INTRODUCTION

The Political Economy of the State in Zimbabwe: The rise and fall of the Securocrat State

Ibbo Mandaza

His face is on money, his photograph hangs in every office in his realm, his ministers wear gold pins with tiny photographs of him on the lapels of their pinstriped tailored suits. He names streets, football stadiums, hospitals and universities after himself. He carries a silver inlaid ivory rungu or an ornately carved walking stick or a flywhisk or chiefly stool. He insists on being called doctor or being the big elephant or the number one peasant or nice old man or the national miracle or the most popular leader in the world, his every pronouncement is reported on the first page. He shuffles ministers without warning, paralysing policy decisions as he undercuts pretenders to his throne. He scapegoats minorities to show up popular support. He bans all political parties except the one he controls. He rigs elections. He emasculates the courts and he cows the press, he stifles academia. He gives the church. The Big Man’s off-the-cut remarks have the power of law. He demands thunderous applause from the legislature when ordering far-reaching changes in the constitution. He blesses his home region with highways, schools, hospitals, housing projects, irrigation schemes and a presidential mansion. He packs the civil service with his tribesmen… His enemies are harassed by youth wingers from the ruling party. His enemies are detained or exiled, humiliated, tortured or killed.

-Willy Mutunga (Now the Chief Justice of Kenya)1

I. THE LEGACY AND SCOURGE OF THE POST-COLONIAL STATE IN AFRICA

Willy Mutunga’s citation above is an apt description of one of the main symptoms of the

political pathology that is attendant to the legacy and scourge of the post-colonial state in Africa.

Therefore in citing Mutunga, Eric Matinenga argues that the main objective of constitution-

making (and constitutionalism) in Africa has been the need to rein in and curtail the excesses of

the Executive - the “Big Man” syndrome. However, here it is necessary to explain why,

notwithstanding the best of constitutions, including the Zimbabwean one which was signed into

law in 2013(but remains largely unimplemented by a stubborn Executive), the pursuit of

(bourgeois) democracy (or the “national democratic revolution”) has so far remained largely

illusive. For, always implicit but seldom explicit in the discourse on the political processes

and/or transitions in the post-colonial situation has been the subscription to bourgeois

1 Willy Mutunga. Constitution-Making from the Middle: Civil Society and Transition Politics in Kenya, 1992-1997: Sareat, 1999 (cited by Eric Matinenga in his chapter herein)

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democracy; with its origins in the (European) Westphalian State2; finding its contemporary

expression in the African context in the nationalist struggle for independence and the

establishment of the nation-state-in-the-making at independence , with all the requisite trappings

for a constitutional democracy, in a community of nations as represented by the United Nations

and other international organisations.

Central to the bourgeois democracy model or, to use a term which connotes the same, “national

democratic revolution”, are the following; a constitution as the supreme law of the land, with a

strong emphasis on the separation of powers - between the Executive, Legislature and Judiciary

– as the guarantee for the rule of law, the basic freedoms for all citizens and genuine democratic

discourse; the establishment and maintenance of national institutions that are simultaneously

non-partisan and conducive to nation building; and an enlightened leadership that, in the absence

of the conventional national bourgeoisie that is the anchor class in contemporary (western)

bourgeois societies, can be the driving force for the political and socio-economic development of

the post-colonial dispensation.

There are various concepts that have emerged among progressive African scholars in particular,

as part of the quest for an unique (African) epistemology, but also reflecting a recent past

(1970’s to 1980’s) when the development debate in Africa centred on the (presumed) choice

between capitalism and socialism. Hence the less precise concept of the “Developmental State”3

and the more dynamic one, “Developmental Democracy”4; both seek to explain the

contemporary African reality as essentially the struggle for bourgeois democracy and economic

development in an era dominated by international capital, neo-liberalism and a relentless

globalization that has virtually relegated Sub-Saharan Africa to the status of an extractive

industry bowl for primary products, bereft of an industrial capacity and therefore destined for a

cycle of unemployment, poverty and underdevelopment now, almost sixty years since the first

Sub-Saharan country (Ghana) gained its independence in 1957, Kwame Nkrumah’s clarion call –

2 See, for example, Ibbo Mandaza, “The Challenges of Governance in Africa”, Lecture presented at School of Governance, UNISA, 21, April, 2015.

