Militarisation and State Institutions: ‘Professionals’ and ‘Soldiers’ inside the Zimbabwe Prison Service

Abstract

Efforts to understand Zimbabwe's recent upheavals have brought scholars into productive conversation with approaches to African politics hitherto neglected in Zimbabwe. These have included political science analyses of ‘disorder’ and ethnographic approaches to the state at its unstable ‘margins’. Such analyses have highlighted the reconstitution of power through the expansion of powerful networks inside and outside state institutions and focused attention on the social and governmental effects of uncertainty. While these approaches are very different, they share a tendency to neglect processes of change within the civil service proper. Using a study of the ‘militarisation’ of Zimbabwe's prison service, I argue that these processes are essential to understanding the nature of political transformation. Militarisation catastrophically undermined the prison service's capacity to carry out its most basic functions and divided its staff between ‘professionals’ and ‘soldiers’. Professionals embraced an historically rooted state ideal built on the value of rules and expertise. They cast both as essential attributes of statehood just as they were comprehensively subverted by the soldiers in the name of an ongoing liberation struggle. Civil servants in these two camps no longer shared a common set of norms or purposes, though they all participated to greater or lesser degrees in the ‘militarised’ practices that pervaded the service. The unequal battle over the nature of state authority that ensued was – and remains – crucial to the exercise and legitimation of state power.

Notes

¹ T. Ranger launched the debate on ‘patriotic history’ in his seminal ‘Historiography, Patriotic History and the History of the Nation: The struggle over the Past in Zimbabwe’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 30, 2 (2004), pp. 215–34. For the best recent account of Zimbabwe's political history, see B. Raftopoulos and A. Mlambo (eds), Becoming Zimbabwe: A History from the Pre-Colonial Period to 2008 (Harare, Weaver Press, 2009).

² See, e.g., S. Maclean, ‘Mugabe at War: The Political Economy of Conflict in Zimbabwe’, Third World Quarterly, 23, 3 (2002), pp. 513–28; M. Bratton and E. Masunungure, ‘Zimbabwe's Long Agony’, Journal of Democracy, 19, 4 (2008), pp. 44–55. N. Kriger, ‘ZANU PF politics under Zimbabwe's “Power-Sharing” Government’, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 30, 1 (2012), p. 13, 15–19 elaborates on the idea of a ‘parallel government’.

³ See P. Chabal and J-P. Daloz, Africa Works: Disorder as Political Instrument (Oxford, James Currey, 1999); J-F. Bayart, The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly (London, Longman, 1993); and J-F. Bayart, S. Ellis, and B. Hibou, The Criminalization of the State in Africa (Oxford, James Currey, 1999). There are many more contributions to this genre and much diversity within it. For recent uses in Zimbabwe see Maclean, ‘Mugabe at War’, p. 525, and Kriger, ‘ZANU PF politics’, p. 12. For a seminal engagement, see J. McGregor, ‘The Politics of Disruption: War Veterans and the Local State in Zimbabwe’, African Affairs, 101, 402 (2002), pp. 9–37.

⁴ H. Vigh, 'Crisis and Chronicity: Anthropological Perspectives on Continuous Conflict and Decline', Ethnos, 73, 1 (2008), p. 12. The anthropological concern with uncertainty has a long pedigree – see J. Dewey, The Quest for Certainty (New York, Milton, Balch and Co., 1929) – and many recent variants, a discussion of which is beyond the scope of this article. See, e.g., S. Reynolds-Whyte, ‘Epilogue’, in L. Haram and C. B. Yamba (eds), Dealing with Uncertainty in Contemporary African Lives (Stockholm, Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 2009).

⁵ T. Asad, ‘Where are the Margins of the State?’, in V. Das and D. Poole (eds), Anthropology in the Margins of the State (Oxford, James Currey, 2004), p. 286. Asad elaborates on the multiple meanings of margin, which I have not fully captured here. Also see discussion in V. Das and D. Poole, ‘State and its Margins: Comparative Ethnographies’, pp. 3–34, in the same collection.

⁶ J. Jones, ‘Freeze! Movement, Narrative and the Disciplining of Price in Hyperinflationary Zimbabwe’, Social Dynamics, 36, 2 (2010), pp. 344, and see 343–8. Also see his ‘“Nothing is Straight in Zimbabwe”: The Rise of the Kukiya-kiya Economy’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 36, 2 (2010), pp. 285–99.

