Tag Archives: IAN SMITH

WHITE FLIGHT BROUGHT DEVASTATION TO RHODESIA – 93 YEAR OLD MUGABE OUT

Zimbabwe’s ruling party dismissed President Robert Mugabe on Sunday, ending his 37-year reign as the African country’s leader, a party official said.

.Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe addresses party members and supporters gathered at his party headquarters to show support to Grace Mugabe becoming the party's next Vice President after the dismissal of Emerson Mnangagwa November 8 2017.
Zimbabwe's sacked vice president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, said on November 8, 2017, he had fled the country, as he issued a direct challenge to long-ruling President Robert Mugabe and his wife Grace. / AFP PHOTO / Jekesai NJIKIZANA        (Photo credit should read JEKESAI NJIKIZANA/AFP/Getty Images)FROMImage result for CNN LOGO .COM Mugabe given until Monday to clean out his desk

Recently fired Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa was appointed as the new leader of the ZANU-PF party and is expected to lead a new government. Senior figures of the party gathered early Sunday for an emergency meeting of the party’s Central Committee to discuss calls to expel the 93-year-old leader. First lady Grace Mugabe was also recalled as head of the women’s league.

Rhodesia, commonly known from 1970 onwards as the Republic of Rhodesia, was an unrecognised state in southern Africa from 1965 to 1979, equivalent in territorial terms to modern Zimbabwe.

Today’s southern African country of Zimbabwe, now infamous for its land invasions, state repression, and erratic rule by its de facto dictator Robert Mugabe was until 1980 a country with white minority rule. However, economic sanctions and guerilla warfare led to the transformation of power from the whites to the majority blacks, which in the recent decade meant a mass eviction of white farmers and also their exodus from the country as a whole.

In 1965 Rhodesia, led by its leader Ian Smith, declared independence from United Kingdom. The country was run by a minority of approximately a quarter million whites, who had both the political and economic power. This illegal declaration of independence led to economic sanctions against the new country, first from the United Kingdom, later from the United Nations. 1972 saw the beginning of a seven year long guerilla war between black nationalists and the Rhodesian security forces.

The sanctions continued and the political pressure against Rhodesia increased as the 1970s progressed. Negotiations concerning a transformation to majority rule came about in 1976, and the first multiracial elections took place in 1979, an election where the guerilla factions ZANU and ZAPU were banned from participating. After renewed pressure from the UK and the US a new election was held in 1980, this time including the two guerilla factions. Robert Mugabe (ZANU) won an overwhelming victory, and Rhodesia had now changed its name to Zimbabwe. AND THE  REST IS HISTORY

CLICK HERE FOR THE FALL OF RHODESIA

1. Destroy the engine of productivity

The Harare Sports Club, a Rhodesian throwback, sits kitty-corner from Mugabe’s private residence. I was told ahead of time by locals that the patrons would be mostly white ex-farmers “crying into their beer.” Inside, towering, bull-necked men lined the bar. Most were chain-smoking, and they did seem quite wobbly. A television hanging from the ceiling played reruns of Tim Henman’s latest Wimbledon tease. At the entrance to the club is a sports shop, which sells squash rackets and cricket bats. The place is Old England in a capsule, and yet the paint is chipped, the tabs are unpaid, and the lively chatter, once about crop yields and rugby scores, now focuses on court dates and emigration plans.

In July of 2001 about fifty people who lived in the nearby town arrived on his land. Most were miners, and they were led by three officials from the Mugabe government. The group began surveying Ashton’s property and marking out plots for homes. The next six months were a constant battle. The settlers returned and erected makeshift thatch huts in the middle of Ashton’s maize and tobacco fields. They dug up his maize crops, beat up his farm workers, and removed and bent his irrigation pipes. Still Ashton hung on, living in his farmhouse and planting and harvesting what he could. In January of 2002 four trucks arrived, containing youth militia and men claiming they were veterans of the liberation war collecting their reward for service. This time the invaders attacked Ashton, with steel rods and an ax, cutting him in the forearm and badly damaging his pickup truck as he tried to escape. They held two of his sons hostage for a day, threatening to execute them and making them chant songs in praise of the ruling party. As the invaders carted away all the Ashton family’s transportable belongings—from crockery to toilet seats—the police watched with amusement and then decided to join in.
Mugabe decided on what he called “fast-track land reform” only in February of 2000, after he got shocking results in a constitutional referendum: though he controlled the media, the schools, the police, and the army, voters rejected a constitution he put forth to increase his power even further. A new movement was afoot in Zimbabwe: the Movement for Democratic Change—a coalition of civic groups, labor unions, constitutional reformers, and heretofore marginal opposition parties. Mugabe blamed the whites and their farm workers (who, although they together made up only 15 percent of the electorate, were enough to tip the scales) for the growth of the MDC—and for his humiliating rebuff.So he played the race card and the land card. “If white settlers just took the land from us without paying for it,” the President declared, “we can, in a similar way, just take it from them without paying for it.” In 1896 Africans had suffered huge casualties in an eighteen-month rebellion against British pioneers known as the chimurenga, or “liberation war.” The war that brought Zimbabwean blacks self-rule was known as the second chimurenga. In the immediate aftermath of his referendum defeat Mugabe announced a third chimurenga, invoking a valiant history to animate a violent, country-wide land grab.