Zimbabwe: the Fall from a Jewel Status

ABSTRACT

This introduction prefaces a collection exploring why Zimbabwe, once a breadbasket in southern Africa, has fallen deeper into crisis. This article reflects on, reconceptualises, and critiques Zimbabwe’s socio-economic and political decline occasioned by ZANU PF’s militant nationalism. Contributors to this collection debate post-2017 Zimbabwe from historical, political, legal, gender, media, and literary perspectives. This interdisciplinary approach enables the authors to condemn the intensifying political violence against citizens and the deepening economic decline overseen by President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s new dispensation. Collectively, the articles in this collection amplify the need to mobilise progressive forces in Zimbabwe, Africa, and the world to write and speak against the silence enforced on Zimbabwean citizens. This collection also magnifies a political gap that still exists in current scholarship in Zimbabwe post-2017, which is how to write about the different Zimbabwean citizens who are challenging the Mnangagwa regime. It is hoped that scholars will take up this challenge in future studies.

KEYWORDS:

• Zimbabwe; crises; coup; fragile; state; Mnangagwa

Re-conceptualising Zimbabwe’s decline in a global context

This collection titled ‘Zimbabwe: The Fall from a Jewel Status’ is about state violence and how it has become a permanent feature in the governance of Zimbabwe since 1980 when Robert Mugabe began leading this southern African country. Intertwined with current destructive Zimbabwe politics post-2017, ‘Zimbabwe: The Fall from a Jewel Status’ is largely about how to resuscitate a dream and an aspiration by Zimbabwean citizens to be the breadbasket of southern Africa. International readers and young Zimbabweans born in the 1990s have grown up knowing a Zimbabwe in perpetual crisis, defined by toxic nationalist politics that smoked, destroyed, and deferred an expectation for the better under Mugabe’s misrule and his successor Emmerson Mnangagwa’s regime post-2017.

However, things were not simply grim as they are now in post-2017 Zimbabwe because in its early years of independence – in fact, the country was described by eminent African politicians of the day as a ‘jewel’. The late President of Tanzania, Julius Mwalimu Nyerere, ‘envied’ and counselled Mugabe in 1980 that the latter had inherited a jewel of an economy and that he should preserve it (Lessing 2003). Furthermore, Samora Machel, the late President of Mozambique, noted in his congratulatory message to Robert Mugabe in April 1980 that, unlike Mozambique then rocked by war, Zimbabwe was a functional economy. Thus, in the political rhetoric of the 1980s, Zimbabwe was shining like a jewel with a strong agri-based economy, a robust manufacturing sector, and 40% of the population employed by European-owned farms and mines (Mlambo 2017).

In this collection, Zimbabwe’s decline as a ‘fall’ from jewel status is described and analysed. This fall is shown to have economic, political, social, moral, and spiritual dimensions. The authors who have contributed to this collection have engaged the Zimbabwean crises post-2017 (Chuma, Msimanga, and Tshuma 2020) and analysed the deficit in the political rationality used to trample economic rationality. In the discourses of citizens’ moral economy, Zimbabwe’s fall was originally hoped to bring a better future, in which Zimbabwe is a, ‘proper jewel of Africa, yes tholukuthi a land not only indescribably wealthy but so peaceful’ (Bulawayo 2022, 8) of which ordinary people will see themselves as citizens and not subjects.

Thanks to Robert Mugabe’s violent suppression of the insurrection in Matabeleland (1983–1987) (Mpofu 2021), ill-advised payments made to restive war veterans, an unplanned adventure into the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo and chaotic land reform in the 2000s, by 2017 this jewel of an economy was a shell of its former glory, hardly recognisable because Zimbabwe’s economy had been killed and transformed into a basket case, and a nation of beggars (Masunungure 2020) and vendors (Mlambo 2017).

Yet Mugabe did not act alone in destroying the Zimbabwean economy. Emmerson Mnangagwa was adviser to Mugabe throughout the nearly four decades of Mugabe’s rule, with profoundly negative consequences then and as in post-2017, when Mnangagwa took power by force. Together with powerful elements in the Zimbabwean defence force under Mugabe, political rationality undermined economic commonsense (Vhumba 2020). Even after Mnangagwa had dethroned Mugabe using the same Zimbabwean defence force, what was once a jewel of a functioning economy has become a state in freefall. This prompts the question of what has happened to Mnangagwa’s mantra of a Zimbabwe as open for business in the second republic or his new dispensation?

Zimbabwe post-2017 provides evidence of an example of a failed state. Fragility marks failed states even though this failure is willed by the ruling elites to enable them to extract national resources. Ferguson (quoted in Mhandara 2020, 367) suggests that the ‘likeness of Mnangagwa to Mugabe implies not only a resemblance but also a connection, a proximity, an equivalence, even an identity’. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2015) further describes Zimbabwe post-2017 as an era of ‘Mugabeism without Mugabe’.

