Making Sense of Mugabeism in Local and Global Politics: ‘So Blair, keep your England and let me keep my Zimbabwe’

Abstract

President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has emerged as one of the most controversial political figures since 2000, eliciting both admiration and condemnation. What is termed ‘Mugabeism’ is a summation of a constellation of political controversies, political behaviour, political ideas, utterances, rhetoric and actions that have crystallised around Mugabe's political life. It is a contested phenomenon with the nationalist aligned scholars understanding it as a pan-African redemptive ideology opposed to all forms of imperialism and colonialism and dedicated to a radical redistributive project predicated on redress of colonial injustices. A neoliberal-inspired perspective sees Mugabeism as a form of racial chauvinism and authoritarianism marked by antipathy towards norms of liberal governance and disdain for human rights and democracy. This article seeks to analyse Mugabeism as populist phenomenon propelled through articulatory practices and empty signifiers. As such it can be read at many levels: as a form of left-nationalism; as Afro-radicalism and nativism; a patriarchal neo-traditional cultural nationalism and an antithesis of democracy and human rights. All these representations make sense within the context of colonial, nationalist, postcolonial and even pre-colonial history that Mugabe has deployed to sustain and support his political views.

Notes

1 See New African Magazine: Zimbabwe Special Issue, Summer 2007, pp 5–6. Mugabeism took an openly anti-British and anti-Blair format mainly after 1997 when the British Secretary for International Development, Clare Short, wrote a letter to Zimbabwe's Minister of Agriculture, Kumbirai Kangai, in which she stated that the UK did not have any responsibility for redressing material inequalities that were created by colonialism in Zimbabwe. In this letter Short had written that: ‘I should make it clear that we do not accept that Britain has a special responsibility to meet the costs of land purchase in Zimbabwe. We are a new Government from diverse backgrounds without links to former colonial interests. My own origins are Irish and as you know we were colonised not colonisers.’ For the full letter, see ‘Short, Clare, how it all started’, New African Magazine, March 2002. The fallout between Mugabe and Blair was further exacerbated by the British imposition of an arms embargo against Zimbabwe in May 2000. This was accompanied by the UK's decision to stop supplying Land Rovers to the Zimbabwe Republic Police, withdrawal of the British Military Advisory Training Team, and cutting of aid to Zimbabwe by one-third. Mugabe was further angered by Blair's active role in the decision of the European Union to implement ‘targeted sanctions’ against the government of Zimbabwe on 18 January 2002. This included the imposition of an asset freeze and travel ban on Mugabe and his senior party officials; an embargo on the sale or transfer of arms and technical advice. Blair further infuriated Mugabe through his close relationship with George Bush, who in December 2001 had signed into law the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Bill that introduced sanctions against senior Zimbabwe government officials. Mugabe blamed Blair for having played a central role in making sure Zimbabwe was suspended from the Commonwealth in March 2002. Finally Mugabe accused Blair's government of being the brains behind the creation and sponsorship of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change as its running dog of imperialism, aimed at achieving ‘regime change’ and facilitating the re-colonisation of Zimbabwe.

2 The Herald, 6 December 1997.

3 Quoted in J Chaumba, I Scoones & W Wolmer, ‘New politics, new livelihoods: agrarian change in Zimbabwe’, Review of African Political Economy, 98, 2003, pp 585–608.

4 S Zizek, The Sublime Object of Ideology, London: Phronesis, 1989.

5 SJ Ndlovu-Gatsheni, ‘Patriots, puppets, dissidents and the politics of inclusion and exclusion in contemporary Zimbabwe’, Eastern Africa Social Science Research Review, XXIV (1), 2008, pp 81–108.

6 E Laclau, On Populist Reason, London: Verso, 2005, pp ix–xi.

7 G Germani, Authoritarianism, Fascism and National Populism, Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1978, p 88.

8 P Worsley, ‘The concept of populism’, in G Ionescu & E Gellner (eds), Populism: Its Meaning and National Characteristics, London: Macmillan, 1969, p 213.

9 A Norman, Mugabe: Teacher, Revolutionary, Tyrant, Gloucestershire: History Press, 2008.

10 Ibid, p 161.

11 E Laclau & C Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, London: Verso, 1985, p 67.

12 Laclau, On Populist Reason, p 74.

13 E Laclau, ‘Towards a theory of populism’, in Laclau (ed), Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory, London: New Left Books, 1977.

