tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/rhodesia-29004/articlesRhodesia – The Conversation2023-03-09T14:28:58Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2007442023-03-09T14:28:58Z2023-03-09T14:28:58ZJimmy Carter’s African legacy: peacemaker, negotiator and defender of rights<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512455/original/file-20230227-1191-gv4ueg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Carter's interest in southern Africa was crucial to keeping the peace.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons/Flickr</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When historians and pundits praise Jimmy Carter’s <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-american-studies/article/abs/nancy-mitchell-jimmy-carter-in-africa-race-and-the-cold-war-stanford-ca-stanford-university-press-2016-4500-pp-xiv-883-isbn-978-0-8047-9358-8/DB52A5925C6F10E199F93FB881AB03D9">achievements</a> as the US president and extol his exemplary post-presidential years, they mention the recognition of China, the <a href="https://billofrightsinstitute.org/e-lessons/the-panama-canal-treaties-jimmy-carter">Panama Canal Treaties</a> and the <a href="https://carterschool.gmu.edu/why-study-here/legacy-leadership/camp-david-hal-saunders-and-responsibility-peacemaking">Camp David Accords</a>. Almost no one mentions what Carter achieved in Africa during his presidency. This is a serious oversight. </p>
<p>When I interviewed President Carter in 2002, <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/extra/?id=25540&i=Excerpt%20from%20the%20Introduction.html">he told me</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I spent more effort and worry on Rhodesia than I did on the Middle East.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The archival record supports the former president’s claim. Reams of documents detail Carter’s sustained and deep focus during his presidency on ending white rule in Rhodesia, and helping to bring about the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/zimbabawean-independence-day">independence of Zimbabwe</a>.</p>
<p>There were several reasons for Carter’s focus on southern Africa. First, realpolitik. Southern Africa was the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25798909?seq=4">hottest theatre</a> of the Cold War when Carter took office in January 1977. A year earlier, Fidel Castro had sent <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Conflicting-Missions-Havana-Washington-1959-1976/dp/0807854646">36,000 Cuban troops</a> to Angola to <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Conflicting-Missions-Havana-Washington-1959-1976/dp/0807854646">protect the leftist MPLA</a> from a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Conflicting-Missions-Havana-Washington-1959-1976/dp/0807854646">South African invasion</a> backed by the Gerald Ford administration. The <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Visions-Freedom-Washington-Pretoria-1976-1991/dp/1469628325">Cubans remained in Angola until 1991 </a>.</p>
<p>Mozambique was no longer governed by America’s NATO ally, Portugal, but instead by the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4185752">left-leaning Frelimo</a> . Apartheid South Africa – so recently a stable, pro-American outpost far from the Cold War – suddenly faced the prospect of being surrounded by hostile black-ruled states.</p>
<p>The unfolding events in southern Africa riveted Washington’s attention on Rhodesia, where the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Jimmy-Carter-Africa-International-History/dp/0804793859">insurgency against the white minority government</a> of <a href="https://www.mandela.ac.za/Leadership-and-Governance/Honorary-Doctorates/Ian-Smith-1979">Ian Smith</a> was escalating. One week after the Carter administration took office it assessed the crisis in Rhodesia: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>This situation contains the seeds of another Angola … If the breakdown of talks means intensified warfare, Soviet/Cuban influence is bound to increase.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The administration knew that if the war did not end, the Cuban troops might cross the continent to help the rebels.</p>
<h2>And then what?</h2>
<p>It was unthinkable that the Carter administration, with its <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1977-1980/human-rights#:%7E:text=He%20intended%20to%20infuse%20a,the%20fate%20of%20freedom%20">stress on human rights</a>, would intervene in Rhodesia to support the racist government of Ian Smith. But, given the Cold War, it was equally unthinkable that it would stand aside passively enabling another Soviet-backed Cuban victory in Africa. Therefore, the administration’s first <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/44376206">Presidential Review Memorandum</a> on southern Africa, written immediately after Carter took office, announced:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In terms of urgency, the Rhodesian problem is highest priority.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Carter administration assembled a <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=25540">high-powered negotiating team</a>, led by <a href="https://aysps.gsu.edu/andrew-young-biography/">UN Ambassador Andrew Young</a> and <a href="https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/short-history/vance">Secretary of State Cyrus Vance</a>, to coordinate with the British and hammer out a settlement. These negotiations, spearheaded by the Americans, led to the <a href="https://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/5847/5/1979_Lancaster_House_Agreement.pdf">Lancaster House talks</a> in Britain, and the free elections in 1980 and black majority rule in an independent in Zimbabwe. </p>
<p>There was another reason for Carter’s interest in southern Africa: race. Carter <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Hour-Before-Daylight-Memories-Boyhood/dp/0743211995">grew up in the segregated South</a> of the 1920s and 1930s. As a child, he did not question the racist strictures of the <a href="https://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/what.htm">Jim Crow South</a>, but as he matured, served in the US Navy and was elected governor of Georgia, his worldview evolved. </p>
<p>He appreciated how the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/collections/civil-rights-history-project/articles-and-essays/">civil rights movement</a> had helped liberate the US South from its regressive past, and he regretted that he had not been an active participant in the movement. When I asked Carter why he had expended so much effort on Rhodesia, part of his explanation was:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I felt a sense of responsibility and some degree of guilt that we had spent an entire century after the Civil War still persecuting blacks, and to me the situation in Africa was inseparable from the fact of deprivation or persecution or oppression of Black people in the South. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Parallels with the US South</h2>
<p>Carter’s belief that there were parallels between the freedom struggles in the US South and in southern Africa may have been naïve, but it was important. </p>
<p>Influenced by Andrew Young, who had been a <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/young-andrew">close aide</a> to <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1964/king/biographical/">Martin Luther King </a>, Carter transcended the knee-jerk anticommunist reaction of previous American presidents to the members of the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/struggle-Zimbabwe-Chimurenga-War/dp/0949932000">Patriotic Front</a>, the loose alliance of insurgents fighting the regime of <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/lifeinfocus/a-life-in-focus-ian-douglas-smith-last-white-prime-minister-rhodesia-zimbabwe-a8754971.html">Ian Smith</a>.</p>
<p>Young challenged the Manichaean tropes of the Cold War. <a href="https://stanfordpress.typepad.com/blog/2017/04/race-and-the-cold-war.html">He explained in 1977</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Communism has never been a threat to me … Racism has always been a threat – and that has been the enemy of all of my life. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Young helped Carter see the Patriotic Front, albeit leftist guerrillas supported by Cuba and the Soviet Union, as freedom fighters. Therefore, unlike the Gerald Ford administration which had <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Jimmy-Carter-Africa-International-History/dp/0804793859">shunned</a> the Front and tried to settle the conflict through negotiations with the white leaders of Rhodesia and South Africa, Carter considered the Front the key players. He brought them to the fore of the negotiations. This was extraordinarily rare in the annals of US diplomacy during the Cold War. </p>
<p>Carter has not received the credit his administration deserves for the Zimbabwe settlement. It was a success not only in moral terms, enabling free elections in an independent country. It also precluded a repetition of the Cuban intervention in Angola. It was Carter’s signal achievement in sub-Saharan Africa. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512411/original/file-20230227-24-kep09i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512411/original/file-20230227-24-kep09i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512411/original/file-20230227-24-kep09i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512411/original/file-20230227-24-kep09i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512411/original/file-20230227-24-kep09i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512411/original/file-20230227-24-kep09i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512411/original/file-20230227-24-kep09i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The late former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan (C) speaks as former US president Jimmy Carter and Graca Machel of Mozambique look on.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alexander Joe/AFP via Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Angola and the Cold War reflexes</h2>
<p>Carter also improved US relations with the continent as a whole. He <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Jimmy-Carter-Africa-International-History/dp/0804793859">increased</a> trade, diplomatic contacts and, simply, treated Black Africa with respect.</p>
<p>During the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Jimmy-Carter-Africa-International-History/dp/0804793859">war in the Horn of Africa</a>, he resisted intense pressure to throw full US support behind the Somalis when the Somali government waged a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Jimmy-Carter-Africa-International-History/dp/0804793859">war of aggression</a> against leftist Ethiopia. His administration attempted valiantly to <a href="https://academic.oup.com/dh/article-abstract/34/5/853/490367">negotiate a settlement</a> in Namibia and condemned apartheid in South Africa. </p>
<p>But in Angola, as historian Piero Gleijeses’ superb <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Visions-Freedom-Washington-Pretoria-1976-1991/dp/1469628325">research</a> has shown, Carter reverted to Cold War reflexes. He asserted that the US would restore full relations with Angola only after the Cuban troops had departed. This, even though he knew that the Cubans were there by invitation of the Angolan government, and were essential to hold the South Africans at bay. Carter’s was the typical response of US governments to any perceived communist threat. But it serves to highlight – by contrast – how unusual was the administration’s policy of embracing the Patriotic Front in Zimbabwe. </p>
<p>For the next 40 years, Carter focused more on sub-Saharan Africa than on any other region of the world. The Carter Center’s almost total <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/02/23/1158358366/jimmy-carter-took-on-the-awful-guinea-worm-when-no-one-else-would-and-he-triumph">eradication of Guinea worm</a> has saved an estimated 80 million Africans from this devastating disease. Its election monitoring throughout the continent, and its conflict resolution programmes, have bolstered democracy. </p>
<p>Carter’s work in Africa, and especially in Zimbabwe, forms a significant and underappreciated part of his impressive legacy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200744/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nancy Mitchell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Carter’s work in Zimbabwe forms a significant and under appreciated part of his legacyNancy Mitchell, Professor of History, North Carolina State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1993902023-02-16T13:27:55Z2023-02-16T13:27:55ZWhy does Turkey want other countries to start spelling its name ‘Türkiye’?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510183/original/file-20230214-23-rltrz1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C341%2C2461%2C1652&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Turks have called their country Türkiye since 1923.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/campaign-billboard-showing-the-portrait-of-turkish-news-photo/667766060?phrase=Türkiye billboard&adppopup=true">Chris McGrath/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Is Turkey’s recent spelling change about being more authentically Turkish? Or is there more to the story? </p>
<p>In June 2022, the United Nations <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/02/turkey-turkiye-erdogan-united-nations-un/">agreed to change</a> the spelling of the country known in the English-speaking world as Turkey to Türkiye, heeding a request by the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In January 2023, the U.S. State Department also agreed to adopt the requested change <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/05/us-turkey-spelling-turkiye-country">in its written communications</a>.</p>
<p>A number of news outlets <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/06/03/1102841197/turkey-changes-its-official-name-to-turkiye">have reported</a> that Turkey has changed its name, but that’s not really true – Turks have called their country Türkiye <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Treaty-of-Lausanne-1923">since 1923</a>, when Turkey became the successor state to the Ottoman Empire. The change is less like Rhodesia becoming Zimbabwe <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/zimbabawean-independence-day">in 1980</a> and more akin to what would happen if the country known in English as Germany asked that the world refer to it as Deutschland, which is the way the Germans say it. </p>
<p>But Erdogan’s request – and the U.N.’s decision to follow suit – does raise the question of why countries seek to change their names.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/98kqyvQuy2I?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>From Burma to Myanmar</h2>
<p>As Julie Tetel Andresen and I explain in our book “<a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Languages+In+The+World%3A+How+History%2C+Culture%2C+and+Politics+Shape+Language+-p-9781118531280">Languages in the World: How History, Culture, and Politics Shape Language</a>,” the answer almost always has to do with politics and power. It might be inspired by domestic politics, as is likely the case with Türkiye, or it could represent a shift in regional or global power dynamics. </p>
<p>The case of Burma, which officially <a href="https://apnews.com/article/myanmar-burma-different-names-explained-8af64e33cf89c565b074eec9cbe22b72">renamed itself Myanmar in 1989</a>, illustrates both of these dynamics. </p>
<p>From 1824 to 1948, Burma was ruled by Britain, which set up colonies in the interior of the country to control the production of timber, oil and <a href="https://theconversation.com/earth-day-colonialisms-role-in-the-overexploitation-of-natural-resources-113995">minerals</a>. Later settlements along the fertile Irrawaddy Delta coastline controlled the even more profitable production of rice. </p>
