Posted
on April 18, 2016
Zimbabwe
isn't quite as large as the state of California – and yet it has 16
official languages!
We're
talking Chewa, Chibarwe, English, Kalanga, Koisan, Nambya, Ndau,
Ndebele, Shangani, Shona, sign language, Sotho, Tonga, Tswana, Venda,
and Xhosa.
Did
you notice “English” in the list? That's because Zimbabwe used to
be a colony of the United Kingdom – until this date in 1980.
Actually,
the land that we now know as Zimbabwe was known as Southern Rhodesia
when it was a British colony, and its colonial government was run by
the white minority. Southern Rhodesia provided more soldiers, per
capita, fighting for the British Empire in both World War I and World
War II than any other nation – including Britain itself. But after
the wars, instead of awarding the African land its independence, the
British glommed together Southern Rhodesia with Northern Rhodesia and
Nyasaland (now Malawi) in what they called the Central African
Federation. This was against the wishes of the African residents of
those lands, and after a decade of tumult, Britain dissolved the
Union.
Northern
Rhodesia became independent and renamed itself Zambia. The leader of
Southern Rhodesia, a fellow named Ian Smith, convinced his government
to also declared independence and to drop “Southern” from the
country's name – they lived in the only “Rhodesia” now. But the
Brits didn't go along with this declaration of independence (any more
than they had hundreds of years earlier gone along with the American
Declaration). Britain didn't go to war over the colony's “rebellion,”
but instead went to the United Nations and convinced the world to put
sanctions on the new government, including a trade embargo. In other
words, other nations wouldn't buy stuff from Rhodesia, and they
wouldn't sell stuff to Rhodesia.
In
the meantime, the black majority in Rhodesia weren't happy with
Smith's government, either, and there was a civil war, fought mostly
with guerrilla tactics like ambushes, sabotage, hit-and-run attacks,
etc. (This is in contrast to the usual pitched battles and sieges of
normal warfare.)
So...bad
stuff. Strife and warfare, violence and poverty. Eventually a peace
agreement was drawn up, and the world – even Britain – finally
recognized the nation as an independent, self-governing country on
this date in 1980.
And
of course, the new nation changed its name to Zimbabwe.
I
hate to break it to you, but since 1980, Zimbabwe hasn't been a place
of democracy and human flourishing. It has been led by just one
authoritarian president / prime minister for all these years—and he
keeps getting re-elected among rumors of election fraud and
vote-rigging. There have been horrible problems with poor living
standards and health care, and there have been terrible human-rights
abuses, including torture and massacres of citizens.
It's
hard to celebrate the nation that has such a terrible past and
present, but here are some totally amazing, wonderful, beautiful things to see in Zimbabwe:
Chimanimani Mountains |
Great Zimbabwe |
Hwange National Park |
Lake Kariba at sunset |
Victoria Falls (above and below) |
Also
on this date:
Plan
ahead:
Check out my Pinterest boards for:
And
here are my Pinterest boards for:
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