Legacies of the Past: The Influence of Former Freedom Fighters and their Rhetoric in Southern Africa

Abstract

The liberation struggle impacts on the current political landscape of Southern Africa. In this regard, some scholars speak of enduring ‘post-liberation states’, whereas others foresee the slow but inevitable decline of the active role of freedom fighters in politics. We aim to enrich the debate over the legacies of the liberation struggle by providing empirical evidence in a three-step analysis. Firstly, we provide figures on the composition of cabinets since independence, demonstrating not only that more than half of today's cabinet members are former freedom fighters, but also that their numbers are continuously decreasing. Secondly, we compare recent election manifestos of liberation-movements-turned parties to older documents of the same movements, showing that in Namibia and South Africa, freedom fighter rhetoric is more subtle than overt, which differs from the case in Zimbabwe. In a third step, we contrast these findings with evidence from practical politics. Through this multilayered comparative analysis, we also reveal the opportunistic use of the liberation struggle as a political tool across all three country case studies.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Henning Melber, Claire Bacher, the anonymous reviewers, and the journal's editor for helpful recommendations on an earlier version of this paper. The authors would also like to acknowledge the support of the Center of Excellence ‘Cultural Foundations of Integration’ at the University of Konstanz. Daniela Kromrey also acknowledges the support of the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation.

Notes

1. The Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) was later forcefully incorporated into ZANU, and some ministers left ZAPU to join ZANU. Therefore, we treat ZANU and ZAPU as one party, especially in the first step of our analysis.

2. We note that on the basis of political reasons, President Mugabe has also awarded the title ‘freedom fighter’ to individuals whose participation in the liberation fight is disputed (see The Zimbabwean Independent, ‘Zimbabwe: Who Qualifies to Be a National Hero?’, 5 August 2010; Kriger (2006)). However, to the best of our knowledge, this is not an issue for the individuals we study and hence does not bias our analysis.

3. The most valuable sources included Namibian Institute for Democracy, Who's Who in Namibian Politics: http://www.nid.org.na; South African Government Communication and Information System, Profiles: http://www.gcis.gov.za/gcis/gcis_new_profile_search.jsp; Africa Confidential, Who's Who Search: http://www.africa-confidential.com/whos-who-search; and Zimbabwe Ministry of Information, Posts, and Telecommunications, A Guide to Heroes Acre: http://www.chronicle.co.zw/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=27057:heroes-who-contributed-zimbabwes-liberation&catid=38:local-news&Itemid=131.

4. For seven Zimbabwean ministers, the informational background was insufficient to draw definitive conclusions regarding their status as freedom fighters. These seven ministers were in office for a total of 14 years, which amounts to only 2% of all counted years per minister position. The analysis will therefore suffer only negligibly from these missing values.

5. At first, Robert Mugabe was Zimbabwe's prime minister, and Canaan Banana was the country's president (a position in which no executive authority was vested). The two positions were merged in 1987, and Mugabe became president.

6. We consider the different global political settings to be less problematic for our analysis, as the selection of cabinet members is generally determined by domestic or party-internal factors rather than by international factors.

7. One exception is on Page 9.

8. Dobell's work (1998) qualifies these observations. She claims that SWAPO only used this rhetoric as a strategy to obtain support from its socialist allies, primarily Russia and Angola. If her findings hold, the shift in rhetoric is not surprising, as it would imply that militant rhetoric has never been part of SWAPO's core philosophy.

9. We should acknowledge the different historical settings. Whereas the guiding documents of SWAPO and ZANU were written in exile, in a far less restricted environment, the Freedom Charter was adopted in South Africa during the rise of the apartheid system and therefore had to be more carefully worded.

10. Interview with a former associate of Robert Mugabe, Harare, February 2009.