Crisis as Catalyst: Contemporary Zimbabwe and the Reinstatement of Region in a Global Era

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Notes

¹ The author would like to thank Andrew Offenburger and Chris Saunders for their support of this project, as well as the contributors to this special issue for their commitment and patience. He is also grateful to Brian Raftopoulos, Tim Scarnecchia, and Luise White for their comments on an earlier draft of this essay. It should be further noted that Brian Raftopoulos (Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, South Africa) originally contributed an essay to this issue, but had to pull out at the last minute due to reasons of copyright. The introduction has subsequently been revised, though some comments and footnotes have remained unchanged in order to direct attention to his important work.

² See, for example, Hammar et al., Zimbabwe's Unfinished Business; Raftopoulos and Savage, Zimbabwe; Bond and Manyanya, Zimbabwe's Plunge. Though not exclusively concerned with the current crisis as such, Patrick Bond's earlier work lays the groundwork for such expectations. See Bond, Uneven Zimbabwe.

³ For readings on various aspects of contemporary globalization, see, among many, Appadurai, Modernity at Large and Globalization; Hardt and Negri, Empire and Multitude; and James, Globalism, Nationalism, Tribalism. Such recent work has built upon earlier frameworks in political economy from the 1970s, specifically world-systems theory and its variants. See, for example, Frank, Crisis in the World Economy; Arrighi, Chaos and Governance; Wallerstein, World-Systems Analysis. For important engagements and critiques of contemporary scholarship on globalization by scholars of Africa, see Comaroff and Comaroff, “Millennial Capitalism: First Thoughts on a Second Coming”; Cooper, “What is the Concept of Globalization Good For?”; Hart, Disabling Globalization; Ferguson, Global Shadows.

⁴ Such concerns for space and experience have been particularly keen among anthropologists. For studies that have sought to negotiate the relationship between the local and the global, see Tsing, In the Realm of the Diamond Queen and Friction; Gupta and Ferguson, Culture, Power, Place; Ferguson, Expectations of Modernity; Piot, Remotely Global. The importance of region has also been revived among historians. See, for example, the essays from the American Historical Review Forum “Bringing Regionalism Back to History” including Applegate, “A Europe of Regions”; Wigen, “Culture, Power, and Place”; O’Brien, “On Observing the Quicksand”; Rafael, “Regionalism, Area Studies, and the Accidents of Agency.”

⁵ On “groupness” and identity, see Brubaker and Cooper, “Beyond Identity.”

⁶ For studies of this transformation with region in mind, see, for example, Martin, “Region Formation Under Crisis Conditions”; Crush et al., South Africa's Labor Empire; Moodie and Ndatshe, Going for Gold; Harries, Work, Culture, and Identity; Peberdy, “Obscuring History?”; Söderbaum, The Political Economy of Regionalism, Chapter 4.

⁷ On the expression “structures of feeling,” see Williams, The Long Revolution, 48–71. For a recent discussion of this idea vis-à-vis nation and region, see Gupta, “The Song of the Non-Aligned World.”

⁸ This general assertion is not meant to undermine ongoing collective efforts at placing the region in perspective, the Journal of Southern African Studies (1973 to present) being one enduring forum for the idea and importance of region. However, the category of “region” appears more often as a backdrop than an analytic unit critically reflected upon. Political economists and political scientists have gone further to assess the meaning of region through SADC (previously the Southern African Development Coordination Conference, or SADCC) and other forms of economic integration. See Nsekela, Southern Africa; Amin et al., SADCC; Lee, SADCC; Clapham et al., Regional Integration in Southern Africa; Poku, Security and Development in Southern Africa; Lee, The Political Economy of Regionalism in Southern Africa; Söderbaum, The Political Economy of Regionalism. On expertise vis-à-vis the nation or “the local,” my thoughts draw in part from Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine; Mitchell, Rule of Experts.

⁹ On post-apartheid South Africa, see Simon, South Africa in Southern Africa.

¹⁰ Robert Mugabe is president of Zimbabwe and the leader of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), the ruling party. He has been president since independence in 1980.

¹¹ Such debates between comparative analysis versus exploring transnational connections have animated studies of the US and of South Africa in particular. See Fredrickson, White Supremacy and Black Liberation; Cooper, “Race, Ideology, and the Perils of Comparative History”; Seigel, “Beyond Compare.”

¹² President Thabo Mbeki (2002), as quoted in Phimister, “South African Diplomacy and the Crisis in Zimbabwe,” 290, 291.

¹³ For an overview, see Stoneman, “Zimbabwe Land Policy and the Land Reform Programme.”

¹⁴ Zimbabwe has a rich historiography that is impossible to encompass fully here. For important texts that cover the themes of politics, race, and the state, see, for example, Ranger, Revolt in Southern Rhodesia; Palmer, Land and Racial Domination in Rhodesia; Phimister, An Economic and Social History of Zimbabwe; Schmidt, Peasants, Traders, and Wives; Jeater, Marriage, Perversion, and Power; Summers, From Civilization to Segregation; West, The Rise of an African Middle Class.

