ZANU (PF)'s Manipulation of the ‘Alien’ Vote in Zimbabwean Elections: 1980–2013

Abstract

This article historicises how the post-colonial Zimbabwean government has maintained and consolidated its power through, among other tactics, the systematic manipulation of the ‘alien’ vote. The ‘aliens’ are residents in Zimbabwe who are either of foreign origin themselves or whose parents are originally from Malawi, Zambia and Mozambique. Basing its findings on oral interviews, the paper engages power and coercion as analytical concepts to understand how non-indigenous communities are affected by state power through the reconfiguration of their citizenship/belonging and relentless violence during elections. It argues that since the 1980s migrant descendants have been used and abused by the hegemonic socio-political hierarchy for its electoral benefit. Migrants, who came into what was then Southern Rhodesia during the colonial labour migration system (1890s to 1970s), like other autochthonous Zimbabweans, were allowed to vote between 1980 and 1996. Yet all this changed in the post-2000 period, when the ZANU (PF) government complicated citizenship laws and initiated the land reform exercise to, among other aims, strip ‘aliens’ of their right to suffrage in subsequent elections. This on and off relationship has been dictated by the politics of power, patronage and coercion under which migrant descendants have constituted a critical swing vote which ZANU (PF) has either embraced for its benefit or marginalised it in the face of formidable opposition politics. This disenfranchisement has invariably affected the livelihoods of these foreign descendants through violence, intimidation and denial of socioeconomic leverage.