Polarized Partisanship and Voting Behavior in Zimbabwe: A Public Opinion Perspective

The chapter argues that voting behaviour and public opinion are deeply influenced by official controls applied by the entrenched ruling Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party. Popular voting behaviour in Zimbabwe is associated with an assortment of political, cultural, and economic views. In regard to the ruling ZANU-PF’s series of electoral triumphs, leading considerations are whether persons trust traditional leaders as a guide to vote choice, the extent to which they think the economy has been administered properly, and whether they fear retribution for not voting for incumbent political elites. However, the chapter further argues, to best appreciate Zimbabwean voting behaviour, scholars must pay significant attention to Zimbabwe’s acute hyper-partisan polarization. Zimbabweans are more divided politically than in any other African country in which party affiliation has been systematically measured. Ruling and opposition parties are divided by mutual distrust, conflicting standpoints on policy debates, and over electoral choice. Polarization is partly a construction by Zimbabwean political elites, but it also has substantial traction amongst ordinary citizens who have accepted partisan loyalty as an important facet in their range of identities.

The Monster That Hid Under A Desk? Zimbabwe and the West

Zimbabwe’s diplomatic relations with Britain became exceptionally fractious from about 2000. Britain’s New Labour government publicly criticized the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party for its violent seizure of white-owned commercial farms, political violence, and rolling back of democracy. ZANU-PF countered the British government’s accusation, describing it as unwarranted interference in Zimbabwe’s domestic affairs by an ex-colonial master. Such highly charged accusations between government elites of both countries have tended to animate scholarly debates about the nature of Zimbabwe–-Britain relations. This chapter does something different: it examines understandings of Zimbabwe–Britain relations, drawing on research interviews with Zimbabwean non-elites. The chapter argues that Zimbabwean and British political elites instrumentalized the diplomatic quarrel in order to position themselves as honourable wardens of their respective countries and particular norms such as human rights and sovereignty. However, the chapter further contends, non-elites’ comprehensions of the diplomatic argument reveal the limits of this instrumentalization and reflect the complicated and ambivalent appreciations of Zimbabwe–Britain relations. The diplomatic argument attained popular resonances and dissonances, which reflect a multifaceted existential entanglement with roots in the colonial era. Ideas of the expulsion of white farmers as a representation of ‘real independence’ and the display of the shortcomings of a post-colonial order on the other end, impress particular self-understandings and identities.

Plus Ça Change? The Dynamics of Security Sector Reform in Zimbabwe, 2009–2013

This chapter discusses the elements that influenced and constrained Security Sector Reform (SSR) in Zimbabwe during the country’s 2009 to 2013 power-sharing government period. The chapter argues that the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front’s (ZANU-PF) historically rooted symbiotic links with the security sector and the regional solidarity politics of ZANU-PF’s ruling fellow African liberation struggle parties, greatly undermined SSR in Zimbabwe. Thabo Mbeki, of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC), an ostensibly ‘neutral’ mediator between ZANU-PF and opposition parties in the power-sharing talks, negotiated an agreement that lacked precise detail on the nature of SSR and how its implementation would be enforced. Coupled with ZANU-PF’s obstruction of attempts to delink the party from the security sector, and opposition parties’ lack of expertise in SSR issues and diplomacy, SSR faltered. The chapter further argues that in the absence of SSR, ZANU-PF was able to use the security sector to out-manoeuvre opposition parties in the power-sharing government and win the 2013 elections decisively. The failure of SSR in the power-sharing phase has had powerful consequences for civil–military relations after 2013. The security sector’s influence on politics mounted, culminating in the military staging a coup against president Robert Mugabe in 2017, which heightened the military’s political influence.

An Overview of Zimbabwe–China Relations

This chapter surveys Zimbabwe’s relations with China in two main ways. It first examines the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) liberation movement’s relations with China during Zimbabwe’s independence struggle, followed by the ZANU-PF controlled independent Zimbabwean state’s links with China. The chapter shows the fundamentally realist character of ZANU-PF’s relationship with China from the 1970s to the present. It maintains that although ideological commitment and rhetoric has been an observable dynamic buttressing these relations, the links have mainly been steered by practical factors such as the supply of weaponry in Zimbabwe’s independence war and, latterly, reciprocally advantageous foreign policies. Crucially, the chapter argues, in the 1980s China played a role in directing the ZANU-PF government towards a capitalist economy, thereby avoiding the socialist ideological adherences with which China was historically associated. However, many of the capitalist deals and diplomatic links between China and Zimbabwe have, in the Zimbabwean domestic context, primarily advanced the interests of ZANU-PF elites and solidified their control of the state. Colonial legacies and the not always constructive interventions of former colonial powers in Africa, have partly contributed to political and developmental problems in many African states. China presents itself as the antithesis of the behaviours of ex-colonial powers but the case of Zimbabwe casts some doubt on this contention.

Opposition Parties and Political Change in Zimbabwe

This chapter argues that the performance of Zimbabwean opposition parties in elections is chiefly determined by dynamics internal to these parties. The key determinant internal factor is opposition parties’ ability to develop and sustain effective mobilizing structures. Zimbabwe’s current main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), stands out in this regard because it has, historically, appropriated the mobilizing structures of other organizations, such as trade unions, followed (however inconsistently) inclusive internal democracy procedures and constructed a highly partisan identity that prevents defections to the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party. Taken together, the chapter argues that these internal factors have enabled the MDC to maintain considerable broad-based national appeal for approximately two decades, a quality that most opposition parties since independence have lacked. The chapter’s argument about the efficacy of mobilizing structures, partisan behaviours and incomplete tenets of internal democracy, is a corrective to explanations of Zimbabwean politics that overemphasize the significance of ZANU-PF’s election rigging strategies, in determining the success of opposition parties.

