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This article explores the everyday narratives of women’s experiences of obstetric violence in public maternity systems in Zimbabwe. It examines women’s perception and knowledge of obstetric violenc...

The paper examines the emerging impact of COVID-19 on soccer in Zimbabwe. It focuses on the Zimbabwe Premier Soccer League (ZPSL) to highlight how football leagues with historical challenges of fun...

This article analyses the dynamics underpinning formal political institutions in relation to women’s participation in Zimbabwe, with a focus on the post November 2017 context. Patriarchal continuities and not changes characterize the post-November period. Under the “new dispensation”, patriarchy, intertwined with the increase in militarized masculinities, is producing exclusion with limited spaces for women’s participation. Simultaneously, Zimbabwean women at times have been destabilizing political spaces, while also being complicit in reproducing patriarchal practices and violence. The military-assisted transition is significant because of the fall of Grace Mugabe and the broader implications of this for women and politics in Zimbabwe.

The paper examines the political economy of resettlement planning, beneficiary selection and reasoning behind A1 and A2 in Zimbabwe post year 2000. The Fast-Track Land Reform Programme which was preceded by land occupations led by war veterans and some ruling party members of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) was based on political imperatives in land allocation with little consideration of sound settlement planning and land use. The purpose of this paper is to have an understanding of the planning, beneficiary selection and reasoning behind the implementation of A1 and A2 models. The paper also examines the political and socio-economic imperatives that influenced beneficiary selection in Mashonaland West, Zimbabwe. The study used the multi-method approach. The study used a case study of Makonde district in Mashonaland West Province, Zimbabwe from A1 and A2 farmers. The study dwelt mainly on qualitative methodologies in order to get farmers’ perceptions and feelings towards the issues around land distribution on the role of politics in resettlement planning and beneficiary selection. The qualitative approach was conducted through focus group discussion, in-depth interviews, key informants and participant observation. The self-administered questionnaires were distributed mainly to A2 farmers who were assumed to be literate. Secondary data were collected from the farmers’ database of the Lands Department, waiting lists for both A1 and A2 farmers and also farmer application forms. The major finding of the study was that politics played a major role in land allocation and selection of beneficiaries. The war veterans and political leadership were part of the district and provincial lands committees responsible for the selection of beneficiaries. Land beneficiaries were passive participants in decision making; they lacked representation and were fearful of political leaders and war veterans.

Football is the most popular game in Zimbabwe. Events and activities in this sport in many ways mirror the state of wider society in the country. This paper provides a grounded critique of how money, football and politics intersect through the lens of the Asiagate match-fixing scandal which engulfed post-2000 Zimbabwe. It utilizes reports and transcripts from the investigation to highlight the role of various actors in the match-fixing scandal including administrators, politicians, coaches, players, referees, and journalists. The paper argues that Asiagate needs to be understood in the context of the globalization of match-fixing and the socio-economic crises engulfing post-2000 Zimbabwe. The socio-economic crises characterized by widespread poverty and suffering left players vulnerable to match-fixers. The paper concludes that the politically connected and powerful players in the scandal were not held accountable and this has created precedence for the continued existence of match-fixing in Zimbabwean football.

The paper examines the role sex work played as a livelihood opportunity for women to meet short and long term needs. Post 2000 Zimbabwe underwent a major socioeconomic crisis which culminated in world record inflation rates, widespread poverty, high unemployment, food and cash shortages. This culminated in 2008 where the country suspended its currency and adopted a multi-currency system with the American dollar gaining prominence as the mode of exchange. Sex work has a long history in colonial and post-colonial Zimbabwe but post 2000 period requires a nuanced analysis of how this livelihood activity has evolved in response to the ever-changing macroeconomic context. Participant observation and unstructured interviews with female sex workers point towards their ability to actively respond to macroeconomic changes. Agency demonstrated by sex workers characterizes how they adjusted through the context of crisis and hyperinflation in Zimbabwe. The findings point to an increased inflow of income for sex workers which have translated to an improved livelihood despite poor working conditions which are reinforced by criminalization and penalization of sex work in Zimbabwe. The paper thus argues that sex work is an occupational sector with participants who make rational choices in joining sex work.

