1979 Zimbabwe Rhodesia general election
The Zimbabwe Rhodesia general election of April 1979 was held under the Internal Settlement negotiated by the Rhodesian Front government of Ian Smith intended to provide a peaceful transition to majority rule on terms not harmful to Rhodesians of white descent. The internal settlement was not approved internationally but the incoming government under Bishop Abel Muzorewa did decide to participate in the Lancaster House talks which led to the end of the dispute and the creation of Zimbabwe. Under the agreement of 1978, the new Zimbabwe Rhodesia House of Assembly was to consist of 100 members. 20 were to be elected on the old roll with property and education qualifications, which most black citizens did not meet, and, used to elect the majority of the Rhodesia House of Assembly. 72 seats were elected by the "Common Roll". Owing to the lack of an electoral roll, voters were instead marked with ink on their fingers to stop multiple voting. Once the 92 members had been elected, they assembled to vote for eight White non-constituency members.
All the candidates for these posts were members of the Rhodesian Front. The 20 White Roll members were elected from new constituencies made up of combinations of the previous constituencies; the Common Roll members were elected by province using a closed list system. It was intended to set up a full electoral register and institute single-member constituencies for future elections; the main question in the election campaign was how many Africans would vote in the common roll election. The Patriotic Front parties, Zimbabwe African National Union and Zimbabwe African People's Union, pledged to disrupt the election and called for a boycott. By 1979, all of Rhodesia apart from the central area between Salisbury and Bulawayo was under a form of martial law due to attacks by the Patriotic Front's armies, the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army and Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army. In the event the turnout was quite respectable in Mashonaland, although somewhat depressed in Manicaland and Victoria.
In Matabeleland South, where ZIPRA was strongest, the turnout was lowest. Vote Totals exclude uncontested seats; the final state of the parties was: Ind – Independent NDU – National Democratic Union RF – Rhodesian Front UANC – United African National Council UNFP – United National Federal Party ZANU – Zimbabwe African National Union ZUPO – Zimbabwe United People's Organisation Polling day was 10 April 1979. Polling day was 21 April 1979. * – Subsequently formed the Zimbabwe Democratic Party ** – These candidates had resigned from the United National Federal Party and joined the Zimbabwe United Peoples' Organisation after nominations had closed. It was ruled. Polling day was 7 May 1979. Eight seats were up for election. John Moses Chirimbani was elected as the Speaker of the House of Assembly on 8 May 1979, therefore an ex officio member. On 25 May, John Zwenhamo Ruredzo was appointed to replace him. Robert Siyoka resigned, was replaced by Sami Thomani Siyoka on 28 June 1979. On 25 June 1979 James Chikerema led a group of eight elected UANC members in resigning from the party, on 29 June seven of the eight formed the Zimbabwe Democratic Party.
Actor Mupinyuri rejoined the UANC shortly after resigning from it. The seven who joined are denoted by asterisks in the lists above. A questionable wording in the electoral law led to the UANC taking legal action to disqualify the seven on the grounds that they had to keep their membership of the party to remain members of the Assembly, but Chikerema was successful in defending the right to break away. Hilary Gwyn Squires resigned in June 1979. David Colville Smith was returned unopposed as Rhodesian Front candidate for Borrowdale constituency on 24 July 1979. Terrence Mashambanhaka was murdered on 16 September 1979 after being lured to an ambush at'peace talks' with ZANLA forces. Abel Muringazuwa Madombwe was appointed to the Assembly to replace him on 27 November 1979. Theunis Christian de Klerk was killed in a rocket attack on his home on 20 September 1979. Donald Galbraith Goddard was returned unopposed to follow him on 30 November 1979; the United Nations Security Council passed several resolutions against the "illegal" election, including Resolution 445 and Resolution 448, both of which argued that the election was not representative of the Zimbabwean people and was designed to entrench white minority rule.
In these resolutions, the UN declared the results of the election void. Rhodesia Government Gazette The Herald
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country located in southern Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa, Botswana and Mozambique. The capital and largest city is Harare. A country of 16 million people, Zimbabwe has 16 official languages, with English and Ndebele the most used. Since the 11th century, present-day Zimbabwe has been the site of several organised states and kingdoms as well as a major route for migration and trade; the British South Africa Company of Cecil Rhodes first demarcated the present territory during the 1890s. In 1965, the conservative white minority government unilaterally declared independence as Rhodesia; the state endured a 15-year guerrilla war with black nationalist forces. Zimbabwe joined the Commonwealth of Nations, from which it was suspended in 2002 for breaches of international law by its then-government, from which it withdrew in December 2003; the sovereign state is a member of the United Nations, the Southern African Development Community, the African Union, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa.
