Portal:Zimbabwe/Featured article/2008
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[edit] Months in 2008
- January
Mutare (known as Umtali until 1982) is the fourth largest city in Zimbabwe, with a population of approximately 189,000. It is the capital of Manicaland province. It is located at . Mutare was founded in 1897 as a fort, about 8 km from the border with Mozambique, and is just 290 kilometres from the Mozambican port of Beira, earning Mutare the title of "Zimbabwe's Gateway to the Sea".
Sometimes also called "Gateway to the Eastern Highlands".
A border railway station on the railway line from Harare to Beira (Mozambique) with a railways mechanical work shop.
The view from the top of Christmas Pass down onto Mutare is breathtaking.
The town lies north of the Bvumba Mountains and south of the Imbeza Valley. It is home to the Mutare Museum, the Utopia House Museum dedicated to Kingsley Fairbridge, the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Murahwa Hill, known for its rock paintings and Iron Age village, Cross Kopje with a memorial to Zimbabweans and Mozambiqueans killed in World War I and a nature reserve. It is also home to the Africa University, a pan-African university of about 1,200 students.
- February
The Rhodesian Bush War, also known as the Second Chimurenga or the Liberation Struggle, was a guerrilla war which lasted from July 1964[1] to 1979 and led to universal suffrage, the end of biracial rule in Zimbabwe Rhodesia, and the creation of the Republic of Zimbabwe. The Smith and Muzorewa governments fought against Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union and Joshua Nkomo's Zimbabwe African People's Union.
The war is viewed by many Zimbabweans as a war of national liberation, as many of them considered their country as having been occupied and dominated by a foreign power, namely, Britain, since 1890. It was felt that black Zimbabweans had been subjected to racial discrimination and brutality in most spheres of human existence in the country. The nationalists went to war over the land question and institutionalised racism, applied in all spheres of Rhodesian life. The land question resulted from the land dispossession, forced removal from land imposed upon the majority black population by the Rhodesian government. By contrast, most white Rhodesians viewed the war as one of survival with savage atrocities committed in the former Belgian Congo, the Mau Mau Uprising campaign in Kenya and elsewhere in Africa fresh in their minds. Many white and black Rhodesians viewed the lifestyle of themselves as safer and with a higher standard of living then African countries to their north.
- March
The first Matabele War was fought in 1893 between the British South Africa Company military forces and the Ndebele nation. Lobengula, king of the Ndebele, avoided outright war with the British settlers because he and his advisors were mindful of the destructive power of the European weapons on traditional Matabele impis attacking in massed ranks. Lobengula had 80 000 spearmen and 20 000 riflemen, armed with nine pound Martini-Henrys which were modern arms at that time. However, poor training meant that these were not effective weapons. The British South Africa Company had no more than 750 BSA Police troops with an undetermined number of possible colonial volunteers and an additional 700 Bechuana allies. Cecil Rhodes, who was Prime Minister of the Cape Colony and Leander Starr Jameson, the Administrator of Mashonaland also avoided war to prevent loss of confidence in the future of the territory. Matters came to a head when Lobengula approved a raid to forcibly extract tribute from a Mashona chief in the district of the town of Fort Victoria, which inevitably led to a clash with the BSA Company.
- April
The dollar is the currency of Zimbabwe. It is subdivided into 100 cents. It is normally abbreviated with the dollar sign $, or alternatively Z$ to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies.
The first Zimbabwean dollar was introduced in 1980 and replaced the Rhodesian dollar at par. The present ISO 4217 code was ZWD. At the time of its introduction, the Zimbabwean dollar was still worth more than the U.S. dollar, with ZWD 0.68 = USD 1.00. However, the currency's value eroded rapidly over the years. On 26 July 2006, the parallel market value of the dollar fell to one million to the British pound [1].
In October 2005, the head of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, Dr. Gideon Gono, announced "Zimbabwe will have a new currency next year." New banknotes and coins were to replace the then current Zimbabwean dollar. Gono did not provide a name for this new currency. In June 2006, Deputy Finance Minister David Chapfika stated that Zimbabwe had to achieve macroeconomic stability (i.e., double digit inflation) before any new currency was introduced.
- May
Lake Kariba is a large, man-made lake and reservoir located on the Zambezi river, about halfway between the river's source and mouth, about 1300 kilometers upstream from the Indian Ocean. The lake lies along the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe. Lake Kariba was filled between 1958 and 1963 following the completion of the Kariba Dam at its northeastern end, flooding the Kariba Gorge on the Zambezi River and displacing large numbers of the local Tonga people.
The Zimbabwean town of Kariba was built for construction workers on the lake's dam, while some other settlements such as Milbibezi in Zimbabwe and Siavonga and Sinazongwe in Zambia have grown up to house people displaced by the rising waters.
Lake Kariba is over 220 kilometers (140 mi) long and up to 40 kilometers (20 mi) in width. It covers an area of 5,580 square kilometers (2,150 sq mi) and its storage capacity is an immense 185 cubic kilometers (44.4 cu mi). The mean depth of the lake is 29 meters (95 ft); the maximum depth is 97 meters (320 ft). It is one of the world's largest man-made reservoirs.
The lake is home to several islands, including Chete Island, Sekula and Chikanka.
- June
Zimbabwe held a presidential election along with a parliamentary election on March 29, 2008. The three major candidates were incumbent President Robert Mugabe of the Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), and Simba Makoni, an independent. The election was expected, because of Zimbabwe's dire economic situation, to provide President Mugabe with his toughest electoral challenge to date. Mugabe's opponents have been critical of the handling of the electoral process, and the government has been accused of planning to rig the election; Human Rights Watch said that the election was likely to be "deeply flawed". However, after the election took place, Jose Marcos Barrica, the head of the Southern African Development Community observer mission, described the election as "a peaceful and credible expression of the will of the people of Zimbabwe."
No official results were announced for more than a month after the election. The failure to release results was strongly criticized by the MDC, which sought an order from the High Court that would force their release. An independent projection placed Tsvangirai in the lead, but without the majority needed to avoid a second round.
