Pioneers, settlers, aliens, exiles: the decolonisation of white identity in Zimbabwe (original) (raw)
Elections in Zimbabwe: The ZANU (PF) Hegemony and its Incipient Decline
African Journal of Political Science, 1997
This contribution seeks to explain the ruling ZANU (PF) party's electoral hegemony by outlining and analysing Zimbabwe 'sfive general elections since 1979 and the two presidential elections since 1990. In this regard, the paper argues that the ruling party is experiencing a gradual decline in elite cohesion which is manifested in the electoral challenge of independent candidates coming from the ruling party itself. This phenomenon of independent candidates could have far-reaching consequences in overcoming the present state of weak political opposition in Zimbabwe. The paper therefore suggests a scenario in which a viable opposition could come from a splinter group inside the ruling ZANU (PF) itself not unlike the major ZAPU/ZANU split of 1963.
The Lancaster House Agreement and the post - independence state in Zimbabwe
1991
Every colonisation and decolonisation process must of necessity be fraught with antagonistic contradictions which may differ in terms of their character and depth (the form) but not their essence. The class contradictions which were perhaps necessarily hidden in the Zimbabwean decolonisation process-but which now have become more open-need to be examined and laid bare by an objective social science. For, never is a social system in a state of permanent rest. So, the constant motion, its driving force and its direction need to be understood and used for the continual and betterment of the condition of human existence. This essay which characterizes the post-independence state in Zimbabwe as a neo-colonial one par excellence, holds that the armed struggle for the independence of Zimbabwe was led by a militant nationalist petty bourgeoisie whose material objective was to set itself up as a local dominant bloc presiding over a capitalist social economy dominated by imperialism. The question of a profound transformation of the society-sometimes, many times, articulated in the discourses of these nationalists and some social scientists as "a socialist transformation"-was never seriously on the agenda. The consequent Lancaster House Constitutional Conference of 1979, which brought about the Lancaster House Agreement, was simply the climax which started the "sealing" of an important class alliance that would ensure the reproduction of the heavily imperialist dominated socioeconomic structure and that would demobilise any popular-based attempt at a profound transformation of the society. This process-of course-is still fraught with deadly contradictions.
‘Echoing Silences\': Ethnicity in post-colonial Zimbabwe, 1980-2007
African Journal on Conflict Resolution, 2008
In spite of its rare entry into both official and public discourses about contemporary Zimbabwe, ethnicity, alongside race, has continued to shape and influence the economic, social, and political life of Zimbabwe since the achievement of independence in 1980. In this article we argue that whilst post-independence Zimbabwe has since the days of the Gukurahundi war (1982-1986) not experienced serious ethnic-based wars or political instability, there is serious ethnic polarisation in the country and ethnicity remains one of the challenges to the survival of both the state and the country. This ethnic polarisation is to be explained mainly in terms of the broader failure by the state to develop an effective response to the political economy of ethnicity inherited from the colonial past. * The subtitle of this article is derived from Alexander Kanengoni's brilliant, semi-biographical novel about the rarely discussed violence and trauma of the war of independence, Echoing Silences (Baobab Books, Harare, 1997).
David Kaulemu (ed.) Imagining Citizenship in Zimbabwe. Harare: Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, 2011
"Robert Mugabe’s party, Zanu-PF, which took power at independence in 1980, has managed to retain its political legitimacy in large parts of the country, despite a prolonged economic nightmare and longstanding and incontrovertible evidence of political violence and human rights abuses. In the same way that the NATO powers seem puzzled by the failure of Muammar Gaddafi to shut up shop and leave Libya, there is evident international puzzlement and frustration at Mugabe’s ability to retain power in Zimbabwe. Outside of academia (and even within it), there has been little significant conversation about how his party has remained in place: coercion has been the explanation consistently offered. And yet, it is clear that Zanu-PF did not lose popular support in many rural areas, despite the violent (and apparently rigged) parliamentary election of 2000 and presidential election of 2002. Neither partisan, oppressive behaviour by the state, nor unprecedented economic collapse, significantly undermined rural people’s willingness to vote for the primary perpetrators of the political violence, Zanu-PF. The MDC, meanwhile, found its platform defending citizenship, civil society and property rights seemed too often to fall on fallow ground. Why has the MDC not been able to build up a stronger sense in Zimbabwe of the citizen and a citizen’s rights vis-à-vis the state?"