<p>British administrators, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F00207152211023793">as they did throughout their colonies</a>, played favorites with different ethnic groups on the ground, benefiting those who were willing to learn English and convert to Christianity. In British colonial Burma, <a href="https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/faq/karen">it was the Karens</a> – a large ethnic minority group whose members speak a number of related languages, including Pa’O and Karenni – who played this role. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Vintage photograph of eight men in uniform." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510189/original/file-20230214-1870-h13uwj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510189/original/file-20230214-1870-h13uwj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510189/original/file-20230214-1870-h13uwj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510189/original/file-20230214-1870-h13uwj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510189/original/file-20230214-1870-h13uwj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510189/original/file-20230214-1870-h13uwj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510189/original/file-20230214-1870-h13uwj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">British soldiers pose in Rangoon, Burma, in 1913. Today, Rangoon goes by Yangon, and Burma is called Myanmar.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-pioneers-of-the-1st-royal-munster-fusiliers-rangoon-news-photo/520681821?phrase=burma%20british&adppopup=true">Hulton Archive/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During the 100 years of British rule, the Karens cultivated a sense of national identity that became so strong that they called for the formation of an independent state, seemingly with the support of the British. The divide between the Karens and the Burmans – the majority ethnic group – grew so stark that when the Japanese occupied British Burma in 1942 during World War II, <a href="https://www.mnkaren.org/history-culture/karen-history/">the Karens sided with the British</a>, while the Burmans sided with the Japanese. Things only worsened when the British abruptly pulled out of Burma in 1948, leaving a power vacuum that the Burmans quickly filled. </p>
<p>In 1989, Burma’s military dictatorship set up a language commission to replace or modify the spellings given to Burmese cities by the British. They changed the capital city from Rangoon to Yangon. In a surprise to the world, Burma became Myanmar. </p>
<p>In the Burmese language, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/register">differences in register</a>, or specific styles of the language used for specific purposes, are common. In colloquial, spoken Burmese, the country is known as Bama, from which the British derived Burma. In the formal, written literary style, the country is known as Myanma. </p>
<p>The shift from Burma to Myanmar represented, on the one hand, a postcolonial power move intended to signal distance from British Burma and its colonial legacy. At the same time, the name change waded into domestic ethnopolitics. Bama is preferred among non-elites, including many ethnolinguistic minority groups that don’t have access to the formal register. However, Burman elites have tended to use Myanma. </p>
<p>The move showed that Burman elites in positions of power and authority, who are more likely to use the formal literary style, were calling the shots.</p>
<h2>Excising exonyms</h2>
<p>Not all name changes are quite as complicated. </p>
<p>For hundreds of years, the country currently known in English as Thailand <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/archive/months-past/siam-becomes-thailand">was referred to as</a> Siam, a word likely of Chinese origin that Portuguese colonists started using in the 16th century. </p>
<p>Linguists call words like Siam <a href="https://www.dictionary.com/browse/exonym">exonyms</a> – names applied by outsiders with no particular connection to the named group. When Thailand declared itself a constitutional monarchy in 1939, <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/archive/months-past/siam-becomes-thailand">it simply requested that the exonym be corrected</a>, and that the world refer to its country using a variant of the local term Thailand. </p>
<p>Exonym corrections have been commonplace in postcolonial Africa. The change from Zaire, a Portuguese variant of a Bantu word, <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-05-31-mn-64217-story.html">to the Democratic Republic of the Congo</a> and the change from Rhodesia – named for <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32131829">Cecil Rhodes</a>, a British colonizer – to Zimbabwe are just two examples.</p>
<p>It’s unclear what motivated Erdogan’s request – <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61671913">the government claims</a> Türkiye avoids confusion with the bird among English speakers. Oddly enough, <a href="https://theconversation.com/talking-turkey-how-the-thanksgiving-bird-got-its-name-and-then-lent-it-to-film-flops-171925">Turkey the country does have a connection to the bird</a>. In the 16th century, English speakers noticed similarities between turkeys, which the Aztecs had domesticated, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guineafowl">guinea fowl</a>, a bird imported from Africa to Europe via Turkey.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/03/middleeast/turkey-name-change-mime-intl/index.html">But some observers speculate</a> that putting forth a word of Turkish origin fits seamlessly within Erdogan’s brand of nationalism and may divert attention from a <a href="https://www.euronews.com/2022/11/09/everything-is-overheating-why-is-turkeys-economy-in-such-a-mess">weak economy</a> and <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-05-06/istanbul-falls-victim-to-turkish-political-cold-war-with-erdogan">political turmoil</a>. </p>
<p>How the language politics will play in the wake of the devastating earthquake that has thus far <a href="https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/turkey-syria-earthquake-updates-2-13-23-intl/index.html">killed more than 35,000 Turks</a> is anyone’s guess.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199390/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Phillip M. Carter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Turkey vs. Türkiye? When a country changes its name or requests changes to the spelling of its name, there are almost always political motives.Phillip M. Carter, Professor of Linguistics and English, Florida International UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1639342021-07-29T15:12:54Z2021-07-29T15:12:54ZDogs in the city: on the scent of Zimbabwe’s urban history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413360/original/file-20210727-17-18tn3qd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A politician argued that the Rhodesian ridgeback was the dog of the ancestors and proposed renaming it the Zimbabwe ridgeback.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Dogs are political. Their very existence in modern cities has goaded those in power into trying to discipline them – and their owners. This has happened in the past too: for instance, authorities trying to modernise Paris in the 19th century regarded stray dogs as belonging to the “<a href="https://academic.oup.com/past/article/234/1/137/2965802?login=true">city’s criminal, dirty and rootless dangerous classes – to be slaughtered</a>”. But similar campaigns against stray dogs in Bombay in 1832 resulted in civil protest, used as an opportunity to challenge <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-royal-asiatic-society/article/abs/mad-dogs-and-parsis-the-bombay-dog-riots-of-1832/FAE1BD958098093802B0F278033C6E66">aspects of colonial rule</a>. </p>
<p>Our own <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03057070.2021.1929442?journalCode=cjss20">study</a> focused on changes in regimes regulating dogs, especially those owned by Africans, between 1980 and 2017 in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare. We drew on archival sources, newspaper sources and oral interviews to describe how Harare dealt with its urban canine citizens over the years following independence. The story shows how dog management reflected competing visions of the modern city. </p>
<p>The city developed a hybrid dog-keeping regime that mixed elements of long-enduring local knowledge with the self-consciously modern and cosmopolitan, as we show below. For instance, rural practices such as tolerating “stray dogs” came to the city after 1980 because the new government was reluctant to enforce colonial-era by-laws. National leaders, animal welfare organisations, kennel clubs and individual dog-owners and breeders all helped shape a shifting vision of the city.</p>
<h2>Inventing good dogs and bad dogs</h2>
<p>Southern Rhodesia’s white settlers (who were mostly of English stock) established kennel clubs in the first decade of colonial rule. Their mission was to teach Africans to keep fewer and “better” dogs, which meant imported “purebred” dogs. Kennel clubs, animal welfare societies and city councils sustained western regimes of dog-keeping up to independence in 1980.</p>
<p>As middle-class Africans started moving into the (formerly whites-only) suburbs of Harare, so did “free-roaming dogs”. This triggered complaints about malnourished, maltreated, misbehaving “bad dogs”. Irate suburbanites spoke of “wretched animals” – which were not pets and were not walked on leashes but did bark when they chose and freely roamed the leafy streets. They also complained of “mongrel bitches” introduced from rural areas which threatened the purity of breed and sexual health of “well-bred male dogs”. Such intense fears of “mixing” may have been a proxy for anxieties over racial and class order.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413361/original/file-20210727-18-nbqzpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Dogs huddled together being fed." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413361/original/file-20210727-18-nbqzpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413361/original/file-20210727-18-nbqzpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413361/original/file-20210727-18-nbqzpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413361/original/file-20210727-18-nbqzpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413361/original/file-20210727-18-nbqzpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413361/original/file-20210727-18-nbqzpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413361/original/file-20210727-18-nbqzpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Picture of township mongrel dogs feeding.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The period between 2000 and 2017 witnessed the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03057070600655988?needAccess=true">“Zimbabwean crisis”</a>. This period of political instability saw hyperinflation, state-sponsored violence and massive involuntary migrations. It was a time of lawlessness and yet increased crackdowns on law-breakers. Shacks were destroyed, vendors and hawkers were harassed, and those who did not conform to standard citizenship (such as the homeless) were forcibly removed. The city was being reimagined and dogs were part of this reimagining.</p>
<p>It is a pattern we see in many cities around the world. But we found something special in Harare: a young urban “ghetto dog fancy” was part of the reimagining. The “ghetto dog fancy” gave rise to new ideas about breeding dogs and the aesthetic appeal of particular breeds. The Harare City Council blamed the new breeders for the ballooning dog population and for causing rabies <a href="https://www.herald.co.zw/harare-declared-rabies-area/">outbreaks</a>. By 2005, the city’s canine <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03057070.2021.1929442?needAccess=true&journalCode=cjss20">population</a> was around 300,000 dogs (one dog per five people).</p>
<p>While authorities fretted, youthful dog breeders and owners associated owning particular dog breeds with being cosmopolitan, and being <a href="https://www.herald.co.zw/the-most-expensive-dogs/">part of modernity</a>. Young male African urbanites took up dog breeding as a new survival strategy.</p>
<p>Since the voices of the ghettos do not appear in the public archives, we conducted oral history interviews on the streets. We found that Africans started breeding boerboels, German shepherds and rottweilers and sold them to security companies and anxious home-owners for as much as <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/africa/dog-breeding-is-big-business-in-zim-1819770">US$400 each</a> – in an economy where the average worker might bring home about <a href="https://kubatana.net/2018/11/23/2019-national-budget-insult-civil-servants/">US$280–300 per month</a>. There was a shifting interaction between local and so-called western knowledge about dog-keeping, as the breeders learned international practices of breeding but improvised with the local breeding stock and their own knowledge. </p>
<p>One Zanu-PF politician, Tony Monda, insisted on a new kind of breed purity. In 2016, he <a href="https://www.thepatriot.co.zw/old_posts/closer-look-at-the-zimbabwean-lion-dog/">argued</a> that the Rhodesian ridgeback was the dog of the ancestors and proposed renaming it the Zimbabwe ridgeback. There was a nascent nationalism wagging the tail of such endeavours.</p>
<p>In our <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03057070.2021.1929442?needAccess=true&journalCode=cjss20">research</a>, we interviewed a dog breeder who wanted to create “our very own Zimbred Mastiff” suited to Zimbabwe’s environment, with its own breeders’ association. Yet these hybrid dogs were the product of hybrid bodies of knowledge. Purists within the urban “dog fancy” opposed such experimental breeding, fearing that this would produce monsters: <em>mabhinya embwa</em> (canine thugs or brutes). </p>
<p>Indeed, for some young men in Harare, such dogs operated as projections of their own masculinity. This new investment in dogs – both economic and emotional – created a new economic and social identity for these men. But city authorities worried that they were emulating <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/016059760703100403">“American ghetto culture”</a> based on <a href="https://www.herald.co.zw/mans-feared-best-friend/">illegal dog-fighting</a>. Anxiety over dogs mirrored <a href="https://www.sundaymail.co.zw/mans-best-friend-can-be-worst-enemy">anxieties</a> over an urban under-class of dangerous young men. </p>
<h2>Gone to the dogs?</h2>
<p>Our tracing of dog history in Zimbabwe showed that political independence brought to power a regime that was prepared to tolerate African “traditional” dog-keeping in the city. This increased complaints about urban free-roaming dogs and a new African modernity that often challenged white dog-owning. Dog rearing regimes came to blend aspects of western breeding standards and African tradition with shifting ideas from international and local working-class cultures and from African middle-class modernity.</p>
<p>The human residents of Harare imagined dogs in multiple, changing and conflicting ways that were contoured by power relations. Dogs have been useful metaphors in re-figuring the race, gender and class order and re-imagining the political order in a post-colonial state.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/163934/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Innocent Dande is affiliated with the International Studies Group, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Professor Sandra Swart does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>How Harare has dealt with its urban canine citizens over the years following independence reflects the competing visions of a modern city.Innocent Dande, Post-doctoral research fellow in the International Studies Group, University of the Free StateProfessor Sandra Swart, Professor of History, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1620352021-07-15T13:39:27Z2021-07-15T13:39:27ZHow the history of Zimbabwe played out on the country’s cricket fields<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410100/original/file-20210707-19-ehu5t2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Zimbabwe's Sikandar Raza (R) celebrates with teammate Brian Mudzinganyama at the Harare Sports Club in 2020.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Simon Maina/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When I was 17 years old, I travelled to India for the first time with my parents. At a food stall in Goa, the owner asked us where we were from. When we said Zimbabwe, he responded “Oh, you guys have a cricket team. They don’t play so well.” </p>
