Paths to Independence

There are a couple of Empire-related anniversaries today, as noted in the London Times. The Irish Free State -- clumsily and self-defeatingly acquiring the Eire tag under Dev's 1937 Constitution -- finally made it official in 1949 and became the Republic of Ireland. [Leading to the trivia question: who was the last King of Ireland?]. And on this same day in 1980, Zimbabwe acquired independence as a majority rule African state, succeeding the white majority state minority government under Ian Smith.

Things have worked out rather differently for the two states, although one thing the varying experiences may demonstrate is the advantage of having land reform issues worked out before populist post-independence politics can make a hash of it. At independence, Zimbabwe was a state where 4500 white farmers controlled 70 percent of the land.

By coincidence, the Times also runs an obituary for an only-in-Africa character: Ian Harvey, who served in the air forces of colonial Rhodesia, Ian Smith, and of Zimbabwe, becoming Mugabe's personal helicopter pilot and then living the arc of most Zimbabweans recently, taking a menial job out of retirement to supplement his pension, which was eroded by hyperinflation.

As the weekend showed, the Republic chose to commemorate an uprising and not any of the formal anniversaries of its status, such as today's. Given the current trajectory of the process that began in 1980, a post-Mugabe Zimbabwe may do likewise.