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Zimbabwe

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Overview

Zimbabwe, derived from the Shona phrase “dzimba dza mabwe,” meaning “houses of stone,”

is a mineral-rich country in southern Africa. Originally settled by Bantu-speaking tribesmen, Zimbabwe is comprised of two ethnic groups with distinct languages. The Mashona, who speak Shona, comprise about 75% of the population, while the Matabele, who speak Sindebele, are about 20%. The Portuguese were the first explorers to make contact with the country, in the 16th century, but by 1888, Cecil Rhodes, a British citizen, had obtained the mineral rights from local chiefs. The area, then called Northern and Southern Rhodesia (now Zambia and Zimbabwe) came under British control shortly thereafter. Both were named after Rhodes. Britain exploited the area’s rich mineral resources for decades, until Zimbabwe (then known as Southern Rhodesia) declared its independence in 1965.
 
In 1980, Robert Mugabe rose to power and has ruled Zimbabwe as one of Africa’s most ruthless dictators since. Human rights abuses have abounded, as Mugabe consolidated his power and eliminated any opposition to his rule. Meanwhile, the country has suffered a massive financial collapse, with hyperinflation and removal of foreign and domestic investment. Adding to the problem was a Mugabe program designed to seize white-owned land. In 2002, violence preceding the elections killed more than 50 people. In the wake of the violence and fraudulent election results, the US, EU and other European countries imposed travel restrictions against senior Zimbabwean officials and embargoed the sale of arms to the country.
 
In May 2005, the government began Operation Murambatsvina which resulted in an estimated 700,000 people losing their homes and/or source of livelihood as police destroyed homes and businesses. Elections in 2008 resulted in more violence as Mugabe supporters tried to manipulate the outcome. On September 15, Mugabe and opposition leaders signed a power-sharing agreement to establish an “inclusive” government, but the agreement was not ratified until early 2009. In December 2008, Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer called on Mugabe to step down. Prominent Africans, including South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga, have also called on Mugabe to step down. Recent controversies have included expanded US sanctions against Zimbabwe, Mugabe calling a US diplomat a “prostitute,” and threatening to expel another diplomat from the country.
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Basic Information

Lay of the Land: Landlocked Zimbabwe in southern Africa shares one of the wonders of the world, the magnificent Victoria Falls, with its northern neighbor, Zambia. It also shares one of the world’s largest man-made lakes, Lake Kariba, with Zambia. Both of these phenomena are located on the Zambesi River, Zimbabwe’s natural border with Zambia. To the south, another important river, the Limpopo, forms Zimbabwe’s frontier with the Republic of South Africa.

 
Population: 12.4 million
 
Religions: Christian 68.3%, Ethnoreligious 29.2%, Muslim 0.7%, Baha’i 0.3%, Jewish 0.1%, Hindu 0.1%, non-religious 1.0%.
 
Ethnic Groups: Shona 82%, Ndebele 14%, other African 2%, mixed and Asian 1%, white less than 1%.
 
Languages: Shona 84.0%, Ndebele 12.2%, Manyika 6.8%, Ndau 6.3%, Kalanga 5.5%, English (official) 3.0%, Nyanja 2.0%. There are 19 living languages in Zimbabwe.
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History

The original inhabitants of present-day Zimbabwe were Bushmen whose language, with its unusual clicking sounds, fascinated early European academics. However, when settlers arrived, they found it difficult to befriend the reticent Bushmen, and so hunted down and killed them instead. The current population of Zimbabwe has its origins in the Bantu people of the Niger/Congo region who, over a period of 2,000 years, spread throughout sub-equatorial Africa. By the 10th century, the Karangas, Shona-speaking descendents of the Bantu, had colonized present-day Zimbabwe, Malawi and the lowlands of Mozambique. The Karangas discovered and worked with gold, tin and copper and built the royal palace of Zimbabwe in the 11th century. They also established a trade in gold and ivory, which they transported to Mozambique, from where Arab merchants shipped it as far away as India and China. In the 15th century, the Rotsi, a Shona-speaking people from the south, took over the royal palace of Zimbabwe. The Portuguese, lured by the gold and ivory, colonized Mozambique and replaced the Arabs as the Rotsi’s trading partners.

 
In 1834, Moselekatse, a Zulu general, broke with the chief he had been serving and fled north, forcing the Rotsi to retreat to the west. Moselekatse and his followers settled in the Matopos Hills and became known as the Matabele: “those who blend easily with the bush.” The Rotsi, or Shona, became subjects of the Matabele.
 
The Dutch began colonizing southern Africa in the early 1600s, and the British followed suit in the early 1800s. In 1833, the House of Commons outlawed slavery in all British dominions. Dutch settlers, known as Boers or Afrikaners, were dependent on slaves, and migrated north in the “Great Trek.” Fighting their way through the Zulus, they established their own republics, the Natalia, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal.
 
Although he was suffering from tuberculosis, Englishman Cecil Rhodes was sent at the age of seventeen to the British southern African colony of Natal, where his older brother was running a cotton plantation. When diamonds were discovered in the Orange Free State, Rhodes moved there and formed a business selling excavating equipment. In 1880, he founded the De Beers Diamond Mining Company. When gold was discovered in the Transvaal, Rhodes invested in the fields and established the Goldfields of South Africa Company in 1887. In 1888, he sent his partners north and they made contact with the king of the Matabele, Moselekatse’s son, Lobengala. Lobengala signed away the mineral rights to his kingdom for 1,000 rifles, 10,000 bullets, a steamboat and £1,200 a year. The following year, the British government granted Rhodes a royal charter for his British South Africa Company (BSAC).
 
Reports of the discovery of gold in Mashonaland were sufficient motivation for Rhodes to order an expedition to the area. One hundred eighty adventurers, all under the age of 25, accompanied by hundreds of armed militia, set off on a 400-mile trek to Mashonaland under the guidance of elephant hunter Frederick Courteney Selous. Dubbed the Pioneer Column, they left on June 28, 1890, with the promise of a farm each and gold claims. When it turned out that there were no significant deposits of gold, many of the pioneers left. Those who stayed were the first white colonizers of Mashonaland. A BSAC administrator, Dr. Leander Starr Jameson, encouraged more British to emigrate and, without bothering to consult with the Mashona, who were already living there, parceled out land to the white settlers.
 
Within ten years, the whites had seized one-sixth of the land—16 million acres. They had also disrupted the economy of the Matabele, who had long been collecting tribute from the Mashona. Jameson then demanded that the Matabele vacate the area. They refused and  the Matabele War broke out in 1896. The British used machine guns to push back the Matabele, and went in search of King Lobengula, who took his own life. The British named the country Southern Rhodesia in honor of Cecil Rhodes.
 
In Transvaal, gold really was discovered, prompting Rhodes to send an invading army in to overthrow the Boer government in January 1896. The invasion failed and Rhodes was forced to resign as both the managing director of the BSAC and as prime minister of Britain’s Cape Colony.
 
The Boer victory proved to the Matabele that the British were not invincible. In March 1896, they rose up against the Europeans, as did the Mashona, killing more than 10% of the European population. Cecil Rhodes managed to negotiate a peace settlement, and the fighting came to an end in October 1897. The following year, the Native Reserves Order in Council created reserves for the blacks on low-quality land, while the whites were promised a degree of self-government.
 
On the eve of World War I, there were 836,000 blacks in Southern Rhodesia and 28,000 whites, yet the whites owned three-quarters of the land. The British and the Boers had already fought against each other in two wars, and tensions between the two were rising again when World War I broke out and the Europeans were distracted by their fight against the Germans. In a referendum in October 1923, the whites in Southern Rhodesia voted for self-government rather than joining the 13-year-old Union of South Africa. The Land Apportionment Act of 1930 allotted 49 million acres to Southern Rhodesia’s 50,000 whites and 29 million acres to its black population of 1.1 million. It also denied black Africans from owning land in white areas.
 
In 1924, Robert Mugabe was born at the Katuma Jesuit Mission, fifty miles west of Salisbury (now Harare), on land donated by the British South Africa Company because Jesuits had accompanied the Pioneer Column in 1890. In 1949, Mugabe earned a scholarship to the all-black University of Fort Hare in Cape Province, South Africa. The African National Congregs (ANC) was founded at Fort Hare in 1912. Also, Nelson Mandela was expelled from the University for leading a student strike in 1940. Mugabe joined the Youth League of the ANC and met several important political activists including Oliver Tambo of the ANC, the South African Zulu leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi and Leopold Takawiri, who introduced him to Marxism.
 
Mugabe returned to Southern Rhodesia in 1952, taught school and earned another degree in education. At the time, 90% of blacks in Southern Rhodesia were literate, yet apartheid (the Afrikaans word for “separateness”) had been official racial policy since 1933.
 
In 1953, the British combined Southern and Northern Rhodesia with Nyasaland to create the administrative entity of Rhodesia and Nyasaland.
 
In 1957, Ghana was about to become the first British African colony to achieve independence. Its soon-to-be-president, Kwame Nkrumah, invited Africans from other countries to come to Ghana to teach and to study and to spread the movement for African liberation. Mugabe was one of the idealists who responded. In Ghana, he soaked up the rhetoric and the spirit of activism.
 
Back in Rhodesia, the African National Congress was launched as a national party, led by Joshua Nkomo, who was chosen for his moderate image. Nkomo and the ANC tried not to scare the white population and emphasized goals that would be viewed as reasonable, such as abolition of discriminatory laws and the extension of the right to vote. At the time, the right to vote was based on income, so that only 560 Africans were in included in the list of 52,000 eligible voters. The ANC touched a nerve in the black population and quickly grew into a mass movement that called for redistribution of land. Some ANC members began guerrilla attacks. The Rhodesian government declared a state of emergency on February 26, 1959, banning all political parties advocating African nationalism and imprisoned hundreds of their leaders. In 1960, nationalists launched a more radical group, the Nationalist Democratic Party (NDP), which demanded not just land redistribution, but political power for the black majority.
 
Mugabe returned to Rhodesia in May 1960 to get married. He intended to return to Ghana to complete his teaching contract there, but nationalist friends of his asked him to stay and to join their cause. In July, police arrested three NDP leaders, one of whom was one of Mugabe’s closest friends. Mugabe joined a 7,000-strong demonstration outside the prime minister’s office. Riot police opened fire on the crowd. The day after the “March of the 7000,” half of the black workforce did not show up for work and the number of demonstrators swelled to 40,000. Mugabe spoke to the crowd and presented his vision of a future Zimbabwe that would be African-ruled, like Ghana. The name Zimbabwe is derived from the Shona phrase “dzimba dza mabwe,” meaning “houses of stone.” The unrest spread and the British colonial government passed the Law and Order (Maintenance) Amendment Act. This law gave the government a free hand in curbing freedom of speech, assembly, movement, association and privacy. The police were given unlimited powers to arrest and detain anyone without trial. Anything that seemed to encourage the violent overthrow of the colonial government was deemed “an act of terrorism,” punishable by life imprisonment. The white chief justice of Rhodesia, Sir Robert Tredgold, resigned in protest, publicly stating, “This bill outrages every basic right…. It will remove the last vestige of doubt about whether Rhodesia is a police state.”
 
Mugabe gave up his teaching post in Ghana and was elected publicity secretary of the NDP. In 1961, the British government held a conference to decide Rhodesia’s future. Joshua Nkomo, as president of the NDP, headed a nationalist delegation that took part in the conference. Nkomo agreed to the creation of a constitution that gave blacks token representation in a parliament. Mugabe and other NDP members were outraged by Nkomo’s capitulation. Later that year the government banned the NDP. The nationalists simply formed a new party, the Zimbabwe African Peoples Union (ZAPU). Mugabe was again named publicity secretary, and Nkomo returned as party president.
 
The more violent nationalists began attacking white schools and churches, burning crops and forests and sabotaging railway lines. After nine months, the government banned ZAPU, arrested Mugabe and other leaders and restricted them to their home districts for three months in an attempt to calm the situation in the capital of Salisbury. When Mugabe returned, he was arrested for giving a speech in which he referred to the Law and Order Act as “the legislation of murder.”
 
After getting out of prison, Nkomo tricked Mugabe into establishing a government-in-exile in Dar es Salaam, Tanganyika, in order to get Mugabe and other nationalist opponents out of the country. Back in Salisbury, Mugabe’s colleagues formed an anti-Nkomo nationalist party, the Zimbabwe African National union (ZANU). Mugabe, in absentia, was elected secretary-general. In Matabeleland, the armed wings of ZAPU and ZANU went to war against each other, which did not appease the Rhodesian whites about the prospects for black rule.
 
