The Zimbabwean Crisis and the Unresolved
Conundrum of Race in the Post-colonial Period
James Muzondidya
Senior Researcher at the Human Sciences Research Council,
Pretoria, South Africa
ABSTRACT
This article seeks to show that although economic and political factors were all
important in the Zimbabwean crisis, the unresolved legacies of racial polarization
and inequalities in this former white settler colony played a pivotal role in shaping
the nature and form of the crisis. The emphasis is on the unresolved racial inequalities in the economy, especially in land ownership and land utilization, which
contributed to the country’s economic crisis. Further, the article shows how the
Zimbabwe crisis became protracted mainly because the ruling ZANU-PF successfully utilized the emotive issue of race to mobilize support internally, regionally
and internationally, while both the opposition and external critics of ZANU-PF
underestimated the power of race in mobilizing support for ZANU-PF, and in
polarizing political opinion in Zimbabwe.
Keywords: conundrum, ESAP, IBDC, AAG, MDC, Pan-Africanism, bourgeoisie, indigenization, integration
Introduction
The question of race in the Zimbabwe Crisis has not been sufficiently
interrogated in scholarly debates about the crisis, most of which have
been preoccupied with ascertaining whether the crisis has been a political
or economic one. In this article, I argue that although economic and political factors, especially issues of governance, democracy, human rights
and the economic deterioration of the 1990s, have all been important in
the Zimbabwean crisis, unresolved legacies of racial polarization and inequalities in this former white settler colony have played a pivotal role
in shaping the nature and form of the crisis. My first point of emphasis
is that unresolved racial inequalities in the economy, especially in land
ownership and utilization, partly contributed to the economic crisis.
Copyright © 2010 SAGE Publications www.sagepublications.com
(Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC)
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Journal of Developing Societies 26, 1 (2010): 5–38
The second point is the fact that once Zimbabwe started experiencing
political and economic upheavals in the 1990s, the crisis assumed racial
dimensions mainly because there were unresolved issues of race in postindependence Zimbabwe. Because of the unresolved colonial legacies
of racial prejudice and inequalities, I further argue it was easier for the
incumbent government to use both land and race for political mobilization
and scapegoating when it found itself confronted with mounting popular pressure. At the same time, by both projecting the Zimbabwe Crisis
as a racial problem and casting the opposition as ‘stooges of local white
farmers and the imperial West’, the incumbent government was able to
occidentalize an internal problem while simultaneously positioning itself
as an African nationalist government defending Zimbabwean national
interests at home and black people’s rights and dignity across the globe.
By projecting the crisis in this manner, the incumbent government was
not only able to win ideological support from some quarters of the marginalized world but also to retain some level of political legitimacy both
internally and externally. Finally, I argue that the Zimbabwe crisis became protracted mainly because the ruling Zimbabwe African National
Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) successfully utilized the emotive issue
of race to mobilize support internally, regionally and internationally, while
both the opposition and external critics of ZANU-PF underestimated
the power of race in building support for ZANU-PF and in polarizing
political opinion on Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe at the Crossroads: Economic and Political Roots
of the Crisis
The post-2000 crisis cannot be understood fully without focusing on its
historical context. Discussing the historical context of the crisis allows
us to develop a more nuanced perspective on how and why the political
crisis unfolded and mutated and how ZANU-PF’s populist politics of
racial nationalism evolved.
Although the political and economic aspects of the Zimbabwe Crisis
started to manifest themselves more clearly in the 1990s, the roots of the
crisis can be traced back to beyond the 1990s when the country, for various
reasons, failed to adequately address many of the problems and tensions
of its colonial past. Some of these inherited problems which Zimbabwe
continued to experience in its first decades of independence, and have
been subsequently discussed in a number of books on Zimbabwe, included
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lack of housing for urban workers, rural poverty and infrastructural underdevelopment. The other social and economic challenges experienced
are rising unemployment among Africans; redistributive challenges in
the spheres of land and the economy; uneven distribution of the gains
of independence between elite groups (which included which included
rich peasants and commercial farmers, business people and educated
professionals) and the poor in both rural and urban societies (Mandaza
1986: 21–74; Moyo 2000b: 5–28; Cliffe 1988: 309–325; Stoneman 1988:
47–48; Chung 1988: 129–130). As a result, there was no significant narrowing of income and wealth differentials among Zimbabweans by the mid
1980s: it was estimated that 3 per cent of the population, mainly white
farmers and a small black bourgeoisie, continued to own the bulk of resources and to control two-thirds of gross national income in the 1980s
(Stoneman 1988: 51–52; Kanyenze 2004: 39).
In addition, Government policy on rural development did not effectively
transform rural economies or lift millions of rural dwellers out of their
condition of deprivation. A significant proportion of rural households
continued to have inadequate access to productive land in the communal
areas (Cliffe 1988: 309–25). In the urban sphere, generally marginalized
in the government’s development planning1 (Musemwa, 2008: 5), urban
workers were beginning to experience intensified transport problems
and shortages in housing by the mid 1980s. Some of the sub-standard
houses and hostels built for African workers in townships during the
colonial period began to yield to the pressure of increased overcrowding
(Mafico 1991; Zinyama, Tevera and Cumming 1993). Besides experiencing
growing problems in housing and transport, urban workers were struggling to survive on declining wages (Cobbing 1999: 85).
By the mid-1990s, it was clear that the country was faced with a crisis
and that Zimbabwe was moving towards a social or political implosion.
A series of droughts in the 1980s and the devastating 1991–92 drought
which hit the country and ravaged the southern African region had led
to a decline in the productivity of the agricultural sector and a drastic fall
in exports, while the implementation of the IMF/World Bank Economic
and Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) from 1991 worsened
economic and social conditions in the country (Mlambo 1995: 83–91).
Large numbers of workers were retrenched as industries closed down
and when government cut down on its employees.2 The deregulation of
prices and removal of subsidies for basic consumer goods under ESAP
resulted in severe hardships for workers, the unemployed and the poor
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who all battled to afford basic goods whose prices skyrocketed in the
inflationary environment of the period. Government cutbacks in health
and education subsidies made these services inaccessible to the majority
of the poor and unemployed. The introduction of user fees under ESAP,
for instance, decreased enrolments as parents who could not afford fees
reacted by withdrawing them from school. The quality of health services
also deteriorated. According to a 1993 UNICEF study, health services had
fallen by 30 per cent, and twice as many women were dying in childbirth
than before 1990 and fewer people were visiting clinics and hospitals because they could not afford it (Mlambo 1995: 83–100).
The plight of the rural population equally worsened during this period.
As the Zimbabwean land and agrarian expert, Sam Moyo, has convincingly
argued, ESAP not only set in the deindustrialization of the agro-industrial
sector but also intensified rural poverty as it had extensive negative effects on the agricultural output of the poor. The combined result of the
reduction in government extension services and agricultural input services
under ESAP cost recovery schemes, the introduction of tight and more
expensive credit, the deterioration in rural roads used to transport peasant
crops was a severe reduction in both peasant agricultural productivity
and peasant earnings (Moyo 2004: 17–18). Worse, structural adjustment
increased pressure on rural land and natural resources as retrenched
urban workers either sent the families or relocated with their families to
their overcrowded rural homes. By 1987, the population in the Communal
Areas had risen to 5.1 million and the national average population density
was 36 people per km, up from 3.9 million and an average population
density of 27 people per km in 1982 (Moyo 2004: 9–18; Moyo 2000a: 58–90;
Zimbabwe Population Census 1987).
