ZANU(PF) strategies in general elections, 1980-2000: Discourse and coercion

Abstract

For many analysts, the general election campaign in 2000 showed a new face of the ruling party, ZANU(PF). Against the new opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, ZANU(PF) engaged in violence and intimidation, often relying on youth and war veterans, even as it accused its opponents of subversive violence. Moreover, ZANU(PF) appealed to its liberation war credentials, while dismissing its chief opponents as puppets of British imperialism and reactionary white settlers. After the election, President Mugabe appealed for reconciliation between winners and losers, only to permit violence against those who had voted against the ruling party. For ruling party perpetrators of violence, there was impunity and later a presidential pardon. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how the ruling party used remarkably similar strategies in every general election since 1980, notwithstanding striking differences in the contexts, issues, and nature of the chief opposition party. Given this well established pattern of ruling party violence and intimidation and characterization of opposition parties as illegitimate, the article seeks to understand why analysts repeatedly saw in the regular multiparty elections either a democratic system or one that was amenable to democratization.