In December 1963, Mugabe returned to Zimbabwe where he was immediately arrested. Sentenced to 21 months in prison in March 1964, he was placed in a maximum-security prison in Salisbury. In August, the new right-wing leader of Rhodesia, Ian Smith, banned ZAPU and ZANU and sent Nkomo to prison with a 10-year sentence. Mugabe made the most of his years of incarceration, earning three more degrees through correspondence with the University of London, and creating a school for his fellow prisoners. When ZANU guerillas killed a white farmer and his wife, the government transferred ZANU’s leaders, including Mugabe, to Salisbury’s Central Prison, where he shared a communal cell with Reverend Sithole. Mugabe would remain in this prison for eight years.
 
In 1974, outside events caused a chain reaction that led to Mugabe’s release from prison. Far away in Portugal, General António de Spinola staged a coup and announced plans to withdraw Portuguese troops from Angola and Mozambique, and to grant independence to both nations. Faced with the prospect of two hostile, black-ruled nations on his border, the white president of South Africa, John Vorster, pressured Ian Smith to make peace with ZANU and ZAPU in Rhodesia. In November 1974, Smith released Mugabe, Nkomo and Sithole from prison. Having been incarcerated for ten years and four months, Mugabe was Africa’s second longest held political prisoner. Only Nelson Mandela of South Africa spent more time in prison.
 
Fearing re-arrest, Mugabe left for Mozambique, which achieved independence two months later. Mozambique’s president, Samora Machel, offered Mugabe and his wife a villa, and they lived there for the next four years. With black rule in their own nation increasingly possible, Zimbabwe’s nationalist leaders, Mugabe, Sithole, Nkomo and Bishop Abel Muzorewa, tried to set aside their differences and work together against Ian Smith and the white Rhodesians. In November 1975, the military wings of ZANU and ZAPU joined forces to form the Zimbabwe People’s Army. However, their rivalry could not be hidden. When the Soviets, who were supplying arms to the army, insisted that Mugabe recognize Nkomo as the movement’s leader, Mugabe turned to the Chinese for weapons. Later he would also reach out for aid to the Soviet Union, North Korea, Cuba and Vietnam.
 
Over the next three years, the nationalist parties, their armies and their leaders maneuvered for position in preparation for the increasingly inevitable assumption of power by the black majority. White farmers were driven from their homes in the east; ZANU blew up Salisbury’s largest fuel depot, destroying a month’s fuel supplies; Muzorewa briefly led a superficial transitional government; and then, in October 1979, Mugabe and Nkomo agreed to the creation of a new constitution. The Lancaster House Agreement declared Zimbabwe a sovereign republic and all political parties were allowed to campaign for a February 1980 election for a bicameral legislature. The House of Assembly would consist of 80 black members and 20 white members. The Senate would have 40 members, 14 black, 10 white, 10 to be elected by the Council of Chiefs and 6 to be nominated by the president on the recommendation of the prime minister.
 
The election campaign was punctuated with violence. There were two assassination attempts on Mugabe, including one in which a grenade was thrown at his house. His supporters retaliated by bombing two churches in Salisbury. When a leftist paper described Mugabe as “a psychopath suffering from paranoia,” their printing press was bombed. On Election Day, ZANU guerrillas intimidated voters at polling stations. The election results were announced on March 4, 1980. Mugabe’s party won 57 seats in the Assembly, a majority. Nkomo’s party gained 20 seats and Muzorewa’s party 3 seats. Mugabe offered Nkomo the ceremonial post of president, which he refused, eventually settling for the minister of home affairs, which gave him control of the police. Mugabe took over as the first prime minister of independent Zimbabwe.
 
After taking power Mugabe promised not to “victimize the minority.” He included two white men in his cabinet and appointed a white military officer, Lieutenant-General Peter Walls, supreme commander of the armed forces. Many of the 170,000 whites in Zimbabwe, however, were edgy. Statues of Cecil Rhodes were removed, and Cecil Square in the center of Salisbury was renamed Africa Unity Square. In 1982, the name of the capital city itself was changed from Salisbury to Harare. The future of the whites was unclear. Six thousand white farmers owned almost half the land, including two-thirds of the most productive lands. They employed 300,000 people, a third of the labor force. They also dominated the economy, including banking, industry and trade. Zimbabwean television, black-controlled for the first time, began to broadcast references to “racist whites.” By the end of the year, 10% of the white population had left the country, most of them moving to South Africa, which was still white-ruled.
 
Lieutenant-General Walls revealed on television that he had appealed to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to cancel the election results, and Mugabe ordered Walls to leave the country. In the summer of 1980, one of Mugabe’s closest friends, Edgar Tekere, accused the Anglican Church of being “an instrument of oppression” and then led an attack on a white farmhouse in which an elderly white farmer was murdered. Tekere was tried for the crime, but was later acquitted.
 
Problems then developed between the black Zimbabwean government and the white South African government. The South Africans tried to destabilize Zimbabwe by establishing a network of spies, informers and saboteurs inside the military and the police. In July 1982, South African raiders destroyed 13 aircraft at Zimbabwe’s main air force base.
 
By the end of the third year of independence, 70,000 whites, more than 40%, had emigrated. When Ian Smith’s party won 15 of the 20 Assembly seats reserved for whites at the 1985 election, Mugabe declared, “Those whites who have not accepted the reality of a political order in which the Africans set the pace will have to leave the country.” Then he added, in the chiShona language, “We will kill the snakes among us; we will smash them completely.”
 
Mugabe saw his two main enemies as the government of South Africa, which was in fact training a dissident army, and Joshua Nkomo, who had retained a 20,000-man army rooted in Matabeleland. In October 1980, Mugabe secretly signed an agreement with Kim Il–Sung of North Korea to have more than 100 North Korean advisors train a brigade of Zimbabweans to deal with internal dissidents. Mugabe kicked Nkomo out of his government and seized his property. Then he turned his sights on Nkomo’s base, Matabeleland. Instead of concentrating his wrath on Nkomo and his supporters, Mugabe treated all the Ndebele people of Matabeleland as his enemies.
 
In 1983, he deployed the North Korean-trained 5 Brigade to Matabeleland and launched a campaign of arson and murder against the civilian population. Going from village to village, Mugabe’s men killed at least 2,000 civilians in the first six weeks. Tens of thousands more were beaten. Villagers were forced to sing songs in the chiShona language and to dance on the mass graves of their recently buried family members. During one four-month period in 1984, 8,000 people were processed through an interrogation center known for torture. The 5 Brigade dumped another 8,000 bodies down an unused mine only to have the bodies float to the surface when it rained.
 
Faced with repeated assassination attempts, Nkomo fled the country. However he returned for the 1985 election, and his party won all of the 15 seats contested in Matabeleland South. As a matter of survival, he signed a Unity Accord, merging his party with Mugabe’s in exchange for amnesty.
 
In 1987, Mugabe abolished the position of prime minister and made himself executive president, which meant that he was head of state, head of the government and commander-in-chief of the armed forces. He abolished the clause in the constitution that reserved 20 Assembly seats for whites, and every six months he renewed the state of emergency that gave the government the authority to detain people without trial.
 
By 1990, under the terms of the Lancaster House Agreement and funded by Great Britain, 416,000 people had been resettled on 6.5 million acres formerly owned by whites. Mugabe amended the constitution to allow the government to confiscate land at any price it deemed to be fair. He also seized the land of his political opponents, including his former ally and cellmate, Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole.
 
With national elections on the horizon, Mugabe played the race card, ordering full-scale invasions of white farms on February 26, 2000. In less than two weeks, about 400 farms had been invaded and the farmers, in many cases, beaten, tortured and even murdered. Black laborers suspected of supported an opposition party were given the same treatment.
 
When 7,000 blacks and whites joined together for a peace march on April 1, 2000, war veterans aligned with Mugabe attacked them with clubs. By May 15, 1,400 farms had been invaded. On May 24, Mugabe signed a decree allowing the seizure of 800 farms without the payment of compensation.
 
In 1999, the Zimbabwean Electricity Supply Authority, riddled with corruption, ran out of money, as did the state oil company, causing fuel shortages. Morgan Tsvangirai organized a series of strikes against the corruption of Mugabe’s rule and formed a new party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
 
In February 2000, with inflation running at 58.5% and basic food products in short supply, Mugabe held a referendum to allow him to run for two more five-year terms and to make Great Britain responsible for paying for land reform. Although advertisements for the “Vote No” campaign were banned, the referendum was defeated 55%-45%.
 
Mugabe then tried to find new tactics to insure that he would win the parliamentary elections in June. Several farms were turned into “reeducation centers” where workers were forced to sing songs in praise of Mugabe’s party, the ZANU-PF. His supporters also beat teachers in Matabeleland accused of supporting Tsvangirai and the MDC. By late May, 250 schools were forced to close and 7,000 teachers fled their homes. MDC activists were also seized and tortured. When the election results were announced on June 27, it turned out that despite all of the violence and intimidation, Mugabe had only scored a narrow victory. His ZANU-PF won 62 seats and the MDC 57, with one seat going to an independent. Because 30 parliamentary seats were appointed, Mugabe ended up with a clear majority of seats, 92 to 58.
 
In 2001, Mugabe changed the rules for voter eligibility by requiring that voters show rental agreements for their housing. Because many MDC supporters were poor and lived in makeshift shacks, they did not have rental agreements and lost the right to vote. As the Zimbabwean economy, riddled with corruption and incompetence, disintegrated, the government defaulted on its foreign loans and the vital tourism industry collapsed. Meanwhile, AIDS spread rapidly while hospitals ran out of drugs. In February 2002 the European Union and the United States issued sanctions forbidding Mugabe and his cohorts from entering their territory, a development that Mugabe used to his favor in his election campaign.
 
Meanwhile, Morgan Tsvangirai was gaining support among military officers and even among the war veterans. One month before the election, Australian television broadcast a video that appeared to show Tsvangirai discussing the desirability of Mugabe’s death. On February 25, 16 days before the election, Mugabe had Tsvangirai arrested on charges of treason. Mugabe won 56% of the vote and Tsvangirai 42%, but the election was widely considered to have been rigged, with huge discrepancies in some areas between the number of votes cast and the number of eligible voters.
 
Invoking the same law that the British colonial government had used to imprison him, Mugabe had Tsvangirai charged with “an act of terrorism,” encouraging the violent overthrow of the government. Zimbabwe’s Supreme Court acquitted Tsvangirai in October 2004.
 
On May 19, 2005, Mugabe launched Operation Murambatsvina (Clean the Filth) in which, according to United Nations estimates, 700,000 Zimbabweans were forcibly removed from their homes or businesses. Mugabe’s government claimed this was done to “restore order and sanity,” but many locals suspect that the real motivation was to forestall demonstrations as the nation’s economy continued to deteriorate.
 
By the end of 2008, inflation skyrocketed to a mind-boggling 231,000,000%, up from 7,000% in 2007, unemployment reached 80%, and the Zimbabwean dollar was basically worthless. According to the World Health Organization, Zimbabwe had the world’s lowest life expectancy.
 
Fed up with the economic collapse and the lack of available necessities, Zimbabweans expressed their anger at the polls in March 2008’s presidential and parliamentary elections. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change won a majority of the seats in Parliament, a remarkable defeat for Mugabe’s party, ZANU-PF. Four days after the vote, Tsvangirai declared himself the winner by a slim margin. Mugabe refused to concede.
 
In April police raided the offices of the opposition and election monitors and detained dozens of people for questioning. After the election, supporters of Mugabe began a brutal campaign of violence against the opposition that left more than 30 people dead and hundreds wounded. Tsvangirai fled the country, fearing assassination attempts. He returned to Zimbabwe in late May.
 
On May 2, election officials finally released the results of the vote, with Tsvangirai defeating Mugabe, 47.9% to 43.2%. A runoff election was necessary because neither candidate won more than 50%. In the lead-up to the runoff election, police intensified their crackdown on Tsvangirai and members of his party. Indeed, at least 85 supporters of his party were killed in government-backed violence. Officials banned rallies and repeatedly detained Tsvangirai for attempting to do so. In addition, Tsvangirai’s top deputy, Tendai Biti was arrested on charges of treason. Biti denied he committed treason, and several members of Parliament alleged the charges were trumped up. In June, Mugabe barred humanitarian groups from providing aid in the country—a drastic move that aid organizations estimated would deny about two million people much-needed assistance. The ban on aid groups was lifted in September, and aid groups were correct in their prediction that the suffering of nearly two million Zimbabweans would intensify under the ban.
 
On June 22, Tsvangirai withdrew from the race, saying he could not subject his supporters to violence and intimidation. He took refuge in the Dutch Embassy. Not surprisingly, Mugabe was elected to a sixth term, taking 85% of the vote.
 
In August, Lovemore Moyo, national chairman of the opposition party Movement for Democratic Change, was elected speaker of Parliament, 110 to 98, prevailing over Mugabe’s candidate. It was the first time a member of the opposition held the post since Zimbabwe gained independence in 1980.
 