Toward the Politics of Racialized Black Nationalism
The exasperation caused by windfall in the economy, the contractions on
government spending on social services as well as its failure to deliver
land in the wake of continued land-hunger posed a challenge to the nation
as both peasants and urban workers became more restless in the 1990s.
Spurned by the failure of the government to deliver land in the wake of
continued land-hunger, peasants, for instance, became more militant in
their demands for land. During the 1990s, land occupations expanded in
form and content as peasants – sometimes led by chiefs and local war
veterans – sporadically invaded not only private lands but also state land.
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At the same time, the urban poor were increasingly occupying both state
and municipal lands for agriculture in a bid to supplement their food resources (Moyo 2000a; Moyo 2004; Marongwe 2002).
During the same period, urban groups were moving increasingly towards
militant agitation to air their grievances. Workers and the unemployed
moved towards mass action and responded to the impoverishing effects of
ESAP with strike action (Saunders 2001; Raftopoulos 2001: 10–11). Civil
society groups, which had hitherto confined themselves to complementing
the state’s developmental project of the 1980s, gradually became more
assertive. They questioned the state’s commitment to uprooting poverty
and criticized its growing intolerance of dissent (Rich-Dorman 2002:
81–85; Raftopoulos and Alexander 2006: 35). Women’s groups also became
more active (Kanji and Jazdowska 1993: 11–26; Raftopoulos & Alexander
2006: 40). Even the church, which had historically shied away from active
involvement beyond ‘issues of faith’, gradually involved itself in the
broader political, social and economic affairs of society (Rich-Dorman
2002: 75–92; Verstraelen 1998). During this period, the government also
came under increasing pressure from the restless veterans of the guerrilla
nationalist armies, disgruntled over unemployment, neglect, corruption
in government and lack of access to land throughout the 1980s and 1990s,
and experiencing the negative effects of ESAP (Chitiyo 2000; Kriger
2003: 191–208).
Another important source of pressure against the state during these
years of mounting national dissatisfaction were members of the black
middle class who were frustrated by the lack of opportunities to move
upwards and particularly felt threatened by the erosion of their limited
gains of the 1980s. Their frustration was directed against both government and what was beginning to be seen as an ‘intransigent white
elite’ reluctant to share the national cake with its black counterparts.
Throughout the first decades of independence, members of the black
middle class, particularly those in the business sector, had continued to
suffer from constraints which limited their participation in the productive
sectors of the economy. These ranged from difficulties in securing loans
from white and foreign-owned financiers and banks to hostility from
monopolistic white capital (Maphosa 1998: 176–78). The productive sector, especially manufacturing, had continued to be closed to potential black
entrepreneurs (Bond 1997). A 1989 report on black advancement in the
private sector showed the following racial distribution at management
level: senior management: 62.5 per cent white, 37.5 per cent black; middle
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management: 35. 5 per cent white, 64.5 per cent black; junior management: 22 per cent white, 78 per cent black (Raftopoulos 1995: 6). By 1993,
the level of business participation by blacks in all sectors of the economy
stood at only 2 per cent (Financial Gazette, 28 January 1998).
Frustrated by their lack of economic opportunities, the aspiring black
bourgeoisie increasingly criticized the government for failing to support
them. They accused the government of ‘go[ing] out its way to protect
multinationals and ex-settler businesses against competition from outside… but not cushion[ing] aspiring black businesses from evil competition
applied by the monopolies and oligopolies’ (Sanders 1996). They also
blamed white businessmen and farmers for blocking their chances of economic success through the practice of institutional racism. In 1990, leading
black business persons from various sectors of the economy formed the
Indigenous Business Development Centre (IBDC) to push for greater
black participation and control of the economy. A conglomeration of
various black lobby groups, including the Zimbabwe National Farmers’
Union, Women in Business, the Zimbabwe Transport Organization and
Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce, the IBDC agenda was a
change of the ownership structure of the economy towards local blacks.
It, alongside other black affirmative action lobbies, also emphasized
the deracialization of the ownership base of commercial farmland
(Maphosa 1998: 185; Moyo 2004: 13).
In 1994, younger members of the black businessmen community who
were disappointed by the limited success of the IBDC formed the Affirmative Action Group (AAG) to spearhead a more aggressive campaign
for the localization of ownership in foreign-owned companies. The group
soon overshadowed the IBDC, and applied pressure on both government and established business to obtain funding, political support and
other policy concessions for black business development (Maphosa 1998:
Sanders 1996: 8–11). Soon after its formation, the AAG, using race as an
agency for its own members’ private accumulation, unsuccessfully called
for a consumer boycott of all firms which had not entered into joint
ventures with black entrepreneurs (Maphosa 1998: 186). In July 1994,
a coalition of black pressure groups, which included members of the
IBDC, AAG, IBWO and the University of Zimbabwe-based youth cultural organization, Sangano Munhumutapa3, organized protest marches
in Harare to denounce institutional racism in banks and other financial
institutions (Maphosa 1998: 186).
Generally, black opposition to the inequality took an increasingly
racial form from the mid-1990s, when the economy began to contract
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seriously and the social problems of the poor mounted. While frustrated
black business people formed pressure groups to push both government
and white capital to create more opportunities for their members, student
demonstrations for increases in government support grants were often
accompanied by attacks on white motorists or their properties in the
affluent northern suburbs of Harare.4 Though black motorists driving
expensive cars were not spared, indicating the class dynamics at play, the
attacks were mainly directed against whites. This to some extent reflected
a general spirit of resentment against continued white privilege. Even the
pro-capital Financial Gazette had to caution:
It is false security and foolhardy for the wealthy few from one section of the
population to consider the rest of the population to be content with their
[poverty]… particularly when it is clear that they are from the same race.
(Financial Gazette, 25 February 1992)
The ZANU-PF government’s reaction to the mounting social and
political pressure in the 1990s and the emerging politics of racialized
nationalism was informed by two approaches: repression and persuasion.
The repressive approach involved intensified control over the judiciary,
the media and the security services. Its persuasive strategy, on the other
hand, was more sophisticated – it entailed exploiting the power of popular
nationalism in a nation divided by its colonial racial legacy.
Capitalizing on the power of the concept of race in the former colony,
the opportunistic government slowly began to redirect popular anger
towards government and capital [foreign and white-dominated] by
appealing to notions of exclusive black nationalism. It began to give
peripheral support to some of the groups which were deploying race as
an agency for individual accumulation. At public forums, state and party
officials increasingly blamed whites for the problems in the country
(Selby 2006). The government gradually abandoned both its conciliatory approach and the inclusive nationalism of the early period, and
began to adopt a radical, exclusive nationalist stance. It deployed race in
the political and social arena, and tried to reconstitute the whole discourse
of rights, justice and citizenship in Zimbabwe (Muzondidya 2007: 330–41;
Raftopoulos 2004a; Barnes 2007: 635–37, 649–51).