3 Issa Shivji. “The State in the Dominated Social Formations of Africa: Some Theoretical Issues”, International Social Science Journal, XXXII, 1980.

4 Thandika Mkandawire.”Thinking about developmental states in Africa”, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 2001, 25 (3), 289 313.‐

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“Seek ye first the political kingdom and all else will be added unto it”5 – rings so hollow for the

majority of Africa’s citizens. And, as Willy Mutanga and others in this collection have inferred,

even the constitutions themselves are not worth the paper they are written on: though a symptom

of a more fundamental problem, the burden of an all-powerful executive - the “Big Man”- is a

glaring symbol of the failure of constitutional democracy and constitutionalism itself. Needless

to add, the constitutional provision, which has become a virtual necessity in constitution-making

in post-colonial Africa, for a two-term limit for presidents/ heads of states, constitutes part of this

struggle to restrain and contain the burden of an incorrigible incumbency. But even this has made

little or no difference, not least for those heralded in the 1980’s as “new generation”6 of African

leaders. Yoweri Museveni, now in power since 1986, asserts arrogantly that, “We do not believe

in the term limits…if you don’t want [them] to be there forever, you vote them out.”7 This is the

same man who, on taking office 30 years ago (in 1986) said; “The problem of Africa in general

and Uganda in particular, is not the people but leaders who want to overstay in power”8.

Recently, Rwanda and Congo Republic both changed their constitutions to allow their leaders to

seek third terms; while Burundi’s President Pierre Nkurunzinza has sparked a major political

furore in his country by his decision to stay in office beyond the two terms. In Zimbabwe, the

two term limit provision was introduced only recently, in the 2013 Constitution, when Mugabe

was already 33 years in office (7 years of which were as Prime minister, from 1980 to 1987). So,

nature and the run of politics permitting, this means that President Mugabe can stand for the

second term in 2018, at the age of 94; to relinquish office in 2023, at the age of 99! But his

disdain for this (two-term) provision and the constitution itself is summed up in his retort to U.N

Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon during the African Union Summit in Addis Ababa in January

2016. The Secretary-General had advised that African leaders should not cling to power. Mugabe

responded that he was virtually “Life President,”: “I will still be there until God says, come join

the other angels. But as long as I’m still alive, I’ll still have the punch.”9

5 Nkrumah 6 Museveni Yoweri, K. What is Africa’s problem?, Kampala: NRM Publications, 1992

7 BBC World Service, BBC's Zuhura Yunus speaks to Mr Museveni after winning 2016 General Elections, 22 February 2016.8 Museveni, ibid9 Mugabe’s Speech at the 26th African Union (AU) Summit Opening in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 30 January, 2016

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Yet, the burden of incumbency in Africa has less to do with the personality make-up of the

individuals concerned, the attendant disease of power megalomania that is characteristic of

dictatorships, nor exclusively that which Ali Mazrui described, in the early 1970’s already, as the

“monarchical tendency”10 in African politics. It has more to do with the nature of this animal

called the post-colonial state, the colonial inheritance: the continuity of the key pillars of the

colonial state in the transition to independence and after; the (petit bourgeois and emergent

comprador bourgeois) class that inherits state power at independence, a class which, unlike the

conventional national bourgeoisie (of the bourgeois democracies), is not grounded in the

economy and production and is, therefore, parasitically dependent upon the state for access to

wealth, primitive accumulation and such predatory activities as are characteristic of this social

formation; and how these exesses, in turn, inhere a level of political insecurity, paranoia, and the

fear of an uncertain future – for self, family and associates – should one relinquish office.

Elsewhere11, we have sought to establish a relationship between (the African nationalist)

ideology of the class that inherits power at independence on one hand and, on the other, the

failure to transform the economic and social structure of Zimbabwe. This was an ideology

founded essentially on two interrelated neo-liberal themes:

(a) An implicit faith in western values, institutional arrangements and related paraphernalia

(including cultural, ceremonial and even garb). Therefore, the (bourgeois) state model which the

African nationalists inherit with political independence epitomises as much this faith as the

exercise of power and priviledge that is on hand for the new class of rulers. Add to this, the

extent to which the western value system is taken for granted, as an integral part of any

dispensation that the African nationalists would one day wish to see established in their

countries; and how the African nationalist leaders, including those who remain in our midst, are

so much creatures of a colonial system that has left an indelible mark on their thought processes,

their lives and their aspirations

(b) The vision of the democratic society in which the violations and demands of the colonial era

would be a thing of the past and a new meritocracy established. As Claude Ake explained,

10 Mazrui, Ali A. “The Monarchical Tendency in African Political Culture”, The British Journal of Sociology Vol. 18 1967, pp. 231-250.

