ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by giving a historical outline of the cityscape in colonial Rhodesia as a backcloth and context against which to understand the developments that led to government implementing the operation restore order in the winter months of May to July 2005 and news media coverage of the operation. Rurality socially engineered over a century-long period of white settler rule was weaponised as an instrument of racial domination of blacks by whites and was used to manufacture Africans suited for exploitation in the mainstream European economy. The government of Rhodesia, under Prime Minister Sir Godfrey Huggins, had sought to put in place policies that ensured that as far as possible Africans would be kept away from European areas. The nationalist elite seemed to have perpetuated the colonial mentality of high standards for a few at the expense of the majority.
