Movement For Democratic Change Research Articles

SADC’s Zimbabwe Mediation in 2008 as Preservation of ZANU PF Power

The historic defeat of the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU PF) in the March 2008 harmonised elections was followed by the unleashing of a violent campaign against the opposition in the run up to the June 27 2008 presidential run-off. This triggered the mediation of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Although the mediation culminated into a Government of National Unity (GNU) comprising ZANU PF and the two Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) formations between 2009 and 2013, this paper argues SADC was largely complicit in the advancement of ZANU PF authoritarian consolidation. ZANU PF deployment of foreign policy within SADC was mainly designed to secure the region's solidarity whilst advancing domestic interests aimed at cementing political survival. The region became a crucial focus of attention by the government, but how this was used to consolidate ZANU PF's hold on power is yet to be unpacked in full.

Alternative democracy? Crisis, discourse and versions of democracy in Zimbabwean politics in the post-2000 context

Democracy is a much contested concept in political movements and politics. The post-2000 context reveals a multiplicity of complex political, social and economic challenges linked to the Zimbabwean crisis which can be best unpacked and understood through critical discourse analysis (CDA). These challenges reflect multiple contestations to the conceptualisation of democracy. This chapter will debunk the political personalisation of democracy and how political parties insert their parties in the narrative of the concept’s modern manifestations, conceptions and practices of democracy. Democracy incorporates multiple layers of meaning and practices. This chapter focuses on how Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU PF) and Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) narratives and stylistic designs are incorporated into their agenda-setting strategies, identity construction and discursive legitimation. Analysis of the theory and discourse of democracy illuminates the conventions, logic and dictates of language, knowledge and meaning. It exposes the inherent politics, nuances and paradoxes of democracy. Analyses of democratic movement(s) through CDA highlight democracy as a political strategy that at once contests power but also gestures to a political alternative and a sustainable development plan. Considering that CDA as a qualitative and narrative analysis method focused on generic features of whole texts rather than isolated features of the text, this chapter analyses the politics of democracy discourse and its relationship to Zimbabwean politics in the context of broader narratives of the Zimbabwean crisis. The paper problematises selected party manifestoes to illuminate and dissect the discourses and power contestations characterising Zimbabwean politics since the emergence of a strong opposition contender, the MDC in 2000. In contrast to normative representations in political discourses, knowledge is embedded in specific cultures, that is, institutionalised practices of decision-making and means of legitimation. In this regard, insights from cultural enquiries necessitated by CDA create the prerequisite for the analysis of political texts.

Geographies of terror, harvest of fear: chiefs, local administration and politics in Zimbabwe in the 2000s

ABSTRACTThe emergence of the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, in 1999 radically reconfigured Zimbabwe's political landscape. MDC greatly challenged the electoral dominance the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front had enjoyed since independence in 1980. As literature on Zimbabwe's ‘crisis' has emphasised, throughout the 2000s ZANU-PF was predominantly preoccupied with repelling this challenge. Central to these efforts were violence and a patronage system involving all state institutions. However, the position of chieftaincy in the new politics has suffered scholarly neglect. This article examines how the government enlisted chiefs and lower-level traditional leaders, through intimidation and patronage networks, in its attempts to make rural areas an exclusively ZANU-PF vote bank. It utilises interviews, newspapers and Hansard, among other publicly available material, to argue that MDC’s hegemonic threat forced ZANU-PF to turn to the customary capital of the hitherto neglected chiefs, and that the consequent relationship became an impediment to democracy in Zimbabwe.

Refugee status as a patronage good? The interaction of transnational party mobilization and migration policy in the global south

ABSTRACT This article examines the transnational operations of the Zimbabwean opposition party Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) to mobilise migrant supporters living in South Africa during the 2000s. Drawing together a variety of empirical sources, including extensive original interviews with former MDC party officials and Zimbabwe diaspora civil society organisers, this article explores the challenges of diaspora engagement within contexts of poverty, legal precarity, and political violence in both origin and residence countries. Bringing together emerging research on transnational party mobilisation with the robust literature on distributive politics and clientelism, I show how assistance with asylum became a patronage good, distributed to party members in exchange for participation in party activities and electoral support. Moreover, the plight of Zimbabweans in South Africa illuminates how the line between forced and voluntary migration is both difficult to delineate and has increasingly dire consequences for populations that do not fit precisely within legal determinations of mass refugee movements. Keywords: Diaspora, Political Parties, Refugee Policy, Elections, Africa

