Down with Tsvangirai
Down with his wife and children
Down with his dogs
Down with his cups!
(Robert Mugabe)1

Introduction

This epigraph captures the level of intolerance and indicates the degeneration of President Robert Mugabe from a respected liberator to a damned dictator. It is one of the most telling signs of the highest ebb of executive lawlessness. The emotional charged and violent slogans of punching the air and crying for the blood of political opponents do not belong to this century. It only indicates that Zimbabwe is under the rule of man and party of yesterday. That is the bane of politics in Zimbabwe and the source of the current crisis.

Zimbabwe is suffering from a chronic disease which John Saul correctly diagnosed as that of ‘liberation without democracy’ and Sipho Seepe described as a disease of ‘legitimacy without morality.’2 Understood more broadly, this is a problem of disconnection of the ‘democratic question’ from the ‘national question’ in post-liberation societies. The situation is further compounded by what Richard Werbner termed ‘anthropology of memory and the making of political subjectivities.’3 This relates to what Henning Melber terms ‘the mystification of liberators’ that has given birth to the problem of ‘liberation war credentials’ as the sole criteria for legitimate participation in politics and qualification for the highest political office in Zimbabwe.4 The roots of the current political stalemate in Zimbabwe that deepened following the elections of the 29th of March 2008 are to be found in this complex politics. Addressing the nation on the eve of the country’s 28th independence anniversary Robert Mugabe still had the audacity to state that:

We, not the British, established democracy based on one person one vote, democracy which rejected racial or gender discrimination and upheld human rights and religious freedom.5

This statement was ironic because Mugabe was claiming to have introduced democracy in Zimbabwe amidst a political stalemate in which an unprecedented delay in realising the results of presidential poll of the 29th of March 2008 were was plunging the country into further crisis and national despair. The government’s commitment to the principles of one person one vote as the basis of political legitimacy was also being questioned. Mugabe also claimed that the democracy they introduced rejected racial discrimination amidst an environment in which nationalism was being rendered in an openly racist manner since 1997.

This article deploys a combination of historical analysis of the tradition of liberation and discourse analysis of post-29th March 2008 political statements, press releases and messages on the 28th anniversary of independence in its endeavour reveal how the liberation has bequeathed an undemocratic culture on Zimbabwe. The current stalemate reveals how ZANU-PF remains entrenched within the traditional ‘nationalist-continuist’ paradigm that has never been amenable to the imperatives of democracy, human rights, constitutionalism and legalism. On the other hand, the MDC is claiming to be fighting for the restoration of the democratic culture that has been removed by ZANU-PF from the national agenda. The situation becomes even more complex when both ZANU-PF and MDC continue to struggle over agency revolving over who represents the authentic progressive agenda in the country. Within this competition, democracy, human rights and the national liberation struggle provide the ideological resources for the major political actors to attack each other and to solicit for political support.

The national and democracy questions in the liberation struggle

Frantz Fanon in his widely read book The Wretched of the Earth analysed what he termed the pitfalls of national consciousness and revealed internal contradictions and structural limits to emancipation inherent in anti-colonial resistance and organised liberation movements. He went further to argue that:

The national government, if it wants to be national, ought to govern by the people and for the people, for the outcasts and by outcasts. No leader, however valuable he may be, can substitute himself for the popular will; and the national government, before concerning itself about international prestige, ought first to give back their dignity to all citizens, fill their minds and feast their eyes with human things, and create a prospect that is human because consciousness and sovereign men dwell therein.6

With specific reference to Zimbabwe, it took a long time for scholars to abandon celebratory analysis of the liberation struggle that included hagiographies and the popular studies of peasant consciousness.7 Even in the midst of ethnic cleansing orchestrated by ZANU-PF and Mugabe in the 1980s, scholars and the international community remained silent and continued to pile praises on the Zimbabwe government as a successful transition story. Just two years into independence, the Zimbabwe government under Mugabe deployed the Fifth Brigade, a North Korean trained military outfit that was answerable to the prime minister and operated outside the normal national military structures. This army was highly politicised and tribally aligned to the majority Shona group. The violent behaviour of this army in Matabeleland and the Midlands regions left over twenty-thousand civilians dead and many others disappeared. This was the first instance that indicated that the pre-independence tradition of violence was being carried over to the postcolonial era.8 The state-orchestrated violence that enveloped the country between 2000 and today is not different from that which took place in Matabeleland and is even better than what happened to the Ndebele in the period between 1980 and 1987.9

