Liberation movements in power: Power and state in Southern Africa

Abstract

Is there something special about National Liberation Movements (NLMs) and the liberation governments that they spawned? Their leaders certainly portray themselves as exceptional. South Africa's Jacob Zuma stated in May 2008: ‘Even God expects us to the rule this country … It is even blessed in Heaven. This is why we will rule until Jesus comes back’ (p. 343). Although NLMs may portray themselves as the political aristocracy of Southern Africa, having earned their legitimacy to govern in perpetuity through armed struggle, Roger Southall shows how they reinvented history, with particular emphasis on the ‘armed struggle’, to provide historical legitimacy and solidarity as they sought to combat internal and external threats to their national democratic revolutions. Liberation Movements in Power focuses on three NLMs: the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa, the South West African People's Organization (SWAPO) of Namibia, and the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) of Zimbabwe. Southall chooses these because their independence settlements shared the same fundamental characteristics of settler populations that lost political power in exchange for guarantees of rights of minorities and property, and NLMs that gained control of the state in exchange for accommodation with domestic and international capital.