⁷ J. Fontein, ‘Anticipating the Tsunami: Rumours, Planning and the Arbitrary State in Zimbabwe’, Africa, 79, 3 (2009), p. 392–93. Also see S. Morreira, 'Living with Uncertainty: Disappearing Modernities and Polluted Urbanity in post-2000 Harare, Zimbabwe', Social Dynamics, 36, 2 (2010), pp. 352–65 and D. Potts, ‘Restoring Order? Operation Murambatsvina and the Urban Crisis in Zimbabwe’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 32, 2 (2006), pp. 272–91.

⁸ Chabal and Daloz, Africa Works, p. 16.

⁹ P. Nugent, ‘States and Social Contracts in Africa’, New Left Review, 63 (May–June 2010), p. 37.

¹⁰ G. Blundo, ‘Corruption in Africa and the Social Sciences: A Review of the literature’, in G. Blundo and J-P. Olivier de Sardan with N. B. Arifari and M. T. Alou, Everyday Corruption and the State: Citizens and Public Officials in Africa (London, Zed Books, 2006), p. 22.

¹¹ T. Bierschenk, ‘States at Work in West Africa: Sedimentation, Fragmentation and Normative Double-Blinds’, Working Paper no. 113, Department of Anthropology and African Studies, Johannes Gutenburg University, Mainz, 2010, p. 4. Also see Bierschenk's review of A. Sharma and A. Gupta (eds), The Anthropology of the State: A Reader (Oxford, Blackwell, 2006), Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, 134, 1 (2009), pp. 134–8 and his ‘The everyday functioning of an African public service: Informalization, privatization and corruption in Benin's legal system’, Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law, 57, 101 (2008), pp. 101–140.

¹² See G. Blundo and J-P. Olivier de Sardan, ‘Everyday Corruption in West Africa’, in Blundo and Olivier de Sardan, Everyday Corruption, pp. 69–109, which includes a critique of B. Hibou (ed.), La Privatisation des États (Paris, Karthala, 1999). Even in contexts of prolonged, extreme disruption, ideas of how state institutions should function have proven remarkably resilient. See H. Vigh, Navigating Terrains of War: Youth and Soldiering in Guinea-Bissau (Oxford, Berghahn Books, 2006).

¹³ Bierschenk, ‘States at Work’, p. 17.

¹⁴ Many studies explore these and other tensions in Zimbabwe. Some of the most detailed focus on state-making in rural areas: see J. Alexander, The Unsettled Land: State-making and the Politics of Land in Zimbabwe 1893–2003 (Oxford, James Currey, 2006), and W. Munro, The Moral Economy of the State: Conservation, Community Development and State Making in Zimbabwe (Athens, Ohio University Press, 1998). A. Selby, ‘Commercial Farmers and the State: Interest Group Politics and Land Reform in Zimbabwe’ (DPhil Thesis, University of Oxford, 2006), offers an account of party leaders' struggles with technocrats over land reform in the 1990s, while G. Karekwaivanane's thesis, ‘Legal Encounters: Law, State and Society in Zimbabwe, c. 1950–1990’ (DPhil Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012), provides a fresh view on judicial institutions in the 1980s. There are parallels in struggles between politicians and bureaucrats elsewhere in the region. See R. Werbner, Reasonable Radicals and Citizenship in Botswana: The Public Anthropology of Kalanga Elites (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2004) and M. Larmer, ‘Chronicle of a Coup Foretold: Valentine Musakanya and the 1980 Coup Attempt in Zambia’, Journal of African History, 51 (2010), pp. 391–409.

¹⁵ See B. Raftopoulos, ‘The labour movement and the emergence of opposition politics in Zimbabwe’, in B. Raftopoulos and L. Sachikonye, Striking Back: The Labour Movement and the Post-Colonial State in Zimbabwe 1980–2000 (Harare, Weaver Press, 2001) and McGregor, ‘The Politics of Disruption’, pp. 12–15.

¹⁶ The best early study of these shifts is McGregor, ‘The Politics of Disruption’. Her fine-grained account of ZANU(PF)'s ‘assault’ on rural local government in 2000 and 2001 shows its targets to be ‘the institutions of the local state, their procedures, their personnel and their day-to-day running’ (p. 17). Also see A. Hammar, B. Raftopoulos and S. Jensen (eds), Zimbabwe's Unfinished Business: Rethinking Land, State and Nation in the Context of Crisis (Harare, Weaver Press, 2003).

