Making Politics in Zimbabwe’s Second Republic

Making Politics in Zimbabwe’s Second Republic
Author: Gorden Moyo
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2023-05-16
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3031301293

The book provides a fresh and innovative interpretation of the new government of Zimbabwe led by Emmerson Mnangagwa, which emerged in late 2017 after the downfall of Robert Mugabe. It demonstrates the contradictory character of the Mnangagwa government, involving both continuities and discontinuities in relation to Mugabe’s regime . The temptation amongst Zimbabwean scholars has been to focus on the continuities and to dismiss the significance of any discontinuities, notably reform measures. This book adopts an alternative approach by identifying and focusing specifically on the existence of a formative project of the Mnangagwa’s Second Republic, further analysing its political significance, as well as risks and limitations. While doing so, the book covers topics such as reform measures, reconciliation, transitional justice, corruption, the media, agriculture, devolution, and the debt crisis as well as health and education. Discussing the limitations of these different reform measures, the book highlights that any scholarly failure to identify the risks of the project leads to an incomplete understanding of what constitutes the Mnangagwa’s Second Republic. The book appeals to students, scholars and researchers of Zimbabwean and African studies, political science and international relations, as well as policymakers interested in a better understanding of political reform processes.

The History and Political Transition of Zimbabwe

The History and Political Transition of Zimbabwe
Author: Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 469
Release: 2020-10-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 3030477339

This book is the first to tackle the difficult and complex politics of transition in Zimbabwe, with deep historical analysis. Its focus is on a very problematic political culture that is proving very hard to transcend. At the center of this culture is an unstable but resilient ‘nationalist-military’ alliance crafted during the anti-colonial liberation struggle in the 1970s. Inevitably, violence, misogyny and masculinity are constitutive of the political culture. Economically speaking, the culture is that of a bureaucratic, parasitic, primitive accumulation and corruption, which include invasion and emptying of state coffers by a self-styled ‘Chimurenga aristocracy.’ However, this Chimurenga aristocracy is not cohesive, as the politics that led to Robert Mugabe’s ousting from power was preceded by dirty and protracted internal factionalism. At the center of the factional politics was the ‘first family’:Robert Mugabe and his wife, Grace Mugabe. This book offers a multidisciplinary examination of the complex contemporary politics in Zimbabwe, taking seriously such issues as gender, misogyny, militarism, violence, media, identity, modes of accumulation, the ethnicization of politics, attempts to open lines of credit and FDI, national healing, and the national question as key variables not only of a complete political culture but also of difficult transitional politics.

Cultures of Change in Contemporary Zimbabwe

Cultures of Change in Contemporary Zimbabwe
Author: Oliver Nyambi
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2021-11-04
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000470288

This book investigates how culture reflects change in Zimbabwe, focusing predominantly on Mnangagwa’s 2017 coup, but also uncovering deeper roots for how renewal and transition are conceived in the country. Since Emmerson Mnangagwa ousted Robert Mugabe in 2017, he has been keen to defi ne his "Second Republic" or "New Dispensation" with a rhetoric of change and a rejection of past political and economic cultures. This multi and inter- disciplinary volume looks to the (social) media, language/ discourse, theatre, images, political speeches and literary fiction and non- fiction to see how they have reflected on this time of unprecedented upheaval. The book argues that themes of self- renewal stretch right back to the formative years of the ZANU PF, and that despite the longevity of Mugabe’s tenure, the latest transition can be seen as part of a complex and protracted layering of postcolonial social, economic and political changes. Providing an innovative investigation of how political change in Zimbabwe is reflected on in cultural texts and products, this book will be of interest to researchers across African history, literature, politics, culture and post- colonial studies.

Mugabeism?

Mugabeism?
Author: Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 641
Release: 2015-12-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 1137543469

What is distinctive about this book is its interdisciplinary approach towards deciphering the complex meanings of President Gabriel Mugabe of Zimbabwe making it possible to evaluate Mugabe from a historical, political, philosophical, gender, literal and decolonial perspectives. It is concerned with capturing various meanings of Mugabeism.

Religion in Times of Crisis

Religion in Times of Crisis
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2014-07-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 900427779X

Religion is alive and well all over the world, especially in times of personal, political, and social crisis. Even in Europe, long regarded the most “secular” continent, religion has taken centre stage in how people respond to the crises associated with modernity, or how they interact with the nation-state. In this book, scholars working in and on Europe offer fresh perspectives on how religion provides answers to existential crisis, how crisis increases the salience of religious identities and cultural polarization, and how religion is contributing to changes in the modern world in Europe and beyond. Cases from Poland to Pakistan and from Ireland to Zimbabwe, among others, demonstrate the complexity and ambivalence of religion’s role in the contemporary world. Contributors are Mariecke van den Berg, David J. Bos, Marco Derks, Marco Derks, R. Ruard Ganzevoort, Miloš Jovanović, Vladimir Kmec, Marta Kołodziejska, Anne-Marie Korte, Anne-Sophie Lamine, Christophe Monnot, Alexandre Piettre, Ali Qadir, Srdjan Sremac, Joram Tarusaria, Martina Topić, and Tom Wagner.

The Zimdancehall Revolution

The Zimdancehall Revolution
Author: Tanaka Chidora
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2023-12-09
Genre: Music
ISBN: 3031418549

Zimdancehall is a musical movement in Zimbabwe that has grown significantly since 2010. The Zimdancehall Revolution brings together critical essays on various aspects of Zimdancehall culture by scholars from diverse disciplines. Traditionally, music critics and senior academics have not taken Zimdancehall seriously, regarding it as vulgar, transient, bubble gum, lacking depth, and in short, a fad. There were also allegations that the lyrics influenced factionalism, incited violence and glorified drug use and unbridled promiscuity among the youth. This book affords this movement the protracted intellectual engagement that it deserves and argues that Zimdancehall is more than just a musical genre but an everyday culture, a way of life. The genre’s close association with the ghetto is telling and enables critics to look at it as a social movement, a revolution, or a raw, petulant and raging disturbance of peace by those who live their lives on the margins. It is, thus, a violent irruption onto the public space by marginalised young people whose presence as artistes creating art from the margins, simultaneously as victims and agents, circulating in a geography that escapes the limits of nationalist ideological and physical territory, in a way subverts communitarian prescriptions and allows young people entry into the world, albeit in a painful, tumultuous and violent way. The essays range from the mapping of the genre’s historical development to theoretical interventions in understanding the genre and its relationship with various aspects of the Zimbabwean society like politics, gender, religion, language, dance, cultural values and other genres.

Making History in Mugabe's Zimbabwe

Making History in Mugabe's Zimbabwe
Author: Blessing-Miles Tendi
Publisher: Peter Lang
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2010
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9783039119899

The crisis that has engulfed Zimbabwe since 2000 is not simply a struggle against dictatorship. It is also a struggle over ideas and deep-seated historical issues, still unresolved from the independence process, that both Robert Mugabe's ZANU PF regime and Morgan Tsvangirai's MDC are vying first to define and then to address. This book traces the role of politicians and public intellectuals in media, civil society and the academy in producing and disseminating a politically usable historical narrative concerning ideas about patriotism, race, land, human rights and sovereignty. It raises pressing questions about the role of contemporary African intellectuals in the making of democratic societies. In so doing the book adds a new and rich dimension to the study of African politics, which is often diluted by the neglect of ideas.