At the forefront of the departure from celebratory approaches to the liberation struggle was Norma Kriger’s breaking work on Zimbabwean national liberation war that emphasised differentiation within the peasantry along the lines lineage, age, gender and wealth as determinants in engagement with guerrilla war. More importantly, Kriger exploded the traditional approaches that created the impression of monolithic, shared cultural nationalist ideology that was popular among peasant and introduced the neglected issues of violence and coercion rather than persuasion.10 At the time of its publication, Kriger’s book did not receive many positive reviews as it was considered too harsh on the nationalist struggle and for ignoring issues of persuasion, compliance, and voluntary participation in the nationalist struggle.11 Notwithstanding the fact that Kriger might have generalised a particular district (Mutoko) experience of nationalism and guerrilla war for the whole country, her work was the earliest that rang the bell about the authoritarian, militaristic and violent strand of Zimbabwean nationalism that is today creating the crisis the country finds itself. Many other critical studies have emerged since the 1990s that are very critical of some aspects of the conduct of the national liberation struggle including bad treatment of women, macho-masculinities the bred predatory sexualities, nationalist patriarchy, and intra-party violence that led Masipula Sithole to describe the nationalist struggle as ‘a revolution that even ate its own children.’12 Josephine Nhongo-Simbanegavi revealed how some of the most revered heroes of the liberation struggle like General Josiah Magama Tongogara were sexual predators in the rear bases in Mozambique. She explained how nationalist ideology was a bizarre mixture of modernity and tradition, with women’s emancipation stalled within these poles.13

Terence Ranger in search for the reasons why there was a ‘democracy and human rights crisis’ argued that:

Perhaps post-independence authoritarianism was the result of liberation wars themselves, when disagreement could mean death. It was difficult to escape the legacy of such a war. Maybe it sprang from the adoption by so many nationalists and especially liberation movements, of Marxist-Leninist ideologies. These implied ‘democratic centralism,’ the domination of civil society by the state and to-down modernising ‘development.’

But perhaps there was something inherent in nationalism itself, even before the wars and the adoption of socialism, which gave rise to authoritarianism. Maybe nationalism’s emphasis on unity at all costs—its subordination of trade unions and churches and all other African organisations to its imperatives—gave rise to an intolerance of pluralism. Maybe nationalism’s glorification of the leader gave rise to a post-colonial cult of personality. Maybe nationalism’s commitment to modernisation, whether socialist or not, inevitably implied a ‘commandist’ state.14

Ranger witnessed nationalist historiography to which he contributed so much being channelled into a narrower, partisan and highly politicised ‘patriotic history’ as Zimbabwean nationalism further degenerated into Afro-radicalism and nativism.15 The propensity for violence in ZANU-PF politics and Mugabe’s political behaviour continue to puzzle many analysts. I tried to explain it this way in 2002:

The post-colonial Zimbabwean state under ZANU-PF failed dismally to make a break with the tradition of nationalist authoritarianism and guerrilla violence as well as colonial settler repression. The ruling party itself, having been a militarised liberation movement, failed to de-militarise itself, not only in practice, but also in attitude and style of management of civil institutions and the state at large. The new ZANU-PF government readily assumed the resilient colonial and military oriented structures left by the retreating Rhodesian settler state, with serious implications for democracy, human rights and human security.16

Brian Raftopoulos critiqued left-leaning analysis crafted within the political economy paradigm’s sometimes blind and simplistic celebration of current nationalist political and economic initiatives as part of resolution of the national question via continuation of national democratic revolution. Raftopoulos made it clear that:

Unfortunately much of the anger of this embattled nationalism is channelled against the citizens of our states, and the nationalism that presents itself as the nation’s shield is often the suffocating embrace of murderous regimes. We need to find new collective discourses that build on a broad participation, and a deep commitment to critical discussion and debate. For Zimbabweans, this challenge is more urgent than ever as divisions over democratic questions continue to deepen.17

Indeed Sam Moyo and Paris Yeros who were choosing to ignore democracy and human rights issues in their analysis. For instance, to Moyo and Yeros what took root in Zimbabwe in 2000 was a revolution in which ‘two political questions that historically have galvanised peripheral capitalism—the agrarian and the national—were returned to the forefront of political life.’ They added that: ‘We argue that the revolutionary situation resulted neither in a revolution, nor in mediocre reformism, nor in restoration. It resulted in an interrupted revolution, marked by a radical agrarian reform and a radicalised state—the first on the continent since the end of the Cold War.’18 While Moyo and Yeros struggled to counter the equally problematic rendering of the situation on Zimbabwe in terms of ‘crisis, chaos and tyranny—a seemingly incurable African pathology,’ they ended up ignoring apparent democratic and human deficits in the country that explain the current stalemate.19

Unique historical features of political evolution of Zimbabwe and ZANU-PF

The way ZANU-PF evolved as a nationalist movement and a political party has a direct impact on how it understood issues of power and governance. ZANU was formed in 1963 after a major split in ZAPU under Joshua Nkomo. The split was followed by extended period of inter-party violence in which supporters of ZANU and ZAPU fought each other in the cities of Harare, Gweru and Bulawayo. This meant that ZANU emerged within a terrain marked by violence. The intransigence and bellicosity of the Rhodesia settler state also forced both ZAPU and ZANU into militancy and to embrace violence as a legitimate tool of liberation. On this development John Makumbe, a political scientist at the University of Zimbabwe wrote that ‘supposedly democratic political parties, formed for the twin purposes of putting an end to colonialism and creating a democratic dispensation in Zimbabwe, were forced to become militant and militaristic liberation movements.’20 Both ZAPU and ZANU received military support from the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Cuba and China on top of the support from fellows Africans on the continent. Thus the Socialist bloc had a lasting impact on the liberation movements to the extent that: ‘The political organisation of ZANU…assumed the eastern bloc format, complete with a central committee and politburo.’21