¹⁷ For a summary of this period, see J. Alexander, ‘Zimbabwe since 1997: Land and the Legacies of War’, in A.R. Mustapha and L. Whitfield (eds), Turning Points in African Democracy (Rochester, Boydell and Brewer, 2009).

¹⁸ The military's ‘militarisation’ was resisted at great cost by its ‘professional’ cadres, as in other institutions. See G. Maringira, ‘Soldiering in Territories: Persistence of Military Being among Zimbabwean Army Deserters and Resignators in Exile in South Africa’ (draft PhD Thesis, University of the Western Cape, 2013).

¹⁹ ZANU(PF) cast this process as a means of guarding the state from ‘regime change’, increasing state efficacy, and as a simple continuity with the party-military relationship from the 1970s. (For a recent defence of this position by Mugabe, see ‘President's Speech at Karakadzai's Burial’, The Herald, 26 August 2013.) However, while veterans were incorporated in state institutions from 1980, they were largely subordinated to a bureaucratic ethic. This changed from the late 1990s as military officers took up top posts in parastatals such as the National Railways of Zimbabwe, the Grain Marketing Board, and the Minerals Marketing Corporation of Zimbabwe; media-related institutions; the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission; the Central Intelligence Organisation and diplomatic service; and a host of ministries and departments. See K. Chitiyo, ‘The Case for Security Sector Reform in Zimbabwe’, Royal United Services Institute, Occasional Paper, London (2009), p. 9; Bratton and Masunungure, ‘Zimbabwe's Long Agony’; and ‘Zanu PF Intensifies Military Patronage’, Zimbabwe Independent, 12 October 2012.

²⁰ See E. Masunungure, ‘Zimbabwe's Militarized, Electoral Authoritarianism’, Journal of International Affairs, 65, 1 (2011), p. 55 and passim.

²¹ M. Dawson and T. Kelsall, ‘Anti-Developmental Patrimonialism in Zimbabwe’, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 30, 1 (2012), pp. 49–66.

²² Chitiyo, ‘The Case’, p. 7.

²³ Chitiyo, ‘The Case’, p. 11. Also see Dawson and Kelsall, ‘Anti-Developmental Patrimonialism’, pp. 57–9; Bratton and Masunungure, ‘Zimbabwe's Long Agony’, p. 47; M. Bratton and E. Masunungure, ‘The Anatomy of Political Predation: Leaders, Elites and Coalitions in Zimbabwe, 1980–2010’, Developmental Leadership Program, Research Paper 09, January 2011; G. Mazarire, ‘ZANU-PF and the Government of National Unity’, in B. Raftopoulos (ed.), The Hard Road to Reform: The Politics of Zimbabwe's Global Political Agreement (Harare, Weaver Press, 2013).

²⁴ See, e.g., B. Egero, Moçambique: Os Primeiros Dez Anos de Construção da Democracia (Maputo, AHM, 1992); J.M. Cabrita, Mozambique: The Tortuous Road to Democracy (New York, Palgrave, 2000).

²⁵ See B. Raftopoulos, ‘The Crisis in Zimbabwe, 1998–2008’, in Raftopoulos and Mlambo, Becoming Zimbabwe, pp. 213–4. On the range of operations, see Chitiyo, ‘The Case’, pp. 4–11.

²⁶ Fontein, ‘Anticipating the Tsunami’, p. 389. Popular resistance rarely arrested the coercive momentum of major operations. See e.g. Fontein, ‘Anticipating the Tsunami’, pp. 376–7, on Operation Murambatsvina and Solidarity Peace Trust (SPT), Operation Taguta/Sisuthi. Command Agriculture in Zimbabwe: Its Impact on Rural Communities in Matabeleland (Johannesburg, SPT, April 2006) on Operation Maguta. The political violence of Operation Mavhoterapapi in the elections of June 2008 marked the apogee of the illegitimate and coercive operation.

²⁷ See Raftopoulos, ‘The Crisis’, pp. 201–32; A. LeBas, From Protest to Parties: Party-Building and Democratization in Africa (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011), chapter 5; Maclean ‘Mugabe at war’, p. 525; J. Alexander and B-M. Tendi, ‘A Tale of Two Elections: Zimbabwe at the Polls in 2008’, Concerned Africa Scholars Bulletin, 80 (Winter 2008), pp. 14–16; J. Alexander, ‘The Political Imaginaries and Social Lives of Political Prisoners in Post-2000 Zimbabwe’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 36, 2 (2010), pp. 487–91.