Mugabe and Tsvangirai agreed to a power-sharing deal in September 2008 that called on the leaders to share executive authority. Under the deal, Tsvangirai will serve as prime minister and the opposition will control 16 ministries. The governing party will control 15, with Mugabe continuing as president. Both sides, however, balked at suggestions by negotiators that Mugabe and Tsvangirai share control over the Ministry of Home Affairs, which controls the police force, stalling implementation of the agreement. Talks dragged on for the remainder of 2008, but the two sides failed to reach consensus.
 
Tsvangirai agreed in January 2009 to enter into a power-sharing government with Mugabe and was sworn in as prime minister in February. Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change will control 13 of the 31 ministries in the new government, while Mugabe’s Zanu-PF was allocated 15. The parties will share responsibility for the contested home-affairs ministry.
 
As if life weren’t unbearable enough in Zimbabwe, with its residents facing hunger, empty store shelves, a nonexistent health system, rampant unemployment, inflation a staggering 231 million percent, and the obvious political instability, a cholera epidemic broke out in August 2008. At least 565 people died from the disease by the end of the year, and another 12,000 were infected.
 
History of Zimbabwe (History World)
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History of U.S. Relations with Zimbabwe

In November 1965, after Zimbabwe’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence, the United States recalled its Consul General from Salisbury, closed the US Information Service (USIS) library, and withdrew its Agency for International Development (USAID) and trade promotion officials. After 1965, the small remaining American consular staff continued to operate under authority of exequaturs issued by Queen Elizabeth II. The US closed its Consulate General on March 17, 1970, when Zimbabwe declared itself a republic.

 
In 1971, the US Congress passed legislation permitting the United States to import strategic materials, such as chrome, from Rhodesia. The legislation took effect on January 1, 1972, but had no real impact on the Rhodesian economy. Instead, the US continued to support sanctions against the country.
 
Alarmed by the growth of Communist involvement in the guerrilla struggles in southern Africa, President Gerald Ford sent his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, to the region to protect American interests. With Kissinger’s support, Rhodesian President Ian Smith announced that he would accept black majority rule in Zimbabwe as long as the whites retained control of the army and the police. In October 1976, Mugabe and Nkomo issued a joint statement flatly rejecting the proposal.
 
The United States supported British efforts to implement the settlement signed at Lancaster House on December 21, 1979, and extended official diplomatic recognition to the new government immediately after independence. A resident embassy was established in Harare on Zimbabwe’s Independence Day, April 18, 1980. The first US Ambassador arrived and presented his credentials in June 1980. Until the arrival of a resident ambassador in Washington in 1983, Zimbabwe’s relations with the US were handled by its ambassador to the United Nations (UN) in New York.
 
In March 1981, at the Zimbabwe Conference on Reconstruction and Development (ZIMCORD), the United States pledged $225 million over a three-year period toward the government’s goals of postwar reconstruction, distribution and development of land, and the development of skilled manpower. By the end of FY 1986, the United States had contributed $380 million: the majority in grants, with some loans and loan guarantees.
 
In July 1986, however, the US government decided to discontinue future bilateral aid to Zimbabwe as a result of continued undiplomatic statements and actions by the Mugabe government in the United Nations and elsewhere. Aid programs previously agreed upon were not affected by the decision, nor were regional development programs that benefiting Zimbabwe. Full programming was restored in 1988.
 
President Mugabe visited Washington informally in September 1980, and on official working visits in September 1983, July 1991, and in 1995, meeting with Presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton respectively. Vice President George H.W. Bush visited Harare in November 1982, on a trip to several African countries.
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Current U.S. Relations with Zimbabwe

Noted Zimbabwean-American:
Andrew Pattison – born in 1949 in South Africa, Pattison is a former Rhodesian tennis player. His highest ranking was World No. 24 in 1974. He became a naturalized American citizen following his retirement from tennis.

 
Currently, relations between the United States and Zimbabwe are strained. Since 2000, the US has condemned the Zimbabwean government’s increasing assault on human rights and the rule of law, and has joined much of the world community in calling for the Mugabe government to embrace a peaceful democratic solution.
 
In 2002 and 2003, the United States imposed various sanctions on Zimbabwe, including financial and visa sanctions against selected individuals, a ban on transfers of defense items and services, and a suspension of non-humanitarian government-to-government assistance.
 
Despite strained political relations, the United States continues to provide humanitarian assistance to the people of Zimbabwe, sending more than $900 million in assistance from 2002-2008, most of which was food aid.
 
USAID assistance to Zimbabwe since 2002 has focused on family planning, HIV/AIDS prevention, democracy and governance programs, emergency food aid, and assistance to internally displaced persons. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) began a direct assistance program in August 2000, which focuses on prevention of HIV transmission; improved care of persons with HIV/AIDS; surveillance, monitoring, and evaluation of the epidemic; and health sector infrastructure support.
 
President George W. Bush joined the chorus of world leaders who condemned the fraudulent 2008 election and the government-sponsored crackdown on the opposition. China and Russia, however, blocked the US-led effort in the UN Security Council to impose sanctions on Zimbabwe. Bush responded in July by expanding existing US sanctions against Mugabe, companies in Zimbabwe, and individuals.
 
In 2006, 32,968 Americans visited Zimbabwe. The number of visitors has been decreasing since 2003, when 47,197 Americans visited the country.
 
In 2006, 4,535 Zimbabweans visited the US. Slightly less Zimbabweans have traveled to the US every year since 2002, when 5,457 visited America.
 
Zimbabwe (BUYUSA.gov)
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Where Does the Money Flow

Despite sanctions imposed by the US on Zimbabwe, American businesses continue to import a healthy amount of goods from the strive-torn country. In 2008, the US imported a total of $111.9 million from Zimbabwe, up from $76 million in 2004.

 
From 2004 to 2008, top US imports from Zimbabwe included steelmaking and ferroalloying materials (unmanufactured), increasing from $23.6 million to $87.1 million; green coffee, moving up from $293,000 to $411,000; tobacco, waxes, and nonfood oils, rising from $417,000 to $708,000; and sulfur and nonmetallic minerals, increasing from $412,000 to $559,000.
 
American imports on the decline included nickel, decreasing from $31.4 million to $16 million; cane and beet sugar, moving down from $5.8 million to $0; and jewelry, watches, and rings, decreasing from $2.5 million to $596,000.
 
American exports to Zimbabwe are led by other foods, increasing from $2.8 million to $26.3 million; parts for civilian aircraft, moving up from $7 million to $19.2 million; pharmaceutical preparations, rising from $4.2 million to $8.1 million; and oilseeds and food oils, increasing from $1.8 million to $4 million.
 
Unfortunately for malnourished Zimbabweans, US exports on the decline included corn, decreasing from $12.9 million to $2.2 million; sorghum, barley, and oats, falling from $4.6 million to $1.9 million; and vegetables, moving down from $11 million to $5.4 million.
 
Of the $17.6 million in US aid to Zimbabwe in 2006, $9.8 million went to HIV/AIDS, $3.5 million went to Civic Participation, and $1 million went to Media Freedom and Freedom of Information.
 
The 2008 budget will increase aid to $21 million. The HIV/AIDS program will grow to $17 million, taking advantage of decreases throughout the Governing Justly and Democratically program (from $6.6 million to $3 million). Zimbabwe will also receive funds through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) outside of the Budget for Foreign Operations.
 
US, Zimbabwe oppose U.N. arms trade treaty (by Geraldine Baum, Los Angeles Times)
Zimbabwe to pay government workers in US dollars (by Angus Shaw, Associated Press)
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Controversies

US Expands Sanctions Against Zimbabwe

In July 2008, the US expanded sanctions against Zimbabwe, in order to keep resources from the regime of President Robert Mugabe. Mugabe’s administration has banned most of the activities of NGOs supplying assistance to the needy of Zimbabwe, but the US sought to expand existing sanctions after Mugabe ignored a UN Security Council appeal to postpone a presidential runoff election on June 27. Earlier that month, Russia and China vetoed a Security Council resolution to impose international sanctions on Mugabe and his government. In the meantime, President George W. Bush authorized the use of up to $2.5 million from the US Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance Fund for people displaced by violence.
 
Mugabe Calls US Diplomat a “Prostitute”
In May 2008, Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe labeled one US diplomat a “prostitute,” and threatened to oust another diplomat from the country. Mugabe called US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer a “prostitute” for trotting around the globe and, in his estimation, acting as if Zimbabwe were an extension of the United States. He also said that US Ambassador to Zimbabwe James McGee would be expelled from the country if he did not stop trying to meddle in Zimbabwe’s electoral process. A month earlier, Frazer has accused Mugabe of trying to steal the election and intimidating voters. Mugabe denied all responsibility for election-related violence and intimidation tactics. Later that month, the US Ambassador to Zimbabwe was stopped twice by security forces and asked harassing questions, and in June, US and British diplomats were stopped by Zimbabwe police who threatened to burn them alive. All were released safely, but the incident sparked a firestorm of criticism from international sources.
 
Zimbabwe Refuses US GMO Food Aid
In June 2002, several nations receiving US food aid, including Zimbabwe, Bolivia, Guatemala and Nicaragua, refused to accept American foods containing transgenic corn, or maize. US officials have long promoted biotechnology as a way to solve the world’s hunger problems, but Zimbabwe—which has about 6 million people facing famine—was vocal in its refusal. According to US officials, the corn was then routed to Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia. By May 2003, the US practice of offering GMO-modified crops to nations receiving food aid had erupted into a full-fledged controversy, with the European Union condemning the US decision to file a complaint with the Word Trade Organization over the EU’s moratorium on GMO foods.
USA: Poor Countries Reject GMO Food Aid (Environment News Service)
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Human Rights

According to the State Department’s human rights report for 2008, the Zimbabwe government or its agents committed politically motivated, arbitrary, and unlawful killings during the year. Security forces killed opposition members and engaged in extralegal killings in connection with illegal diamond mining.

There were killings by paramilitary forces, and numerous reports of politically motivated abductions. Opposition party leaders from the MDC reported that state security agents and ruling ZANU-PF party supporters abducted and tortured hundreds of opposition and civil society members, as well as student leaders, as part of a systematic government-sponsored campaign to dismantle the opposition party’s structures before the March 29 election and, especially, immediately preceding the June 27 presidential run-off.
 
Security forces routinely committed political violence, including torture of citizens in custody, particularly in areas suspected of heavy support for the opposition. Army and police units organized, participated in, or provided logistical support to perpetrators of political violence and generally permitted their activities. Police also refused to record reports of politically motivated violence or destruction of property. Police used excessive force in apprehending and detaining criminal suspects.
Human rights groups reported that physical and psychological torture perpetrated by security agents and government supporters increased during the year. Police repeatedly used cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment against those in custody. Police also used excessive force to disperse demonstrators.
 
Government supporters, including youth militia and war veterans trained by ZANU-PF, were also deployed to harass and intimidate members of the opposition, labor, student movement, and civic groups, as well as journalists considered critical of the government.
 
Security forces were widely used to carry out government-sponsored politically motivated violence. Police routinely and violently disrupted public gatherings and demonstrations, and tortured opposition and civil society activists in police custody.
There were reports that police and army personnel suspected of being sympathetic to the political opposition were demoted or fired. Police were poorly trained and equipped, underpaid, and corrupt. Severely depleted human and material resources, especially fuel, further reduced police effectiveness during the year. Corruption continued to increase in part due to low salaries and a worsening economy.
Mechanisms to investigate security force abuses remained weak. Court orders compelling investigations into allegations of abuse were routinely ignored by authorities. Government efforts to reform security forces were minimal, and training was rarely provided. Police seldom responded during incidents of vigilante violence.
 
Authorities often did not allow detainees prompt or regular access to their lawyers and often informed lawyers who attempted to visit their clients that detainees were “not available,” especially in cases involving opposition members and civil society activists. In several cases police claimed not to know where they were holding a detained individual, which delayed a hearing on bail release. Family members sometimes were denied access unless accompanied by an attorney. Detainees were often held incommunicado.
 
There were reports that victims or witnesses of crimes were detained or charged with the crime after reporting it to police. The government increasingly used arbitrary arrest and detention as a tool of intimidation and harassment, especially against opposition members and supporters, civil society activists, student activists, and journalists. The Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum reported more than 800 confirmed cases of unlawful arrest and detention during the year.
 
Police and other security officials detained MDC President Morgan Tsvangirai without charge several times during the year. On January 23, police executed a predawn raid on Tsvangirai’s home and took him into custody for several hours just before he was expected to lead an MDC march and rally.
Prolonged pretrial detention remained a problem, and some detainees were incarcerated for several years before trial or sentencing because of a critical shortage of magistrates and court interpreters, poor bureaucratic procedures, and for political reasons. During the year some detainees in Harare Remand Prison went months without attending court for bail hearings because Zimbabwe Prison Services lacked fuel to provide transport.
 
The judiciary was under intense pressure to conform to government policies, and the government repeatedly refused to abide by judicial decisions. The government routinely delayed payment of court costs or judgments awarded against it in civil cases. Trials were held by judges without juries and were open to the public, except in certain security cases. Every defendant has the right to a lawyer of his or her choosing, but a local attorney reported that most defendants in magistrates’ courts did not have legal representation. Attorneys sometimes were denied access to their clients, especially in cases involving opposition members or civil society activists.
 