The issue of rights and entitlements was increasingly defined in terms
of racial binaries: black and white binaries, and the nation state was progressively defined as the political expression of a single or a dominant
and relatively homogenous ethnic or racial group – ‘native African’. In
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the historical text/narrative that emerged, only ‘native Africans’ or ‘vana
vevhu/abantwana bomhlabathi’ (sons of the soil) could be the original
and true inhabitants of Zimbabwe who had pre-eminent rights to the
country’s land and other resources. All whites living in the country were
occidentaliszed – depicted as foreigners or usurpers, with little or no
permanent stake in the country (Muzondidya 2007: 333–38; Raftopoulos
2004b: 162; Raftopoulos 2003b: 230). This profound shift in both the official
and public discourses denoted, as Jocelyn Alexander has observed, the
‘critical shifts in the stakes, terms and alliances marking Zimbabwe’s
unfolding politics of land’ and resource distribution and ownership
(Alexander 2003: 83–117; Alexander 2006).
As correctly pointed out in a number of critiques of Zimbabwean contemporary politics, the politics of nativism increasingly articulated by
ZANU-PF from the late 1990s onwards were indeed rhetorical politics
designed to conceal the party’s own policy shortcomings, authoritarianism
and elite accumulation project (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2009: 1141–42; Moore
2001: 253–66; Raftopoulos 2006: 203–19; Scarnechia 2006: 221–37;
Scarnechia et. al 2008; Hammar 2009). The question that has, however, not
been sufficiently addressed by many of these intellectual debates is one of
resonance between this racial politics and the Zimbabwean population.
Racial Politics: Exhausted Nationalism or Popular Nationalism?
In their attempt to explain ZANU-PF’s continued stay in power despite
the intensification of both internal and external opposition to its rule, a
number of accounts written on the subject have argued that that the
party’s hold over power have been achieved simply through coercive or
authoritarian politics. According to these accounts, from 2000 onwards,
ZANU-PF had completely lost all forms of popular support that it could
only survive through coercion and not consent (Blair 2002; Meredith
2002). Many other written critiques of ZANU-PF’s populist politics have
also argued that the party’s violence against the population, including
those in its traditional rural strongholds, in times of elections, especially
from 2000 onward, demonstrate this lack of popular support for both
ZANU-PF and its ‘land and liberation’ rhetoric (Scarnerchia, et. al 2008;
Scarnerchia 2006: 221–37; Ranger 2008; Campbell 2008; Makumbe
2009). Scholars like Patrick Bond, Masimba Manyanya and Horace
Campbell have specifically dismissed ZANU-PF’s racial mobilization
tactics as exhausted nationalism (Bond 2001; Bond and Manyanya 2002;
Campbell 2003). In Campbell’s view, for instance, the ZANU-PF model
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of nationalism, involving revoking memories of racial oppression and
appealing to the militarism and masculinity of the liberation struggle, to
mobilize masses for a violent take over of land is not only patriarchal but
also exhausted because it has ceased to have legitimacy in contemporary
Zimbabwe (Campbell 2003).
Adopting a comparative model that seeks to highlight similarities between fascism in Italy (1920–1924) and Zimbabwe (2000–2005), Timothy
Scarnerchia argues that ZANU-PF’s political support inside the country
was maintained through mobilization of violence while its support
abroad was maintained through the misreading by its supporters of the
relationship between the current populist politics and the older ideologies
of pan-Africanism and race-defined liberation politics (Scarnerchia 2006:
221–37). Devoid of popular grassroots backing, ZANU-PF’s nationalism
of the 2000s and hold over state power was thus enforced through violence
and executive lawlessness.
Contrary to the above, the following discussion argues that whilst it is
undeniable that ZANU-PF’s mobilization tactics in the post-2000 period
have been authoritarian and coercive, its rule has not been maintained
only through coercion but through popular ideology and politics.
ZANU-PF continued to maintain some significant levels of popular
support and legitimacy among various political constituencies inside
and outside the country. Far from being exhausted, the political rhetoric
on race, black economic empowerment and radical, exclusive black
nationalism, despite all the ambiguities and contradictions, continued
to resonate with many Zimbabweans in both rural and urban areas who
recognized the unfair balance of ownership of land and other important
economic resources between blacks and whites. As scholars like Sam
Moyo, Paris Yeros, Ian Scoones and Mahmood Mamdani have correctly
observed, Mugabe’s land reform measures, however harsh, won him
considerable popularity, not just in Zimbabwe but throughout southern
Africa, particularly among those who saw his government’s action as an
attempt to deal with unresolved long term historical grievances (Mamdani
2008: 1; Moyo and Yeros 2007: 173–76; Scoones 2008).
The alleged disconnect between liberation war politics and postindependence politics Campbell and others talk about is exaggerated. The
more nuanced studies of the Zimbabwean Crisis by Brian Raftopoulos
(2004; 2006), Ian Phimister (2004) and Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni
(2009a and 2009b), show that the government of ZANU-PF survived
through both coercive and persuasive popular politics. This persuasive
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politics, which was crucial in maintaining the party’s political legitimacy
both inside the country and abroad, was built around issues of race,
colonial injustices and marginalization (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2009a: 1139–58;
Phimister and Raftopoulos 2004: 385–400; Raftopoulos 2006: Mamdani
2008). Conscious of the historical and contemporary contestations around
postcolonial redress and the native–settler dialectic in postcolonial
Africa, especially in the former white settler states of Southern Africa,
ZANU-PF skilfully shifted the political debate about Zimbabwe into a
more complicated ‘native–settler question’.5 It articulated the politics of
postcolonial justice and redress, focusing on the unresolved questions
of belonging, citizenship and economic rights. This debate has proved
difficult to resolve not only in former settler colonies like Zimbabwe,
Kenya and South Africa but also in many other African countries with
large numbers of non-autochthonous immigrant groups, such as Angola,
Uganda, Ivory Coast and the Democratic Republic of Congo (Mamdani
1999; 2001; 2004; 2005; Seekings 2008; Cousins 2003; Nzongola-Ntalaja
2004; Malaquis 2000; Sall 2004).
The ZANU-PF mobilization strategy of shifting the debate about
Zimbabwe to the ‘native–settler question’ and deploying the discourse
of nativism helped it to connect with some segments of the population,
especially the older generations with fresh memories of colonialism.
