PROFILE
Region: Sub-Saharan Africa
Climate: Moderately tropical, seasonally dry
Leader(s): Robert Mugabe, since 1980 (at time of writing)
Population: 12,973,808
Capital: Harare
Largest City: Harare
Currency: U.S. Dollar, Chinese Yuan, Indian Rupee, South African Rand, Zimbabwe Bond Coins
Official Languages: Chewa, Chibarwe, English, Kalanga, Koisan, Nambya, Ndau, Ndebele, Shangani, Shona, Sotho, Tonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa
Currency: U.S. Dollar, Chinese Yuan, Indian Rupee, South African Rand, Zimbabwe Bond Coins
Official Languages: Chewa, Chibarwe, English, Kalanga, Koisan, Nambya, Ndau, Ndebele, Shangani, Shona, Sotho, Tonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa
Independence: 1965/1980 from the United Kingdom
Territories or Colonies: None
THE FACTS
The first country I’m gonna do is Zimbabwe. It’s all the way down at the end of the list (alphabetically) and it’s not a bad place to start. Zimbabwe is officially called the Republic of Zimbabwe. The accuracy of the name is debateable because Republic means “a country where supreme power is held by elected representatives and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch.”
Zimbabwe’s current President Robert Mugabe while “elected” was elected in a series of often rigged elections or elections where most people in the country couldn’t vote, etc…
ANCIENT & PRE-COLONIAL HISTORY (????-1880s)
Archaeologists have done most of the leg-work uncovering the history of Zimbabwe as there weren’t written records and the only remnants of what past life was like are literal stone remnants.
Archaeologists know that the people living in Zimbabwe at several points throughout history had a centralized government. A lot of people might look at Africa and have an idea of disparate tribes with no central leadership, just roaming around and doing whatever, but Zimbabwe (like Egypt) was an African society with a central leader and a huge capital city built between the 900s and 1200s called the Great Zimbabwe (where the country gets its name).
Before the Great Zimbabwe was built the land was governed by the very hard to pronounce Mapungubwe people and the Great Zimbabwe was actually built by a band of people who left the central Mapungubwe land and moved east towards the Indian Ocean.
The Mapungubwe were good at trading to Egypt, India and China, but it was kind of hard when you’re seat of government is so far from the Indian Ocean (the go-to place for trading, besides the Silk Road, at the time). This group of people set off walking towards the Indian Ocean and decided to set up shop around the Great Zimbabwe, an easy-breezy 385 mile trek to the Indian Ocean. Now, obviously I’m joking, 385 miles is still really far to walk, but it’s waaay better than the 680+ mile trek it would have been had they stayed.
Now, the group that founded the Great Zimbabwe weren’t separate from the Mapungubwe, they were just a group of Mapungubwe people who seeked easier trade and access to the Indian Ocean.
I think people have this idea that Africa was totally walled off from the world, but that’s not the case. Africa played a pivotal role in Indian Ocean trade with groups around the indian ocean like Northeastern Africans, Egyptians and to a certain extent, Indians, Middle Eastern people and Southeast Asians. Africa however didn’t play as much of a pivotal role in the Silk Road, a series of trade routes that stretched from Mongolia to Europe. Textbooks tend to focus on the Silk Road more because Europe was involved, while the Indian Ocean Trade routes fall to the wayside because Europe was less involved (considering they’re veeery far away from the Indian Ocean).
Zimbabwe had connections, sometimes even to places Europe wished it had, connections like China, where Chinese Silk and Chinese China were valued luxury items.
Anyway, back to the Great Zimbabwe. The Great Zimbabwe was by no means the only city like it. There were several stone cities built by this group of Mapungubwe people. The Great Zimbabwean people group were successful traders because they had access to the Indian Ocean, where previous Mapungubwe settlements didn’t and therefore had more access to Chinese, Indian and Egyptian goods.
Archaeologists have done most of the leg-work uncovering the history of Zimbabwe as there weren’t written records and the only remnants of what past life was like are literal stone remnants.