Betting and gambling have a long history in Zimbabwe. In the past lottery, horse racing and at times dog racing were an integral part of betting culture, especially among the employed and u...

The Fast Track Land Reform programme in Zimbabwe was one of the largest land redistribution exercises in the world. The programme had varying impacts on the diverse rural population, leading to a b...

In the light of the previous chapter, this chapter provides a further analysis of the second chimurenga by identifying and discussing a number of themes. It does so primarily in order to set a comparative basis for analysing the third chimurenga. Crucial in this regard is the relationship between guerrillas and villagers during the second chimurenga, as this speaks to the significance of the relationship between war veterans and occupiers during the fast track occupations (third chimurenga). One the key themes covered in the recent literature is spirituality, with an increasing move away from examining spiritual mediums and other traditional forms of spirituality, to an examination of the relationship between Christian missions, guerrillas and villagers. As well, in the Rhodesian countryside, a number of local patriarchal systems existed, which included chiefs in Native reserves and white farmers on commercial farmers. Whether intentionally or not, the very presence of male guerrillas challenged the authority of these patriarchs. Finally, in the context of patriarchy, the chapter considers the multi-faceted experiences of different groupings of women during the war of liberation.

In developing the argument of the previous chapter, this current chapter demonstrates in diverse ways the manner in which the third chimurenga occupations embodied a decentralised character. This overall claim about the occupations is consistent with a historiography of nationalism and thus goes contrary to the dominant narrative about the third chimurenga. The chapter discusses the diverse memories, motivations and claims of different categories of occupiers which led to their participation in the occupations. It also considers issues around disorder and order during the occupations including the multiple ways in which occupations were organised locally and became crystallised in farm-level authority structures. In seeking to highlight the diversity more convincingly, the chapter examines the occupations in two areas of the countryside, namely, in Masvingo Province and in northern Matabeleland. Though a focus on farm labourers and women vis-a-vis the occupations shows that the fast track occupations were marked by forms of exclusion and subordination, it also evident that the agency of women and farm labourers signals a further need to question any understanding of the third chimurenga occupations rooted in party-state directives and machinations.

This is the first of three chapters on the third chimurenga. This chapter focuses on the crucial question of the ruling party and state and their supposed involvement in the fast track land occupations (third chimurenga), raising the centrality of war veterans to the occupations. In showing that the ruling party and state were in large part peripheral to the occupations, the following chapter is then able to focus on the complex localised dynamics of the occupations as they unfolded across the Zimbabwean countryside. The chapter discusses the acrimonious debate which emerged soon after the occupations began, a debate about the very form of the third chimurenga occupations. This sets the stage for a detailed scrutiny of war veterans and the party-state vis-a-vis the occupations. The war veterans, even if articulating a nationalist agenda seemingly consistent with the ruling party, were neither acting at the behest of the ruling party nor acting in alliance with it. The chapter ends by indicating briefly the sheer diversity of the occupations nation-wide in order to demonstrate the decentralised character of the occupations, which becomes the central theme for the following chapter.

This chapter discusses the first major anti-colonial revolt in colonial Zimbabwe (in 1896 and 1897), which began to be labelled retrospectively as the first chimurenga from the late 1950s as a nationalist movement arose, leading a decade later to the guerrilla-based war of liberation or second chimurenga in the 1970s. It considers the overall character and trajectory of the first chimurenga, in particular its modalities of organisation and mobilisation, as the book seeks to draw parallels between the first anti-colonial revolt and the second and, notably, the third chimurenga. In addition to understanding the general dynamics of the first chimurenga, the chapter also highlights certain themes, such as gender and spirituality, which are pertinent to our latter analyses of the other zvimurenga. At the same time, it must be highlighted that there are very few full-length analyses of the first chimurenga, and no real insights about local dynamics, which means that any examination of this revolt remains somewhat thin and shallow.

