The Zimbabwe Independent
Brian Raftopoulos :Academic
ZIMBABWE politics is once again caught between the deepening authoritarian logic of a former liberation movement, and an opposition movement that faces a renewed onslaught of repression and systematic state led incapacitation. When Mugabe ruled, he selected anti-imperialist and Pan-African narratives to respond to internal and intentional criticisms directed at the state’s human rights abuses and the execution of the fast-track land redistribution programme.
The late Thandika Mkandawire argued that the forms of Zimbabwe’s crisis-ridden politics could be located in the context of the multiple transitions the new Zimbabwean state faced. These included: decolonisation; de-racialisation of the economy; economic liberalisation and the dismantling of the sanctions-related control measures of the settler colonial period; attempts at democratisation; and agrarian transformation (https://doi.org/10.1080/02589001.2020.1746751).