The conduct of the armed struggle against a belligerent settler colonial state implied a number of developments that left a lasting impression on ZANU. The first was militarisation of the liberation movement together with commandist and regimentalist attributes. The second was prominence of the party leader within the movement that became seeds for development cult of personality. The third was that the militarist approach tended to brook no dissent. The fourth was the building of a nationalist-military alliance that has remained up to today in which top commanders of the army are ZANU-PF members.22 The final aspect was the development of a culture of violence as a legitimate tool of achieving political goals (examples: ‘the ZANU axe must continue to fall upon the necks of rebels when we find it no longer possible to persuade them into the harmony that binds us all’ and ‘degrees in violence’ speech).23

Makumbe argues that these developments implied that ZANU ‘would become vulnerable to tendencies of authoritarianism and personalised rule.’24 Under the influence of Eastern bloc countries that had one-party political systems, ZANU’s pronouncements and propaganda throughout the liberation period into the 1980s and beginning of 1990s, emphasised their need to create a one-party socialist state in Zimbabwe.25 Even today the way ZANU-PF conducts itself is as though Zimbabwe is under a one party-state political system. Makumbe has further argued that ‘the party’s adherence to socialist party organisational structures and systems of operational management have resulted in its failure to transform itself into a democratic political party.’26 He concluded that:

The genesis of a political party seems to have a bearing on that party’s future development. The Zimbabwe case seems to illustrate that liberation movements struggle to transform themselves into democratic political parties when their countries become liberated or independent. Indeed, whenever they are threatened with loss of political power, former liberation movements tend to resuscitate their original achievements as liberators as a license to continued tenure of office. They also harness their wartime tactics of instilling fear in the electorate to win elections.27

The timing of Zimbabwe’s independence also impacted on future politics in the country. Zimbabwe joined the community of nations as the fiftieth independent African state on the 18th of April 1980. It was neither an ‘early decoloniser’ of the 1960s nor a ‘late decoloniser’ of the 1990s. It was a ‘mid-decolonised,’ achieving independence in the middle of ‘early’ and ‘late’ de-colonisers. This meant that it stood astride uneasily the fading socialist world and the emerging neo-liberal world. It was therefore was forced to dream in both socialist and liberal terms, and its political ideology was captive to these antagonistic worlds. It is also important to note that the transfer of political power from white settler to the black nationalist elite that had spearheaded the liberation struggle was negotiated at Lancaster House in Britain under the tutelage, refereeing and supervision of Britain and America, that made sure that radical Marxist ideologies that had been imbibed by the liberation forces and that advocated for the total smashing of the colonially constructed state and the building of a new socialist republic did not materialize. At the end of decolonisation, Zimbabwe was born as a successor to the Rhodesia colonial state rather than a new alternative to it.

The current political stalmate in Zimbabwe

The harmonised senatorial, parliamentary and presidential elections held on the 29th of March 2008, that were for the first time in postcolonial history of Zimbabwe, not characterised by violence has culminated in a terrible stalemate in which ZANU-PF has vowed not to leave power even if it was defeated in the lections. Post-election violence indicates how ZANU-PF is trying to force the electorate to vote for Mugabe in the planned presidential run-off. This is the latest manifestation of what Horace Campbell termed ‘executive lawlessness.’28 Since 1997, Zimbabwe has witnessed a process in which the executive arm of government represented by President Robert Mugabe consistently undermined existing legal frameworks and constitutionalism as it inaugurated the Third Chimurenga dubbed ‘war for economic liberation.’29 Since that time, the Zimbabwean government took many controversial decisions, beginning with sending of troops to the DRC without parliamentary consultation, awarding war veterans lump sums of pension outside parameters of the budget, endorsing and supporting invasion of white owned commercial farms, governing through military-style operations that included the widely condemned Operation Murambatsvina, arbitrary cutting of prices of basic goods without considerations of market realities up to the current barring of release of the results of presidential elections.30

The current stalemate is furthered compounded by the increasing intervention of the military into civil and political affairs. This emerged poignantly on the 9th of January 2002 during a tight contest for the presidency of Zimbabwe between Morgan Tsvangirai of the MDC and Robert Mugabe of ZANU-PF. In a startling televised statement the then Commander of Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF) General Vitalis Zvinavashe, flanked by all service military and security chiefs including the directors of prisons and the feared spy organisation (the Central Intelligence Organisation-CIO), declared that the country’s military and security institutions would only render support to leaders who ‘pursue Zimbabwean values, traditions and beliefs for which thousands of lives were lost in pursuit of Zimbabwe’s hard-won independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and national interests.’ Without blinking at all, the commander of ZDF continued to state that:

To this end, let it be known that the highest office on the land is a straightjacket whose occupant is expected to observe the objectives of the liberation struggle. We will, therefore, not accept, let alone support or salute anyone with a different agenda that threatens the very existence of our sovereignty, our country and our people.31

This threat has been repeated by the current commander of ZDF Constantine Chiwenga. This behaviour of the military generals reveals their attempt to act as ‘king-makers’ in Zimbabwe in subversion of even the people’s will.32 On the 24th of April 2008, Tendai Biti, the Secretary-General of MDC-Tsvangirai wrote another letter to General Constantine Chiwenga in which the Commander of ZDF was reminded of Section 96 of the Constitution of Zimbabwe which allows deployment of the military forces in defence of Zimbabwe not against Zimbabweans. Biti added that:

