Zimbabwe African National Union

Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), nationalist movement and political party that helped bring about majority rule in what is now Zimbabwe. ZANU was formed in 1963 under the leadership of Ndabaningi Sithole as a breakaway from the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), a nationalist political party led by Joshua Nkomo. At the time, Zimbabwe was a self-governing British colony known as Southern Rhodesia. Initially, intellectuals in the nationalist leadership supported ZANU, which demanded a more radical style of politics than ZAPU. Banned by the white Rhodesian government almost as soon as it was formed, ZANU struggled for years to gain recognition. Its exiled leaders turned to China for support and developed a Marxist-Leninist ideology. From 1968 ZANU developed close links with the Mozambican guerrilla force, the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo, from Frente de Libertação de Moçambique). At the same time the movement strengthened its position among the Shona, an ethnic group concentrated in the northern part of the colony. By 1972 ZANU, with the help of Frelimo, had recruited and developed an active guerrilla movement in the north, and was conducting raids into Southern Rhodesia from Mozambique.

Conflict within the leadership of ZANU during the 1970s caused radical Marxists to replace Sithole with Robert Mugabe as leader in 1976. The military wings of Mugabe’s ZANU and Nkomo’s ZAPU formed an alliance, called the Patriotic Front (PF), after 1976. The combined guerrilla force successfully fought government troops in the late 1970s, eventually forcing a transition to black-majority rule. The first free parliamentary elections were held in February 1980, shortly before Zimbabwe became independent. Although ZANU and ZAPU officially worked together in the elections, ZANU effectively campaigned as a separate party and won 57 out of the 80 seats, mostly in the Shona-speaking north of the country. ZANU-PF, as ZANU was called henceforth, formed a government, with Mugabe as prime minister, in coalition with ZAPU and with elements of the white population.

Although ZANU-PF’s stated goal was the transformation of Zimbabwe into a Marxist-Leninist state, its policies became increasingly moderate after independence. After ZANU-PF took 64 out of 80 seats in the 1985 elections, it moved toward a merger with ZAPU, which formally took place in 1988. Mugabe hoped to maintain Zimbabwe as a unified, one-party state. However, a major corruption scandal within ZANU-PF in 1988 led to the creation of a new opposition party, the Zimbabwe Unity Movement (ZUM), by a former ZANU-PF official who had been expelled from the party for denouncing its leadership. Nevertheless, ZANU-PF won 117 out of 120 popularly elected seats in the 1990 multiparty elections. Unrest increased during the early 1990s but no opposition group grew strong enough to challenge ZANU-PF, which won 118 out of 120 popularly elected seats in the 1995 elections.