The State and Contested Citizenship in Zimbabwe, 1980 to 2011
Nationalism and National Projects in Southern Africa: New Critical Reflections, 2013
In colonial Zimbabwe, dual citizenship was tolerated through laws such as the Southern Rhodesian Citizenship and British Nationality Act of 1949, the Southern Rhodesian Citizenship and British Nationality (Repeal) Act of 1958, the Citizenship of Southern Rhodesia and British Nationality Act of 1963, and the Citizenship of Rhodesia of 1970. The drafting of Zimbabwe’s post-colonial citizenship laws has been influenced by notions of national security, sovereignty and, above all, the state’s nationalist rhetoric purporting to fulfil the mandate of the 1960s and 1970s liberation struggle by achieving economic liberation. The Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), often argued that people with dual citizenship and expatriate workers were promoting foreign political and economic interests. The ZANU-PF government believed that in order to fully implement policies like the land reform programme and indigenisation of the economy without the interference of foreign interests, there was need to abolish dual citizenship to ensure total loyalty of its citizens. The state, which favours the policy of mono citizenship, argues that persons should be totally committed in a legal and emotional sense to one country and believes that dual or multiple citizenship contravenes its notions of national identity and cohesion. Dual citizens, particularly the whites and Africans of foreign origin, were labeled as ‘half-hearted citizens’ who oppose and resist the state’s nationalist policies. Contrary to this, most civil society organisations and opposition political like the Conservative Alliance of Zimbabwe (CAZ) and the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which is now in government, supported dual citizenship arguing that it is a global trend. Despite challenges and resistance from opposition political parties and civil society, the post-colonial state implicitly and explicitly played a central role in defining who is a citizen to be included in decisive national affairs like elections and to benefit when economic resources are distributed. As this chapter argues, the implementation and amendments of Zimbabwe’s citizenship laws shows that, like other forms of belonging, citizenship can be used by the state to intimidate or exclude opponents during times of political contestation or economic scarcity.
Africa
of the 1990s. In the section on politics of durability, Dorman goes into great detail on both the formation of organizations that enabled ZANU-PF to hold on to power and the emergence of new organizations that would eventually challenge that durability. Dorman's analysis argues that urban professionals did not begin their activism in the late post-1999 era, as suggested by most scholars, but rather that trade unions and other civil organizations formed in response to demands by ordinary citizens immediately after independence. In writing about the Zimbabwean economic crisis, scholars often point to the 1997 war veterans' payouts as the critical point that sparked the country's economic woes. Dorman gives important context to the challenges faced by war veterans and the formation of organizations that advocated against corruption. This historical context is particularly important as more time passes since independence and the liberation struggle. Dorman goes into greater detail on the issues that resulted in the prevailing toxic relationship between war veterans and the government. ZANU-PF's push for land reform was not motivated by the need to provide for war veterans; instead, the party recognized that its position of power in both urban and rural constituencies had weakened. And thus land reform is about the politics of party durability. From 1980 until the mid-1990s, the major democratic institutions, such as courts and civil society, operated with relative freedom, but as ZANU-PF sensed that it was losing control, its nationalistic politics became more extreme and violent. Finally, scholars of African feminism will appreciate Dorman's in-depth exploration of the central role that women such as Margret Dongo continue to play in shaping Zimbabwe's contemporary politics.
Bsc Thesis, 2016
Political systems and processes in Zimbabwe have attracted much commentary and attention in the world over, with much attention hinged and fixated on elections and the amassment of political hegemony by ZANU PF despite ruling in a dire state of a crippled and plummeting economy that should be inciting social and political dissent. Elections are associated with vote rigging, political violence and unscrupulous political activities that range from appointment of party loyalist in key, strategic and influential positions that define and determine politics of the day. The cry has been that such appointments have been in electoral and state institutions that have the mandate to necessitate democratic transition, the partisan appointments have led to a manifestation of the hiring of white collar electoral fraudsters who miraculously Nikuv elections to the favour of the mostly contested hegemonic political player ZANU PF. This study adopted a qualitative approach to its gathering of information regarding the hegemony of ZANU PF in Zimbabwe’s political experiences and processes, in its qualitative nature it attempted to gain an understanding of the underlying reasons and factors driving the political happenings and establish how people interpret the hegemony of ZANU PF, the interpretation of the Zimbabweans’ perception of the state of affairs was thereby established through the use of questionnaires and focus group discussions that showed a true reflection of the political realities on the ground with the aid of purposive sampling. Established was that the hegemony of ZANU PF is convolutedly tied to the lack of political resilience and charisma amongst opposition parties, incompetent political parties, partisan legal systems that favor the incumbent, and general stateism. Strategically, with a great level of political astuteness, ZANU PF has seemingly been identified with using the containment-elimination approach in gobbling up its political opponents and adopting a political illusory approach to deceive its opposition by creating facades of democracy that hinder a transition of political power through elections. Notwithstanding, Zimbabwe needs to thoroughly nuture political leadership in schools, and political parties, and if necessary establish political academies to help inculcate a spirit of political leadership for political competition to be feasibly witnessed in Zimbabwe’s democratic transition story