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From Social Justice, to Neo-liberalism, to Authoritarian Nationalism: Where Is the Zimbabwean State Going?
Mario Zamponi
Extracted from the publication: Zimbabwe - The political economy of decline
March 2005

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Introduction
Zimbabwe is currently facing a crisis of unimaginable proportions: the economy has collapsed and the majority of the population lives below the poverty line. The Zimbabwean opposition and civil society are struggling for democratisation while the Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries have been unable, because of the lack of consensus, to find opportunities for a negotiated solution to the country’s crisis.

This presentation is an attempt to look at the crisis in Zimbabwe from the perspective of the internal struggle over democratisation and the transformation of the political consensus within state institutions under the hegemonic pressure of the ruling party. Such an analysis requires a retracing of the political and economic history of the post-independence period. Indeed, the search for a negotiated solution that could favour the correct implementation of the 2005 parliamentary elections, may only occur by recognising the historical processes at the base of the country’s fundamental problems: the legitimacy of its leadership and the role of the state; the issue of democracy and human rights; and the land question. In particular, as Moore suggests, the impasse of primitive accumulation; the simmering dilemma of the nation-state formation; and the democratisation process are still open issues (Moore, 2001).

These are issues which have never been solved, which have been relegated to the background, and which only became explicit when the interests of the powerful white minority were challenged or, to put it better, when the post-independence ‘elite consensus’ was brought to a crisis, a consensus which, albeit subject to transformations over the years, had to some extent lasted until 1997. At that point, it became clear that the ‘historic compromise’ had come to an end, showing the crisis of the post-colonial state and the resurgence of the instrumental use of nationalism (at internal level) and regional solidarity (at regional level). It is worth noting that the Zimbabwean crisis has a strong regional dimension (it is sufficient to think of the land question in South Africa, and even more so in Namibia, where a new phase of land reform is starting). In this regard, as Raftopoulos explains: "Zimbabwe provides an important case study for broader economic and political problems in a region with certain linkages in the mode of colonial penetration, forms of liberation struggle, and problems of post-colonial development" (Raftopoulos, 2003a:2). Three elements seem to be of particular relevance:

• The crisis – which does not mean the exhaustion – of the post-colonial state. Particularly, by showing its inability to reach its economic goals, the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) highlighted the limitations in fulfilling both economic efficiency and development in the context of globalisation. This resulted in a wide crisis of legitimacy which encouraged the abandonment of the neo-liberal policies, while no viable alternative project to ESAP was found;
• The role, transformation and breakdown of the ‘elite consensus’. In the 1990s the internal political cleavages and the increasing economic crisis fostered the breakdown of the post-independence consensus and transformed the internal struggle for democracy;
• The process of re-legitimacy. Even if this presentation deals with domestic issues, there can be little doubt that one of the most significant aspects of the current crisis in Zimbabwe has been its international character. In the need to regain consensus, President Robert Mugabe and the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) articulated the crisis through a re-editing of a reinforced nationalist project and through an anti-imperialist and a Pan- Africanist position. In this respect, both the land question and the Congo war were used as a legitimate language of historical redress and renewed African solidarity.

In the next sections I will present and discuss these issues following three historical stages that were also marked by the three stages of land reform debates and policies:

• The first stage is the socialist and egalitarian phase of social justice, implemented in the 1980s, characterised by a high level of social redistribution and by the land resettlement programme;
• The second stage, related to the implementation of ESAP and to the indigenisation processes, deals with both the need for primitive accumulation and the need to redefine the economic structure without, however, radically transforming the ‘elite consensus’ of the post-settler state but reformulating it to three actors: government, white capital, and new black entrepreneurs;
• The third stage is the current crisis and the battle for internal and regional relegitimisation at all costs. The disordered and controversial ‘Fast Track Land Reform Programme’ is the key element in the government's attempt to recover consensus within a context of increasing political authoritarianism and economic crisis.

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