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Robert Mugabe's push for independence

As the nations of Africa throw off the shackles of colonial rule, an independence movement is also afoot in South Rhodesia. For the 300,000 white Europeans in the country of seven million, the best hope for retaining power is said to be "multi-racialism" - a partnership among all races in which whites are the senior partners. But, as CBC reporter Morley Safer learns, that arrangement may be wishful thinking.

Reporting from Salisbury (later Harare), a city he says "looks like Edmonton," Safer finds a nation that is still highly segregated and an independence movement that is totally opposed to multiracialism. "We are non-racialist in our approach," says Robert Mugabe, spokesman with the Zimbabwe African Peoples Union, in this clip. "Everybody must be accorded his full political rights, whether he be white or black, educated or uneducated, rich or poor."

• Southern Rhodesia began as a mining corporation, the British South Africa Company. It was founded in 1890 when financier and empire-builder Cecil Rhodes established a fort in at what is now Harare. The United Kingdom annexed the territory from the company in 1923.

• In 1961 Robert Mugabe joined the Zimbabwe African Peoples Union (ZAPU), founded by Joseph Nkomo. But there was a split in the group, and in 1963 Mugabe, along with Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole, founded the rival Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU).

• Mugabe was imprisoned for "subversive speech" for 10 years starting in 1964. Upon his release he once again led a campaign for independence from Britain. A civil war (1975-79) between Mugabe's Patriotic Front of Zimbabwe and the white-minority Rhodesian government ensued.

• In 1980 Mugabe was elected prime minister of the new country of Zimbabwe. In 2008 he was still in power, pending the results of a disputed election.
 
• The country's economy deteriorated throughout the 1990s, and in 2002 Mugabe launched a highly contentious program of confiscating farmland from white owners and giving it to supporters who frequently had no farming experience. As a result, chronic food shortages and sky-high inflation of up to 100,000 per cent have plagued Zimbabwe. 
Medium: Television
Program: Newsmagazine
Broadcast Date: April 25, 1962
Guest(s): Robert Mugabe
Reporter: Morley Safer
Duration: 5:22

Last updated: February 1, 2012

Page consulted on May 13, 2013

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