The Struggles for Zimbabwe, South Africa and SADC

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. The Rhodesia Front government unilaterally declared independence from Britain in November 1965. 2. This Rhodesian claim was based on the fact that sixteen of the sixty-six seats in the Rhodesian Parliament were reserved for Africans, and Africans could vote if they fulfilled stringent literacy and property requirements. But the system actually ensured that few could vote. 3. Anti-colonial resistance leaders and traditional leaders from the first Chimurenga of 1896-7 are particularly revered. 4. See Griff Foley, ‘Learning in the Struggle: the Development of Political Consciousness Among Zimbabweans in the 1930s’, Zimbabwean History (Vol. 12, 1980), pp. 47–60. 5. The MDC have been particularly vulnerable to this claim. 6. See Terence Ranger, ‘Nationalist Historiography, Patriotic History and the History of the Nation: the Struggle over the Past in Zimbabwe’, Journal of South African Studies (Vol. 30, No. 2, June 2004), pp. 215–234. 7. As quoted by war veteran leader Lucas Gwara, interview in The Herald, 12 November 2006. 8. In 2005, Operation Marambatsvina resulted in the forced displacement of an estimated 600,000 people from the cities in Zimbabwe. 9. ZUM was led by Edgar Tekere, a ZANU-PF heavyweight and former minister in the post-1980 government. After falling out with Mugabe, Tekere became a long-standing critic of Mugabe, and a ‘political warlord’ in Manicaland province. 10. South Africa's ‘total strategy’ was adapted from French General Andre Beaufre's 1950s thesis that the West had to develop a ‘total strategy’ to counter the Communist ‘total onslaught’. 11. Live ammunition instead of blanks was used at the ZNA's mock battle drill at the Marondera Agricultural Show in September 2004; this resulted in fourteen people being seriously injured. It also led to a parliamentary enquiry, and Parliamentary Defence Committee Report (2004) which highlighted serious morale and training problems in the ZNA. 12. Doubts about Mbeki's suitability intensified in the wake of his ‘no crisis’ comment following the March 2008 elections in Zimbabwe. 13. For more details on the ANC's post-1994 internal ideological struggles, see William Gumede,Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC (London: Zed Books, 2007). 14. Naison Ngoma, Prospects for a Security Community in Southern Africa (Pretoria: ISS, 2005), pp. 230–231. 15. Professor Laurie Nathan headed the Military Research Group which worked with the ANC and SADF to produce the 1993 South African White Paper on Defence. This document was crucial in promoting a non-militarist, human security driven conception of national security. 16. Although Rwanda's participatory justice process has been groundbreaking, there have been concerns about the extent to which it has ended the culture of impunity, and whether it institutionalises ‘victor's justice’. On the other hand, it has provided a crucial template for local ownership of the justice and restitution process in Africa. Additional informationNotes on contributorsKnox ChitiyoDr Knox Chitiyo is Headof the Africa Programme at RUSI