11 Ibbo Mandaza, “Edgar Tekere and Zimbabwe’s Struggle for Independence”, Introduction to Tekere Edgar’s Lifetime of Struggle. Harare, SAPES Books, 2007.

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The language of the nationalist movement was the language of democracy, as is clear; I speak of Freedom (Nyerere), Without Bitterness (Orizul), Facing Mount Kenya (Kenyatta), Not yet Uhuru (Odinga), Freedom and Development (Nyerere), African Socialism (Senghor), and The Wretched of the Earth (Fanon). It denounced the violation of dignity of the colonized, racial discrimination, lack of equal opportunity and equal access, and economic exploitation of the colonized. The people were mobilized according to these grievances and expectations of a more democratic dispensation12.

As in the case of the post-colonial Africa in general, Zimbabwe has demonstrated a glaring

(economic and political) incapacity to fulfil its vision. Unlike the conventional bourgeois state

after which model it was in pursuit at independence, the nation-state-in-the-making lacks the

economic foundations – and the anchor (or national bourgeoisie) in particular- through which to

inhere a commendable level of national confidence, project national interest, and create a

national economy. Hence the continued hegemony of parasitic and comprador classes most of

whose members have grown pari passu this post-colonial pathology, and are largely dependent

upon the state, international capital or an institutionalized aid regime. This the narrative herein;

to seek to analyse the foundations of this pathology.

II. ZIMBABWE IN TRANSITION

Zimbabwe’s transition has been characterized by the factors of (state) continuity, class, the

primacy of “national security” over political and economic reform, and the conflation of (ruling)

party and state as a necessary feature of the securocrat state. The latter term is also derived from

the military-security factor in the Zimbabwean case, a feature that might also distinguish the

latter from other post-colonial situations in Sub-Saharan Africa. This is the enduring role, so far,

of leading elements of Zimbabwe’s former guerilla army within the security establishment of the

state; and how these, through a combination of the liberation ideology rhetoric that has

contrivedly sought to pervade the post-independence period, the related system of patronage

(borne out of a seemingly open-minded entitlement) that has made them part of the comprador

bourgeois class, and their capacity for violence (or the threat of it), have been an indispensable

factor in Robert Mugabe’s incumbency, particularly since 2000. In short, this is the Zimbabwe

in crisis: a state as apparently invincible and impervious to change since the turn of this century,

and yet so brittle as the current political and economic implosion illustrates.

12 The Feasibility of Democracy in Africa, CODESRIA, 200O,P.46

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Therefore, here is to offer a brief political economy of the crisis, the origins and development of

the securocrat state; and in doing so, try to identify the dialectic of change, the contradictions that

are simultaneously the agency for change in such a crisis

1. Continuity (as opposed to transformation) of the inherited (colonial) state.

Thirty years since the publication of Zimbabwe: The Political Economy, 1980-8613, it is now

more obvious why the term “transition”, and not “transformation”, was used by the authors to

characterize the Zimbabwean political and economic process: some of us had had exposure as

exiles to the realities of the post-colonial situation in the neigbouring countries of Botswana

Zambia, Mozambique and Tanzania; African scholarship had by that time sufficiently analysed

and exposed the nature and content of the post-colonial state; and six years after independence,

the myth of “Southern African exceptionalism”- the view, underpinning the revolutionary

rhetoric of the liberalism struggle of Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Namibia and South

Africa, that the protracted struggle would naturally inhere a transformative post-liberation

process – had been sufficiently exposed, as the book itself sought to illustrate. Therefore,

continuity rather than change is what characterizes Zimbabwe in transition:

The main problem arose from the fact that Zimbabwe inherited the key elements of the white settler colonial apparatus…this was precisely the intention of the Lancaster House Agreement: to provide for the continuity of the state as a guarantee for ‘stability’, the ‘maintenance of high standards’; and the survival and maintenance of the economic (capitalist) status quo. The reality of the white settler colonial state was brought home to the African nationalists during the ceasefire and election processes, in which the Rhodesian state was dominant. The fact was reaffirmed with the birth of a new government that had to depend on the goodwill of elements of the old in its attempt to build new structures. The problem of reconciling the old and new into the new state would persist…Only time, and the vantage of a deeper – if only because retrospective analysis - will reveal the extent to which the inherited state structures would in turn influence the nature and character of the new state in Zimbabwe…14

