Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (Zanla)

Abstract

Abstract The British South Africa Company of Cecil Rhodes conquered what is now Zimbabwe during the 1890s and a small number of white settlers took most of the best land. With responsible government in 1923, the white minority gained internal political control over the colony of Southern Rhodesia. In the late 1950s and early 1960s a series of banned and then reformed African nationalist organizations staged mass demonstrations against Southern Rhodesia's inclusion in the supposedly multi‐racial but white‐dominated Central African Federation, a union of Southern and Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, and the territory's own white minority ruled state. These groups included the Southern Rhodesian African National Congress (SRANC), National Democratic Party (NDP), and Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU), all of which had been led by Joshua Nkomo. In 1963 the federation broke up with the two northern territories of Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland becoming the independent African‐ruled states of Zambia and Malawi, respectively. A blatantly white supremacist Rhodesian Front government under Ian Smith came to power in Southern Rhodesia and when refused dominion status by Britain it unilaterally declared independence (UDI) in 1965. As the federation was breaking up, ZAPU leaders split over strategy, with those wishing to mobilize international support against white Rhodesia remaining loyal to Nkomo and the more militant who wanted to lead mass protests at home hiving off to form the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) under Ndabaningi Sithole and later Robert Mugabe. These organizations were banned and African nationalist leaders, including Nkomo, Sithole, and Mugabe, were arrested and imprisoned, and others went underground or fled the country.