<p>The comment was, in 2006, unfortunately accurate. But the history of the cricket in Zimbabwe was also connected by historical links between the two countries. In my <a href="https://www.ohioswallow.com/book/Sports+in+Africa%2C+Past+and+Present#:%7E:text=%22A%20long%20overdue%20project%20by,studies%20as%20a%20humanities%20subject.&text=It%20challenges%20longstanding%20racial%2C%20ethnic,prescribed%20social%20and%20cultural%20identities">book chapter</a>, The Gist of the Game is Played Out on the Edges: The History of an Indian Cricket Team in Africa 1934-1995, which is based on an <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03057070.2019.1642041">academic paper</a> I wrote, I look at these ties and how they evolved over half a century.</p>
<p>Back in 1934, nine immigrant men formed the Young Merchants Cricket Club in the city of Salisbury in Southern <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Rhodesia">Rhodesia</a>. Seven years later they renamed it the Oriental Cricket Club. They had all crossed the Indian Ocean in recent decades from <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Gujarat">Gujarat</a> on the western coast of the Indian subcontinent looking for opportunities in a new colony. </p>
<p>They were the first Indian cricket team in the country. Over time, they transformed from being a ragtag group of men who played the sport for entertainment into a formally structured organisation that survived all the way into the 21st century.</p>
<p>Zimbabwean cricket is, once again, in a state of <a href="https://www.icc-cricket.com/news/2184637">disarray and chaos</a>. Its performance in international matches and tournaments is pitiful. And, stymied by a lack of participation as well an outlet for upward progress for its players beyond league games, the team’s grounds, the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Sunrise-Sports-Club-110005622422249/">Sunrise Sports Club</a> today host only social cricket.</p>
<p>But the history of the team, as well as the history of cricket in Zimbabwe, shows that the country had decades of cosmopolitan engagement with a social and cultural world beyond its borders, and that they were a significant part of Rhodesia’s transition to <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/zimbabwe">Zimbabwe</a>. </p>
<p>By including the men of Sunrise Sports Club within this reimagining of a Zimbabwean national culture, it becomes clear how the country’s history played out, quite literally, on the cricket field.</p>
<h2>Pre independence</h2>
<p>Cricket was brought to Rhodesia in the late 19th century by the country’s first white settlers. These men called themselves “pioneers” for whom the bat-and-ball game represented a legacy of colonialism and empire. </p>
<p>The Oriental Cricket Club aspired to become ideal colonial subjects by using the game as a way to claim affinity with white settler society, rather than the majority African population. For them, the game of the empire provided a means of inclusion in the elite sporting life of the colonial city. They played with other Indian teams in the country and participated in local cricketing leagues.</p>
<p>But as the white settler government consolidated Rhodesia’s status as a self-governing colony, discrimination against non-European populations intensified. Cricket was an elite sport requiring specialised equipment and grounds that remained out of the reach of ordinary Africans. For their part Indians faced discrimination whenever they played against white teams. They were prevented from changing or eating at white sports clubs and restricted from opening their own sports grounds in white neighbourhoods.</p>
<p>As a result, Indian cricket teams in Southern Rhodesia, including the Oriental Cricket Club, began to use the sport as a means of connecting to an Indian tradition of the game and a nationalist Indian identity. </p>
<p>Postcolonial India began to emerge as a strong contender in international cricket, triumphing over its former coloniser. Rather than only playing against white teams, the Oriental members also played against other diasporic Indian cricket teams in the region. Games were played in South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, as well as their neighbours of Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland.</p>
<p>More importantly, they realised the need to have a space of their own where they could play the game on their own terms, not subject to the discriminatory conditions imposed on them by white society.</p>
<p>In 1969, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/mohandas-karamchand-gandhi">the centenary of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth</a>, the Oriental team officially opened its new grounds at the Sunrise Sports Club, located in the Indian neighbourhood of Ridgeview in Salisbury. The team’s name was officially changed to Sunrise. </p>
<h2>Post independence</h2>
<p>As the 1970s progressed, it became clear that the tides of change that had permeated the rest of the continent were <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Southern-Africa/Independence-and-decolonization-in-Southern-Africa">penetrating</a> Rhodesia’s borders. Still under white minority rule, the country had declared <a href="https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/southern-rhodesias-unilateral-declaration-independence-udi/">unilateral independence from the UK in 1965 </a>. But international sanctions and civil war threatened the white government’s hold, and by 1979, change was in the air. </p>
<p>Fearing retaliation for the years of oppression if a black-majority government came to power, white Rhodesians were unsure of their status in the new country. But, on his election in 1980, Zimbabwe’s new leader, Robert Mugabe, <a href="https://www.accord.org.za/ajcr-issues/reconciliation-conciliation-integration-and-national-healing/">called for reconciliation</a> between black and white, words that defined the spirit of the country’s first decade of independence.</p>
<p>Rhodesia became <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/zimbabwe">Zimbabwe in 1980</a>, and less than a decade later, the Sunrise management committee began actively recruiting African players for the team, hoping to take part in a post colonial sporting culture as well as aid Zimbabwe’s play for test status with the International Cricketing Council.</p>
<p>Several Indian players and former Sunrise members, including the all-rounder and left-handed batsman Ali Shah, were drafted into the international team, representing both their community as well as their country. </p>
<p>The game that had once been played as a colonial inheritance, and then as a legacy of an Indian identity, became a way for the players to find inclusion in a nationalist Zimbabwean sporting culture.</p>
<p>But this period of hope and change did not last long. </p>
<p>In 1995, <a href="https://www.espncricinfo.com/player/henry-olonga-55675">Henry Olonga</a> was elected the first black player to the international team. His selection caused waves in Zimbabwean cricket. Black members of the Zimbabwe Cricket Union leadership pushed for the selection of more black players. The remaining white members dug in their heels and insisted on keeping mostly white players on the team. </p>
<p>Several white players left. And the conflict over the racial composition of the national side translated to the local league level. Once dominated by white cricket teams, it has now been reduced to a few clubs who still participate in social tournaments. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382999/original/file-20210208-17-yrh1j8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A turquoise book cover with yellow text reading 'Sports in Africa: Past and Present' and a black illustration that is the silhouette of a man running, she shape of the African continent emerging behind him." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382999/original/file-20210208-17-yrh1j8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382999/original/file-20210208-17-yrh1j8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382999/original/file-20210208-17-yrh1j8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382999/original/file-20210208-17-yrh1j8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382999/original/file-20210208-17-yrh1j8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382999/original/file-20210208-17-yrh1j8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382999/original/file-20210208-17-yrh1j8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ohio University Press</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In many ways, this has been a story about Zimbabwean cricket, rather than one simply about the history of the Sunrise Sports Club cricket team. Sport, and specifically cricket, provided a way for Indians to make themselves visible, and navigate the racial hierarchies and structures of colonial and postcolonial society in Zimbabwe. </p>
<p>While cricket has been seen as both a British and an Indian sport, the case of the Sunrise team suggests that they drew from both these inheritances in the 1980s to aspire towards an <em>African</em> citizenship. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article is one of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa/search?q=%23SportInAfricaSeries">series</a> on the state of African sport. The articles are each based on a chapter in the new <a href="https://www.ohioswallow.com/book/Sports+in+Africa%2C+Past+and+Present#:%7E:text=%22A%20long%20overdue%20project%20by,studies%20as%20a%20humanities%20subject.&text=It%20challenges%20longstanding%20racial%2C%20ethnic,prescribed%20social%20and%20cultural%20identities">book</a> Sports in Africa: Past and Present published by <a href="https://www.ohioswallow.com">Ohio University Press</a>. You can find others in the series here.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162035/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Trishula Patel's research for this article was supported by funding from a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad fellowship, the Cosmos Club, and Georgetown University. </span></em></p>Nine immigrants founded a cricket club in 1934 in Rhodesia. The Sunrise club survives to this day, part of Zimbabwe’s national culture.Trishula Patel, Adjunct Lecturer, Georgetown UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1464082021-06-17T15:10:07Z2021-06-17T15:10:07ZKenneth Kaunda: the last giant of African nationalism and benign autocrat left a mixed legacy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358636/original/file-20200917-24-1xzswgv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Former Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda at the inauguration of former South African president Thabo Mbeki in 2004.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/dr-kenneth-kaunda-former-president-zambia-born">Kenneth Kaunda</a>, the former president of Zambia, who has <a href="https://www.sabcnews.com/sabcnews/former-president-kenneth-kaunda-passes-away-aged-97/">died in hospital in the capital, Lusaka</a>, at the age of 97, was the last of the giants of 20th century African nationalism. He was also one of the few to depart with his reputation still intact. But perhaps more than any of his contemporaries, the standing of the man who ruled over Zambia for 27 years is clouded with ambiguity.</p>
<p>The charismatic president who won accolades for bowing out peacefully after losing an election was also the authoritarian who introduced a one-party state. The pioneer of “African socialism” was the man who cut a supply-side deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The nationalist leader known for personal probity planned to give huge tracts of farmland to an Indian guru. The revolutionary who gave sanctuary to liberation movements was also a friend of US presidents.</p>
<p>I met him in 1989 when I helped organise a delegation of 120 white South African notables for a conference with the then-banned and exiled <a href="https://www.anc1912.org.za/brief-history-anc">African National Congress</a>, which was fighting for the liberation of black South Africans, in Lusaka. “KK”, as he was known, shed tears as he welcomed guests, who included the <a href="https://hsf.org.za/about/about-the-helen-suzman-foundation">liberal MP Helen Suzman</a>, known for her defiant opposition to the apartheid government.</p>
<p>By then, he’d been president for a quarter of a century and seemed a permanent fixture at the apex of southern African politics. And yet, as it turned out, he was on his final lap.</p>
<p>He exuded an image of the benign monarch, a much-loved father to his people, known for his endearing quirks – safari suits, waving white handkerchiefs, ballroom dancing, singing his own songs while cycling, and crying in public. And yet there was also a hard edge to the politics and persona of the man, whose powerful personality helped make Zambia a major player in Africa and the world for three decades.</p>
<h2>The early years</h2>
<p>Kenneth David Kaunda was born in Chinsali, Northern Zambia, on October 24 1924. Like so many of his generation of African liberation leaders, he came from a family of the mission-educated middle class. He was the baby among eight children. His father was a Presbyterian missionary-teacher and his mother was the first qualified African woman teacher in the country.</p>
<p>He followed his parents’ profession, first in Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia), where he became a head teacher before his 21st birthday. He also taught in then Tanganyika (Tanzania), where he became a lifelong admirer of future president Julius Nyerere, whose “Ujamaa” brand of African socialism he tried to follow.</p>
<p>After returning home, Kaunda campaigned against the British plan for a <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230270916_12">federation</a> of Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, which would increase the powers of white settlers. He took up politics full-time, learning the ropes through working for the liberal Legislative Council member <a href="https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-33474">Sir Stewart Gore-Browne</a>. Soon after, as secretary general of the Northern Rhodesian African National Congress, he was jailed for two months with hard labour for distributing <a href="https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/zambians-campaign-independence-1944-1964">“subversive literature”</a>.</p>
<p>After his release he clashed with his organisation’s president, Harry Nkumbula, who took a more conciliatory approach to colonial rule. Kaunda led the breakaway Zambian African National Congress, which was promptly banned. He was <a href="https://biography.yourdictionary.com/kenneth-david-kaunda">jailed for nine months</a>, further boosting his status.</p>
<p>A new movement, the United National Independence Party <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3172067">(UNIP)</a>), chose Kaunda as its leader after his release. He travelled to America and <a href="https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/book/kenneth-kaunda-the-united-states-and-southern-africa/introduction-kenneth-kaunda-and-zambia-united-states-relations-before-1975">met Martin Luther King</a>. Inspired by King and Mahatma Gandhi, he launched the <a href="https://cdn.website-editor.net/74225855d7734800bb2b5c38f2c1cf16/files/uploaded/chachacha.pdf">“Cha-cha-cha” civil disobedience campaign</a>.</p>
