Understanding Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe's recent history has been shaped by battles about who speaks for the nation, fought out in struggles for control of political institutions, the media, and civil society. In her book Sara Rich Dorman examines the interactions of social groups - churches, NGOs, and political parties - from the liberation struggle, through the independence decades, as they engaged the state and ruling party. Her empirically rich account reveals how strategies of control and co-option were replicated and resisted, shaping expectations and behavior. Dorman tracks how the relationship between Mugabe's ruling party and activists was determined by the liberation struggle, explaining how electoral machinery, the judiciary, and other institutions of state control ensured ZANU-PF hegemony, even as other forces in Zimbabwean society demanded accountability and representation. This is a story of ambiguity and complexity in which the state and civil society mimic and learn from each other. We learn how both structural and direct violence are deployed by the regime, but also how ad-hoc and unplanned many of their interventions really were. Even as the liberation war generation reluctantly exits the Zimbabwean political stage, their influence continues to shape interaction between citizens and the state.

The ongoing crisis in Zimbabwe has led to an unprecedented exodus of over a million desperate people from all strata of Zimbabwean society. The Zimbabwean diaspora is now truly global in extent. Yet rather than turning their backs on Zimbabwe, most maintain very close links with the country, returning often and remitting billions of dollars each year. Zimbabwe's Exodus. Crisis, Migration, Survival is written by leading migration scholars many from the Zimbabwean diaspora. The book explores the relationship between Zimbabwe's economic and political crisis and migration as a survival strategy. The book includes personal stories of ordinary Zimbabweans living and working in other countries, who describe the hotility and xenophobia they often experience.

Zimbabwe¿s July 2013 election brought the country¿s ¿inclusive¿ power-sharing interlude to an end and installed Mugabe and ZANU-PF for yet another¿its seventh¿term. Why? What explains the resilience of authoritarian rule in Zimbabwe? Tracing the country¿s elusive search for political stability across the decades, Michael Bratton offers a careful analysis of the failed power-sharing experiment, an account of its institutional origins, and an explanation of its demise. In the process, he explores key challenges of political transition: constitution making, elections, security-sector reform, and transitional justice.

Development has remained elusive in Africa. Through theoretical contributions and case studies focusing on Southern Africa’s former white settler states, South Africa and Zimbabwe, this volume responds to the current need to rethink (and unthink) development in the region. The authors explore how Africa can adapt Western development models suited to its political, economic, social and cultural circumstances, while rejecting development practices and discourses based on exploitative capitalist and colonial tendencies. Beyond the legacies of colonialism, the volume also explores other factors impacting development, including regional politics, corruption, poor policies on empowerment and indigenization, and socio-economic and cultural barriers.

This timely book reflects on discourses of identity that pervade local talk and texts in Zimbabwe, a nation beset by political and economic crisis. As she explores questions of culture that play out in broadly accessible local and foreign film and television, Katrina Daly Thompson shows how viewers interpret these media and how they impact everyday life, language use, and thinking about community. She offers a unique understanding of how media reflect and contribute to Zimbabwean culture, language, and ethnicity.

"Zimbabwe had gone through a difficult period of nation building since independence in 1980 characterised by Western sanctions, the weakening of the legitimacy of state structures due to corruption, lack of free and fair political participation in the affairs of the nation, the violation of human rights, to name but a few. There has been the lack of transparency, accountability, responsiveness, fairness, honesty, fundamental human rights and freedoms, social and economic justice. All these have undermined the nation building project. The challenges of building regional and global partnerships for development, growth and transformation also affected the nation-building project. As a contribution to this project, Prof. Mudyanadzo has produced a scholarly compendium of knowledge about history, education, development, governance, peacebuilding, reconciliation, leadership and foreign policy which every citizen of Zimbabwe needs to know."--

Examines Zimbabwe's pre-colonial, colonial and postcolonial social, economic and political history and relates historical factors and trends to more recent developments in the country.