From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe

Behind and Beyond Lancaster House

W.H. Morris-Jones

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Topic: Economics
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317760993
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: Economics

First published in 1980. The aim of this collection of articles is to furnish information and perspective on the main economic and political elements present in the making of Zimbabwe. Although the articles were prepared before the conclusion of the Lancaster House negotiations, they discuss matters which must be central to the future of this important newly independent state of Southern Africa.

The Insignificance of Tribe in the African Politics of Zimbabwe Rhodesia¹

by

John Day

University of Leicester

I

The political divisions among Africans in Zimbabwe Rhodesia are bewilderingly complex. In 1979 one strained alliance of ZAPU (Zimbabwe African People’s Union) and Robert Mugabe’s ZANU (Zimbabwe African National Union) in the Patriotic Front confronted another strained alliance of UANC (United African National Council) and Ndabaningi Sithole’s ZANU in the Government, while the new parties of ZDP (Zimbabwe Democractic Party) and NFZ (National Front of Zimbabwe) formed out of dissatisfaction with the old. This present complexity is not exceptional, for the antagonisms between and within the African parties of Zimbabwe Rhodesia have over the last twenty years been kaleidoscopic, as one pattern of fragmentation has succeeded another. This has resulted in curious paradoxes: for example, Mugabe, who helped Sithole in 1963 to establish ZANU in opposition to Joshua Nkomo’s ZAPU, worked in 1979 with Nkomo against Sithole, while both Mugabe and Sithole claimed the inheritance of the original ZANU.

To help explain the apparently inexplicable many observers have assumed that tribal rivalries underlie many of the political differences between Africans in Zimbabwe Rhodesia. Often bitter quarrels have seemed improbably to be the consequences of trivial disagreements. Then it is tempting to look for weighty motives as the causes of serious political divisions. In the absence of any satisfactory explanation in terms of ideology, ultimate aim, basic strategy, or class, reference to supposed tribal animosities appears to give a substantial explanation, which is rooted in historical, geographical, and social realities. Unfortunately people often use tribe to explain African politics in Zimbabwe Rhodesia without providing adequate evidence or any aid to understanding precisely what tribe may mean in the Zimbabwe Rhodesian setting.

The Rhodesian Front Government, which represented the majority of the white settlers between 1962 and 1978, had an ideological vested interest in emphasising the tribal in African politics. It wished to believe that African nationalism, with its emphasis on the single African nation and on universal franchise, was in conflict with the traditional, tribal values that most Africans were supposed still to hold. In a document that it published in 1964 the Government quoted a memorandum prepared by the Ministry of Internal Affairs:

Powerful African voices and deep sentiments are beginning to be aroused as they see their tribal values thrown into the melting pot or trodden on by a voting mass of literate youngsters herded together by a political boss.²

The Government argued against a referendum among Africans to test opinion on whether Rhodesia should be granted independence under the existing Constitution on the grounds that individuals voting would not represent the communal identities of the tribes. Wishing to believe that the Africans were unready to participate in modern government, the Rhodesian Front liked to stress the continuing tribal nature of African society and consequently emphasised the distinction between the two main tribal groups, the Shona and the Ndebele. The 1969 Constitution, for example, provided for four chiefs to represent the Shona and four to represent the Ndebele (a curious division, as the Ndebele formed only 22 per cent of the African population). Many Rhodesian whites believed that the Africans, even if they had a veneer of European civilisation, were still fundamentally primitive and feared that, without European control, they might revert to their traditional barbarism, which, in the European myth, entailed permanent and ubiquitous tribal wars. It was natural, then, to interpret antagonisms between African nationalists as the result of ingrained tribalism.

Eagerness to explain African politics in tribal terms is, however, by no means restricted to the Rhodesian right. To many journalists it is an instinctive reflex. In its most extreme form this preoccupation with tribe produces exaggerated statements like Smith Hempstone’s that ‘the tribe remains the most important element in black politics in Rhodesia’,³ and extravagant speculations like Paul Moorcraft’s that ‘Nkomo could perhaps seize Bulawayo, the traditional Ndebele capital, and set up a rival Ndebele state’ to compete against a Shona republic based in Salisbury.⁴ Less sweeping but still inadequately examined assumptions about tribe are common in the British press. A leading article in The Guardian in December 1977, for example, referred without scepticism to ‘the fierce contest … between Matabele and Mashona which is widely feared’.⁵ A report in The Daily Telegraph on the formation of NFZ appeared under the totally misleading headline, ‘New party is ready for tribal poll in Rhodesia’ and emphasised the party’s Karanga rationale, in spite of its President’s acknowledged statements that the party would not be solely for Karanga and that it had national policies.⁶