Archaeologists know that the people living in Zimbabwe at several points throughout history had a centralized government. A lot of people might look at Africa and have an idea of disparate tribes with no central leadership, just roaming around and doing whatever, but Zimbabwe (like Egypt) was an African society with a central leader and a huge capital city built between the 900s and 1200s called the Great Zimbabwe (where the country gets its name).
Before the Great Zimbabwe was built the land was governed by the very hard to pronounce Mapungubwe people and the Great Zimbabwe was actually built by a band of people who left the central Mapungubwe land and moved east towards the Indian Ocean.
The Mapungubwe were good at trading to Egypt, India and China, but it was kind of hard when you’re seat of government is so far from the Indian Ocean (the go-to place for trading, besides the Silk Road, at the time). This group of people set off walking towards the Indian Ocean and decided to set up shop around the Great Zimbabwe, an easy-breezy 385 mile trek to the Indian Ocean. Now, obviously I’m joking, 385 miles is still really far to walk, but it’s waaay better than the 680+ mile trek it would have been had they stayed.
Now, the group that founded the Great Zimbabwe weren’t separate from the Mapungubwe, they were just a group of Mapungubwe people who seeked easier trade and access to the Indian Ocean.
I think people have this idea that Africa was totally walled off from the world, but that’s not the case. Africa played a pivotal role in Indian Ocean trade with groups around the indian ocean like Northeastern Africans, Egyptians and to a certain extent, Indians, Middle Eastern people and Southeast Asians. Africa however didn’t play as much of a pivotal role in the Silk Road, a series of trade routes that stretched from Mongolia to Europe. Textbooks tend to focus on the Silk Road more because Europe was involved, while the Indian Ocean Trade routes fall to the wayside because Europe was less involved (considering they’re veeery far away from the Indian Ocean).
Zimbabwe had connections, sometimes even to places Europe wished it had, connections like China, where Chinese Silk and Chinese China were valued luxury items.
Anyway, back to the Great Zimbabwe. The Great Zimbabwe was by no means the only city like it. There were several stone cities built by this group of Mapungubwe people. The Great Zimbabwean people group were successful traders because they had access to the Indian Ocean, where previous Mapungubwe settlements didn’t and therefore had more access to Chinese, Indian and Egyptian goods.
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Migrations of Early Zimbabwean Groups
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Eventually, around the thirteenth or fourteenth century, the Great Zimbabwean people group got bigger than its parent settlement and expanded. At this around the fourteen hundreds a trader by the name of Nyatsimba Mutota wanted to trade more went with the tried-and-true method of “if you wanna trade more, just get closer to the Indian Ocean” and moved even closer than the Great Zimbabwe to the Indian Ocean, which led with even more trade and even more money and eventually as Biggie would put it “Mo problems.”
The portuguese, who started poking around the area in 1531 took interest in the newer Mutapa Kingdom and wanted control of its money and trade strength. (Remember Europe at this point is jealous of Indian Ocean Trade and wants in on it.)
The Portuguese figured they could infiltrate the higher government of the Mutapa Kingdom and slowly dismantle it from the inside, but the Mutapa’s army and strategic location (still a good 400 kilometers inland from the Ocean) proved too much for Portugal, until the Mutapa began squabbling about boring government tariff stuff (which is a surprisingly frequent cause of downfall) which led to a bunch of infighting. Portugal, being the opportunists they were, decided to slide in and install their own guy Mavura Mhande Felipe to basically gain control of Zimbabwe, showing the very early 17th century roots of colonialism.
This was a very broad definition of a colony though. While the Mutapa remained independent (kind of) they basically were. While Portugal claimed they owned the land, the Mutapans knew they had no control over it and while Portugal said they wanted all of the gold in the area to sent to Portugal, the Mutapans were like “no, why would we do that?”
Eventually infighting destroyed the Mutapans and after them came smaller empire of the Butua Kingdom, which Portugal in a last ditch effort to gain control invaded in 1693 and were defeated by Rowzi Dynasty.
