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Narratives around the everyday experiences of corruption in urban Harare provide multiple perspectives on how Zimbabweans create specific moral repertoires to make sense of their actions. They highlight how ordinary people speak to the dissonance of engaging in actions they deem immoral, such as paying and receiving bribes. Our research is based on interviews with fifteen respondents involved in livelihood options where bribery or petty corruption is an everyday occurrence. We utilize the concept of moral economy to show how people make sense of their actions in contexts where survival often involves participating in transactions constructed as immoral. We demonstrate that the respondents have created mechanisms to make sense of and excuse their actions as necessitated by the need for survival in difficult contexts. This has thus led to specific moral economies in urban Harare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2017, Zimbabwe recorded a military intervention that left President Mugabe out of office. The replacement government has created a raft of controversial measures and policies. The study therefore explored the implications of the coup to policy formulation and execution vis-à-vis the rights and security of the people. The study followed a democratic governance framework. It focused on demonstration participants and active soldiers during the coup. Twenty civilian demonstrators and ten soldiers were sampled from Harare which was the centre of the coup. Data were analysed using Narrative Latent Content method. The study established that policy formulation is driven by both emotions and the desire to protect committers of the coup from possible accountability. It also established that in-order to safeguard its interests, the regime has crafted repressive laws that are however unsustainable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reactions to acts of state-sponsored election violence and other forms of repression vary greatly across individuals. This article develops a theory that the psychological characteristic of self-efficacy moderates opposition supporters' reactions to state-sponsored election violence. I use data from an original survey and in-depth qualitative interviews with opposition supporters in Zimbabwe to illustrate and test this theory. Self-efficacy is a strong predictor of intention to take action in support of the opposition after episodes of state-sponsored election violence and is related to the emotional reactions that opposition supporters have after violent events. Specifically, people who are higher in self-efficacy report that they would feel more anger relative to fear after episodes of state-sponsored election violence. The relationship between self-efficacy and persistence in pro-opposition action after violence is similar in magnitude to variables that the existing literature argues are the most important predictors of dissent in repressive environments, including strength of identification with the opposition and gender. These results provide empirical support for the assumption in many collective action theories that psychological characteristics create variation in dissent in repressive environments. Understanding how individual psychological differences can shape reactions to coercive violence may help explain why forms of repression like state-sponsored election violence have such unpredictable effects on subsequent pro-opposition mobilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Robert Mugabe resigned as Zimbabwe's president in November 2017, following a military action called Operation Restore Legacy. This article examines the motivations and dynamics of Operation Restore Legacy, which it characterizes as a coup by military generals that had significant commonalities with historical coups in Africa. This characterization, which is informed by the accounts of coup participants and a reading of the literature, challenges interpretations of the coup as 'a non-coup-coup', 'very Zimbabwean', or 'special'. The article argues that the coup was a vote of no confidence in Mugabe's leadership, which succeeded because soldiers from Zimbabwe's 1970s independence war subscribed to the coup's stated ideal to restore liberation struggle principles in the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front party as well as party members who had been sidelined. Liberation war veterans held decisive army and air force command posts when the coup occurred. The article's emphasis on liberation struggle principles as a crucial determinant of the coup's success is a counterpoint to game theoretic approaches to coup dynamics that disregard political beliefs as a consequential factor in the realization of coups. In respect of motivations, the article advances interrelating motives and contends that the coup's catalyst was Mugabe's refusal to meet his generals on 13 November 2017, for vital talks on widening differences between both parties. Sealing off dialogue catalyzed the coup. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have long been interested in investigating why and how ruling parties manipulate elections in Africa and elsewhere. Despite the importance of such a subject, much remains unknown about the role of incumbents in strategically manipulating electoral processes and outcomes in by-elections in particular. Debate rages on as to whether ruling parties rely exclusively on coercive methods or, in addition, make use of non-repressive methods. In seeking to contribute to addressing this matter, we draw upon a case study of two by-elections held in 2017 in rural constituencies in Zimbabwe, namely Bikita West and Mwenezi East. Our research involved evidence gleaned through personal observations, review of grey literature and personal reflections. Our study established that competitive authoritarian regimes as found in Zimbabwe combine both methods when manipulating by-elections. However, we show that there has been a shift away from heavy reliance on organised acts of naked political violence on the part of the ZANU-PF ruling party since the disputed 2008 elections and in the subsequent 2013 and post-2013 by-elections. Thus, there appears to be an inclination towards the use of subtle methods, including patronage, assisted voting, use of traditional leadership and appealing to the rendition of past violence. Nonetheless, even these methods impinge on the credibility of not only by-elections but also national elections in Zimbabwe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to provide an insight into the complex role that editorials – a newspaper's institutional voice – play in highly polarised political contexts. It focuses on how the editorials of two Zimbabwean daily newspapers – The Herald, a progovernment newspaper, and NewsDay, a perceived pro-opposition