Zimbabwe: Genesis, History and Politics

Ebrahim Fakir

- Politics in Zimbabwe, like politics everywhere, is tendentious and fractious, characterized by ideological nuance, policy variation and contending political trajectories, even within relatively coherent political parties. Zimbabwean politics, however, has displayed these characteristics to an unusual degree. It is a sad history …

Genesis, History and Politics – Party Political contestations and conflicts in Zimbabwe

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“…the hardest lesson of my life has come to me late. It is that a nation can win freedom without its people becoming free…”

“…independence, I could clearly see, does not of itself cure ordinary people’s problems”

- Joshua Nkomo

Politics in Zimbabwe, like politics everywhere, is tendentious and fractious, characterized by ideological nuance, policy variation and contending political trajectories, even within relatively coherent political parties. Zimbabwean politics however, even at the incipient emergence of an insurgency for independence from settler-colonialism, has displayed these characteristics to an unusual degree. It is a sad history, replete with the unfortunate coincidence of a confluence of the personal (animosities, mistrust and misplaced trust, bombast and hypocrisy, calumny and brinkmanship and personality cults, greed and corruption) and political factors (international pressures and hypocrisy, colonial paternalism and double standards, imperialist tendencies to undermine independence, sovereignty and self-determination, political shortsightedness and a lack of foresight.

In this context and over time, the concentrated expression of even the slightest ideological nuance, policy variation or the deviation from a specific political line – has resulted in deep schisms and splits into factions in political parties whose coherence and cogence, and in some cases even its unity, could consequently only be maintained through strict military like command discipline or through caprice, violence and repression. Therefore, the tendency of many widespread assumptions about the homogeneity of ZANU-PF, or for that matter the MDC, as representing one political strand with a common political objective, have had a tendency to totalise who they are and what they represent, without necessarily considering what the nuances and differences within them are. Just the last decade has witnessed not just debate and schism within political parties in Zimbabwe, but also wholesale factionalism and fracture. Considering just the last five years of this decade, it has witnessed the emergence of no less than five splits [and some rapprochement] from what may have essentially been only two major political parties :

1. ZANU-PF has seen Jonathan Moyo, Robert Mugabe’s erstwhile detractor turned spin-doctor and former Zimbabwean Minister of Information in Mugabe’s cabinet, an embarrassed one time academic expelled from the academy, and accused of embezzlement go from being a cabinet minister to being dismissed, subsequently contesting constituency elections for the House of Assembly as an Independent candidate in the Tsholotsho constituency.

2. Simbarashe Makoni intended to run against Robert Mugabe in ZANU-PF for the Presidency of the party and country. A former Finance Minister in a ZANU-PF government, he was dismissed from ZANU-PF, pilloried and vilified by Mugabe and ran for Zimbabwe’s Presidency in 2008 as an independent candidate. Endorsed by Dumiso Dabengwa, an immediate past ZANU-PF minister and high-ranking official in the party, he was the intelligence head of the Zimbabwean African People’s Union [ZAPU] and a commander in the Zimbabwean Peoples Revolutionary Army [ZIPRA]; with impressive liberation credentials, before the 1987 merger of the Zimbabwean African National Union [PF- ZANU] and the Zimbabwean African People’s Union [PF- ZAPU]. Edgar Tekere, Liberation war hero and first Minister for Manpower in an independent Zimbabwe, he is amongst the founders of ZANU and one its strongman militating for the prosecution of the Matabeleland massacres, constantly in and out of the ZANU inner circle after denouncing corruption in ZANU as early as 1984, Tekere endorsed Simba Makoni,for the March 2008 presidential election and said that he was appointing himself a principal campaigner for Mugabe’s downfall, ever since he has had run ins with Mugabe, especially after his critcisms of the ZANU leadership in the mid 80’s. At a book launch of his autobiography, the Zimbabwean Independent Newspaper carried some rather candid remarks and observations that he had made regrading the evolution if Zimbabwe’s politics. Tekere it seems, also took the opportunity to sound a warning alert to South Africans.

