During the bush War of the 1960s and 1970s, the only centrist party that pushed for majority rule and integration of the black African majority while not veering toward militant opposition was the United African National Council, led by (Zimbabwe Rhodesia) Prime Minister Rev.
When black majority rule began in 1980, parliament was dominated by the ZANU-PF, a Marxist party with illiberal tendencies, with the former Rhodesian Front (renamed the Republican Front and, finally, the Conservative Alliance of Zimbabwe) representing the seats allocated to the white minority until the seats were abolished in 1987.
Non-conservative whites who had previously been forced to vote for either the nationalist socialist majority or conservative minority parties since independence for convenience purposes, in the meantime, backed non-political, multiracial civil society groups that had pressed against the land reforms and other policies pushed by ZANU-PF.
These groups, galvanized by the 2000 referendum, soon organized into a political party, the Movement for Democratic Change.
Led by Morgan Tsvangirai with a short-lived faction led by Arthur Mutambara, the MDC, which presses for social and political liberalism and is backed by the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions and the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa, soon usurped the opposition position in Parliament against the ZANU-PF.