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Social movements and civic organizations often face profound strategy dilemmas that can hamper their effectiveness and prevent them from contributing to transformative change and peace. In Zimbabwe two particular dilemmas have fed into and fueled destructive processes of political polarization-dividing society, leadership, and decision-makers well beyond its borders. As conceptualized in this study, the first is whether to prioritize political or economic rights in efforts to bring about nation-wide transformative change (rights or redistribution). The second is whether and how to work with government and/or donors given their political, economic, and social agendas (participation or resistance). This book investigates these issues through two social movement organizations-the National Constitutional Assembly and the Zimbabwe National War Veterans' Association-and the movements they led to achieve constitutional change and radical land redistribution. Through in-depth case study analysis and peace and conflict impact assessment spanning the years 1997-2010, lessons are drawn for activists, practitioners, policy-makers, and scholars interested in depolarizing concepts underpinning polarizing discourses, transcending strategy dilemmas, and understanding how social action can better contribute to transformative change and peace.
This book investigates how culture reflects change in Zimbabwe, focusing predominantly on Mnangagwa’s 2017 coup, but also uncovering deeper roots for how renewal and transition are conceived in the country. Since Emmerson Mnangagwa ousted Robert Mugabe in 2017, he has been keen to defi ne his "Second Republic" or "New Dispensation" with a rhetoric of change and a rejection of past political and economic cultures. This multi and inter- disciplinary volume looks to the (social) media, language/ discourse, theatre, images, political speeches and literary fiction and non- fiction to see how they have reflected on this time of unprecedented upheaval. The book argues that themes of self- renewal stretch right back to the formative years of the ZANU PF, and that despite the longevity of Mugabe’s tenure, the latest transition can be seen as part of a complex and protracted layering of postcolonial social, economic and political changes. Providing an innovative investigation of how political change in Zimbabwe is reflected on in cultural texts and products, this book will be of interest to researchers across African history, literature, politics, culture and post- colonial studies.
This retrospective offers a first hand account on internal conflicts in ZANU during the 1970s, which resulted in the defeat of its left wing. Chung's narratives include her experiences in two guerrilla camps. She recalls her encounters with the charismatic Josiah Tongogara, a legendary military commander during Zimbabwe's liberation war (known as the ©second chimurenga♯), who died at the threshold to Independence. The personal recollection of a transition to national sovereignty concludes with an incisive analysis of developments after Independence. It ends with Chung's vision for the Zimbabwe of the future. Fay Chung served within the Ministry of Education in post-colonial Zimbabwe for a total of fourteen years, at the end as the Minister of Education and Culture. Her autobiographical account has the childhood experiences in colonial Rhodesia as a point of departure. Like many other Zimbabwean intellectuals she joined the liberation struggle. From the mid-1970s she worked within the ZANU-organised educational sphere.
Focusing on political trials in Zimbabwe's Magistrates' Courts between 2000 and 2012, Susanne Verheul explores why the judiciary have remained a central site of contestation in post-independence Zimbabwe. Drawing on rich court observations and in-depth interviews, this book foregrounds law's potential to reproduce or transform social and political power through the narrative, material, and sensory dimensions of courtroom performances. Instead of viewing appeals to law as acts of resistance by marginalised orders for inclusion in dominant modes of rule, Susanne Verheul argues that it was not recognition by but of this formal, rule-bound ordering, and the form of citizenship it stood for, that was at stake in performative legal engagements. In this manner, law was much more than a mere instrument. Law was a site in which competing conceptions of political authority were given expression, and in which people's understandings of themselves as citizens were formed and performed.
This book investigates the role of the internet and social media in political processes in non-western and non-democratic contexts. Using Zimbabwe as a case study, the book demonstrates how activists and ordinary people deploy social media, particularly Facebook, to subvert an enduring hegemonic state. However, the book also highlights how authoritarian regimes are in turn learning and adapting to the information age, challenging the impact of digital activism. Studies of digital activism in the Global South are often centred around democracy, but this book paints a more complex picture, examining the role and effect of digital activism in challenging state hegemony in authoritarian contexts. The book notes that while communication technologies help mediate activism, they are also simultaneously constrained by pre-existing and emergent challenges tied to the social and political context and the inherent limitations of those technologies. The book investigates the tactics used by digital activists, the contextual factors and restrictive political environment they operate in, including the role of pro-government activists, and ultimately, the impact of digital activism given these constraints. From the case of Zimbabwe, the book builds out a broader theoretical analysis of the evolution of ‘third world protest’ in the digital age, examining the limitations of activists’ actions and the ideological deficit in online activism to ferment a virulent counter hegemony.
