Zimbabwe

B

Principal Cities

Zimbabwe’s largest city, and main commercial and cultural centre, as well as its capital, is Harare (formerly Salisbury), which has a population of 1,903,510 (2002). The country’s second city, and the main centre of Matabeleland, is Bulawayo, population 676,787 (2002), an important manufacturing centre and railway junction. Other major centres (with their populations) include Chitungwiza, 321,782 (2002), a black dormitory town; Gweru (formerly Gwelo), 137,000 (2002), a mining centre; Mutare (formerly Umtali), 153,000 (2002), located in an agricultural and forestry region; and Kwekwe (formerly Que Que), 88,000 (2002), an industrial and mining centre.

C

Religion

More than 40 per cent of the population is at least nominally Christian. Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Methodists, and Presbyterians are large groups, and many independent Churches are active. Some 40 per cent of the population follows traditional religions.

D

Language

English is the official language of Zimbabwe and it has around 376,000 first-language speakers. Eighteen other languages are spoken, all of which are Bantu languages (see Niger-Congo Languages) except for Fanagolo (a Zulu-based pidgin) and Hietshware (a Khoisan language). The most important Bantu languages are Shona (6,225,000 speakers), Ndebele (1,485,000), and Ndau (391,000).

E

Education

Education is compulsory. Before independence, the majority of the black population was excluded from all but the most basic education, while facilities for the white minority were on a par with much of Western Europe. A priority of the government after 1980 was to redress this inequality, and spending on education increased hugely, becoming one of the largest elements in the budget. The policy was very successful: by the early 1990s, 85 per cent of the population aged 5-19 was in school, and literacy had reached almost 75 per cent. By 2005 it was 92 per cent. The need to constrain costs, however, led to the introduction of school fees for primary education in 1991; parents have always been expected to contribute to secondary school costs. In 1999–2000, 11.1 per cent of gross national product (GNP) was spent on education.

In 2000 approximately 2.46 million students were enrolled in primary schools and 844,183 in secondary schools. There are a large number of private primary and secondary schools, some of them run by Church bodies. The large commercial farms are expected to establish primary schools for the children of their workers, which must be registered with the ministry of education. Higher educational institutions include ten teachers’ colleges and several agricultural and technical schools. The University of Zimbabwe (1957) is in Harare. There were around 60,221 students in higher education in 2002–2003.

IV

Economy

Zimbabwe has the most diversified economy of any African nation apart from South Africa. Mining, agriculture, and manufacturing are all well developed, and the country’s financial services sector and infrastructure are highly sophisticated. Following the unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) by the white government in 1965, trade sanctions were imposed against Rhodesia by the UN (see History below). They did not, however, seriously damage the economy; during the 1970s numerous local industries were developed to provide substitute goods, and the country became self-sufficient in, and an exporter of, food. The economy suffered a negative growth rate in the late 1970s, but expanded at a real rate of 2.9 per cent a year during the first decade of independence despite recurrent severe droughts.

Partly because of high population growth, per capita incomes were little better than at independence in 1980. The economy faced severe problems, primarily inflation and devaluation of the currency. There was a growing need to attract investment, and to create new jobs to accommodate the thousands of well-educated school-leavers joining the job market. In the early 1990s, the government began to move towards a market-oriented economy and embarked upon a radical reform programme, backed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), to liberalize the economy and encourage foreign investment. Trade controls, inherited from the pre-independence era, were removed, and government spending was cut heavily. There was some new investment, but the immediate result was a rise in the balance of payments deficit as new imports flooded in, and increased unemployment as civil service jobs were cut and domestic industries, formerly protected, retrenched in the face of competition from cheaper imports. The tourist industry, an increasingly valuable source of revenue, suffered from the turbulent political situation in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The unemployment rate in 1994 was estimated at 45 per cent of the workforce. By 2004 the GNP was about US$8,016 million (World Bank figures), equivalent to US$350 per capita.