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The following lists events that happened during 1980 in Zimbabwe .
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The following lists events that happened during 1980 in Zimbabwe .
This section lists deaths in Zimbabwe during 1980.
Until roughly 2,000 years ago, what would become Zimbabwe was populated by ancestors of the San people. Bantu inhabitants of the region arrived and developed ceramic production in the area. A series of trading empires emerged, including the Kingdom of Mapungubwe and Kingdom of Zimbabwe. In the 1880s, the British South Africa Company began its activities in the region, leading to the colonial era in Southern Rhodesia.
Zimbabwe, officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the south-west, Zambia to the north, and Mozambique to the east. The capital and largest city is Harare. The second largest city is Bulawayo. A country of roughly 15 million people, Zimbabwe has 16 official languages, with English, Shona, and Ndebele the most common. Beginning in the 9th century, during its late Iron Age, the Bantu people built the city-state of Great Zimbabwe which became one of the major African trade centres by the 11th century, controlling the gold, ivory and copper trades with the Swahili coast, which were connected to Arab and Indian states. By the mid 15th century, the city-state had been abandoned. From there, the Kingdom of Zimbabwe was established, followed by the Rozvi and Mutapa empires.
The national flag of Zimbabwe consists of seven even horizontal stripes of green, gold, red and black with a white triangle containing a red five-pointed star with a Zimbabwe Bird. The present design was adopted on 18 April 1980. The soapstone bird featured on the flag represents a statuette of a bird found at the ruins of Great Zimbabwe. The bird symbolises the history of Zimbabwe; the red star beneath it officially stands for the nation's aspirations but is commonly thought to symbolise socialism, and the revolutionary struggle for freedom and peace. The design is based on the flag of Zimbabwe's ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front.
The Lancaster House Agreement, signed on 21 December 1979, declared a ceasefire, ending the Rhodesian Bush War; and directly led to Rhodesia achieving internationally recognised independence as Zimbabwe. It required the full resumption of direct British rule, nullifying the Unilateral Declaration of Independence of 1965. British governance would be strictly prescribed to the duration of a proposed election period followed by a formal power transfer back to a recognised, sovereign state. Constitutional instruments would thus be transferred from the British state to a popularly elected government, under an unqualified universal franchise vote. Crucially, the political wings of the black nationalist groups ZANU and ZAPU, who had been waging an increasingly violent insurgency, would be permitted to stand candidates in the forthcoming elections. This was however conditional to compliance with the ceasefire and the verified absence of voter intimidation.
Abel Tendekayi Muzorewa, also commonly referred to as Bishop Muzorewa, was a Zimbabwean bishop and politician who served as the first and only Prime Minister of Zimbabwe Rhodesia from the Internal Settlement to the Lancaster House Agreement in 1979. A United Methodist Church bishop and nationalist leader, he held office for only a few months.
Janet Banana was a Zimbabwean teacher who became First Lady of Zimbabwe. She was married to the country's first President, Canaan Banana, from 1961 until his death in 2003, and she served as the first First Lady of Zimbabwe from 1980 until 1987. In 2000, she sought asylum in the United Kingdom, where she became a citizen and remained until returning to Zimbabwe in 2019.
Gibson Jama Sibanda was a Zimbabwean politician and trade unionist. He was a founding member of the Movement for Democratic Change and at the time of his death was the Vice-President of the faction of the Movement for Democratic Change led by Arthur Mutambara. A former president of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, he was first elected to the House of Assembly in the 2000 parliamentary election. He was a member of the Senate and a Minister of State in the Office of Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara at the time of his death in 2010.
Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa is a Zimbabwean politician who has served as President of Zimbabwe since 24 November 2017. A member of ZANU–PF and a longtime ally of former President Robert Mugabe, he held a series of cabinet portfolios and was Mugabe's Vice-President until November 2017, when he was dismissed before coming to power in a coup d'état. He secured his first full term as president in the disputed 2018 general election.
Articles related to Zimbabwe include:
The prime minister of Zimbabwe was a political office in the government of Zimbabwe that existed on two occasions. The first person to hold the position was Robert Mugabe from 1980 to 1987 following independence from the United Kingdom. He took office when Southern Rhodesia became the Republic of Zimbabwe on 18 April 1980. This position was abolished when the constitution was amended in 1987 and Mugabe became president of Zimbabwe, replacing Canaan Banana as the head of state while also remaining the head of government. The office of prime minister was restored in 2009 and held by Morgan Tsvangirai until the position was again abolished by the 2013 Constitution of Zimbabwe.
Sarah Francesca "Sally" Mugabe was the first wife of Robert Mugabe and the First Lady of Zimbabwe from 1987 until her death in 1992. She was popularly known as Amai (Mother) in Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe regained its independence from the United Kingdom on 17 April 1980. Canaan Banana, a Methodist minister and theologian, became the first President of Zimbabwe on 18 April.
Foreign relations exist between Australia and Zimbabwe. Both countries have full embassy level diplomatic relations. Australia currently maintains an embassy in Harare, and Zimbabwe maintains an embassy in Canberra.