Excellent academic writers on Zimbabwe Rhodesia, too, often take tribe to be a crucial factor in African politics without much scrutiny. Larry W. Bowman asserted that, when the African National Congress was formed in 1957, ‘the leadership was ethnically balanced’,⁷ assuming that the tribal mixture had some significance, whereas the composition of the National Executive almost certainly resulted from the desire to represent fairly the two organisations, the Youth League, based in Salisbury, and the Bulawayo branch of the old Congress, whose merging had created the new Congress. Claire Palley, writing before the election of April 1979, talked as if it were axiomatic of ‘the deep tribal divisions between the Shona and the Ndebele’.⁸ Later, analysing the election results, she jumped hastily to the conclusion that the approximately 40 per cent of the total potential vote that Bishop Abel Muzorewa won correlated remarkably with the 43 per cent of the African population that belong to the Manyika, Korekore, and Zezuru tribes.⁹ Yet the voting figures do not, in fact, show that Muzorewa received his support exclusively from these tribal areas.¹⁰

In some parts of Africa, like Nigeria and Kenya, tribal rivalry has been a major factor in modern politics, but one is not entitled to assume that this is true throughout the continent. The example of Zambia provides a salutary lesson. Robert Molteno has convincingly demonstrated that what may appear to be tribal conflicts are more accurately described as sectional.¹¹ His main thesis is well expressed in the passage he quotes from T. Rasmussen:

… the root causes of political competition [in Zambia] often lie in divergent economic and political interests, not in tribal differences… While tribe remains an important category of political analysis, it can be more usefully viewed as an aggregation of shared material interests rather than as an expression of traditional solidarity based on shared culture and historical experience and an innate hostility towards outsiders.¹²

In Zambia since independence political conflict has often been between regions competing for resources and offices that were in the government’s gift. Zimbabwe Rhodesia provides no exact parallel, but the case of Zambia illustrates the danger of facile assumptions about tribal influence.

In this essay the thesis is advanced that tribe has not frequently been a major factor in the African politics of Zimbabwe Rhodesia and that, where it has intruded, it is difficult to give an intelligible explanation of why and how tribe has affected political behaviour. To forward this argument the next section tries to show that the ramifications of political development within the African nationalist movement can be explained more convincingly by dissatisfaction with leaders, rivalries for power, and differences of strategy than by tribe. Then follows an examination of the strongest cases that can be made for the impact of tribe on political activity, and the essay concludes with discussion of the difficulties raised by tribal explanations.

II

From its origins in the mid-1950s until 1961 the African nationalist movement in Southern Rhodesia achieved steadily increasing unity between various segments of the African population. To a degree that was unprecedented in the territory the African National Congress and, after it was banned in 1959, NDP (National Democratic Party) brought together in a single movement for African emancipation subsistence farmers and factory workers, the educated elite and the illiterate masses. Africans from the two principal cities, Salisbury and Bulawayo, cooperated in a way that had in the past proved impossible for more than a brief period. The nationalist leaders appealed successfully to Africans across nearly the whole country.

A constitutional conference in Salisbury in January to February 1961 marked a watershed in the history of the nationalist movement.¹³ To win African representation at this conference was a major achievement for NDP, since the British and Southern Rhodesian governments had never previously recognised the Africans’ right to a voice in constitutional development. At the same time the conduct of the NDP leaders under Nkomo at the conference led to serious disagreement within the Party, which, although largely stilled in 1961, re-emerged in 1963 to rend the movement in two and set the pattern in subsequent years of multiplying factionalism.

The cause of the crisis in the movement in 1961 was the agreement by Nkomo and his fellow delegates to a constitution in which Africans would for the first time have representatives in the Assembly, but initially with only fifteen seats out of sixty-five. The NDP delegation agreed reluctantly to this constitutional compromise, knowing that the Party had up to the conference demanded publicly one man, one vote, and that the National Executive had privately determined to accept nothing less than a constitution that would make NDP the main opposition in parliament. Widespread discontent with the constitutional agreement was immediately expressed within NDP and Nkomo very soon pretended that he had never accepted the compromise. Some in the party remained critical of Nkomo, who, nevertheless, skilfully managed to convince most members that he had not compromised NDP’s principles. A few doubts about Nkomo’s leadership lingered on and in June 1961 a splinter party, ZNP (Zimbabwe National Party), was formed by some malcontents. It attracted little support, but under the surface of general adulation of Nkomo ran a current of uncertainty that his handling of the constitutional conference had created.

