Civil society and state-centred struggles

Abstract

This article is about civil society and state-centred struggles in contemporary Zimbabwe. I first identify and outline three current understandings of civil society. Two understandings (one Liberal, one Radical) are state-centric and exist firmly within the logic of state discourses and state politics. A third understanding, also Radical, is society-centric and speaks about politics existing at a distance from the state and possibly beyond the boundaries of civil society. This civil society-state discussion frames the second section of the article, which looks specifically at Zimbabwe. It details civil society as contested terrain (from the late 1990s onwards) within the context of a scholarly debate about agrarian transformation and political change. This debate, which reproduces (in theoretical garb) the key political society (or party) fault-lines within Zimbabwean society, has taken place primarily within the restricted confines of state-centred discourses.

Keywords:

• civil society
• liberal and radical versions

Notes

1. In a rare collaborative work (Moyo, Makumbe, and Raftopoulos 2000), Moyo (a radical nationalist) and Raftopoulos and Makumbe (civil nationalists) use civil society ‘loosely’ (2000, xii) as equivalent to NGOs, understood though as both intermediary donor-funded organisations and community-based organisations. The point is that this is an institutionally based definition of civil society.

2. Interestingly, prior to the ‘wave’ of democratisation throughout Africa during the 1990s, Shivji (1989) theorised about the NDR and human rights, and argued (unlike Moyo and Yeros) that the furtherance of the NDR necessitated a distinctive anti-authoritarian (and thus democratic) thrust that privileged the right of the popular classes to organise independent of the repressive nation-state. In this respect, Neocosmos (1993) repeatedly emphasises the critical link between ‘democratisation from below’ (1993, 8) and agrarian reform, and he argues that democratic struggles are ‘the primary issue’ (1993, 15) in ensuring progressive reform.