3. The Movement for Democratic Change –formed in 1999 following The People’s Working Convention in February 1999 as a political party opposing the ZANU-PF government. The MDC was formed from a broad coalition of civil society actors, unionist, business, church, women’s groups, students, human rights and other civic groups including some organised white farmers. The MDC scored its first impressive victory when it mobilised in a referendum against the adoption of a new constitution for Zimbabwe which would have extended and expanded the powers and functions of the President and created immunity from prosecution for the President and elements of the Repressive machinery of the State. The ideological character and content of the Party remains unclear, and in 2006, it split into two factions. The MDC under Morgan Tsvangirai -, the MDC(T), and the MDC formed under Arthur Mutambara, the MDC(M). On 28 April 2008 they once again united in the face of an impending social, economic and political crisis, but certainly too late to effect any meaningful change in a context in which a month after an election, the results were still not known. Ideologically, the MDC sits somewhere between a social democratic and a liberal party. Considering its offshoot faction that now apparently rejoined it, its strategic line of march, is still anyone’s guess.
4. ZANU-PF as a Party is a 1987 agglomeration of the Zimbabwe African National Union (PF ZANU) of Robert Mugabe and the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (PF-ZAPU) of the late Dr Joshua Nkomo [known as father Zimbabwe], which itself is emerging, despite its thirty year history, as a fractured and crisis ridden collection of factional interests harking back to the separate histories of ZANU and ZAPU respectively, together with splits in the repressive apparatus of the Zimbabwean State [the defense force, the air force and the police], and the entrenchment of ethnic cleavages.

For those keen on multi-party democracy, this ought to be a welcome development signaling as it potentially could, healthy contestation of the political space where a resurgence of multiple political parties competing for hegemony and positing ideas make for an interesting jockeying of ideas in governance and in the shaping of society, and by so doing, providing for a wider set of political choices than may have hitherto been the case. One might also assume that a plethora of strong political parties in competition would increase oversight in the political system and create alternative mechanisms for accountability outside of it through a vibrant civil society and a viable political culture in which choice and voice contribute to a thriving economy underpinned by development and the institutional edifices of a democracy. Sadly though, the fiction of competition between fractious political parties, themselves originating only in moments of simulated crises, has undermined democracy and development, rather than contributed to them simply because many of the splits and schisms in political parties in Zimbabwe have been precipitated not by established principle or ideology, but by ethnic considerations, instrumental rational actor considerations maximising personal, kith, kin and crony networks, or personal aggrandizement. Where division has emerged from a matter of principle or ideology – the schisms seem to have taken shape without the necessary consideration of the strategies [the long term political goals] and tactics [the instruments used to achieve that goal].

The historical antecedents of division and fracture in Zimbabwean politics run deep. So, for that matter do historical parallels in the evolution of its body politic. For a start “stolen elections” seem to be a legacy bequeathed to the people of Zimbabwe since its very founding. What else are we to make of Joshua Nkomo’s appraisal of the Independence elections in 1980 after the Lancaster House agreements .
It seems all to surreal in that the disputed facts surrounding the 1980 elections, the false starts in proclamations and expectations about the results, the revisionism of evaluating the process itself, the violence and intimidation that prefigured the election, seem to mirror the now well known pattern that has characterised every Zimbabwean acclamatory plebiscite since independence. [sans the flying of marked ballots to Britain, of course].

But where do these divisions emerge from and from whence to they stem?

As an aside, they seem all the more unreal, given the gallant struggle waged by ZANU,since 1974 and ZAPU since 1963, and the subsequent formation of the Patriotic Front between ZANU and ZAPU for the Lancaster House Negotiations. The unity of the Patriotic Front immediately after the Lancaster House negotiations was almost instantly undermined when Robert Mugabe failed to honor an agreement to meet his Patriotic Front negotiating counterparts in order strategise a consolidation of the by no means satisfactory gains of the Lancaster house agreement. What transpired was a hubric abuse of good faith .

