The Zimbabwean Liberation Struggle

By Terence Ranger

Both the operation of the Southern colonial system and the pattern of African opposition to it were deeply influenced by neighbouring South Africa. Before 1948 modelled most of its own legislation and social practice on South African precedents. Segregation—both residential segregation in urban areas and the partition of rural land into "European" and "native" areas—was the rule, although without the later overlay of South Africa's post-1948 "apartheid."

African opposition, too, was often modelled on or influenced by South African precedents. The Southern Rhodesian Bantu Congress in 1938, for example, was consciously modelled on the South African National Congress. Like the ANC, the Southern Rhodesian Congress was originally an elite organization, although it made connections both with industrial workers and with peasants in the late 1940s. Also, like the South African ANC, it only became a mass movement in the 1950s.

This happened with its re-launch as the Southern Rhodesian African Nation Congress in September 1957 under the leadership of , Bulawayo trade unionist and chairman of the only surviving branch of the Bantu Congress. The pattern was not an exact duplication of South Africa, of course—there was no unifying Freedom Charter and no high-profile Treason Trials. But there were a series of riots and demonstrations, bans on nationalist parties, declarations of states of emergency, and trials. The African National Congress and its successors—the National Democratic Party (NDP, January 1960 to December 1961) and the African Peoples Union (ZAPU, December 1961 to September 1962)—brought together urban and rural unrest and attracted the leading African intellectuals, including , teacher, preacher, and author of the well-known book African Nationalism; Herbert Chitepo, the first black Zimbabwean lawyer, and , who had recently returned from teaching in Ghana. Supporters of these nationalist parties boycotted the 1962 elections; as a result, the segregationist Rhodesia Front was returned to power by the white electorate. They also began a domestic sabotage campaign and sent men abroad for military training.

In July 1960 fierce rioting broke out in the capital, Salisbury, and in the second city, Bulawayo. Several Africans were shot during the riots. In London Garfield Todd, the ex- prime minister, joined Joshua Nkomo of the National Democratic Partyto demand that the Rhodesian constitution be suspended and that Britain send in troops. There was even discussion at British ministerial level of the possible need to send in a "strong man." It soon became clear, however, that Britain would not intervene effectively. It was also clear that strikes, riots, and rallies were not enough to end settler rule.

Yet the development of an armed struggle within Zimbabwe was delayed by divisions inside the nationalist movement over both strategies and over personal and regional rivalries. The major split, between ZAPU - which revived in exile after the 1962 ban—and the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), is most commonly linked to the ethnic division between Shona-speaking and Ndebele-speaking Zimbabweans. Such a stereotype does little to explain a far more complex history of relationships between and within different organizations. Those relationships were complicated by exile in different countries, the imprisonment of many leaders, and the settler regime's efforts to exploit nationalist divisions for their own advantage.

After ZAPU was banned in September 1962, Nkomo ordered his executive committee to gather in Dar es Salaam, where he planned to announce the formation of a government in exile. After Julius Nyerere and refused to allow this, the frustrated committee conspired to overthrow Nkomo and replace him with Ndabaningi Sithole. Nkomo pre-empted this by returning to Zimbabwe. After the formation of ZANU by the dissidents in August 1963, fierce in-fighting took place between it and Nkomo's continuing ZAPU. Ian Smith, leader of the white-dominated minority regime banned all nationalist organisations in August 1964 and detained or imprisoned almost all their leaders, most of whom spent the next ten years as his prisoners.

Even then nationalist exiles were not fully committed to an armed struggle. Their attention was focussed on the probability of Ian Smith throwing off remaining British restrictions by unilaterally declaring independence (UDI). If that happened, they thought, Smith's regime would become illegal. Britain would be forced to act, and an internationally recognized government in exile would at last become possible. When Smith did eventually declare UDI on 11 November 1965, the situation became clearer. There was still no British or international intervention; both ZAPU and ZANU committed themselves to armed struggle.

Despite the obvious need for military struggle, it took a long time for the nationalist parties to prepare effectively. ZAPU and ZANU needed arms and training. Eventually ZAPU got adequate supplies from the Soviet Union, ZANU from China. They also needed secure regional bases and effective tactics. In the end ZAPU operated from a base in and ZANU from . These differences led to ideological clashes outside Zimbabwe and dangerous regional emphases inside it. Most of the incursions of the late 1960s were military disasters. It was only from the early 1970s that ZANU began to infiltrate rural communities, later flooding them with thousands of young guerrillas. In the mid-1970s ZAPU began to develop a capacity for formal warfare, equipped itself with Soviet tanks and planes, and drew up a strategy for armoured thrusts on the cities, operating out of rural "liberated zones." This ZAPU strategy was never implemented.

The armed struggle in Zimbabwe was very different from South Africa's, hardly affecting the cities and townships and waged as a guerrilla war largely in the African communal areas. Rhodesian repression was brutal. Collective punishment was imposed upon peasants; in many areas, "protected villages" were erected into which everyone was driven, and martial law was declared in the last stages of the war. The guerrillas themselves punished "sell-outs." Everyone in the rural areas was caught between the combatant forces. Spirit mediums, chiefs, headmasters, and missionaries as well as peasant families all had to make their choices.

