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Abstract
During the interregnum between the announcement of the election results in March 1980 and the independence ceremony in April, approximately 16,000 workers staged wildcat strikes across Zimbabwe. While previous scholarly analyses have focused on the failure of these strikes to catalyse a sustained movement, this article reads them as timely enactments of the workers’ vision of decolonisation during a fragile moment of transition. First, rather than reacting to state policy making, the strikes seized the brief opening to make demands to which the incoming government was forced to respond. Second, the strikes intervened in a broader debate about the speed at which political change ought to unfold in the new state. This debate was reflected through the terms ‘reconciliation’ and ‘transformation’, which circulated in public discourse and framed ZANU(PF)’s approach to governance. These terms captured two different approaches to the predicament that the party found itself in once it acquired power. Reconciliation centred on gradualism and moderation, while transformation emphasised the rapid change of extant colonial institutions. Caught in this bind, through the mechanism of the wildcat strike, workers refused the injunction to wait for the formal transfer of power to access the freedoms promised to them, enacting a sense of anticipation that made distinct claims on the future government.
Acknowledgements
Archival research for this article was funded by the US Social Science Research Council and the Princeton University Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship. I am grateful to participants of the 2020 Greater New York Area African History Workshop and the University of California Africanist Workshop, whose comments and provocations sharpened the focus of this article. I also wish to thank Mhoze Chikowero, Erik Johnson and JSAS’s anonymous reviewers for their close readings of earlier versions of this article. Farai Mudzingwa: thank you for directing me to take a second look at the Associated Press’s invaluable footage of these events. Finally, special thanks to Victor Gwande for generously sharing materials from the UK National Archives.
Notes
1 L. Sachikonye, ‘State, Capital, and Trade Unions’, in I. Mandaza (ed.), Zimbabwe: The Political Economy of Transition 1980–1986 (Dakar, CODESRIA, 1986), p. 253.
2 ‘Bulawayo Strikers Go Back’, Herald, Salisbury (Harare), 2 April 1980.
3 Sachikonye, ‘State, Capital, and Trade Unions’, p. 252.
4 Associated Press (AP) Archive, ‘Zimbabwe Workers Strike’, 11 March 1980.
5 A. Astrow, Zimbabwe: A Revolution that Lost its Way? (London, Zed Press, 1983), pp. 175–83; B. Raftopoulos, ‘Beyond the House of Hunger: Democratic Struggle in Zimbabwe’, Review of African Political Economy, 19, 54 (1992), pp. 59–74; R. Saunders, ‘Striking Ahead: Industrial Action and Labour Movement Development’, in B. Raftopoulos and L. Sachikonye (eds), Striking Back: The Labour Movement and the Post-Colonial State in Zimbabwe 1980–2000 (Harare, Weaver Press, 2001), pp. 133–73; S.R. Dorman, Understanding Zimbabwe: From Liberation to Authoritarianism (New York, Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 62–3.
6 These arguments underlie Adom Getachew, Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2019); and Gary Wilder, Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World (Durham and London, Duke University Press, 2015).
7 Wilder, Freedom Time, p. 1.
8 Sachikonye, ‘State, Capital and Trade Unions’, p. 254.
9 I owe this important observation, which made the question of timing salient to my analysis, to Simon Gikandi.
10 I. Shivji, Class Struggles in Tanzania (London, Heinemann, 1976).
11 S.J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, The Zimbabwean Nation State Project: A Historical Analysis of Identity and Power-Based Conflicts in a Postcolonial State, Discussion Paper 59 (Uppsala, Nordiska Afrikainsitutet, 2011), p. 60.
12 V. de Waal, The Politics of Reconciliation (Harare, Longman, 1990); J.L. Fisher, Pioneers, Settlers, Aliens, Exiles: The Decolonisation of White Identity in Zimbabwe (Canberra, Australia National University Press, 2010).
13 Planned research for this article initially included three months in Zimbabwe to solicit interviews with labour organisers active during this period. Pandemic travel restrictions disrupted this plan. While I had some promising contacts, conducting virtual interviews proved to be a challenging task. Still, I am aware that the absence of interviews with participants limits the claims I can make and colours my interpretive framing. Future iterations of an ongoing project on these questions will make use of interviews.
14 M. Nyagumbo, ‘Towards the Second National Congress, May 1984’, Zimbabwe News, 14, 4 (1983), p. 7.
15 P. Bond, ‘Radical Rhetoric and the Working Class during Zimbabwean Nationalism’s Dying Days’, in Raftopoulos and Sachikonye (eds), Striking Back, p. 36.
