Sub Saharan Africa

Zimbabwe

Last updated: 19 June 2009

Country information

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HISTORY

Until the 19th century the area was ruled by a succession of Shona kingdoms, including the builders of the famous Great Zimbabwe complex (from which the country takes its name). By the 1820s internal and external pressures had led to the collapse of the Shona polities, laying the country open to occupation. Nguni conquerors from South Africa occupied what is now Matabeleland, and in 1890 Cecil Rhodes' British South Africa Company (BSAC) founded Salisbury (now Harare) and took control of the rest of the country by 1893. The BSAC's defeat of the 1896 Shona and Ndebele rebellion (the 'First Chimurenga') secured the country for widespread European settlement. In 1923, after a referendum which rejected union with South Africa, the country became a self-governing colony. In an attempt to pre-empt black majority rule the white-controlled Rhodesian parliament made a Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965, leading to a 15 year guerrilla war ('the Second Chimurenga'). After the Lancaster House agreement in 1979 the country returned briefly to direct British rule, and elections were held in 1980.

The Shona-dominated Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) won a majority (57 out of 80) of seats available to blacks (20 seats had been reserved for a separate white election) in the new parliament, and its leader, Robert Mugabe, became Prime Minister. ZANU used its majority gradually to amend the constitution, introducing, for example, an executive presidency to which Mugabe was elected in 1987. In the same year, following several years of conflict in Matabeleland ('the gukurahundi'), ZANU and its Ndebele-dominated rivals, the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) signed a Unity Accord which merged the two parties into the Zimbabwe African National Union-Popular Front. ZANU-PF exercised a virtual monopoly on national politics until the emergence of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in 1999.

BBC News Country Profile: Zimbabwe