²⁸ Ministry of Justice and Legal Affairs' prison service ‘Mission Statement’, available at http://www.justice.gov.zw/index.php?option = com_content&view = article&id = 58%3Azimbabwe-prison-service&catid = 35%3Adepartments&Itemid = 55, retrieved on 27 September 2012.

²⁹ Yuda was supplied with a camera by Guardian Films. See P. Lewis, ‘”I was being loyal to a government that was not loyal to its people”’, The Guardian (London), 5 July 2008, available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/05/zimbabwe1, retrieved on 31 October 2012.

³⁰ Interview, Shepherd Yuda, Oxford, 14 September 2008. For other post-2000 state institutions, see S. Verheul in this issue on the Attorney General's office; Chitiyo, ‘The Case’, pp. 12–16 and Maringira, ‘Soldiering in Territories’ on security forces; McGregor, ‘The Politics of Disruption’ on local government; N. Marongwe, ‘Interrogating Zimbabwe's Fast Track Land Reform and Resettlement Process: A Focus on Beneficiary Selection’ (PhD Thesis, University of the Western Cape, 2008), on ministries concerned with land and agriculture.

³¹ On prison conditions, see e. g. Zimbabwe Association for Crime Prevention and Rehabilitation of the Offender, ‘Human Rights for Prisoners in Zimbabwe’, paper presented to the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights Workshop, Bulawayo, 3–4 October 2008; Third Report of Portfolio Committee on Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs on the State of the Prisons, presented to Parliament of Zimbabwe on 23 May 2006; Sokwanele, ‘On the Death Trail’, 3 May 2004, available at http://www.sokwanele.com/articles/sokwanele/onthedeathtrail_3may2004.html, retrieved on 31 October 2012; J. Alexander, ‘Death and Disease in Zimbabwe's Prisons’, The Lancet, 373, 9668 (21 March 2009), pp. 995–6; and the 2009 South Africa Broadcasting Company documentary Hell Hole. For prisoners' accounts see Alexander, ‘Political Imaginaries’.

³² See ‘Hundreds Bid Farewell to Chigwida’, The Herald, 16 May 2011.

³³ Conversely, militarisation might be said at least symbolically to predate Zimondi's promotion: military ranks were reintroduced in the service in 1995, a return to Rhodesian traditions. The post of Director of Prisons was renamed Commissioner and the top ranks of the prison service were made up by commissioned officers. Many African prison services have military traditions. See C. Tapscott, ‘Challenges to Good Prison Governance in Africa’, in J. Sarkin (ed.), Human Rights in African Prisons (Cape Town, HSRC Press, 2008), p. 77.

³⁴ Interview, Mary Ndlovu, Bulawayo, 7 October 2008.

³⁵ Interview, Yuda, 14 September 2008.

³⁶ Interview, Chatambarara, 18 October 2008.

³⁷ See reports in The Chronicle on Parliamentary Committee findings of a lack of hygiene, tattered uniforms, overcrowding and staff shortages, in ‘Prisoners Complain of Appalling Conditions that They Live In’, 9 August 1997, and ‘Prisoners Face Shortages: Report’, 5 November 1998; more widely see ‘Poor Conditions Rile Prison Officers’, 10 May 1999; ‘Police Probe Cell Death’, 7 June 1998.

³⁸ Khami was subject to an official investigation following allegations of fatal beatings and life-threatening conditions made by former prisoners to TheChronicle in 1999. Such conditions were alleged to be of long standing. See reports in The Chronicle: ‘Life in Prison Close To Hell: Inmates’, 27 February 1999; ‘Conditions at Prison “Horrible”’, 24 March 2000; ‘Khami Prison Warders Accused of Brutality’, 21 July 2001; ‘Brutalising of Inmates Worsens’, 26 July 2001; ‘Khami “Dumping Ground for Wayward Officers”’, 31 July 2001.

³⁹ Tapscott, ‘Challenges’, p. 74. In its first seven years, 37,425 community service sentences were handed down. See ‘Programme Saves Government $17 m’, The Chronicle, 25 September 2000.

⁴⁰ The first open prison was inaugurated at Connemara in 2000 in an effort to address overcrowding. The prison service then held a reported 20,000 inmates, 4,000 over capacity. See ‘Plans to Introduce Open Prison System Advanced’, The Chronicle, 24 August 1999. Regular amnesties for thousands of less serious offenders were also used to reduce overcrowding.