¹⁵ ZANU was founded in 1963; ZAPU was founded in 1962. Both were the main anti-Rhodesian organizations of the Second Chimurenga. For studies of these movements and the guerrilla struggle generally, see Ranger, Peasant Consciousness and Guerilla War in Zimbabwe; Lan, Guns and Rain; Kriger, “The Zimbabwean War of Liberation” and Zimbabwe's Guerrilla War; Moore, “Democracy, Violence, and Identity in the Zimbabwean War of National Liberation.”

¹⁶ Eric Worby has separately cited 1700 as the total number of farms invaded: Worby, “A Redivided Land?,” 477

¹⁷ ZANU-PF violence against black farm workers drew less attention. For a separate overview with specific attention to perspectives on the left, see Raftopoulos, “The Zimbabwean Crisis and the Challenges for the Left,” 203, 204.

¹⁸ My thoughts here are inspired in part by Peters, “Seeing Bifocally.”

¹⁹ Phimister and Raftopoulos, “Mugabe, Mbeki and the Politics of Anti-Imperialism.”

²⁰ See Worby, “A Redivided Land?,” 492–95; Bowyer-Bower and Stoneman, Land Reform in Zimbabwe; Alexander, “The Unsettled Land”; Alexander and McGregor, “Elections, Land and the Politics of Opposition in Matabeleland”; Alexander, “ ‘Squatters’, Veterans and the State in Zimbabwe”; Marongwe, “Farm Occupations and Occupiers in the New Politics of Land in Zimbabwe”; Rutherford, “Belonging to the Farm(er)”; Rukuni and Jensen, “Land, Growth and Governance”; Sachikonye, “The Promised Land”; Moore, Suffering for Territory.

²¹ On Robert Mugabe as a political figure, see Smith, Mugabe; Meredith, Our Votes, Our Guns; Blair, Degrees in Violence; Chan, Robert Mugabe; Kriger, “Robert Mugabe, Another Too-Long-Serving African Ruler”; Campbell, Reclaiming Zimbabwe.

²² Bond writes “by 1980 it was revealed that the Rhodesians had left to Robert Mugabe the following financial liabilities: multilateral debt of US $5.3 million, bilateral debt of US $97.9 million and private debt of US $593.9 million.” Bond and Manyanya, Zimbabwe's Plunge, 17.

²³ As to why the Mugabe government decided to repay outstanding debts from the Rhodesian period, Bond explains that the promise of future loans and beneficial trade agreements encouraged this decision. However, this move would also firmly place international finance at the center of future state policies. See Ibid., 9, 24, 25. For another view of this transition period, see Mandaza, Zimbabwe.

²⁴ Bond and Manyanya, Zimbabwe's Plunges.

²⁵ This overview draws from Ibid., Chapters 1 and 2. For a broader discussion, see Bond, Uneven Zimbabwe, especially Chapters 1 and 12.

²⁶ South African manipulation of the situation must also be included, adding a regional dimension to this conflict. See Alexander, “The Unsettled Land,” 586; Weitzer, “In Search of Regime Security,” 542–47; Dzimba, South Africa's Destabilization of Zimbabwe. For overviews of this period with attention to Matabeleland and post-independence conflict generally, see Alexander, “The Unsettled Land”; Alexander et al., Violence and Memory; Kriger, Guerrilla Veterans in Post-War Zimbabwe.

²⁷ For a discussion of the origins of this postcolonial elitism, see Moore, “The Ideological Formation of the Zimbabwean Ruling Class.”

²⁸ The ZCTU was originally formed in 1981.

²⁹ Raftopoulos, “The State in Crisis,” 228.

³⁰ Ibid., 226–30. On the constitutional reform movement, see Kagoro, “Constitutional Reform as Social Movement.”

³¹ It is also worth mentioning that during this period Zimbabwe became involved in the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, when Mugabe sent a military force of 10,000 soldiers to protect the regime of President Laurent Kabila. The Zimbabwe government was criticized for the high expense of this gesture, estimated to be US $3 million per month. Troops arrived in 1998 and left in 2002.

³² Norma Kriger argues that these characteristics of the 2000 election fit into an ongoing pattern. See Norma Kriger, “ZANU(PF) Strategies in General Elections, 1980–2000.”

³³ For news reports, see, for example, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1871045.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1870229.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1871392.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/1872069.stm (accessed 2 April 2007).

³⁴ For a recent assessment of Operation Murambatsvina, see Potts, “ ‘Restoring Order’?”

³⁵ Ian Phimister writes that at a 2002 meeting of SADC members in Windhoek, participants leveled criticism against the intervention of the British Commonwealth and “ ‘unequivocally condemned the unsubstantiated, grossly fabricated and far-fetched propaganda deliberately perpetrated against the Government, people and sovereignty of Zimbabwe by those who are bent on sowing the seeds of discord, confusion, strife and anarchy in our region.’ ” See Phimister, “South African Diplomacy and the Crisis in Zimbabwe,” 274.

³⁶ Ibid., 271.

³⁷ Ibid., 288–91.