Politics from the Pits: Artisanal Gold Mining, Politics and the Limits of Hegemonic State Domination in Zimbabwe

In post-2000s Zimbabwe, artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) has become one of the major economic activities that provides income and livelihood opportunities to millions of people. The article attempts to make sense of how such mining activities intertwined with the country’s political economy and became implicated in shaping the dynamics of local and national politics. Taking the case of Kwekwe district, situated at the heart of the country, the article argues that ASGM as a socio-economic and political activity and a general way of life became the core of contemporary local Zimbabwean political relations, interactions and participation, and indeed a potent motor in party–state expansion and power consolidation. The new arrangements of politics, while facilitating the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union(Patriotic Front) (ZANU[PF])’s strong hold on power and territory in the face of powerful opposition politics represented by the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), also encouraged local actors to expand their own statuses and influence away from political marginality towards the traditional political and elite centres such as the capital, Harare. The article shies away from literature that has emphasised state domination and subordination; this is in order to demonstrate that the relationship between the new political actors (buoyed by gold extraction) and the state is a flexible network of bargains and negotiated fusions, exchanges and appropriations. Largely ethnographical, it engages with an aspect of artisanal mining and politics in Zimbabwe that has yet to receive systematic scholarly attention.

Language and Factional Polarity in the Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe

This paper explores the role of language in the scientific study of politics. Conceding that politics is naturally an arena of heated disputation, it examines linguistic manifestations of factional polarisation by interpreting words, phrases, and sentences used by the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) politicians during the party’s acrimonious splits of 2005 and 2014 and subsequent re-union of 2017. I contend that the use of vituperative, exclusionary and inflammatory language fuelled personality clashes; ethnic chauvinism; sexism; racism; ideological discord and intraparty violence. This often derailed attempts to reconcile the party’s bickering factions.

Violence, Victimhood and Retaliation: The 2008 Elections and the Cyclic Nature of Political Violence in Norton, Zimbabwe

This article is an empirical examination of ‘victimhood’ in the context of the widespread, deadly and destructive electoral violence that affected Zimbabwe in 2008. It contends that an examination of the behaviour of victims of state-sponsored political violence enhances our comprehension of ‘victimhood’ as a factor in the perpetuation of political violence. The victims were largely ignored by the justice system, the political leadership and the community, all of whom were under the coercive spell of the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU PF). The trivialisation of their situation, and the absence of legitimate avenues for redress, forced many victims to seek direct revenge. The article traces how this fomented and reproduced the already violent political atmosphere in Norton town during the 2008 election period. It relies on interviews with opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) victims of violence in Norton to consider how they attempted to make sense of their pain by claiming victimhood and exacting physical revenge against their tormentors.

Dynamics of Political Entrepreneurship among the Elites in Post-Colonial Zimbabwe

The political arena is now abounding with people who either live ‘off’ or ‘for’ politics. The ferocious competition for people’s votes is akin to economic competition and as this study submits, the politicians are just like business people. Both productive and predatory profit opportunities have pervaded the Zimbabwean political arena where politics is a type of business. Political positions have afforded some people access to economic resources, making politics the quickest way to untold and unending riches. As a result, the political landscape has invited abuse of power thereby decimating not the physical being but the entire moral fibre of the nation. This study shows how Zimbabwean political leaders have turned out to be the primary controllers and distributors of power and resources with the capacity to penetrate society politically and secure their hegemony. Reference is made to politicians belonging to the ruling party Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), where politicians from either party have exhibited, though not uniformly, patterns of misconduct characteristic of political entrepreneurship. This paper applies the theory of the entrepreneur to political behaviour for the purpose of identifying political entrepreneurs and analytically distinguishing them from other government agents.

The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) music videos and the mutation of the Chimurenga genre in Zimbabwe

ABSTRACT This paper explores how musicians sympathetic to MDC appropriate, exploit, and ultimately seem to fall victim to the narrative traps present in Chimurenga music and its role in Zimbabwe’s political history. In this paper MDC’s Chimurenga music videos and songs are analyzed to bring out deep lying meanings and placed in a historic context. The paper analyses how the visual and lyrical content contest the ‘authorized’ version of Chimurenga to the extent of creating a new understanding of Chimurenga discourse and Chimurenga music. The selected video text helps identify lines of appropriation and contamination/mutation as it traces and contextualizes the evolution of the MDC war song up to a point it generically becomes similar to the traditions of Chimurenga established in the 70s. It is crucial to look at how a sense of ‘memory’ is ‘extracted’ as well as how it is re/packaged, re/distributed and received or contested in the service of MDC’s counter hegemonic propaganda. In this vein, we do not seek just to point moments or points of appropriation but also instances of mutation/violation that the MDC music videos usher into the narrative of the Chimurenga discourse especially in a post-colonial context.