<p>In 1962, encouraged by Kaunda’s moves to pacify the white settlers, the British acceded to self-rule, followed by full independence two years later. He emerged as the first Zambian president after <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/25/newsid_2658000/2658325.stm">UNIP won the election</a>.</p>
<h2>The challenges of independence</h2>
<p>One challenge for the newly independent Zambia related to the colonial education system. There were no universities and fewer than half a percent of pupils had completed primary school. Kaunda introduced a policy of free books and low fees. In 1966 he became the first chancellor of the new <a href="https://www.unza.zm/international/?p=history">University of Zambia</a>. Several other universities and tertiary education facilities followed.</p>
<p>Long after he was ousted as president, Kaunda continued to be warmly received in African capitals because of his role in allowing liberation movements to have bases in Lusaka. This came at considerable economic cost to his country, which also endured military raids from the South Africans and Rhodesians.</p>
<p>At the same time, he joined apartheid South Africa’s hard-line prime minister <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/balthazar-johannes-vorster">BJ Vorster</a> in mediating a failed bid for an internal settlement in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) in 1975. He attempted the same in South West Africa (Namibia), which was then administered by South Africa. But <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/pieter-willem-botha">President PW Botha</a>, who succeeded Vorster after his death, showed no interest.</p>
<p>Kaunda helped lead the <a href="https://www.nti.org/learn/treaties-and-regimes/non-aligned-movement-nam/">Non-Aligned Movement</a>, which brought together states that did not align with either the Soviets or the Americans during the Cold War. He broke bread with anyone who showed an interest in Zambia, including Romania’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nicolae-Ceausescu">Nicolai Ceausescu</a> and Iraq’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/saddam-hussein-how-a-deadly-purge-of-opponents-set-up-his-ruthless-dictatorship-120748">Saddam Hussein</a>, while also cultivating successive American presidents (having more success with <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/james-carter/">Jimmy Carter</a> than <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/ronald-reagan/">Ronald Reagan</a>). He invited China to help build the <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/1983/0330/033064.html">Tazara Railway</a> and bought 16 MIG-21 fighter jets from the Soviet Union <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/1980/0205/020532.html">in 1980</a>.</p>
<h2>African humanism</h2>
<p>Kaunda’s economic policy was framed by his belief in what he called “African humanism” but also by necessity. He inherited an economy under foreign control and moved to remedy this. For example, the mines owned by the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/British-South-Africa-Company">British South African Company</a> (founded by <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/cecil-john-rhodes">Cecil John Rhodes</a>) were acquired as a result of colonial conquest in 1890. Kaunda’s threats to nationalise without compensation prompted major concessions from BSAC.</p>
<p>He promoted a planned economy, leading to “development plans” that involved the state’s Industrial Development Corporation acquiring 51% equity in major foreign-owned companies. The policy was undermined by the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/mar/03/1970s-oil-price-shock">1973 spike in the oil price</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1973/02/04/archives/as-copper-goes-so-goes-zambia.html">fall in the price of copper</a>, which made up 95% of Zambia’s exports.</p>
<p>The consequent balance of payments crisis led to Zambia having the world’s second highest debt relative to GDP, <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/11985187.pdf">prompting IMF intervention</a>. Kaunda at first resisted but by 1989 was forced to bow to its demands. Parastatals were partially privatised, spending was slashed, food subsidies ended, prices rocketed and Kaunda’s support plummeted. </p>
<p>Like many anti-colonial leaders, he’d come to view multi-party democracy as a western concept that fomented conflict and tribalism. This view was encouraged by the 1964 uprising of the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1964/08/13/archives/rhodesia-holds-leader-of-cult-kaunda-says-alice-lenshina-calls-for.html">Lumpa religious sect</a>. He banned all parties other than UNIP in 1968 and Zambia officially became a one-party state four years later.</p>
<p>His government became increasingly autocratic and intolerant of dissent, centred on his personality cult. But Kaunda will go down in history as a relatively benign autocrat who avoided the levels of repression and corruption of so many other one-party rulers.</p>
<p>Julius Nyerere, who retired in 1985, tried to persuade his friend to follow suit, but Kaunda pressed on. After surviving a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1990/07/01/world/failed-zambia-coup-weakens-leader.html">coup attempt in 1990</a> and following food riots, he reluctantly acceded to the demand for a multi-party election in 1991. </p>
<p>His popularity could not survive the chaos prompted by price rises and was not helped by the revelation that he’d planned to grant <a href="http://www.minet.org/TM-EX/Fall-91">more than a quarter of Zambia’s land</a> to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (who promised to create a “heaven on earth”). The trade union leader Frederick Chiluba won in a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1991/11/02/world/zambian-voters-defeat-kaunda-sole-leader-since-independence.html">landslide victory in 1991</a>.</p>
<h2>The last years</h2>
<p>Kaunda <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4283286.stm">won kudos abroad</a> for what was considered to be his gracious response to electoral defeat, but the new government was less magnanimous. It placed him under house arrest after alleging a coup attempt; then <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1999/04/01/world/founder-of-zambia-is-declared-stateless-in-high-court-ruling.html">declared him stateless</a> when he planned to run in the 1996 election (on the grounds that his father was born in Malawi), which he successfully challenged in court. He survived an <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/news/shot-kaunda-claims-attempt-on-life-1.99800">assassination attempt in 1997</a>, getting grazed by a bullet. One of his sons, Wezi, was shot dead outside their home in 1999.</p>
<p>The 1986 AIDS death of another son, Masuzgo, inspired him to campaign around HIV issues far earlier than most, and he stepped this up over the next two decades. After Chiluba’s departure, he returned to favour and became a <a href="https://thenews-chronicle.com/a-life-that-defies-expectations-a-tribute-to-kenneth-kaunda-at-96/">roving ambassador for Zambia</a>. He reduced his public role following the <a href="https://www.lusakatimes.com/2012/09/19/mama-betty-kaunda-dies/">2012 death</a> of his wife of 66 years, Betty.</p>
<p>Kaunda will be remembered as a giant of 20th century African nationalism – a leader who, at great cost, gave refuge to revolutionary movements, a relatively benign autocrat who reluctantly introduced democracy to his country and an international diplomat who punched well above his weight in world affairs.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/146408/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gavin Evans does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Kaunda will be remembered as a giant of 20th century African nationalism – a leader who gave refuge to revolutionary movements, a relatively benign autocrat and an international diplomat.Gavin Evans, Lecturer, Culture and Media department, Birkbeck, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1443092020-08-12T08:29:36Z2020-08-12T08:29:36ZRepression in Zimbabwe exposes South Africa’s weakness<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352286/original/file-20200811-18-i8su44.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Emmerson Mnangagwa of Zimbabwe and President Cyril Ramaphiosa of South Africa in 2018.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">GCIS</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South African president Cyril Ramaphosa’s <a href="https://ewn.co.za/2020/08/10/sa-special-envoys-get-red-carpet-welcome-in-zim-amid-tensions">despatch of envoys to Zimbabwe</a> in a bid to defuse the latest crisis, in which the government has engaged in a vicious crackdown on opponents, journalists and the freedoms of speech, association and protest, has been widely welcomed.</p>
<p>Such has been the brutality of the latest assault on human rights by President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s regime that something had to be done. And, as the big brother neighbour next door, South Africa is the obvious actor to do it. </p>
<p>It may be guaranteed that Ramaphosa’s envoys – <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/fholisani-sydney-mufamadi">Sydney Mufamadi</a>, a former government minister turned academic, and <a href="https://www.gov.za/about-government/contact-directory/baleka-mbete-honourable">Baleka Mbete</a>, a former deputy president of South Africa, former speaker of the National Assembly and former chairperson of the African National Congress (ANC) – were sent off to Harare with a very limited brief. They were accompanied by <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/who-is-ngoako-ramatlhodi-29368263">Advocate Ngoako Ramatlhodi</a> and diplomat <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/ndumiso-ntshinga-13b3a348/?originalSubdomain=ke">Ndumiso Ntshinge</a>.</p>
<p>The mission quickly ran into trouble. The envoys returned to South Africa without <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/ramaphosas-envoys-snub-zimbabwean-opposition-parties-after-meeting-president-mnangagwa-20200811">meeting members of the opposition</a>.</p>
<p>Observers and activists are rightly <a href="https://www.capetalk.co.za/articles/392334/zimbabweans-skeptical-as-past-envoys-in-mbeki-mugabe-era-used-as-a-whitewash-or-cover-up">sceptical</a> about how much will come out of it. The best that is seriously hoped for is that South African diplomacy will bring about immediate relief. This would include: the release of journalists, opposition figures and civil society activists from jail; promises to withdraw the military from the streets; perhaps even some jogging of the Mnangagwa government to meet with its opponents and to make some trifling concessions.</p>
<p>After all, the pattern is now well established: crisis, intervention, promises by the Zanu-PF regime to behave, and then relapse after a decent interval to the sort of behaviour that prompted the latest crisis in the first place. </p>
<p>But in a previous era, South Africa once made Zimbabwe’s dependence count.</p>
<h2>South Africa has done it once</h2>
<p>Back in 1976, apartheid South Africa’s Prime Minister John B. Vorster fell in with US plans to bring about a settlement in then Rhodesia, and hence relieve international pressure on his own government, by withdrawing military and economic support and closing the border between the two countries. </p>
<p>Ian Smith had little choice but to comply. Today, no one, not even the most starry-eyed hopefuls among the ranks of the opposition and civil society in Zimbabwe, believe that Ramaphosa’s South Africa will be prepared to wield such a big stick. The time is long past that Pretoria’s admonitions of bad behaviour are backed by a credible threat of sanction and punishment.</p>
<p>So, why is it that Vorster could bring about real change, twisting Smith’s arm to engage in negotiations with his liberation movement opponents that eventually led to a settlement and a transition to majority rule, and ANC governments – from the time of Nelson Mandela onwards – have been so toothless? </p>
<p>If we want an answer, we need to look at three fundamental differences between 1976 and now.</p>
<p>First, Vorster was propelled into pressuring Smith by the US, which was eager to halt the perceived advance of communism by bringing about a settlement in Rhodesia which was acceptable to the West. In turn, Vorster thought that by complying with US pressure, his regime would earn Washington’s backing as an anti-communist redoubt. Today there is no equivalent spur to act. It is unlikely that US president Donald Trump could point to Zimbabwe on a map. </p>
<p>Britain, the European Union and other far-off international actors all <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/opinion/arrest-of-zimbabwe-journalist-shows-mnangagwas-heavy-hand-4b45fffd-43a2-4f0f-a81b-0feca5ebb6eb">decry</a> the human rights abuses in Zimbabwe. But they have largely given up on exerting influence, save to extend vitally needed humanitarian aid (and thank God for that). Zimbabwe has retreated into irrelevance, except as a case study as a failed state. They are not likely to reenter the arena and throw good money and effort at the Zimbabwean problem until they are convinced that something significant, some serious political change for the good, is likely to happen.</p>
<p>Second, South African intervention today is constrained by liberation movement solidarity. They may have their differences and arguments, but Zanu-PF and the ANC, which governs South Africa, remain bound together by the conviction that they are the embodiments of <a href="https://theconversation.com/southern-africas-liberation-movements-can-they-abandon-old-bad-habits-101197">the logic of history</a>. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-liberators-turn-into-oppressors-a-study-of-southern-african-states-57213">How liberators turn into oppressors: a study of southern African states</a>
</strong>
</em>
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<p>As the leading liberators of their respective countries, they believe they represent the true <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-anc-insists-its-still-a-political-vanguard-this-is-what-ails-democracy-in-south-africa-141938">interests</a> of the people. If the people say otherwise in an election, this can only be because they have been duped or bought. It cannot be allowed that history should be put into reverse.</p>
<p>Former South African president Thabo Mbeki played a crucial role in forging a coalition government between Zanu-PF and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) after the latter effectively won the parliamentary election <a href="https://theconversation.com/sham-or-not-election-flaws-unlikely-to-unseat-mugabe-16737">in 2008</a>. But South Africa held back from endorsing reliable indications that MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai had also won the presidential election against Robert Mugabe. </p>
<p>As a result, Tsvangirai was forced into a runoff presidential contest, supposedly because he had won less than 50% of the poll. The rest is history. </p>
<p>Zanu-PF struck back with a truly vicious campaign against the MDC, <a href="http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1817057,00.html">Tsvangirai withdrew from the contest</a>, and Mugabe remained as president, controlling the levers of power. The ANC looked on, held its nose, and scuttled home to Pretoria saying the uneasy coalition it left behind was a job well done.</p>
<p>Third, successive Zanu-PF governments have become increasingly militarised. Mnangagwa may have put his military uniform aside, but it is the military which now calls the shots. It ultimately decides who will front for its power. There have been numerous statements by top ranking generals that they will never accept a government other than one <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-zimbabwe-politics/zimbabwe-army-wont-allow-opposition-to-rule-minister-idUSKCN1IO2B9">formed by Zanu-PF</a>. The African Union and Southern African Development Community have both <a href="https://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/compilation_democracy/lomedec.htm">outlawed coups</a>, but everyone knows that the Mnangagwa government is a military government in all but name.</p>