⁴¹ Two of these workshops were held at resorts in the eastern highlands. On outings, Zimondi insisted on driving at the head of the convoy and made all others follow behind him on walks up the mountains. Interview, Ndlovu. Zimondi cited a notorious escape from Chikurubi maximum security prison in 1997 to justify military training of prison officers. See ‘Chikurubi Officers to be Probed’, The Chronicle, 4 October 1997; ‘ZNA to Train Prison Officers’, The Chronicle, 21 June 1998; ‘Prisons Security Under Microscope’, The Chronicle, 7 July 1999; ‘Undisciplined Prison Officers Blasted’, The Chronicle, 6 August 2001.

⁴² Interview, Ndlovu. Prisoners described the routine use of falanga.

⁴³ Interview, Yuda, 15 September 2008.

⁴⁴ Interview, Yuda, 10 September 2008. Yuda was a proud beneficiary of training by the paramilitary Police Support Unit's elite Special Tactics Team.

⁴⁵ Interview, Chatambarara, 18 October 2008. The loss of qualified prison officers had started earlier: Mary Ndlovu noted that in the late 1990s many posts went unfilled; others left after gaining qualifications. Interview, Ndlovu.

⁴⁶ Interview, Yuda, 15 September 2008.

⁴⁷ For details see ‘4000 Prisoners Granted Amnesty’, The Chronicle, 18 August 2001; ‘ZPS Embark on Building Exercise’, The Chronicle, 15 July 2002.

⁴⁸ Interview, 18 October 2008. In 2005, The Chronicle reported a passing out parade for 893 prison service recruits, 351 of whom were militia. ‘Mujuru Commends Prison Service’, The Chronicle, 19 August 2005. On the youth militia, see SPT, ‘National Youth Service Training – “Shaping Youths in a Truly Zimbabwean Manner”: An Overview of Youth Militia Training and Activities in Zimbabwe, October 2000-August 2003’, 5 September 2003. On the absorption of militia into state institutions more widely, see Chitiyo, ‘The Case’, pp. 13, 16; Kriger, ‘ZANU PF politics’, p. 15.

⁴⁹ Interview, Chatambarara, 18 October 2008.

⁵⁰ On poor housing and transportation, see e.g. ‘Prison Transport Situation Critical’, The Chronicle, 22 March 2000; ‘ZPS embark on Building Exercise’, The Chronicle, 15 July 2002.

⁵¹ Interview, Yuda, 10 September 2008.

⁵² Interview, Chatambarara, 18 October 2008.

⁵³ Interview, Yuda, 15 September 2008. Also, Interview, Ndlovu.

⁵⁴ Interview, Chatambarara, 18 October 2008.

⁵⁵ Interview, Chatambarara, 18 October 2008, and see 14 February 2009. Chatambarara estimated that there were some 500 officers at the national headquarters in 2008, most of whom were military appointments.

⁵⁶ Interview, Yuda, 15 September 2008.

⁵⁷Ibid.

⁵⁸ Interview, Chatambarara, 18 October 2008.

⁵⁹ Interview, Yuda, 15 September 2008. I have removed the names of senior veterans as it is not possible to verify specific allegations.

⁶⁰ Interview, Chatambarara, 18 October, 2008; 14 February 2009. SPT, Operation Taguta/Sisuthi, details widespread corruption and abuses under Operation Maguta.

⁶¹ Interview, Chatambarara, 18 October 2008.

⁶² See e.g. the account of MDC MP William Madzimure following his tour of seven prisons in early 2007 in Godwin Gandu, ‘High Ups Use Free Prison Labour’, Mail and Guardian (South Africa), 5 March 2007.

⁶³ Interview, Chatambarara, 18 October 2008.

⁶⁴Ibid. Also, interview, Yuda, 15 September 2008 and see the 2009 SABC documentary Hell Hole and prisoners' accounts in Alexander, ‘Political imaginaries’.

⁶⁵ Interview, Chatambarara, 14 February 2009.

⁶⁶ See official numbers of deaths due to HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and other diseases in 1999 and 2000, and complaints regarding the dearth of prison doctors and health costs of severe overcrowding in ‘Number of Prisoners Catching HIV Rises’, The Chronicle, 29 January 2001.

⁶⁷ Interview, Chatambarara, 14 February 2009.

⁶⁸Ibid.