The Inherent Resort to Violence in Opposition Politics: A Synthesis of the Post-2005 Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) Formations in Zimbabwe

The Inherent Resort to Violence in Opposition Politics: A Synthesis of the Post-2005 Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) Formations in Zimbabwe

ZIMBABWE BETWEEN THE REFERENDUM AND THE ELECTIONS

Has any Zimbabwean election ever solved anything? problem is not the constitution but who counts the votes. (Local voices) (1)) 1. Introduction The recent overwhelming 'Yes' vote in the constitutional referendum on 16 March has led to two seemingly contradictory developments. The way has opened up for elections later in the year (the date has to be announced by 29 June), but it is unlikely that these will occur in a free and fair environment as demanded by the regional body, the Southern African Development Community (SADC), and by international donors who may provide the funding. By law Zimbabwe has to have set an election date by the end of June 2013 and before such elections the regional body SADC insisted that there be a referendum on a new constitution as agreed in inter-party negotiations after 2008. This took place peacefully, although amid a wider climate of intimidation and arrests, (2)) and the electorate voted overwhelmingly in favour. (3)) The negotiations over the latter in the Parliamentary Constitutional Select Committee (COPAC) have dragged on since 2009. Finally a draft constitution was agreed in mid-January 2013 with all parties making concessions at the last minute. The sticking points were choosing presidential running mates (a big problem for both Mugabe and Tsvangirai given faction fighting), devolution, a Constitutional Court, a National Prosecuting Authority separate from the partisan Attorney General, and reducing the powers of the executive. Many see the draft as very flawed but with little choice but to accept it. As things stand, if elections are not called in the first half of 2013 the government becomes ultra vires. (4)) There has always been a tendency in ZANU-PF to maintain the semblance of legality (even if post-hoc on occasion) despite its methods. There has been no significant progress towards security reforms/governance to prevent the violence of the 2008 elections being repeated or other reforms to ensure a free(ish) and fair(ish) election such as a truly autonomous electoral commission (ZEC) and reform of the degraded voters roll. Legislation to establish a Human Rights Commission passed through Parliament but its provisions on impunity for abuses until recently attracted much civil society criticism. Western donors seem very keen to re-engage Harare despite the volatile human rights situation. In February 2013 we had four years of the 'Inclusive (or Unified) Government' (IG/GNU) following the signing in September 2008 of the 'Global Political Agreement' (GPA) between the former sole ruling party ZANU-PF and its challengers, the two factions of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Many activists see that ZANU-PF has used the space of the GPA better to consolidate its previously shaky rule, even if its support base is low. Its control of the major organisations of state with the exception of the Ministry of Finance remains firm especially with the additional, largely undeclared revenues from the diamond mines. Its ideological stance of indigenisation, sovereignty and empowerment is at least clearly understood while that of the MDC is unclear, including its Jobs, Upliftment, Capital Investment and Ecology (JUICE) programme for growth. It remains susceptible to the charge repeated endlessly by its coalition 'partner' and the state-controlled media of being Western puppets. There is, however, an alternative scenario that both MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai and President Mugabe fear more the enemy within (that is, in their own parties) than that without. This might lead to possible realignments according to some. While some are sceptical about this, proponents point out that no-one is posing a way to unlock the process whereby a yes vote leads to the elections with little having changed and the supposedly democratic elements of the constitution have had no chance to bed in. The alternative therefore is an elite pact avoiding ructions within the parties giving that few actually really want elections anyway. …

Learning and performing political violence: ZANU-PF Youth and the 2008 presidential run-off election in Zimbabwe

ABSTRACT This article examines political violence enacted by youth during the presidential run-off election in Zimbabwe in 2008. After the presidential election in March 2008, no clear winner emerged, leading to a run-off election in June 2008 between Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). In the face of a possible defeat in the run-off, ZANU-PF unleashed significant levels of violence against MDC activists and members, such that Tsvangirai withdrew. Central to the violence were youths, and mainly young men, who performed this violence for diverse reasons, including promises of material rewards and compliance due to fear of being labelled as a sell-out. While not denying the significance of these reasons, this article explores the importance of political socialisation of youth in Zimbabwe by the ‘war generation’, that is, those who fought during the war of liberation in the 1970s. This socialisation entailed the propagation of an authoritarian nationalist narrative by ZANU-PF in which violence was justified in defending ‘the revolution’. This narrative was very pervasive in the years preceding 2008 and in the months leading up to the run-off. There is evidence that suggests that youths learnt about the efficacy of violence through this process of political socialisation and, on this basis, performed violence during the run-off. We conclude that this ‘indoctrination’ is of some significance in understanding youth violence in 2008. However, we argue that any youths considered as inspired on nationalist grounds to enact violence also had their own personal motivations that are irreducible to nationalist fervour.

