Chapter 2 POLITICAL BACKGROUND Introduction In assessing these elections, and in offering our recommendations in subsequent chapters, the Group took account of relevant aspects of the country’s past and present political context, and their impact on the 2018 elections. These include Zimbabwe’s protracted struggle for independence, which exacerbated geographic and tribal divisions, and the lengthy and repressive regime of President Robert Gabriel Mugabe, who was in office from 1980 to 2017, that led to international isolation and economic decline. From British colonial influence to independence British colonialism began in 1888 when Cecil Rhodes and the British South Africa Company obtained mineral rights from local chiefs. In the absence of significant gold discoveries, the white settlers acquired vast areas of fertile land for farming. Eventually, the region was divided under British rule as Southern Rhodesia, or present-day Zimbabwe, and Northern Rhodesia, or modern Zambia. In 1953, Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, now Malawi, formed a federation that was dissolved at the end of 1963 after much crisis and turmoil. Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland became the independent states of Zambia and Malawi in 1964, while Southern Rhodesia became Rhodesia and remained under British control. The traditional chiefs provided leadership and influence over their people. The practice of British indirect rule was to use them to support their objectives. The role and influence of traditional chiefs remains strong in Zimbabwe. In response to British pressure to accept black-majority rule, Rhodesia, then under Prime Minister Ian Smith, declared independence from the United Kingdom in 1965, which led the United Nations to impose economic sanctions. The nationalists’ movement, the Zimbabwe African Peoples Union (ZAPU), led by Joshua Nkomo, and eventually its break-away rival, the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), led by Robert Mugabe, waged a guerrilla resistance against Ian Smith’s government’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI). After years of liberation war and pressure from the international community, and the failed 1978 Internal Settlement between the Smith regime and Moderate African Nationalist Leaders, all major parties in the conflict participated in peace talks, initiated at the 1979 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Lusaka and finally convened in London, under the auspices of the British government. This led to the Lancaster House Agreement on land, the holding of elections and acceptance 4