The conduct of the defence forces against their own innocent fathers and mothers is a callous and contemptuous disregard for their democratic right to choose a leader of their choice and clear breach of your constitutional office. As Commander of Zimbabwe Defence Forces, you are personally and constitutionally liable for the mayhem occasioned by t5he unlawful deployment.33

The MDC is continuing to try and salvage democracy and human rights from the jaws of ZANU-PF authoritarianism and militarism. In the midst of all the evidence to the contrary ZANU-PF insists that the national liberation struggle installed democracy and human rights that were denied under colonialism. At the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of Nations Annual Summit, held in Maputo in Mozambique in June 2004, he stated that:

Eleven years I spent in prison fighting for democracy, for one man, one vote and for us now to hear a voice from London saying there is no democracy, no freedom, no human rights observed in Zimbabwe is very offensive and repulsive…We will not allow erstwhile imperialists to come and judge our election… [they] must be supervised only by people of our region, people of Africa, people in the Third World.34

What is apparent in all Mugabe’s references to democracy and human rights, he has failed to cite current evidence to prove that he was a democrat, practising democracy and respecting human rights save for the land reform that was marred by violence and loss of life and constant reference to the ideals of the liberation struggle which he is undermining everyday in practice. The MDC is therefore justified in its claims that ZANU-PF has been the undertaker of democracy and human rights in its twenty-eight year rule and they cite numerous examples to substantiate their claims. The result has been a fierce ideological contest (battle for ideas) that includes a ‘nationalist-continuist’ discourse represented by ZANU-PF weeded in traditional anti-colonial rhetoric, liberation war commandism, intolerance of dissenting voices, adherence to notions of monolithic unity and notions of patriotism together with the rhetoric of defending national sovereignty and land as priceless African heritage. In this discourse, politics is channelled and reduced into a form of memory of the national liberation struggle. The second is the recent counter-discourse represented by the MDC with its mantra of a ‘new Zimbabwe’ founded on the global principles of democracy, human rights, good governance and acceptance of neo-liberal micro-economic policies. It is within these two discourses that current politics in Zimbabwe are playing themselves and spilling over to the SADC region and the international terrain as ZANU-PF and MDC compete to mobilise friends and allies across the world. The people of Zimbabwe are caught in between and they bear the humanitarian costs of this struggle that has taken global proportions.

The MDC has tried to make its politics very different from that of ZANU-PF tradition with Morgan Tsvangirai stating that ‘MDC politics are not nationalist inspired, because they focus more on empowerment and participation of the people. ZANU’s thinking has always been top-down, centralized, always trapped in a time warp.35 The MDC has also fought to claim the liberation struggle as for workers arguing that:

The political struggle in Zimbabwe, historically led by the working class, has always been for dignity and sovereignty of the people. In the first Chimurenga, workers fought against exploitation in the mines, farms and industry, and peasants against the expropriation of their land. The nationalist movement that led the second Chimurenga was born from and built on struggles of the working people. The current nationalist elite hijacked this struggle for its own ends, betraying the people’s hopes and aspirations.36

The MDC has made ceaseless attempts to connect with liberation history via the avenue of social justice, democracy and human rights which ZANU-PF is said to have discarded. In a 2003 document, MDC’s core values, goals and policy principles recognized ‘the struggle of the Zimbabwean people throughout our history for economic, social and political justice’ and acknowledged ‘the continuing liberation struggle for social, economic and political rights and freedoms.’37 Similarly, in a 2008 policy document, the MDC stated that it ‘pursues social liberation policies aimed at completing the unfinished business of the national liberation struggle and shall strive for the democratic structural economic liberation, rehabilitation and transformation of Zimbabwe.’38

Recent post-election speeches by both ZANU-PF and MDC indicate how the issue of memory of liberation, democracy and human rights has come to the core of party politics. This politics is intertwined with the issue of land, food and jobs, with ZANU-PF emphasizing land and MDC jobs and food. Thus following the victory of his party in the parliamentary elections, Tsvangirai issued a press statement which partly read:

The challenge of giving birth to a new Zimbabwe founded on restoration and not on retribution; on equality and not discrimination; on love, not war; on tolerance, not hate. After Saturday 29th of March 2008, Zimbabwe will never be the same again; the people have spoken with one vote….In those minutes inside the polling booth, each one of us re-wrote the history of Zimbabwe. For that particular moment, we each held the destiny of our country in the pen we used to cast the vote. The votes cast on Saturday were for change and a new beginning. It was a vote for jobs; it was a vote for food, for dignity, for respect, for decency and equality, for tolerance, for love, and for trust.39

It is clear from this statement that Tsvangirai was seeing a ‘New Zimbabwe’ as one different from that constructed by ZANU-PF where there was retribution, discrimination, violence, hate, coupled with lack of food, jobs, human dignity, decency, equality, respect, love, trust and equality. ZANU-PF plunged the country into all this by severing the democratic question from national question.