Today, it is no longer possible to underestimate the nearly universal and hegemonic parameters

of the bourgeois state model and its accompanying neo-liberal ideology, constraining and,

perhaps, thereby delaying, the (historically) inevitable explosion of the contradictions that

constitute modern day capitalism. So, is there, for the time being, an alternative, for such nation-

13 Ibbo Mandaza (ed), 1986, CODESRIA 14 Ibbo Mandaza, ibid, Chapter 1, “The Post-White Settler Colonial Sitauation,”p.43.

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states-in-the-making as Zimbabwe, to the pursuit of the bourgeois democracy model as is

implicit in the struggle for political and economic reform of the post-colonial state.?

As has already been pointed out in the foregoing, the distinguishing feature between other post-

colonial situations and the Zimbabwe case is that the latter’s state was able to combine within

itself both the inherited structures of the colonial order and a former guerilla army whose

leadership worked hand-in-glove with its civilian counterparts, not only in developing the

securocracy that is now so self-evident today, but also as part of the comprador bourgeoisie. The

backdrop of a bloody armed struggle in which a number of its survivors still constitute a

significant, if not a central, factor in the securocrat state, and the (ideological) rhetoric that has

accompanied and sought to pervade the entire post-independence period to this day, contribute

towards the attempt to sustain and justify the twin pillars of contemporary securocracy in

Zimbabwe: violence (or the threat of it) and entitlement and/or patronage which has become

integral to endemic corruption and blatant looting of state resources. As will be elaborated

shortly in the context of an outline of the main features of the securocrat state, it is the extent to

which the conflation of (ruling ZANU PF) party and state has sought to envelop the entire

society, from central government itself, to the provinces and districts, and down to the villages

and wards. Structurally, this has been achieved through the system of traditional leaders who are

virtually employees and therefore an extension of the state apparatus; district and village heads

who are simultaneously party and state functionaries; and a military-security superstructure that

is generally pervasive throughout the society. Thus, regimentation, as opposed to mobilization

which is no longer sustainable in such conditions, has become the order of the day, through a

combination of state-driven violence (or the threat of it) and state-sponsored patronage. This has

been most pronounced since the violence that accompanied the “run-off” elections of 2008 and

no doubt pervaded and influenced the outcome of the 2013 poll. This has been the pattern of

politics in Zimbabwe since 2000, as the Mugabe regime has tenuously and perilously hung on in

the face of mass opposition, a flagging economy and migration of at least a third of the country’s

population.

2. The nature (and development) of the class that inherits power at

independence.

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Inheriting a bourgeois state model but without a national bourgeoisie! As has been explained

elsewhere15, the nature and impact of white settler colonialism in Zimbabwe (as elsewhere in

Southern Africa) directly impeded and pre-empted the development of an indigenous national

bourgeoisie. African nationalists in Zimbabwe have almost universally condemned the Land

Apportionment Act of 1930 as mainly an expression of the racial nature of white settler

colonialism. But, as Giovanni Arrighi illustrated in his seminal work on “The Political Economy

of Rhodesia,”16 this piece of legislation constituted the cornerstone of the economic

underdevelopment of Zimbabwe and determined that its indigenous people were reduced to

classes of land hungry peasants, wage earners in the capitalist economy, and an amorphous petit

bourgeois class composed of school teachers, nurses, labour supervisors, educated elites, petty

traders etc. The combination of this historical backdrop and a relentless globalization has

virtually killed the prospects of (post-colonial and neo-colonial) economies (such as

Zimbabwe’s) ever producing a national bourgeoisie; whatever potential there might have been

for the emergence of such a class was, with the passage of time, reduced to a predatory and

parasitic class of a comprador bourgeoisie that straddles both public and private sectors.

