Southern Rhodesia
Southern Rhodesia (English: Southern Rhodesia ) is the name of the former British colony in southern Africa, the 1965 Republic of Rhodesia (Republic of Rhodesia ) unilateral independence declared himself under a white minority government and in 1980 after elections with the participation of all political groups as a republic Zimbabwe (English: Zimbabwe) a black majority government received. The de jure continue existing colony was then dismissed in the final independence on 18 April 1980.
The 390,757 km ² land ( 1.1 times the size of Germany ) today with 11 million inhabitants located between Zambia ( Northern Rhodesia until 1964, limit is the Zambezi ) and the Republic of South Africa. Around 1100 built a Bantu people who knew how to ore and metal production, in the city founded around 800 Zimbabwe, the first stone houses. The fast-growing city became the center of Bantu empire of Monomotapa, that far enough in today's Mozambique and passed through gold mines to great power.
Europeans came after David Livingstone ( 1855) into the country. The king of the Ndebele issued in 1888 Cecil Rhodes a land concession for the exploitation of ore deposits, to which many Europeans settled. Against German and Portuguese claims Great Britain declared a protectorate in 1891, the country.
Later, Southern Rhodesia came in white self-government and in 1930 was divided into residential areas for whites and blacks, because it was intended as a settlement colony. From 1953 to 1963, was formed with its northern neighbor and Nyasaland (Malawi ), the Central African Federation, but broke up, among other things by the resistance of the African National Congress ( ANC) in 1963.
In contrast to the two neighboring countries of the UK Southern Rhodesia in 1964 denied the independence, as the white population group (less than 4%) under Ian Smith majority refused to involve the black majority in the government. The Government Smith pointed to the collapse of the former colonies, where the transfer of power was done without delay to representatives of the Bantu population. The unilaterally declared independence on 11 November 1965 was punished with an international embargo and other sanctions (see also UN resolutions 216 and 217). In parallel, started by the USSR and China supported communist organizations with a guerrilla war against the government and attacks against whites and blacks who cooperated with the government. About 250,000 whites had the power held over 5 million black people. The UN decided Boykottierungen against Southern Rhodesia to move the government to back down. Negotiations between the government and the guerrillas failed in 1976. To end guerrilla warfare, began in 1976 in Geneva, the Rhodesia Conference. 1978 received the black majority in parliament and asked the Prime Minister. Nevertheless, the sanctions remained in place since the black, partially influenced communist guerrilla movements ZANU and ZAPU were not involved.
1979 Prime Minister Ian Smith agreed with the liberation movements a truce. In late 1979, the conference succeeded with the Lancaster House Agreement, a breakthrough. In March 1980, elections were held with the participation of all political groups, which won the ZANU party of Robert Mugabe.
On April 18, 1980, the independent Zimbabwe was proclaimed. Mugabe took over from his predecessors a country that was called because of its high agricultural productivity as "Africa's breadbasket " and partly due to a high literacy rate and well-developed infrastructure, relatively good conditions for a successful further development showed that more in the following years and more were playful.