Inside Competitive Electoral Authoritarianism in Zimbabwe, 2008–2018

Most African states today are characterized as hybrid regimes that occupy a ‘grey zone’ between liberal democracy and naked authoritarianism. Whilst political scientists often argue that these regimes produce a competitive electoral authoritarianism, their arguments generalize across a diverse range of regimes and overlook local logics of electoral subversion. This article therefore provides a detailed empirical investigation through a case study of the 2013 and 2018 general elections in Zimbabwe. Since the end of British colonial rule in 1980, Zimbabwe has kept its constitutional obligation to hold regular elections. However, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) has used multiple strategies to manipulate elections, remaining in power despite the creation of a popular opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), in 1999. Scholarly attempts to explain this hegemony through the competitive advantages of the incumbent and ‘smart rigging’ fail to address adequately local patterns of electoral manipulation and their delegitimizing effects. Central to ZANU-PF’s strategy is the conflation of the state and the ruling party from the centre down to the village level, with coercion as the perennial autocratic feature. However, in the June 2008 elections, the use of naked coercion undermined ZANU-PF’s power and legitimacy. Subsequently, in the 2013 and 2018 general elections, ZANU-PF relied upon covert manipulation, but never wholly gave up coercion because the opposition remained competitive, and political legitimacy contested. A view from marginal rural areas, which have been neglected in academic studies, provides invaluable insight into the interplay of electoral strategies and helps to illuminate how a delegitimized ruling party clings to power.

Mineral Extraction and Political Ruptures in Zimbabwe

Strategies for controlling mineral wealth continue to profoundly shape modern political affairs in Zimbabwe, building on colonial-era legacies. Minerals symbolize diverse social, economic, and political struggles. The imagined capacity of minerals to generate economic and social transformation has often been at the heart of debates over mining. Simultaneously, debates on ‘resource curses’ have pointed to the dynamics of elite political capture and the use of minerals to secure political survival. Challenging ‘governance failure’ frames, this chapter discusses some of the ways in which state power was reconfigured in response to the rising importance of minerals in the 2000s, and how narratives of ‘illegality,’ ‘empowerment’, and the ‘resource curse’ were used controversially to justify policy turns and new systems for controlling mineral wealth. Examining articulations of continuities and strategic ruptures with the past, the chapter discusses contested consequences and interpretations around injustices experienced in mining areas and society more broadly.

The Making of Zimbabwe’s Currency and Economic Crisis: International Financial Architecture, Nationalism, and Economic Policies 1980–2000

This chapter examines the making of Zimbabwe’s currency and economic crisis from a historical perspective. It suggests that colonial legacies played an important role, together with the connections forged through the international financial architecture. Both these factors should be considered in examining why the country continues to face sustained economic crisis. Although the chapter acknowledges the importance of local political factors that many scholars have examined, it provides an alternative perspective that stresses a neglected aspect in the study of the Zimbabwean crisis. Attention must be given to the importance of inherited models and discourses of economic management and the ways in which they have been embedded into the fabric of economic administration. The chapter interrogates these influences, focusing in particular on the role of the System of National Income accounting in Zimbabwe’s descent into debt and aid dependency. It argues that these factors should be included in explanations of the multilayered political and economic crisis that Zimbabwe has been facing for the past two decades.

The Impact of Voter Exit on Party Survival: Evidence from Zimbabwe

Can voter emigration sustain hegemonic undemocratic regimes at a time when elections and democratization are on the rise around the globe? In this chapter I show a link between the mobility of young, middle class, educated urbanites and the survival of ruling parties faced with growing international and local pressures. In additional to benefiting from traditional methods of centralizing power incumbent regimes can sustain their rule when opposition supporters are forced to emigrate because of deteriorating economic or political conditions. My findings suggest that the exit of voters both weakened the opposition movement and relieved political pressures on the incumbent party.

‘As it was bodily, so it is politically’: Prostitutes, Wives, and Political Power in Zimbabwe

This chapter argues that the term ‘prostitute’ is part of the political grammar in Zimbabwe, used to discipline women’s participation in party politics. Rather than approaching the use of this term as an unfortunate but prosaic aspect of politics, it situates the term in the now well-documented history of colonial policing and administration. ‘Out of place’ black women were linked to chaos and social breakdown, spurring attempts to control their visibility and mobility. The chapter argues that in likening politicians to prostitutes, women who monetize their own sexual labour, the term reveals the extent to which the control of women’s bodies, sexuality, and labour remains a key focus of the post-independence state. Moreover, it examines the use of this term alongside the growing visibility and tacit acceptance of sex work in Zimbabwe’s cities. Drawing from media coverage and interviews, this chapter examines the careers of four Zimbabwean female political figures, Joice Mujuru and Grace Mugabe from ZANU-PF, along with Thabitha Khumalo and Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga from the MDC factions. It examines how these differently situated women have managed their public visibility under such constraints by deploying, rebuffing, or reappropriating the term prostitute.