The 2004 Afrobarometer survey of political opinion in Zimbabwe, for
instance, found out that while MDC was attractive to the younger voters,
ZANU-PF tended to draw the old (Chikwanha, Sithole and Bratton 2004:
17 &18). ZANU-PF, to a certain extent, also managed to win the hearts
and souls of many Zimbabweans across the political divide by locating
the land question within its discourse of postcolonial redress. For a large
proportion of the Zimbabwean population in overpopulated rural areas
and living adjacent to large commercial farms owned by whites, the
ZANU-PF rhetoric about the ‘return of the land to its rightful owners’
had a popular resonance.6 This was mainly because the majority of both
rural and urban Zimbabweans have remained largely connected to the
land and have continued to regard a rural home in the communal lands
(formerly native reserves) as a crucial site that defines one’s sense of
belonging (Rutherford, 2003: 200).7 As a result, the ZANU-PF message
about land to the people [read black people], encapsulated in its 2002
election mantra – The Economy is the Land, the Land is the Economy,
articulated, as Ndlovu-Gatsheni points out, many people’s ‘longings,
claims and demands’ (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2009a: 1141–42).
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The above point has been missed in many of the academic critiques
of ZANU-PF’s racial politics which have failed to distinguish between
popular support for ZANU-PF, as a political movement, and ideological
backing for its messages on specific issues like land and racial inequalities.
There is enough anecdotal evidence from both public discourse and qualitative surveys to suggest that while some people disapproved ZANU-PF’s
dictatorial politics and violence, they largely agreed with its language of
popular nationalism and politics of land expropriation. In a detailed study
tracking the evolution of the fast track reform programme since 2000, Ian
Scoones, for instance, found out that despite problems dogging the fast
track resettlement programme such as lack of capital and input support,
there was universal acclaim for the resettlement programme among
resettled peasants and their general feeling was that life had changed
remarkably because there was no more overcrowding, people had more
land and were able to produce more than they used to (Scoones 2008).
Survey results from the 2004 Afrobarometer survey showed President
Mugabe’s popularity ratings went from a low 21 per cent in 1999 to 58 per
cent in 2004 (Chikwanha, Sithole and Bratton 2004: 21). The ZANU-PF
government’s land redistribution programme and its promises about
black economic emancipation and empowerment partly accounted for
this significant rise in Mugabe’s popularity.
Moreover, the voting patterns in all the national elections from 2000,
especially the March 2008 election, which was relatively free compared
to all previous elections since 1980 (ZESN 2008: 4, 8), to a large extent,
show some correlation between the ZANU-PF rhetoric about land and
its popularity. While most urbanites consistently voted against ZANUPF from 2000, most rural residents, particularly resettled peasants, voted
ZANU-PF (Alexander and Raftopoulos 2005: 4–23; ZESN 2002; 2005;
Zimbabwe Peace Project 2008).
Indeed, ZANU-PF’s post-2000 electoral victories among rural residents
was achieved partly through electoral fraud and the deployment of
violence and coercion in the rural areas, easier to police than the urban
areas and also suffering from the legacy of a concentration of Zimbabwe’s
electoral violence since independence in 1980 (Sithole and Makumbe
1997; Moyo 1992; ZESN 2002; 2005; 2008). However, it is difficult to assess
how much of ZANU-PF electoral victory in rural areas was achieved
through intimidation rather than voluntary support. ZANU-PF had a
popular base of support in rural areas deriving from historic alliances with
rural populations forged through the 1970s war for national liberation
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and the government’s initial deliveries on some of its wartime social
and economic promises in the 1980s. ZANU-PF’s support among rural
residents also derived from its skilful articulation of populist policies
on land and indigenization issues close to the hearts of most rural communities. In the March 2008 elections, the relatively low incidence of
violence and overt intimidation in the period leading to this election
as well as transparency of the electoral process and results processing
makes it difficult to attribute a prominent role to violence and coercion or
electoral fraud to the results. Yet, in this relatively ‘free and fair’ election
held at a time when Zimbabweans were experiencing their worst economic hardships in history, ZANU-PF still managed to retain 43.2 per cent
of the national popular vote against the MDC’s 47.9 per cent, and polled
a majority in most rural district wards (ZEC 2008: iv; ZESN 2008: 43).8
Even in the urban areas, where ZANU-PF’s political legitimacy was
increasingly questioned from several fronts from the early 1990s onwards,
its ‘essentialist race’ message managed to develop a broader appeal to
some workers suffering from the negative effects of Zimbabwe’s colourcoded capital under structural adjustment conditions. Despite its dramatic
loss of support among urbanites after 2000, reflected in its poor showing
in all the elections between 2000 and 2008, ZANU-PF still managed to
retain some significant levels of voluntary support among various urban
social groups, including workers, musicians, students and intellectuals,
who bought into its politics of nativism and empowerment of the workers.
Through their own initiative or the support of government, popular urban
musicians and actors, for instance, popularized ZANU ideologies and
politics by composing and performing songs in praise of ZANU-PF and
its fast track land redistribution programme – the ‘Hondo Yeminda [War
for Land/Fast Track] musicians (Chikowero, forthcoming). The ZANUPF message about racial politics during this period was also provided
the much needed ideological backing by urban intellectuals, including
university lecturers, independent researchers, writers and journalists,
whose motives for supporting ZANU-PF varied from ideological beliefs to
the party’s patronage system which guaranteed benefits to its supporters.
The intellectuals, described by Terence Ranger and other critics as ‘patriotic intellectuals’, became the party’s organic intellectuals defending
and rationalizing its nativist politics and ideology inside the country and
abroad through their writings and conference addresses (Ranger 2005;
215–34; Kriger 2006: 1151–69; Tendi 2008: 379–96).
The ZANU-PF message on race and Zimbabwean supra-nationalism
also resonated strongly among Zimbabweans living abroad, especially
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those in South Africa, Europe and America who, like other African
migrants, had to deal with being black in countries where issues of race
and racism are still serious problems (Zeleza 2004: 268–70; Winant
1997; Neocosmos 2006; Abdullah 2000). The ZANU-PF message
about race mainly found resonance among those Zimbabweans who
sought to deal with the huge assault on their personal and national dignity
brought about by displacement, racial discrimination and xenophobia by
developing, like other marginalized diasporas, defensive nationalism.9
This defensive nationalism, triggered by a combination of discrimination
and the emotional void created by being away from home, led some
Zimbabweans abroad, even those who did not support the incumbent
government, to develop a positive image of Zimbabwe and everything
Zimbabwean and to be defensive about Zimbabwe and its government,
especially when outsiders made generalizations about their country
(Muzondidya, forthcoming). It also led others to embrace (temporarily or
permanently) Mugabe’s politics of race. The subscription to Mugabe’s racial
politics was often expressed through statements of racial frustration, such
as ‘‘Tinopesana naMugabe panyaya yekutonga, asi panyaya yemabhunu ne
ivhu ari right [We might disagree with Mugabe on governance and politics
but he is right on his politics about white racism and land repossession]
or ‘UK ndimaenzanise, nokuti ganda rako ndiro qualification yako chete
muno [All Zimbabweans are equals in the UK because your race is the
only professional qualification which matters to British society].10
The resonance of the race message among Zimbabweans was even
felt within the political opposition, characterized by Mugabe and ZANU
as a foreign white creation (Raftopoulos 2006: 212). The ruling party’s
campaign against the opposition Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC) projected it as an extension of outside forces and a vehicle through
which white commercial farmers sought to derail the land reform programme (Mugabe 2001: 88). This political labelling was reinforced by
the fact that white farmers, many of whom had not participated in party
politics since the scrapping of separate representation in parliament in
1987, openly supported and financed the MDC (Laasko 2003). Western
governments like the British and American and organizations, such as the
Westminister Foundation for Democracy, the International Republican
Institute and United States Agency for International Development, also
provided financial support to the MDC and Zimbabwean opposition civic
groups (Elich 2006; Gowans 2008).
