Zimbabwe: the Fall from a Jewel Status

Abstract

ABSTRACT This introduction prefaces a collection exploring why Zimbabwe, once a breadbasket in southern Africa, has fallen deeper into crisis. This article reflects on, reconceptualises, and critiques Zimbabwe’s socio-economic and political decline occasioned by ZANU PF’s militant nationalism. Contributors to this collection debate post-2017 Zimbabwe from historical, political, legal, gender, media, and literary perspectives. This interdisciplinary approach enables the authors to condemn the intensifying political violence against citizens and the deepening economic decline overseen by President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s new dispensation. Collectively, the articles in this collection amplify the need to mobilise progressive forces in Zimbabwe, Africa, and the world to write and speak against the silence enforced on Zimbabwean citizens. This collection also magnifies a political gap that still exists in current scholarship in Zimbabwe post-2017, which is how to write about the different Zimbabwean citizens who are challenging the Mnangagwa regime. It is hoped that scholars will take up this challenge in future studies.