There were hundreds of reports of political detainees throughout the year, including opposition officials, their supporters, NGO workers, and civil society activists. During the year police severely beat and tortured numerous opposition, civil society, and student leaders while in detention.
Security forces searched homes and offices without warrants; the government pressured local chiefs and ruling party loyalists to monitor and report on suspected opposition supporters; and the government forcibly displaced persons from their homes. The government coerced ruling party supporters and punished opposition supporters by manipulating the distribution of food aid, agricultural inputs, and access to other government assistance programs.
 
Prison conditions remained harsh and life threatening. Prison guards beat and abused prisoners. Poor sanitary conditions and overcrowding persisted, which aggravated outbreaks of cholera, diarrhea, measles, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS-related illnesses. Human rights activists familiar with prison conditions reported constant shortages of food, water, electricity, clothing, and soap. Some prisoners reported receiving only one small meal a day.
 
In 2007, the president signed into law the Interception of Communications Act (ICA) to provide for the interception and monitoring of any communication (including telephone, postal mail, e-mail, and Internet traffic) in the course of transmission through a telecommunication, postal, or other related system in the country. During the year the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the state-run Zimpapers secretly monitored subordinates’ private e-mails for political content.
 
The government continued to restrict freedom of speech, particularly by those making or publicizing comments critical of President Mugabe. Passage of the 2007 ICA increased the government’s ability to monitor speech and to punish those who criticized the government.
 
Under authority of the Official Secrets Act, Public Order, and Security Act (POSA), or the Criminal Law Act, the government arrested individuals for criticizing President Mugabe in public. There were credible reports that CIO agents and informers routinely monitored political and other meetings. Persons deemed critical of the government were frequently targeted for harassment, abduction, and torture.
 
The Ministry for Information and Publicity controlled the state-run media, including the two remaining daily newspapers, the Chronicle and the Herald. The news coverage in these newspapers and in the state-controlled media as a whole generally portrayed the activities of government officials positively, portrayed opposition parties and other antigovernment groups negatively, and downplayed events or information that reflected adversely on the government. High-ranking government officials, including President Mugabe, used the state-controlled media to threaten violence against suspected critics of the government.
 
There were two main independent domestic weekly newspapers, the Zimbabwe Independent and the Standard, and a semi-independent weekly paper, the Financial Gazette, all three of which continued to operate despite threats and pressure from the government.
 
The government controlled all domestic radio broadcasting stations through the state-owned Zimbabwe Broadcasting Holdings, supervised by the Ministry for Information and Publicity.
 
The government controlled the only domestically based television broadcasting station, the Zimbabwean Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC).
 
Senior government officials repeatedly criticized both local and foreign independent media for what they deemed biased reporting meant to discredit the Mugabe regime and to misrepresent the country’s political and economic conditions. Government used accreditation laws to prevent most major international media outlets and some local journalists from covering the country’s combined presidential, parliamentary, and local government elections. Journalists and publishers continued to practice self-censorship as a result of government action and threats.
 
According to independent assessments, hundreds of thousands of persons remain displaced within the country as a result of government policies including state-sponsored election-related violence, land reform, and Operation Murambatsvina in 2005. The government’s campaign of forced evictions and the demolition of homes and businesses continued during the year.
 
Under the constitution, the president may unilaterally declare a state of public emergency for a period of up to 14 days; has sole power to dissolve parliament and to appoint or remove a vice president and any minister or deputy minister; and directly appoints eight provincial governors who sit in parliament, and six senators. There were reports that the government removed, from the civil service and the military, persons perceived to be opposition supporters. The government also routinely interfered with MDC-led local governments.
 
The World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators reflected that corruption was a severe problem. Implementation of the government’s ongoing redistribution of expropriated, white-owned, commercial farms substantially favored the ruling party elite and continued to lack transparency. Top ruling party officials and entrepreneurs supporting the ruling party received priority access to limited foreign exchange, farm inputs such as fertilizer and seed, and fuel.
 
Domestic and international human rights groups were subject to government restrictions, interference, monitoring, and harassment. The government continued to use the state-controlled media to disparage and attack human rights groups. Articles typically dismissed the efforts and recommendations of NGOs that were considered critical of the government as efforts by groups that merely did the bidding of “Western governments.”
 
Few cases of rape, especially spousal rape, were reported to authorities because women were unaware that spousal rape was a crime and feared losing the support of their families, particularly in rural areas. Domestic violence against women, especially wife beating, continued to be a serious problem. In 2006 the Musasa Project, a local NGO that worked for the protection and promotion of women’s rights, reported that approximately one-third of women in the country were in an abusive marital relationship. Most cases of domestic violence went unreported due to traditional sensitivities and fear of economic consequences for the family.
 
Several civil society groups offered anecdotal evidence that the country’s worsening economic problems were forcing more women and young girls into prostitution. There were increasing reports that women and children were sexually exploited in towns along the borders with South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique, and Zambia.
 
Women commonly faced workplace sexual harassment, government enforcement was not effective, and there were no reports of any prosecutions during the year.
 
Despite laws aimed at enhancing women’s rights and countering certain discriminatory traditional practices, women remained disadvantaged in society. Economic dependency and prevailing social norms prevented rural women in particular from combating societal discrimination. Despite legal prohibitions, women remained vulnerable to entrenched customary practices, including pledging young women to marry partners not of their choosing and forcing widows to marry the brothers of their late spouses.
Primary education is not compulsory, free, or universal for any children. According to the UNICEF Humanitarian Action Report 2008: Zimbabwe, the educational system was “characterized by low enrolment rates, declining attendance and completion rates, low transition rate to secondary school and insufficient learning spaces, teachers and learning materials.”
 
Child abuse, including incest, infanticide, child abandonment, and rape continued to be serious problems during the year. Police statistics showed that child rape tripled between 2005 and 2007.
 
The traditional practice of offering a young girl in marriage as compensatory payment in interfamily disputes continued during the year, as did arranged marriage of young girls.
 
Rural children were trafficked into farms or cities for agricultural labor, domestic servitude, and commercial sexual exploitation, often under the false pretenses of job or marriage proposals, according to one NGO. The use of child laborers, especially as farm workers or domestic servants, was common in the country, often with the complicity of family members.
 
Mugabe has publicly denounced homosexuals, blaming them for Africa’s ills. Although there was no statutory law proscribing homosexual practice, common law prevents homosexual men, and to a lesser extent, lesbians, from fully expressing their sexual orientation and, in some cases, criminalizes the display of affection between men.
 
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Debate
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Past Ambassadors

Note: The Embassy in Salisbury (now Harare) was opened on Apr 18, 1980, with Jeffrey Davidow as Chargé d’Affaires ad interim.

 
Robert V. Keeley
Appointment: May 23, 1980
Presentation of Credentials: Jun 19, 1980
Termination of Mission: Left post Feb 20, 1984
 
David Charles Miller, Jr.
Appointment: Mar 30, 1984
Presentation of Credentials: May 31, 1984
Termination of Mission: Left post Apr 17, 1986
 
James Wilson Rawlings
Appointment: Oct 16, 1986
Presentation of Credentials: Nov 27, 1986
Termination of Mission: Left post Mar 30, 1989
 
Note: Edward F. Fugit served as Chargé d’Affaires ad interim, Mar 1989-Apr 1990.
 
J. Steven Rhodes
Appointment: Mar 8, 1990
Presentation of Credentials: Apr 5, 1990
Termination of Mission: Left post Aug 6, 1990
 
Edward G. Lanpher
Appointment: Oct 25, 1991
Presentation of Credentials: Nov 20, 1991
Termination of Mission: Left post Jan 12, 1995
 
Johnnie Carson
Appointment: Mar 4, 1995
Presentation of Credentials: Apr 20, 1995
Termination of Mission: Left post 25 July 1997
 
Tom McDonald
Appointment: Nov 4, 1997
Presentation of Credentials: Dec 11, 1997
Termination of Mission: Left post Dec 15, 2000
 
Joseph Gerard Sullivan
Appointment: Aug 7, 2001
Presentation of Credentials: Oct 1, 2001
Termination of Mission: Left post Aug 26, 2004
 
Christopher William Dell
Appointment: Jul 2, 2004
Presentation of Credentials: Sep 2, 2004
Termination of Mission: Left post, Jul 14, 2007

James D. McGee
Appointment: Oct 29, 2007
Presentation of Credentials: Nov 22, 2007
Termination of Mission: July 2009
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Zimbabwe's Ambassador to the U.S.
ambassador-image Mapuranga, Machivenyika

Machivenyika Mapuranga serves as Zimbabwe’s ambassador to the United States. Mapuranga received a BA with honors from the University of London in 1971, and a post graduate diploma in development studies from Oxford in 1972. He was awarded his MLitt in history and political thought from Edinburgh University in 1974 and a PhD in history from the University of London in1980.

 
He has served as a lecturer at the University of Ibadan, Jos Campus in Nigeria (1975-1976), University of Jos in Nigeria (1975-1979), and the University of Zimbabwe (1979-1980) before embarking on his diplomatic career in 1980.
 
Mapuranga was counselor and Charge d’Affaires to the Zimbabwe High Commission, Lusaka (1980-1981), ambassador to Tanzania (1982-1986), and assistant secretary general representing Southern Africa Region in the OAU (1987-1995).
 
From 1993-1994, he was special representative of the OAU Secretary General to Rwanda, before becoming chairman of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Political Committee in 1997. He was also OAU Secretary General’s Special Envoy to Somalia, Sierra-Leone and Burundi, chairman of the UN Special Political Committee (4th Committee) in 1997, and head of the Zimbabwe Official Delegation to Commonwealth Summit in Australia in 1999.
 
From 1996-1998, he was ambassador and permanent representative to the United Nations in New York, and from 1999-2001, he was permanent secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
 
Mapuranga also served as ambassador to Ghana (2001-2005), a position he held prior to his current assignment.
 
On May 25, 2010, Mapuranga caused a mild sensation when he showed up for a speech in Washington by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson and heckled Carson for criticizing Zimbabwe's human rights record.Event staff eventually convince the ambassador to leave.
 

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Zimbabwe's Embassy Web Site in the U.S.
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US-flag nation-flag U.S. Embassy web site

U.S. Ambassador to Zimbabwe

Ray, Charles
ambassador-image

Charles A. Ray has put in almost five decades of service during his career as both a soldier and diplomat, giving the new U.S. ambassador to Zimbabwe an intriguing political and military skill-set to handle American relations with one of Africa’s most contentious regimes. He was sworn in as ambassador October 20, 2009.

 
A native of Center, Texas, Ray joined the U.S. Army in 1962, and was commissioned a second lieutenant three years later. His military experience covered work in public affairs, psychological operations, unconventional warfare and military intelligence, and his overseas tours included Vietnam (1968-1969, 1972-1973), Germany, Okinawa and South Korea. He retired with the rank of major in 1982.
 
Ray attended Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, where he received his bachelor’s degree in 1972. He earned a Master of Science from the University of Southern California, and a Master of Science in national security strategy from the National Defense University in Washington, DC.
 
While serving in the Army in the 1970s, Ray contributed feature stories and editorial cartoons for the Spring Lake News in North Carolina.
 
After leaving the military, he decided to join another kind of service—the Foreign Service, in 1983. His early postings included serving in the U.S. Consulate General Offices in Guangzhou and Shenyang, China, as an administrative officer in Thailand, as deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and in the State Department’s Political Military Affairs Bureau.
 
In 1998, he became the first U.S. Consul General in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam.
 
Ray’s first ambassadorship came in 2002, when he was appointed by President George W. Bush to lead the U.S. mission in Cambodia, where he served until 2005.
 
Then, he came back to the U.S. and served as diplomat-in-residence at the University of Houston for one year. He recruited students interested in careers in the Foreign Service or the State Department, and worked with secondary school systems, civic organizations and other groups to inform communities about diplomatic work.
 
In September 2006, Ray was appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for POW/Missing Personnel Affairs. He was responsible for policy, control and oversight of all matters pertaining to missing American soldiers, including their rescue.
 
He is the author of Things I Learned from My Grandmother about Leadership and Life(2008), and Taking Charge: Effective Leadership for the Twenty-First Century(2009). He has published articles on leadership and social issues at Red Room, and produced stories, photography and art for publications such as Asia Magazine, Ebony, Essence, Eagle and Swan, and Buffalo Soldier.
 
Ray says he is “relatively proficient in Vietnamese and Thai” and knows some German, Korean and French. He is married to Myung Wook-soe.
 
