The Republic of Zimbabwe, and formerly the Republic of Rhodesia and Zimbabwe Rhodesia, is a landlocked country in the southern part of the continent of Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. It borders South Africa to the south, Botswana to the southwest, Zambia to the northwest, and Mozambique to the east. The name Zimbabwe derives from "Zimba Remabwe" meaning "big house of stone" in the Shona language. Its use as the country's name is a tribute to Great Zimbabwe, site of the capital of the Empire of Great Zimbabwe. Under the leadership of current president Robert Mugabe the economy of Zimbabwe deteriorated from one of the strongest in Africa to the weakest. -----------------------There is wide-spread evidence of the presence of Stone Age hunters in Zimbabwe from about 5000 years ago or even earlier. These people were related to today's Khoisan people and were displaced by Bantu people. They painted scenes of life in hundreds of caves across Zimbabwe, the so-called Bushman paintings.Iron Age Bantu-speaking peoples began migrating into the area about 2,000 years ago, including the ancestors of the Shona, who account for roughly four-fifths of the country's population today. By the Middle Ages, there was a Bantu civilization in the region, as evidenced by ruins at Great Zimbabwe, a Shona-speaking state. Around the early 10th century, trade developed with Muslim merchants on the Indian Ocean coast, helping to develop Great Zimbabwe in the 11th century. The state traded gold, ivory, and copper for cloth and glass. It ceased to be the leading Shona state in the mid-15th century. In 1836 the Shona were conquered in southern Zimbabwe by the Ndebele, who forced them to pay tribute and concentrate in northern Zimbabwe.-----------------------In 1888 British entrepreneur Cecil Rhodes extracted mining rights from King Lobengula of the Ndebele. He used this concession to persuade the British government to grant a royal charter to his British South Africa Company (BSAC) over Matabeleland and its subject states such as Mashonaland, and to negotiate similar concessions covering all territory between the Limpopo River and Lake Tanganyika, referred to as 'Zambesia'. Through such concessions and treaties, many of which were deceitful, he promoted the colonization of the region's land, labor, and precious metal and mineral resources.[6] In 1895 the BSAC adopted the name 'Rhodesia' for Zambesia, after Cecil Rhodes, and in 1898 'Southern Rhodesia' was officially adopted for the part south of the Zambezi, which later became Zimbabwe, while the part to the north was administered separately by the BSAC and was later named Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia. --------------------------- Natives staged unsuccessful revolts against the encroachment on their lands in 1896 and 1897. Both the Ndebele and Shona became subject to the Rhodes administration. This was the beginning of a larger settlement of white settlers that led to land distribution favouring whites, displacing both the Shona and Ndebele and other black people. The land issue in Zimbabwe remains a controversial issue to this day. ----------------------------- Southern Rhodesia became a self-governing British colony in 1922. In 1953, in the face of African opposition,Britain joined the two parts of Rhodesia with Nyasaland (now Malawi) in the ill-fated Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland which was dominated by Southern Rhodesian settlers. Growing African nationalism and unrest particularly in Nyasaland forced Britain to dissolve it in 1963, and each of the three countries went their separate ways. On November 11, 1965, Ian Smith unilaterally declared independence from Britain and Southern Rhodesia dropped the designation 'Southern', becoming the Republic of Rhodesia in 1970.--------------------The British government requested United Nations economic sanctions against Rhodesia as negotiations with the Smith administration in 1966 and 1968 stalemated. The Smith administration declared itself a republic in 1970, recognized only by the apartheid government of South Africa. Guerrilla fighting against the government intensified, and the Smith government opened negotiations with the leaders of the Patriotic Fronts Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), led by Robert Mugabe, and the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU), led by Joshua Nkomo. In March 1978, with his regime near the brink of collapse, Smith signed an accord with three black leaders, led by Bishop Abel Muzorewa, who offered safeguards for white civilians. As the result of an Internal Settlement elections were held in April 1979. The United African National Council (UANC) party won a majority in this election. On June 1, 1979, UANC's leader, Abel Muzorewa, became the country's nominal Prime Minister. The country's name was changed to Zimbabwe Rhodesia. The internal settlement left control of the country's police, security forces, civil service, and judiciary in white hands. It assured whites of about one third of the seats in parliament. It was essentially a power-sharing arrangement which did not amount to majority rule. However, on June 12, the United States Senate voted to end economic sanctions against Zimbabwe Rhodesia. On December 1, 1979 delegations from the British and Rhodesian governments and the Patriotic Front met in London and signed the Lancaster House Agreement, ending the civil war.---------------------Britain's Lord Soames was appointed governor to oversee the disarming of revolutionary guerrillas, the holding of elections, and the granting of independence to an uneasy coalition government with Joshua Nkomo, head of ZAPU. In the free elections of February 1980, Mugabe and his ZANU won a landslide victory. Mugabe has won re-election ever since. During the first decade of independence Mugabe used the North Korean trained Fifth Brigade to silence any opposition from the Ndebele nation in an operation against dissidents referred to as Gukurahundi. Several thousand civilians, mostly Ndebele, were killed or disappeared and have not been accounted for to this date. Allegations of genocide and ethnic cleansing have resulted in calls for Mugabe's arrest and prosecution for crimes against humanity.----------------------Land issues, which the liberation movement promised to solve, re-emerged as the vital issue for the ruling party beginning in 1999. Despite majority-rule, and the existence of a "willing buyer-willing seller" land reform programme since the 1980s, ZANU (PF) claimed that whites made up less than 1% of the population but held 70% of the country's commercially viable arable land (though these figures are disputed by many outside the Government of Zimbabwe). Mugabe began to redistribute land to blacks in 2000 with a compulsory land redistribution; charges that the programme as a whole is designed to reward loyal deputies have persisted in Zimbabwe since the beginning of the process. Despite claims by both the opposition and the government that land reform of one kind or another must take place, the Mugabe led process has been seen as a diversion away from an ill conceived war in the DRC and economic maladministration. The legality and constitutionality of the process has regularly been challenged in the Zimbabwean High and Supreme Courts, however the policing agencies have rarely acted in accordance with courts' rulings on these matters. The chaotic implementation of the land reform led to a sharp decline in agricultural exports, traditionally the country's leading export producing sector. Mining and tourism have surpassed agriculture. As a result, Zimbabwe is currently experiencing a severe hard currency shortage, which has led to hyperinflation and chronic shortages in imported fuel and consumer goods. In 2002 Zimbabwe was suspended from the Commonwealth of Nations on charges of human rights abuses during the land redistribution and of election tampering.---------------------Following elections in 2005, the government initiated "Operation Murambatsvina," a supposed effort to crack down on illegal markets and homes that had seen slums unfit for human habitation emerge in towns and cities. This action has been widely condemned by opposition and international figures, who charge that it has left a large section of the urban poor homeless. The Zimbabwe government has described the operation as an attempt to provide decent housing to the population although they have yet to deliver any new housing for the forcefully removed people.----------------------Zimbabwe's current economic and food crisis, described by some observers as the country's worst humanitarian crisis since independence, has been attributed, in varying degrees, to a drought affecting the entire region, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and the government's price controls and land reforms.----------------------Life expectancy at birth for males in Zimbabwe has dramatically declined since 1990 from 60 to 37, the lowest in the world. Life expectancy for females is even lower at 34 years.Concurrently, the infant mortality rate has climbed from 53 to 81 deaths per 1,000 live births in the same period. 5.5 million Zimbabweans currently live with the HIV.