Different narration, same history: The politics of writing ‘democratic narratives’ in Zimbabwe

Over the past five decades, Zimbabwe’s political trajectories were characterised by a historiographic revision and deconstruction that revealed varying ideological perceptions and positions of political actors. This article reconsiders the current shifts in the Zimbabwean historiography and focuses on the politics of positioning the self in the national narrative. The article analyses three Zimbabwean political autobiographies written by political actors from the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), particularly Michael Auret’s From Liberator to Dictator: An Insider’s Account of Robert Mugabe’s Descent into Tyranny (2009), Morgan Tsvangirai’s At the Deep End (2011), and David Coltart’s The Struggle Continues: 50 Years of Tyranny in Zimbabwe (2016). It also discusses how writing in Zimbabwe is a contested terrain that is bifurcated between oppositional and dominant imaginaries of politics, the revolutionary tradition, and past performances of power.

The nexus of journalism and political activism in post-2000 Zimbabwe: A field theory critique

The post-2000 political-economic crisis in Zimbabwe saw the migration of journalists as political and economic refugees. Many, if not all, of these claimed persecution at home and some amongst them established online publications with an interest on Zimbabwe. But some of the journalists that remained in Zimbabwe became activists in support of either the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) regime or the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Another group joined civil society whilst others joined either the ruling ZANU-PF party or the opposition political parties, mainly MDC. In the same context, some activists joined newsrooms. In this context, the distinction between journalism and political activism became increasingly blurred. The article, deploying Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory, explores how and why this morphing of journalists into activists and vice versa unfolded and its impact on the journalistic field. The findings demonstrate that on one hand journalists morphed into activists through: switching into civil society; active involvement in party politics either as members or election candidates; openly campaigning for or against certain political parties and candidates; and writing political campaign material disguised as news. On the other hand, activists entered the journalistic field as columnists, correspondents or stringers, editors and, in one high profile case, a Ministry of Information official. The metamorphosis happened openly and underground, and it was caused by poverty, greed, the desire to migrate, disenchantment with economic challenges, state-sponsored repression of the media and the desire to secure one’s privileged position in the journalistic social field.

Land Reform in Zimbabwe: a Balance of Political Expediency and Economic Inevitability?

The article considers the political aspect of land reform in the Republic of Zimbabwe. The problem of land reform has been one of the crucial ones in the history of this African country, which celebrated 40 years of independence on April 18, 2020. In recent decades, it has been constantly in the spotlight of political and electoral processes. The land issue was one of the key points of the political program from the very beginning of Robert Mugabe’s reign in 1980. The political aspect of land reform began to manifest itself clearly with the growth of the opposition movement in the late 1990s. In 2000–2002 the country implemented the Fast Track Land Reform Program (FTLRP), the essence of which was the compulsory acquisition of land from white owners without compensation. The expropriation of white farmers’ lands in the 2000s led to a serious reconfiguration of land ownership, which helped to maintain in power the ruling party, the African National Union of Zimbabwe – Patriotic Front (ZANU – PF). The government was carrying out its land reform in the context of a sharp confrontation with the opposition, especially with the Party for the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), led by trade union leader Morgan Tsvangirai. The land issue was on the agenda of all the election campaigns (including the elections in July 2018); this fact denotes its politicization, hence the timeliness of this article. The economic and political crisis in Zimbabwe in the 2000–2010s was the most noticeable phenomenon in the South African region. The analysis of foreign and domestic sources allows us to conclude that the accelerated land reform served as one of its main triggers. The practical steps of the new Zimbabwean president, Mr. Emmerson Mnangagwa, indicate that he is aware of the importance of resolving land reform-related issues for further economic recovery. At the beginning of March 2020, the government adopted new regulations defining the conditions for compensation to farmers. On April 18, 2020, speaking on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the independence of Zimbabwe, Mr. E. Mnangagwa stated that the land reform program remains the cornerstone of the country’s independence and sovereignty.