As the term implies17, the comprador bourgeoisie in Zimbabwe is a class not rooted in

production; on the contrary, it thrives on back handers, fat rewards for crooked contracts and

shady deals, official corruption and looting of state coiffeurs; not to forget the “casino

economy”18 era during which the comprador bourgeois class thrived through the agency of the

Central Bank, but at the expense of the economy in general and collapse of the national currency

in early 2009. By nature, the comprador bourgeoisie is a class in itself and for itself, bereft of a

15 Ibbo Mandaza, ibid16

Arrighi Giovanni and Saul, J. “Essays on the political Economy of Africa”, Monthly Review, New York, 1973.See also, Ibbo Mandaza, ibid, Chapter 117

“A comprador, in the original sense of the word, was the Chinese manager or the senior Chinese employee in a foreign commercial establishment. The compradors served foreign economic interests and had close connection with imperialism and foreign capital” in Mao-Tse Tung, “Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society”, March, 1926, Selected Works of Mao-Tse Tung, 1975, p.19 18

This is a reference to a term used, albeit most inappropriately, given that it was these quasi-fiscal activities under his leadership of the Central Bank that ruined the economy, (Gideon Gono.2008.Zimbabwe's Casino Economy: Extraordinary Measures for Extraordinary Challenges, ZPH Publishers) See also the Auditor-General’s Reports for 2014; and Transparency International, Zimbabwe Annual State of Corruption: Focus on State-Owned Enterprises, Transparency International Zimbabwe, 2015.

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national vision because it is incapable of conceiving one and, more significantly, lives for today,

uncertain about tomorrow.

The origins of the comprador bourgeoisie in Zimbabwe are to be found in African nationalism

itself, in its class ambitions and, as has already been explained, in its (class) frustrations at the

failure to become a national bourgeoisie. So, in such historical circumstances, the African

nationalist leaders and their class associates were always easy prey for international capital in its

quest for new representatives and agents for its enterprise in the post-colonial dispensation. For

example, the role of such multinationals as Tiny Rowland’s LONRHO in the “compradorization”

of almost all of Zimbabwe’s nationalists even before independence19. But, perhaps not

surprisingly, it has been largely through the extractive industries that the comprador bourgeoisie

has grown during the post-independence period, expressing itself as it has, not only through the

members of the political and military-security and bureaucratic hierarchy, and in collaboration

with their counterparts in the private sector and in multinationals at home and abroad; but also in

the apparent conflation between power, corruption and wealth. The $15 billion diamond scandal

is the most symbolic in this sad saga and yet could be only the proverbial tip of the iceberg for

what is clearly an integral component of the securocrat state in Zimbabwe. As Ken Yamamoto

states:

A President discloses that mines essentially owned by his government looted $15 billion and the newspapers don’t even make it front page news with screaming headlines is a sign of a country that has lost its soul. With the stolen $15 billion, Zimbabwe could have provided its economy a huge bailout, funding refurbishment of railways infrastructure, construction of power plants, construction and expansion of national highways, a bailout to the sinking industrial sector, provided clean water in cities, funded alternative agriculture and processing industries and invested in clean energy…What matters is that with the stolen $15 billion, Zimbabwe could have provided its economy a huge bailout, funding refurbishment of railways infrastructure, construction and expansion of national highways, provide working capital to the sinking industrial sector, provide clean water in cities, fund alternative agriculture and processing industries and invested in clean energy. It could also build at least ten power stations providing over 1000 MW of power for local consumption and export. It could also build hospitals and import the latest technology and Mugabe himself would not need to fly to Singapore and Dubai for medical treatment. It’s selfish to stash national wealth in foreign countries and then fly there for medical treatment. The stolen $15 billion could transform Zimbabwe overnight, taking millions out

19 Tom Bower, Tiny Rowland: Portrait of a Tycoon, 1993

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of street vending back into the productive sector. Sadly, while he was touting ZIMASSET, Robert Mugabe did not tell Zimbabweans a secret he knew, that billions have been and were at that material time being siphoned out of the country. He only revealed this when he turned 92.The question that keeps nudging my mind is how do human beings became so bland and lose their souls to such a point? How does Mugabe sleep well at night? How do his coterie of praise-singers and bootlickers live with themselves? How do you preside over such theft and keep a straight face? How do you disadvantage 99% of the population and not bat an eyelid? What kind of people live between the two rivers – Zambezi and Limpopo? How do people continue to eat, drink, sleep, go to work, vend, or even make merry in the midst such a scandal?