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The role of white Zimbabweans and foreign organizations in opposition politics not only helped to bolster ZANU-PF claims that it was the
‘front for imperialism’ but also to alienate the MDC from both its own
supporters and potential supporters as well as sympathisers who were
sensitive to issues of race and imperialism, both within and outside
Zimbabwe. The issue of race actually helped to create strains within
the party as some activists began to complain about the predominance of
whites in certain leading positions.11 Having initially committed itself to
the politics of non-racialism and having embraced whites in its structures
and activities at its inception, it was therefore not surprising that the
MDC, when confronted with the problematic legacies of racism and racial
inequalities in post-settler society, began to adopt a much more cautious
and sensitive approach towards issues of race and white representation
in its activities (Raftopoulos 2005). Under the strain of trying to find
its own space and voice within a context where it was characterized as
an extension of foreign white forces, the MDC not only had difficulties
dealing with issues of representation of Zimbabwean whites and other
minorities in the party’s leadership position (Raftopoulos 2006: 212) but
also maintaining an open relationship with its donors and supporters in
the West (Makunike 2008).
The language of race and anti-imperialism played particularly well on
the African continent and other parts of the Third World. This was not
simply because, as Scarnerchia suggests, those who supported ZANU-PF
failed to understand the distinction between older ‘race and liberation’
politics and contemporary struggles in Zimbabwe or how the rhetoric of
race was being used by the party to maintain its repressive grip on power
(Scarnerchia 2006: 236). As Ian Phimister and Brian Raftopoulos have
correctly observed, ZANU-PF received support partly because it managed
to articulate the political and economic crises to a broad anti-imperialist
and pan-Africanist audience by mobilizing the power of race and the language of imperialism both to define the conflict and to mobilize support
(Raftopoulos and Phimister 2004: 385–400; Raftopoulos 2006: 212).
Conscious of the anti-imperialist and anti-racist sentiments among
marginalized people across the world, ZANU-PF ideologues tried to
conceal their authoritarian politics and responsibility for the crisis by
mobilizing the language of postcolonial redress, black nationalism, antiimperialism and pan-Africanism to project their government as a victim
of an imperialist, Western plot designed to punish black Zimbabweans
for having stood up to the interests of white capital and racism (Phimister
and Raftopoulos 2004: 385–400). The party’s propagandists deployed
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inside and outside the country also skilfully tried to link every problem
in Zimbabwe to international sanctions by the European Union and the
USA.12 The ZANU-PF rhetoric on race found reception among some in
these constituencies mainly because of concerns about the legacies of
colonialism and racialism, the continued dominance and marginalization
of the South under globalization and the new imperialism of the postSeptember period (Raftopoulos and Phimister 2004: 385–400; Shivji
2002; Dua, Razack & Warner 2005: 1–7).
At the same time, the West’s ‘clumsy reaction’ to the Zimbabwe crisis
helped to bolster ZANU-PF’ claims that it was a victim of Western
hegemonic designs. The West’s ‘clumsy’ response to the Zimbabwe crisis
expressed itself in the British government’s abrasive denial of responsibilities for colonial injustices in Zimbabwe, the imposition of targeted
sanctions on the government of Zimbabwe by the US, Australia, Canada
and the European Union, and offering of open support to the opposition
in Zimbabwe (Phimister and Raftopoulos 2004: 386–89; Makunike
2008). The Western government’s clumsy response to the Zimbabwean
crisis was accentuated by the way the Western media, particularly the
powerful British and American global media houses such as BBC (British
Broadcasting Corporation) and CNN (Cable News Network), framed the
Zimbabwean crisis. Ignoring the many other historical, political and social
dimensions of the crisis, especially those relating to the experiences of
black Zimbabweans under both the colonial and postcolonial government,
the British and American media framed the Zimbabwean crisis as a story
of white suffering and focused on land invasions and violence against white
farmers (Williams: forthcoming; 205: 91–108). The high level of focus on
rather than attention for white farmers helped to racialize the crisis and
bolster ZANU-PF’s claim that the Western attention on Zimbabwe had
more to do with a concern for their ‘kith and kin’ – the white commercial
farmer, rather than democracy or the welfare of Zimbabweans at large.
The framing of the Zimbabwean crisis in Western discourse, particularly
the British and American governments’ repeated verbal attacks on the
Zimbabwean government, delivered in the arrogant language of imperial
hegemony, helped to divide international public opinion on the Zimbabwe
crisis in a way that made it difficult for the international community to
take a definitive and united position on Zimbabwe. In Southern Africa,
for instance, all the powerful regional actors, South Africa, Angola,
Mozambique and Namibia, partly resentful of Western attempts to dictate orders, solidly continued to support the ZANU-PF government
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while countries like Botswana and Zambia took a more critical but
cautious stance. The reasons for this support were indeed complex,
ranging from economic interests at stake to historical ties and solidarities
forged during the anti-colonial struggle (Phimister and Raftopoulos
2004: 389–92). However, the resentment to Western attempts to dictate
positions on African leaders, in a region pregnant with memories of racial
domination and supremacy, led many African governments to support
the Zimbabwean government, even though they disagreed with some of
its repressive and partisan politics.
In the case of South Africa, the legacy of apartheid and race crucially
came to shape public opinion on Zimbabwe: black South Africans supporting Mugabe in large numbers while their white counterparts condemned him. As McKinley (2004) explains, for Mbeki’s ANC government
and most black South Africans, the Zimbabwe crisis remained essentially
a crisis of unresolved legacies of racial inequalities and ZANU-PF’s land
policies represented, at their core, a genuine attempt to address the enduring legacies of colonialism – namely dominant white ownership of
land at the expense of blacks (Mckinley 2004; Phimister and Raftopoulos
2004: 390–91). For white South Africans, the crisis remained an issue of
mis-governance and victimization of a white minority group by a vengeful
and racially vindictive black majority government (Mckinley 2004). South
African responses to the Zimbabwe crisis, to a large extent, came to reflect
South Africans’ own struggles and contestations about how best to deal
with the legacy of apartheid.
Though increasingly unpopular and repressive at home, through some
orchestrated articulation of racial politics, the ZANU-PF government
somehow managed to develop a populist appeal among some marginalized
groups around the world by positioning itself as the champion of ‘mass
justice.’ The same posturing enabled it to maintain ideological backing
among some Zimbabweans who, in spite of their continued economic
suffering under the crisis, could not disagree with its articulations on
racial inequalities and prejudice. In this sense, the events and process
in post-2000 Zimbabwe increasingly mirrored the events and process in
Uganda around the 1972 expulsion of Asians by Idi Amin’s government.