In the early twenty-first century, white-owned farms in Zimbabwe were subject to large-scale occupations by black urban dwellers in an increasingly violent struggle between national electoral politics, land reform, and contestations over democracy. Were the black occupiers being freed from racist bondage as cheap laborers by the state-supported massive land redistribution, or were they victims of state violence who had been denied access to their homes, social services, and jobs? Blair Rutherford examines the unequal social and power relations shaping the lives, livelihoods, and struggles of some of the farm workers during this momentous period in Zimbabwean history. His analysis is anchored in the time he spent on a horticultural farm just east of Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, that was embroiled in the tumult of political violence associated with jambanja, the democratization movement. Rutherford complicates this analysis by showing that there was far more in play than political oppression by a corrupt and authoritarian regime and a movement to rectify racial and colonial land imbalances, as dominant narratives would have it. Instead, he reveals, farm worker livelihoods, access to land, gendered violence, and conflicting promises of rights and sovereignty played a more important role in the political economy of citizenship and labor than had been imagined.
Civil society plays an increasingly powerful role in the global landscape, emerging as key actors in preventing and managing conflict, and building more peaceful and sustainable societies . The multiple case studies featured in this volume illustrate the growth of civil society involvement in national, regional, and international peacebuilding policy. The focus is on multi-stakeholder, systems-based approaches to peacebuilding and human security that involve diverse civil society groups (NGOs, religious organizations, media, etc.), government agencies, intergovernmental organizations, and security forces. This unique comprehensive approach encompasses diverse stakeholders seeking to understand the drivers of conflict and the possibilities for working together to build peace. The book illustrates how the involvement of civil society can result in better informed, more inclusive, more accountable government decision making, and more effective peacebuilding policies. Importantly, a number of the case studies provide a gender perspective on peacebuilding and civil society issues, voicing and giving attention to women’s perspectives without being focused only on gender issues. Further, authors from the Global South offer the perspectives of those directly immersed in ongoing struggles for justice and peace.
Morgan Richard Tsvangirai is arguably the most polarising figure and advocate of democracy and human rights in the history of opposition politics in Zimbabwe. He is as much a topic of debate in Zimbabwe and beyond as the late president Robert Gabriel Mugabe. Tsvangirai's legacy, like Mugabe's, remains indisputably controversial and conflicted. Broadly, the divided opinion on the Tsvangirai legacy can be represented, firstly, by those who argue that Tsvangirai was the champion of democracy and the face of the struggle for human rights in Zimbabwe. In this light, Tsvangirai has been variously described as a "selfless...people's hero", a "colossus of the struggle for democracy", "the commander of the struggle", "a symbol of courage and resistance", and "the doyen of constitutionalism" in Zimbabwe. On the other hand, critics have described Tsvangirai as a "sell-out", "a Judas Iscariot", "traitor", and "coward", among other nefarious and pejorative characterisations. Drawing on all these opinions and the various characterisations of Tsvangirai, this book provides a comprehensive and multi-disciplinary appraisal of a gigantic trade unionist and political figure who, in his life and in death, inspires different narratives, emotions and values. This book is therefore about a mortal but "living" figure who left an indelible mark on Zimbabwe, Africa and the rest of the world in fields such as trade unionism, governance and politics. As such, the book is handy for students and practitioners in African studies, political science, policy studies, economics, history, global studies and development studies.
Building from the Rubble is the latest volume to trace the history of Zimbabwe’s labour movement, following Keep on Knocking (1997) and Striking Back (2001). Even though it focuses on the period between 2000-2017, the analysis reviews the changes in trade unionism throughout the post-colonial era. For much of this period, the unions faced massive challenges, including state violence and repression, funding limitations, splits, factionalism, and problems of organising at factory level. Perhaps the greatest challenge was the massive structural change in the economy. Deindustrialisation and the informalisation of work decimated the potential membership of the unions and redefined the trajectory of the movement. The growing precarity of work and the loss of formal employment placed the future of trade unions in great jeopardy. Notwithstanding these challenges, the importance of the labour movement continued to resonate with workers. The editors conclude that the unions needs to reconnect with their social base at the workplace, and rebuild structures and alliances in the informal economy, the rural sector, and with residents’ associations and social media movements. ‘This’ they write ‘is a critical post-Mugabe agenda that should be seized by the labour movement at all levels, from shop-floor to district, regional and national spaces.
Is the impression of a new dynamism in African-Asian relations empirically correct? Is it a process that will once be accepted as one of the fundamental transformations of World Society in the 21st century? This volume addresses these questions in 14 chapters, from a look back to 2000 years of African-Asian contacts and exchange to the analysis of the origins of this new inter-regional dynamism. On the Asian side, the focus is on China, which has - with the Forum on China-African Cooperation (FOCAC), the Belt and Road Initative with numerous infrastructure projects, development assistance, resource deals, and the support for the African Union in Africa - drawn most attention, but also recent initiatives by India and South Korea are described. On the African side, the recent developments in Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Angola, Guinea, Tanzania, Ghana, Zimbabwe and South Africa are analyzed in detail, with a special focus on the various impacts of the recent and ongoing projects and initiatives and the conditions under which they exert developmental or detrimental economic, Do we witness the repetition of past mistakes of development policies at higher level, or is this time everything different? Patrick Ziltener is an Associate Professor at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. Christian Suter is Professor of Sociology at the University of Neuchâtel and President of the World Society Foundation, Zurich, Switzerland.