Charles A. Ray’s Blog (Red Room)
Statement of Charles A. Ray to Senate Committee on Foreign Relations (pdf)
Ambassador Charles A. Ray (State Department)
Charles Ray Biography (Helium)


Charles A. Ray’s Official Biography

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News
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Overview

Zimbabwe, derived from the Shona phrase “dzimba dza mabwe,” meaning “houses of stone,”

is a mineral-rich country in southern Africa. Originally settled by Bantu-speaking tribesmen, Zimbabwe is comprised of two ethnic groups with distinct languages. The Mashona, who speak Shona, comprise about 75% of the population, while the Matabele, who speak Sindebele, are about 20%. The Portuguese were the first explorers to make contact with the country, in the 16th century, but by 1888, Cecil Rhodes, a British citizen, had obtained the mineral rights from local chiefs. The area, then called Northern and Southern Rhodesia (now Zambia and Zimbabwe) came under British control shortly thereafter. Both were named after Rhodes. Britain exploited the area’s rich mineral resources for decades, until Zimbabwe (then known as Southern Rhodesia) declared its independence in 1965.
 
In 1980, Robert Mugabe rose to power and has ruled Zimbabwe as one of Africa’s most ruthless dictators since. Human rights abuses have abounded, as Mugabe consolidated his power and eliminated any opposition to his rule. Meanwhile, the country has suffered a massive financial collapse, with hyperinflation and removal of foreign and domestic investment. Adding to the problem was a Mugabe program designed to seize white-owned land. In 2002, violence preceding the elections killed more than 50 people. In the wake of the violence and fraudulent election results, the US, EU and other European countries imposed travel restrictions against senior Zimbabwean officials and embargoed the sale of arms to the country.
 
In May 2005, the government began Operation Murambatsvina which resulted in an estimated 700,000 people losing their homes and/or source of livelihood as police destroyed homes and businesses. Elections in 2008 resulted in more violence as Mugabe supporters tried to manipulate the outcome. On September 15, Mugabe and opposition leaders signed a power-sharing agreement to establish an “inclusive” government, but the agreement was not ratified until early 2009. In December 2008, Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer called on Mugabe to step down. Prominent Africans, including South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga, have also called on Mugabe to step down. Recent controversies have included expanded US sanctions against Zimbabwe, Mugabe calling a US diplomat a “prostitute,” and threatening to expel another diplomat from the country.
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Basic Information

Lay of the Land: Landlocked Zimbabwe in southern Africa shares one of the wonders of the world, the magnificent Victoria Falls, with its northern neighbor, Zambia. It also shares one of the world’s largest man-made lakes, Lake Kariba, with Zambia. Both of these phenomena are located on the Zambesi River, Zimbabwe’s natural border with Zambia. To the south, another important river, the Limpopo, forms Zimbabwe’s frontier with the Republic of South Africa.

 
Population: 12.4 million
 
Religions: Christian 68.3%, Ethnoreligious 29.2%, Muslim 0.7%, Baha’i 0.3%, Jewish 0.1%, Hindu 0.1%, non-religious 1.0%.
 
Ethnic Groups: Shona 82%, Ndebele 14%, other African 2%, mixed and Asian 1%, white less than 1%.
 
Languages: Shona 84.0%, Ndebele 12.2%, Manyika 6.8%, Ndau 6.3%, Kalanga 5.5%, English (official) 3.0%, Nyanja 2.0%. There are 19 living languages in Zimbabwe.
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History

The original inhabitants of present-day Zimbabwe were Bushmen whose language, with its unusual clicking sounds, fascinated early European academics. However, when settlers arrived, they found it difficult to befriend the reticent Bushmen, and so hunted down and killed them instead. The current population of Zimbabwe has its origins in the Bantu people of the Niger/Congo region who, over a period of 2,000 years, spread throughout sub-equatorial Africa. By the 10th century, the Karangas, Shona-speaking descendents of the Bantu, had colonized present-day Zimbabwe, Malawi and the lowlands of Mozambique. The Karangas discovered and worked with gold, tin and copper and built the royal palace of Zimbabwe in the 11th century. They also established a trade in gold and ivory, which they transported to Mozambique, from where Arab merchants shipped it as far away as India and China. In the 15th century, the Rotsi, a Shona-speaking people from the south, took over the royal palace of Zimbabwe. The Portuguese, lured by the gold and ivory, colonized Mozambique and replaced the Arabs as the Rotsi’s trading partners.

 
In 1834, Moselekatse, a Zulu general, broke with the chief he had been serving and fled north, forcing the Rotsi to retreat to the west. Moselekatse and his followers settled in the Matopos Hills and became known as the Matabele: “those who blend easily with the bush.” The Rotsi, or Shona, became subjects of the Matabele.
 
The Dutch began colonizing southern Africa in the early 1600s, and the British followed suit in the early 1800s. In 1833, the House of Commons outlawed slavery in all British dominions. Dutch settlers, known as Boers or Afrikaners, were dependent on slaves, and migrated north in the “Great Trek.” Fighting their way through the Zulus, they established their own republics, the Natalia, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal.
 
Although he was suffering from tuberculosis, Englishman Cecil Rhodes was sent at the age of seventeen to the British southern African colony of Natal, where his older brother was running a cotton plantation. When diamonds were discovered in the Orange Free State, Rhodes moved there and formed a business selling excavating equipment. In 1880, he founded the De Beers Diamond Mining Company. When gold was discovered in the Transvaal, Rhodes invested in the fields and established the Goldfields of South Africa Company in 1887. In 1888, he sent his partners north and they made contact with the king of the Matabele, Moselekatse’s son, Lobengala. Lobengala signed away the mineral rights to his kingdom for 1,000 rifles, 10,000 bullets, a steamboat and £1,200 a year. The following year, the British government granted Rhodes a royal charter for his British South Africa Company (BSAC).
 
Reports of the discovery of gold in Mashonaland were sufficient motivation for Rhodes to order an expedition to the area. One hundred eighty adventurers, all under the age of 25, accompanied by hundreds of armed militia, set off on a 400-mile trek to Mashonaland under the guidance of elephant hunter Frederick Courteney Selous. Dubbed the Pioneer Column, they left on June 28, 1890, with the promise of a farm each and gold claims. When it turned out that there were no significant deposits of gold, many of the pioneers left. Those who stayed were the first white colonizers of Mashonaland. A BSAC administrator, Dr. Leander Starr Jameson, encouraged more British to emigrate and, without bothering to consult with the Mashona, who were already living there, parceled out land to the white settlers.
 
Within ten years, the whites had seized one-sixth of the land—16 million acres. They had also disrupted the economy of the Matabele, who had long been collecting tribute from the Mashona. Jameson then demanded that the Matabele vacate the area. They refused and  the Matabele War broke out in 1896. The British used machine guns to push back the Matabele, and went in search of King Lobengula, who took his own life. The British named the country Southern Rhodesia in honor of Cecil Rhodes.
 
In Transvaal, gold really was discovered, prompting Rhodes to send an invading army in to overthrow the Boer government in January 1896. The invasion failed and Rhodes was forced to resign as both the managing director of the BSAC and as prime minister of Britain’s Cape Colony.
 
The Boer victory proved to the Matabele that the British were not invincible. In March 1896, they rose up against the Europeans, as did the Mashona, killing more than 10% of the European population. Cecil Rhodes managed to negotiate a peace settlement, and the fighting came to an end in October 1897. The following year, the Native Reserves Order in Council created reserves for the blacks on low-quality land, while the whites were promised a degree of self-government.
 
On the eve of World War I, there were 836,000 blacks in Southern Rhodesia and 28,000 whites, yet the whites owned three-quarters of the land. The British and the Boers had already fought against each other in two wars, and tensions between the two were rising again when World War I broke out and the Europeans were distracted by their fight against the Germans. In a referendum in October 1923, the whites in Southern Rhodesia voted for self-government rather than joining the 13-year-old Union of South Africa. The Land Apportionment Act of 1930 allotted 49 million acres to Southern Rhodesia’s 50,000 whites and 29 million acres to its black population of 1.1 million. It also denied black Africans from owning land in white areas.
 
In 1924, Robert Mugabe was born at the Katuma Jesuit Mission, fifty miles west of Salisbury (now Harare), on land donated by the British South Africa Company because Jesuits had accompanied the Pioneer Column in 1890. In 1949, Mugabe earned a scholarship to the all-black University of Fort Hare in Cape Province, South Africa. The African National Congregs (ANC) was founded at Fort Hare in 1912. Also, Nelson Mandela was expelled from the University for leading a student strike in 1940. Mugabe joined the Youth League of the ANC and met several important political activists including Oliver Tambo of the ANC, the South African Zulu leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi and Leopold Takawiri, who introduced him to Marxism.
 
Mugabe returned to Southern Rhodesia in 1952, taught school and earned another degree in education. At the time, 90% of blacks in Southern Rhodesia were literate, yet apartheid (the Afrikaans word for “separateness”) had been official racial policy since 1933.
 
In 1953, the British combined Southern and Northern Rhodesia with Nyasaland to create the administrative entity of Rhodesia and Nyasaland.
 
In 1957, Ghana was about to become the first British African colony to achieve independence. Its soon-to-be-president, Kwame Nkrumah, invited Africans from other countries to come to Ghana to teach and to study and to spread the movement for African liberation. Mugabe was one of the idealists who responded. In Ghana, he soaked up the rhetoric and the spirit of activism.
 
Back in Rhodesia, the African National Congress was launched as a national party, led by Joshua Nkomo, who was chosen for his moderate image. Nkomo and the ANC tried not to scare the white population and emphasized goals that would be viewed as reasonable, such as abolition of discriminatory laws and the extension of the right to vote. At the time, the right to vote was based on income, so that only 560 Africans were in included in the list of 52,000 eligible voters. The ANC touched a nerve in the black population and quickly grew into a mass movement that called for redistribution of land. Some ANC members began guerrilla attacks. The Rhodesian government declared a state of emergency on February 26, 1959, banning all political parties advocating African nationalism and imprisoned hundreds of their leaders. In 1960, nationalists launched a more radical group, the Nationalist Democratic Party (NDP), which demanded not just land redistribution, but political power for the black majority.
 
Mugabe returned to Rhodesia in May 1960 to get married. He intended to return to Ghana to complete his teaching contract there, but nationalist friends of his asked him to stay and to join their cause. In July, police arrested three NDP leaders, one of whom was one of Mugabe’s closest friends. Mugabe joined a 7,000-strong demonstration outside the prime minister’s office. Riot police opened fire on the crowd. The day after the “March of the 7000,” half of the black workforce did not show up for work and the number of demonstrators swelled to 40,000. Mugabe spoke to the crowd and presented his vision of a future Zimbabwe that would be African-ruled, like Ghana. The name Zimbabwe is derived from the Shona phrase “dzimba dza mabwe,” meaning “houses of stone.” The unrest spread and the British colonial government passed the Law and Order (Maintenance) Amendment Act. This law gave the government a free hand in curbing freedom of speech, assembly, movement, association and privacy. The police were given unlimited powers to arrest and detain anyone without trial. Anything that seemed to encourage the violent overthrow of the colonial government was deemed “an act of terrorism,” punishable by life imprisonment. The white chief justice of Rhodesia, Sir Robert Tredgold, resigned in protest, publicly stating, “This bill outrages every basic right…. It will remove the last vestige of doubt about whether Rhodesia is a police state.”
 
Mugabe gave up his teaching post in Ghana and was elected publicity secretary of the NDP. In 1961, the British government held a conference to decide Rhodesia’s future. Joshua Nkomo, as president of the NDP, headed a nationalist delegation that took part in the conference. Nkomo agreed to the creation of a constitution that gave blacks token representation in a parliament. Mugabe and other NDP members were outraged by Nkomo’s capitulation. Later that year the government banned the NDP. The nationalists simply formed a new party, the Zimbabwe African Peoples Union (ZAPU). Mugabe was again named publicity secretary, and Nkomo returned as party president.
 
The more violent nationalists began attacking white schools and churches, burning crops and forests and sabotaging railway lines. After nine months, the government banned ZAPU, arrested Mugabe and other leaders and restricted them to their home districts for three months in an attempt to calm the situation in the capital of Salisbury. When Mugabe returned, he was arrested for giving a speech in which he referred to the Law and Order Act as “the legislation of murder.”
 
After getting out of prison, Nkomo tricked Mugabe into establishing a government-in-exile in Dar es Salaam, Tanganyika, in order to get Mugabe and other nationalist opponents out of the country. Back in Salisbury, Mugabe’s colleagues formed an anti-Nkomo nationalist party, the Zimbabwe African National union (ZANU). Mugabe, in absentia, was elected secretary-general. In Matabeleland, the armed wings of ZAPU and ZANU went to war against each other, which did not appease the Rhodesian whites about the prospects for black rule.
 