A political regime that saw itself as a new dispensation and had its leader Mnangagwa promises the opening of economic opportunity to citizens resorts to violence when confronted by hungry and unemployed citizens. Mnangagwa’s administration is self-serving, always sets the state machinery against the citizens and hardly follows through the ‘rational’ steps that the regime speaks about in policy documents, when reaching decisions. The economic rationality of Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) is subjective, as both the president and most of the politicians are consistently both rational and irrational in reaching decisions from time to time.

Scholarly dialogue vs. militant nationalism: purpose of this collection

The idea of a collection on the fall of Zimbabwe emerged in 2019. First, no longer numbed by the fear of politics induced by the Mnangagwa coup, Zimbabwean authors from an interdisciplinary background believed that they could contribute to a freer Zimbabwe by challenging a new political culture of a military coup as being naturalised as a substitute for democratic elections (Langa 2023).

Second, the coup set a foreboding precedent that in post-2017 Zimbabwe civilian rights would be decided by the power of the gun. This dangerous thinking that brought Mnangagwa to power had to be questioned because it ruled out any possibility of creative dialogue amongst Zimbabwean citizens. Militant nationalism had to be defeated in the world of scholarly ideas because this kind of nationalism is outmoded post-1980.

Third, after the 31 July 2018 shambolic Zimbabwe Harmonised Election, Mnangagwa and the ZANU-PF leadership ordered the military to quell protests by citizens over concerns of a rigged election (Maringira 2021). More than 10 ordinary people were killed, and several people were wounded. In August 2019, ZANU-PF was again at its game of political violence when more than 35 people were killed protesting the hiking of petrol and food prices (Maringira 2021). Authors, medical doctors, nurses, teachers, and university lecturers saw their possible fate in death in the experiences of the citizens killed while defending their rights (Dendere and Taodzera 2023). Intellectual reflection on the trajectory of Zimbabwe post-2017 is considered by the authors in this collection as political activism.

Fourth, after 2017, Zimbabweans have been dealing with a changed ZANU-PF that no longer pretends to be patriotic or nationalistic, judging by the arrests of people and the speed with which national institutions and the economy are being destroyed amidst the self-enrichment of the military-led government. The rational and the irrational in the Mnangagwa regime belong to – and enable – each other. Therefore, contributors to this collection see their writing as countercultural to ZANU-PF’s political excesses.

Therefore, the need exists to generate scholarship that mobilises local and international voices to reverse the sinister tendencies of a military-led government that saw it fit, later in 2023, to introduce a ‘Patriotic Bill’ outlawing criticism of the government before the 2023 August elections (Reuters 2023). This collection is unique because it provides an appropriate cultural platform to analyse ZANU-PF’s existence as itself a wicked problem that must be defeated, using all means available to Zimbabwean citizens.

Articles in this collection

The first article ‘The fast-track land reform programme of Zimbabwe read through the lens of Ubuntu’ by Vongai Z. Nyawo (2023, this collection) foregrounds the wicked problem of land inequalities and the chaotic way in which the Mugabe went about ‘resolving’ them. Using the philosophy of ubuntuism, this article draws attention to the sensory pains that real people suffered during the reform programme: the violent seizure of white commercial farms, the killings of white farmers and the general economic decline arising from this land reform. Furthermore, the article shows the gendered nature of the land reform process, by revealing how women were marginalised. Although a few ordinary people benefited, most of the prime productive land went to a small clique of Mugabe and his sycophants. The article contributes in two ways. First, in debating the graphic and senseless murder, violence and economic mayhem suffered largely by white owners, the article forces readers to regard the pain of white people who are also citizens of Zimbabwe. Second, the fast-track land reform programme has re-defined relations between Zimbabweans and the international community, resulting in the sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe that are discussed in the second article.

The second article, written by Joshua Chakawa (2023, this collection), ‘Why Sanctions have not worked: Zimbabwe’s experience from 2001 to 2021’, debates the strategies employed by the Robert Mugabe regime and then the Emmerson Mnangagwa rule in busting the sanctions following their imposition in 2001 by European countries and the United States of America. While the article discusses the nature of the sanctions, the main interest in the study is on demonstrating a contradiction that arises between sanctions and their targets. The ZANU-PF top elites have not been severely affected but have passed the burden of the sanctions on to the ordinary people. This article contributes to scholarship in three ways: first, by showing that key actors in the Zimbabwean crises are ZANU-PF under the administrations of Mugabe and Mnangagwa. Second, the article shows that the international community that imposed sanctions have unwittingly contributed to the economic suffering of ordinary Zimbabweans. Third, both Mugabe and Mnangagwa and their immediate families grew richer. Mugabe used sanctions to overstay in power, and the Mnangagwa administration uses the rhetoric of anti-sanctions to further squeeze the Zimbabwean economy and steal the resources of the country.