newspaper – spoke to those in power at a time of transition from a government of national unity to majoritarian rule in 2013. The study also sets out to understand how both the newspapers' editorials over this time responded to a contested political domain. Qualitative content analysis, rhetorical analysis and in-depth interviews were used to consider the tactics employed in the editorials to question and challenge the decisions and behaviours of those in positions of authority. The research findings contradict the common view in Zimbabwe that the privately–owned media blindly support the opposition while the state-owned media do the same with ZANU-PF. The findings show that in the period in question both newspapers exploited the editorial as a space to urge politicians to think of the national common good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Zimbabwe Defence Forces' November 2017 removal of Robert Mugabe was the first successful military coup in Africa in over three years. Increasingly rare in contemporary politics, Mugabe's removal at the barrel of the gun was a common fate for the original generation of political leadership in the region. We contextualize Mugabe's removal by reviewing the fates of Sub-Saharan Africa's original post-colonial leadership, of which a majority was directly removed in military coups. The fall of Mugabe can be seen as the final chapter on coups against the original generation of leadership, but is unique in regard to the fate of the ousted leader. Of all prior first generation leaders removed via a coup, each was imprisoned, exiled, or killed in association with the coup. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on major issues affecting the indigenous peoples in Zimbabwe, the Tshwa and the Doma. Topics discussed include the general elections won by the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front and Emmerson Mnangagwa as president, the continued decline of the country's economy, and key issues relating to land, conservation, and livelihoods.

The politics of urban control has revolved around centralisation since independence in 1980. However, such politics became more pronounced after 2000 owing to the rise of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) as the main governing party in urban areas. Political tensions and contradictions ensued between central government, under the Zimbabwe African National Union (Patriotic Front) (ZANU[PF]), and local authorities, under the MDC, over the control and administration of urban areas. Based on 30 interviews, the article explains how central government and, by extension, ZANU(PF) attempted to regain control of urban areas through centralisation of water and vehicle licensing functions. This practice, however, contravenes existing laws. Hitherto, scholarship has attributed centralisation by the government to a strategy to defuse the opposition rule in cities. This article extends reasons for centralisation to include ZANU(PF)'s strong ideological belief in centralisation, access to resources in a failing economy and maintaining a firm grip on power. In particular, the article focuses on how urban politics is manifested in the transfer of water and sanitation and vehicle licensing functions from local authorities to government-run entities. It is also evident that the prioritisation of survival politics neglects key service delivery in urban centres. In the absence of a functionally devolved system of governance, this casts doubt on the feasibility and success of opposition political parties in governing African cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to the debate on the merits and perils of interim executive power-sharing as a means of conflict management by examining the functioning of Zimbabwe's power-sharing government during the interregnum of 2009-13. Based on the insider accounts of numerous executive members, the article argues that the inter-party dynamics in the Government of National Unity were characterised by selective co-operation and obstruction. The extent of co-operation between ministers from the three parties in the coalition varied depending on the domain of governance and constellation of officials involved, rather than being exclusively determined by party strategies. New government organs introduced to the existing executive structure to enable power-sharing failed effectively to balance power between the three parties. The Zimbabwe African National Union (Patriotic Front) (ZANU[PF]), which had dominated government since the introduction of majority-rule democracy in 1980, consistently flouted government protocol. Yet inter-party relations within government improved gradually, and the power-sharing parties generally co-operated on economic, social and infrastructure policies. Democratic gains were minor, owing to ZANU(PF)'s resistance to reform, but the power-sharing process considerably reduced polarisation and fostered dialogue among hostile political elites. Zimbabwe's Government of National Unity thus illustrates that interim power-sharing can have a significant peace-building effect at the elite level. Yet it also shows that an interim governance process is unlikely to achieve decisive democratic reforms where parties lack commitment, engage in power-sharing with ulterior motives and undermine reforms from within. Although interim power-sharing may foster dialogue and ease hostility, conflict actors who internalised coercion and authoritarianism in their habitus are unlikely to adopt a democratic political culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses the case of illegal street vending in Harare to explore the interface between urban governance and politics. Drawing on the ideas of urban governance and informal governance, it illustrates how polarisation between the opposition political party Movement for Democratic Change-dominated municipal council and the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front-led government is affecting governance in general and in particular Harare municipality's ability to handle the illegal street vending problem. While the paper essentially identifies political expediency as the major reason why a lasting solution is elusive in handling the illegal street vending problem, it acknowledges that there are broad reasons for its persistence. Consequently, the article demonstrates some of the reasons why illegal street vending is difficult to end using the conventional methods and provides some alternatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the administration of former president of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe. It mentions about his tyranny, and his unconstituional and illegal coup. It also mentions about his dominating economic and political policies that caused resentment amongst common people, and became the reason for his removal.