In December 1963, Mugabe returned to Zimbabwe where he was immediately arrested. Sentenced to 21 months in prison in March 1964, he was placed in a maximum-security prison in Salisbury. In August, the new right-wing leader of Rhodesia, Ian Smith, banned ZAPU and ZANU and sent Nkomo to prison with a 10-year sentence. Mugabe made the most of his years of incarceration, earning three more degrees through correspondence with the University of London, and creating a school for his fellow prisoners. When ZANU guerillas killed a white farmer and his wife, the government transferred ZANU’s leaders, including Mugabe, to Salisbury’s Central Prison, where he shared a communal cell with Reverend Sithole. Mugabe would remain in this prison for eight years.
 
In 1974, outside events caused a chain reaction that led to Mugabe’s release from prison. Far away in Portugal, General António de Spinola staged a coup and announced plans to withdraw Portuguese troops from Angola and Mozambique, and to grant independence to both nations. Faced with the prospect of two hostile, black-ruled nations on his border, the white president of South Africa, John Vorster, pressured Ian Smith to make peace with ZANU and ZAPU in Rhodesia. In November 1974, Smith released Mugabe, Nkomo and Sithole from prison. Having been incarcerated for ten years and four months, Mugabe was Africa’s second longest held political prisoner. Only Nelson Mandela of South Africa spent more time in prison.
 
Fearing re-arrest, Mugabe left for Mozambique, which achieved independence two months later. Mozambique’s president, Samora Machel, offered Mugabe and his wife a villa, and they lived there for the next four years. With black rule in their own nation increasingly possible, Zimbabwe’s nationalist leaders, Mugabe, Sithole, Nkomo and Bishop Abel Muzorewa, tried to set aside their differences and work together against Ian Smith and the white Rhodesians. In November 1975, the military wings of ZANU and ZAPU joined forces to form the Zimbabwe People’s Army. However, their rivalry could not be hidden. When the Soviets, who were supplying arms to the army, insisted that Mugabe recognize Nkomo as the movement’s leader, Mugabe turned to the Chinese for weapons. Later he would also reach out for aid to the Soviet Union, North Korea, Cuba and Vietnam.
 
Over the next three years, the nationalist parties, their armies and their leaders maneuvered for position in preparation for the increasingly inevitable assumption of power by the black majority. White farmers were driven from their homes in the east; ZANU blew up Salisbury’s largest fuel depot, destroying a month’s fuel supplies; Muzorewa briefly led a superficial transitional government; and then, in October 1979, Mugabe and Nkomo agreed to the creation of a new constitution. The Lancaster House Agreement declared Zimbabwe a sovereign republic and all political parties were allowed to campaign for a February 1980 election for a bicameral legislature. The House of Assembly would consist of 80 black members and 20 white members. The Senate would have 40 members, 14 black, 10 white, 10 to be elected by the Council of Chiefs and 6 to be nominated by the president on the recommendation of the prime minister.
 
The election campaign was punctuated with violence. There were two assassination attempts on Mugabe, including one in which a grenade was thrown at his house. His supporters retaliated by bombing two churches in Salisbury. When a leftist paper described Mugabe as “a psychopath suffering from paranoia,” their printing press was bombed. On Election Day, ZANU guerrillas intimidated voters at polling stations. The election results were announced on March 4, 1980. Mugabe’s party won 57 seats in the Assembly, a majority. Nkomo’s party gained 20 seats and Muzorewa’s party 3 seats. Mugabe offered Nkomo the ceremonial post of president, which he refused, eventually settling for the minister of home affairs, which gave him control of the police. Mugabe took over as the first prime minister of independent Zimbabwe.
 
After taking power Mugabe promised not to “victimize the minority.” He included two white men in his cabinet and appointed a white military officer, Lieutenant-General Peter Walls, supreme commander of the armed forces. Many of the 170,000 whites in Zimbabwe, however, were edgy. Statues of Cecil Rhodes were removed, and Cecil Square in the center of Salisbury was renamed Africa Unity Square. In 1982, the name of the capital city itself was changed from Salisbury to Harare. The future of the whites was unclear. Six thousand white farmers owned almost half the land, including two-thirds of the most productive lands. They employed 300,000 people, a third of the labor force. They also dominated the economy, including banking, industry and trade. Zimbabwean television, black-controlled for the first time, began to broadcast references to “racist whites.” By the end of the year, 10% of the white population had left the country, most of them moving to South Africa, which was still white-ruled.
 
Lieutenant-General Walls revealed on television that he had appealed to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to cancel the election results, and Mugabe ordered Walls to leave the country. In the summer of 1980, one of Mugabe’s closest friends, Edgar Tekere, accused the Anglican Church of being “an instrument of oppression” and then led an attack on a white farmhouse in which an elderly white farmer was murdered. Tekere was tried for the crime, but was later acquitted.
 
Problems then developed between the black Zimbabwean government and the white South African government. The South Africans tried to destabilize Zimbabwe by establishing a network of spies, informers and saboteurs inside the military and the police. In July 1982, South African raiders destroyed 13 aircraft at Zimbabwe’s main air force base.
 
By the end of the third year of independence, 70,000 whites, more than 40%, had emigrated. When Ian Smith’s party won 15 of the 20 Assembly seats reserved for whites at the 1985 election, Mugabe declared, “Those whites who have not accepted the reality of a political order in which the Africans set the pace will have to leave the country.” Then he added, in the chiShona language, “We will kill the snakes among us; we will smash them completely.”
 
Mugabe saw his two main enemies as the government of South Africa, which was in fact training a dissident army, and Joshua Nkomo, who had retained a 20,000-man army rooted in Matabeleland. In October 1980, Mugabe secretly signed an agreement with Kim Il–Sung of North Korea to have more than 100 North Korean advisors train a brigade of Zimbabweans to deal with internal dissidents. Mugabe kicked Nkomo out of his government and seized his property. Then he turned his sights on Nkomo’s base, Matabeleland. Instead of concentrating his wrath on Nkomo and his supporters, Mugabe treated all the Ndebele people of Matabeleland as his enemies.
 
In 1983, he deployed the North Korean-trained 5 Brigade to Matabeleland and launched a campaign of arson and murder against the civilian population. Going from village to village, Mugabe’s men killed at least 2,000 civilians in the first six weeks. Tens of thousands more were beaten. Villagers were forced to sing songs in the chiShona language and to dance on the mass graves of their recently buried family members. During one four-month period in 1984, 8,000 people were processed through an interrogation center known for torture. The 5 Brigade dumped another 8,000 bodies down an unused mine only to have the bodies float to the surface when it rained.
 
Faced with repeated assassination attempts, Nkomo fled the country. However he returned for the 1985 election, and his party won all of the 15 seats contested in Matabeleland South. As a matter of survival, he signed a Unity Accord, merging his party with Mugabe’s in exchange for amnesty.
 
In 1987, Mugabe abolished the position of prime minister and made himself executive president, which meant that he was head of state, head of the government and commander-in-chief of the armed forces. He abolished the clause in the constitution that reserved 20 Assembly seats for whites, and every six months he renewed the state of emergency that gave the government the authority to detain people without trial.
 
By 1990, under the terms of the Lancaster House Agreement and funded by Great Britain, 416,000 people had been resettled on 6.5 million acres formerly owned by whites. Mugabe amended the constitution to allow the government to confiscate land at any price it deemed to be fair. He also seized the land of his political opponents, including his former ally and cellmate, Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole.
 
With national elections on the horizon, Mugabe played the race card, ordering full-scale invasions of white farms on February 26, 2000. In less than two weeks, about 400 farms had been invaded and the farmers, in many cases, beaten, tortured and even murdered. Black laborers suspected of supported an opposition party were given the same treatment.
 
When 7,000 blacks and whites joined together for a peace march on April 1, 2000, war veterans aligned with Mugabe attacked them with clubs. By May 15, 1,400 farms had been invaded. On May 24, Mugabe signed a decree allowing the seizure of 800 farms without the payment of compensation.
 
In 1999, the Zimbabwean Electricity Supply Authority, riddled with corruption, ran out of money, as did the state oil company, causing fuel shortages. Morgan Tsvangirai organized a series of strikes against the corruption of Mugabe’s rule and formed a new party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
 
In February 2000, with inflation running at 58.5% and basic food products in short supply, Mugabe held a referendum to allow him to run for two more five-year terms and to make Great Britain responsible for paying for land reform. Although advertisements for the “Vote No” campaign were banned, the referendum was defeated 55%-45%.
 
Mugabe then tried to find new tactics to insure that he would win the parliamentary elections in June. Several farms were turned into “reeducation centers” where workers were forced to sing songs in praise of Mugabe’s party, the ZANU-PF. His supporters also beat teachers in Matabeleland accused of supporting Tsvangirai and the MDC. By late May, 250 schools were forced to close and 7,000 teachers fled their homes. MDC activists were also seized and tortured. When the election results were announced on June 27, it turned out that despite all of the violence and intimidation, Mugabe had only scored a narrow victory. His ZANU-PF won 62 seats and the MDC 57, with one seat going to an independent. Because 30 parliamentary seats were appointed, Mugabe ended up with a clear majority of seats, 92 to 58.
 
In 2001, Mugabe changed the rules for voter eligibility by requiring that voters show rental agreements for their housing. Because many MDC supporters were poor and lived in makeshift shacks, they did not have rental agreements and lost the right to vote. As the Zimbabwean economy, riddled with corruption and incompetence, disintegrated, the government defaulted on its foreign loans and the vital tourism industry collapsed. Meanwhile, AIDS spread rapidly while hospitals ran out of drugs. In February 2002 the European Union and the United States issued sanctions forbidding Mugabe and his cohorts from entering their territory, a development that Mugabe used to his favor in his election campaign.
 
Meanwhile, Morgan Tsvangirai was gaining support among military officers and even among the war veterans. One month before the election, Australian television broadcast a video that appeared to show Tsvangirai discussing the desirability of Mugabe’s death. On February 25, 16 days before the election, Mugabe had Tsvangirai arrested on charges of treason. Mugabe won 56% of the vote and Tsvangirai 42%, but the election was widely considered to have been rigged, with huge discrepancies in some areas between the number of votes cast and the number of eligible voters.
 
Invoking the same law that the British colonial government had used to imprison him, Mugabe had Tsvangirai charged with “an act of terrorism,” encouraging the violent overthrow of the government. Zimbabwe’s Supreme Court acquitted Tsvangirai in October 2004.
 
On May 19, 2005, Mugabe launched Operation Murambatsvina (Clean the Filth) in which, according to United Nations estimates, 700,000 Zimbabweans were forcibly removed from their homes or businesses. Mugabe’s government claimed this was done to “restore order and sanity,” but many locals suspect that the real motivation was to forestall demonstrations as the nation’s economy continued to deteriorate.
 
By the end of 2008, inflation skyrocketed to a mind-boggling 231,000,000%, up from 7,000% in 2007, unemployment reached 80%, and the Zimbabwean dollar was basically worthless. According to the World Health Organization, Zimbabwe had the world’s lowest life expectancy.
 
Fed up with the economic collapse and the lack of available necessities, Zimbabweans expressed their anger at the polls in March 2008’s presidential and parliamentary elections. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change won a majority of the seats in Parliament, a remarkable defeat for Mugabe’s party, ZANU-PF. Four days after the vote, Tsvangirai declared himself the winner by a slim margin. Mugabe refused to concede.
 
In April police raided the offices of the opposition and election monitors and detained dozens of people for questioning. After the election, supporters of Mugabe began a brutal campaign of violence against the opposition that left more than 30 people dead and hundreds wounded. Tsvangirai fled the country, fearing assassination attempts. He returned to Zimbabwe in late May.
 
On May 2, election officials finally released the results of the vote, with Tsvangirai defeating Mugabe, 47.9% to 43.2%. A runoff election was necessary because neither candidate won more than 50%. In the lead-up to the runoff election, police intensified their crackdown on Tsvangirai and members of his party. Indeed, at least 85 supporters of his party were killed in government-backed violence. Officials banned rallies and repeatedly detained Tsvangirai for attempting to do so. In addition, Tsvangirai’s top deputy, Tendai Biti was arrested on charges of treason. Biti denied he committed treason, and several members of Parliament alleged the charges were trumped up. In June, Mugabe barred humanitarian groups from providing aid in the country—a drastic move that aid organizations estimated would deny about two million people much-needed assistance. The ban on aid groups was lifted in September, and aid groups were correct in their prediction that the suffering of nearly two million Zimbabweans would intensify under the ban.
 
On June 22, Tsvangirai withdrew from the race, saying he could not subject his supporters to violence and intimidation. He took refuge in the Dutch Embassy. Not surprisingly, Mugabe was elected to a sixth term, taking 85% of the vote.
 
In August, Lovemore Moyo, national chairman of the opposition party Movement for Democratic Change, was elected speaker of Parliament, 110 to 98, prevailing over Mugabe’s candidate. It was the first time a member of the opposition held the post since Zimbabwe gained independence in 1980.
 
