Portal:Zimbabwe/Featured article/February 2008

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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.