It was once known as the "Jewel of Africa" for its prosperity under the former Rhodesian administration. Robert Mugabe became Prime Minister of Zimbabwe in 1980, when his ZANU-PF party won the elections following the end of white minority rule. Under Mugabe's authoritarian regime, the state security apparatus dominated the country and was responsible for widespread human rights violations. Mugabe maintained the revolutionary socialist rhetoric of the Cold War era, blaming Zimbabwe's economic woes on conspiring Western capitalist countries. Contemporary African political leaders were reluctant to criticise Mugabe, burnished by his anti-imperialist credentials, though Archbishop Desmond Tutu called him "a cartoon figure of an archetypal African dictator"; the country has been in economic decline since the 1990s, experiencing several crashes and hyperinflation along the way. On 15 November 2017, in the wake of over a year of protests against his government as well as Zimbabwe's declining economy, Mugabe was placed under house arrest by the country's national army in a coup d'état.
On 19 November 2017, ZANU-PF sacked Robert Mugabe as party leader and appointed former Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa in his place. On 21 November 2017, Mugabe tendered his resignation prior to impeachment proceedings being completed. On 30 July 2018 Zimbabwe held its general elections, won by the ZANU-PF party led by Emmerson Mnangagwa. Nelson Chamisa, leading the main opposition party MDC Alliance contested the election results and filed a petition to the Constitution Court of Zimbabwe; the court confirmed Mnangagwa's victory. The name "Zimbabwe" stems from a Shona term for Great Zimbabwe, an ancient ruined city in the country's south-east whose remains are now a protected site. Two different theories address the origin of the word. Many sources hold that "Zimbabwe" derives from dzimba-dza-mabwe, translated from the Karanga dialect of Shona as "houses of stones"; the Karanga-speaking Shona people live around Great Zimbabwe in the modern-day province of Masvingo. Archaeologist Peter Garlake claims that "Zimbabwe" represents a contracted form of dzimba-hwe, which means "venerated houses" in the Zezuru dialect of Shona and references chiefs' houses or graves.
Zimbabwe was known as Southern Rhodesia and Zimbabwe Rhodesia. The first recorded use of "Zimbabwe" as a term of national reference dates from 1960 as a coinage by the black nationalist Michael Mawema, whose Zimbabwe National Party became the first to use the name in 1961; the term "Rhodesia"—derived from the surname of Cecil Rhodes, the primary instigator of British colonisation of the territory during the late 19th century—was perceived by African nationalists as inappropriate because of its colonial origin and connotations. According to Mawema, black nationalists held a meeting in 1960 to choose an alternative name for the country, proposing names such as "Matshobana" and "Monomotapa" before his suggestion, "Zimbabwe", prevailed. A further alternative, put forward by nationalists in Matabeleland, had been "Matopos", referring to the Matopos Hills to the south of Bulawayo, it was unclear how the chosen term was to be used—a letter written by Mawema in 1961 refers to "Zimbabweland" — but "Zimbabwe" was sufficiently established by 1962 to become the preferred term of the black nationalist movement.
In a 2001 interview, black nationalist Edson Zvobgo recalled that Mawema mentioned the name during a political rally, "and it caught hold, and, that". The black nationalist factions subsequently used the name during the Second Chimurenga campaigns against the Rhodesian government during the Rhodesian Bush War of 1964–1979. Major factions in this camp included the Zimbabwe African National Union, the Zimbabwe African People's Union. Archaeological records date human settlement of present-day Zimbabwe to at least 100,000 years ago; the earliest known inhabitants were San people, who left behind arrowheads and cave paintings. The first Bantu-speaking farmers arrived during the Bantu expansion around 2000 years ago. Societies speaking proto-Shona languages fir
Robert Mugabe
Robert Gabriel Mugabe is a Zimbabwean revolutionary and politician who served as Prime Minister of Zimbabwe from 1980 to 1987 and as President from 1987 to 2017. He chaired the Zimbabwe African National Union group from 1975 to 1980 and led its successor political party, the ZANU – Patriotic Front, from 1980 to 2017. Ideologically an African nationalist, during the 1970s and 1980s he identified as a Marxist–Leninist, although after the 1990s self-identified only as a socialist, his policies have been described as Mugabeism. Mugabe was born to a poor Shona family in Southern Rhodesia. Following an education at Kutama College and the University of Fort Hare, he worked as a school teacher in Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia, Ghana. Angered that Southern Rhodesia was a colony of the British Empire governed by its white minority, Mugabe embraced Marxism and joined African nationalist protests calling for an independent black-led state. After making anti-government comments, he was convicted of sedition and imprisoned between 1964 and 1974.
