Zimbabwe Rhodesia (), alternatively known as Zimbabwe-Rhodesia and also informally known as Zimbabwe, was a de facto sovereign state that existed from 1 June 1979 to 11 December 1979. Zimbabwe Rhodesia was preceded by another unrecognised state named the Republic of Rhodesia and was briefly followed by the re-established British colony of Southern Rhodesia, which according to British constitutional theory had remained the lawful government in the area after Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) in 1965. About three months later, the re-established colony of Southern Rhodesia was granted internationally recognised independence within the Commonwealth as the Republic of Zimbabwe.

Under pressure from the international community to satisfy the civil rights movement by black people in Rhodesia, an "Internal Settlement" was drawn up between the Smith administration of Rhodesia and moderate African nationalist parties not involved in the Communist insurgency. Meanwhile, the government continued to battle armed resistance from both Soviet- and Chinese-backed terrorists. The Rhodesian Bush War was an extension of the Cold War, being a proxy conflict between the West and East, similar to those in Vietnam and Korea, albeit Rhodesia received no support from any major Western powers.

The "Internal Settlement" agreement led to relaxation of education, property and income qualifications for voter rolls, resulting in the first ever black-majority electorate. The country's civil service, judiciary, police and armed forces continued to be administered by the same officials as before, of whom most were white people, due to the composition of the upper-middle class of the period. Despite these changes, the new state did not gain international recognition, with the Commonwealth claiming that the "so-called 'Constitution of Zimbabwe Rhodesia'" would be "no more legal and valid" than the UDI constitution it replaced.