This was in 1979, but the roots go deeper still. For purposes of length and space, I will eschew delving into the history of these divisions and fracture pre-1962. The fractures and divisions inherent in Zimbabwean politics since 1962, arguably shape the contradictions manifest in the present. But as all historiography is informed by that which passed before it, a short recap of the pre 1962 antecedents will be necessary. Before 1962, an independence insurgency had taken root through the Southern Rhodesian African National Congress, which proved in the final instance quite an inadequate organisation as a channel for the expression of mass resentment against the increasing iniquities of Southern Rhodesian colonialism as it was administered from Britain, and the later Settler Colonialism under the unilateral declaration of independence in what came to be known as Rhodesia. Like the spurt of radicalization spurred on by younger generations across the continent, an executive committee meeting of the SR African National Congress Youth League became a prime, if not sole, mover for the creation of a new African National Congress when Joshua Nkomo resigned from the leadership of the old ANC, citing the old ANC’s inability to foster and channel the energy and vitality of mass African resentment increasingly being expressed throughout the country, expressed in gatherings, boycotts and demonstrations. Formed at the Mai Musodzi hall in Salisbury (sic!) [Harare], on the 12 September 1957, the leadership comprised Joshua Nkomo as the President, James Chikerema as the vice- president, George Nyandoro as general secretary and Joseph Msika [Immediate past vice-President of Zimbabwe to Robert Mugabe] as its treasurer. The new ANC was vastly different from its predecessor and its new leadership comprised several people, including Nkomo, now emboldened by the rising resentment of the people, particularly the 1956 Harare township bus riots, who were not averse to using violence for political ends. The independence of Ghana and the wind of coming independence to several of Britain’s other colonies, together with the assistance of the Indian National Congress through its representative in Salisbury (sic!) [Harare], provided further impetus for organisation.

At the same time, settler colonial politics, governance and administration was undergoing its own ruptures. At the beginning of the ‘60’s, the white politicians of the then ruling United Federal Party ousted their Prime Minister, Garfield Todd, since they claimed that he believed too much in african progress, to which Nkomo once famously quipped, “…although he did little enough about it”. The replacement, Edgar Whitehead, once installed, immediately proceeded on 26 February 1959 to Ban the African National Congress, and put in place increasingly severe repressive measures, which saw several of the new ANC’s leaders jailed. Curiously, though Whitehead attempted to remove certain aspects of racial segregation but effected no real change or fundamental alteration in the power of the white electorate. Ultimately, Whitehead sought to tamper with the segregationists aspects of the colonial administration, but ultimately kept in tact the discriminatory and oppressive edifice of society. Seizing the small gaps that arose from the minor adjustments Whitehead made to segregationist policies, the banned ANC metamorphosed in 1960 into the National Democratic Party [NDP] for which Robert Mugabe served as publicity secretary, which he did for the Zimbabwe African People’s Union [ZAPU] as well, once it was formed immediately after the NDP was banned. ZAPU operated with exactly the same constitution and leadership as the NDP, simply under a different name. It was able to do so, since a quick witted NDP leadership read the NDP banning order as specific to the NDP as an organisation, rather than as a Ban on activities and programmes. Doing so was an embarrassing show up of an inept Government, which retaliated by simply banning and driving ZAPU underground. This kind of repression created a new solidarity among the people and unity amongst seemingly progressive nationalist and independence minded social actors, which was at an all time high. Tragically, it was soon after this moment that divisions began to fester. Those first glimmers from the shards of division are the problems of disunity that persist till this day.
It was really at this moment that the unity of the forces for change unraveled Julius Nyerere on the one hand sought greater and more influence on the continent and amongst liberation movements on the continent by dispensing his patronage. In doing so, he displayed an uncanny partiality for the advice of the Chinese in Peking and their mode of thinking regarding liberation politics. This introduces yet another faultline in African liberation politics, that of the sino-soviet cleavage. This in large part may explain Nyerere’s antipathy to Joshua Nkomo, alinged as he [Nkomo] and ZAPU were to the Soviets. It of course also explains Nyerere’s and the Chinese partiality to South Africa’s Pan Africanist Congress rather the African National Congress, who benefitted from the patronage of the Soviet Union. .

