A Predictable Tragedy

When the southern African country of Rhodesia was reborn as Zimbabwe in 1980, democracy advocates celebrated the defeat of a white supremacist regime and the end of colonial rule. Zimbabwean crowds cheered their new prime minister, freedom fighter Robert Mugabe, with little idea of the misery he would bring them. Under his leadership for the next 30 years, Zimbabwe slid from self-sufficiency into poverty and astronomical inflation. The government once praised for its magnanimity and ethnic tolerance was denounced by leaders like South African Nobel Prize-winner Desmond Tutu. Millions of refugees fled the country. How did the heroic Mugabe become a hated autocrat, and why were so many outside of Zimbabwe blind to his bloody misdeeds for so long? In A Predictable Tragedy: Robert Mugabe and the Collapse of Zimbabwe Daniel Compagnon reveals that while the conditions and perceptions of Zimbabwe had changed, its leader had not. From the beginning of his political career, Mugabe was a cold tactician with no regard for human rights. Through eyewitness accounts and unflinching analysis, Compagnon describes how Mugabe and the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) built a one-party state under an ideological cloak of antiimperialism. To maintain absolute authority, Mugabe undermined one-time ally Joshua Nkomo, terrorized dissenters, stoked the fires of tribalism, covered up the massacre of thousands in Matabeleland, and siphoned off public money to his minions—all well before the late 1990s, when his attempts at radical land redistribution finally drew negative international attention. A Predictable Tragedy vividly captures the neopatrimonial and authoritarian nature of Mugabe's rule that shattered Zimbabwe's early promises of democracy and offers lessons critical to understanding Africa's predicament and its prospects for the future.

This book provides a timely reconceptualization of Zimbabwe’s anti- colonial liberation struggle, resisting simple binaries in favour of more nuanced, critical analysis. Most historiographies characterize Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle as being defined by simple bifurcations along racial, ethnic, class and ideological perspectives. This book argues that the nationalist struggle is far more complex than such simple configurations would suggest, and that many actors have been overlooked in the analysis. The book broadens our understanding by analysing the roles of a wide range of political figures, organizations, and members of the military, as well as the media and the often overlooked part that women played. Over the course of the book, the contributors also reflect on the ways in which revolutionary figures have been repainted as “sellouts”, in particular by the ZANU PF ruling party, and what that means for the country’s interpretation of their recent past. Highlighting in particular, the expertise of leading scholars from within Zimbabwe, across a range of disciplines, this book will be of interest to researchers of African history, politics and postcolonial studies.

Provides a comparative analysis of the ideational dimension of judicial review and its potential contribution to democratic governance.

This book examines the role played by two popular private newspapers in the struggle for democracy in Zimbabwe, one case from colonial Rhodesia and the other from the post-colonial era. It argues that, operating under oppressive political regimes and in the dearth of credible opposition political parties or as a platform for opposition political parties, the African Daily News, between 1956-1964, and the Daily News, between 1999-2003, played an essential role in opening up spaces for political freedom in the country. Both newspapers were ultimately shut down by the respective government of the time. The newspapers allowed reading publics the opportunity to participate in politics by providing a daily analytical alternative, to that offered by the government and the state media, in relation to the respective political crises that unfolded in each of these periods. The book further examines both the information policies pursued by the different governments and the way these affected the functioning of private media in their quest to provide an "ideal" public sphere. It explores issues of ownership, funding and editorial policies in reference to each case and how these affected the production of news and issue coverage. It considers issues of class and geography in shaping public response. It also focuses on state reactions to the activities of these newspapers and how these, in turn, affected the activities of private media actors. Finally, it considers the cases together to consider the meanings of the closing down of these newspapers during the two eras under discussion and contributes to the debates about print media vis-à-vis the new forms of media that have come to the fore.

This book provides an introductory perspective on its subject together with detailed studies of the major non-Shakespearean tragedies. It assumes that the central and most disturbing insights of the plays were expressed in terms of the thought patterns of the time.

Explores how Greek tragedy was fundamentally choral and deeply connected to the cultic and ritual contexts of its performance.

The Blackwell Companion to Greek Tragedy provides readers with a fundamental grounding in Greek tragedy, and also introduces them to the various methodologies and the lively critical dialogue that characterize the study of Greek tragedy today. Comprises 31 original essays by an international cast of contributors, including up-and-coming as well as distinguished senior scholars Pays attention to socio-political, textual, and performance aspects of Greek tragedy All ancient Greek is transliterated and translated, and technical terms are explained as they appear Includes suggestions for further reading at the end of each chapter, and a generous and informative combined bibliography

Analyzing the work of every Roman tragedian whose work survived in substance, Anthony J. Boyle provides the first detailed cultural and theatrical history of Roman tragedy and its place at the centre of Rome's cultural and political life.