Mugabe and Tsvangirai agreed to a power-sharing deal in September 2008 that called on the leaders to share executive authority. Under the deal, Tsvangirai will serve as prime minister and the opposition will control 16 ministries. The governing party will control 15, with Mugabe continuing as president. Both sides, however, balked at suggestions by negotiators that Mugabe and Tsvangirai share control over the Ministry of Home Affairs, which controls the police force, stalling implementation of the agreement. Talks dragged on for the remainder of 2008, but the two sides failed to reach consensus.
 
Tsvangirai agreed in January 2009 to enter into a power-sharing government with Mugabe and was sworn in as prime minister in February. Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change will control 13 of the 31 ministries in the new government, while Mugabe’s Zanu-PF was allocated 15. The parties will share responsibility for the contested home-affairs ministry.
 
As if life weren’t unbearable enough in Zimbabwe, with its residents facing hunger, empty store shelves, a nonexistent health system, rampant unemployment, inflation a staggering 231 million percent, and the obvious political instability, a cholera epidemic broke out in August 2008. At least 565 people died from the disease by the end of the year, and another 12,000 were infected.
 
History of Zimbabwe (History World)
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History of U.S. Relations with Zimbabwe

In November 1965, after Zimbabwe’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence, the United States recalled its Consul General from Salisbury, closed the US Information Service (USIS) library, and withdrew its Agency for International Development (USAID) and trade promotion officials. After 1965, the small remaining American consular staff continued to operate under authority of exequaturs issued by Queen Elizabeth II. The US closed its Consulate General on March 17, 1970, when Zimbabwe declared itself a republic.

 
In 1971, the US Congress passed legislation permitting the United States to import strategic materials, such as chrome, from Rhodesia. The legislation took effect on January 1, 1972, but had no real impact on the Rhodesian economy. Instead, the US continued to support sanctions against the country.
 
Alarmed by the growth of Communist involvement in the guerrilla struggles in southern Africa, President Gerald Ford sent his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, to the region to protect American interests. With Kissinger’s support, Rhodesian President Ian Smith announced that he would accept black majority rule in Zimbabwe as long as the whites retained control of the army and the police. In October 1976, Mugabe and Nkomo issued a joint statement flatly rejecting the proposal.
 
The United States supported British efforts to implement the settlement signed at Lancaster House on December 21, 1979, and extended official diplomatic recognition to the new government immediately after independence. A resident embassy was established in Harare on Zimbabwe’s Independence Day, April 18, 1980. The first US Ambassador arrived and presented his credentials in June 1980. Until the arrival of a resident ambassador in Washington in 1983, Zimbabwe’s relations with the US were handled by its ambassador to the United Nations (UN) in New York.
 
In March 1981, at the Zimbabwe Conference on Reconstruction and Development (ZIMCORD), the United States pledged $225 million over a three-year period toward the government’s goals of postwar reconstruction, distribution and development of land, and the development of skilled manpower. By the end of FY 1986, the United States had contributed $380 million: the majority in grants, with some loans and loan guarantees.
 
In July 1986, however, the US government decided to discontinue future bilateral aid to Zimbabwe as a result of continued undiplomatic statements and actions by the Mugabe government in the United Nations and elsewhere. Aid programs previously agreed upon were not affected by the decision, nor were regional development programs that benefiting Zimbabwe. Full programming was restored in 1988.
 
President Mugabe visited Washington informally in September 1980, and on official working visits in September 1983, July 1991, and in 1995, meeting with Presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton respectively. Vice President George H.W. Bush visited Harare in November 1982, on a trip to several African countries.
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Current U.S. Relations with Zimbabwe

Noted Zimbabwean-American:
Andrew Pattison – born in 1949 in South Africa, Pattison is a former Rhodesian tennis player. His highest ranking was World No. 24 in 1974. He became a naturalized American citizen following his retirement from tennis.

 
Currently, relations between the United States and Zimbabwe are strained. Since 2000, the US has condemned the Zimbabwean government’s increasing assault on human rights and the rule of law, and has joined much of the world community in calling for the Mugabe government to embrace a peaceful democratic solution.
 
In 2002 and 2003, the United States imposed various sanctions on Zimbabwe, including financial and visa sanctions against selected individuals, a ban on transfers of defense items and services, and a suspension of non-humanitarian government-to-government assistance.
 
Despite strained political relations, the United States continues to provide humanitarian assistance to the people of Zimbabwe, sending more than $900 million in assistance from 2002-2008, most of which was food aid.
 
USAID assistance to Zimbabwe since 2002 has focused on family planning, HIV/AIDS prevention, democracy and governance programs, emergency food aid, and assistance to internally displaced persons. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) began a direct assistance program in August 2000, which focuses on prevention of HIV transmission; improved care of persons with HIV/AIDS; surveillance, monitoring, and evaluation of the epidemic; and health sector infrastructure support.
 
President George W. Bush joined the chorus of world leaders who condemned the fraudulent 2008 election and the government-sponsored crackdown on the opposition. China and Russia, however, blocked the US-led effort in the UN Security Council to impose sanctions on Zimbabwe. Bush responded in July by expanding existing US sanctions against Mugabe, companies in Zimbabwe, and individuals.
 
In 2006, 32,968 Americans visited Zimbabwe. The number of visitors has been decreasing since 2003, when 47,197 Americans visited the country.
 
In 2006, 4,535 Zimbabweans visited the US. Slightly less Zimbabweans have traveled to the US every year since 2002, when 5,457 visited America.
 
Zimbabwe (BUYUSA.gov)
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Where Does the Money Flow

Despite sanctions imposed by the US on Zimbabwe, American businesses continue to import a healthy amount of goods from the strive-torn country. In 2008, the US imported a total of $111.9 million from Zimbabwe, up from $76 million in 2004.

 
From 2004 to 2008, top US imports from Zimbabwe included steelmaking and ferroalloying materials (unmanufactured), increasing from $23.6 million to $87.1 million; green coffee, moving up from $293,000 to $411,000; tobacco, waxes, and nonfood oils, rising from $417,000 to $708,000; and sulfur and nonmetallic minerals, increasing from $412,000 to $559,000.
 
American imports on the decline included nickel, decreasing from $31.4 million to $16 million; cane and beet sugar, moving down from $5.8 million to $0; and jewelry, watches, and rings, decreasing from $2.5 million to $596,000.
 
American exports to Zimbabwe are led by other foods, increasing from $2.8 million to $26.3 million; parts for civilian aircraft, moving up from $7 million to $19.2 million; pharmaceutical preparations, rising from $4.2 million to $8.1 million; and oilseeds and food oils, increasing from $1.8 million to $4 million.
 
Unfortunately for malnourished Zimbabweans, US exports on the decline included corn, decreasing from $12.9 million to $2.2 million; sorghum, barley, and oats, falling from $4.6 million to $1.9 million; and vegetables, moving down from $11 million to $5.4 million.
 
Of the $17.6 million in US aid to Zimbabwe in 2006, $9.8 million went to HIV/AIDS, $3.5 million went to Civic Participation, and $1 million went to Media Freedom and Freedom of Information.
 
The 2008 budget will increase aid to $21 million. The HIV/AIDS program will grow to $17 million, taking advantage of decreases throughout the Governing Justly and Democratically program (from $6.6 million to $3 million). Zimbabwe will also receive funds through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) outside of the Budget for Foreign Operations.
 
US, Zimbabwe oppose U.N. arms trade treaty (by Geraldine Baum, Los Angeles Times)
Zimbabwe to pay government workers in US dollars (by Angus Shaw, Associated Press)
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Controversies

US Expands Sanctions Against Zimbabwe

In July 2008, the US expanded sanctions against Zimbabwe, in order to keep resources from the regime of President Robert Mugabe. Mugabe’s administration has banned most of the activities of NGOs supplying assistance to the needy of Zimbabwe, but the US sought to expand existing sanctions after Mugabe ignored a UN Security Council appeal to postpone a presidential runoff election on June 27. Earlier that month, Russia and China vetoed a Security Council resolution to impose international sanctions on Mugabe and his government. In the meantime, President George W. Bush authorized the use of up to $2.5 million from the US Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance Fund for people displaced by violence.
 
Mugabe Calls US Diplomat a “Prostitute”
In May 2008, Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe labeled one US diplomat a “prostitute,” and threatened to oust another diplomat from the country. Mugabe called US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer a “prostitute” for trotting around the globe and, in his estimation, acting as if Zimbabwe were an extension of the United States. He also said that US Ambassador to Zimbabwe James McGee would be expelled from the country if he did not stop trying to meddle in Zimbabwe’s electoral process. A month earlier, Frazer has accused Mugabe of trying to steal the election and intimidating voters. Mugabe denied all responsibility for election-related violence and intimidation tactics. Later that month, the US Ambassador to Zimbabwe was stopped twice by security forces and asked harassing questions, and in June, US and British diplomats were stopped by Zimbabwe police who threatened to burn them alive. All were released safely, but the incident sparked a firestorm of criticism from international sources.
 
Zimbabwe Refuses US GMO Food Aid
In June 2002, several nations receiving US food aid, including Zimbabwe, Bolivia, Guatemala and Nicaragua, refused to accept American foods containing transgenic corn, or maize. US officials have long promoted biotechnology as a way to solve the world’s hunger problems, but Zimbabwe—which has about 6 million people facing famine—was vocal in its refusal. According to US officials, the corn was then routed to Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia. By May 2003, the US practice of offering GMO-modified crops to nations receiving food aid had erupted into a full-fledged controversy, with the European Union condemning the US decision to file a complaint with the Word Trade Organization over the EU’s moratorium on GMO foods.
USA: Poor Countries Reject GMO Food Aid (Environment News Service)
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Human Rights

According to the State Department’s human rights report for 2008, the Zimbabwe government or its agents committed politically motivated, arbitrary, and unlawful killings during the year. Security forces killed opposition members and engaged in extralegal killings in connection with illegal diamond mining.

There were killings by paramilitary forces, and numerous reports of politically motivated abductions. Opposition party leaders from the MDC reported that state security agents and ruling ZANU-PF party supporters abducted and tortured hundreds of opposition and civil society members, as well as student leaders, as part of a systematic government-sponsored campaign to dismantle the opposition party’s structures before the March 29 election and, especially, immediately preceding the June 27 presidential run-off.
 
Security forces routinely committed political violence, including torture of citizens in custody, particularly in areas suspected of heavy support for the opposition. Army and police units organized, participated in, or provided logistical support to perpetrators of political violence and generally permitted their activities. Police also refused to record reports of politically motivated violence or destruction of property. Police used excessive force in apprehending and detaining criminal suspects.
Human rights groups reported that physical and psychological torture perpetrated by security agents and government supporters increased during the year. Police repeatedly used cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment against those in custody. Police also used excessive force to disperse demonstrators.
 
Government supporters, including youth militia and war veterans trained by ZANU-PF, were also deployed to harass and intimidate members of the opposition, labor, student movement, and civic groups, as well as journalists considered critical of the government.
 
Security forces were widely used to carry out government-sponsored politically motivated violence. Police routinely and violently disrupted public gatherings and demonstrations, and tortured opposition and civil society activists in police custody.
There were reports that police and army personnel suspected of being sympathetic to the political opposition were demoted or fired. Police were poorly trained and equipped, underpaid, and corrupt. Severely depleted human and material resources, especially fuel, further reduced police effectiveness during the year. Corruption continued to increase in part due to low salaries and a worsening economy.
Mechanisms to investigate security force abuses remained weak. Court orders compelling investigations into allegations of abuse were routinely ignored by authorities. Government efforts to reform security forces were minimal, and training was rarely provided. Police seldom responded during incidents of vigilante violence.
 
Authorities often did not allow detainees prompt or regular access to their lawyers and often informed lawyers who attempted to visit their clients that detainees were “not available,” especially in cases involving opposition members and civil society activists. In several cases police claimed not to know where they were holding a detained individual, which delayed a hearing on bail release. Family members sometimes were denied access unless accompanied by an attorney. Detainees were often held incommunicado.
 
There were reports that victims or witnesses of crimes were detained or charged with the crime after reporting it to police. The government increasingly used arbitrary arrest and detention as a tool of intimidation and harassment, especially against opposition members and supporters, civil society activists, student activists, and journalists. The Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum reported more than 800 confirmed cases of unlawful arrest and detention during the year.
 
Police and other security officials detained MDC President Morgan Tsvangirai without charge several times during the year. On January 23, police executed a predawn raid on Tsvangirai’s home and took him into custody for several hours just before he was expected to lead an MDC march and rally.
Prolonged pretrial detention remained a problem, and some detainees were incarcerated for several years before trial or sentencing because of a critical shortage of magistrates and court interpreters, poor bureaucratic procedures, and for political reasons. During the year some detainees in Harare Remand Prison went months without attending court for bail hearings because Zimbabwe Prison Services lacked fuel to provide transport.
 
The judiciary was under intense pressure to conform to government policies, and the government repeatedly refused to abide by judicial decisions. The government routinely delayed payment of court costs or judgments awarded against it in civil cases. Trials were held by judges without juries and were open to the public, except in certain security cases. Every defendant has the right to a lawyer of his or her choosing, but a local attorney reported that most defendants in magistrates’ courts did not have legal representation. Attorneys sometimes were denied access to their clients, especially in cases involving opposition members or civil society activists.
 
