Back to Index

How to kill a country
Samantha Power, (Atlantic Monthly - Dec 2003)
December 2003

Nearly forty years ago Ian Smith, the Prime Minister of Rhodesia, became the first and only white colonial ruler to break away from the British Crown. He had tired of London's nagging about the subjugation of Rhodesian blacks. In 1965 Smith declared independence. "The mantle of the pioneers has fallen on our shoulders," he said, calling on white Rhodesians to maintain standards in a "primitive country." Smith saw himself as an apostle of Cecil John Rhodes, the British magnate who gave Rhodesia its name, and who in the late nineteenth century duped black tribal leaders into signing over the fertile land to white pioneers. Although Rhodesia in 1965 was home to just over 200,000 whites and four million blacks, Smith shared Rhodes's belief that black majority rule would occur "never in a thousand years."

Smith was of course wrong. In 1980, after a civil war that cost 30,000 lives, the black majority took charge of the country, which was renamed Zimbabwe. Robert Mugabe- the nationalist leader whom Smith had branded a "Marxist terrorist" and jailed for more than a decade; a man who had once urged his followers to stop wearing shoes and socks to show they were willing to reject the trappings of European civilization-became President.

Zimbabwe, one of southern Africa's most prosperous countries, held great promise. Its Victoria Falls was one of the seven natural wonders of the world. Its gushing Zambezi River boasted wildlife and pulsing rapids. Its lush soil was the envy of a continent. And, though landlocked, the country had modernized sensibly: it had a network of paved roads, four airports, and, thanks to Mugabe's leadership, a rigorous and inclusive education system. Mugabe knew that whites drove the economy, and he was pragmatic. "Good old Bob," as white farmers quickly came to call him, kept his shoes and socks on, and urged reconciliation: "An evil remains an evil whether practiced by white against black or black against white," he said on the eve of independence. In a cordial meeting with Smith, Mugabe acknowledged that he had inherited the "jewel of Africa," and he vowed to keep it that way.

Download the Acrobat PDF file (200KB) to read the full article.

Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.

TOP