The Identity Politics Factor in Zimbabwe’s Transition Politics

Abstract

This chapter interrogates the identity politics factor in post-colonial Zimbabwe and its role in shaping the political economy. It offers a conceptual construction of the three group identifiers around which identity politics has manifested as a dominant political culture. The chapter posits that the past and future of transition in Zimbabwe lie in the nature and extent of identity politics, and how this is harnessed and utilised in the transition process. The chapter reveals that identity politics in Zimbabwe has historically been a three-pronged phenomenon. This appears in three basic clusters that seem to vary as differing national transition questions bedevil the nation. These three group-coalescing and/or group identifier strands are racial nationalism, the politics of tribal/ethnic hegemony and the politics of liberation entitlement. These have nurtured and prolonged Zimbabwe’s political culture, in turn shaping its political transitions. The ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union–Patriotic Front, has been at the centre of the alternation, cross-pollination and metamorphosis of these three elements, and has embedded them in the country’s dominant political culture.