⁶⁹Ibid., and see Deputy Commissioner Chimboza's account of health conditions in ‘Judiciary Must Protect Prisoners – Makarau’, The Zimbabwe Times, 11 July 2009, available at http://www.zimbabwesituation.com/jul12_2009.html#Z6, retrieved on 19 July 2013.

⁷⁰ Interview, Yuda, 11 September 2008. Also see footage from Hell Hole in which prisoners are dressed in rags, scraps of blankets or nothing at all. Clothing deteriorated from the early 2000s: see ‘Prisons Overcrowded, Inmates Ill-Treated’, The Chronicle, 25 December 2002, and ‘Prisoners in Zimbabwe's Jails Go Naked’, Mail and Guardian, 4 April 2006.

⁷¹ See ‘Harare Prisoners to be Hired Out’, IOL News, 26 September 2004, available at http://www.iol.co.za/news/africa/harare-prisoners-to-be-hired-out-1.222671#.UQkHg6X7UUs, retrieved on 30 January 2013, in which Deputy Commissioner Chimboza justifies the policy. According to Chatambarara, Vice President Joice Mujuru paid the prisons in cabbage for labour in 2008, a boon for prison officers who had no relish to give their wards. Interview, 14 February 2009. Also see Fontein, ‘Anticipating the Tsunami’, p. 374, on Mujuru's use of prison labour in 2006 and the 2007 report of ‘hundreds’ of prisoners regularly being sent to farms owned by ZANU(PF) and military elites in Gandu, ‘High Ups’.

⁷²Ibid. See complaints from judges and parliamentary committee reports on failures to bring prisoners to court from 2000: ‘Prison transport situation critical’, The Chronicle, 22 March 2000; ‘Judge criticises prison officials’, The Chronicle, 22 June 2000; ‘Fuel Crisis Hits Prisons’, The Chronicle, 20 December 2000; ‘Prisons Overcrowded, Inmates Ill-Treated’, The Chronicle, 25 December 2002; ‘Transport Shortage Hits Khami Prison’, The Chronicle, 13 February 2003; ‘Diesel Blues Ground Wheels of Justice’, The Chronicle, 5 November 2003.

⁷³ Interview, Chatambarara, 14 February 2009.

⁷⁴Ibid.

⁷⁵ Interview, Chatambarara, 18 October 2008.

⁷⁶ Interview, Chatambarara, 14 February 2009.

⁷⁷ Interview, Chatambarara, 18 October 2008.

⁷⁸ Interview, Chatambarara, 14 February 2009.

⁷⁹ ‘Judiciary Must Protect Prisoners – Makarau’.

⁸⁰ Interview, Chatambarara, 18 October 2008.

⁸¹ Interview, Chatambarara, 14 February 2009. Also see discussion of corruption in the judiciary in Verheul, this issue.

⁸² Objections were occasionally raised. In 2007, an officer from the Attorney General's office told a reporter that his office was granting ‘easy bail’ to those charged with minor crimes because, ‘“We can't just send people to die of hunger’.” That is, however, precisely what judicial officers did in thousands of cases. See Gandu, ‘High Ups’. Also see account of High Court judge Charles Hungwe in ‘Judiciary Must Protect Prisoners – Makarau’. There are some references to small rebellions by prison officers. For example, in Gweru in 2005 officers refused to take suspects remanded into custody on the grounds that the prison was full and they had no fuel to return to court. See ‘Prison Officers Refuse to Take Suspects’, The Chronicle, 12 November 2005.

⁸³ Interview, Chatambarara, 18 October 2008.

⁸⁴ Interview, Chatambarara, 18 October 2008. This was a common view in 2008: e.g., Bratton and Masunungure, ‘Zimbabwe's Long Agony’, p. 47, noted, ‘Corruption now pervades all levels of the Zimbabwean state… [D]aily survival in Zimbabwe has become unavoidably criminalized’. Compare to Jones, ‘“Nothing is straight”’.

