History of Political and Civic Unrest in Zimbabwe

The United Kingdom granted Zimbabwe its independence on April 18, 1980. Prior to this, the country was referred to by one of three names--Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia, or Zimbabwe-Rhodesia.

The country declared a state of emergency from 1985-1987. A number of organizations made efforts to reform the government by introducing a tricameral instition--a white, a colored and an indian parliament. During this period press freedom was resticted.

In the 2000s, economic instability led several members of the military to try to overthrow the government in a coup d'etat.

When I researched the history of Zimbabwe without using the Internet, I realized that the information in books are often more accurate because the authors had to do research themselves before compiling the books. However,research using books and hard copies of articles proved to be a tedious and lengthy exercise. It takes much longer to skim the pages of books as opposed to Web pages.

When I researched using the Internet, search engines, helped me find the relevant information in quick time by narrowing my searches. Google even presented the pages in chronological order beginning with the most recents articles on the subject. This is possible because most Web sites are updated periodically. In addition, the articles contained links to related references. However, some articles seemed to be sensational and I questioned their reliability. In fact, on Wikipedia, a note stated: "The neutrality of this article is disputed."