The founding of the colony of Southern Rhodesia created a plural society quite in keeping with the Furnivall model and very much characterized by dissensus, conflict and coercion as features of general interaction between the dominant and the subordinate strata of this newly founded society. In reality, a three-tier social segmental system evolved in the new society, with the foreign African elements representing an interpolating median between the dominant white settler classes and the subject African indigenous societies. Introduced, at first, as simple menials, military auxiliaries and necessary adjuncts to missionary enterprise, the foreign Africans, then largely from South Africa, were gradually reinforced in their numbers by numerous other immigrant groups brought into the country later, at various stages, as labourers, but with various degrees of success. The Abyssinians, Somalis and Arabs from North East Africa and Aden, for example, failed to provide Southern Rhodesia with a perennial external source of labour supply either because these recruits would not accept employment under the chattel labour conditions prescribed by Southern Rhodesia's repressive colonial setting or because of the reluctance of the territory's colonist employers to reform these conditions in question. Indian labour supply would not materialise because the plan obviously ran counter to the relatively liberal political philosophy of the colonial government of India at Simla; a philosophy that was expected to take into consideration issues of relevance to universal British imperial citizenship and trusteeship. Chinese labour supply raised so much controversy and fragmented the white colonial front in Southern Rhodesia so seriously that it had to be abandoned. The Mfengu settlement scheme was only a temporary success, as far as its labour value was concerned.

The end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 21st century were marked by enormous social, economic and political challenges in Africa and in other developing contexts. This was partly due to the effects of a global economic recession and arguably failed national economic structural adjustment programmes, rampant public sector corruption and a rise in authoritarianism, as states tried to keep restive populations under control. Zimbabwe saw intense political struggles between the government and various agents of social change who were pressing for democratic space. This study specifically investigates how the news media in Zimbabwe played a critical role in actively mobilizing for political change and as a site for opposition politics and agitation during moments of turmoil and repression from 1997-2010. Zimbabwe’s news media, particularly privately owned newspapers, provided more accessible platforms for robust debate that challenged the status quo in the troubled state. Not only did the private press in Zimbabwe successfully oppose the one-party state after the country attained independence in 1980, they were even more significant at the height of the economic and political governance crisis, also known as the Zimbabwe Crisis, from 2000-2010. My research focuses on the unprecedented ways in which newspaper journalism helped the cause of democratisation in Zimbabwe. The research is designed as a qualitative case study of The Daily News, a leading private newspaper whose masthead was aptly worded: “telling it like it is”. Apart from content illustration of purposely-selected headlines of newspaper articles, it was based on semi-structured interviews conducted with 51 respondents, who were mainly politicians and journalists living in Zimbabwe. I also draw upon my experience and observations of having worked for the Daily News during this eventful period. The research methods gave me access to primary data on the institutional and personal experiences of a private newspaper and its journalists, who reflected and affected the political crisis in Zimbabwe. The main aim was to investigate why and how news journalists working for a prominent private medium came to oppose an undemocratic state under conditions of repression. The analytical lens of alternative media facilitates a construction of how The Daily News and its journalists experienced, reported, confronted and navigated state authoritarianism in a historical moment of political turmoil. The study discusses the complex relationships between the independent and privately-owned press, the main opposition political party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and civil society organizations. Such groups include the labour movement and the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), the main constitutional reform movement. This dissertation argues that in the struggles for political change that ensued between the opposition forces and the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party, The Daily News provided form and solidity to oppositional and civic voices that were previously shut out by the dominant public media. The significance of this study is that existing scholarship on media and communication studies in Zimbabwe do not adequately capture these experiences. The agency of such media institutions and journalists has rarely been investigated. Further, the research provides an original analysis of the operations of The Daily News and its journalists in the context of highly undemocratic political moment, inclusive of the trials and tribulations, such as assaults, arrests, detentions, and office bombings, civil and criminal trials. Arguably, this study fills an important lacuna in scholarship on the role of the news media in democratising states during moments of political instability. The study thus contributes to knowledge on the experiences of alternative, opposition, activist and often radical journalists in Zimbabwe, where they championed ordinary citizens’ stories instead of focussing entirely on expert views of the crisis. By embracing alternative media theory as the analytic lens of the study, there is arguably a normative contribution to knowledge through the use of the framework in a democratising context to broaden the understanding of the role of the news media in societies going through turbulent political transitions.

The Tonga Plateau was the main area of white settlement in Northern Rhodesia and in the 1920s many Africans there were moved into reserves on poor land which soon became overcrowded. At the same time, official restrictions were placed on the marketing of farm produce by the African population which supplied part of the Copperbelt market. Such grievances, together with settler pressure for closer union with Southern Rhodesia, prompted Africans in the area to form some of the earliest political associations in the territory. By the late 1940s, there was a small group of highly commercialised Tonga farmers. The Government tried to enlist the support of this elite with a scheme for 'Improved Farmers', but it was only partly successful and rules for land conservation antagonised the great mass of small scale African farmers. From the first, the plateau provided substantial support for the country's first nationalist party, the A.N.C. However, the party's leaders regarded the area, with its income from commercial farming, primarily as a source of funds and its organisation on the plateau was poor and several influential Africans declined to lend it any active assistance. The Improved Farmers, for instance, preferred their non-political Farmers Associations. This brought on them accusations of collaboration with white oppression which only increased their alienation. After the 1958 split in the A.N.C.'s leadership which led to the formation of U.N.I.P., the A.N.C. came to be more closely identified with the Southern Province (and its political centre-point, the Tonga plateau), which area provided its most consistent support, U.N.I.P. lad the disadvantage of being rooted on the Copperbelt where few Tonga lived or worked. Besides, most of its leaders were long-standing urban residents and the Tonga had doubts about committing rural claims to such people. This lack of affinity with the Copperbelt partly ensured the A.N.C.'s continued popularity on the Tonga plateau.