The (belated) land reform exercise that began two decades after independence was also an

agency for primitive accumulation and patronage on the part of the political elites, the military-

security top brass, the upper echelons of the civil service and parastatal sectors, the judiciary,

traditional leaders and ruling party chiefs and operatives across the country. So, beginning with

the Fist Family itself, Vice Presidents and Cabinet Ministers and their deputies, provincial

governors/ministers, the top brass in the army, air-force, police, security services, the Chief

Justice and almost the entire leadership of the supreme and high courts, all the traditional leaders

(or chiefs) – all these were, almost in order of the hierarchy, the key beneficiaries of about the

4000 best commercial farms and estates that were “acquired” by the state on the back of fast-

tracked legislation that followed one of the most violent episodes in Zimbabwe’s post

independence period20.

No doubt, less voracious than the colonial violence that preceded the Land Apportionment Act,

the fast track land reform which began under the politically charged circumstances of the

referendum over the constitution in February, 200021, could have been the agency through which

to replace the former white settler agrarian bourgeoisie with an indigenous one; but the process

lacked the enormous financial, technical and market resources with which colonialism was able

20 Follow the link http://www.thezimbabwean.co/2010/12/security-chiefs-own-most-fertile-land/21 This refers specifically to the coincidence between the rise of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and the crafting of a new constitution under the constitutional commission whose referendum was held in February, 2000. The MDC mobilized, with the support of the white population in general towards the rejection of the constitution in that referendum; and thus began the campaign through which white-owned farms were invaded and occupied, from February, 2000, in order to pre-empt what might have heralded the end of the Mugabe era and the advent of Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC. So, contrary to the claims by such people as Thabo Mbeki , that the land reform exercise in Zimbabwe was delayed by design by Mugabe until South Africa was free, the “fast track land reform” programme was sparked by these political circumstances in February, 2000.

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to create such a class in a different historical context. So, after, almost two decades, the

commercial agriculture sector has virtually collapsed, and together with it, also an industrial

sector which was so dependent upon it; the country has become one large informal sector, with

only 4% of the economically active in employment; about 50% or more Zimbabwe’s

professional/ skilled population now in the diaspora; and the public sector accounting for 83% of

the national budget of 4 Billion in terms of the salary bill22. These are the circumstances under

which the comprador bourgeoisie finds itself under pressure and in search for new avenues for

primitive accumulation; and, to some degree, therefore, even “resource nationalism” generally

and the “indigenization” policy in particular reflect the aspirations of this class, especially since

the focus of such attention is the attractive mining sector around which the comprador

bourgeoisie has waxed rich in recent decades.

In short, the alliance between the comprador bourgeois class and sections of the security forces

around the state over the last two decades represents the failure of the former national liberation

movement as an agency of political and economic development in Zimbabwe.

III. THE SECUROCRAT STATE

Therefore, securocracy is the very antithesis of democracy; ruling without or despite the popular

will. The securocrat state is one in which the military-security apparatus is a dominant factor in

the power complex that is the state. In Zimbabwe, this revolves around (but symbolic in that

herein lies the centre of power) the proverbial office of the President, Head of State and

Governemnt, Commander-in-Chief of the Defence Forces. As will be outlined shortly,

Zimbabwe’s securocracy has its origins in the liberation struggle – in both ZAPU and in

particular ZANU – in which the military-security factor reigned supreme over civil and political

relations. Of special significance in contemporary Zimbabwe is the extent to which, under the

direction of the president himself, the military-security factor has, since 2000 in particular,

sought to pervade social and political relations, compromise or contradict public policy issues,

subvert the electoral system and purge political rivals to the incumbent “Big Man”23. Of course,

it can be as fascinating as the James Bond-type spy (or the cloak and dagger) narratives to have

to single out and detail the operations of the arm of one military-security complex in such 22 See, for example Godfrey Kanyenze, “The Zimbabwean Economy”, presentation at Bronte Hotel, June 17, 2014 23 Ibbo Mandaza, “The ZANU PF Congress of 2014:Triumph of Securocrat State”, Zimbabwean Independent, 15 December 2014

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analyses of the security sector in African states, as Miles-Blessing Tendi has sought to do

recently But, this can be both a distraction from political economy and, more seriously, a

misreading of the history and development of the Zimbabwean state24. For example, if it is

significant as Tendi seeks to demonstrate, that military intelligence was the agency through

which Joice Mujuru in particular was purged in 2014, how would he explain why, a year later,

the same agency is itself under siege, as Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his allies

that include the Chief of Defence Forces (under whom military intelligence operates),

Constantine Chiwenga, and a significant section of the war veterans led by Christopher

Mutsvangwa, are being systematically purged and neutralized under the same military-security

complex which includes the army (and its military intelligence and Presidential guard), air force,

police, prisons and CIO?

