Abstract
The “non-coup” coup in Zimbabwe in November 2017 brought focused international and national attention on the imbrication of familial practices with electoral politics in the country. Much commentary has focused on the actions of Grace Mugabe, wife of then President Robert Mugabe, as precipitating the military replacement of Mugabe with his erstwhile comrade Emmerson Mnangagwa. I deepen the analysis through placing these events within three dimensions of patriarchal familial logics that tend to be common in political economies in Africa and elsewhere: the forging of networks of access and patronage; the metaphorical grafting of “the family” onto the imagination of the nation; and the performance of heteronormative, patriarchal, and marital propriety. At the same time, I argue that these familial logics should be contextualized within the particular affective mobilizations and demobilizations associated with electoral politics in Zimbabwe.
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