16 De Waal, The Politics of Reconciliation, p. 129.
17 S. Muzenda, ‘Reconciliation: The Great Zimbabwean Experiment’, Zimbabwe News, 14, 4 (1983), p. 19.
18 ‘Zimbabwe is Born: Jubilation as Flag is Raised’, Herald, 18 April 1980, p. 1.
19 ‘Address to the Nation by the Prime Minister: The Wrongs of the Past Must Now Stand Forgiven and Forgotten’, Herald, 18 April 1980, p. 4.
20 Ibid.
21 2 Cor. 5:17.
22 Ibid.
23 Lancaster House Agreement, 21 December 1979, available at https://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/5847/5/1979_Lancaster_House_Agreement.pdf, retrieved 17 August 2022.
24 A.E. Sibanda, The Lancaster House Agreement and the Post-Independence State in Zimbabwe (Harare, Zimbabwe Institute of Development Studies, 1991), p. 10.
25 Pamberi NeZimbabwe, directed by João Manuel Costa and Carlos Henriques (Maputo, National Film Institute of Mozambique, 1981).
26 B. Bloom, ‘We Want to Take the People with Us’, Financial Times, London, 22 April 1980, p. Zimbabwe IV.
27 H. Ushewokunze, ‘The Police in Independent Zimbabwe’, Zimbabwe News, Harare, 14 March 1983, p. 16.
28 S. Biko, I Write What I Like: A Selection of his Writings, second edition (London, Bowerdean Publishing, 1996), p. 49.
29 ‘Year of National Transformation’, Zimbabwe News, 13, 1 (1982), p. 1.
30 ZANU(PF) 1980 Election Manifesto (Salisbury, ZANU Central Committee, 1980), pp. 8–9.
31 D. Marechera, The House of Hunger (Long Grove, Waveland Press, 2013 [1978]), p. 13.
32 ‘Jubilation Gets Out of Hand in Midlands’, Herald, 7 March 1980, p. 3.
33 Concerning Violence, directed by Goran Olsson (Copenhagen, Final Cut for Real, 2014).
34 S. Onslow, ‘The Man on the Spot: Christopher Soames and Decolonisation of Zimbabwe/Rhodesia’, Britain and the World: Historical Journal of The British Scholar Society, 6, 1 (2013), p. 92.
35 Tekere had a reputation for a certain kind of political immoderation that defies easy ideological categorisation. This trait is captured by his nickname, 2Boy, earned in childhood, owing to his prowess on the soccer field. The nickname later came to be associated with his famously mercurial personality. In December 1980, he was tried and ultimately acquitted for murdering a white farmer, whom he suspected of engaging in sabotage. After his expulsion from ZANU(PF), he founded the Zimbabwe Unity Movement (ZUM), the first opposition party in Zimbabwe after the integration of ZAPU and ZANU in 1987. His criticisms of the growing corruption in ZANU(PF) earned him a following from a broad coalition, bringing leftist university students, ZANU defectors, and white hold-outs into his orbit. Despite his stated sympathies with the impatience of the black poor and working classes, he later told students at the University of Zimbabwe, ‘[w]e were all talking about Marxism Leninism. It is a beautiful theory and makes interesting study. Study these theories and analyse them, but remember that Marx never had a State to run. We need to worry about the practical realities’. E.Z. Tekere, A Lifetime of Struggle (Harare, SAPES Books, 2007), p. 159.
36 Not in a Thousand Years, directed by J. Barraclough (London, British Broadcasting Corporation, 1980), available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cikU1J_oIZ4, retrieved 18 August 2022.
37 Ibid.
38 ‘Zimbabwe – No Need for Haste’, Herald, 8 March 1980, p. 1.
39 ‘Soames, PM Fix Compromise Date’, Herald, 15 March 1980, p. 1.
40 ZANU (PF) 1980 Election Manifesto, p. 10.
41 T. Hawkins, ‘Mugabe’s Crises of Expectation – From Whites and Blacks’, Financial Times, 13 June 1980.
42 Other ‘crises of expectation’ concerned urban housing and unemployment. A Herald editorial on the increase of beggars appearing on Salisbury’s streets observed that ‘[t]he crisis of independence expectations has, unfortunately, brought about an influx of job seekers in our urban cities which has resulted in both disappointment at the failure to find employment and poverty forcing some of our people to rely on their wits to keep themselves fed and clothed’. See ‘Arresting Beggars’, Herald, 25 April 1981, p. 4.
43 ‘Striking Teachers Return to Work’, Herald, 21 March 1980, p. 4.