This chapter discusses the intervening period between the second and third zvimurenga by focusing on developments central to the rise of the fast track land occupations in the year 2000. A central consideration for this period is the Zimbabwean state’s failure to shift fundamentally the colonial land and agrarian structure, with the land reform programme failing to de-racialise the countryside in terms of landholdings. Alongside this stalled land reform programme were two further developments which facilitated the emergence of the third chimurenga. On the one hand, large numbers of ex-guerrillas from the war of liberation were marginalised in the post-1980 period and they began to mobilise and organise in a manner which led to the eventual formation of a national war veterans’ association which expressed discontent with the Zimbabwean state and ruling party. On the other hand, because of minimal land reform, as well as ongoing land pressures and livelihood challenges in the communal areas, villagers often in alliance with war veterans increasingly began to occupy land in the 1990s in a deeply localised way. By the late 1990s, the stage was set for another large-scale episode of land struggles.

This chapter examines the third chimurenga occupations in Bindura and Shamva, two districts in Mashonaland Central Province. Consistent with the claims made throughout the book, the chapter seeks to show that the occupations in both districts are not understandable in terms of top-down orchestration by the ruling party and state. In this sense, the chapter contributes to restoring the presence of occupiers, including ordinary men and women, onto the historical stage through a case study of occupations in these two districts. This involves considering the decentralised forms of organisation and mobilisation which existed during these occupations, along with the grievances and motivations which animated the occupiers. Central to the occupations were war veterans. The chapter does not claim that the occupations in Shamva and Bindura were in any way organised at district level, or that there was no inter-district coordination. Further, while parallels exist across the two districts, there were also differences, in particular the more pronounced organisational foundation of the occupations in Shamva.

This is the first of two chapters on the second chimurenga. The purpose of these chapters is to provide an overview of the historical development of the nationalist and guerrilla movements, and to identify key themes in the second chimurenga literature. This chapter examines the early scholarly literature on the second chimurenga and highlights themes embodied in this literature, but also silences and gaps which are addressed in the later literature. It then turns to a consideration of one particular theme, namely the overall character of the nationalist movements and guerrilla armies and, more importantly, the relationship between them. The chapter considers some of the temporal dynamics of the war of liberation during the 1970s, and it captures many of the complexities of the spatial diversity of the second chimurenga across the breadth of the Rhodesian countryside. Ultimately, in considering the second chimurenga, the chapter is concerned primarily with pinpointing and discussing themes which are particularly crucial in developing a comparative analysis of the three zvimurenga and in understanding the specificities of the third chimurenga.

Overall, while fast track land reform may have “resolved” certain matters, it also left other matters unattended or even facilitated the emergence of new dilemmas (and new sites of struggle) which continue to be played out, even within post-coup Zimbabwe under the presidency of Emmerson Mnangagwa. This chapter makes no attempt to provide a comprehensive overview of the post-2000 period in Zimbabwe and the fast track programme more specifically, as there is abundant literature on this. Rather, the chapter points to certain post-2000 issues arising from the analysis of the three zvimurenga and in particular of the third chimurenga. In other words, the chapter uses the zvimurenga examination as a lens through which to speak about post-2000 Zimbabwe. In particular, analytically, the chapter considers the ways in which the third chimurenga occupations were subdued and institutionalised by way of a state-driven restructuring of land and agrarian spaces (namely, through fast track), and the possibilities and existence of further land contestations—specifically in the light of a neoliberal capital-driven process under the presidency of Mnangagwa. It does so with reference to what we label as an autonomist commoning perspective.