As Mamdani explains, what distinguished Mugabe and Amin from other
authoritarian rulers is not their demagoguery but their ability to project
themselves as champions of mass justice and to successfully rally those
whom justice had been denied by the colonial system (Mamdani 2008).
In the case of Uganda, in spite of spite of the terror it unleashed against
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its political opponents, a terror that eventually led to its downfall, the
popular legitimacy of the Amin regime was anchored in a single divisive
and controversial but popular action – the expulsion of Asians from
Uganda in 1972 (Mamdani 1993).
According to Mamdani, by the time of Idi Amin’s coup in 1971, popular frustration was high not only against political corruption among government bureaucrats engaged in self-expropriation under the guise of
affirmative action but also against what was regarded as historic ‘Asian
exploitation’. The ground was rife for a populist demagogue that would
bring an end to this era of affirmative action by shifting the terms of the
debate from ‘Ugandinization’ to ‘Africanization’. That demagogue came
in the form of Amin who not only ‘spoke the language of nationalism’ but
whose ‘expulsion of 1972, and not the independence of 1962…brought the
first significant institutional change in Uganda society as shaped by colonial
rule’. ‘At a stroke’, Mamdani further explains, ‘the 1972 expropriation
sliced off the dome of local privilege that had crystallized over decades.
With that expropriation, Uganda became in popular language the land
of opportunity for its African inhabitants’ (Mamdani 1993: 9).
Like Amin, the politically reincarnated Mugabe of the post-2000
period, singing a new song about ‘land to the sons and daughters of the
soil’ to revive the waning political support, spoke the language of black
nationalism which not only millions of poor Zimbabweans could understand but also hundreds of thousands of others outside could relate to.
The fundamental question about Zimbabwe which most discussions have
conspicuously avoided to interrogate is how and why ZANU-PF was able
to mobilize successfully on the basis of racial politics at this particular
point in time – 20 years after the dismantling of colonial rule and its racialized structures of power.
The Political Economy of Race in a Post-colonial State
Theorists of race have explained that racism and issues relating to race
remain alive and active in former settler states because the idea of race
‘supplies a foundational understanding of natural hierarchy on which a
host of other supplementary social and political conflicts have come to
rely’13 (Gilroy, 2004: 9, cited in Raftopoulos, 2006: 212). In these former
settler states still struggling to overcome the racial and ethnic divisions of
their colonial past, mobilization rooted in subjective identities like race
and ethnicity can prove more effective than other forms of mobilization,
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such as those based on appeals to class and economic interest groups.
This is because such racial mobilization allows political leaders to form
solidarities across their narrow class groupings as well as retain mass support by concealing other important structures and processes accounting
for continued inequalities and deepening poverty (Hintzen 2004: 106–22;
1989: 1–27; N. Alexander 2006: 1–14; Olzak 2006). The chances of political leaders gaining and retaining control of power in these former settler
states, as Percy Hintzen explains about the former British colonies of
Guyana and Trinidad, does not necessarily depend upon their willingness
and ability to meet collective needs but their ability to employ successfully
a mobilizing idiom to gain and retain popular support (Hintzen 1989: 2;
Chaliand 1989: 178–84). In their attempts to mobilize, the aspirations of
political leaders are best served if they are able to exploit patterns of social
organization that make sense within the existing context and that relate
to the reality of the existing social structure (Cohen 1969: 23–24).
In the specific case of the former settler states of southern Africa, such
as Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa which have all not managed to
resolve their legacies of race and racial inequalities, race inevitably becomes a powerful mobilizing idiom in contestations over both political
and economic space because it is the most visible and salient dimension of
cleavage. In post-apartheid South Africa, for instance, race has remained
the most salient dimension of social cleavage between blacks and whites
and the main challenges to nation building have come to be centred on
issues of post-apartheid redress and indigenization or black economic
empowerment (Habib and Bentley 2008; Posel 2001; Burger and Jaftaa
2006; Southall 2004: 313–28). In the case of Zimbabwe, as Raftopoulos
explains,
The ravages of neo-liberalism combined with the loss of ruling party legitimacy
and the emergence of a formidable opposition, brought these issues of black
empowerment and historical economic redress on to centre stage. The land, a
continuosly unresolved problem in the postcolonial period, became the sole
central signifier of national redress, constructed through a series of discursive
exclusions, among which race became a central mobiliser and marker of outsider status’ (Raftopoulos 2006: 212).
That the mobilization of race as a legitimizing force in Zimbabwean
politics occurred against a background of unresolved long term historical
economic grievances cannot be emphasized. The historical grievances
highlighted in some of the more nuanced work on the Zimbabwean crisis
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included racial inequalities in the control and ownership of land and
the economy which had not been seriously addressed in the first years
of independence (Hammar and Raftopoulos 2003: 1–47; Mlambo 2005:
1–21; Moyo 2000b; 2004). Conscious of the racial protection guaranteed
by the Lancaster House Constitution, crafted as part of the deal to end the
liberation war in 1979 and to give settler capital a decade-long period of
consolidation, white farmers were generally reluctant to relinquish their
colonially inherited privilege.14
Throughout the 1980s, there had been little radical reform or structural
change in the Zimbabwean economy which had remained in foreign hands,
especially British and South Africa-based multinational corporations,
and some local whites (Stoneman 1988: 54–55). It was estimated in 1985
that 48 per cent of manufacturing was owned by foreign enterprises or
individuals. Foreign dominance was more extensive in mining, where an
estimated 90 per cent was owned by foreign multinationals (Burdette
and Davies 1988: 78). The predominance of foreign-owned companies
in the productive sectors of the economy meant that locals continued
to be excluded. Joint ventures and partial takeovers, which presented
those in power – and those connected to them – with opportunities for
personal accumulation, continued to mask foreign-capital dominance
(Raftopoulos and Compagnon 2003).
As in the colonial period, when the ambitions of the aspiring black
petty bourgeoisie were proscribed by the structures of the colonial
state, their aspirations in the post-colonial period were frustrated by the
legacy of these structures. The rapid Africanization of certain sectors of
the economy in the early years of independence took place only in the
public sector, where the government had direct control. Although the
government tried to redress racial imbalances in the private sector through
exhortation and non-preferential legislation, such as the Labour Relations
Act (No. 16 of 1985) which outlawed labour market discrimination, the
Ministry of Labour had only investigative powers and was not sufficiently
resourced to monitor firms effectively (Bennell and Strachan 1992: 30).
At the same time, the government’s indigenization policies were also
not coherently defined and were implemented half-heartedly during
the first decade of independence because there was no sustained pressure
for radical reform. Its reaction to demands from the black bourgeoisie
for greater inclusion in the control and ownership of the economy
lacked urgency and commitment (Raftopoulos 1996; Raftopoulos and
Compagnon, 2003). In the absence of concerted pressure for justice
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and economic reform from both the government and the impoverished
masses in the 1980s when the economy was performing well and social
obligations were being met, privileged whites were thus lulled into a false
sense of political and economic security, in which many felt secure in their
privileged economic positions over blacks because of their huge capital
investments (Banana 1996: 2).