There were hundreds of reports of political detainees throughout the year, including opposition officials, their supporters, NGO workers, and civil society activists. During the year police severely beat and tortured numerous opposition, civil society, and student leaders while in detention.
Security forces searched homes and offices without warrants; the government pressured local chiefs and ruling party loyalists to monitor and report on suspected opposition supporters; and the government forcibly displaced persons from their homes. The government coerced ruling party supporters and punished opposition supporters by manipulating the distribution of food aid, agricultural inputs, and access to other government assistance programs.
 
Prison conditions remained harsh and life threatening. Prison guards beat and abused prisoners. Poor sanitary conditions and overcrowding persisted, which aggravated outbreaks of cholera, diarrhea, measles, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS-related illnesses. Human rights activists familiar with prison conditions reported constant shortages of food, water, electricity, clothing, and soap. Some prisoners reported receiving only one small meal a day.
 
In 2007, the president signed into law the Interception of Communications Act (ICA) to provide for the interception and monitoring of any communication (including telephone, postal mail, e-mail, and Internet traffic) in the course of transmission through a telecommunication, postal, or other related system in the country. During the year the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the state-run Zimpapers secretly monitored subordinates’ private e-mails for political content.
 
The government continued to restrict freedom of speech, particularly by those making or publicizing comments critical of President Mugabe. Passage of the 2007 ICA increased the government’s ability to monitor speech and to punish those who criticized the government.
 
Under authority of the Official Secrets Act, Public Order, and Security Act (POSA), or the Criminal Law Act, the government arrested individuals for criticizing President Mugabe in public. There were credible reports that CIO agents and informers routinely monitored political and other meetings. Persons deemed critical of the government were frequently targeted for harassment, abduction, and torture.
 
The Ministry for Information and Publicity controlled the state-run media, including the two remaining daily newspapers, the Chronicle and the Herald. The news coverage in these newspapers and in the state-controlled media as a whole generally portrayed the activities of government officials positively, portrayed opposition parties and other antigovernment groups negatively, and downplayed events or information that reflected adversely on the government. High-ranking government officials, including President Mugabe, used the state-controlled media to threaten violence against suspected critics of the government.
 
There were two main independent domestic weekly newspapers, the Zimbabwe Independent and the Standard, and a semi-independent weekly paper, the Financial Gazette, all three of which continued to operate despite threats and pressure from the government.
 
The government controlled all domestic radio broadcasting stations through the state-owned Zimbabwe Broadcasting Holdings, supervised by the Ministry for Information and Publicity.
 
The government controlled the only domestically based television broadcasting station, the Zimbabwean Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC).
 
Senior government officials repeatedly criticized both local and foreign independent media for what they deemed biased reporting meant to discredit the Mugabe regime and to misrepresent the country’s political and economic conditions. Government used accreditation laws to prevent most major international media outlets and some local journalists from covering the country’s combined presidential, parliamentary, and local government elections. Journalists and publishers continued to practice self-censorship as a result of government action and threats.
 
According to independent assessments, hundreds of thousands of persons remain displaced within the country as a result of government policies including state-sponsored election-related violence, land reform, and Operation Murambatsvina in 2005. The government’s campaign of forced evictions and the demolition of homes and businesses continued during the year.
 
Under the constitution, the president may unilaterally declare a state of public emergency for a period of up to 14 days; has sole power to dissolve parliament and to appoint or remove a vice president and any minister or deputy minister; and directly appoints eight provincial governors who sit in parliament, and six senators. There were reports that the government removed, from the civil service and the military, persons perceived to be opposition supporters. The government also routinely interfered with MDC-led local governments.
 
The World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators reflected that corruption was a severe problem. Implementation of the government’s ongoing redistribution of expropriated, white-owned, commercial farms substantially favored the ruling party elite and continued to lack transparency. Top ruling party officials and entrepreneurs supporting the ruling party received priority access to limited foreign exchange, farm inputs such as fertilizer and seed, and fuel.
 
Domestic and international human rights groups were subject to government restrictions, interference, monitoring, and harassment. The government continued to use the state-controlled media to disparage and attack human rights groups. Articles typically dismissed the efforts and recommendations of NGOs that were considered critical of the government as efforts by groups that merely did the bidding of “Western governments.”
 
Few cases of rape, especially spousal rape, were reported to authorities because women were unaware that spousal rape was a crime and feared losing the support of their families, particularly in rural areas. Domestic violence against women, especially wife beating, continued to be a serious problem. In 2006 the Musasa Project, a local NGO that worked for the protection and promotion of women’s rights, reported that approximately one-third of women in the country were in an abusive marital relationship. Most cases of domestic violence went unreported due to traditional sensitivities and fear of economic consequences for the family.
 
Several civil society groups offered anecdotal evidence that the country’s worsening economic problems were forcing more women and young girls into prostitution. There were increasing reports that women and children were sexually exploited in towns along the borders with South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique, and Zambia.
 
Women commonly faced workplace sexual harassment, government enforcement was not effective, and there were no reports of any prosecutions during the year.
 
Despite laws aimed at enhancing women’s rights and countering certain discriminatory traditional practices, women remained disadvantaged in society. Economic dependency and prevailing social norms prevented rural women in particular from combating societal discrimination. Despite legal prohibitions, women remained vulnerable to entrenched customary practices, including pledging young women to marry partners not of their choosing and forcing widows to marry the brothers of their late spouses.
Primary education is not compulsory, free, or universal for any children. According to the UNICEF Humanitarian Action Report 2008: Zimbabwe, the educational system was “characterized by low enrolment rates, declining attendance and completion rates, low transition rate to secondary school and insufficient learning spaces, teachers and learning materials.”
 
Child abuse, including incest, infanticide, child abandonment, and rape continued to be serious problems during the year. Police statistics showed that child rape tripled between 2005 and 2007.
 
The traditional practice of offering a young girl in marriage as compensatory payment in interfamily disputes continued during the year, as did arranged marriage of young girls.
 
Rural children were trafficked into farms or cities for agricultural labor, domestic servitude, and commercial sexual exploitation, often under the false pretenses of job or marriage proposals, according to one NGO. The use of child laborers, especially as farm workers or domestic servants, was common in the country, often with the complicity of family members.
 
Mugabe has publicly denounced homosexuals, blaming them for Africa’s ills. Although there was no statutory law proscribing homosexual practice, common law prevents homosexual men, and to a lesser extent, lesbians, from fully expressing their sexual orientation and, in some cases, criminalizes the display of affection between men.
 
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Debate
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Past Ambassadors

Note: The Embassy in Salisbury (now Harare) was opened on Apr 18, 1980, with Jeffrey Davidow as Chargé d’Affaires ad interim.

 
Robert V. Keeley
Appointment: May 23, 1980
Presentation of Credentials: Jun 19, 1980
Termination of Mission: Left post Feb 20, 1984
 
David Charles Miller, Jr.
Appointment: Mar 30, 1984
Presentation of Credentials: May 31, 1984
Termination of Mission: Left post Apr 17, 1986
 
James Wilson Rawlings
Appointment: Oct 16, 1986
Presentation of Credentials: Nov 27, 1986
Termination of Mission: Left post Mar 30, 1989
 
Note: Edward F. Fugit served as Chargé d’Affaires ad interim, Mar 1989-Apr 1990.
 
J. Steven Rhodes
Appointment: Mar 8, 1990
Presentation of Credentials: Apr 5, 1990
Termination of Mission: Left post Aug 6, 1990
 
Edward G. Lanpher
Appointment: Oct 25, 1991
Presentation of Credentials: Nov 20, 1991
Termination of Mission: Left post Jan 12, 1995
 
Johnnie Carson
Appointment: Mar 4, 1995
Presentation of Credentials: Apr 20, 1995
Termination of Mission: Left post 25 July 1997
 
Tom McDonald
Appointment: Nov 4, 1997
Presentation of Credentials: Dec 11, 1997
Termination of Mission: Left post Dec 15, 2000
 
Joseph Gerard Sullivan
Appointment: Aug 7, 2001
Presentation of Credentials: Oct 1, 2001
Termination of Mission: Left post Aug 26, 2004
 
Christopher William Dell
Appointment: Jul 2, 2004
Presentation of Credentials: Sep 2, 2004
Termination of Mission: Left post, Jul 14, 2007

James D. McGee
Appointment: Oct 29, 2007
Presentation of Credentials: Nov 22, 2007
Termination of Mission: July 2009
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Zimbabwe's Ambassador to the U.S.
ambassador-image Mapuranga, Machivenyika

Machivenyika Mapuranga serves as Zimbabwe’s ambassador to the United States. Mapuranga received a BA with honors from the University of London in 1971, and a post graduate diploma in development studies from Oxford in 1972. He was awarded his MLitt in history and political thought from Edinburgh University in 1974 and a PhD in history from the University of London in1980.

 
He has served as a lecturer at the University of Ibadan, Jos Campus in Nigeria (1975-1976), University of Jos in Nigeria (1975-1979), and the University of Zimbabwe (1979-1980) before embarking on his diplomatic career in 1980.
 
Mapuranga was counselor and Charge d’Affaires to the Zimbabwe High Commission, Lusaka (1980-1981), ambassador to Tanzania (1982-1986), and assistant secretary general representing Southern Africa Region in the OAU (1987-1995).
 
From 1993-1994, he was special representative of the OAU Secretary General to Rwanda, before becoming chairman of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Political Committee in 1997. He was also OAU Secretary General’s Special Envoy to Somalia, Sierra-Leone and Burundi, chairman of the UN Special Political Committee (4th Committee) in 1997, and head of the Zimbabwe Official Delegation to Commonwealth Summit in Australia in 1999.
 
From 1996-1998, he was ambassador and permanent representative to the United Nations in New York, and from 1999-2001, he was permanent secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
 
Mapuranga also served as ambassador to Ghana (2001-2005), a position he held prior to his current assignment.
 
On May 25, 2010, Mapuranga caused a mild sensation when he showed up for a speech in Washington by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson and heckled Carson for criticizing Zimbabwe's human rights record.Event staff eventually convince the ambassador to leave.
 

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Zimbabwe's Embassy Web Site in the U.S.
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US-flag nation-flag U.S. Embassy web site

U.S. Ambassador to Zimbabwe

Ray, Charles
ambassador-image

Charles A. Ray has put in almost five decades of service during his career as both a soldier and diplomat, giving the new U.S. ambassador to Zimbabwe an intriguing political and military skill-set to handle American relations with one of Africa’s most contentious regimes. He was sworn in as ambassador October 20, 2009.

 
A native of Center, Texas, Ray joined the U.S. Army in 1962, and was commissioned a second lieutenant three years later. His military experience covered work in public affairs, psychological operations, unconventional warfare and military intelligence, and his overseas tours included Vietnam (1968-1969, 1972-1973), Germany, Okinawa and South Korea. He retired with the rank of major in 1982.
 
Ray attended Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, where he received his bachelor’s degree in 1972. He earned a Master of Science from the University of Southern California, and a Master of Science in national security strategy from the National Defense University in Washington, DC.
 
While serving in the Army in the 1970s, Ray contributed feature stories and editorial cartoons for the Spring Lake News in North Carolina.
 
After leaving the military, he decided to join another kind of service—the Foreign Service, in 1983. His early postings included serving in the U.S. Consulate General Offices in Guangzhou and Shenyang, China, as an administrative officer in Thailand, as deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and in the State Department’s Political Military Affairs Bureau.
 
In 1998, he became the first U.S. Consul General in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam.
 
Ray’s first ambassadorship came in 2002, when he was appointed by President George W. Bush to lead the U.S. mission in Cambodia, where he served until 2005.
 
Then, he came back to the U.S. and served as diplomat-in-residence at the University of Houston for one year. He recruited students interested in careers in the Foreign Service or the State Department, and worked with secondary school systems, civic organizations and other groups to inform communities about diplomatic work.
 
In September 2006, Ray was appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for POW/Missing Personnel Affairs. He was responsible for policy, control and oversight of all matters pertaining to missing American soldiers, including their rescue.
 
He is the author of Things I Learned from My Grandmother about Leadership and Life(2008), and Taking Charge: Effective Leadership for the Twenty-First Century(2009). He has published articles on leadership and social issues at Red Room, and produced stories, photography and art for publications such as Asia Magazine, Ebony, Essence, Eagle and Swan, and Buffalo Soldier.
 
Ray says he is “relatively proficient in Vietnamese and Thai” and knows some German, Korean and French. He is married to Myung Wook-soe.
 
Charles A. Ray’s Blog (Red Room)
Statement of Charles A. Ray to Senate Committee on Foreign Relations (pdf)
Ambassador Charles A. Ray (State Department)
Charles Ray Biography (Helium)


Charles A. Ray’s Official Biography

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