Postcolonial Zimbabwe

During the time of World War I, Europeans have established empires at a majority of countries all over the world. Among them was Zimbabwe, located north of South Africa colonized earlier in 1890 by Great Britain. One of the problems that the Zimbabwe has to deal with as a direct result is civil unrest over land control. The indirect result would be the diseases that are spread amongst the people, especially HIV/AIDS that have a major impact on mortality rates. At times of civil unrest there were rival liberation groups between the ZANU and the ZAPU who attempted to take back their land from the British and claimed that a very small portion of the population which consisted of British colonizers owned more than half of Zimbabwe’s land; “As a result of this internal conflict in the independence movement, armed conflict between the two groups and competition for the support of the peasants prevented the Zimbabweans from forming a strong united front of opposition to the Rhodesians”.(emory) The Rhodesians were the English colonists who have changed Zimbabwe to Rhodesia during their colonizing period.

Another problem of past colonization as a direct result is inflation in Zimbabwe’s economy. A common problem after a country is no longer economically dependent with a dominant country or disadvantaged from foreign commercial relations. “Experts say that Zimbabwe's inflation is currently the world's highest”. (NY Times) Food or rather toilet paper are among the unattainable luxuries that exist in Zimbabwe today; "The price of toilet paper, like everything else here, soars almost daily . . .Four hundred seventeen Zimbabwean dollars is the value of a single two-ply sheet. A roll costs $145,750 — in American currency, about 69 cents."(NY Times) Unemployment rates have sky-rocketed; “The jobless — officially 70 percent of Zimbabwe's 4.2 million workers”(NY Times).

Works Cited :

http://english.emory.edu/Bahri/Zimb.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/02/world/africa/02zimbabwe.html?ex=1304222400&en=e4f95916b4e5d098&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss