ZIMBABWE, FLAG OF

national flag consisting of horizontal stripes of green-yellow-red above and red-yellow-green below a central black stripe. A white hoist triangle bears a red star and the Zimbabwe Bird. The flag's width-to-length ratio is 1 to 2. From the late 19th century Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) denied representative government to its African majority. White resistance to British attempts to encourage democracy resulted in a new flag's adoption on April 8, 1964. Instead of the former British Blue Ensign, the new Rhodesian flag had a light blue background, recalling the Royal Air Force ensign under which many white Rhodesians had served in World War II. Like the British Blue Ensign, however, the 1964 flag included the Union Jack in the canton and the shield of Rhodesia at the fly end. The white government proclaimed independence on November 11, 1965, and adopted an entirely new flag on November 11, 1968. The new design had vertical green-white-green stripes with the full coat of arms in the centre. When resistance by African nationalist groups forced white Rhodesians to establish a limited democracy, the new Zimbabwe Rhodesia adopted a flag on September 2, 1979. Very soon, however, the white minority was forced to accommodate the British and the Zimbabwe African National Union. After subsequent free democratic elections, the Republic of Zimbabwe was proclaimed on April 18, 1980, under the flag that continues to fly today. Its colours, originally chosen by the winning Patriotic Front, include black for the ethnic majority, red for the blood shed in the liberation process, green for agriculture, yellow for mineral wealth, and white for peace and progress. At the hoist is a red star for socialism, on which is emblazoned the ancient Zimbabwe Bird. That distinctive emblem appeared in the form of soapstone carvings found at the Great Zimbabwe archaeological site, the stone ruins of which are centuries old. Whitney Smith History The remains of Stone Age cultures dating back 500,000 years have been found in Zimbabwe, and it is thought that the San, who still survive mostly in the Kalahari desert of Botswana, are the last descendants of these original inhabitants of southern and central Africa. They were driven into the desert by the Bantu-speaking tribes during the long migrations from the north in the course of which the Bantu-speaking peoples populated much of Africa from Lake Chad to present-day South Africa. The first Bantu are thought to have reached Zimbabwe between the 5th and 10th centuries AD. The stone ruins of Zimbabwe date mainly from about the 9th century, although the most elaborate belong to a period after the 15th century and are of Bantu origin. Portuguese exploration The Portuguese, who arrived on the east coast of Africa at the end of the 15th century, dreamed of opening up the interior and establishing a route to connect their eastern settlements with Angola in the west. The first European to enter Zimbabwe was probably Antnio Fernandes, who tried to cross the continent and reached the neighbourhood of Que Que (now Kwekwe). Nearly 50 years later the emperor Mwene Matapa was baptized by a Jesuit father, and in 1569 an abortive military expedition entered the interior in search of gold. A second great movement of the Bantu peoples began in 1830, this time from the south. To escape from the power of the great Zulu chief Shaka, three important tribes fled northward, one of them the Ndebele, who carved out a kingdom. The Ndebele were warriors and pastoralists, in the Zulu tradition, and under their formidable chief Mzilikazi they mastered and dispossessed the weaker tribes, known collectively as Shona (Mashona), who were sedentary, peaceful tillers of the land. For more than half a century, until the coming of European rule, the Ndebele continued to enslave and plunder the Shona. During this period, however, British and Afrikaner hunters, traders, and prospectors had begun to move up from the south, and with them came the missionaries. Robert Moffat visited Mzilikazi in 1857, and this meeting led to the establishment in 1861 of the first mission to the Ndebele by the London Missionary Society. The economy The government of independent Zimbabwe moved cautiously to alter the pattern of management that it inherited from the white minority regime. The first budget of July 1980 was described by the finance minister as conservative a mild and pragmatic application of socialism. But the whites had passed on government machinery that included many levers of economic power. While the whites by inclination were wedded to a system of private enterprise, they had evolved a system of government intervention to support infant industries and maintain agricultural prices through marketing boards. The need to cushion the blows dealt by economic sanctions during UDI brought acceptance of the imposition of exchange and import controls. The government raises nearly half of its revenue from personal and corporate income taxes that since 1966 have been collected on a pay-as-you-earn system. About two-fifths of government revenue comes from customs and excise duties and sales taxes, a small portion from investments, and much of the rest from government borrowing and, since independence, international aid. The independent Zimbabwe government removed sales taxes on the staple items of food and fuel for the poorest people and extended sales taxes to travel, hotel accommodations, taxis, telecommunications, and other services. It continued the former rates of personal income tax. The evolution of the trade union movement was some two years behind the pattern of political change by 1980. The Robert Mugabe government dealt with immediate labour problems, such as strikes for a higher minimum wage, rather than institute a thorough revision of the basic Industrial Conciliation Act of 1959. The government seemed to favour the strengthening, by mergers or amalgamation, of small unions in the same industry; the strengthening of the whole movement by the formation of a single trade-union congress from the five or six existing confederations of unions; and an arm's-length relationship of government with such a congress. Despite the large number of unions in existence, the largest sections of the labour forcethe agricultural workers and domestic servantsremained outside the system. Employers' groups, such as the Associated Chambers of Commerce of Zimbabwe and the Association of Rhodesian Industries, remained influential. Agriculture Agriculture is the most important productive sector of the country's economy. It regularly generates about 15 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) and some 40 percent of foreign-exchange earnings. More than one-half of the total labour force and one-fourth of the formally employed are engaged directly in agricultural activities. The sector is divided into large-scale commercial farming, which occupies some 40 percent of the total land area and is dominated by white farmers, and small-scale farming, which is both commercial and subsistence in nature. Occupying about the same total area as the large-scale commercial sectorbut on land that is considerably less fertilesmallholders have steadily increased their share of the country's total agricultural output since independence, from about one-tenth in the early 1980s to about half of total production in the early 1990s. To accelerate this trend and redress the issue of land distribution, the government has purchased many large farms and established resettlement areas on them for African farmers. Crop production is well diversified. The most important food crop is corn, which is grown throughout Zimbabwe but does best in the well-watered northeast. Enough corn is usually produced so that Zimbabwe is able to meet its domestic demand and also export a sizable quantity. Wheat production has grown steadily since the 1960s, but the country meets only about two-thirds of its high domestic demand and must import the rest. Other food crops include millet, sorghum, barley, cassava, peanuts (groundnuts), soybeans, bananas, and oranges. Tobacco, of which Zimbabwe is the largest producer in Africa, is the principal cash crop. It contributes about two-thirds of all agricultural export revenue and employs more than one-tenth of the work force. Three types of tobacco have traditionally been grown in the country: Virginia flue-cured, on the large commercial farms; burley, mostly by smallholders; and Turkish, of more limited extent. Cotton is a chief export crop and also the foundation of a large domestic textile industry. Grown by both smallholders and large commercial farmers, cotton has increased steadily in output since the UDI period, when commercial farmers were forced to diversify their production away from an overreliance on tobacco. Sugar is grown in the southern Lowveld. It is a major export, as well as the basis for an important fuel industry, which mixes the sugar by-product ethanol with gasoline to help decrease the country's reliance on expensive imported fuels. Coffee has increased in production many times over since the early 1970s. Grown mainly in the eastern highlands between Vumba and Mount Silinda, Zimbabwe's coffees are premium mild arabicas that command a favourable price on the world market. Cattle are the preferred livestock of the country's farmers. Beef and dairy products, produced mainly by the commercial sector, account for about one-fourth of agricultural output in most years. Since independence there has been a growing domestic demand for beef, and, as one of the few African countries allowed to export beef to the European Community, Zimbabwe has developed a significant export trade in beef as well. Sheep, goats, and pigs are raised in some areas, but their importance is minor compared to cattle. Poultry is kept largely for home use. The land Relief Zimbabwe lies almost entirely over 1,000 feet (300 metres) above sea level. Its principal physical feature is the broad ridge running 400 miles from southwest to northeast across the entire country, from Plumtree near the Botswana frontier through Gweru (formerly Gwelo) and Marondera (formerly Marandellas) to the Inyanga Mountains, which separate Zimbabwe from Mozambique. About 50 miles wide, this ridge ranges in altitude from 4,000 to 5,000 feet, until it eventually rises to 8,504 feet (2,592 metres) at Mount Inyangani, the highest point in Zimbabwe, in the eastern highlands. This ridge is known as the Highveld and comprises about 25 percent of the country's total area. On each side of this central spine, sloping down northward to the Zambezi River and southward to the Limpopo River, lies the wider plateau of the Middleveld, which, at an altitude between about 3,000 and 4,000 feet, makes up roughly 40 percent of Zimbabwe's area. Beyond this again and mostly in the south, where the Sabi, Lundi, and Nuanetsi rivers drain from the plateau into the Limpopo, lies the Lowveld, which constitutes approximately 23 percent of the country's total area. The lowest point in Zimbabwe lies at an altitude of 660 feet near Dumela, where the Limpopo flows into Mozambique. There are no parts of Zimbabwe that can properly be called desert, although a sector northwest of Plumtree and a lengthy belt across the Lowveld in the south are severely arid. The landscape is characterized by extensive outcroppings of Precambrian rock, which is between 570 million and 3.8 billion years old. The most ancient part of this rock formation, known as the basement complex, covers the greater part of the country. About four-fifths of the basement complex consists of granite; the Matopo (Matopos) Hills south of the city of Bulawayo are formed from prolonged erosion of an exposed granite batholith. Some of the hills are surmounted by formations, known as balancing rocks, that have been eroded by wind and water along regular fault lines, leaving some blocks precariously balanced upon others. Elsewhere are found innumerable small rounded granite hillocks known locally as kopjes. Belts of schist in the basement complex contain the veins and lodes of most of the country's gold, silver, and other commercial minerals. The Great Dyke, which is up to 8 miles wide and about 330 miles long, is another notable landscape feature. The longest linear mass of mafic and ultramafic rocks in the world, the Great Dyke bisects the country from north to south and contains enormous reserves of chromium, nickel, and platinum. The Alkali Ring complexes near Beitbridge in the Sabi valley are distinctive igneous intrusions. The Karoo (Karroo) Systema thick layer of sedimentary rocks consisting of shale, sandstone, and grit of Permian and Triassic age (208 to 286 million years old)covers the Zambezi valley and the valleys of its tributaries from Hwange (formerly Wankie) southward to Bulawayo and spreads across parts of the southern Lowveld from Tuli, near the southern border, to the Sabi River. Drainage and soils Major faulting from southwest to northeast formed the middle Zambezi trough, which is now partially flooded by the Lake Kariba reservoir. Other faulting episodes affected the depressions of the Sabi and Limpopo rivers. Except for a small area of internal drainage in the dry southwest, these three rivers carry the entire runoff of the country to the Indian Ocean via Mozambique. The central ridgeline of the Highveld is the major divide separating Zambezi from Limpopo-Sabi drainage. The light, sandy soils found in most parts of Zimbabwe are residual soils developed largely from the granite parent material. They are highly weathered and leached, even in the areas of lower rainfall, and do not easily retain water because of their coarse texture. Outcrops of basement schists give rise to rich red clays and loamssome of the country's best soilsbut their extent is limited. Since most rain occurs in heavy showers during a few months of the year, rapid runoff and high rates of erosion are common. The meagre mineral reserves in most soils imply an inherently low fertility; under cultivation, productivity drops rapidly after a few years. The difficulty of cultivating these lighter soils is greatest in the black farming areas, where population pressure no longer allows land to be temporarily abandoned to rejuvenate after cultivation; black farmers, because of a lack of capital, are also less able than white farmers to maintain the mineral fertility with manure and chemical fertilizers. The people Ethnic and linguistic composition More than two-thirds of the population of Zimbabwe speak Shona as their first language, while about one out of five speak Ndebele. Both Shona and Ndebele are Bantu languages; from the time of their great southward migration, Bantu-speaking tribes have populated what is now Zimbabwe for more than 10 centuries. Those who speak Ndebele are concentrated in a circle around Bulawayo, with Shona-speaking peoples beyond them on all sidesthe Kalanga to the southwest, the Karanga to the east around Nyanda (formerly Fort Victoria), the Zezuru to the northeast, and the Rozwi and Tonga to the north. Generations of intermarriage have to a degree blurred the linguistic division between the Shona and Ndebele peoples. Among the whites in Zimbabwe at independence were the descendants of the country's first European immigrants. Only about one-quarter of the adult white population, however, were born in Zimbabwe. After World War II the white population grew severalfold because of heavy immigration, and some two-thirds of the present white population have their origins in Europe, the great majority from Britain. The rest have come largely from South Africa. Of the whites living in rural areas, about one-quarter are Afrikaners. There are several thousand Asians, forming a community that is predominantly concerned with trade. There are also Zimbabweans of mixed race, called Coloureds, who are mainly skilled and semiskilled workers. English is the official language of government; teaching in schools is also conducted in English, except for the instruction of the youngest children in black schools. Religion The great majority of the black population adheres to traditional religion based on reverence for ancestors. The Shona have preserved their ancient reputation for prophecy, divination, and rainmaking; they believe in Mwari, a supreme being. The stone ruins of Great Zimbabwe are regarded as a shrine of deep religious significance, as also are parts of the Matopo Hills. In the last 50 years Christian mission schools have exercised much influence in the country, and most of the members of the first Cabinet of independent Zimbabwe were graduates of these schools. The Roman Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, and Dutch Reformed churches are represented. Because the Roman Catholic church supported nationalist aspirations, it held a position of influence in the postindependence period.