⁸⁵ Interview, Yuda, 15 September 2008. On the persecution of opposition political prisoners, see Alexander, ‘Political Imaginaries’; Human Rights Watch (HRW), ‘Our Hands are Tied’: Erosion of the Rule of Law in Zimbabwe (New York, HRW, 2008), pp. 19–23. Yuda filmed the manipulation of prison officers' votes. See D. Campbell and P. Lewis, ‘Exclusive: Secret Film Reveals how Mugabe Stole an Election’, The Guardian, 4 July 2008, available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/04/zimbabwe1 (the video is available here), retrieved on 1 November 2012. For the involvement of militarised members of the prison service in the 2008 campaign, see HRW, ‘Bullets for Each of You’: State-Sponsored Violence since Zimbabwe's March 29 Elections (New York, HRW, 2008), pp. 1–2, 14, 21; ‘Zimbabwe Prison Service in Terror Campaign’, The Zimbabwean, 7 June 2008, available at http://www.thezimbabwean.co/news/13272/zimbabwe-prison-service-in-terror-campaign.html, retrieved on 6 May 2013; A. Chimora, ‘Zimbabwe: Zanu PF Agents in Uniformed Forces Get Double Salaries’, Afrik-News, 20 July 2010, available at http://www.afrik-news.com/article17998.html, retrieved on 19 June 2013. Junior officers who were not part of the ‘junta’ were tasked with ‘guarding’ nighttime meetings held in ZANU(PF) bases, as recorded in Yuda's Guardian film footage. These roles were rewarded at all levels. See‘Mugabe promotes key men in election scandal’, Times Online, 12 August 2008, available at http://www.zimbabwesituation.com/aug13_2008.html#Z3, retrieved on 1 November 2012; Chimora, ‘Zimbabwe’.

⁸⁶ Interviews, Chatambarara, 18 October 2008; Yuda, 15 September 2008. Also see Chimora, ‘Zimbabwe’, in which a police source contends, ‘Most of these people who are in this [security] department are Zanu(PF) agents and not real prison officers’. A prison source in the same article emphasised the department's ZANU(PF) loyalties. Establishing partisan sections of state institutions in order to enforce political loyalty was standard ZANU(PF) practice, e.g. in the police and military. See discussion in Chitiyo, ‘The Case’.

⁸⁷ Interview, Chatambarara, 14 October 2009.

⁸⁸ Interview, Yuda, 10 September 2008.

⁸⁹ See Collin Chiwanza, ‘Prison service suspends 16 alleged MDC supporters’, The Daily News, 6 October 2001, available at http://www.zimbabwesituation.com/oct7_2001.html#link5, retrieved on 1 November 2012.

⁹⁰ Interview, Yuda, 10 September 2008.

⁹¹Ibid.

⁹² See ‘Zimbabwe: Ndlovu Promoted’, The Herald, 22 May 2007, available at http://allafrica.com/stories/200705220563.html, retrieved on 6 May 2013.

⁹³ Interview, Yuda, 10 September 2008.

⁹⁴Ibid.

⁹⁵Ibid.

⁹⁶Ibid., and Interview, Yuda, 11 September 2008.

⁹⁷ Interview, Yuda, 11 September 2008.

⁹⁸ Interview, Chatambarara, 18 October 2008. The increasing sympathies of junior prison officers for the MDC in the 2000s was widely noted by political prisoners. See Alexander, ‘Political Imaginaries’, pp. 494–6. Also see Bratton and Masunungure, ‘Zimbabwe's Long Agony’, p. 47.

⁹⁹ Interview, Chatambarara, 14 February 2009. Also, Interview, Yuda, 15 September 2008. See J. Alexander and K. Chitofiri, ‘The Consequences of Violent Politics in Norton, Zimbabwe’, The Round Table, 99, 411 (2010), pp. 673–86 for a discussion of shifting loyalties under the GNU more widely.

¹⁰⁰ ‘Judiciary Must Protect Prisoners – Makarau’.

¹⁰¹ See ‘Zimbabwe Prisons Boss Fired for Corruption’, ZimEye, 23 May 2010, available at http://www.zimeye.org/?p = 17601, retrieved on 21 January 2013; ‘Prisons paltry harvest’, The Zimbabwean, 16 June 2010, available at http://www.thezimbabwean.co/business/industry/31848/prisons-paltry-harvest.html, retrieved on 21 January 2013. Ndlovu's fate may also have been influenced by jockeying among veterans of the two liberation armies in the context of contracting resources. See ‘Mugabe Clashes with Zimondi over Promotions’, ZimEye, 17 August 2010, available at http://www.zimeye.org/?p = 20919, retrieved on 21 January 2013.

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Jocelyn Alexander

Jocelyn AlexanderDepartment of International Development, University of Oxford, 3 Mansfield Road, Oxford, OX1 3TB, UK. E-mail: [email protected]