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ABSTRACT
The article argues that to understand the troubled history of Zimbabwe we have to pay attention to the multiple and incomplete ‘transitions’ that the country underwent within three decades. Each of these transitions was probably inevitable and the trajectory they followed may be the right one for each of the transitions. However, the transitions in Zimbabwe were intertwined in a not always mutually supportive way. Indeed, we also argue that eventually, Zimbabwe suffered from a ‘transition overload’ as the many transitions undermined or confounded each other. The article is also a caution against the preoccupation of individuals in Zimbabwean history. Finally, there are some lessons for post-conflict countries that are often faced with wide-ranging agenda that often include externally imposed items.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes on contributor
Thandika Mkandawire was the executive Secretary of Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) for a decade, he was also the Director of The United Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) and finally he occupied the Chair of African Development at the London School of Economics. He held a Senior Doctorate from Rhodes University, South Africa. (See the Tribute by Fred Hendricks in this issue for more details).
Notes
1 Witness the storm over Mahmood Mamdani’s article in the Times Literary Supplement (Jacobs and Mundy Citation2009; Mamdani Citation2009). The Association of Concerned Africa Scholars complied the responses to Mamdani’s paper in its Bulletin. In a letter to the editor, signed by 33 scholars, Mamdani was accused of having been ‘fooled by Mugabe’s rhetoric of imperialist victimization’ (Jacobs and Mundy Citation2009). Other scholars, such as the late Sam Moyo, who sought to explain the extensive nature of the land reform process, found themselves subject to financial sanctions and intellectual vilification.
2 During the early years of independence, the ZANU-PF leadership was quite conscious of the need of sequencing. Addressing the Zimbabwe Economic Society in September 1980, Prime Minister Mugabe asserted that he still strongly held to socialist principles; affirmed the country’s socialist orientation; but the reality was that all goals could not be pursued at once: ‘At a time when our main concern is the resettlement of our peasantry, the rehabilitation of our economy and social services, we have determined that any measures disruptive of the economic infrastructure must at all costs be avoided. Our socialist thrust will thus restrict itself for now to the area of land resettlement and organization of peasant agriculture’.
3 One consistent exception to the single issue or sequential issues approach has been provided by David Moore: who has considered the implications of the simultaneous effects of ‘primitive accumulation’, national-state formation, democratisation and globalisation (Citation2001a, Citation2001b).
4 The other solution to this conundrum has been to put the brakes on one of the transitions, while another was consolidated. In Spain, for example, the party which won the first democratic election post-Franco served as a sacrificial lamb by focusing on democratic consolidation, while risking its electoral prospects by letting the economy slide downwards. ‘Spain’s successful dual transition thus rests on an unintentional sequencing of tasks between the nation’s first two ruling parties. The first party concentrates, out of necessity, on democratic consolidation while the second, electorally stronger party, concentrates on economic reform’ (Bermeo Citation1994, 602).
5 The brutality was documented most courageously by the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe (Citation2007).
6 Herbst captures the situation in Zimbabwe with respect to the public sector: ‘ … Z.A.N.U. (P.F.) took over a bruised but not defeated settler state, which contained powerful anachronistic elements that were either hostile or at least not sympathetic to the new leadership. For instance, of the 10,570 “established officers” in the civil service in 1980, only 3,368 were Africans, and none of these held positions above the senior administrative level’ (Citation1989, 76).
7 There were, of course, other problems with creating a coherent civil service in a racially divided society. Newly salaried black professionals in the state apparatus discovered equal wages did not mean equal wealth. Their white counterparts may already have bought a house, inherited a car from their family, or had easy access to credit. Old attitudes and differences in wealth excluded interracial socialisation among the new civil servants.
8 The policy had the unintended consequence of creating ‘Bumiputra Networks’, in which ethnic Chinese businessmen ended up with their own ‘Ali Baba’. This referred to partnerships with a Bumiputra (Ali), who had access to government supported business projects.
9 Writing on the trade sector, from where a black bourgeoisie was most likely to emerge, Fafchamps observed: ‘Unlike credit from financial institutions, trade credit does not rely on formal collateral but on trust and reputation. Contract enforcement is flexible. Network effects and statistical discrimination affect the screening of trade credit applicants. Black entrepreneurs are disadvantaged by their lack of business contacts and by the difficulty of distinguishing themselves from the mass of financially insecure and short-lived African-owned businesses in Zimbabwe. A vicious circle is created between weak financial base, unreliability as a debtor, and inability to gain access to credit’ (Citation1997). See also Harvey (1996).
10 Thus when the state privatised Dairibord and the Cotton Company, they were sold to a white farmers’ organization (Taylor Citation1999).
11 The new social movements were generally opposed to state-led land reform, proposing reform from ‘below’ (Sikor and Müller Citation2009).
12 ‘The pricing structure adopted for maize and other agricultural commodities, which favoured and promoted peasant production, undoubtedly had a developmental dimension, even though bureaucratic delays in fixing prices and making payments sometimes adversely affected farmers’ (Dawson and Kelsall Citation2012, 6).
13 The massive land reform programme – probably one of the most extensive in post-colonial history – was reduced by Boone and Kriger to simple ‘cronyism’. ‘The acquired land was used mainly to foster the ruling elite’s land accumulation and retain their loyalty’ (Citation2010, 180). The extent of Zimbabwe’s land reform has been extensively documented by Sam Moyo (Moyo Citation2001, Citation2010, Citation2011, Citation2013; Moyo and Yeros Citation2005) and in more recent years, by Scoones et al. (Citation2010). It is difficult to conceive that its scale could remotely be explained by cronyism: if for no other reason than the idea of Mugabe having 1,000,000 cronies is wildly implausible.
14 ‘Definitionally, a ‘conflicted democracy’ involves a two part test … First, there must be a deep seated and sharp division in the body politic, whether on ethnic, racial, religious, class, or ideological grounds … Second, this division must be so acute, and the political circumstances such as to have resulted in or threaten significant political violence’ (Aoláin and Campbell Citation2005, 27).
15 On the failures of democratic governments in India, Pakistan and the Philippines to carry our radical land reform, see Leftwich (Citation2002). Rashid (Citation2001) suggests that successful land reform requires attention to three factors: speed, compensation, and support. Specifically, this involves speed in enforcement, low compensation for landlords and extended support for beneficiaries. ‘These three objectives cannot be reasonably expected of democratic governments’. In the Philippines, far reaching legislation failed at implementation level (Walden Bello http://fpif.org/liberal-democracy-promotes-inequality/). The dilemma is often between concerns for equity and the ‘incentive compatibility’ of such land reforms in a capitalist economy. This is captured by the World Bank’s Chief Economist: who after recommending wealth rather than income distribution, observes: ‘It is doubtful that such direct wealth redistribution is feasible or without cost. Redistributing property can only be done under exceptional circumstances, which often involve political violence, and can hardly be considered economic policy options. Land reform is a case in point’. (Bourguignon Citation2004, 23).
16 On 10 May 2000, the Supreme Court ruled that the government must stop its ‘fast track programmes’. In African post-settler economies, there has been insistence on property rights by national constitutions. On attempts by the ZANU-PF to get around constitutional restraints, see Kriger (Citation2007).
17 The export of pension funds would be followed by both South Africa and Namibia.
18 The literature on Latin America often makes this point: see Weyland (Citation1999b). But the continent’s actual experience seems to have been in the opposite direction (Arce and Bellinger Citation2007).
19 This accounts for some of what Gallagher (Citation2015) terms ‘politics of ambivalence’: which has been there all along, although she also highlights a shift away from the ‘politics of polarisation’.