On release, he fled to Mozambique, established his leadership of ZANU, oversaw ZANU's role in the Rhodesian Bush War, fighting Ian Smith's predominantly white government. He reluctantly took part in the peace negotiations brokered by the United Kingdom that resulted in the Lancaster House Agreement; the agreement ended the war and resulted in the 1980 general election, at which Mugabe led ZANU-PF to victory. As Prime Minister of the newly renamed Zimbabwe, Mugabe's administration expanded healthcare and education and—despite his professed Marxist desire for a socialist society—adhered to mainstream, conservative economic policies. Mugabe's calls for racial reconciliation failed to stem growing white emigration, while relations with Joshua Nkomo's Zimbabwe African People's Union declined. In the Gukurahundi of 1982–1985, Mugabe's Fifth Brigade crushed ZAPU-linked opposition in Matabeleland in a campaign that killed at least 10,000 people Ndebele civilians. Internationally, he sent troops into the Second Congo War and chaired the Non-Aligned Movement, the Organisation of African Unity, the African Union.
Pursuing decolonisation, Mugabe emphasised the redistribution of land controlled by white farmers to landless blacks on a "willing seller–willing buyer" basis. Frustrated at the slow rate of redistribution, from 2000 he encouraged black Zimbabweans to violently seize white-owned farms. Food production was impacted, leading to famine, drastic economic decline, international sanctions. Opposition to Mugabe grew, although he was re-elected in 2002, 2008, 2013 through campaigns dominated by violence, electoral fraud, nationalistic appeals to his rural Shona voter base. In 2017, members of his own party ousted him in a coup, replacing him with former Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa. Having dominated Zimbabwe's politics for nearly four decades, Mugabe is a controversial figure, he has been praised as a revolutionary hero of the African liberation struggle who helped to free Zimbabwe from British colonialism and white minority rule. Conversely, in governance he has been accused of being a dictator responsible for economic mismanagement, widespread corruption, anti-white racism, human rights abuses, crimes against humanity.
Robert Gabriel Mugabe was born on 21 February 1924 at the Kutama Mission village in Southern Rhodesia's Zvimba District. His father, Gabriel Matibiri, was a carpenter while his mother Bona taught Christian catechism to the village children, they had been trained in their professions by the Jesuits, the Roman Catholic apostolic order which had established the mission. Bona and Gabriel had six children: Miteri, Robert, Dhonandhe and Bridgette, they belonged to one of the smallest branches of the Shona tribe. Mugabe's paternal grandfather was Constantine Karigamombe, alias "Matibiri", a strong powerful figure, who served King Lobengula in the 19th century; the Jesuits were strict disciplinarians and under their influence Mugabe developed an intense self-discipline, while becoming a devout Catholic. Mugabe excelled at school, where he was a secretive and solitary child, preferring to read, rather than playing sports or socialising with other children, he was taunted by many of the other children, who regarded him as a mother's boy.
In 1930, Gabriel had an argument with one of the Jesuits, as a result the Mugabe family was expelled from the mission village by its French leader, Father Jean-Baptiste Loubiere. The family settled in a village about seven miles away, although the children were permitted to remain at the mission primary school, living with relatives in Kutama during term-time and returning to their parental home on weekends. Around the same time, Robert's older brother Raphael died of diarrhoea. In early 1934, Robert's other older brother, Michael died, after consuming poisoned maize; that year, Gabriel left his family in search of employment at Bulawayo. He subsequently abandoned Bona and their six children and established a relationship with another woman, with whom he had three further offspring. Loubiere died shortly after and was replaced by an Irishman, Father Jerome O'Hea, who welcomed the return of the Mugabe family to Kutama. In contrast to the racism that permeated Southern Rhodesian society, under O'Hea's leadership the Kutama Mission preached an ethos of racial equality.