The heaviest casualties of the war, however, were inflicted outside the country in Rhodesian bombing and ground attacks on training and refugee camps in Zambia and Mozambique. The slaughter of such attacks exposed the moral bankruptcy of the Smith regime, but the war exacted heavy economic and political costs as well. The first guerrilla attacks had been dealt with by the British South African Police. By the end it was necessary for Smith to mobilise virtually every able-bodied white man in the country, reinforced by South African troops and mercenaries from Western countries. By 1978 white Rhodesia was exhausted.

Meanwhile a complicated scenario of international and exile politics took place between 1965 and 1978. Britain tried to encourage a compromise between the Rhodesian regime and Zimbabwean nationalist movements, joined at times by South Africa and the United States. The Frontline States—, Zambia, Mopzambique, Botswana, and Angola—backed the Zimbabwean guerrillas both practically and diplomatically, especially through the Commonwealth. By the end of the 1970s the international picture had been simplified. The United States and South Africa were eager to leave the final negotiations up to Britain. The Front-Line States, especially Zambia and Mozambique, were battered by the conflict and desperate for an end to the war. So the white Rhodesians and most external actors were ready for a settlement. But negotiations were complicated by divisions on the side of the African liberation movements.

Joshua Nkomo was still the leader of ZAPU, after ten years in detention, a Rhodesian raid on his headquarters, and many splits within his movement. He had tried to mobilise his considerable internal political support inside Zimbabwe and had even negotiated unsuccessfully with Ian Smith. But he retained the support of the Soviet Union and of the South African ANC.

Until 1977, it was hard to tell who would emerge as the principal leader of ZANU. In early 1975 it seemed that Robert Mugabe was in third place behind party president Ndabaningi Sithole and party chairman Herbert Chitepo. (Mugabe and Sithole had both been released from prison in the detente exercise of late 1974.) Chitepo was assassinated in Lusaka on 18 , an event for which the responsibility is still hotly disputed. In that crisis, Sithole supported the Zambian government's arrest of almost all ZANU guerrillas and argued that ethnic rivalries within the party had led to the assassination. This position destroyed his credibility with the fighting men. At that point Mugabe was identified by guerrillas in Tanzania as a possible candidate.

Early in 1976 Mugabe escaped from Zimbabwe into Mozambique, but he still faced great difficulties, being held under house arrest by the Mozambican authorities. The Frontline States, impatient with the in-fighting among nationalist politicians, had backed the formation of a Zimbabwe People's Army (ZIPA) which conducted the war in 1976. When the ZIPA leadership was suppressed in 1977, Mugabe became the recognised leader of ZANU's liberation struggle. His position was ratified at the second ZANU Congress in Chimoio in September 1977. The primacy of the party over the army was declared and from then on the guerrillas pouring in from Mozambique made support for Mugabe the main theme of political education.

Nkomo and Mugabe, who jointly formed the Patriotic Front in October 1976, were two of the key African figures in the settlement talks that began in 1979. A third group, the African National Council (ANC), was led by Methodist Bishop Abel Muzorewa, who had emerged in 1971 as the figurehead for a revival of internal nationalist organizing in Zimbabwe. The ANC led the campaign against the constitutional proposals supported by Ian Smith and British Foreign Secretary Lord Home. The ANC was so successful in achieving an African "No" vote against these proposals that it turned itself into a political party in March 1972. As leader of the ANC, Muzorewa was involved in the detente negotiations in 1974 and for some time even claimed the allegiance of all the fighting men. This was an illusion, however, and Muzorewa returned to Rhodesia in 1978 with another repudiated ZANU leader, Ndabaningi Sithole. The two men signed an internal settlement with Ian Smith on 3 March 1978. This led to the emergence of the state called Rhodesia-Zimbabwe and to an election, which Muzorewa won overwhelmingly, thus becoming the first black prime minister of the country, in alliance with politicians of the previous white regime. Neither the election nor the new administration gained great credibility, however, and the war continued.

These were the principal African figures who met with Ian Smith at the Lancaster House Conference from 10 September to 15 December 1979. Lancaster House was a genuine negotiation under British chairmanship: no party to the conflict had won the war. The negotiations succeeded mainly because each of the main African parties to it believed that they could win the peace and triumph in an election. Nkomo was confident that he still retained the majority support he had enjoyed in 1964; Muzorewa had recently won a convincing electoral victory and was sure of South African funding; Mugabe believed that guerrilla political education guaranteed him victory. A cease-fire was signed on 21 December 1979.

For the first time in its history Southern Rhodesia got a British Governor and British policemen. In the election that followed, Mugabe's calculations proved more accurate than those of Nkomo and Muzorewa. His ZANU-Patriotic Front party (ZANU-PF) won two-thirds of the vote.

Majority rule—and the new nation of Zimbabwe—had been established, but at a price. The provisions insisted on by the British in the Lancaster House constitution prevented any effective redistribution of the land. Moreover, the settlement had failed to establish a firm consensus among the parties, and the historic and regional tensions between ZAPU and ZANU persisted until after independence, leading in the 1980s to virtual civil war in Matabeleland, the area of majority support for ZAPU.

About the author: Terence Ranger is Emeritus Professor at St. Antony's College, Oxford, and a member of Aluka's Zimbabwe National Committee.