A War for Whiteness: Zimbabwe vs. Rhodesia
Recently for my thesis work I have been reading a lot about nation building projects in the global south, specifically those born from revolution. I do most of my work in the Caribbean, however another enormous research interest of mine is Zimbabwe. I had watched a travel program on the BBC about tourism to Zimbabwe following the death of Robert Mugabe and that send me back down a spiral where I have begun to do more reading on a research passion of mine that i’ve had to sideline. I was very curious what types of accounts existed within the HistoryMakers Digital Archive in regards to Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe prior to 1980 was a white minority apartheid state called Rhodesia, identical in political character to the more famous Apartheid South Africa. Zimbabwe was a very important focal point for the world because there was a war for control of the country in the context of the Cold War between Robert Mugabe who fought on behalf of Black majority rule and Ian Smith, leader of the Rhodesian white minority government. The United States was very opportunistic on the issue of the Zimbabwean war of independence because Ian Smith’s government was anti-communist and aligned with the American values of white supremacy. In an interview with the HistoryMakers Joseph Segar Consul general and foreign ambassador for the United States at the time reflected on the nature of America’s position on the conflict: “At the same time we had in, in Congress conservatives who felt that we never should have supported the revolution. They were right, very happy with Ian Smith and Rhodesia and felt that it should remain that way. The only reason some people in Congress supported what was going on in South, in, in Rhodesia”
Rhodesia as a white apartheid-state is broken down to its mechanics by Clarence Page who was a journalist at the time of the Zimbabwean independence War, who recounts the realities of apartheid by stating: “Apartheid was the Jim Crowe segregation in South Africa when it was run by a white minority regime, for like, as long America, as long as the U.S. has been around, about three [300] or 400 years. And, but Apartheid itself only came into effect about the time I was born, there in the late 1940”. It was clear the project Rhodesia was fighting for was for Africa to have a lasting white colonial foothold at a time when Africa was all but formally decolonized. Rhodesia’s refusal to relinquish power to its Black majority came from a place of racist reaction on behalf of the Smith government.
The war would mean the end of the white minority government and rise of Black majority rule with the swearing in of Zimbabwe’s first president Robert Mugabe. Newly independent Zimbabwe would attract a lot of attention and praise from the Black diaspora, especially when compared with South Africa, which simontenously retained its apartheid model until 1994. Such fascination and praise from the Zimbabwe government was reflected in Rachel Swarns’ interview with the HistoryMakers: “Zimbabwe, even though you know there's obviously, it was going through its own difficulties, it had made this transition. And even though with the leadership, there was all this kind of you know, kind of race division and, and there were”.
