Unities and Disunities in Zimbabwe's 1990 Election

Abstract

In 1985 the Zimbabwean national election presented voters with a drama of pretence. The Zimbabwe African National Union (Patriotic Front), known as Z.A.N.U. (P.F.), the party in power, issued a manifesto for ‘unity of the working people in the advance of a just Socialist Society’; meanwhile its candidates routinely cast aspersions on (working) people who supported the major rival party, the Patriotic Front–Zimbabwe African People's Union (P.F.-Z.A.P.U.). The latter defensively called for a unified effort to ensure that multi-party liberalism would prevail in Zimbabwe; it then implicitly endorsed most of the principles of social balance through growth with equity which its alleged ‘Marxist–Leninist’ opponents had instituted.