The Withdrawal
On 2 March 1980, all Monitoring Force personnel were pulled back to a tented camp in and around New Sarum airport, and immediately the Royal Air Force began flying sorties of men and equipment back to the UK and various other Commonwealth countries. Many Rhodesians, and most especially the white population, had been hoping that Joshua Nkomo would win the election, as he was considered the more stable of the two candidates. It came as a shock for most whites when Robert Mugabe was announced as the winner, swiftly changing the name of the country to Zimbabwe. The whites who remained were mainly farmers as they stood to lose everything, as the first law Mugabe passed was that anyone leaving Zimbabwe, could take no more than a couple of hundred dollars with them. Those Rhodesian's who left the country were virtually penniless.
By 16 March 1980, all of the Monitoring Force had departed from Zimbabwe, apart from a small volunteer group (about 40 men) of British Infantry Instructors who were to train the new Zimbabwe National Army. Three weeks later on 18 April 1980, at a ceremony that was attended by HRH Prince Charles, the Union Jack was lowered for the last time from Government House in Salisbury, and the new African nation of Zimbabwe declared itself a free and independent country.
Read more about this topic: Operation Midford
Famous quotes containing the word withdrawal:
“A bizarre sensation pervades a relationship of pretense. No truth seems true. A simple morning’s greeting and response appear loaded with innuendo and fraught with implications.... Each nicety becomes more sterile and each withdrawal more permanent.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“A separation situation is different for adults than it is for children. When we were very young children, a physical separation was interpreted as a violation of our inalienable rights....As we grew older, the withdrawal of love, whether that meant being misunderstood, mislabeled or slighted, became the separation situation we responded to.”
—Roger Gould (20th century)