Anyway, the Rowzi kicked Portugal’s ass, and set up their own government, that several local tribes wanted to join for the money, power and sex, o.k., well more the first two. These things are the three most powerful motivators in history, so watch out for them in the future.
Now if all of these different empires over-throwing other empires seems confusing, the general gist of this is that over time the focus on Indian Ocean Trade became more and more important which led to Zimbabwean settlements closer and closer to the ocean.
COLONIAL PERIOD (1880s-1965)
The new ruler of Matabeleland, Mzilikali Khumalo was worried, rightly so about the ever encroaching British led by the notorious asshole Cecil Rhodes along with his British South Africa Company.
Now, hold up, you may be saying. How did we get from the relative stability of the Rowzi Dynasty to the British showing up and mucking everything up. Well, the Rowzi were doing pretty well until yet ANOTHER kingdom overthrows them. Well, this time they weren’t really overthrown, but another ethnic group slowly assimilated with the Rowzis until they both held positions of power. What group was this? The Zulus are the answer. You may recognize the name from Shaka Zulu, by far the most famous zulu, who had been dead for about 60 years at this point, or you may know the Michael Caine movie about the battle between the Zulu and British.
The Zulu were very good at fighting and pushed back against the British for a incredibly long amount of time considering the British had horses, steamships and machine guns and the Zulu didn’t.
I will delve deeper into this in the South Africa post, but the Zulu were displaced and many of them fleed north to Zimbabwe. Many Zulu wanted positions of power as they held in South Africa so they began assimilating into the Rowzi culture and people and eventually the two groups were ethnically more similar.
From this ethnic group came the Kingdom of Matabeleland, which arose from the decaying ruins of the Rowzi, which had been plagued with infighting and instability like its predecessors the Mutapans and Matungubwe.
The new ruler of Matabeleland, Mzilikali Khumalo was worried, rightly so about the ever encroaching British led by the notorious asshole Cecil Rhodes along with his British South Africa Company.
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Notorious Asshole Cecil Rhodes
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Mzilikali Khumalo was ethnically Zulu and saw what happened to his homeland so he tried to cool things off with the British by proposing trade agreements to try and prevent the British from needing to colonize. The British didn’t really want anything they had, until... gold was found... or re-found, because if you remember the Portuguese wanted Zimbabwe’s gold a good 200 years prior.
Now, Mzilikali had a son Lobenbula, who didn’t have interest in cooling ANYTHING off and just wanted to make some sweet gold money. He told Britain that, hey guys, you can take all this land as long as I get money for the gold and guns and power. (Again money and power are huuuuuge motivators.)
Britain was like, yea we’ll take the gold, but how about we don’t give you ANY money and NO power. Obviously Lobenbula was not at all into this plan, as most African leaders had been when British pulled this bullshit in Egypt, Sudan, Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Botswana, Zambia and South Africa.
Lobenbula was so pissed in fact that he took his grievance to London and negotiated with Queen Victoria. Lobenbula proposed that Matabeleland would be its own sovereign state, with control of its gold, land and the people living there and Britain would have nothing to do with it, except for trade.
Queen Victoria surprisingly agreed. But notorious asshole Cecil Rhodes seemed to think he was above the law and went in invading anyway. This obviously made Lobenbula really pissed off and he went to war, which the British won with the same tactic that they used in South Africa of “have machine guns.” These wars weren’t even at all. You had the British sitting in a bunker with a machine gun, literally mowing down people with swords and bows.
Lobenbula ate it and in retaliation the still un-free people of Matabeleland went to war again, where they lost, again!
The colony was renamed Rhodesia after notorious asshole Cecil Rhodes. Cecil really like naming things after himself. Not only did he name Zimbabwe Rhodesia, he named Zambia (Zimbabwe’s northern neighbor North Rhodesia.)
Things sat like this for a while until 1914. This is about when the U.K. entered into World War I on the side of the Triple Entente with Russia, France and later the U.S.
At this point the scramble for Africa was really heating up and the war only perpetuated that, as colonies were really good for getting resources and people to fight in your military (which wasn’t always a good plan because indigenous people usually hated their colonizers and weren’t willing to fight for them.)