Simultaneously, in a strange game of brinkmanship, while Nkomo was steadily outwitting Nyerere, in large part thanks to his more established and older contacts around the world and independence from Nyerere’s patronage repression and the space to operate politically was closing down in then Rhodesia. Going to Dar-e-Salaam was becoming almost a necessity, as it was there that the Pan African Freedom Movement and the Organisation of African Unity’s [OAU] liberation committee had been set up. Exiles and students at Universities abroad were becoming restless, some uncomfortable with the leadership of Joshua Nkomo. Percieved in some quarters as too radical, in others too remote, and yet in others as distant and out of touch with the people, rumours amongst its backers, in Egypt and at the OAU were circulating about ZAPU’s demise. It was also at this time at the OAU’s inaugural meeting in 1963, that tribal and ethnic identities within ZAPU had come to the fore and forced the ZAPU leadership to confront, both rumours and rumblings of which they had been unaware. At the inaugural OAU meeting the organising committee has arranged for a special press conference with the world media. ZAPU was to have press statement ready, but at twelve thirty that day, the press statement and the ZAPU publicity secretary responsible for it, Robert Mugabe was nowhere to be found. After some impromptu and informal remarks which thankfully proceeded well, Joseph Msika then ZAPU treasurer and a later Deputy President of Zimbabwe under ZANU-PF, found a letter circulating urging the ZAPU leadership to give a chance in the leadership, to the majority tribes and to get rid of the “Zimundebere” – a derogatory word in Shona for an “old Ndebele man”. This had come as a shock to the ZAPU leadership, since they understood and deliberately followed a policy that drew its leadership from all areas of the country, without distinction. In any event, records show that the ZAPU central committee at the time was in any event dominated by Shona speakers. These events have unfortunately set in train a seemingly irreversible motion in the politics of Zimbabwe where in the context of the current Zanu-PF being increasingly revealed as an unstable faction-ridden movement rather than a party, with no real ideological programme short of a rhetorical assertion of sovereignty and independence with the simultaneous entrenchment of personal ambitions replacing a political programme, the manufactured faultlines of ethnic affiliation is taking on emergent new dimensions.”

Back during the time at which the ethnic card was played at the OAU meeting, the issue of the armed struggle had also at this time taken centre stage. ZAPU was by 1963 fully committed to an Armed struggle, but once again Nyerere intervened, offering space for political.organisation, solidarity and office work, but not for the armed struggle. ZAPU then decided to call a meeting to resolve emergent problems and decide on away forward. At the ZAPU congress of 10 and 11 August 1963, while still banned, covertly met at Cold Comfort Farm. While most its members attended a group comprising Nadabaningi Sithole, Leopold Takawira, Enos Nkala at whose house the meeting was held, Herbert Chitepo, Edgar Tekere, Moton Malianga and Edson Zvobgo,amongst others. ZANU was influenced by the Africanist ideas of the Pan Africanist Congress in South Africa and later influenced by Maoism while ZAPU was an ally of the African National Congress and was a supporter of a more orthodox pro-Soviet line on national liberation. ZANU was not at this time, and probably not until 1974, really radicalised. Nadabaningi Sithole was a known moderate, and it was only until Mugabe wrested power from him after a fallout, that ZANU’s armed struggle from Mozambique began in earnest. Sithole then went on to lead the more moderate ZANU[ndonga]. What was interesting about the ZANU breakaway was that it went directly against the grain of a slightly earlier resolve amongst most members and sympathisers of ZAPU that despite the banning of ZAPU and in consideration of the adoption of the armed struggle, no other party should be created to replace it. There was naturally anger at what was perceived to be the ZANU groups betrayal, and this was when a low intensity war between the two groups started, giving greater pleasure to the settler-colonial regime, than joy to either ZANU or ZAPU.
The general facts of the history from here on, are generally better known. In 1964 Nkomo and most the leadership of ZAPU as well as most of ZANU, were jailed by the new incumbents in the settler colonial complex under Ian Smith, while others outside the country, principally in Zambia, through Jason Moyo, George Silundika, Edward Ndlovu and Sikwili Moyo organised the armed struggle for ZAPU, yet few of their names were to be found at Heroes acre after independence, with acknowledgements arriving only later in the case of those who had passed on.