14 Laclau, On Populist Reason, p 225.

15 D Moore, ‘Is land the economy and the economy the land? Primitive accumulation in Zimbabwe’, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 19 (2), 2001, pp 253–266.

16 E Laclau, ‘Ideology and post-Marxism’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 11 (2), 2006, p 112. Emphasis in original.

17 E Laclau, ‘Why do empty signifiers matter in politics?’, in Laclau, Emancipation(s), London: Verso, 1996, p 44.

18 Norman, Mugabe, p 18.

19 DB Moore, ‘The ideological formation of the Zimbabwean ruling class’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 17 (3), 1991, p 492.

20 Quoted in T Ranger, ‘The changing of the old guard: Robert Mugabe and the revival of zanu’, Journal of Southern African Studies: Special Issue on Contemporary Politics, 7 (1), 1980, p 83.

21 ‘Comrade Mugabe lays the line at historic Chimoio Central Committee Meeting’, Zimbabwe News, July–December 1977, p 14.

22 RG Mugabe, ‘Independence message’, Struggles for Independence: Documents of Recent Developments of Zimbabwe, 1975–1980, Vol 7, Hamburg: Institute of African Studies Documentation Centre, December 1979–April 1980.

23 I Mandaza, ‘Reconciliation and social justice in Southern Africa: the Zimbabwe experience’, in MW Malegapuru (ed), African Renaissance: The New Struggle, Cape Town: Mafube Publishing, 1999, p 79.

24 Ibid.

25 B Raftopoulos, ‘The Zimbabwean crisis and the challenges of the Left’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 32 (2), 2006, p 203.

26 S Moyo & P Yeros, ‘Intervention: the Zimbabwe question and the two lefts’, Historical Materialism, 15, 2007, pp 173–174.

27 S Moyo & P Yeros, ‘The radicalised state: Zimbabwe's interrupted revolution’, Review of African Political Economy, 111, 2007, p 106.

28 Ibid, p 106.

29 Ibid, pp 106–107.

30 M Mamdani, ‘Lessons of Zimbabwe’, London Review of Books, 30 (23), 2008, p 1.

31 Ibid, p 3.

32 T Scarnecchia, J Alexander and 33 others, ‘Lessons of Zimbabwe’, at http://ww.lrb.co.uk/v31/n01/letters.html

33 T Ranger, ‘From Terence Ranger’, at http://ww.lrb.co.uk/v31/n01/letters.html

34 H Campbell, ‘Mamdani, Mugabe and the African scholarly community’, at http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/52845

35 I Phimister & B Raftopoulos, ‘Mugabe, Mbeki and the politics of anti-imperialism’, Review of African Political Economy, 101, 2004, pp 385–400.

36 B Raftopoulos, ‘The Zimbabwean crisis and the challenges for the Left’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 32 (2), 2006, p 203.

37 Ibid, p 219.

38 British Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Response of the Secretary of State for Session 2001–2002, London: Stationary Office, 2002, pp 2–3.

39 S Mair & M Sithole, Blocked Democracies in Africa: Case Study of Zimbabwe, Harare: Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, 2002, p 22.

40 SJ Ndlovu-Gatsheni, ‘Dynamics of the Zimbabwe crisis in the 21st century’, African Journal on Conflict Resolution, 3 (1), 2003, pp 99–105.

41 C Young, The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994, pp 283, 225.

42 T Ranger, ‘Introduction to Volume Two’, in Ranger (ed), The Historical Dimensions of Democracy and Human Rights in Zimbabwe, Vol 2, Nationalism, Democracy and Human Rights, Harare: University of Zimbabwe, 2003, pp 1–37.

43 K-S Chen, ‘Introduction: the decolonisation question’, in Chen (ed), Trajectories: Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, London: Routledge, 1998, p 14.

44 M Mamdani, ‘When does a settler become a native? Citizenship and identity in a settler society’, Pretext: Literacy and Cultural Studies, 10, (1), 2001, pp 63–66.

45 The Herald, 6 December 1997.

46 M Mamdani, ‘When does a settler become a native? Reflections on the roots of citizenship in equatorial and South Africa’, text of Inaugural Lecture delivered as AC Jordan Professor of African Studies, University of Cape Town, 13 May 1998.

47 F Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, New York: Grove, 1968, pp 157–159.

48 P Bond, ‘Radical rhetoric and the working class during Zimbabwean nationalism's dying days’, Journal of World-Systems Research, VII (1), 2001, p 59.