The point here is that the dynamics at play within the ZANU PF party/state are best understood

in the context of a securocrat state in which the “Big Man” himself, and in the current situation,

“State House” itself, has so far been its epicentre and the constant factor. This is because, as in

all such dictatorships, cach of the heads of the military-security chiefs are individually beholden

to the “Big Man” who, as has been explained, has discretion to renew or terminate the annual

extension to their respective contracts, and are beneficiaries of a patronage (and state-sponsored

corruption) system in which, inter alia, he has personally facilitated the participation of the

military, police and intelligence, in the extractive industries, including diamonds and platinum25.

Reports of fierce rivalry (and competition for access to resources attendant to the growing train)

between some of the Chiefs of the military-security establishment are not surprising since, as

part of the machinations of the securocrat state, these individuals operate less in concert than

each in relation to the “Big Man”, as will be illustrated shortly. This is “divide and rule” par

excellence as is characteristic of dictatorships; as illustrated in Tendi’s account with respect to

the role of the military intelligence in the purging of Vice President Joice Mujuru and her allies

in 2014, this means one arm of the military-security complex can be used expediently to execute

a given political programme, at the expense of other arms of the complex; and, a year later, the

order reversed, as military intelligence itself is being purged of yet another political project. This,

is the process of self-immolation of the securocrat state, but it is too early to predict how it will 24

25

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unravel nor the ramifications thereof. Of course, it can be as fascinating as the James Bond-type

spy (or the cloak and dagger) narratives to have to single out and detail the operations of the arm

of one military-security complex in such analyses of the security sector in African states, as

Miles-Blessing Tendi has sought to do recently26. In retrospect, the rise of the securocrat state

can therefore be traced to at least three main features that have characterized the Zimbabwean

social formation over the last 36 years. These are the very factors around which the possible

trajectory of political and economic reform has to be identified, as the securocrat state itself is

thawing under its own contradictions and the inexorable forces of change and development.

(i)The rise and rise of the “Big Man” and the (commensurate)

subversion of national institutions.

This has taken place on the back of a process whereby the constitution was variously amended

over the years to create an all-powerful executive; whilst correspondingly blurring the separation

of powers, subverting and eroding national institutions, and the gradual conflation thereby of

(ruling) party and the state. Notwithstanding the shortcomings of a document designed

specifically for the transition from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, the Lancaster House Constitution did

lay down the foundations for the separation of powers between the Executive, the Legislature

and the Judiciary, at least until the advent of the Executive Presidency in 1987. Thereafter, the

Executive President became increasingly the very centre and symbol of power in the

Zimbabwean state. As explained elsewhere27, the Mugabe story is one that requires its own

attention and space. But it is already an informative lesson on the exercise of power in a post-

colonial setting, in the careful interplay of state and party, and with the conflation of both around

him; and how this provides the “Big Man” with the framework for enhancing his power and

control over the entire polity. Like the Cabinet under him, the ZANU PF politburo and central

committee – including the Women’s and Youth wings – become instruments through which to

institutionalize the control system, pre-empt or manage dissent, while the patronage that

26 Miles-Blessing Tendi, “State Intelligence and the Politics of Zimbabwe’s Presidential Succession”, African Affairs Vol 115, 2016 p.1-22.

27 Ibbo Mandaza, “Introduction: Edgar Tekere and Zimbabwe’s Struggle for Independence,” in Edgar Tekere, ibid.

13

necessarily accompanies post and priviledge also keeps the entire state as well greased as

possible.

In recent years, and as the years and vagaries of the state have taken their toll on the “Big Man”,

the First Lady has taken centre stage in propping him up in a purported “life presidency” that

also boarders on dynastic politics. However, driven equally by fear and a palpable paranoia over

the inevitable closure of the Mugabe regime, she has inadvertently accelerated the implosion of

both party and state. So, in the meantime, the current situation has all the hallmarks of a

conventional dictatorship in the political economy definition of the term: a decisive and thorough

purge of anyone – or anything – that purports to be opposed to the First Family and its

party/state; an amazing disdain for, and apparent obliviousness to, the political and economic

realities that constitute the Zimbabwe crisis; and a relentless determination to rule ad nauseam,

regardless of the consequences.

