ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that the deliberate isolation of the small white settler ruling elite from the mass of the African population and that elites utter intransigence against yielding a modicum of either political power or economic privilege created what were in many ways ideal conditions for revolution. Almost all of the political elite—prominent politicians and top-level bureaucrats—came from the petite bourgeoisie, and their current incomes and consequent capital assets—even without corruption—place them in the bourgeoisie. Zimbabwe's African-ruled neighbors, acting individually and later collectively as the Frontline States, gave indispensable support to the Zimbabwean revolution, although they were much less wealthy and less powerful than Rhodesia's settler-colonial allies. In addition to British vacillation, the major international force that initially postponed successful change was the support given by other settler-colonial states of southern Africa: South Africa and Portuguese Mozambique, which contained the major ports serving landlocked Rhodesia.