Using original archival materials from the Commonwealth Secretariat and the UK National Archives, as well as private paper collections, this thesis examines the experience of the Commonwealth summits (CPMM/CHOGM) in dealing with the Rhodesia problem from 1966 until 1979. In doing so it pays particular attention to the role of the British government and the work of the Commonwealth Secretariat. Rhodesia emerged as a major international and a Commonwealth problem after Ian Smith, the leader of the Rhodesia Front announced a Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) in November 1965. Britain refused to acknowledge the independence of Rhodesia without a constitutional conference and majority rule. The British government fixed on economic sanctions as the main policy to end the rebellion without intensifying the armed struggle, but this moderate approach provoked outrage from many African Commonwealth leaders. Ghana and Tanzania even broke off diplomatic relations with Britain while others threatened to leave the Commonwealth. Rhodesia remained on the agenda of Commonwealth meetings until the CHOGM in Lusaka in 1979; this paved the way to a Constitutional Conference at Lancaster House, which resulted in a settlement. Somehow the system of Commonwealth summits had survived a long-running and highly-charged crisis. In exploring how this came about, the thesis particularly argues that members' national interests, including those of Britain and the African Commonwealth, combined to make agreement between them, rather than a rift, highly desirable. Furthermore, Commonwealth summits continued to evolve throughout the period, in ways that made common understanding easier to achieve.

This thesis discusses the struggle for independence in Rhodesia, from the Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965 to internationally recognised independence in 1980. Whilst there are many existing accounts and discussions of the Rhodesia crisis, there is very little work that considers the role of advocacy organisations and the pressure they exerted on successive Governments and the broader left in Britain, and little consideration of the African nationalist movement outside of Rhodesia or the nationalist bases in neighbouring countries. The thesis builds on existing literature by considering how interest in the Rhodesia issue amongst advocacy organisations and the labour movement in Britain fluctuated over this 15 year period, according to key events in the timeline of the transition from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe. It examines the methods used by advocacy organisations in campaigning on the Rhodesia issue, arguing that they were constrained by pragmatism and adherence to familiar methods of campaigning, as well as a lack of will to break with these methods, one of which was to involve the labour movement and utilise their established networks to publicise the cause. This tactic was met with limited success because, for the majority of the period under consideration, the British labour movement was broadly disengaged with the Rhodesia issue, with other primarily domestic concerns taking precedence, although certain individuals gave ardent support to the cause. The rhetoric of the more middle class led advocacy organisations generally failed to find traction with much of the labour movement. Meanwhile, the African nationalist movement focused its attentions on the British Labour Party in the belief that they were the real power brokers, and maintained a polite relationship with its representatives, whilst espousing a strong anti-British rhetoric back in Rhodesia.

My thesis offers an examination of U.S. policy towards Rhodesia as viewed through the lens of the respective Presidential administrations. The aim of my research is to demonstrate the changing American perspective on the Rhodesian question and how this directly affected the ultimate emergence of an independent Zimbabwe. I discuss the transformation in U.S. policy from the cautious approach of the Johnson White House, the shift towards 'white Africa' during the Nixon years as anticommunism and economic interests took centre stage and the subsequent attempt of the Ford Administration to achieve a peace settlement to prevent further communist expansion into southern Africa. Finally, I will analyse the critical role played by President Carter in bringing an end to UDI. When evaluating U.S. policy I highlight the diverse factors which drove presidential decision making. Anti-communism, trade, strategic interests, the increasing interdependence of the global system, a moral belief in decolonization, the growth of human rights, domestic race relations and the growing importance of the African-American vote all significantly impacted White House actions. On a broader level, I will demonstrate how relations with Salisbury offers an interpretative prism which reveals the evolution of U.S. foreign relations during the Sixties and Seventies.

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This thesis uses belonging as an analytical tool to analyse the history of the Basotho community in the Dewure Purchase Areas in Zimbabwe. The thesis analyses how Basotho’s migration history and their experiences with colonial displacements shaped and continue to shape their construction of a sense of belonging. It also examines how Basotho’s purchase of farms in the Dewure Purchase Areas in the 1930s and their establishment of a communally owned farm have played a key role in their struggles for belonging. It also explores the centrality of land, graves, funerals, and religion in the belonging matrix. The study, however, avoids projecting the Basotho community as a monolithic and cohesive unit by analysing the various internal schisms and cleavages within the community and examining their impacts. Although, Basotho have seemingly managed to integrate into the local community, a more critical analysis reveals that they have also continued to maintain a level of particularism. The central dynamic in this thesis, therefore, is how the Basotho, in their different struggles and strategies to belong, over the last century, have fundamentally been caught between being seen and treated as the same as the other people around them and being seen (and seeing themselves) as different. It is arguably this ambivalence or delicate balancing between integrating and remaining ‘outsiders’ that has shaped Basotho’s sense of belonging and determined the strategies they have deployed in different historical contexts. The thesis concludes that, since it is relational and always in a state of becoming, strategies deployed in constructing and articulating belonging constantly change to suit particular historical contexts.

No description available.