49 Phimister & Raftopoulos, ‘Mugabe, Mbeki and the politics of anti-imperialism’, p 285.

50 M Mamdani, ‘A brief history of genocide’, Kwani, 2003, p 43.

51 B Raftopoulos, ‘Nation, race and history in Zimbabwean politics’, in S Dorman, D Hammett & P Nugent (eds), Making Nations, Creating Strangers: States and Citizenship in Africa, Leiden: Brill, 2007, p 181.

52 A Mbembe, ‘African modes of self-writing’, Public Culture, 14 (1), 2002, pp 239–273.

53 A Mbembe, ‘On the power of the false’, Public Culture, 14 (3), 2002, p 629.

54 A Mbembe, ‘The cultural politics of South Africa's foreign policy: between black (inter)nationalism and Afropolitanism’, unpublished paper presented at Wits Institute of Economic and Social Research, University of Witwatersrand, 2006, p 8.

55 Ibid.

56 Mbembe, ‘African modes of self-writing’, pp 239–240.

57 Ibid, pp 240–241.

58 Ibid, p 241.

59 Ibid.

60 Ibid.

61 R Mugabe, Inside the Third Chimurenga, Harare: Government Printers, 2001, pp 92–93.

62 Mbembe, ‘African modes of self-writing’, p 242.

63 Ibid.

64 Ibid, p 243.

65 SJ Ndlovu-Gatsheni, ‘Putting people first—from regime security to human security: a quest for social peace in Zimbabwe, 1980–2002’, in AG Nhema (ed), The Quest for Peace in Africa: Transformations, Democracy and Public Policy, Utrecht & Addis Ababa: International Books with ossrea, 2004, pp 297–322.

66 Mbembe, ‘African modes of self-writing’, pp 243–244.

67 Ibid, p 244.

68 Ibid, p 250.

69 Ibid, p 251.

70 Ibid.

71 Ibid.

72 KC Dunn, ‘“Sons of the soil” and contemporary state making: autochthony, uncertainty and political violence in Africa’, Third World Quarterly, 30 (1), 2009, p 115.

73 Mbembe, ‘The power of the false’, p 635.

74 Dunn, ‘“Sons of the soil”’, pp 114–115.

75 N Kriger, ‘From patriotic memories to “patriotic history” in Zimbabwe, 1990–2005’, Third World Quarterly, 27 (6), 2006, p 1154.

76 A Appadurai, ‘Dead certainty: ethnic violence in the era of globalisation’, in B Meyer & P Geschiere (eds), Globalisation and Identity: Dialectics of Flow and Closure, Oxford: Blackwell, 1999, p 322.

77 R Muponde, ‘The worm and the hoe: cultural politics and reconciliation after the third chimurenga’, in B Raftopoulos & T Savage (eds), Zimbabwe: Injustice and Political Reconciliation, Cape Town: Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, 2004, p 176.

78 Ibid.

79 Mbembe, ‘African modes of self-writing’, p 252.

80 Ibid, p 252. Emphasis in the original.

81 D Blair, Degrees in Violence: Robert Mugabe and the Struggle for Power in Zimbabwe, London & New York: Continuum, 2002.

82 Mbembe, ‘Africa modes of self-writing’, p 268.

83 Ibid, p 260.

84 Ibid, p 267. Emphasis in original.

85 This is no to ignore the fact that zanu-pf is not a monolithic political movement; it has conservatives, radicals, reformers, modernists as well as cosmopolitans. However, the position described above is well articulated in S Moyo, The Zimbabwe Crisis and Normalisation, Centre for Policy Studies: Issues and Actors, 18 (7), 2005, Johannesburg, p 5.

86 E Chitando, ‘In the beginning was the land: the appropriation of religious themes in political discourse in Zimbabwe’, Africa: Journal of the International Studies Institute, 75 (2), 2005, pp 220–239.

87 The Zimbabwean nativist revolution has been reduced to the Fast-Track Land Reform Programme that ensued at the turn of the millennium. See Mugabe, Inside the Third Chimurenga.

88 Terence Ranger, ‘Nationalist historiography, patriotic history and history of the nation: the struggle over the past in Zimbabwe’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 30 (2), 2004, pp 215–234. See also L Bull-Chrisstiansen, Tales of the Nation: Feminist Nationalism or Patriotic History? Defining National History and Identity in Zimbabwe, Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 2004.