The battle for ideas and imaginations of a ‘New Zimbabwe’

On the eve of the 28th anniversary of Zimbabwe’s independence Mugabe and ZANU-PF took advantage of the day to remind the nation of the liberation struggle and the strategic role Mugabe played in this struggle. Ignatius Chombo reminded the people that:

Our leader, His Excellency Cde Mugabe spent eleven years in jail and many more at the forefront of the liberation struggle with other luminaries like Cde Chitepo, Cde Joshua Nkomo and Cde Muzenda among others….Cde Mugabe’s tenacious defence of the dignity of the people of this land and 28 years later he is still standing strong in defending our heritage.40

What was even unique about the celebrations is that during Mugabe’s inspection of the Guard of Honour, the military detachment made another political statement—‘Zimbabwe is a sovereign state, we shall defend it with our blood.’41 Every member of Zimbabwe’s military forces takes an oath of allegiance to the state, and why they had to repeat that oath at a stadium as a collective military detachment is pointing to something beyond military professionalism. Did Mugabe need this assurance at that moment and why? When Mugabe’s turn came to deliver his national address, he tied to claim democracy and human rights as property of ZANU-PF just like the liberation struggle by stating that:

We, not the British, established democracy based on one person one vote, democracy which rejected racial or gender discrimination and upheld human rights and religious freedom….In short, the advent of an independent Zimbabwe restored dignity to our people. That, comrades and friends, is the essence of our celebrations here, indeed, the very core of it. No challenge or hardship can ever overcome the sense of being independent. For that reason, let us take pride as we renew our independence joy in loudly proclaiming that Zimbabwe, this our Zimbabwe, shall never be a colony again (my emphasis).42

Mugabe emphasised on the significance of rekindling the memory of the liberation struggle as the main way through which Zimbabweans should form unity of purpose of guarding a threatened national sovereignty. He second also claimed that ZANU-PF through prosecution of the liberation movement brought about democracy and human rights in Zimbabwe including one person one vote.

On the 7th of March 2008, Tsvangirai continued to hammer home the issue of lack of democracy in Zimbabwe and how his party was committed to restore it. He stated that:

But democracy is an orphan in Zimbabwe. Since the infamous Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965 made by the white government of Ian Smith in what was then Rhodesia—in an effort to block the extension of suffrage to the country’s black majority—the cry for democracy has been ignored. Mugabe’s 28-year rule has similarly undermined the development of institutional democracy….

How can global leaders espouse the values of democracy, yet when they are being challenge fail to open their mouth? Why is it that a supposed ‘war on terror’ ignores very real terror of broken minds and mangled bodies that lie along the trail left by Mugabe?….The new leadership is committed to nurturing democracy in Zimbabwe and to begin rebuilding our shattered country. It is time to make a stand.43

Arthur Mutambara the leader of the other faction of the MDC has continued to articulate a combination of the national and democratic issues including encouraging political actors to put national interest first in his Independence Day message:

This particular 28th commemoration is like none of the previous ones. We are in uniquely invidious circumstances. Our economy has virtually collapsed and industries have grinded to a halt. Our society is calibrated by fear, terror and outright brutality. Our national institutions of governance have been rendered dysfunctional and impotent. We have had harmonised general elections, and twenty days later the results of the presidential polls are not yet released. One of the key objectives of the liberation struggle was attainment of the one person one vote dispensation. Twenty eight years after independence our people are denied this basic right. Our country is characterised by extreme illegitimacy where we have an abrasive caretaker president and an illegally constituted cabinet in cahoots with an imbecilic and cynical military junta, running the affairs of the country.44

Turning to the future direction that Zimbabwe must take since the elections of the 29th of March 2008, Mutambara stated that:

In the history of every nation, there comes a time when a generation has a unique opportunity to break with the past and define a new direction. Such a momentous occasion currently presents itself in our country. We need to seize the time and deliver change. This requires putting national interest before partisan, sectoral and personal interests. It demands that we apply our minds and outthink the regime. What Mugabe has lost in the electoral battle, he cannot legitimately regain in any election remotely described as free and fair. He is fatally and mortally wounded. The veil of invincibility has been pierced. On the 29th of March 2008, the people voted for change, and that democratic choice must be defended. Our independence will be meaningless without the sanctity and integrity of the one person one vote principle. Those that rule our country must do so with the consent of the governed.45

In an endeavour to facilitate democratic change Tsvangirai has embarked on a diplomatic offensive to cut Mugabe’s umbilical cord with Africa.

Mugabe and Tsvangirai’s diplomatic offensives

Faced with expulsion from the Commonwealth and being slapped with smart sanctions Mugabe embarked on a diplomatic offensive that included placing ‘the Zimbabwe problem at the centre of a larger anti-imperialist and Pan-African position.’46 Mugabe cleverly located the land question within a discourse of legitimate redress for colonial injustice a language that had resonance on the African continent and the Third World due the memories of colonial domination.47 At the same time the MDC put the Zimbabwe crisis on the international scene as a case of crisis of governance punctuated by serious violation of human rights on an unprecedented scale. The MDC readily embraced post-Cold War politics of global morality within its human rights, democracy and good governance discourse.