White Zimbabweans did not make much effort at all during the first
decades of independence to contribute towards addressing the inherited
racial imbalances in wealth between blacks and whites or nation building.
Writing in 1982, for instance, Kaplan observed that ‘whites, acknowledging their loss of political primacy, have focused on maintaining their economic status but have made few attempts to accommodate themselves
to a changing social order’ (Kaplan 1982). ‘The maintenance of their
pre-independence privileges was seen as absolutely normal, Huyse has
added, while ‘prejudices and the destructive social relations they generated
were kept alive.’ Many white Zimbabweans in fact sought to defend their
colonially derived privileges by appealing to the language of ‘individual
rights and standards’, a tactic used by many other advantaged groups in
hierarchical societies to defend racialized privilege and avoid distributive
justice (Mamdani 1998: 7–10). Through an analysis of letters written to
the local press by both black and white Zimbabweans in the late 1980s
and 1990s, Graham Kinloch (1997: 820–38; 2003: 250–71) revealed that
while African authors were becoming increasingly critical of White racism
and their government, their criticisms focused on their institutional needs
and major social problems like transportation, housing and health needs.
White authors, on the other hand, remained consistently skeptical of the
country’s Black government and emphasized the maintenance of ‘civilized institutional standards and social efficiency’.
The behaviour of many white Zimbabweans who lived in Zimbabwe
and outside continued to be influenced by what both Ranger and Mandaza
have described as the legacy of ‘settler culture’ (Mandaza 1986: 42; Ranger
forthcoming). Settler culture, is ‘the great power exerted by settlers, their
virtual monopoly over political and legal institutions, their coercive control
over the labour and livelihoods of Africans, their manipulative methods
for advancing the economic interests of themselves’ (Kennedy 1987). It
was also profoundly conservative because it could not allow itself to adapt
to the African environment (Ranger forthcoming). The legacy of this
‘culture’, in the sense of ‘standardized modes of behaviour and thought’,
was ‘pre-eminently the expression of the white community’s tenuously
held position of predominance’ (Ranger forthcoming).
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Until the removal of the 20 reserved seats in 1987, politically active
whites continued to see themselves as existing outside the new nation
state and overwhelmingly continued to support the conservative Rhodesia
Front (Sylvester 1986: 152; Godwin: 1984; Godwin and Hancock 1993:
279–313). After the demise of the Rhodesia Front and the enactment of the
constitutional amendment which abolished the separate voters’ roll, most
whites withdrew from national electoral politics while others continued
to hold on to their political imaginations of Rhodesia.15 They only resurfaced in 2000, when their economic livelihoods were threatened by the
government confiscation of white commercial farms (Huyse 2003).
What helped to make race a powerful tool for mobilization in post-2000
Zimbabwe were not simply visible and salient racial inequalities among
Zimbabweans but also the visible lack of meaningful social integration
since independence and the prevalent racism among some whites.
Two decades after independence, there had been little integration in
schools, sports, residences and other spaces of social contact. While some
whites, especially the younger generation, were socially proactive and
integrated, many maintained their isolation and ‘largely abdicated from
actively engaging in the process of nation building’ (K.Alexander 2004: 194).
As Selby has written in respect of white commercial farmers:
The white community’s visible affluence and continued social isolation, which
amplified during structural adjustment, provided a target and a catalyst for
anti-white sentiment. An independent consultant identified the racial exclusiveness of the CFU [Commercial Farmers Union] as their biggest weakness and
greatest threat. Racism among some whites was still prevalent and mounting
scepticism among farmers towards government was often explained through
condescending cultural perspectives. Some farmers maintained conservative
attitudes with racial undertones. (Selby 2006: 242)
Notwithstanding the significant role played by many whites who
remained in Zimbabwe after independence, many others had withdrawn
into their ‘racial enclaves’ (Godwin 1984). In the urban areas, for instance,
some responded to black suburban encroachment by creating alternative
spaces where they continued to keep to themselves, ‘retreat[ing] from
public life into the laager of sports club, home entertaining and the
video’ (Godwin 1984). In Harare, affluent whites reacted to the postindependence movement of blacks into previously white-only areas such
as Mabelreign and Avondale by withdrawing to more exclusive suburbs
like Mount Pleasant, Glen Lorne and Borrowdale; their counterparts
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in Bulawayo acted similarly (Kilgore, 2009: 19–30, 92–105; PickardCambridge 1988: 1–13; Financial Gazette, 30 December 1999). Notions
of racial boundaries and separation were also maintained through the
setting up of gated communities.16
In clubs, diners and restaurants, separation was enforced through practices such as membership-based admission.17 In the educational sector,
some white parents responded to the government’s de-racialization of
education and the admission of blacks into formerly white-only (Group A)
schools by building new, independent schools whose fee structures were
designed to exclude the majority of children from middle- and low-income
black families (Zvobgo 1986: 337). Lack of social integration was similarly
experienced in sport, especially in the formerly white codes of rugby and
cricket, where issues of transformation continued to be a problem through
to 2000 and beyond. The national cricket team remained exclusively
white until 2004, when black players had to be drafted in after the mass
resignation of white players, which was prompted by disputes between
the players and the Zimbabwe Cricket Union (ZCU) about contracts and
the inclusion of blacks in the team. Until then, both black players and the
ZCU had persistently complained of institutional racism in Zimbabwe
cricket (BBC news, 29 September 2004; BBC news, 8 April 2004).18
For this and other reasons, Zimbabwean society had continued to be
seriously divided along the lines of race for much of the years before
the crisis. The above social and economic context, in a way, provided
ZANU-PF with the space and opportunity it needed to turn race into a
powerful mobilization idiom when it found itself against mounting pressure from the masses. The organization was able to mobilize on the basis of
race partly because of Zimbabwe’s failure to deracialize the economy and
society following the end of colonial rule. As in the colonial period, race
had continued to shape and influence the economic, social, and political
life of post-independence Zimbabwe. Race had continued to matter for
most Zimbabweans, mainly because it remained embedded the social,
economic and political structures of the country. Though removed from
the country’s legal system, it remained the modality through which life
was experienced.
Conclusion
I have argued that the failure to resolve the colonial legacies of racial
divisions and inequalities helped to shape the nature and character of
the Zimbabwe crisis as well as prolong its resolution. First, the continued
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existence of deep racial inequalities and racial prejudice in Zimbabwe,
two decades after the end of colonial rule, enabled the incumbent
ZANU-PF to mobilise the political idiom of race to defend its control
of the state by blaming all its weaknesses and failure to deliver on social
and political demands on white control over the land and the economy.
Opportunistically mobilizing on the rhetoric of race and land, ZANUPF was able to articulate the Zimbabwe crisis as a racial issue whose
solution could only be found in addressing issues of racial domination
and inequalities. While repression and coercion were important aspects
of ZANU-PF rule in the late 1990s onward, the rhetoric on race and
land was its political draw-card. Second, by mobilizing on the basis of
race, an increasingly repressive and waning ZANU-PF was not only
able to rally a significant proportion of the masses in Zimbabwe behind
it but also to build its political legitimacy inside the country and abroad.