A decade later, some leaders were freed and the armed struggle was prosecuted by both ZANU and ZAPU in earnest. ZANU only after an extended spell in Prison allowed for a usurpation of the leadesrhip of ZANU from Ndabaningi Sithole. Brokered by Kenneth Kanunda and Presidents of the Frontline States pressured by the South African Apartheid Government, some rapproachment was beginning to take place between the Rhodesian Government of Ian Smith and the nationalist/independence minded leaders. During those discussions, the idea of unity of the Nationalist forces was mooted and was crystallised through the reformation of the African National Council which was set up as a front during exile and incarceration of the ZAPU leadership. They deliberately chose a moderate mild mannered man who would not raise the ire of the authorities to lead it, so that it could operate in a challenging and repressive environment but more importantly maintain a relatively cohesive presence and organisational structure on the ground. During the failed talks with the Rhodesians and the negotiations with the Presidents of the Front Line States it had emerged that ZANU was growing bitterly divided amongst itself. During the talks with the Presidents of the frontline states, their disagreements were spiralling into violent outbreaks. Some ZANU leaders were being abducted by its own Army [ZANLA]. The famous Herbert Chitepo had become a victim of the very ethnic politics that he was a part of orchestrating. An inquiry found that Chitepo was murdered when a bomb exploded under his car. It was found that those who perpertrated the act, were motivated by the fact he as part of the Manyika tribe of the Shona group, he had been killed by the Kalanga group in his own party.

In light of the failed talks with the Ian Smith regime, the front line states decided to uppe the ante and provide intensified support for the armed struggle.A good decision in principle, but one which went quite wrong in practice. By now, Ndabaningi Sithole’s ousting was engineered. Asked by the Frontline Presidents which movements had armies ZAPU could claim ZIPRA, but Sithole was left in the unenviable position of admitting that he had no army at his command as his soldiers had deserted him. Solomon Mujuru, known than as Rex Mhongo represented the ZANLA army and confirmed that from a political organisation side, ZANLA was without a leader. Mujuru proposed Robert Mugabe, who was expelled from Zambia after making nasty remarks about Kenneth Kaunda and was confined to house by President Samora Machel. After negotiation and discussion he was allowed to be the political representative for the ZANLA army with the Frontline Presidents who wanted to mould and create a unified command for the liberation army. This proved disastrous for two reasons. Firstly ZANLA soldiers mutinied in Zambia and were then expelled to Tanzania. Their ZIPRA comrades joined them but had difficulty accepting the polotical line that the Chinese instructors in the Tanzanian camps were giving them. Soon fighting between the ZANLA and ZIPRA forces broke out and eventually it settled that ZIPRA forces operated out of Zambia and the ZANLA from Mozambique.

This had profound political consequences and may explain the residual ability of Mugabe, who until this day, amidst an impending economic and social crisis continues to harbour political support, even in the wake of the decline in his electoral support as evidence by ZANU-PF’s loss of majority in the 2008 House of Assembly elections. The win of close to 90 odd seats is demonstration of some support, residual as it may be.