Africa was a huge source of resources for the war effort and in total war a country could use all of the materials it could get.
Zimbabwe was also very important in the war because, while France and England had colonies, so did Germany and the German colonies were also at war. The English and French colonies were at war with the German colonies and Southern Rhodesia was right in the middle of it, with Namibia, then called German West Africa to the west and Tanzania, then called Tanganyika or German East Africa to the east.
World War II was less chaotic because after World War I Germany got its colonies taken away (which crippled its economy, but that’s a story for the Germany post, and probably for the Namibia and Tanzania posts.) French and British colonies in Africa helped the war effort more through manpower and through resources.
After the unification that came with something like a World War ended in 1945 the country was again ideologically split. The white minority had control of the government and the black majority was pissed off, rightly so. Eventually the black populace (like 97%) of the population could vote in elections, but this came with shady stipulations and was much like the literacy test instituted by the U.S. in the 1870s.
This meant that most black people still couldn’t vote. Tensions were growing higher and the seeds of rebellion were planted. Borders in the area were redrawn and redrawn and redrawn until Zimbabwe ended up in a colony that was previously South Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), North Rhodesia (Zambia) and Nyasaland (Malawi). South Rhodesia declared its independence as did North Rhodesia and Nyasaland, but things got complicated and independence took a backseat to the struggles going on north in Zaire. Eventually in 1965 Zimbabwe gained their independence from the U.K.
POSTCOLONIAL PERIOD (1965-PRESENT)
Immediately after gaining independence the country again erupted into war between the Rhodesian government (a bunch of white guys, with in Robert Mugabe’s opinion, no right to the presidency, and it’s kinda hard to argue with that), the ZANU-PF led by current dictator Robert Mugabe and the ZAPU and the ANC.
The Rhodesian government were pretty much hated by everyone in the country on account of them being mostly made up of British colonizers and supported by the British colonizers in South Africa and the Portuguese colonizers in Mozambique.
The Rhodesian government fell to the wayside and the other four parties fought over control for the next FIFTEEN!!! years until in 1980 the war stopped.
In 1980 Robert Mugabe, who led the winning ZANU-PF party gained control of the presidency and began exiling the white populace and massacring political dissenters.
In the 90s Robert Mugabe “won” the next election and decided to propose a constitutional amendment to make him president for life, which didn’t pass. In retaliation he lowered spending in several areas and pocketed government money.
Zimbabwe was hit incredibly hard by the AIDS crisis and Mugabe didn’t really do anything about it, but embezzle money that could’ve been used for health care.
Mugabe, since then has kept running for President and winning with rigged elections. In 2008, Mugabe actually lost the election, but complained they weren’t rigged enough and called a second election, which he rigged and surprise surprise he won.
Mugabe has been President since and not a whole lot has changed. However, Mugabe is reeeeeeeeaaaally old at the ripe-old age of 91, he’s likely not going to exist for much longer, soooooo.
ZIMBABWE FACTS
If you check the currency section of the country profile, you would see that Zimbabwe takes all sorts of currency like the U.S. Dollar, the British Pound and even the Chinese Yuan. Why is this? Is Zimbabwe part of the U.S., Britain or China... Well, no, the reason this is is because Zimbabwe's original currency: the Zimbabwean Dollar hyper-inflated so much that it's basically useless and they had to use other countries currency.
This started when the country ran out of money and instead of proposing tax cuts, seeking aid or taking out a loan (all solutions to these problems) Mugabe decided to start printing more of the country's currency (the Zimbabwean Dollar). When you start printing money, you don't get more money, the money you currently have gets less valuable.
The Dollar was losing value so fast that at one point, prices would double in just 24 hours. To fix this the government began printing larger and larger bills, even getting up to the trillions. Eventually the currency was demonetized and is no longer in use.
Also, Zimbabwe had a president named Canaan Banana, who so far is the title-holder for "Best Name in History!"
Next up, Zambia, from the Iron Age Kingdoms to the Present.
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