O'Hea nurtured the young Mugabe. As well as helping provide Mugabe with a Christian education, O'Hea taught him about the Irish War of Independen
Portmanteau
A portmanteau or portmanteau word is a linguistic blend of words, in which parts of multiple words or their phones are combined into a new word, as in smog, coined by blending smoke and fog, or motel, from motor and hotel. In linguistics, a portmanteau is defined as a single morph; the definition overlaps with the grammatical term contraction, but contractions are formed from words that would otherwise appear together in sequence, such as do and not to make don't, whereas a portmanteau word is formed by combining two or more existing words that all relate to a singular concept. A portmanteau differs from a compound, which does not involve the truncation of parts of the stems of the blended words. For instance, starfish is not a portmanteau, of star and fish; the word portmanteau was first used in this sense by Lewis Carroll in the book Through the Looking-Glass, in which Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice the coinage of the unusual words in "Jabberwocky", where slithy means "slimy and lithe" and mimsy is "miserable and flimsy".
Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice the practice of combining words in various ways: You see it's like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word. In his introduction to The Hunting of the Snark, Carroll uses portmanteau when discussing lexical selection: Humpty Dumpty's theory, of two meanings packed into one word like a portmanteau, seems to me the right explanation for all. For instance, take the two words "fuming" and "furious." Make up your mind that you will say both words, but leave it unsettled which you will say first … if you have the rarest of gifts, a balanced mind, you will say "frumious." In then-contemporary English, a portmanteau was a suitcase. The etymology of the word is the French porte-manteau, from porter, "to carry", manteau, "cloak". In modern French, a porte-manteau is a clothes valet, a coat-tree or similar article of furniture for hanging up jackets, hats and the like. An occasional synonym for "portmanteau word" is frankenword, an autological word exemplifying the phenomenon it describes, blending "Frankenstein" and "word".
Many neologisms are examples of blends. In Punch in 1896, the word brunch was introduced as a "portmanteau word." In 1964, the newly independent African republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar chose the portmanteau word Tanzania as its name. Eurasia is a portmanteau of Europe and Asia; some city names are portmanteaus of the border regions they straddle: Texarkana spreads across the Texas-Arkansas border, while Calexico and Mexicali are the American and Mexican sides of a single conurbation. A scientific example is a liger, a cross between a male lion and a female tiger. Many company or brand names are portmanteaus, including Microsoft, a portmanteau of microcomputer and software. "Jeoportmanteau!" is a recurring category on the American television quiz show Jeopardy!. The category's name is itself a portmanteau of the words "Jeopardy" and "portmanteau." Responses in the category are portmanteaus constructed by fitting two words together. Portmanteau words may be produced by joining together proper nouns with common nouns, such as "gerrymandering", which refers to the scheme of Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry for politically contrived redistricting.
The term gerrymander has itself contributed to portmanteau terms playmander. Oxbridge is a common portmanteau for the UK's two oldest universities, those of Oxford and Cambridge. In 2016, Britain's planned exit from the European Union became known as "Brexit". David Beckham's English mansion Rowneybury House was nicknamed "Beckingham Palace", a portmanteau of his surname and Buckingham Palace. Many portmanteau words do not appear in all dictionaries. For example, a spork is an eating utensil, a combination of a spoon and a fork, a skort is an item of clothing, part skirt, part shorts. On the other hand, turducken, a dish made by inserting a chicken into a duck, the duck into a turkey, was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2010; the word refudiate was first used by Sarah Palin when she misspoke, conflating the words refute and repudiate. Though a gaffe, the word was recognized as the New Oxford American Dictionary's "Word of the Year" in 2010; the business lexicon is replete with newly coined portmanteau words like "permalance", "advertainment", "advertorial", "infotainment", "infomercial".