Here too, a confluence of historical, and more contemporary factors bring themselves to bear. Key among them is the symbol and imagery of the liberation struggle and the armies that waged them.
Being based in Zambia, ZIPRA faced a topographical disadvantage compared to ZANLA’s advantages operating from bases in Mozambique. The border between Mozambique and then Rhodesia provided excellent prospects for a guerilla war. Bordered by forests and mountains it allowed for good air cover for troops. Thus easier access to proximate communities for ZANLA forces who also began playing an increasingly more political role, rather than just a military one, allowed them to penetration into peasant communities. The effect of this, throughout the liberation struggle, was that ZANU was able to draw its support base from rural areas. “ZANU imbibed Maoist mobilisation strategies of the ‘fish and water’ type, where proximate rural peasants became the sea within which ZANLA forces played their politics. Throughout the liberation struggle ZANLA used night vigils – called Pugwe in Shona – to politicise the peasantry and to win them over to ZANU. Seen in this light, ZANU is a party with a rural base. The liberation war was fought in the rural areas and ZANLA was purely a guerrilla army compared to ZIPRA that modelled itself as a conventional military force that mainly left politics to rural ZAPU nationalists. The legacy of the liberation struggle has left a deeper memory in rural areas than in urban areas. Memory of a rural guerrilla is in fact a memory of ZANU as an emancipatory force. This memory will take time to pass from peasant consciousness. ZANU is reaping dividends from this consciousness.”

Synonomous with this is Robert Mugabe but while Mugabe may be famous for many things, he is infamous for an equal number of things. He is most famous however, for being the symbol of Liberation and Zimbabwean independence. But that itself is beginning to come into question as ZANU –PF a 1987 agglomeration of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) of Robert Mugabe and the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) of the late DrJoshua Nkomo [known as father Zimababwe], remains a fractured and crisis ridden collection of factional interests . While Mugabe’s and ZANU’s contribution to independence and liberation are well recognised and documented, independence and liberation do not remain the sole repository of Robert Mugabe and or Zanu-PF. In 2006, Mugabe’s vice-president Joseph Msika at a rally in Bulawayo, rubbished Mugabe’s past apology for the infamous Matabeleland Massacre unleashed by Mugabe through the north Korean trained armed force that reports directly Mugabe and which exists outside of any command or accountability structure of the Zimbabwean State. The Matabeleland massacre, known as the Gukhurahundi, saw the death of an estimated 20000 people. At the funeral of the late Joshua Nkomo, Mugabe himself described the Gukhuranhundi as a”time of madness which should not be repeated again”. Joseph Msika at the Bulawayo Rally in 2006 reportedly said about Mugabe: “When we asked him about the massacres he apologised, but I was not convinced about his sincerity.” In addition he claimed that ZANU-PF had been lying to the world about being the pioneers in the liberation struggle. “The true history of the liberation struggle should be told. I feel I have a duty to correct this blatant lie … The struggle to liberate Zimbabwe started in Bulawayo at Stanley Hall, when we formed the African Youth Congress. At one of the meetings of the youth congress which I chaired, we decided to invite people from Mashonaland to join us in the struggle. If there is anyone who doubts this, they should come forward and challenge me one-on-one. Four people were approached, namely Enoch Dumbutshena, Stanlake Samkange, Joshua Nkomo and Mwanaka. Samkange insulted us, saying he could not work with unschooled people. Dumbutshena also insulted us saying we were unemployable and violent people against the whites. Mwanaka never responded, but Nkomo said what we were planning to do, the road that we would walk, would be a thorny one and said if we were prepared to face it he would join us, which he did. That is when Joshua Nkomo became the leader of the struggle” .

This from within Mugabe’s own Party. An apprpropriation or at least a re-apprpriation of history,memory and context is what is at play This 2008 election has provided an opportunity for the revisitation of this discourse of blood and soil in attempt to appropriate the notion of democracy and democratic politics, itself.
Democratic politics, it can be argued, is essentially the politics of rational dialogue in which language, thought and persuasion play key roles. At least that is what we have over the decades learnt to believe. The recent electoral process in Zimbabwe, appears to have fundamentally shifted this ground. It is not that the theatre of politics has moved unprecedentedly and dangerously away from reason towards something else. Emotion, for example, has always been an indispensable appendage of democratic politics, and of the politics of Zimbabwe, whether for good or ill. What seems new is something else. It is the rise to predominance of affectation in relation to reason and emotion. This has shifted politics on to entirely different ground.