Mugabe reacted to these developments by digging deploying memories of liberation struggle and trying to renew Third World nationalism, and in the process casting issues of good governance, democracy and human rights as cover-up for latter-day liberal imperialism. This won him some sympathies in the SADC region, the African continent and some pockets of the Third World.48 At home this was articulated through such slogans as ‘Zimbabwe Will Never Be a Colony Again’ and ‘Land is the Economy, Economy is Land’ that was attended by the illegitimating of the MDC as a ‘running dog of imperialism.’49 Mugabe channelled nationalism into Afro-radicalism and nativism.50 This was clearly manifested in what Ezra Chitando terms ‘sacralisation’ of land and mythologizing of ZANU-PF and ritualisation of Mugabe.51 In this religio-political interface, ZANU-PF is the only party with the historic mission in Zimbabwe and is an heir to the First Chimurenga and Mugabe is the obedient first born son taking orders from oracular shrines and fulfilling oracular prophesises of Nehanda and Chaminuka.52

Mugabe’s diplomatic offensive has also included adoption of the ‘Look East Policy’ that has seen mainly Chinese gaining a foothold in Zimbabwe, building on the liberation war relations in which China supplied ZANU-PF with arms and ideological resources including Maoism.53 In all this South Africa evolved a complex policy of ‘quiet diplomacy’ that has been heavily criticised by those fighting for democracy in Zimbabwe. It has been seen as part of collusion if not support of a dictatorial regime based on liberation-war solidarities.54 Phimister and Raftopoulos have argued that Mbeki’s policy toward Mugabe has shallow historical roots and is ‘more contingent on domestic political forces and events’ including ‘the potentially unsettling precedent that would be established by an MDC government in Harare, and of the apparently widespread support for Mugabe by black South Africans.’55 Recently, the Africa Confidential’s lead article entitled ‘Zimbabwe: The Sick Man of the South’ outlined how Mugabe as the ‘eminence grise’ of the SADC region managed to ‘shield himself from criticism with a series of concentric ring of support.’ It added that the inner circle of regional allies included Angola, Mozambique and Namibia—with a common history of waging liberation wars.56

Since the 29th of March 2008, Tsvangirai has vowed to cit Mugabe’s umbilical cord with Africa as they had dome with the West. Three recent developments seem to indicate that this diplomatic offensive is working. The first is the emergency meeting (12th April 2008) of SADC leaders with the sole aim to discuss the crisis in Zimbabwe held in Lusaka in which both Mugabe and Tsvangirai were invited. For the first time, Mugabe who normally uses such occasions to push his image of a revolutionary dedicated to Africa’s total liberation and to lambast the West, abstained from the meeting which Tsvangirai attended. The second is the politics that attended the Chinese ship carrying arms to Zimbabwe that failed to offload its goods and President Levy Mwanawasa of Zambia and Chairperson of SADC urging member states not to allow the ship to offload its goods at it ports. Labour unions have also called its members not to offload the ship. This is one indication of some change of attitude among SADC states, though still more need to be done to force Mugabe to adhere to principles of democracy. The third development is the ANC under Jacob Zuma’s open criticism of what Mugabe is doing and putting pressure on him to release presidential polls’ results.57 Perhaps the SADC is growing out of being a solidarity organisation into a guardian of democracy in the region.

Conclusion and the way forward

ZANU-PF and Mugabe are doing everything to block a democratic transition in Zimbabwe. Their strategy has included telling Zimbabweans that they will never allow the MDC to rule over Zimbabwe even if it wins both parliamentary and presidential elections. Even more disturbing is the continued interference of the military in civil and political affairs of the country together with the rising post-election violence targeting MDC supporters. One wonders how a presidential run-off would be possible with a militarised terrain and what is the purpose of the run-off if ZANU-PF and Mugabe would not accept change? This is all the culmination of the growing executive lawlessness within which ‘the political kingdom’ was privileged over and above constitutionalism and legalism. One just hopes that sanity would return to Mugabe and ZANU-PF and they allow and respect the will of the people to prevail. For this to happen, the region and the international community must intervene to ensure an enabling environment for presidential run-off.

About the Author

Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Lecturer in African Studies at The Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies at The Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom.