In 1963 the movement split catastrophically when discontent with Nkomo’s leadership led to revolt against him. The few who had since the conference been unhappy about Nkomo were joined by many more who had become increasingly disillusioned with him after the banning in September 1962 of ZAPU, the party which replaced NDP after its suppression in December 1961. When the Government outlawed ZAPU, Nkomo was out of the country and caused some concern by delaying his return, apparently in fear of what the authorities might do to him. As he had also been abroad in February 1959, when the Congress had been banned and its leaders arrested, and, as he had not returned home till November 1960, when recalled to be President of NDP, some people wondered if he lacked courage.

Although he did eventually go back to Southern Rhodesia and was restricted to the remote rural district where he was born, Nkomo again, and more seriously, raised doubts about his political judgement early in 1963. He persuaded the ZAPU Executive to leave the country for Dar es Salaam, although several of its members had doubts about the wisdom of leaving the people at home without leadership. These doubts were confirmed when the ZAPU leaders found, contrary to what Nkomo had told them, that President Nyerere opposed their self-imposed exile. Some of Nkomo’s lieutenants felt that his keenness to take them out of Southern Rhodesia formed part of a growing tendency in Nkomo to place his faith in an international strategy instead of confronting the government at home.¹⁴ Throughout 1961 and 1962 Nkomo had personally spent much time in lobbying sympathisers around the world, an activity in which he had become skilled during his long exile after the banning of the Congress. Nkomo’s purpose was to harden world opinion against the white minority regime in Southern Rhodesia, so that the British government would yield self-rule to the Africans. By 1963, however, this strategy had not achieved its objective.

Once people began to question Nkomo’s political judgement, they could easily find other defects in his leadership. He had always left the organisation of the movement to others, and he lacked the ascetic intensity of Kaunda or Nyerere. Although he was an exciting orator to mass audiences, he was too easy-going in private to sustain confidence in his dynamism. His political skill seemed to lie more in his ability to rally the Party round his leadership than in directing the Party against its enemies.

Yet to some extent Nkomo became a scapegoat for some Africans’ disappointment at the lack of progress that the nationalist movement had made towards majority rule, especially in comparison with the success of Africans in Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland. The British Colonial Office gave way to pressure much more easily than the settler government of Southern Rhodesia. The rhetoric of the ZAPU leaders had raised hopes of early victory, but by 1963 the movement seemed to have reached an impasse. Secretly the Party leaders had begun to plan for violent resistance, but it was too early for tangible results.¹⁵ Political frustration was released for some in denunciation of Nkomo.

By a curious irony Nkomo’s tactic of leading his Executive into exile facilitated the organisation of opposition to him. As the ZAPU leaders dispersed round Africa, the dissidents did not challenge Nkomo in a full Executive meeting, which might have enabled him to re-assert his authority. In July 1963 a group of four ZAPU leaders meeting in Dar es Salaam tried to depose Nkomo as President and replace him with Sithole. The rebels knew that they had some popular support in Salisbury, but, ironically, in view of their criticism of Nkomo’s preoccupation with activity abroad, they delayed their return home and allowed Nkomo to rally popular support there for his continuing leadership.¹⁶

Unable to prevent Nkomo from defending his position, Sithole and the other rebels formed a rival party, ZANU, in August 1963. Faced with this open challenge, Nkomo resurrected the banned ZAPU in the form of a nominally new organisation called PCC (People’s Caretaker Council). The split in the nationalist movement became a developing disaster, as Africans lined up between the groups of rival leaders.

During the year in which the Government allowed the two nationalist parties legal existence PCC and ZANU became steadily more hostile to each other. The ideology and aims of the two factions were indistinguishable and, in spite of Sithole’s criticism of Nkomo’s strategy, ZANU in practice did not immediately devise any radically new or more successful methods of applying pressure on the government. Nkomo retained more popular support than Sithole attracted, but ZANU recruited enough members to make it a far more formidable opponent to PCC than ZNP, a mere splinter, had been to NDP or ZAPU. The tragedy of the 1963 split was that both parties spent more energy in denouncing each other than in fighting their common European enemy. PCC and ZANU did not restrict their conflict to words and emotions: many of their supporters used phys...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Editorial Note
• Notes on Contributors
• Zimbabwe’s Land Problem: The Central Issue
• Zimbabwe’s Prospects as an Industrial Power
• Zimbabwe’s International Economic Position and Aspects of Sanctions Removal
• Political Scenarios and Their Economic Implications
• Zimbabwe’s Southern African Setting
• The Insignificance of Tribe in the African Politics of Zimbabwe Rhodesia
• The Impact of the War