This chapter acts as a prelude which frames the examination of the second chimurenga in Chapters 4 and 5. In discussing land alienation, land struggles and the rise of nationalism in Rhodesia in the intervening period between the first and second zvimurenga, the chapter brings to the fore the deep grievances around land under colonial subjugation, which resulted in localised resistance and struggles in the Reserves, later Tribal Trust Lands. Grievances and struggles were firmly embedded in the historical memories of rural people as they engaged with guerrilla armies during the second chimurenga. The chapter shows social differentiation within the reserves and the tensions which sometimes arose because of this differentiation. In the case of both the pre-nationalist days and the days of emerging mass nationalism from the mid-1950s, the chapter stresses the ways in which Africans drew upon their localised experiences and grievances when confronting the colonial order, including the agrarian and land reconfiguration of the reserves. As well, the chapter has a specific focus on women, as they struggled not only against a colonial order but also a patriarchal order.

Urban land provides spaces for understanding the intersection of politics, money and corruption in post-colonial Africa. This chapter traces the political economy of accumulation in which political power is used by various actors to claim a stake in lucrative urban land markets. Urban land in Africa is a lucrative economic and thus political asset, and increased demand for urban land across the continent has been driven by multiple factors, including high rates of urbanisation, increased rural–urban migration, urban population growth and serious challenges in housing provision. This chapter uses desk research to map out the actors and contestations over land, using case studies from SSA to show how an intricate mix of political power and money creates multiple illicit land deals and often shadow land markets in which politicians and politically connected individuals use land as an economic and political asset. The political complexities involved in land corruption make difficult to combat the problem. Politicians and bureaucrats with responsibility to fight corruption are entangled in the web of corrupt dealings which make it difficult to end the problem. The chapter offers suggestions to improve urban land systems.

Background: This study is coming against the background of people with epilepsy who are abandoning anti-epilepsy medication in developing countries, such as Zimbabwe. Aim: The aim of this article was therefore to review the general side effects and challenges associated with these anti-epilepsy medications. Setting: The researchers reviewed literature related to the general side effects, psychological, social and economic challenges associated with anti- epilepsy medication. Methods: To answer the research questions, the researchers used a narrative approach. Results: Findings of the study reflected that the general side effects associated with anti- epilepsy medication include feelings of tiredness, stomach upset, dizziness or blurred vision, which usually happen during the first weeks of taking medicines. Psychologically, an individual with epilepsy may suffer cognitive problems that are associated with thinking, remembering, paying attention or concentrating and finding the right words to use. Socially, people with epilepsy experience social isolation, dependent behaviour, low rates of marriages, unemployment and reduced quality of life. Using anti-epilepsy medication is also associated with economic challenges. Conclusion: The researchers concluded that some people with epilepsy have discontinued using anti-epilepsy medications because of these side effects and challenges.

This article reports on a study which aimed to examine the varied experiences of women involved in business across rural spaces in the context of patriarchy through an exploration of their narratives highlighting their challenges, successes, fears and hopes. The assumption of the study was that rural women in Zimbabwe occupy a particularly difficult space because of numerous structural impediments which include patriarchy, unequal access to skills, capital inadequacy and exclusion from formal economic systems. The study sought to provide a nuanced understanding of female entrepreneurship in African spaces with the aim of showing that there are varied stories of agency, challenges, successes and failures that can be documented. The study utilised qualitative methods which sought a nuanced analysis of women’s experiences in Mudzi District, Mashonaland East Province, Zimbabwe. The data was collected through life histories, focus group discussions and key informant interviews. A total of 34 participants were recruited for the study through purposive and snowball sampling techniques. The participants included women involved in a varied number of entrepreneurial activities such as bread making, vending, dress making, poultry and running micro enterprises. The findings showed that whilst women face multiple structural impediments as entrepreneurs, they are active agents questioning and shaping their social spaces through business. Women embarking on entrepreneurial activities is in itself seen as a serious challenge against patriarchal structures.

Of late, the concept of ‘frenemies’, commonly used to explain relationships in which people are friends and enemies at the same time, has increasingly been used by social theorists to understand re...