Notes

1. R. Mugabe’s declaration at a campaign rally in Masvingo for the June 2000 parliamentary elections. This declaration is also quoted in E. Chitando, ‘Down with the Devil, Forward with Christ! A Study of the Interface between Religious and Political Discourses in Zimbabwe,’ in African Sociological Review, 6, (1), (2002), p. 165.
2. J. Saul, ‘Liberation without Democracy? Rethinking the experiences of the Southern African Liberation Movements,’ in J. Hyslop (ed.), African Democracy in the Era of Globalisation, (Wits University Press, Johannesburg, 1999), pp. 167-178 and S. Seepe, ‘Legitimacy without Morality Subverts Democracy,’ in Mail & Guardian, 25-31 January 2002.
3. W. Werbner, ‘Beyond Oblivion: Confronting Memory Crisis,’ in R. Werbner (ed.), Memory and the Postcolony: African Anthropology and the Critique of Power, (Zed Books, London & New York, 1998), p. 2.
4. H. Melber, ‘From Liberation Movements to Governments: On Political Culture in Southern Africa,’ in African Sociological Review, 6, (1), (2002), p. 3. For a recent analysis of ‘liberation war credentials’ and elections see S. J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, ‘Robert Mugabe’s Liberation War Credentials: ZANU-PF’s Winning Card?’ in A. K. Nord & D. Spiker (eds.), Elections in Zimbabwe: Analysis and Commentary on the 2008 Zimbabwe Presidential and Parliamentary Elections, (Heinrich Boll Stiftung, Cape Town, March 2008.
5. Excerpt from President Robert Mugabe’s national address on the occasion of the 28th Independence Anniversary in The Herald, 19 April 2008.
6. F. Frantz, The Wretched of the Earth: Reprint from Original French, (Penguin, London, 2001), p. 165.
7. On hagiographies in Zimbabwe see D. Martin and P. Johnson, The Struggle for Zimbabwe: The Chimurenga War, (Zimbabwe Publishing House, Harare, 1981) and C. S. Banana (ed.), Turmoil and Tenacity: Zimbabwe 1890-1990, (The College Press, Harare, 1989). For studies of peasant consciousness see T. O Ranger, Peasant Consciousness and Guerrilla War in Zimbabwe, (Zimbabwe Publishing House, Harare, 1988); D. Lan, Guns and Rain: Guerrillas and Spirit Mediums in Zimbabwe, (Zimbabwe Publishing House, Harare, 1988); K. D. Manungo, The Role Peasants Played in the Zimbabwe War of Liberation With Special Reference to the Chiweshe District,’ (Unpublished PhD thesis, Ohio University, 1991); For a comprehensive historiography of nationalism in Zimbabwe see B. Raftopoulos, ‘Problematising Nationalism in Zimbabwe: A Historiographical Review,’ in Zambezia: University of Zimbabwe Journal of Humanities, XXVI, (ii), (1999), pp. 115-134.
8. The atrocities committed are detailed in Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace & Legal Resources Foundation Report, Breaking the Silence, Building True Peace: A Report on the Disturbances in Matabeleland and the Midlands, 1980-1988, (CCJP & LRF, Harare, 1997). See also J. Alexander, J. McGregor & T. Ranger, Violence & Memory: One hundred Years in the ‘Dark Forests’ of Matabeleland, (Weaver Press, Harare, 2000).
9. S. J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, ‘The Post-Colonial State and Matabeleland: Regional Perceptions of Civil-Military Relations, 1980-2002,’ in R. Williams, G. Cawthra & D. Abrahams (eds.), Ourselves to Know: Civil-Military Relations and Defence Transformation in Southern Africa, (Institute for Security Studies, Pretoria, 2003), pp. 17-38.
10. N. J. Kriger, Zimbabwe’s Guerrilla War: Peasant Voices, (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1992), pp. 200-240.
11. S. Robins, ‘Heroes, Heretics and Historians of the Zimbabwe Revolution: A Review Article of Norma Kriger’s Peasant Voices,’ in Zambezia, XXIII, (i), (1996), p. 86.
12. M. Sithole, Zimbabwe: Struggle Within the Struggle: Second Edition, (Rujeko Publishers, Harare, 1999)
13. J. Nhongo-Simanegavi, For Better or Worse? Women and ZANLA in Zimbabwe’s Liberation Struggle, (Weaver Press, Harare, 2000); J. P. Parpart, ‘Masculinities, Race and Violence in the Making of Zimbabwe,’ in K. Muchemwa and R. Muponde (eds.), Manning the Nation: Father Figures in Zimbabwean Literature and Society, (Weaver Press, Harare, 2007), pp. 89-101.
14. T. Ranger, ‘Introduction to Volume Two,’ in T. Ranger (ed.), The Historical Dimensions of Democracy and Human Rights in Zimbabwe: Volume Two: Nationalism, Democracy and Human Rights, (University of Zimbabwe Publications, Harare, 2003), pp. 1-2
15. T. Ranger, ‘Nationalist Historiography, Patriotic History and the History of the Nation: The Struggle Over the Past in Zimbabwe,’ in Journal of Southern African Studies, 30, (2), (June 2004), pp. 215-234. on Afro-radicalism and nativism see A. Mbembe, ‘African Modes of Self-Writing,’ in Public Culture, 14, (1), (2002).
16. S. J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, ‘Dynamics of the Zimbabwe Crisis in the 21st Century,’ in African Journal on Conflict Resolution, p. 111.
17. B. Raftopoulos, ‘The Zimbabwean Crisis and the Challenges for the Left,’ in Journal of Southern African Studies, 32, (2), (June 2006), p. 219.