<h2>Lamentably inadequate</h2>
<p>So, it is all very well to call for a transitional government, one which would see Zanu-PF engaging with the opposition parties and civil society and promising a return to constitutional rule and the holding of a genuinely democratic election. But we have been there before.</p>
<p>The fundamental issue is how Zimbabwe’s military can be removed from power, and how Zimbabwean politics can be <a href="https://theconversation.com/zimbabwe-beware-the-military-is-looking-after-its-own-interests-not-democracy-87712">demilitarised</a>. Without the military behind it, Zanu-PF would be revealed as a paper tiger, and would meet with a heavy defeat in a genuinely free and fair election.</p>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.pindula.co.zw/Ibbo_Mandaza">Ibbo Mandaza</a>, the veteran activist and analyst in Harare, what Zimbabwe needs is the <a href="https://www.thestandard.co.zw/2020/05/03/no-way-national-transitional-authority/">establishment of a transitional authority</a> tasked with returning the country to constitutional government and enabling an economic recovery. Nice idea, but a pipe dream.</p>
<p>No one in their right mind believes that a Ramaphosa government, whose own credibility is increasingly threadbare because of its bungled response to the coronavirus epidemic, its corruption and its economic incompetence, has the stomach to bring this about. We can expect fine words and promises and raised hopes, but lamentably little action until the next crisis comes around, when the charade will start all over again.</p>
<p>Any relief, any improvement on the present situation will be welcomed warmly in Zimbabwe. But no one in Harare – whether in government, opposition or civil society – will really believe that Ramaphosa’s increasingly ramshackle government will be prepared to tackle the issue that really matters: removing the military from power.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144309/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Roger Southall is author of Liberation Movements in Power: Party and State in Southern Africa.</span></em></p>The time is long past that Pretoria’s admonitions of bad behaviour by Zimbabwe’s leaders are backed by a credible threat of sanction and punishment.Roger Southall, Professor of Sociology, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1179862019-05-30T11:07:31Z2019-05-30T11:07:31ZA tribute to Zimbabwean liberation hero Dumiso Dabengwa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278494/original/file-20190607-52748-jxtqi0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A fitting way to pay tribute to Zimbabwean liberation war hero <a href="https://www.polity.org.za/article/sacp-sacp-expresses-its-heartfelt-condolences-to-the-dabengwa-family-the-people-of-zimbabwe-and-southern-africa-for-the-great-loss-encountered-2019-05-24">Dumiso “DD” Dabengwa</a>, who has died aged 79, is to depict a snapshot history of the late 1970s and the 1980s that shows the stresses of his job during and just after Zimbabwe’s war of liberation.</p>
<p>As the head of intelligence for <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Zimbabwe-Peoples-Revolutionary-Army/dp/1436361559">Zimbabwe African People’s Revolutionary Army</a>, the armed wing of Zimbabwe African People’s Union (Zapu), he faced two enemies in the late seventies: the Rhodesian forces and those of Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwean African National Union (Zanu), the nationalist party that split off from <a href="https://www.academia.edu/38948000/The_split_of_ZAPU_2_">Zapu in 1963</a> and would eventually lead Zimbabwe. In the 1980s South Africa and the United Kingdom joined those antagonists. </p>
<p>Only psychologists could discern how Dabengwa maintained his legendary composure. He kept his head while everyone was losing theirs: a necessary trait for an intelligence supremo. </p>
<p>This tribute is inspired by a picture – probably taken in 1981 at the New Sarum airfield outside what was Salisbury – that’s making social media rounds following Dabengwa’s death. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1131547396960399361"}"></div></p>
<p>Dabengwa is shown standing with Rex Nhongo, commander of the newly integrated Zimbabwean military forces. The two young soldiers symbolise the unity to be forged out of Rhodesia’s and the two nationalist parties’ security forces as they entered Zimbabwe’s democratic dispensation. </p>
<p>That task’s difficulty is shown by the possibility that the two were on their way to Entumbane to calm the battles raging between the two nationalist armies, in which over 300 soldiers <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/27/obituaries/dumiso-dabengwa-dead.html">were killed</a>. But they would fail in these efforts and would land on different sides of Zimbabwe’s post liberation story. Dabengwa would be jailed by his erstwhile comrades. Nhongo would retire early, rich and still a power-broker in his party – until his fiery death in mid-<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331776137_Political_Accidents_in_Zimbabwe">2011</a>.</p>
<h2>Internecine violence</h2>
<p>About five years before 1981, an effort <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02589001.2012.639655">emerged</a> to create a united “people’s army” out of Zanu’s guerrilla forces, Zanla and Zipra.</p>
<p>Nhongo had once been a Zipra soldier, but left during Zapu’s devastating internecine disputes in the early 1970s. With Zanla’s commander in Zambia’s jails suspected of <a href="https://allnewsnetwork.wordpress.com/2011/03/12/who-killed-josiah-tongogara-and-herbert-chitepo/">murdering the national chairman of Zanu, Herbert Chitepo</a>, Nhongo was by 1976 at the head of Zanla. Thus he became the commander of the Zimbabwe People’s Army (Zipa), supposedly an attempt to unite the two nationalist armies. </p>
<p>But his heart was not in it. He ordered his soldiers on engaging the Rhodesian forces to <a href="https://academic.oup.com/hwj/article/57/1/79/675840">kill Zipra fighters first</a>. There were battles between the two armies in training camps. What should Dabengwa have done?</p>
<p>Zipra withdrew a good number of troops, but adhered to the agreement to unite the armies. As it happened, before too long Robert Mugabe (on his way to the top) and Nhongo sidelined the group that really believed in the unity project. Dabengwa told one of us (Moore) many years later that Zipa was too militaristic, ignoring democratic processes. He took a wait and see approach.</p>
<p>With the adherents to unity gone, Zanu’s anti-Zapu sentiments opened further. The party’s <a href="http://www.archives.gov.zw/">1978 political education</a> tract claimed that Zipra forces planned to let Zanla smash Rhodesia’s “racist state machinery” single-handedly. Once victory was achieved, Zipra would “crash (sic) Zanla and seize political power…” </p>
<h2>Gukurahundi</h2>
<p>These and <a href="https://cul.worldcat.org/title/march-11-movement-in-zapu-revolution-within-the-revolution/oclc/13564369">other Zanu-related imbroglios</a> made life very difficult for Dabengwa, a man entrusted with Zapu’s intelligence. </p>
<p>Yet with “freedom” – hastened by <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2017.1275108">Soviet assistance to ZPRA</a> – Zimbabwe became even more central to Cold War and South African intrigue. As Zimbabwean political scientist Miles Tendi <a href="https://www.zimlive.com/2019/05/27/dumiso-dabengwa-a-military-czar-without-peer-in-making-of-the-zimbabwean-state/">attests</a>, Dabengwa and Josiah Tongogara, then the top Zanla general, played a key role with the “Patriotic Front” (another effort at unity between the two main liberation parties) at the late 1979 <a href="https://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/5847/5/1979_Lancaster_House_Agreement.pdf">Lancaster House negotiations </a> that led to Zimbabwe’s new dispensation. </p>
<p>Dabengwa himself said in a <a href="http://www.cite.org.zw/videos/interview-with-dumiso-dabengwa/">mid-2018 interview</a> that he and Tongogara thought they could push the unity idea beyond an agreement to maintain unity at diplomatic negotiations, but remaining separate for all other purposes. They wanted <em>political</em> unity. They carried out research among the soldiers, who indicated agreement. Yet Tongogara’s <a href="https://bulawayo24.com/index-id-opinion-sc-columnist-byo-152947.html">suspicious death</a> as he drove to a Mozambican camp only days later killed that dream: <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=zi-tWekXbD8C&pg=PA19&lpg=PA19&dq=%22the+early+rain+which+washes+away+the+chaff+before+the+spring+rains%22&source=bl&ots=dWX2SIUj7r&sig=0aDLpmmQfN93e_RNJuKcBmGGEYI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwioi-joj6LWAhWE7hoKHRF_C7wQ6AEIOTAD#v=onepage&q=%22the%20early%20rain%20which%20washes%20away%20the%20chaff%20before%20the%20spring%20rains%22&f=false">Gukurahundi</a> mass killings and atrocities in Matabeleland were only steps away. </p>
<p>Dabengwa’s interview leaves little doubt about Gukurahundi’s roots:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>At independence the British had already made a decision with Mugabe to carry out this genocide. (They) had already decided to ensure that that no one of the Ndebele nation would be allowed to be leader in this country. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Conspiracy and persecution</h2>
<p>On 9 May 1980, just weeks after Zimbabwe’s 17 April freedom celebrations, Mugabe visited British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. He <a href="http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-%20guides/prime-ministers-office-records/">complained that</a> “some” in Zapu did “not accept the new situation”. They wanted to continue the fight and the government might have to act against them soon.</p>
<p><a href="http://researchdata.uwe.ac.uk/104/240/roh-oh-sta-da1-appr.pdf">Danny Stannard</a>, Rhodesia’s Special Branch director, stayed on during the new era. With then Minister of State Security Emmerson Mnangagwa, he organised the transition of Zimbabwe’s security services – precisely to keep the region Communist-free, Stannard told one of us in 2014. He thought Mnangagwa was the perfect man for that job. Stannard held Dabengwa in venomous disregard and was dead certain that in February 1982 his Soviet allies were rolling to the Entumbane barracks. </p>
<p>In March the Zapu cabinet ministers, Dabengwa, deputy armed forces commander Lookout Masuku, and four other Zapu officials were arrested and charged with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1983/03/25/world/a-fateful-trial-witty-ex-guerrilla-v-zimbabwe.html">treason</a>. Arms caches had been “discovered” on Zapu properties. </p>
<p>In December 1982 a Whitehall officer wondered if the British should reconsider support for a régime seemingly hell-bent on eliminating Zapu and its potential supporters. No, he wrote, “if we refuse military sales and aid” Mugabe might approach the USSR – albeit reluctantly. Other reasons to keep Mugabe on side included selling arms and jet fighters, as well as paving the road to Namibian and South African <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/07075332.2017.1309561">settlements</a>. </p>
<p>Treason charges for all but Dabengwa were dismissed in early April 1983. But, as he and the others walked out of court they were jailed again under the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1983/03/25/world/a-fateful-trial-witty-ex-guerrilla-v-zimbabwe.html">Emergency Powers Act</a>. </p>
<h2>Peacemaking</h2>
<p>By this time, the Fifth Brigade had been in Matabeleland for several months: Gukurahundi was underway with its terror, mass starvation, and murder. When they were released in 1986 Zapu had to stop the carnage, agreeing to be absorbed into Zanu (PF). Dabengwa’s reluctant agreement was essential; it took his authority, and that of Zapu leader <a href="https://pindula.co.zw/Joshua_Nkomo">Joshua Nkomo</a>, to persuade the Zipra ex-combatants and the Zapu youth to merge.</p>
<p>The Cold War was on its last legs. Zanu (PF) had won its war for a one-party state. During the 1990s, with Nkomo as vice-president in the revised Zanu (PF) government, Dabengwa took on posts ranging from Home Affairs minister to managing the long-gestating but never funded <a href="https://www.theindependent.co.zw/2011/01/06/matabeleland-zambezi-water-project-urgent/">Matabeleland Zambezi Water Project</a>. </p>
<p>He left government in 2000. In 2008 he abandoned the Zanu (PF) politburo and revived Zapu. </p>
<p>There cannot be a man deserving more to rest in peace than Dabengwa.</p>
<p><em>David Galbraith, a retired Professor of English at University of Toronto and who spent the early 1980s in Matabeleland, contributed to this article</em>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117986/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Only psychologists could discern how Dumiso Dabengwa maintained his legendary composure, a necessary trait for an intelligence supremo.David B. Moore, Professor of Development Studies and Visiting Fellow, Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, University of JohannesburgNqobile Zulu, Lecturer in Development Studies, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/998592018-07-16T14:15:04Z2018-07-16T14:15:04ZCan Zimbabwe finally ditch a history of violence and media repression?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227563/original/file-20180713-27045-2alah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Zanu-PF supporters at a peace rally in Harare.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA-EFE/Aaron Ufumeli</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Zimbabwe’s governing Zanu-PF is earnestly courting international legitimacy as the country approaches its first post-independence elections <a href="https://www.apnews.com/baee38cf5cd24282be5d7c332848a8b2">without Robert Mugabe</a>. </p>
<p>The party frequently uses clichés like “fresh start”, “new dispensation”, and “open for business” to signal its willingness to <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2018/01/24/africa/zimbabwe-president-emmerson-mnangagwa-davos-intl/index.html">engage with the West</a>. The talk has been matched by some action.</p>
<p>The government has repudiated most of its <a href="https://www.herald.co.zw/govt-amends-indigenisation-law/">indigenisation legislation</a>, and recently <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/62f28a38-5d0a-11e8-9334-2218e7146b04">applied to re-join</a> The Commonwealth. Additionally, <a href="https://www.zimbabwesituation.com/news/zimbabwe-invites-46-countries-to-observe-2018-polls/">46 countries and 15 regional bodies</a> have been invited to observe the elections. This includes many Western nations that had been excluded in recent years.</p>
<p>Their assessments will probably not be decided by technical factors. It seems unlikely that ongoing debates over <a href="https://www.newsday.co.zw/2018/06/zec-under-fire-over-undelivered-voters-roll/">the voter’s roll</a> or the prominence of ex-military personnel in the <a href="https://www.newsday.co.zw/2018/02/soldiers-make-15-zec-staff/">Zimbabwe Electoral Commission</a> will have much impact on the final judgements passed by the monitoring missions.</p>
<p>It’s more likely that the credibility of the elections will be shaped by issues such as political violence and media freedom. In both spheres, the legacy of colonialism and the liberation struggle weigh heavily. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://bulawayo24.com/index-id-opinion-sc-columnist-byo-71015.html">breakaway party</a> from the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (Zapu) in 1963, the Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu) emerged in a very fragile position. It endured violence against its members and was denied access to a free media. In later years, the party perpetrated and perpetuated the same tactics under which it was conceived – both as a liberation movement and in government.</p>