89 Muponde, ‘The worm and the hoe’, p 177.

90 Chitando, ‘In the beginning was the land’, p 224.

91 Ibid.

92 Quoted in B-M Tendi, ‘Patriotic history and public intellectuals critical of power’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 34 (2), 2008, p 386.

93 E Worby, ‘The end of modernity in Zimbabwe? Passages from development to sovereignty’, in A Hammar, B Raftopoulos & S Jensen (eds), Zimbabwe's Unfinished Business: Rethinking Land, State and Nation in the Context of Crisis, Harare: Weaver Press, 2003, p 70.

94 Muponde, ‘The worm and the hoe’, p 191.

95 Worby, ‘The end of modernity in Zimbabwe?’, p 71.

96 Chitando, ‘In the beginning was the land', p 229. Emphasis in original.

97 Quoted in Chitando, ‘In the beginning was the land’, p 229. See also E Chitando, ‘“Down with the Devil, forward with Christ!” A study of the interface between religious and political discourses in Zimbabwe’, African Sociological Review, 6 (1), 2002, pp 1–16.

98 Ambuya Nehanda and Chaminuka were pre-colonial religious figures who were renowned for predicting and seeing into the future. Nehanda was accused and hanged by the British colonialists for having been the brains behind the Shona uprising of 1896–97.

99 Among traditional religious politics there is a pervasive belief that Ambuya Nehanda prophesised that her bones would arise and fight for the liberation of Zimbabwe when she was about to be hanged in the 1890s.

100 JG Todd, Through the Darkness: A Life in Zimbabwe, Cape Town: Zebra Press, 2007, p 424.

101 Citizenship of Zimbabwe Amendment Act, 2003.

102 Phineas Chihota, Deputy Minister of Industry and International Trade, ‘Urban dwellers not Zimbabwean—mp’, The Zimbabwean Independent, 1 July 2005.

103 Quoted in the Daily News, 14 October 2002.

104 Operation Murambatsvina took place in 2005 and left about 70 000 people homeless.

105 J Muzondidya, ‘“Zimbabwe for Zimbabweans”: invisible subject minorities and the quest for justice and reconciliation in post-colonial Zimbabwe’, in Raftopoulos & Savage, Zimbabwe, pp 213–235.

106 Ibid, p 225.

107 Ibid, pp 225–226.

108 H Campbell, Reclaiming Zimbabwe: The Exhaustion of Patriarchal Model of Liberation, Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2003.

109 Moyo, The Zimbabwe Crisis and Normalisation, p 6.

110 Muponde, ‘The worm and the hoe’, p 178.

111 Ibid.

112 Ibid.

113 R Gaidzanwa, ‘Bourgeois theories of gender and feminism and their shortcomings with reference to Southern African countries’, in R Meena (ed), Gender in Southern Africa: Conceptual and Theoretical Issues, Harare: sapes, 1992; E’ Schmidt, ‘Review article: For better or worse? Women and zanla in Zimbabwe's liberation struggle’, International Journal of Historical Studies, 34 (2), 2001, pp 416–417; and J Nhongo-Simbanegavi, For Better or Worse? Women and zanla in Zimbabwe's Liberation Struggle, Harare: Weaver Press, 2000.

114 C Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990, p 45.

115 SJ Ndlovu-Gatsheni, ‘Patriarchy and domestication of women in Zimbabwe: a critique of female-to-female relations of oppression’, Zambezia, XXX (ii), 2003, pp 229–245.

116 The Herald, 16 February 2002.

117 Sunday Mail, 16 March 2003.

118 This line of thinking was depicted in Tafataona Mahoso's column in the Sunday Mail, 19 July 2008.

119 R Desai, ‘The Political Economy and Cultural Politics of Nationalisms in Historical Perspective', Third World Quaterly, 29 (3), 2008, p 663. See also R Desai, ‘From national bourgeoisies to rogues, failures and bullies: 21st century imperialism and the unravelling of the Third World’, Third World Quarterly, 25 (1), 2004, pp 169–185.

120 Desai, ‘The Political Economy and Cultural Politics of Nationalisms', p 668. See also R Desai, ‘Nation against democracy: the rise of cultural nationalism in Asia’, in F Quadir & J Lele (eds), Democracy and Civil Society in Asia, Vol 1, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, pp 81–110.