18. S. Moyo & P. Yeros, ‘The Radicalised State: Zimbabwe’s Interrupted Revolution,’ in Review of African Political Economy, 111, (2007), p. 103.
19. Ibid.
20. J. Makumbe, ‘ZANU-PF: A Party in Transition?’ in R. Cornwell (ed.), Zimbabwe’s Turmoil: Problems and Prospects, (Institute for Security Studies, Pretoria, 2003), p. 34.
21. Ibid.
22. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Nationalist-Military Alliance and the Fate of Democracy, pp. 80-96.
23. D. Blair, Degrees in Violence: Robert Mugabe and the Struggle for Power in Zimbabwe, (Continuum International Publishing Group, New York, 2000); M. Meredith, Our Votes, Our Guns: Robert Mugabe and the Tragedy of Zimbabwe, (Public Affairs, New York, 2002) and S. Chan, Robert Mugabe: Life of Power and Violence, (Michigan University Press, New York, 2003)
24. Makumbe, ‘ZANU-PF,’ p. 34.
25. I. Mandaza & L. Sachikonye (eds.), The One Party State and Democracy: The Zimbabwe Debate, (Sapes Books, Harare, 1991).
26. Makumbe, ‘ZANU-PF,’ p. 35.
27. Ibid, p. 38
28. H. Campbell, Reclaiming Zimbabwe: The Exhaustion of Patriarchal Model of Liberation, (African World Press, Asmara, 2003).
29. R. Mugabe, Inside the Third Chimurenga, (Ministry of Information and Publicity, Harare, 2001).
30. S. J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, ‘Conflict, Violence & Crisis in Zimbabwe,’ in K. Matlosa, J. Elklit and B. Chiroro (eds.), Challenges of Conflict, Democracy and Development, (Electoral Institute of Southern Africa, Johannesburg, 2007), pp. 306-329.
31. This statement that was not only unconstitutional but that signalled a threat of a military take over in case of a win by a candidate without liberation credentials. For details on nationalist-military alliance in Zimbabwe sees S. J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, ‘Nationalist-Military Alliance in Zimbabwe and the Fate of Democracy,’ in African Journal on Conflict Resolution, 6, (1), (2006), pp. 49-80.
32. Letter written by Morgan Tsvangirai to President Robert Mugabe, 28th of December 2005.
33. T. Biti, ‘Unlawful Deployment of Units of Zimbabwe Defence Forces: Letter to General Constantine Chiwenga, 24th of April 2008,
34. Mail & Guardian, 25 June 2004.
35. Quoted in Southern Africa Report, June 2000. For more details on the labour movement and the MDC see B. Raftopoulos & T. Yoshikuni (eds.), Sites of Struggle: Essays in Zimbabwe’s Urban History, (Weaver Press, Harare, 1999); B. Raftopoulos, ‘The Labour Movement and the Emergence of Opposition Politics in Zimbabwe,’ in B. Raftopoulos & L. Sachikonye (eds.), Striking Back: The Labour Movement and the Post-Colonial State in Zimbabwe, 1980-2000, (Weaver Press, Harare, 2001); B. Raftopoulos & I. Phimister (eds.), Keep On Knocking: A History of the Labour Movement in Zimbabwe, 1900-97, (Baobab Books, Harare, 1997).
36. MDC Election Manifesto, 2000, p. 2. See also R. Saunders, Never the Same Again: Zimbabwe’s Growth Towards Democracy, (Edwina Spicer Productions, Harare, 2000).
37. MDC Policy Document, 2003.
38. MDC Manifesto, 2008.
39. Morgan Tsvangirai, Press Conference Statement, 1 April 2008.
40. Herald, 19 April 2008.
41. Ibid.
42. The Herald, 19 April 2008.
43. The Guardian, 7 April 2008.
44. A. G. O. Mutambara, ‘A Shameful Betrayal of National Independence: The Case for Out-thinking ZANU-PF and Putting National Interest First,’ in www.sokwanele.com
45. Ibid.
46. I. Phimister & B. Raftopoulos, ‘Mugabe, Mbeki & the Politics of Anti-Imperialism,’ in Review of African Political Economy, 101, (2004), p. 385.
47. Ibid.
48. Ibid, pp.386-399.
49. D. Moore, ‘Is the Land the Economy and Economy the Land? Primitive Accumulation in Zimbabwe,’ in Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 19, (2), (2001), pp. 253-66.
50. S. J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, ‘The Nativist Revolution and Development Conundrums in Zimbabwe,’ in ACCORD Occasional Paper Series, 1, (4), (2006), pp. 1-40.
51. E. Chitando, ‘In the Beginning Was the Land’: The Appropriation of Religious Themes in Political Discourse in Zimbabwe,’ in Africa, 75, (2), (2005), pp.220-239.
52. Shona mythology has it that Nehanda and Chaminuka (revered Shona religious figures) prophesised that their bones were going to rise up to fight for the liberation of Zimbabwe from colonialism. Mugabe presents himself as those ‘bones’ that are fighting a Third Chimurenga. See F. Chung, Reliving the Second Chimurenga: Memoirs from the Liberation Struggle, (Nordic Africa Institute and Weaver Press, Uppsala and Harare, 2006), p. 82.
53. P. Chigora, ‘Zimbabwe’s Look East Policy: A Critical Appraisal of Zimbabwe’s Foreign Policy in the New Millennium,’ in OSSREA Bulletin, (March 2007), pp. 9-13.
54. J-A van Wyk, ‘The Zimbabwe Crisis: Reluctance, Inadequacy or Another Rubicon to Cross?’ in New Zealand International Review, 28, (2003), pp. 30-50.
55. Phimister & Raftopoulos, ‘Mugabe, Mbeki & the Politics of Anti-Imperialism,’ p. 390.
56. Zimbabwe: The Sick Man of the South,’ in Africa Confidential, 49, (7), 28 March 2008).
57. ANC, ‘Zimbabwe Elections: The Will of the People Must be Heard’ in ANC Today, 8, (15), (18-24 April 2008).