Chapter 5: Africa in Transition

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Chapter 5 Africa in Transition

• Section 5 Zimbabwe

The bird symbolizes the history of Zimbabwe the
red star beneath it symbolizes the revolutionary
struggle for liberation and peace.
Green the agriculture and rural areas of
Zimbabwe Yellow the wealth of minerals in the
country Red the blood shed during the war of
the liberation Black the heritage and ethnicity
of the native Africans of Zimbabwe White peace
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Geography and People

• Small compared to Nigeria, half the size
• Roughly equal in size to Montana
• 11 million people live there
• Zimbabwe is a landlocked nation, thus goods must
  pass through bordering countries
• In colonial days , all goods had to travel
  through white-ruled South Africa
• Today, Zimbabwe predominantly sends goods to
  Mozambique

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Resources

• Located on a high plateau with mild weather the
  country is ideal for growing tobacco, cotton, and
  corn
• Also contains many precious metals
• Drought only affected Zimbabwe once in the early
  1980s
• Infrastructure maintains an excellent road/
  Railroad system, and uses the Kariba dam to
  generate electricity

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Ethnicity

• 80 of population are Shona
• 19 are Ndebele
• The rest are whites and Asians
• Ethnic rivalries exist but are not as intense as
  in Nigeria
• The government has done an effective job of
  alleviating ethnic rivalries

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The Road to Independence

• 1500s the Portuguese unsuccessfully set up a
  colony
• 1890s, the British developed a colony and named
  it Rhodesia
• Named after Cecil Rhodes, a prominent businessman
• G.B. wanted the country for its mineral resources
  (gold, coal, copper, nickel, chromium)

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Cecil Rhodes
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The Road to Independence

• 1965, the white-ruled government of Rhodesia
  broke away from G.B. due to the empires reforms
  toward black majority rule
• The United Nations condemned the Rhodesian
  government and imposed economic sanctions
• UN nations stopped trading with Rhodesia and
  eventually civil war erupted within the country
  in the 1970s

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Rebuilding the Nation

• Robert Mugabe came to power after the civil war
  (ruling since 1980)
• 1980 Rhodesia changed its named to Zimbabwe and
  rededicated its independence
• He urged whites and blacks to set aside their
  differences
• However, his policies and political tactics have
  been seen as autocratic or sometimes similar to a
  dictatorship
• His main goals for the country are to improve
  human services

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Economic Development

• Land reform is one of the major issues today
• 1992 - a land reform was passed to take land from
  white owners and redistributed it to blacks
• Critics of Mugabe state that he took some of the
  land or gave it to his close supporters
• Zimbabwe has many government controlled
  industries
• Private investment is being introduced but
  government corruption is hindering the economy