The author focuses on the political affairs of Zimbabwe. Topics discussed include the tyranny of former president Robert Mugabe, his removal by an illegal and unconstitutional coup, and the appointment of Emmerson Mnangagwa as the president of Zimbabwe. Also being discussed is a comparison between the their ways of ruling.

There has been significant debate about the land occupations which occurred from the year 2000 in Zimbabwe, with a key controversy concerning the role of the state and ruling party (or party-state) in the occupations. This controversy, deriving from two grand narratives about the occupations, remains unresolved. A burgeoning literature exists on the Zimbabwean state’s fast-track land reform programme, which arose in the context of the occupations, but this literature is concerned mainly with post-occupation developments on fast-track farms. This article seeks to contribute to resolving the controversy surrounding the party-state and the land occupations by examining the occupations in the Shamva District of Mashonaland Central Province. The fieldwork for our Shamva study focused exclusively on the land occupations (and not on the fast-track farms) and was undertaken in May 2015. We conclude from our Shamva study that involvement by the party-state did not take on an institutionalised form but was of a personalised character entailing interventions by specific party and state actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decades of economic crisis and political uncertainties in Zimbabwe since independence in 1980 have culminated in exponential increases in the central government's indebtedness. This paper, therefore, seeks to examine the evolution of government debt, both domestic and foreign, in Zimbabwe from 1980 to 2015. At the centre of the discussions are the public-debt structural reforms and frameworks, debt trends and the associated debt-management challenges over the review period. The paper identified four distinctive phases of public-debt evolution in Zimbabwe between 1980 and 2015: (1) 1980 to 1989, in which government debt was still small, but increasing gradually; (2) 1990 to 1997, in which public sector indebtedness was increasing exponentially - mostly due to substantial economic structural adjustment reforms, maturity of previous debts and severe economic crises; (3) 1998 to 2008, in which economic recession and subsequent revenue constraints led to the massive accumulation of public debt arrears; and (4) 2009 to 2015, in which the country experienced an economic rebound leading to some paltry payments on foreign public debt arrears. Among the recommended government debt management principles in Zimbabwe is the need to devise market-friendly trade and investment policies that would enable the government to expand its revenue base, thus effectively reduce the state's reliance on debt financing and also avoid the future accumulation of any arrears. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to undertake a comparative study of the politics of corruption and organized violence in two historically, geographically, and culturally distinct societies, namely the Roman Republic and contemporary Zimbabwe. Based on the assumption that power politics undercut spatial-temporal distinctions, as has also been observed by Finley,2 this study extrapolates the Roman Republic’s nexus of political power, land and violence into the case of contemporary Zimbabwe. The article frames part of its argument in one aspect of Marx´s social theory of production and also Michel Foucault’s view of power as not just an abstraction but a force that defines itself in practical situations where it enables individuals to achieve and/or block certain goals. Thus, in both political landscapes, we consider land as one of the crucial sites where power plays out, and in this sense, draw upon the study of the economy of sharing resources in different parts of the world. We also argue that agrarian violence, selfishness and corruption are not products of a specific mode of production per se; rather, they are consequences of the breakdown of civic life, and result from prolonged dictatorship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The expansion of outgrower areas linked to large lowveld sugar estates has been an important component of Zimbabwe’s land reform since 2000. This has involved the transfer of nearly 16,000 ha to over 800 resettlement farmers on irrigated ‘A2’ plots of around 20 ha each. These farmers now produce around a quarter of the sugar output linked to the Triangle and Hippo Valley mills. Tongaat Hulett, a large South African conglomerate, is the dominant shareholder in Zimbabwe’s sugar industry, and its Zimbabwe operation represents a crucial part of the overall multi-million-dollar business. The new outgrowers are a mix of former civil servants, sugar industry professionals and business people, with some politicians and security service personnel also with land. Through a detailed analysis over 12 years of the changing fortunes of a group of new outgrowers linked to Hippo Valley estate, the paper explores the patterns of production, employment and wider livelihood contexts of outgrowers and their workers. In particular the paper examines the tensions and conflicts that have arisen, particularly between the new outgrowers and the estate. The paper in turn explores the implications for sugar politics in Zimbabwe’s Lowveld. The new outgrowers were drawn from a range of previous occupations and, compared to land reform beneficiaries in nearby dryland smallholder areas, were richer, better educated and more well-connected politically. The paper asks how this new group negotiated a relationship with a large-scale South African capitalist enterprise, and with what outcomes. More broadly, the paper examines how outgrowers, the state and capital brokered a politically and economically acceptable post-land reform deal, suiting all parties. Based on the longitudinal case study insights, the paper concludes with an assessment of whether Zimbabwe’s very particular sugar outgrower model of land reform will work, and if it does, for whom. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper traces the rise and fall of wage labor in Zimbabwe between c.1960 and 2010. Building on Giovanni Arrighi’s seminal study, ‘Labour supplies in historical perspective: a study of the proletarianization of the African peasantry in Rhodesia’, we argue that the 1950s were the highpoint of African wage labor participation in the Southern Rhodesian/Zimbabwean economy. From that point, the percentage of wage labor as part of the economically active population fell consistently until the collapse of the Zimbabwean economy from the late 1990s onward, when it shrunk emphatically. This process is observable elsewhere in southern Africa over the second half of the twentieth century. Writing in the 1960s when the Southern Rhodesian economy was diversifying and absorbing large numbers of African workers from within and beyond the country’s borders, Arrighi overstated the stability and longevity of the proletariat. From that point, though, combined internal and external forces resulted initially in the stagnation of secondary and primary industry and commerce, and latterly in their contraction. The ensuing processes of de-proletarianization, falling wages, and heightened livelihood precarity have been the norm for an ever-increasing proportion of the African working class up to the present. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article provides an overview analysis of the relevant provisions of the Zimbabwe Constitution Amendment Act 20 of 2013 (Zimbabwe Constitution 2013) that, inter alia, deals with the functions of the judiciary. To this end, the article examines the adequacy of the aforesaid provisions in relation to their practical enforcement and the promotion of constitutional democracy in Zimbabwe. In light of this, a synoptical analysis of the gaps and flaws of the provisions dealing with the functions of the judiciary under the Zimbabwe Constitution 2013 will be provided. In addition and where applicable, a comparative analysis of these provisions and those that were provided under the Lancaster House Constitution of Zimbabwe Amendment Act 19 of 2008 (Lancaster House Constitution 2008) will be undertaken. This is done to explore whether the flaws and gaps that were associated with the relevant provisions of the Lancaster House Constitution 2008 are now corrected under the Zimbabwe Constitution 2013. Thereafter, possible recommendations and concluding remarks will be stated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Zimbabwe has recently been facing serious challenges and threats to its peace and security as a result of deepening economic crisis. Civilians have taken to the streets and the first half of 2016 was characterized by protests. The crisis has its roots deeper in Zimbabwe's postcolonial history, escalating with the adoption of a controversial land reform program in 2000. From hyper-inflation in 2008, the nation turned to a serious liquidity crunch within eight years. The situation has not been helped by growing unemployment, informalization of the economy, and a polarized political landscape. The population has thus been exposed to both structural and system violence. In addition to macro violence, there are growing youth subcultures that feed into violence in Zimbabwe. One notable example is Zimdancehall, which has become a major artistic and musical phenomenon in the country. This article examines the way Zimdancehall adds another layer of violence to Zimbabwe. In particular, we focus on the micro aspect of Zimdancehall violence and the missed opportunity for this music genre to become an instrument for peacebuilding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In July of 2015 an American dentist paid a large fee to shoot 'Cecil' the lion in Zimbabwe. The lion turned out to be part of a research project. The circumstances under which the killing occurred, and responsibility for the incident, remain unclear. One remarkable feature of the story is that in American news coverage, the government of Zimbabwe was not centrally featured, and when it was it was depicted as marginal and ineffectual. By the time of this conference (July 2016), the incident will largely be forgotten. But it illustrates some interesting points about rhetoric and African governments. This essay argues that American news coverage of the Cecil incident portrays primary responsibility for the episode as residing in the market. The killing of the lion was portrayed as primarily a commercial exchange between the hunter and those who made the lion available to him. The essay argues that such news coverage subordinates government to the market, a phenomenon occurring worldwide but of special importance in circumstances where government is regarded as ineffectual. The incident perpetuates a rhetoric of individual action and responsibility for events, rather than governmental sovereignty and control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]