1950s and early 1960s, the white elite in Rhodesia, led by
Ian Smith, comprising possibly 5 percent of the population,
declared independence from Britain in 1965. Few
international governments recognized Rhodesia’s
independence, and the United Nations levied economic
and political sanctions against it. The black citizens
organized a guerrilla war from bases in the neighboring
countries of Mozambique and Zambia. International
pressure and the rebellion waged by the two main groups,
Mugabe’s ZANU (the Zimbabwe African National Union)
and ZAPU (the Zimbabwe African People’s Union), led by
Joshua Nkomo, resulted in a negotiated end to white rule.
The state of Zimbabwe was created in 1980.
After independence, Mugabe quickly established his
personal control. He either violently eliminated his
opponents or co-opted them. The most egregious acts of
violence happened in Matabeleland, the heartland of
support for ZAPU, where as many as twenty thousand
people were killed in the early 1980s. By 1987 ZAPU had
merged with ZANU to create ZANU-PF, and Joshua
Nkomo was sidelined politically. Mugabe was able to
rewrite the constitution he had inherited as a part of the
independence negotiation, making himself president (he
had started as prime minister), abolishing white voter rolls
that were part of the independence agreement, and
eventually, in 1990, getting rid of the Senate altogether and
introducing positions in the legislature that he could
nominate. A de facto one-party state headed by Mugabe
was the result.
Upon independence, Mugabe took over a set of
extractive economic institutions created by the white
regime. These included a host of regulations on prices and
international trade, state-run industries, and the obligatory
agricultural marketing boards. State employment expanded
rapidly, with jobs given to supporters of ZANU-PF. The tight
government regulation of the economy suited the ZANU-PF
elites because it made it difficult for an independent class
of African businessmen, who might then have challenged
the former’s political monopoly, to emerge. This was very
similar to the situation we saw in Ghana in the 1960s in
chapter 2 (this page–this page). Ironically, of course, this
left whites as the main business class. During this period