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2002 Presidential & Harare Municipal elections - Index of articles
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Election
Bulletin
Crisis
in Zimbabwe Coalition
February 22, 2002
The State
in Crisis in Zimbabwe - Authoritian nationalism and distortions
of democracy in Zimbabwe
By
Brian Raftopoulos
Three points
can be stressed about the political crisis in Zimbabwe. The first
concerns the pervasive violence of the state. In the early 1980’s
Mugabe regime used the war veterans to consolidate its control of
the state, and then proceeded to demobilise this force when its
power base was more secure. Similarly, the state attempted to marginalize
the influence of traditional authorities, as it extended its power
to local government level. After two decades of independence, and
in the context of a massive loss of state legitimacy, there have
been certain reversals in this process. The embattled regime has
once again turned to the war veterans to enforce party dominance.
Secondly, it
is clear that a severe break has developed between the discourse
and politics of the liberation struggle, as channelled through party
ideologues, and that of the civic struggles for democratisation
in the post-colonial period. This friction has developed, on the
one hand, in the context of a declining liberation movement that
has drawn a lethal distinction between a violently driven, ‘anti-imperialist’
project, centred on the land question, and the politics of human
rights which it has characterised as an imposition of global imperatives.
Any sense of a national ownership of such rights issues is lost
in this characterisation.
On the other
hand the civic opposition has espoused its agenda largely through
the language of citizenship rights, articulated most clearly in
the campaign for constitutional reform. However this politics of
democratisation has not sufficiently negotiated its connections,
as well as its differences, with the legacies of the liberation
struggle.
The third point
relates to the ways in which the role of politics had been articulated
in Zimbabwean politics. For a dominant faction of the ruling party,
violence in the post-colonial period has been viewed as an extension
of its use during the liberation struggle: a necessary means to
achieve a political agenda. The dehumanising effects of this strategy
on the citizenry have been considered part of the modality for maintaining
state power. The forces of opposition have, in response, used their
critique of this violence as a pivotal part of their demand for
an alternative politics. This critique, however, has not confronted
the systemic violence that post-colonial states like Zimbabwe, continue
to be subjected to by the forces of global finance. This lack of
a critical scope on globalisation remains a weakness of the opposition
perspective. As a result opposition groups are not sufficiently
preparing for the difficult confrontations and choices that any
government in a marginalized state will have to make in a project
of economic and political reconstruction. These ambiguities in Zimbabwean
politics are the terrain on which any attempts at a post-nationalist
politics must contend.
Excerpts
from a paper "The State in Crisis: authoritarian nationalism,
selective citizenship and distortions in democracy in Zimbabwe.
B. Raftopoulos, Associate Professor, IDS, University of Zimbabwe
Visit the Crisis
in Zimbabwe fact
sheet
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