³⁸ For separate views on Zimbabwe vis-à-vis South Africa, see Maundeni, “Why the African Renaissance is Likely to Fail”; Freeman, “South Africa's Zimbabwe Policy.”

³⁹ Kenneth Kaunda, President of Zambia, at the Lusaka Summit (1980), as quoted by Sir Seretse Khama, President of Botswana, in Khama, “Introduction,” ix.

⁴⁰ The Lusaka Summit of April 1980, when the Lusaka Declaration and the SADCC Programme of Action were launched, was preceded by a number of other meetings in the build-up to SADCC's formation. The Arusha Conference was held in July 1979, in addition to a meeting in Gaborone, Botswana in May 1979. For a personal overview, see Khama, “Introduction,” x, xi.

⁴¹ Kenneth Kaunda as quoted in Lee, SADCC, 3. The original quote comes from Khama, “Introduction,” x.

⁴² SADCC must not be romanticized either, given different contentions between member states as well as complex connections with South Africa and the West. For one early view, see Leys and Tostensen, “Regional Cooperation in Southern Africa.”

⁴³ Lesotho and Swaziland also played roles, though these six countries are generally pointed to as the Frontline States.

⁴⁴ The Reagan administration also famously supported UNITA and its leader Jonas Savimbi. For an insider's view of US policy in southern Africa during the 1980s, see Crocker, High Noon in Southern Africa.

⁴⁵ Lee, SADCC, 1.

⁴⁶ It is important to note that the Rhodesian government initially supported RENAMO, due to Mozambique's support of the liberation struggle in Southern Rhodesia.

⁴⁷ Simon, “Introduction,” 8–14.

⁴⁸ For discussion of the regional political ambiguities of South African dominance, see Holland, “South Africa, SADC, and the European Union”; Bond, “South Africa's Agenda in 21st Century Global Governance,” “The ANC's ‘Left Turn’ and South African Sub-Imperialism,” and “Zimbabwe's Hide and Seek with the IMF.”

⁴⁹ On the ambiguities of solidarity today, see Sachikonye, “Solidarity and Africa in the New Century,” 655–56.

⁵⁰ Appadurai, “Grassroots Globalization and the Research Imagination,” 17.

⁵¹ On grassroots movements in South Africa today, see Desai, We Are the Poors and “Neoliberalism and Resistance in South Africa.” For broader discussion of the effects of globalization in southern Africa, see Tsie, “States and Markets in the Southern African Development Community”; Comaroff and Comaroff, “Millennial Capitalism”; Moore, “Neoliberal Globalisation and the Triple Crisis of ‘Modernisation’ in Africa”; Hart, Disabling Globalization; Ferguson, Global Shadows, Chapter 8.

⁵² On the initial ideas of SADCC, see Nsekela, Southern Africa; Amin et al., SADCC. On SADC and COMESA, see Sidaway and Gibb, “SADC, COMESA, SACU”; Ngwenya, “Reviewing the Differences and Common Goals of SADC and Comesa”; Zarenda, “SADC and Comesa: Balancing the Benefits.”

⁵³ Clapham, “The Changing World of Regional Integration in Africa,” 60, 64–68. A security approach is not necessarily easy either. For discussion, see Willett, “In the Wake of War”; Vines, “Small Arms Proliferation”; Williams, “From Collective Security to Peace-Building?”; Poku, Security and Development; Nathan, “SADC's Uncommon Approach to Common Security, 1992–2003.”

⁵⁴ Lee, The Political Economy of Regionalism in Southern Africa, especially Chapters 1 and 8.

⁵⁵ Simon, “Reflections: Writing (on) the Region”; Söderbaum, The Political Economy of Regionalism, 52, 53.

⁵⁶ Mbembe, On the Postcolony; Mamdani, Citizen and Subject. See also Mbembe, “Necropolitics”; Bayart, The State in Africa.

⁵⁷ On sovereignty in Zimbabwe, see Worby, “Tyranny, Parody, and Ethnic Polarity” and “The End of Modernity in Zimbabwe?”; Moore, Suffering for Territory, Chapter 7.

⁵⁸ For discussion, see the essays in Robins, Limits to Liberation After Apartheid. On the competing meanings of citizenship in Zimbabwe, see Raftopoulos, “The State in Crisis”; Rutherford, “Belonging to the Farm(er)”; Raftopoulos et al., Zimbabwe.

⁵⁹ For existing comparative discussions with land as the focus, see Palmer, “Mugabe's ‘Land Grab’ in Regional Perspective”; Lahiff and Cousins, “The Land Crisis in Zimbabwe”; Cousins, “The Zimbabwe Crisis in its Wider Context.”

⁶⁰ For an earlier version of this approach, see Moore, “Is the Land the Economy and the Economy the Land?”

⁶¹ For further discussion on the politics of contemporary scholarship and historiography, see Ranger, “Nationalist Historiography, Patriotic History and the History of the Nation”; Raftopoulos, “The Zimbabwean Crisis and the Challenges for the Left.”

⁶² International Crisis Group, “Zimbabwe: An End to the Stalemate?”