Zimbabwe's 1980 Independence and Bob Marley's Harare Concert

Zimbabwe became independent on April 18, 1980, ending nearly a century and a half of white-minority and colonial rule in the territory previously known as Rhodesia. The path there ran through the Rhodesian Bush War, a guerrilla conflict fought from the mid-1960s into 1979 between the white-minority government, which had unilaterally declared independence from Britain in 1965 rather than accept a transition to Black-majority rule, and two rival nationalist movements, Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and Joshua Nkomo’s Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU). The war ended with the Lancaster House Agreement, signed in London on December 21, 1979, by the Rhodesian government, Bishop Abel Muzorewa, and the two nationalist leaders. The agreement restored the territory to temporary British colonial administration, arranged a ceasefire, and set terms for elections open to all adult citizens. Mugabe’s ZANU-PF won a decisive majority in the February 1980 elections that followed, and Mugabe became prime minister of the newly independent Zimbabwe at the April 18 ceremony in the capital, then still called Salisbury but renamed Harare that same year.

The independence celebrations at Rufaro Stadium included a performance by Bob Marley and the Wailers, whose 1979 song “Zimbabwe” had become an anthem for the liberation struggle and had reportedly been embraced by fighters in the Patriotic Front guerrilla forces during the war. Marley paid his own way to Harare and performed without a fee, making the Zimbabwean government’s official invitation to him, reportedly the only outside musical act asked to take part in the ceremony, a recognition of that connection. The concert did not go entirely to plan: the stadium’s capacity was overwhelmed by crowds who had been shut out of the ticketed event, and when people outside pushed through fencing to get in, police responded by firing tear gas into the crowd, sending chaos through parts of the stadium even as Marley and his band continued playing. In response, Marley and the Wailers organized a second, free public concert the following night so that the wider public who had missed the official ceremony could see them perform.

Zimbabwe’s independence marked one of the last major transitions of the Southern African settler-colonial era, following closely behind Mozambique’s and Angola’s independence from Portugal in the mid-1970s and preceding Namibia’s from South African administration by a decade. It left Mugabe as the country’s founding leader, a position he would hold, first as prime minister and from 1987 as executive president, for the next 37 years.