The modern political history of Zimbabwe starts with the arrival of white people to what was dubbed Southern Rhodesia in the 1890s. The country was initially run by an administrator appointed by the British South Africa Company. The prime ministerial role was first created in October 1923, when the country achieved responsible government, with Sir Charles Coghlan as its first Premier. The third Premier, George Mitchell, renamed the post Prime Minister in 1933.
The president of Zimbabwe is the head of state of Zimbabwe and head of the executive branch of the government of Zimbabwe. The president chairs the national cabinet and is the chief commanding authority of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces.
The 1980 Zimbabwe women's national field hockey team won the gold medal in women's field hockey at that year's Summer Olympics in Moscow, the capital of the Soviet Union. The squad of 16 women, all from Zimbabwe's white minority, was assembled less than a month before the Olympics began to help fill the gaps the American-led Olympic boycott created in the women's hockey competition. Zimbabwe's subsequent victory in the round-robin tournament with three wins and two draws was regarded as a huge upset, particularly considering the team's lack of preparation and experience; it has been called an "irresistible fairy story". Won at a time of great political transition in Zimbabwe, the gold medal was the country's first Olympic medal of any colour.
Canaan Sodindo Banana was a Zimbabwean Methodist minister, theologian, and politician who served as the first President of Zimbabwe from 1980 to 1987. He was Zimbabwe's first head of state after the Lancaster House Agreement that led to the country’s independence. In 1987, he stepped down as President and was succeeded by Prime Minister Robert Mugabe, who became the country's executive president. In 1997, Banana was accused of being a homosexual, and after a highly publicised trial, was convicted of 11 counts of sodomy and "unnatural acts", serving six months in prison.
The following lists events from the year 2018 in Zimbabwe.
Relations between the UK and Zimbabwe have been complex since the latter's independence in 1980. The territory of modern Zimbabwe had been colonised by the British South Africa Company in 1890, with the Pioneer Column raising the Union Jack over Fort Salisbury and formally establishing company, and by extension, British, rule over the territory. In 1920 Rhodesia, as the land had been called by the company in honour of their founder, Cecil Rhodes, was brought under jurisdiction of the Crown as the colony of Southern Rhodesia. Southern Rhodesia over the decades following its establishment would slowly be populated by large numbers of Europeans emigrants who came to form a considerable diaspora, largely consisting of Britons but also smaller groups of Italians, Greeks and Afrikaners. A settler culture that had already existed since the time of company would come to cement fully and the white population began to identify as Rhodesians, often in conjunction with British/Afrikaner/Southern European identities of their ancestors. Southern Rhodesia would go on to participate heavily in both the First and Second wars, providing soldiers and military equipment to the British war effort. During the years after the war, the relationship between Britain and Southern Rhodesia became increasingly strained. The UK had opted to decolonise Africa and had adopted a firm policy of no independence before majority rule, which deeply upset the white establishment of the colony, in particular the radical Rhodesian Front party led by Winston Field and later, Ian Smith. Relations between the British Government and the colonial Southern Rhodesian government deteriorated for much of the early 1960s and negotiations between the two dragged on with little to no success. Eventually, relations broke down entirely and Southern Rhodesia unilaterally declared independence from Britain. The move was met with zero recognition from the international community and the UK government and the illegitimate state was still formally considered under British sovereignty for its roughly 15-year span of existence. For the first 5 years of its proclaimed independence, Rhodesia still declared loyalty to the Queen Elizabeth II as a would-be Commonwealth realm, but this was never recognised by the British monarch who continued to encourage Smith's illegal government to resign. Given her refusal to appoint a Governor-general, from 1965 to 1970 an "Officer Administering the Government" served as the de facto head of state. Rhodesia eventually moved to sever all links with Britain and became a republic with a president in 1970. Throughout the subsequent Rhodesian Bush War between white Rhodesians and black paramilitaries such as ZANU and ZAPU, the UK continued to remain staunchly opposed to the rogue state and extensively sanctioned it, even enforcing blockades using the Royal Navy to cut off Rhodesian oil imports via Portuguese Mozambique. When Rhodesia failed to hold out after 15 years of fighting and came to the negotiating table with the black resistance groups and moderate African nationalist parties, the UK again became directly involved in Rhodesia's affairs. After a brief stint as the nation of Zimbabwe Rhodesia following an Internal Settlement that was denounced by the international community for not being satisfactory enough, the nation transiently reverted to its status as a self-governing British colony before being granted full independence and majority rule as Zimbabwe in 1980 under the landmark Lancaster House Agreement.
State House, formerly known as Government House, is the official residence of the President of Zimbabwe and is located in Harare, Zimbabwe. It was previously used by the Administrator of Southern Rhodesia, Governor of Southern Rhodesia and the Governor-General of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in addition to being occupied by the internationally unrecognised Rhodesian Officer Administering the Government and later President of Rhodesia. It was constructed in 1910 to a design by Detmar Blow in the Cape Dutch revival style.
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