The third article, ‘The securocratic transition: conceptualising the transition problem in Zimbabwe’, co-authored by Pedzisai Ruhanya and Bekezela Gumbo (2023, this collection), emphasises the fact that the military factor has been active in militarising politics and politicising the military under Mugabe, who was in power for nearly four decades. The military coup signalled a change and marked a precedent in which power was transferred through force. The significance of this article is to make the point that the presence of the military in running Mnangagwa’s regime facilitates the capturing of the state and enables dubious politicians to plunder Zimbabwe’s economy with impunity.

In ‘Three pandemics in post-2017 Zimbabwe: authoritarianism, corruption and ruling through Covid-19’, Urther Rwafa (2023, this collection) details how coercion more than consent is the norm with ZANU-PF in power, both under Mugabe and in post-2017 Zimbabwe under Mnangagwa. The first of ZANU-PF’s hard rules came in the form of the wilful murder of more than 10 people who were shot by the military protesting delays in counting the votes in the Zimbabwe Harmonised Election on 31 July 2018. Second, in January 2019 the Mnangagwa regime killed more than 35 innocent citizens protesting the hikes in the price of petrol. The consequence of ZANU-PF’s lack of accountability is further manifested in gratuitous acts of looting of public funds and corruption by members of the political party. An effect of the military coup is that the fear that spread among the people enabled ZANU-PF to weaponise COVID-19 to the extent that Zimbabwean citizens’ lives were rendered more precarious within the context of an already devastating disease. Under Mnangagwa’s new dispensation, power is necessarily authoritarian. Rwafa’s article contributes to showing that if removing Mugabe was the rational thing to do, Mnangagwa’s vicious silencing of alternative ideas constitutes the irrational.

In ‘The challenges of rebranding Zimbabwe’s image post-2017: media coverage of Statutory Instrument (SI) 62 of 2020’, Washington Mushore (2023, this collection) argues that ZANU-PF manipulates the media to hoodwink the international community into believing that it has reformed and truly intends to correct the botched land issue by paying compensation to former landowners. This is not so, as very few former landowners have been compensated. This article contributes towards showing that under the Mnangagwa regime, the law can be manipulated to silence and punish citizens. The weakening of national institutions, namely the media and legal institutions, is not new since Robert Mugabe did the same from 1980 onwards. However, what defies logic is the anti-nationalistic tendencies of the military-led ZANU-PF government of the Mnangagwa administration.

Post-2017, Emmerson Mnangagwa has consistently promulgated economic policies that are intended to subvert the efforts of Zimbabwean citizens to create their own livelihoods. Beauty Vambe (2023, this collection) in ‘Zimbabwe is open for business: a legal perspective on the post-2017 use of Statutory Instruments’ debates a plethora of laws introduced by the Mnangagwa government. The policies contradict the spirit of hope that is captured in the president’s promise of an open economy that would benefit most citizens. Statutory Instruments introduced between 2017 and 2022 echo the Robert Mugabe policies in their severity and curtailment particularly of informal traders. In addition, the article debates the ambiguities that arise when political rationality is used to subvert economic rationality.

The monster that has become ZANU-PF post-2017 has not entirely silenced political critics. In ‘The elitist subaltern? Jonathan Moyo’s tweets as a Machiavellian barometer of post-Mugabe Zimbabwean politics’, the authors Reggemore Marongedze, Wellington Gadzikwa and Enock Machanja (2023, this collection) debate how social media provide a platform to contest ZANU-PF’s hegemonic desires. The article discusses how Jonathan Moyo – a former Cabinet minister under the Mugabe regime and alleged member of the first lady Grace Mugabe-aligned Generation 40 (G40) faction within ZANU-PF – uses his tweets to expose, undermine, and delegitimise the Mnangagwa Lacoste faction of ZANU-PF. The authors show that the media are a site of struggle and that the intention to absolutely control and weaponise the media by the Mnangagwa administration can be contested, using social media platforms that ZANU-PF cannot entirely control.

