from the political scene in Zimbabwe.
South Africa has a long history with Europe, the Dutch, Portuguese, and finally the British have controlled this land. The country is home to many different groups, from white to black. South Africa is a new country, liberated by the British in 1934. Its history has been dominated by white power and ignorance. When the British left in 1934, the White South Africans were placed in power, putting them in Apartheid.
Dr. Noah Zerbe is a professor and chair of the department of politics at Humboldt State University in California and someone who has spent time in both South Africa and Zimbabwe. Dr. Zerbe goes in depth into the factors that surrounded the 2002 famine in Africa, where 14 million Africans were on the brink of starvation. The Malawi president, just a season before the famine, sold off all of Mal...
The first European to arrive to Great Zimbabwe was a German explorer named Karl Mauch, in 1871. It was Mauch’s friend, Adam Render, who was also German and was living in the tribe of Chief Pika, that has lead him to Great Zimbabwe. When Mauch first saw the ruins, he abruptly concluded that Great Zimbabwe wasn’t erected by Africans. He felt that the handiwork was too delicate and the people who constructed this showed they were way too civilized to have been the work of Africans.
At the end of WWII is when decolonization was brought up as a serious topic of discussion. Over 200,000 Africans had fought in Europe and Asia for the Allies’ freedom and democracy which showed quite the contradiction. They were fighting for something that wasn’t even going to truly benefit them. In 1945 is when the 5th Pan African Conference met to go over the possibility of granting back independence to the colonized areas. Ghana played a significant role during the decolonization process in Africa because Ghana was the first Sub-Saharan African majority government to gain independence in 1957. Not only did Ghana gain independence, but they did this by acting nonviolently. For years following th...
It is clear that there is a negative relationship between HIV/AIDS and growth. HIV/AIDS affects the labour force, it lowers efficiency and productivity and lastly, savings and investment. It is evident that HIV/AIDS had contributed to the downturn of economic growth of Swaziland. This pandemic affected the drivers of economic growth mainly, the foreign direct investment and loss of labour. Due to lower productivity as a result of HIV/AIDS, there is a fall in both private and public savings. A low rate of return on capital discourage Foreign Direct Investment (Haacker, 2003). In addition, HIV/AIDS deter investors as it increased the risk of investing in Swaziland. In 2002, Isaksen et al. (2002) explained how a Taiwanese firm chose Lesotho instead of Swaziland due to the later having high HIV/AIDS
In 1884, gold was discovered in the Witwatersrand, which lured thousands of British miners and prospectors to settle in the area. The Afrikaners, who were mainly farmers, didn’t like the newcomers (Uitlanders), so they taxed them and denied them voting rights. The dislike of one another grew, which lead to a revolt by the Uitlanders in Johannesburg against the Afrikaner government. This revolt was instigated by the British colonial statesman and financier Cecil Rhodes, the premier of the Cape Colony, who wanted to bring all of Southern Africa into the British Empire. In December of 1895, Leander Starr Jameson, who was a friend of Rhodes, led a group of 600 armed British men in an attempt to support the Uitlanders in the South African Republic. This was called the Jameson Raid. It resulted in Jameson’s capture and imprisonment, and in Rhodes’s resignation. Jameson later became the premier of the Cape Colony from 1904 to 1908.
The earlier city of Zimbabwe, named Great Zimbabwe, should not be confused with present day Zimbabwe. This essay will focus on Great Zimbabwe, which by the way means “the house of rock” in the Shona language. A few disagree about who settled the land, but one theory suggests it was established by Shona farmers attempting to move away from the tsetse flies, which kill livestock and humans. The flies carry and inject their victims with a disease called sleeping sickness. This rationale seems like a reasonable motivation since the flies live in a wide middle section of Africa between two deserts: the Sahara and the Kalahari. This would leave the far northern and far southern areas of the continent for extensive cattle farming. The city was located on a plateau in southern Africa around 1250 to 1550 AD. Great Zimbabwe was located between the Zambezi River and the Limpopo River. The metropolis encompassed about 80 acres with a view of a fertile valley. The valley was a great place to raise domestic animals, because of the lush vegetation. Wild animals found excellent forage there, too. This allowed the population to eat not only their cattle, but undomesticated creatures as well. Even though the living quarters of the people started as simple structures, as the city’s financial wealth increased, new buildings were added and divisions appeared between the wealthy and those doing the work. The Victoria Falls Travel Guide states the Great Zimbabwe ruins were “the largest ancient structure South of the Sahara and second only to the Pyramids of Egypt in size and grandeur.” Great Zimbabwe was a remarkable settlement to research from its ruins, to trade, and its decline.
For it to do so, however, will require a massive amount of foreign help. As shown earlier Zimbabwe has rich mineral wealth and it was once referred to as the “breadbasket of Africa.” To ensure that it once again can rise to that status will take protection of the country from the vulture like nature of many of the Western corporate conglomerates who like nothing more than to simply swoop down upon post-sanction Zimbabwe and suck all of its resources out for export to the West. Even more so they would like to do it for the benefit of a small elite in control of the political system.
South Africa has a school life expectancy of thirteen years, whereas Zimbabwe’s school life expectancy is around nine years. Both countries have the same literacy rate of age of fifteen or over can read and write. Zimbabwe has the highest unemployment rate in the world, which is at ninety five percent. Part of their high unemployment rate is because of their lack of education, which inhibits their ability to work in the labor field. South Africa has unemployment rate of about fifty percent. There is a big gap between the unemployment rates within the two countries. A big factor for the unemployment rate is that the poverty line affects unemployment. Families who live under the poverty line do not get as good as an education compared to better off families. Sixty eight percent of Zimbabwe is under the poverty line. This causes the inability or less change for those under the poverty level to be able to get a good job in the work force. South Africa has a ...