A company name may be portmanteau as well as a product name. Two proper names can be used in creating a portmanteau word in r
Rhodesian Bush War
The Rhodesian Bush War—also called the Second Chimurenga and the Zimbabwe War of Liberation—was a civil conflict from July 1964 to December 1979 in the unrecognised country of Rhodesia. The conflict pitted three forces against one another: the Rhodesian government, led by Ian Smith; the war and its subsequent Internal Settlement, signed in 1978 by Smith and Muzorewa, led to the implementation of universal suffrage in June 1979 and the end of white minority rule in Rhodesia, renamed Zimbabwe Rhodesia under a black majority government. However, this new order failed to win international recognition and the war continued. Neither side achieved a military victory and a compromise was reached. Negotiations between the government of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, the UK Government and Mugabe and Nkomo's united "Patriotic Front" took place at Lancaster House, London in December 1979, the Lancaster House Agreement was signed; the country returned temporarily to British control and new elections were held under British and Commonwealth supervision in March 1980.
ZANU won the election and Mugabe became the first Prime Minister of Zimbabwe on 18 April 1980, when the country achieved internationally recognised independence. The origin of the war in Rhodesia can be traced to the conquest of the region by the British South Africa Company in the late-19th century, the dissent of native leaders who opposed foreign rule. Britons began settling in Southern Rhodesia from the 1890s, while it was never accorded full dominion status, these settlers governed the country after 1923. In his famous "Wind of Change" speech, UK Prime Minister Harold Macmillan revealed Britain's new policy to only permit independence to its African colonies under majority rule, but many white Rhodesians were concerned that such immediate change would cause chaos as had resulted in the former Belgian Congo after its independence in 1960. Britain's unwillingness to compromise led to Rhodesia's unilateral declaration of independence on 11 November 1965. Although Rhodesia had the private support of neighbouring South Africa and Portugal, which still owned Mozambique, it never gained formal diplomatic recognition from any country.
Although the vote in Rhodesia was constitutionally open to all, regardless of race, property requirements left many blacks unable to participate. The new 1969 constitution reserved eight seats in the 66 seat parliament for "Non-Europeans" only, with a further eight reserved for tribal chiefs. Amidst this backdrop, African nationalists advocated armed struggle to bring about black rule denouncing the wealth disparity between the races. Two rival nationalist organisations emerged in August 1963: the Zimbabwe African People's Union and the Zimbabwe African National Union, after disagreements about tactics, as well as tribalism and personality clashes. ZANU and its military wing ZANLA were headed by Robert Mugabe and consisted of Shona tribes. ZAPU and its military wing ZIPRA consisted of Ndebele under Joshua Nkomo. Cold War politics played into the conflict; the Soviet Union supported ZIPRA and China supported ZANLA. Each group fought a separate war against the Rhodesian security forces, the two groups sometimes fought against each other as well.
In June 1979, the governments of Cuba and Mozambique offered direct military help to the Patriotic Front, but Mugabe and Nkomo declined. Other foreign contributions included from North Korea military officials who taught Zimbabwean militants to use explosives and arms in a camp near Pyongyang. By April 1979, 12,000 ZANLA guerrillas were training in Tanzania and Libya while 9,500 of its 13,500 extant cadres operated in Rhodesia. On the other side of the conflict, South Africa clandestinely gave material and military support to the Rhodesian government; the Bush War occurred within the context of regional Cold War in Africa, became embroiled in conflicts in several neighbouring countries. Such conflicts included the Angolan War of Independence and Angolan Civil War, the Mozambican War of Independence and Mozambican Civil War, the South African Border War, the Shaba I and Shaba II conflicts; the conflict was seen by the nationalist groups and the UK Government of the time as a war of national and racial liberation.