In ‘Theorising post-2017 Zimbabwe: a creative/literary perspective’, Maurice (Vambe 2023), this collection uses NonViolet Bulawayo’s novel, Glory, published in 2022, to interrogate the symbolical representations of Robert Mugabe and Emmerson Mnangagwa’s politics of intolerance before and in post-2017 Zimbabwe. The novel provides a unique literary perspective to understand why and with what consequences Mnangagwa’s political coup against Mugabe took place when it did. The novel embodies literary narratives that represent Jidada (fictional post-2017 Zimbabwe) as a continuation of Mugabe’s past oppressive system of governance. Mugabe, Mnangagwa, and some members of the defence force were key political actors in the Gukurahundi genocide that killed more than 20 000 Ndebele people. In post-2017 Jidada, the new president Tuvious Delight Shasha (Mnangagwa) and the defence forces represented by army generals ‘Judas Goodness Reza, Musa Moya, Lovemore Shava’ (Bulawayo 2022, 60–61) and ‘Commander Jambanja’ (315) continue to create economic and political policies that most hurt Jidada’s ordinary citizens.

Vambe argues that in the literary narratives post-2017 Jidada in Glory, the irrational is detailed in images that show unrelenting suppression of citizens post-2017. Yet, despite or because of Tuvious’s (Mnangagwa’s) intolerance of free speech, Glory represents the human agency of the citizens of Jidada in their daily struggles against Tuvious’s new dispensation regime. The contribution of this article is that it reveals how literature questions the very idea of Zimbabwe (Jidada) as ever having been a jewel because Ndebele people were persecuted by Mugabe’s Fifth Brigade between 1983 and 1987; the very first decade normally described as the ‘jewel era’. Furthermore, Vambe argues that the unstable literary metaphors in Glory empower critics to imagine Jidada imploding from within because some of the soldiers who put Mnangagwa in power are portrayed in the novel as mobilising the masses against Tuvious Delight Shasha (Mnangagwa). Vambe concludes that the contribution of the literary metaphors in Glory in post-2017 Jidada (Zimbabwe) is that the novel gives the citizens of Jidada a voice, a weight, and personality of resistance to injustice that is often underplayed in scholarly studies on Zimbabwe post-2017.

Mobilising progressive forces: contribution of this collection

The idea of this collection was to explore why Zimbabwe, once a breadbasket in southern Africa, has become a nation of vendors post-2017 (Mlambo 2017). Contributors to this collection sought to provide answers to this question by debating post-2017 Zimbabwe from historical, political, legal, gender, media, and literary perspectives. This interdisciplinary approach enabled the authors to condemn the intensifying political violence against citizens and the deepening economic decline overseen by President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s new dispensation. Collectively, the articles in this collection amplify the need to mobilise progressive forces in Zimbabwe, Africa, and the world to write and speak against the silence enforced on Zimbabwean citizens.

Beyond lamenting the coup and its authoritarian cultures, the collection contributes towards problematising the human agency of citizens. On the one hand, Zimbabwean citizens celebrated the deposition of Mugabe by the military. Removing an elected government by force is prohibited by the African Union and in international law. On the other hand, the fear induced in the citizens by the Mnangagwa regime in the murder of civilians after the 2018 elections and in January of 2019 has forced ordinary people to become risk averse. This paradox reveals a ‘schizophrenic citizenry that is simultaneously one of the most literate and one of the politically meekest populations on the African continent’ (Masunungure 2020, 2).

Most of the contributions to this collection condemn and lament the coup and its negative consequences on citizens’ lives. Yet, Vambe’s article suggests that imaginative literature empowers one to imagine symbolical/political spaces where Mnangagwa’s heavy-handed rule is resisted. This collection also magnifies a political gap that still exists in current scholarship in Zimbabwe post-2017, which is how to write about the different Zimbabwean citizens who are challenging the Mnangagwa regime. It is hoped that scholars will take up this challenge in future studies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maurice Taonezvi Vambe

Maurice Taonezvi Vambe is a world-leading African literary scholar and cultural theorist. He is Professor of English Studies at the University of South Africa (UNISA). He serves and has served on the editorial boards of international peer-reviewed scholarly journals, including African Diaspora. He has contributed as editor, co-editor and/or guest editor to international peer-reviewed scholarly journals, including Imbizo: International Journal of African Literary and Comparative Studies and the Journal of Literary Studies. He has published more than 70 peer-reviewed scholarly articles, including in African Identities. He is the author of more than five books, the latest of which is Genocide in African Literature (forthcoming, early 2024). He has contributed book chapters to works such as The Encyclopedia of African Literature and The Oxford Companion to African Literature. Among other committees, Prof. Vambe served on the UNISA Senate Committee on Africanisation. He was the African Union (AU) Co-ordinator and Consultant for the Mwalimu Nyerere AU Scholarship. His community outreach has involved students exploring their awareness of HIV and AIDS at the University of Zimbabwe, resulting in an anthology of poetry, short stories, and dramas. Prof. Vambe can be reached on [email protected].