Party Foot-Soldiers, Quasi-Militias, Vigilantes, and the Spectre of Violence in Zimbabwe’s Opposition Politics

Scholarship tends to neglect the phenomenon of political violence in opposition parties in Zimbabwe. The prevailing narrative is that political violence is largely a monopoly of the state and the ruling party, Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF). However, an emerging trend implicates opposition political parties, particularly the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). The MDC’s party’s foot-soldiers, especially the “Vanguard,” often exhibit violent tendencies. Accordingly, the present article explores the scourge of intra-party violence in the opposition party MDC between 2005 and 2019. The article conceptualises and contextualises MDC’s violence through the lenses of Zimbabwe’s political culture and socialisation in the context of the country’s pre-colonial, colonial, and postcolonial historical trajectories.

Religious Politics in Africa: Fasting for Politics, or Political Fasting in Zimbabwe?

Abstract In the post-colonial history of presidential aspirants in Zimbabwe, no politician has been as overtly religious as Nelson Chamisa, the current leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Chamisa identifies himself as a politician and a pastor whose politics are guided by his Christian faith. However, he took religious rhetoric to mobilise support to an unprecedented level when he explicitly blurred the boundaries between functions by calling for and leading a week of fasting and prayer from 29th July to 4th August 2019. Through a digital ethnography of Chamisa’s Twitter posts and the direct responses to them posted by members of the public during the fasting and prayer week, this article investigates how this call was received by those who responded on Twitter and what this tells us about Zimbabweans’ perceptions of religious politics, that is, the deployment of dominant religions like Christianity in politics.

Central-local state contestations and urban management in Zimbabwe

ABSTRACT Most scholars agree that the character of the urban governance system in Zimbabwe is a reflection of the dominance of one political party, namely, Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF). However, the increasingly prominent role of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in urban governance has heralded, since the early 2000s, a period marked by change, contestation and confusion. Simultaneously, the destabilising effect of contested urban governance politics on urban management in Zimbabwe has become entrenched. This article focuses on the interface between urban governance politics and urban management in Zimbabwe in the post-2000 era. It analyses how central government, through the local government ministry, local government statutes and appointed officials, structures, and even destabilises, the administration of urban affairs. The article concludes that urban governance is not merely a site of political contestation, as it has also profoundly influenced and altered the functioning of urban administration in Zimbabwe.

The Government of National Unity as a Long Lasting Political and Economic Solution in Zimbabwe

This paper addresses the effectiveness of negotiated settlements in solving national disputes, with particular focus on the Government of National Unity (GNU) that operated in Zimbabwe from 2009 to 2013. Some of the experts interviewed for this study noted that the elite agreed to have a unity government in order to serve their self-interest. The Zimbabwe African National Unity Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party needed help in solving the crisis at hand while the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party wanted to experience running a government, at the same time reaping the benefits that came with it. We can conclude that the GNU in Zimbabwe was an elite settlement, without involvement of the general populace. The elite only meant to serve their own interests and ignored national interest. When its tenure expired in 2013, the situation in the country reverted into crisis mode, particularly the economy. It is therefore this paper’s position that any national settlement should involve the affected masses and all transitional settlements should have politically neutral players at the forefront, not political actors or individuals with political ambitions.

Geographies of Urban Dominance: The Politics of Harare’s Periphery

This paper examines how Zimbabwe’s ruling party ZANU(PF) sought to dominate Harare from 2000 onwards, when the city’s voters turned to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). The ruling party’s quest for control was embedded in broader changes to the state, marked by countrywide repression of the political opposition and civic organisations, securitised state institutions, and a shift into patronage and systemic corruption, in a context of repeated economic crises and infrastructural decay. ZANU(PF) deployed a mix of ‘repressive’ and ‘generative’ strategies but these have been notably unsuccessful in winning back urban votes overall. The ruling party’s ‘generative’ patronage in this solidly opposition-supporting capital hinged on controlling land and new settlements on the periphery, together with dominance of central markets and opportunities for vending. Simultaneously, the powers of the Ministry Responsible for Local Government were used to undermine the city’s council, destabilise its finances and restrict its spatial governance. Land reform and land occupations, justified nationwide as a continuation of the liberation struggle, shaped the city’s expansion in distinctive ways. The paper makes two contributions to broader conceptual debates over political dominance in urban contexts. First, it advocates a geographical approach that differentiates specific urban spaces, rather than treating capital cities as monolithic. Second, it calls for attention to the qualities of political dominance and change over time. This means looking beyond top-down strategies of co-optation or coercion and open forms of protest politics to explore authority and political manoeuvres within dominated locales.