This article interrogates studies focusing on gender and Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) in Zimbabwe, highlighting the emerging patterns and missing linkages. We utilize theories of intersectionality and agency to argue for more robust empirical research on the varied experiences of women. An analysis of intersectionality of experiences and agency is necessary to understand how women were differentially positioned and, how this is ultimately linked to how they got access to and ownership of land. The article posits that whilst gender is important, there is need for further analysis of who got what, how and where under FTLRP. To that end, the article asks: How is gender construed in relation to women’s access to FTLRP (what is included and excluded)? Whilst women appear losers as portrayed in many studies, was it only gender that determined access? What about age, nationality, class, political affiliation and traditional roots among other aspects? How did the 18% quoted in several studies get land? What about married women in this debate? Where women just victims in the FTLRP? We argue that ultimately other factors like patronage may as well explain exclusion (and inclusion) of women but this is better understood within intersectionality theoretical premises. At the same time, we also posit that women were not merely victims but used versatile tactics and strategies to get land hence invoking the notion of agency.

This paper focuses on football fan rivalry in an African context using the case of Highlanders and Dynamos Football Clubs in Zimbabwe. It explores the intertwined historical, political and ethno-regional causes of this rivalry reflecting on how football reproduces underlying fractures that exist in society. Fan rivalries are an integral part of football across the world. Clashes between rival football teams are often highly charged encounters, resulting in cases of violence. As such the worst instances of football hooliganism are usually experienced during matches between rival football teams. Through the use of indepth interviews, internet research, key informant interviews and observation, we highlight the various dimensions and explanations of this rivalry. Often football becomes an outlay of wider societal conflicts. The stadium offers space for the playing out of these rivalries. Football rivalries thus offer a mirror into the socio-political tensions in society. Football in Africa is fraught with et...

In March 2003, the African Union launched the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) as one of the key instruments of its New Partnership for Africa’s Development initiative. Whilst being lauded in some quarters as a progressive initiative, the APRM has received scathing critique from those who believe that African leaders neither have the will nor moral authority to peer review and censure each other. This occasional paper provides an analysis how gender has been integrated, mainstreamed and taken up within the APRM process. The discussion outlines the evolution of the gender question in Africa specifically issues around gender discrimination, inequality and difference. It argues that gender has received token attention within the APRM. The everyday experiences of African women and their dreams, hopes, fears and ideas are not reflected within this initiative. Its concerns with macro democratic and governance questions have meant women are relegated to the periphery. For so long women’s issues have been ghettoized and defined as irrelevant to governance. Yet experiences in Africa have shown that women’s issues are governance issues. The paper also focuses on how gender can be infused as a critical element of the debate around democratization in Africa. Without addressing gender disparities most of what Africa aspires for in terms of good governance and development will remain a pipe dream. The paper provides recommendations to policy makers on how the APRM process can take up gender issues. It is based mainly on desk research which draws on official AU documents, country reports, reviews, journal particles, reports and working papers.

This paper demonstrates the nexus between social identity and supporting a soccer team. It highlights that there are deeper underlying meanings and assumptions to one’s support of a sporting team. From the intense regional rivalry that characterized medieval ball games to the national, religious, ethnic and political antagonisms that are present in modern day football, we can highlight the continued role of football in the processes of identity construction and maintenance. I explore how fan identities are formed and how they mediate in fans’ social lives. Supporters of Dynamos Football Club in Zimbabwe offer a good example of how fans form indispensable attachments to clubs. Lived experiences of these fans show that supporting a football team is more than just going to the stadium, rather it transcends one’s social being. Being a fan is an important part of one’s social identity and affects most aspects of one’s life. There is something more to supporting a football team besides entertainment. Su...

This paper questions the reduction of human experience and identity to anatomical determinism in which the category of ‘woman' or ‘man' becomes a universal concept. Through a review of literature on African gender, feminist and masculinity studies, it highlights how people are more than their body parts. It notes how identities are shaped by an intersectionality of various factors such as education, employment status, class, age, physical condition, nationality, citizenship, race and ethnicity. These factors can be spatial and temporal producing differing experiences of gendered lives. African scholars have built up a rich collection of work that repudiates the univerlisation of gender identities based on Western philosophical schools of thought. This work explores in detail current and historical debates in African gender studies.