When reason employs or contends with emotion, it has a supporter or a rival. That is why it not only survives, but flourishes. Affectation, on the contrary, preempts reason. Its appeal is sub-rational. In the prevailing culture of political debate in Zimbabwe, characterised as ‘spectacle’, it finds a particularly conducive environment to flourish in, because the images and invocations used in the rhetoric of the debate bypass reason to speak directly to the senses. In the culture of the spectacle, we are everywhere surrounded by images which solicit our attention ceaselessly. Even words get pared down to mere letters and slogans to reduce communication to a transmission of images and symbols.

The counter impulse to the type of politics painted above, is the type of politics and leadership that posits itself in opposition to the “spectacle” characterises itself as “stoic”. It eschews the spectacle. It counters itself as rational and deliberative – conducive to democracy, but in doing so, it appropriates and aggregates leadership to itself, worse still it appropriates the notion of the “people”, the “nation” and the “democractic” to itself. It works on the principled discourse that because ‘we the leaders know’ better, we will decide what is best. In doing, so it has eclipsed the democratic and attempted to substitute for it, the developmental. In doing so, it promotes the spectacle while simultaneoulsy embracing the technical, but in doing so, instead of fetishizing the individual it fetishizes the instrumental, where the focus is not the people, but the procedural, the process and the institutional. Here the institutional does not exist to serve the individual, but the individual is tamed to serve the institutional.

Arguably, the combination of all of elements have been present in the politics of Zimbabwe, and moreover have been present in the politics of Zimbabwe since independence in 1980. Elements of a combination of these discourses can be found dating back to the “chimurenga” as well as the transition period before 1980, which ushered in the negotiations undertaken at Lancaster house that led to Zimbabwe’s independence. The consequence of the nature of politics conducted in this way has had a materially abrogating effect on the body politic of Zimbabwe.

To wit, the rhetorical slogans used by Robert Mugabe and Zanu-PF in the run up to and during the March 2008 elections, as have been used in previous elections, seem to stand as empty rhetoric in the face of an accumulating social, political and economic crisis, in which it is estimated that more than a 70% of the population is living close to, or on the breadline, unemployment is at an estimated 80%, real inflation stands at 165000%, which means that prices for goods and services potentially double everyday and the availability of basic necessities and critical goods and services in the health sector have become increasingly scarce, if not completely unavailable.

By resorting to the slogans harking back to a recidivist ideology of liberation, national sovereignty, independence and anti colonialism there is the systematic undermining of the potential for a post nationalist rational foundation for democratic exchange, which carries the promise of freedom and justice.
Narratives of Zimbabwean History seem to have been appropriated and de-contextualised outside of the legitimate locations in which they have meaning and resonance. They seem to have been re-appropriated to serve private and personal political ends and have consequently been de-contextualised and de-historicised.

Ideologically drained and historically vacous- such compromised narratives perhaps announce the arrival of an ironic postmodern nationalism. But in reality, what is in contest here is not so much the politics, minus memory and context, but the very battle for an appropriation of memory, history, tradition and context. This in itself is problematic. In the interplay between structure and agency, the context itself has recognisably changed.

People and histories effectively disappear in this culture of the spectacle, even though the superficial impression may be to the contrary. Images as stereotyped representations increasingly replace real peopleand real histories.

This being the situation then, debate is headed not towards more vigorous debate but towards simulated debate. In this milieu the only way to protect politics is to take politics back to those sites where sustained rational discussion still takes place. The insulation of politics from debasement would require it to be located in sites where sustained rational discussion can still take place, among the people themselves. The salvation and recovery of politics as rational, yet still emotional, can be sustained on a democratic basis in the reinvigoration of a Zimbabwean civic society rather than within the confines of any political party. This is not to argue against political parties in their various ideological and organisational manifestations since they are critical institutional vehicles in a democracy, it is simply to argue for a re-invigorated civil society outside of the moribund and ideologically vacuous opposition party and an increasingly recidivist ruling party.