<p>There are a number of examples of how Zanu-PF drew on colonial-era repressive tactics in its post-independence quest for political primacy. These include the <a href="https://www.dailynews.co.zw/articles/2018/01/31/gukurahundi-is-mugabe-s-baby">Gukurahundi violence</a> under the Mugabe led government in the 1980s against areas predominantly supporting Zapu, the government’s 2005 <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/zimbabwe/zimbabwe-operation-murambatsvina-overview-and-summary">Operation Murambatsvina</a> which targeted properties belonging mostly to urban opposition supporters, and the 2008 <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jun/22/zimbabwe1">election run-off violence</a> after Mugabe lost the first round of voting.</p>
<p>As Zimbabweans head to the polls on July 30, this history looms large over the electorate and those responsible for overseeing its successful execution.</p>
<h2>History of political violence</h2>
<p>In July 1960, unprecedented protests in Zimbabwe’s two largest cities ushered in a new era of political violence in the British colony. A year later violence erupted within the liberation movement itself. In June 1961, the first significant attempt to form a breakaway nationalist movement in Zimbabwe was thwarted. Members of the <a href="https://zimhistassociation.wordpress.com/2018/03/27/the-first-split-in-zimbabwes-anti-colonial-struggle-continues-to-cast-shadows-over-contemporary-politics/">Zimbabwe National Party</a> (ZNP) were physically prevented from launching the party at their own press conference by <a href="http://www.sundaynews.co.zw/events-leading-to-banning-of-ndp/">National Democratic Party</a> (NDP) sympathisers.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227581/original/file-20180713-27024-1a70nja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227581/original/file-20180713-27024-1a70nja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227581/original/file-20180713-27024-1a70nja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227581/original/file-20180713-27024-1a70nja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227581/original/file-20180713-27024-1a70nja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227581/original/file-20180713-27024-1a70nja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227581/original/file-20180713-27024-1a70nja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE/Aaron Ufumeli</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The ill-fated efforts of the ZNP would have been prominent in the minds of Zanu founders when it was formed two years later. </p>
<p>Zapu, which replaced the NDP after it was banned, went to great lengths to beat Zanu into submission. The houses of Mugabe and Ndabaningi Sithole, the top leaders in Zanu, <a href="http://cba1415.web.unc.edu/files/2014/07/zapu.pdf">were stoned</a> after the new party was launched.</p>
<p>As other African nations became independent and Zimbabwe remained under minority rule, frustration mounted. This led to a determination to achieve majority rule by any means. A <a href="https://www.pambazuka.org/arts/roots-political-violence-go-deep-zimbabwe">culture of political violence</a> became institutionalised.</p>
<h2>Media Repression</h2>
<p>Assaults on the media were particularly prominent under white minority rule following the unilateral declaration of independence in 1965. <a href="https://www.scotsman.com/news/40-years-on-from-udi-zimbabwe-is-still-paying-the-price-1-1101979">Censors </a> redacted broad swathes of news stories, littering papers with blank pages.</p>
<p>This overt censorship was but a new manifestation of a repressive media heritage. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/scwmss/wmss/online/blcas/welensky.html">Political papers</a> of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/07/world/sir-roy-welensky-84-premier-of-african-federation-is-dead.html">Roy Welensky</a>, the second Prime Minister of the Federation to which Southern Rhodesia belonged from 1953 - 1963, reveal the invidious nature of attempts to control the press. His government covertly worked with journalists and editors to produce articles critical of the white opposition in newspapers that were nominally independent. He also consulted with the white publishers of newspapers geared toward a black audience about ways to promote his government.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://pdfproc.lib.msu.edu/?file=/DMC/African%20Journals/pdfs/Journal%20of%20the%20University%20of%20Zimbabwe/vol23n2/juz023002004.pdf"><em>Central African Examiner</em></a>, a news magazine that was theoretically independent and had links with <em>The Economist</em>, changed editors in the middle of the 1958 elections. The new editor, David Cole, was Welensky’s public relations adviser. </p>
<p>In 1961 the government considered blocking the sale of the colony’s newspaper titles catering to a predominantly black audience to the Thomson Newspaper Group. The concern was that it would be difficult to influence the editorial policy of papers with foreign ownership. Meanwhile, newspapers geared toward a predominantly white audience and owned by the South African based Argus Press were not seen as posing a threat.</p>
<p>The sale went ahead. But in August 1964 both the African Daily News (which had a pro-Zapu bias) and Zanu <a href="http://pdfproc.lib.msu.edu/?file=/DMC/African%20Journals/pdfs/Journal%20of%20the%20University%20of%20Zimbabwe/vol6n2/juz006002015.pdf">were banned</a>. </p>
<p>Zanu learnt the importance of media control in its early years. Once in power it exerted its own influence. Forty years after Zanu and the <em>African Daily News</em> were proscribed, Zanu-PF replicated the tactics when it <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2004/jan/22/pressandpublishing.Zimbabwenews">banned a newspaper, also known as the Daily News</a> amid a media clampdown.</p>
<h2>Eyes on Mnangagwa</h2>
<p>While President Emmerson Mnangagwa has backtracked from Mugabe’s more confrontational rhetoric, his political career is nearly as long as his predecessor’s. His political upbringing was profoundly shaped by the repressive measures the nationalists endured and took up in the 1960s to dismantle the unjust system that governed them.</p>
<p>Zanu-PF’s assaults on the media and penchant for violence are reflective of similar tactics that were used against the party during the colonial era. And they have been critical to its ability to <a href="https://www.theindependent.co.zw/2016/06/10/violence-dominates-zim-political-history/">obtain and retain power</a> for 37 years. </p>
<p>Will Zimbabwe be able to turn the corner and move toward a more equitable election campaign in which the historic trajectory of media repression and political violence is fundamentally altered? If the answer is yes, Mnangagwa will have made a significant stride in truly ushering in a “<a href="https://www.herald.co.zw/the-first-100-days-of-the-new-dispensation/">new dispensation</a>”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99859/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brooks Marmon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The credibility of Zimbabwe’s elections will depend on issues like political violence and media freedom.Brooks Marmon, PhD Student, Centre of African Studies, The University of EdinburghLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/882782017-11-29T13:25:33Z2017-11-29T13:25:33ZOld-world diction, flawed punditry and the fight for Zimbabwe’s future<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196931/original/file-20171129-29123-10rfpxp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Kim Ludbrook</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Words and phrases aren’t empty vessels – they carry the weight of human experience, and the hopes they generate help to set actual agendas.</p>
<p>I was reminded of this as I listened to Robert Mugabe’s now infamous “address to the nation” recorded in State House the previous Sunday evening, <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/11/resignation-robert-mugabe-addresses-nation-171119192306427.html">November 19, 2017</a>, delivered at the midpoint of the six-day <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2017/11/15/soldiers-seize-zimbabwe-state-broadcaster-anti-mugabe-coup-talk-intensifies">transitional drama</a> in Zimbabwe. He commented on the developments swirling around him, and gave his reasons for refusing to step down.</p>
<p>Drawing on a vocabulary from the early 20th century, and delivered in his trademark old-world diction, his remarks could well have been directed at the arch-imperialist <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/cecil-john-rhodes">Cecil John Rhodes</a> – one of the few people in history to have a country named after him during his own lifetime – rather than the <a href="http://dailypost.ng/2017/11/20/zimbabwe-full-text-mugabes-address-nation/">people of Zimbabwe</a>.</p>
<p>At one point <a href="http://time.com/5031128/zimbabwe-robert-mugabe-does-not-resign/">he said</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The congress is due in a few weeks from now. I will preside over its processes, which must not be prepossessed by any acts calculated to undermine it or compromise the outcomes in the eyes of the public.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In one reading, the speech seems quaint, even preposterous. In another, Mugabe’s return to the language of the past makes perfect sense. </p>
<h2>British colony</h2>
<p>The British colony known as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Southern-Rhodesia">“Southern Rhodesia”</a> was founded during a period of intense political ferment. In the 1920s and 1930s, when its formal borders were being finalised, increasingly self-assertive Anglophone colonies – Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa – were seeking a new relationship with Britain.</p>
<p>They emerged from this period as <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=Dominions+of+the+British+Crown&client=safari&rls=en&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjVqdSZsOPXAhWMVRQKHbQLAyQQsAQIhgE">“Dominions of the British Crown”</a>, to use the long-hand phrase. This meant a nominal weakening of Whitehall’s hold over their domestic affairs. But their foreign policy and their capacity to make war remained closely tied to Britain’s imperial ambitions.</p>
<p>The 200 000-odd whites of largely British descent who occupied Southern Rhodesia at the time were less ambitious (and less powerful) than their settler counterparts in neighbouring South Africa. But, seizing the spirit of the times, and using its language, the British government granted them “self-government” in 1923. This sealed the exclusion of the majority from governing their own country. And, it gave the white minority the right to set the rules on two crucial issues: <a href="http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0001/000161/016163eo.pdf">race discrimination</a>, as well as <a href="http://www.raceandhistory.com/Zimbabwe/factsheet.html">access to land</a>.</p>
<p>After the <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/world-war-ii-history">Second World War</a>, in the face of calls for liberation from white domination, the settlers’ struggle to retain this decision-making power, together with the country’s contested constitutional link to London, provided the platform for <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/robert-mugabe">Robert Mugabe’s own career</a>, as school teacher, then as freedom fighter, and finally as president.</p>
<p>Seen against this background, the legalisms and concordances of the “address to the nation” are understandable because they reflect the language in which the struggle for Zimbabwe was conducted.</p>
<h2>The trap of key words</h2>
<p>Did Mugabe intend to show that the hallmarks of imperial government had not been eroded after almost 40 years of majority rule? Or is there a more obvious explanation: that Mugabe (or his speech writers) had failed to appreciate how political language had changed during the 37 years of his presidency?</p>
<p>It seems difficult to believe the first, so the second explanation seems plausible. This is because the language that has linked the power of neoliberal economics to democratic transformation was entirely absent from Mugabe’s remarks. Keywords – terms like “governance”, “accountability”, “deliverables” and “transparency” were notably absent.</p>
<p>But over the past week, as the events have unfolded, these (and similar terms) have crept ever deeper into conversations about Zimbabwe. As punditry grows over the country’s future, it is fair to believe that their hold on the discourse around its future, both within and outside the country, will tighten further.</p>
<p>The core problem is that these words, and the diction in which they are used, offer a one-size-fits-all approach to solving complex sociopolitical situations. As a result, the single greatest failure of contemporary punditry is the refusal to recognise that context matters.</p>
<p>For the think-tank community these words, and the concordances in which they are embedded, promise a road map towards a bright new future. This is because the language appears to be freed from the strictures of ideology. </p>
<p>It isn’t, of course. Like all ideologies, it is nothing more than a set of ideas and beliefs that relies on commmon-sensical explanations of social reality. It is certainly not value-free. </p>
<p>Events over the past two decades – civil wars, Brexit, Trumpism – have tarnished the claims to the truth of neoliberalism.</p>
<p>This brings us back to the conversation about the future of Zimbabwe. The notion that <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-11-27-op-ed-mnangagwas-zimbabwe-breakout-nation/#.Wh6cWGMQgUU">“economic liberalisation”</a> will offer the country a quick and easy pathway to a prosperous future is simplistic and misleading.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88278/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Vale receives funding from the University of Johannesburg, Nanyang Technological University, and the National Research Foundation
. </span></em></p>The single greatest failure of current punditry is the refusal to recognise that context matters. A one-size-fits-all approach to solving Zimbabwe’s complex set of problems simply won’t help.Peter Vale, Professor of Humanities and the Director of the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS), University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/718152017-01-29T16:40:33Z2017-01-29T16:40:33ZTrump’s ‘America first’ pledge has echoes of Rhodesia’s racist white nationalists<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154202/original/image-20170125-23858-jxjcvx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">US President Donald Trump stamped his inaugural speech with the promise of 'America First' -- a slogan with an ominous past. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Kevin Lamarque</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Donald Trump’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/01/20/trumps-inaugural-address-was-demonstrably-bleak/">bleak inauguration speech</a> has attracted attention for, among other things, employing the phrase “America first”. </p>
<p>The term was popularised by the <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/america-first-for-charles-lindbergh-and-donald-trump">famed aviator Charles Lindbergh</a> and is associated with anti-Semitic and Nazi sympathisers who sought to keep the US out of World War II. </p>
<p>But <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/trump-america-first/514037/">Lindbergh and the America First Committee</a> are not the only 20th century white nationalists to use the term. The small band of racist whites in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, employed a version of it as protest against the onset of decolonisation and the spread of black rule across Africa. </p>
<p>In the late 1950s, <a href="http://www.bbm.org.uk/airmen/Harper.htm">William J. Harper</a>, who was also known for his daring aviation exploits in World War II, made waves by using the slogan </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Rhodesia first, last, and always.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A few years later, Harper struck one of the most dramatic blows for white supremacy as a signatory to Rhodesia’s <a href="https://global.britannica.com/topic/Unilateral-Declaration-of-Independence">Unilateral Declaration of Independence</a>. He served as Minister of Internal Affairs in the first cabinet of Prime Minister Ian Smith. Smith famously vowed that the tiny white minority would rule for <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1569980/Ian-Smith-Man-whose-folly-unleashed-Mugabe.html">1 000 years</a>.</p>