The Rhodesian government saw the conflict as a fight between one part of the country's population on behalf of the whole population against several externally financed parties made up of predominantly Black radicals and communists. The Nationalists considered their country occupied and dominated by a foreign power, namely Britain, since 1890; the British government, in the person of the Governor, had indirectly ruled the country from 1923, when it took over from the British South Africa Company and granted self-governing status to a locally elected government, made up predominantly of whites. Ian Smith's Rhodesian Front party was elected to power in 1962 and unilaterally declared independence on 11 November 1965 to preserve what it saw as the self-government it had possessed since 1923; the Rhodesian government contended that it was defending Western values, the rule of law and democracy by fighting Communists. The Smith administration claimed that the legitimate voice of the black Shona and Ndebele population were the traditional chiefs, n
Air Rhodesia
Air Rhodesia was the national airline of Rhodesia. Its head office was located on the property of Salisbury Airport in Salisbury; the airline was formed as a subsidiary of Central African Airways in June 1964, but became an independent corporation on 1 September 1967. It flew internal routes to Buffalo Range, Fort Victoria and Victoria Falls. During the 1970s, it operated international flights to Durban in South Africa. Air Rhodesia's mainstay aircraft were Vickers Viscount 700D turboprops and Boeing 720 jetliners, three of which were purchased in April 1973 despite sanctions against the Rhodesian government. After the country was renamed, the airline became known as Air Zimbabwe Rhodesia in 1979, before reforming as Air Zimbabwe in 1980. Central African Airways was formed on 1 June 1946 as the joint airline of Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, the governments of the three countries owning 50%, 35% and 15% of the airline's share capital respectively. CAA began operating with a mixture of former Rhodesian Air Services aircraft, but soon took delivery of five De Havilland Doves and three Vickers Vikings.
Services were expanded to cover a route network that extended as far north as Nairobi in Kenya, as far south as Johannesburg in South Africa serving destinations such as Blantyre in Malawi to the east, Maun in Bechuanaland to the west. In August 1948, CAA inaugurated Africa's first air freight service. By 1954, CAA had expanded to cover routes as far afield as London in the UK; the federation that joined the three shareholders of CAA was dissolved in 1963, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland prepared to attain their independence the following year, to become Zambia and Malawi respectively. The two new countries expressed a wish to operate their own airlines but this was not straightforward because CAA's core operations were based in Southern Rhodesia, including the engineering base and most of the infrastructure and personnel that were needed to support the airline. A settlement was agreed in December 1963, which provided at least a temporary solution to the problem: CAA would remain in existence but it would be responsible to a higher authority consisting of transport ministers from the three separate governments.
Independent subsidiaries of CAA were formed to operate in the three countries: Air Malawi Ltd, based in Blantyre. The administrative arrangements that operated between the three companies proved to be successful and profitable for all three. On 11 November 1965, the Rhodesian Government formalised the Unilateral Declaration of Independence from Britain, sanctions were imposed on Rhodesia shortly afterwards by Britain and independent African states, including Malawi and Zambia. Relations between the three sister companies became strained and a split was agreed in 1967. Air Rhodesia Corporation came into being on 1 September 1967 while Rhodesia was under international isolation. Unlike Zambia, Malawi maintained "cool" relations with Air Rhodesia Corporation, as a result, flights between Salisbury and Blantyre were maintained and soon increased; the aircraft were repainted in a livery consisting of a white top side, with dark blue and light blue "cheatlines" on the fuselage sides. The controversial "twiggi bird", a stylised representation of the Zimbabwe Bird, the national emblem of Zimbabwe, was superimposed on the two fin stripes.
This was criticised in some circles as being scarcely recognisable as a Zimbabwe Bird, it was likened to an Arab dhow under sail. Air Rhodesia's profits increased between 1969–1970 and the airline continued to perform well despite the challenges brought about by sanctions and the deteriorating political environment within Rhodesia. Passenger services were introduced to Kariba. However, Air Rhodesia's performance was affected when its competitors began to use new jet airplanes, it became obvious that jet aircraft were essential for international services; the airline covertly acquired its first jets, three Boeing 720-025 jetliners, which arrived under a shroud of secrecy on the evening of 14 April 1973 during the Easter holiday. S. air carrier based in Miami, had been acquired by Calair, a German charter airline that folded in 1972. Air Rhodesia's new jet planes were ready to be put into service in November 1973, just as fuel prices increased by 35 percent because of the Yom Kippur War in the Middle East.
Soon afterwards, the Bush War began to escalate and staff shortages due to military call-ups were adding to the airline's difficulties. Mozambique was granted its independence in 1975, Air Rhodesia services to Blantyre and Beira were banned in March 1976 when Rhodesian aircraft were prohibited from overflying Mozambican territory; until 1979, the airline's only external services would be to Durban. On 3 September 1978, Air Rhodesia Flight 825, a Vickers Viscount with registration VP-WAS, was shot down near Kariba by nationalist guerrillas. Only eight people survived the c