Third, the insensitivity to, and inability to deal with, issues of race and
racial domination within both the domestic and international opposition
movements helped not only to internationalize the Zimbabwe crisis but
also to prolong its resolution as it came to polarize regional and international opinion.
Without the political legitimacy ZANU-PF was able to build through
its skilful but opportunistic articulation of the Zimbabwe crisis as a racial
and imperial problem, ZANU-PF could have struggled to prolong its stay
in power simply through coercive means. The mobilization on the basis of
race indeed concealed the multiplicity of causes of the Zimbabwe crisis,
including the historical, structural and policy weaknesses behind the crisis
and ZANU-PF leaders’ individual responsibility for the crisis. However,
the visibility of racial differences in poverty and wealth among blacks and
whites enabled race to assume a broad appeal as a political mobilizing
idiom. The above observations, regrettably, are some of the disconcerting
but greatest lessons of the Zimbabwe crisis which have been shunned or
silenced by most intellectual and academic debates on the crisis.
NOTES
1. The ZANU-PF government’s bias towards rural development was informed
by both historical and political considerations – the conscious desire to even
the colonially-engineered, historical imbalance in development between the
rural and urban areas, and the need to appease a rural-based political constituency, which had played a fundamental role in supporting the war in the
1970s and the electoral victory of 1980.
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2. By 1994, government statistics revealed that 20,710 workers had lost their
jobs since the beginning of economic liberalization and reform programme,
while the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions estimated the figure to be
over 30,000. Unemployment rose from 32.2 per cent in 1990 to 44 per cent
in 1993. See Mlambo, 1995: 91.
3. Sangano Munhumutapa (Munhumutapa Organisation) was founded by the
controversial University of Zimbabwe student leader, Lawrence ‘Warlord’
Chakaredza, and his student colleagues in the mid-1990s. The ZANU-PF
aligned organization, accused by its critics of promoting Shona tribal politics,
derived its name from the royal title of rulers of the precolonial Shona
kingdom of Mutapa, whose political dominance covered large parts of
modern day Zimbabwe and Mozambique from the mid 15th to the late 18th
century. The organization mobilized students and the youth from the streets
to picket against institutions, including banks, restaurants and clubs, perceived
to be practicing racism against blacks. Its activities received international
headlines in the late 1990s when it advocated the removal of the remains
of Rhodesia’s colonial founder, Cecil John Rhodes, from his burial place
on Matopos Hills, which is located near Zimbabwe’s second largest city of
Bulawayo. See Bundu Times, October–November 1998; The Daily Dispatch,
8 September 1998.
4. Author’s own experiences as a student and later as an employee at the
University between 1988–1995.
5. For a more detailed reading about the complications of this debate and useful
suggestions on how to resolve it, see Mamdani, 2001; 2005; Ekeh, 1975.
6. Zimbabweans who seized or applied and received land during the fast-track
programme ranged from rural peasants, farm workers, urban workers and
members of the professional and middle classes, including teachers, nurses,
doctors, police, soldiers, engineers, university lecturers and business persons.
See I. Scoones, 2008; S. Moyo, 2009.
7. Communal lands, as Rutherford has rightly argued, have been associated
with the nation – the backbone or defining character of the nation itself.
8. While there was no widespread violence in the period leading to the March
2008 presidential and parliamentary elections, the elections were not free
from controversy and problems. There were various electoral irregularities
in the organization of the election. These included gerrymandering in the
delimitation of electoral constituencies, manipulation of the voter registration
and voter education process. In contrast to the March 2008 elections, the
period leading to the Presidential Election Run Off of June 2008, conducted
following the inconclusiveness of the results of the first round of elections,
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9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
29
was an extremely violent one. According to reports from human rights
NGOs, 170 opposition MDC supporters were murdered in over 170,000
incidents of violence and abuse, and more than 20,000 homes were burnt and
destroyed in an orgy of violence mainly perpetrated by ZANU-PF leaders
and supporters. See ZESN, 2008; D. Matysszak, 2008.
For comparative reading on defensive nationalism, see Bowmann, 2003:
319–40.
These are also personal impressions I have made from my interaction and
discussions with Zimbabweans living in South Africa. For more detailed
discussion on defensive nationalism among Zimbabweans living abroad,
see Muzondidya (forthcoming). Zimbabwean diaspora discussion forums
also provide invaluable information about Zimbabweans’ views on race. For
example, see readers’ comments on www.newzimbabwe.com, 7 September
2009.
‘Some Lessons Learned.’ Unpublished MDC Mimeo, 2005.
The success of ZANU-PF propaganda on sanctions is difficult to tell, but
anecdotal evidence from discussions with Zimbabweans in different parts
of the country and debates in the press suggest that there are some who
believed not only the ZANU-PF message about sanctions and economic
problems in the country, but also that Britain and its Western allies were
planning to re-colonize Zimbabwe. See debate sparked by a commentary on
New Zimbabwe.com, 21 September 2005, available at www.newzimbabwe.
com/pages/sanctions32.13170.html
Paul Gilroy, After Empire, Melancholia or Convivial Culture? (Abingdon,
Routledfge, 2004), p. 9, as cited in Raftopoulos, ‘The Zimbabwean Crisis
and the Challenges for the Left’, p. 212.
By 1990, the government had acquired only 3.5m hectares of land, resettled
only 52,000 households of the targeted 162,000 families to be settled on
9m hectares. Worse, only 19 per cent of the land acquired was prime land.
The rest was either in marginal rainfall areas or unsuitable for agriculture.
See Moyo, 2000; Tshuma, 1997; Raftopoulos, 2004: 2; Mandaza, 1986.
White Zimbabweans who remained locked in their colonial nostalgia continued to relive their colonial imaginations by forming racial exclusive clubs
inside and outside Zimbabwe, such as the Rhodesia Association of South
Africa, Rhodesian Services Association, the Cape Rhodes Society, the Flame
Lily Association and Rhodesians Worldwide, establishing communication
networks and websites dedicated to reviving memories about Rhodesia and
keeping Rhodesian memorabilia like flags and military symbols. See Godwin
and Hancock, 1993: 316; www.rhodesia.com; www.rhodesianservices.org
Journal of Developing Societies 26, 1 (2010): 5–38
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30
Journal of Developing Societies 26, 1 (2010): 5–38
16. For discussions of the process of similar processes of racialization of space
in post-apartheid South Africa, see Dixon and Reicher 1997: 361–83;
D. Foster Vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 1–10.
17. The issue of segregation in clubs and restaurants came to the fore in 1996
when the University of Zimbabwe pressure group, Sangano Munhumutapa,
carried out a targeted campaign against ‘racist clubs’ in Harare. The campaign
involved students picketing clubs accused of practising institutional racism
against blacks.
18. See ‘Row at Zimbabwe race probe’, BBC news, 29 September 2004, http://
news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/3698114.stm; BBC news, 8 April 2004;
‘Streak sacking confirmed’, http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/3609311.
stm
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