<p>But when Harper first popularised the slogan, which was generally shortened to “Rhodesia first”, he was leading the opposition Dominion Party. The party sought full independence from British rule. It was also at the vanguard of resistance against any movement for reform or genuine integration between settlers and colonial subjects. </p>
<p>The term was particularly controversial as Southern Rhodesia was then governed within the larger <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/federation-rhodesia-and-nyasaland-collapses">Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland</a>. This also included contemporary Zambia and Malawi. By advocating for Southern Rhodesian primacy, Harper not only made it clear that he was opposed to majority rule, but also to the federal structure of governance to which Southern Rhodesia was constitutionally bound. </p>
<p>The slogan prompted a split in 1960 between the territorial branch of the Dominion Party, of which Harper was the leader, and the federal branch, led by Winston Field, who became Southern Rhodesia’s prime minister two years later. Field was subsequently booted aside in 1964 for being too moderate. </p>
<h2>Echoes of an inglorious past</h2>
<p>Harper and his far-right allies sought to appeal to the white Rhodesian electorate by taking a stand against African liberation and the winds of change sweeping into the colony. Similarly, Donald Trump has appealed to an American electorate that feels overwhelmed by the forces of globalisation. The Trump administration’s <a href="https://kenopalo.com/2017/01/14/answers-to-some-of-team-trumps-questions-on-foreign-aid-to-africa/">sceptical approach to aid</a> in Africa and antagonism of China is a throwback to the Dominion Party’s protest against providing social services for Africans and its strident warning of a communist onslaught in newly independent countries.</p>
<p>The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland was <a href="http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/themes/rhodesia-central-african-federation.htm">inaugurated in 1953</a> with the encouraging, albeit vague goal of promoting <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/1405201">racial partnership</a> enshrined in its constitution. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154209/original/image-20170125-23840-1sc060t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154209/original/image-20170125-23840-1sc060t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154209/original/image-20170125-23840-1sc060t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154209/original/image-20170125-23840-1sc060t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154209/original/image-20170125-23840-1sc060t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1358&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154209/original/image-20170125-23840-1sc060t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1358&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154209/original/image-20170125-23840-1sc060t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1358&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Former Rhodesian PM Ian Smith.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Juda Ngwenya</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The same year, the moderate, albeit highly paternalistic missionary <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/oct/14/guardianobituaries.obituaries1">Garfield Todd</a> became Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia’s territorial government. (The Federal government was led by the vastly more conservative Godfrey Huggins who reportedly defined “partnership” in the sense of a <a href="http://www.thepatriot.co.zw/old_posts/godfrey-huggins-partnership-of-horse-and-rider-zimbabweans-must-be-vigilant/">horse and its rider</a>.)</p>
<p>The country’s violent liberation struggle of the 1970s, which saw about 20,000 deaths as the whites refused to accept majority rule, seemed a distant prospect at the time.</p>
<p>But the Federation dissolved in 1963 and the southward march of independence, particularly the chaotic transfer of authority in the Belgian Congo, rapidly radicalised the small white population. Much as Trump promised to his followers the security of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38740717">a wall on the Mexican border</a>, whites in southern Africa saw the Zambezi river on Zimbabwe’s northern border as <a href="https://nsarchive.wordpress.com/2013/07/26/the-1962-state-department-paper-the-white-redoubt-demonstrates-myriad-of-problems-with-crafting-policy-towards-apartheid-era-south-africa/">a fortress</a> to protect what they called “responsible government” and <a href="http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/23rd-august-1975/9/rhodesia-1%22">“civilised standards”</a>.</p>
<p>In 1962 the Dominion Party merged with several smaller conservative parties to form the Rhodesian Front. In the elections that December, the Front, like Trump, defied popular predictions and emerged to <a href="https://www.revolvy.com/main/index.php?s=Southern%20Rhodesian%20general%20election,%201962">form the next government</a>. The Front set about increasing its stranglehold on the government and engaged in widespread censorship of the media. No candidate running on the all-white voter’s roll was ever able to defeat it.</p>
<p>Its key strategy was to position itself as the lone guarantor of white security. A propaganda pamphlet – Rhodesia and You in the Super 70s, available at the University of York’s <a href="https://www.york.ac.uk/borthwick/holdings/what-we-hold/southern-african/">Borthwick Institute</a> – proudly stated, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>In 1962 the people of Rhodesia made their historic decision to stand and fight on the Zambezi; this was in contradistinction to existing trends of surrender and appeasement to the evils of pan-Africanism. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In 1965 the small band of Rhodesians defied world trends and declared their <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/11/newsid_2658000/2658445.stm">own independence</a> from British rule. Harper, Smith and 10 other white men signed the declaration. Its opening lines contained many similarities of both syntax and content to that of the United States’. Both referred to an “entitlement of separate and equal” rights that were in reality only accorded to a minority.</p>
<h2>The past in the present</h2>
<p>While Trump may not be directly inspired by white Rhodesian political strategy, many white American nationalists are. The Charleston church shooter, Dylann Roof, a young white supremacist, posed for pictures while <a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/dylann-roof-charleston-shooting-suspect-had-rhodesia-south-africa-apartheid-jacket-1506881">wearing apparel</a> with the Rhodesian flag. He <a href="https://news.vice.com/article/website-surfaces-with-disturbing-photos-and-manifesto-purportedly-written-by-dylann-roof">owned a website</a> with the url lastrhodesian.com. According to the <a href="http://www.uncpress.unc.edu/browse/book_detail?title_id=801">historian Gerald Horne</a>, hundreds, if not thousands of white Americans, served as mercenaries in the Rhodesian military in the 1970s.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154207/original/image-20170125-23862-ubx4dh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154207/original/image-20170125-23862-ubx4dh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154207/original/image-20170125-23862-ubx4dh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154207/original/image-20170125-23862-ubx4dh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154207/original/image-20170125-23862-ubx4dh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154207/original/image-20170125-23862-ubx4dh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154207/original/image-20170125-23862-ubx4dh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dylann Roof with Rhodesian and apartheid South Africa flags.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Harper and Trump’s political careers share another crucial similarity. Both were dogged by allegations of sexual misconduct. While The Donald has been able to deflect the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/20/donald-trump-sexual-misconduct-tenth-woman-accuser">claims against him</a>, Harper was forced to resign from the Rhodesian cabinet in 1968 over claims of an affair with his secretary, a reputed British agent.</p>
<p>As Trump tweets with the hashtag <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/822502450007515137">#AmericaFirst</a>, he may not be aware of the Rhodesian antecedent of the term. But it seems to be no coincidence that his campaign tone is not out of line with the sentiments of Harper and Rhodesia’s white nationalists.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71815/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brooks Marmon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Rhodesia’s white supremacists appealed to the white electorate by taking a stand against African liberation. Similarly, Donald Trump appealed to white Americans who feel overwhelmed by globalisation.Brooks Marmon, PhD Student, Centre of African Studies, The University of EdinburghLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/682452016-11-15T17:08:57Z2016-11-15T17:08:57ZExplainer: a tour of Robert Mugabe’s early and later legacies<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145756/original/image-20161114-5078-1yotp9z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Robert Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe for 36 years.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Juda Ngwenya</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Robert Mugabe <a href="https://adamwelz.wordpress.com/2009/06/04/robert-mugabes-first-speech-in-the-parliament-of-zimbabwe-4-march-1980/">spoke eloquently</a> as Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister Elect in March 1980. He offered a message of hope and unity to a population ravaged by years of war. He spoke of creating a government “capable of achieving peace and stability … and progress.” </p>
<p>In the first years of independence, some of this vision was realised. But in the ensuing decades peace, stability and progress have waned. Mugabe has been in power for 36 years. The country’s political environment is unstable at best. Its economy is in ruin. There is no clear succession plan.</p>
<p>Mugabe’s presidency <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1709600.Mugabe">has been characterised</a> by mismanagement, corruption, and control over dissent and debate. Outsiders might not understand how someone who led his country’s downfall from breadbasket to basket case has remained in the presidency for so many years. </p>
<p>So who is Robert Mugabe and how has he held onto power for so long?</p>
<h2>Colonial childhood</h2>
<p>Growing up under colonial rule made a large impact on a young Mugabe. Colonialism in what was then Rhodesia started in 1889 when the Crown granted the British South Africa Company a Royal Charter that gave rights to the land which later became Northern (Zambia) and Southern (Zimbabwe) Rhodesia. </p>
<p>The charter gave the British South Africa Company the power to expropriate land and encourage British settlement to exploit the territory’s resources. It declared Southern Rhodesia a colony in 1896, prompting the <a href="http://www.pindula.co.zw/First_Chimurenga">First Chimurenga</a>, which saw the Shona and Ndebele defeated. </p>
<p>The British South Africa Company introduced commercial agricultural development after discovering that the colony was not rich in gold. Commercial farming was dependent on the expropriation of land from the rural population. So in 1898 it encouraged expropriation for commercial agricultural production of tobacco, maize, and corn. It also set up a reserve system which aimed to move and concentrate Shona and Ndebele populations into so-called native reserve lands. </p>
<p>This set the stage for Mugabe’s childhood and the ideology behind the <a href="http://www.pindula.co.zw/Second_Chimurenga">Second Chimurenga</a>, in addition to much of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Zimbabwes-Land-Reform-Realities-African/dp/1847010245">Zimbabwe’s current inequality</a>. </p>
<h2>A political education</h2>
<p>Mugabe was born on February 21, 1924 in Kutama a few months after Southern Rhodesia became a self-governing British Crown colony. </p>
<p>Unlike most of his compatriots who received a grammar school education at best, Mugabe was lucky enough to receive a very good education. The young boy’s intelligence made him stand out amongst his peers, and he was offered a place to study at the elite St. Francis Xavier Kutama College. <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Dinner-Mugabe-Untold-Freedom-Fighter/dp/0141040793">Mugabe went on to qualify as a teacher at Kutuma College.</a></p>
<p>He received a scholarship to South Africa’s Fort Hare University. There he met future leaders like Julius Nyerere from Tanzania and Kenneth Kaunda from Zambia. He joined the African National Congress. He was also exposed to Marxism. After graduating in 1951 with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in History and English, he taught in several schools and continued his studies in Southern Rhodesia and Tanzania, where a nationalist movement led by Nyerere was starting to form. </p>
<p>Mugabe’s political ideology solidified after moving to newly independent Ghana to teach in 1957. Ghana was the first British colony to gain independence in Africa. Kwame Nkrumah’s socialist and anti-imperial rhetoric struck a chord with Mugabe, who by this time was active within Ghana’s political youth leagues.</p>
<p>Mugabe met his future wife Sally Hayfron in Ghana. They travelled to Southern Rhodesia in 1960 so she could meet his mother – and <a href="https://www.princeton.edu/jpia/past-issues-1/1998/10.pdf">found a very changed place.</a></p>
<p>The settler population had increased, and with it the displacement of people and the overcrowding of the reserves. Unemployment was high and most people had no opportunities for advancement. </p>
<p>The government of Southern Rhodesia cracked down heavily on dissent at this time. After several opposition leaders were arrested under the 1959 Unlawful Organisations Act, Mugabe addressed a crowd gathered at Harare Town Hall. He spoke about Ghana’s independence movement. In referring to Marxism and its tenets of equality, he offered an alternative future to a crowd frustrated by minority rule. </p>
<p>Mugabe’s political career had begun.</p>
<h2>Towards independence</h2>
<p>Mugabe was elected Secretary of the National Democratic Party (NDP). Ten days after the government banned the NDP in 1961, several leaders came together to form Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), which was led by Ndebele trade union leader Joshua Nkomo. Mugabe, ZAPU’s Information and Publicity Secretary, was frustrated with Nkomo’s approach and felt that his demands for majority rule favoured rhetoric over action. Other leaders felt the same way and they together broke from ZAPU to form Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) in 1963. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.pindula.co.zw/Zimbabwe_African_People's_Union">The government banned</a> both ZANU and ZAPU and several party leaders, including Mugabe, were imprisoned in 1964 – the year Ian Smith became Prime Minister.</p>
<p>Smith would not agree to a plan or timetable for majority rule in Southern Rhodesia. He unilaterally declared independence from Great Britain in 1965, prompting sanctions and isolation from the international community. </p>