44 ‘Labour Stoppages Hit Six Companies’, Herald, 19 March 1980, p. 1.
45 Raftopoulos, ‘Beyond the House of Hunger’, p. 57.
46 F. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, translated by Constance Farrington (New York, Grove Press, 1991 [1961]), p. 106.
47 Ibid.
48 ‘Labour Unrest Hits 9 More Firms’, Herald, 20 March 1980, p. 1.
49 Ibid., p. 2
50 The Greek kairos names an anticipatory sense of time that is ‘not about duration, but rather about a certain kind or quality of time, a period during which opportunities appear to those who are prepared to take advantage of them’, S. Crowley and D. Hawhee, Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students, 5th Edition (London, Pearson, 2011), p. 38.
51 ‘Strikes, Kangai Sympathetic But …’, Herald, 22 March 1980, p. 1.
52 ‘600 Strike Over Pay Demand’, Herald, 4 April 1980, p. 2.
53 I. Humphreys, ‘Shares for Workers Proposals’, Herald, 6 March 1980, p. 1.
54 Ibid.
55 The National Archives (TNA), Kew, FCO36/2910, Labour Relations of Zimbabwe.
56 B-M. Tendi, The Army and Politics in Zimbabwe: Mujuru, the Liberation Fighter and Kingmaker (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp. 17–18; T. Sellström, interview with Kumbirai Kangai, Harare, 19 July 1995, Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala, available at https://nai.uu.se/library/resources/liberation-africa/interviews/kumbirai-kangai.html, retrieved 21 August 2022.
57 TNA, FCO36/2910, Labour Relations of Zimbabwe.
58 ‘Labour Stoppages Hit Six Companies’, Herald, 19 March 1980, p. 1.
59 Ibid.
60 Ibid.
61 AP Archive, ‘Zimbabwe Workers Strike’, 11 March 1980.
62 TNA, FCO36/2910, Labour Relations of Zimbabwe.
63 ‘Strike Slices Bread Supply’, Herald, 24 March 1980, p. 1.
64 ‘Strikes, Kangai Sympathetic But …’, Herald, 22 March 1980, p. 1.
65 R. Reiss and M. Fleeshman, ‘Land to the Peasants’, Zimbabwe News, Maputo, 2 March 1979, p. 9.
66 ‘Labour Unrest Hits 9 More Firms’, Herald, 20 March 1980, p. 1.
67 ‘Strikes, Kangai Sympathetic But …’, Herald, 22 March 1980, p. 1.
68 ‘Most Strikers Return to Work’, Herald, 27 March 1980, p. 1. Despite his overall success at suppressing the strikes, Kangai was aware that his credibility as a mediator was constrained by the ethnicised party politics that were already coming to the fore at independence. When the wildcat strikes spread to Wankie Colliery, a month after independence, Kangai deliberately stayed away from a largely Shangaan workforce, which he suspected of being sympathetic to ZAPU, choosing not to intervene ‘unless he has some assurance that the strikers will listen to him’. TNA, FCO36/2910, Labour Relations of Zimbabwe.
69 ‘Stoppages are Inexcusable Says Mugabe’, Herald, 26 March 1980, p. 1.
70 A letter to the editor signed by ‘Ex-Zambia’ echoes Mugabe’s conflation of labour agitation with anti-state sabotage. Documenting their encounter with ‘spies’ at a shopping centre, the writer imagines routine organising activities as nefarious plots. The letter provides evidence of suspicious figures seen asking workers ‘to report if their wages were not satisfactory, if their living quarters were not to their liking, if their employers were “cheeky”, if their rations were unsatisfactory’. ‘Spies at Work’, Herald, 28 March 1980, p. 14.
71 ‘Stoppages are Inexcusable Says Mugabe’, Herald, 26 March 1980, p. 1.
72 TNA, FCO36/2910, Labour Relations of Zimbabwe.
73 ‘Minister Kangai Speaks on Labour’, Moto, Gweru, September 1983, p. 13.
74 Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, p. 114.
75 G.H. Musengezi, The Honourable MP (Gweru, Mambo Press, 1990). p. 13.
76 Ibid.
77 Quoted in Saunders, ‘Striking Ahead’, p. 137.
78 ZANU (PF) 1980 Election Manifesto, p. 5.
79 L. Zeilig, ‘Walter Rodney Was Way Ahead of His Time’, Africa Is a Country, New York, 19 February 2019, available at https://africasacountry.com/2019/02/walter-rodney-postcolonial-vision, retrieved 18 August 2022 (emphasis in original).
80 Ibid.