Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) Shona / Mugabe
The two major groups that formed to give political expression to African goals were the Ndebele-dominated Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) and the Shona-based Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU). Although ethnic rivalries were not crucial in the initial split, it became evident that, while ZAPU retained the allegiance of the Ndebele and allied Shona groups, ZANU's political base was in the Mashonaland countryside. ZANU units were armed primarily by China, ZAPU by the Soviet Union. Many insurgents received military training abroad in Algeria, China, and Tanzania. Proscribed in Rhodesia, both political groups established exile headquarters in sympathetic black countries, particularly neighboring Zambia. Despairing of the ability to bring about change through peaceful means, they soon turned to more violent methods, including the formation of military elements trained in guerrilla tactics and armed with the necessary weapons to carry them out. In 1972 ZANU's force, the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA), operating from isolated bases in Mozambique, began sustained guerrilla operations inside eastern Rhodesia. ZAPU's military force, known as the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA), carried out hit-and-run raids from bases in Zambia.
ZAPU "dissidents" in August 1963 founded the internally oriented Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) at a meeting in Gwelo (present-day Gweru). The split in ZAPU and the founding of the more militant and inward-looking ZANU proved to be the turning point in the history of the nationalist movement. ZANU's agenda, as it developed, was socialist and pan-Africanist in content. It demanded an independent state-Zimbabwe-with black najority rule in a one-party republic, elimination of all racial discrimination, and government control of land use. ZANU had been banned a few weeks after it had been formed, but it continued to operate as an external organization in neighboring black countries and as an underground organization internally. It organized occupational groups representing farmers, urban workers, and miners and also attracted professionals, students, women activists, and even some traditional leaders to its ranks. ZANU was troubled almost from the start by factionalism. Sithole, a Congregationalist minister educated at Garfield Todd's mission school and later in the United States, was named president of the organization. A founding member of the NDP and ZAPU, he had been in the forefront of the fight to keep the leadership in Rhodesia. His book, African Nationalism, in which he had demanded an end to white rule, had become the primer for the nationalist movement after its publication in 1959. Sithole, along with Mugabe and many other party leaders, was arrested in 1964 and for the next ten years would remain with them in prison, where most of ZANU's internal political battles were fought. During the early 1970s Sithole was eased out as the leading figure, his place taken by Mugabe, but he managed to retain ZANU's presidency and continued to be recognized by its chief African allies abroad. Although a professed Marxist, Mugabe had a reputation as a political pragmatist whose particular skill was as an organizer. Until his release from prison with Sithole and Nkomo in 1974, however, he was little known outside the inner circles of the nationalist movement. Mugabe had been a teacher in Roman Catholic schools in Rhodesia and later in newly independent Ghana. He became the NDP's public relations officer in 1960 and, as the deputy secretary general of ZAPU, had gone to Dar es Salaam with Nkomo. Aligning himself with Sithole, Mugabe had then become ZANU's secretary general and Sithole's rival for power within the new organization. A cease-fire in the civil war was effected, and economic sanctions were lifted in the UN by the Security Council. Carefully supervised elections in which nine political parties campaigned actively were held in February 1980, and the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) won by an overwhelming majority. ZANU-PF leader Robert Mugabe, avowed Marxist and early advocate of socialist reform, was asked to form the first government and lead it as prime minister. President Canaan Banana, a Methodist minster who had vigorously opposed Rhodesia's racial injustice, would serve as head of state. Despite ZANU-PF's early reputation as the most radical of the political parties involved in the 1980 elections, white Zimbabweans' fears of a Marxist takeover have not materialized during the first two years of national independence. Instead the government has adhered generally to Mugabe's announced policies of reconciliation, reconstruction, and moderate socioeconomic change. Integration of the various elements of the armed forces that existed at the close of the seven-year civil war received primary attention, along with the reestablishment of social services in rural areas. Also high on the list of reforms were efforts to reverse the discriminatory practices in land distribution, education, employment, and wages that existed before independence. Despite the effort. of Tanzania and Zambia to briihg ZANU and ZAPU together, both groups remained more absorbe in recriminations and settling old scores than in waging war in common against the white regime in Rhodesia. Guerrilla activity had virtually ceased by 1968. Disappointment with their weakness led the Organization of African Unity (OAU) to propose a joint military command. When this was rejected by the rival groups, efforts were made by various sponsors to create a new organization to replace ZANU and ZAPU. A new phase in the armed struggle against the white regime was opened in December 1972 when forces of ZANU's military arm, the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA), launched a series of hit-and-run raids in the Centenary area (north of Harare) near the Mozambique border. Acts of terrorism directed against isolated farmsteads were calculated to persuade Europeans to abandon the countryside and to dispel the myth of white invulnerability that had inhibited many blacks from cooperating with the guerrillas. As months passed, operations were expanded to other areas within range of guerrilla camps across the border, and small units established bases on Rhodesian soil. Cross-border activity increased steadily after Mozambique obtained its independence in 1975. Applying Maoist concepts of popular guerrilla warfare, ZANIA forces based primarily in Mozambique relied on contacts built up through ZANU's grass-roots political organization to camouflage their movements in Mashonaland. ZANU's overall strategy involved using the black masses to apply constant pressure on the white regime and to defeat it in a war of attrition. Zambia's Kaunda's umbrella group, the Front for the Liberation of Zimbabwe (FROLIZI), appeared in 1971 and gained immediate support among exiles. In 1976, after the failure of FROLIZI to unify the military effort, the Zimbabwe People's Army (ZIPA) was organized by commanders representing both major factions, although ZANU's ZANLA participation was more apparent and its officers held the most important leadership positions. ZIPA effectively ceased to function when its ZIPRA component was withdrawn in 1977 by Nkomo in his drive to build up ZAPU's military arm after failure of the Geneva talks. Estimates of the size of the insurgent forces vary considerably, but numbers were believed to have been over 50,000 in 1979. Not all of these, however, were sufficiently armed or trained to be considered combat effective. In the late 1970s about 15,000 guerrillas were active inside Rhodesia at any given time, most of them from ZANU's ZANLA. Ranged against the guerrillas in 1972 were security forces and reserves that numbered under 50,000 men. These were incorporated in a small, white-officered regular army of 3,400, of whom 80 percent were black, backed up by 8,000 white reservists. Equipment was old but well maintained. Rhodesian regular forces had high morale, and all components were well trained for their missions.
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