<p>During his ten years in prison Mugabe remained active in ZANU politics. In 1974 he was elected ZANU party head in what some argue was a coup against sitting leader Ndabaningi Sithole. In 1974, at the insistence of South African leaders, Smith released Mugabe to attend a conference in Zambia. Mugabe fled to Mozambique where Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA) guerrilla forces were being trained for what would be another five years of war.</p>
<p>In December 1979 the <a href="http://www.pindula.co.zw/Lancaster_House_Agreement">Lancaster House Agreement</a> formalised a ceasefire and set the path for Zimbabwe’s independence. Mugabe was named Prime Minister in February 1980 elections and the international community recognised Zimbabwe’s independence on April 18, 1980 amid much hope and optimism.</p>
<h2>A promising beginning</h2>
<p>But distrust and insecurities remained. The white minority population was afraid that Mugabe’s government wouldn’t abide by the terms of the Lancaster House Agreement. They also worried about land expropriation and that civil servants would be denied their pensions. But Mugabe preached reconciliation. </p>
<p>The first decade of independence saw the building of that great Zimbabwe which Mugabe spoke about before independence – at least in terms of some important economic and human development gains. The country garnered a reputation as southern Africa’s breadbasket, feeding itself and other countries in the region.</p>
<p>Mugabe continued to recognise the importance of education: the government’s investments resulted in education and literacy rates that were admired throughout the continent. A thriving civil society spearheaded community development efforts throughout the rural areas, where much of the population felt connected to the leader who promised, and seemed to deliver, development.</p>
<p>But when people look back now on Mugabe’s presidency they will not necessarily remember any of these positives. <a href="https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/isbn/3039119893/">His legacy will be very different.</a></p>
<h2>A grim legacy</h2>
<p>People will remember a leadership style that silenced opposition and ultimately led to sanctions against the country and its leaders. This began as early as the 1980s when the Special Forces Fifth Brigade, purportedly trained in North Korea, led a series of raids on Ndebele opposition areas that resulted in the deaths of at least 10,000 “dissidents.” </p>
<p>The merger of ZANU and ZAPU into ZANU-PF effectively institutionalised a system without opposition, in a country where state run media dominates. </p>
<p>People will remember how Mugabe was able to shift his alliances and alienate opponents throughout his political career. They will remember the rampant corruption and patronage and the falling incomes and high unemployment rates. People will remember how Mugabe <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-land-reform-deception-9780199398294?cc=za&lang=en&">used land reform for political expediency</a>. </p>
<p>Zimbabwe’s challenges today are probably vaster than they were at independence. Corruption is institutionalised, and that is not going to change easily. Investor confidence will take time to recover, as will income levels. There is no clear path for <a href="http://www.jacana.co.za/book-categories/business/the-struggle-continues-detail">the democratic succession of a leader</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.ids.ac.uk/files/dmfile/zimbabwean6.pdf">Land reform is at the heart</a> of modern Zimbabwe’s political and economic challenges. It has been haphazard and mismanaged at best. At worst, violent, corrupt and unproductive. Legal and meaningful land reform is paramount. This is only likely to happen with the institution of good governance in Zimbabwe. This is something that could be years in the making – even without Mugabe occupying the office of the president.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68245/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Beverly L. Peters received funding from the US government to do PhD dissertation research on microcredit organizations in South Africa in 1996. The 1996 funding did not support any research towards this article.</span></em></p>Outsiders might not understand how someone who led his country’s downfall from breadbasket to basket case has remained in the presidency for so many yearsBeverly L. Peters, Director and Assistant Professor Measurement & Evaluation School of Professional and Extended Studies, American UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/620552016-07-10T16:45:11Z2016-07-10T16:45:11ZSouth Africa’s armed struggle: where the ANC’s ineptitude was a virtue<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129425/original/image-20160705-789-1g1bpyg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Former members of the ANC's armed wing perform the toyi-toyi dance in support of then ailing former President Nelson Mandela.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Thomas Mukoya </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Whatever the virtues of South Africa’s governing African National Congress (<a href="http://www.anc.org.za/">ANC</a>) – we are assured it still has a few – it was never any good at armed struggle. And no more comprehensive support for that judgment has been assembled than the valuable new book, “<a href="http://penguinbooks.co.za/book/umkhonto-we-sizwe-anc%E2%80%99s-armed-struggle/9781770228412">Umkhonto we Sizwe: The ANC’s Armed Struggle</a>”, by the University of Pretoria’s Thula Simpson.</p>
<p>South Africans can be grateful for this ineptitude. It may even count among the ANC’s greater virtues. For, had the ANC been militarily more capable, millions of South Africans might now be living in hell-holes of war such as those we see in Syria.</p>
<p>Instead, the ANC had the political imagination to reach an accommodation with apartheid’s masters who were, militarily, more powerful than it would ever be. The outcome was thus not a revolution in South Africa – although there have been far-reaching changes. Rather, both concluded they had more to gain from compromise than further confrontation.</p>
<h2>People’s power trumps armed struggle</h2>
<p>Armed struggle played a subsidiary – but, I will suggest below, an oddly important – role in this negotiated outcome. But the tactics deployed inside the country that were most decisive against apartheid were those that did not involve organised violence. They were the tactics in which ordinary people involved themselves, including strikes, boycotts and marches, and developing a vision of a different South Africa.</p>
<p>Underlying these nonviolent tactics was an insight that had become obscured during the setbacks the ANC and others suffered after the birth of the organisation’s military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), in 1961. The insight, only recovered in the early 1970s, was that any ruler can rule only for as long as those he rules allow him to rule. </p>
<p>Put another way, South Africans became increasingly aware that the claim of their primary slogan, “<a href="http://www.amandladevelopment.org/pages/learn_01.html"><em>Amandla! Ngawethu!</em></a>” (“Power is ours!”), was true. The power to decide the fate of the country was, indeed, theirs. Each man, woman and child possessed that power in some degree. And he or she didn’t need to carry a gun to be an agent of change.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129377/original/image-20160705-820-1tqv95m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129377/original/image-20160705-820-1tqv95m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=763&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129377/original/image-20160705-820-1tqv95m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=763&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129377/original/image-20160705-820-1tqv95m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=763&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129377/original/image-20160705-820-1tqv95m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=959&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129377/original/image-20160705-820-1tqv95m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=959&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129377/original/image-20160705-820-1tqv95m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=959&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Former Umkhonto we Sizwe commander Siphiwe Nyanda went on to head South Africa’s military.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/siphiwe-nyanda">Siphiwe Nyanda</a>, probably the most effective field commander in MK, put it differently this year. The ANC, Nyanda said, might have been at the forefront of the struggle, but the people of South Africa had “<a href="http://www.bdlive.co.za/national/politics/2016/03/31/veteran-still-leads-the-charge">liberated themselves</a>”.</p>
<h2>A rich historical collection</h2>
<p>These are my own conclusions, re-asserted with considerably more confidence after reading Simpson’s book. They are not his. Rather, Simpson is careful to reserve his own judgment, preferring to tell his readers the story and leaving it to them to reach their own conclusions about the role of armed struggle in South Africa. In doing so, he has given us what is undoubtedly the richest collection of incident and claim assembled about MK.</p>
<p>Most of the book consists of accounts of attacks, firefights, bombings, the capture of fighters, disputes within the ANC and MK, and cruelties on both sides. The accounts are drawn from, among others, interviews with MK fighters, court records and other scholars.</p>
<p>Each account is usually no more than a page long. And Simpson writes each in the historic present tense. This style puts the reader inside the situation being described, which enhances the drama and readability. It will please the scholar looking for more empirical detail and others, adult or child, who want to know how things happened.</p>
<p>Here is a snippet from his account of the night attack by South African special forces on the headquarters of MK’s special operations unit in Matola, Mozambique, in January 1981. Some South African soldiers had managed to slip into the special operations compound and rounded up some MK people. The noise attracted others’ attention:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Sipho Thobela gets up and looks out the window. He sees his comrades lined up as if by a firing squad. He goes to fetch his AK [AK-47 assault rifle]. From the house’s balcony, Thobela opens fire on the men in the yard, upon which they start shooting at their captives as well as back at the house. The first captive they hit is Montso Mokgabudi, the commander (p276).</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This attack was a heavy blow for MK. A group of gifted young commanders from the post-1976 generation was lost. It was they who had executed the attacks on, among others, the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/sasol-plant-under-attack">Natref and Sasol 1 and 2</a> oil-from-coal plants eight months earlier.</p>
<h2>Success in failure</h2>
<p>The preface to the book states that MK’s armed struggle was “the longest sustained insurgency in South African history”. That billing – though useful in marketing – may be a little misleading. There have been few “sustained insurgencies” in South Africa, let alone long ones.</p>
<p>It is also moot to ask how “sustained” MK’s armed struggle was, even in its own terms. For ten of MK’s 30 years of existence – from 1966 to 1975 – there was no armed struggle inside South Africa. The <a href="http://www.sadet.co.za/docs/rtd/vol1/sadet1_chap12.pdf">Wankie and Sipolilo campaigns</a> in which MK was involved in then-Rhodesia in 1967-68 were aberrant adventures that failed. And from 1976 to 1990, armed struggle spluttered on at very low levels of intensity.</p>
<p>MK’s significance may, paradoxically, lie in its failure – in the ANC’s inability to persuade most South Africans that armed struggle was a plausible way to achieve regime change. I say this as someone who wrote scores of Aesopian newspaper articles and distributed thousands of ANC underground leaflets trying to convince South Africans that it was!</p>
<p>I long to hear Simpson, after all this work, argue a judgment on this and related questions.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129376/original/image-20160705-814-il6bh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129376/original/image-20160705-814-il6bh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129376/original/image-20160705-814-il6bh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129376/original/image-20160705-814-il6bh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129376/original/image-20160705-814-il6bh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129376/original/image-20160705-814-il6bh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129376/original/image-20160705-814-il6bh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Daring to struggle</h2>
<p>The best tribute I’ve heard to MK’s contribution came from <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/ronald-ronnie-kasrils">Ronnie Kasrils</a> in early 1990. The ANC had recently been <a href="https://global.britannica.com/topic/African-National-Congress">unbanned</a>. Kasrils was on the run inside South Africa after apartheid intelligence had uncovered <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/members-anc-and-sacp-are-detained-due-operation-vula">Operation Vula</a>, which they saw as an act of bad faith by the ANC and in which he was number three.</p>
<p>My former commander, Kasrils was willing to be interviewed for my <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02712/05lv02713.htm">doctoral research</a> on ANC operational strategy. At one clandestine meeting at Zoo Lake in Johannesburg, talking off tape, I asked if he could explain how the ANC was commanding such apparent authority among democrats inside the country even though its domestic organisation was at the time, we both knew, pitifully weak. How was it that the ANC looked likely eventually to lead a united front of democrats in negotiations?</p>
<p>Kasrils referred me to <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/oliver-reginald-tambo">Oliver Tambo’s</a> words in a speech in Venezuela seven years earlier. Tambo had been accepting, on Nelson Mandela’s behalf, the <a href="http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=26456&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html">Simón Bolívar Award</a>, named after the South American revolutionary. Tambo had told his audience of how the ANC and Mandela had “<a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/statement-oliver-tambo-accepting-simon-bolivar-award-behalf-nelson-mandela">dared to struggle</a>”.</p>
<p>I recall Kasrils saying:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Our armed struggle, whatever its limitations, has shown that. We’ve dared. Say what they will, no other organisation can match it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That, to my mind, is what MK fighters’ blood, courage and daring bought. It was an important part of the price that the ANC paid to have the authority it needed to lead a broad front of democratic South Africans into negotiations that produced the minimum necessary condition – the institutions of formal democracy – to shape a free society. It was only a necessary condition that those fighters helped achieve, not a sufficient one – but it was priceless all the same.</p>
<p><em>“<a href="http://penguinbooks.co.za/book/umkhonto-we-sizwe-anc%E2%80%99s-armed-struggle/9781770228412">Umkhonto we Sizwe: The ANC’s Armed Struggle</a>”, written by Thula Simpson, is published by Penguin Books South Africa.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62055/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Howard Barrell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Armed struggle played a subsidiary role in the ANC’s fight against apartheid in South Africa. The tactics that were most decisive in securing freedom were those that didn’t involve organised violence.Howard Barrell, Senior Lecturer at the School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.