Against the background of this political pathology, national institutions – e.g. Parliament itself,

the Public Services Commission and the Defence and Security Forces – have lost the relative

autonomy and non-partisanship so clearly demanded under the constitution and adhered to for

most of the first decade of post-independence. The state, not to mention incorrigible incumbency

itself, has consequently relegated and subverted the meritocracy, professionalism and non-

partisanship that was commendable in Zimbabwe’s national institutions in those days of

contagious patriotism. Today, for example, the provisions that the heads of such national

institutions as the defence forces should serve two terms of five years each, exist only on paper,

having been abandoned since 2000, and replaced by annual renewals at the discretion of the

President, Head of State and Government and Commander-in-Chief of the Defence Forces28.

28 Chapter 11, Section 207 of the Zimbabwe Constitution establishes the Security Services in Zimbabwe which consist of the defence forces, the police service, the intelligence service, the prisons and correctional services and any other security service established by an Act of Parliament. Section 208(2a-c) on the conduct of members of the security services state that neither the security services nor any of their members may in the exercise of their functions act in a partisan way, further the interest of any political party or prejudice the lawful interest of any political party. Part 2 11(3) of the Defence Act state The Commander of the Army and the Commander of the Air Force shall be appointed for a period of four years or such shorter period as the President may determine Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF) was formed in 1994 Constantine Chiwenga was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant General and was appointed commander of the Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA). Upon the retirement of General Vitalis Zvinavashe in 2004, he was promoted to the rank of General and Commander of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces. Augustine Chihuri was appointed General Police Commissioner in 1993 for a four-year term but since the expiry of his term of office in 1997 his mandate has been extended every 12 months. Happyton Bonyongwe is the Director General of the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) and he assumed office in 2002 after serving as the major General of the Zimbabwe National Army between,

14

Not, surprisingly, the term “retirement” has virtually disappeared out of the vocabulary and

practice of Zimbabwe’s subverted national institutions, no doubt in keeping with incorrigible

incumbency at the top of the edifice.

(ii)The primacy of the “national security” axis in the state

As has already been intimated, the primacy of the military-security factor over civil and political

relations has its origins in Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle, in particular the structure of ZANLA.

Traditionally, the Chief of Defence, such as were Josiah Tongogara and Rex Nhongo (Solomon

Mujuru) after him, was also the apex of the entire military-security system that undergirded

ZANU during the last phase (1977-79) of the struggle. As such, Tongogara was the centre of

power in both ZANU and ZANLA , with the political and civilian part of the latter virtually

subservient to the military-security factor, even though the official line was to the contrary,

namely, the doctrine that “politics controls the gun”! The advent of political independence in

1980 and the subsequent development of the (post-colonial) state instituted a new power matrix

for the emergent defence and security forces: selected ZANLA units, some of the ZIPA elements

and the former Rhodesian forces, were integrated into the Zimbabwean National Army, under

the close supervision of the British Military Advisory and Technical Team (BMATT), initially

(up to early 1981) under the command of the Rhodesian General Peter Walls and, later, the

former ZANLA Commander, Solomon Mujuru; and selected elements of the former members of

ZANLA’s seguranza (or security-military intelligence) were integrated into the (former)

Rhodesian Special Branch, which was then subsumed under the Central Intelligence

Organisation (CIO), under the leadership of the British-Rhodesian Ken Flower29 and deputized

by Emmerson Mnangagwa , hitherto Mugabe’s Special Assistant since 1978. Other former

1981-1999.In 1992, Parence Shiri was appointed commander of the Air Force of Zimbabwe, taking over from Air Chief Marshal Josiah Tungamirai. Paradzai Zimhondi, a former ZANLA commander and subsequently a senior member of the ZNA, was appointed Director of Prisons in 1994

29 Ken Flower. Serving Secretly. An Intelligence Chief on Record: Rhodesia into Zimbabwe, 1964 to 1981, John Murray, London, 1987. Less known, but requiring further research and elaboration is the extent to which Ken Flower’s CIO had, throughout the UDI period and up to independence in 1980, worked closely with the British intelligence of which, not only himself but also the likes of such of his lieutenants as Danny Stannard and Peter Robinson, were products and loyal servants, even as they served Ian Smith’s – later, Robert Mugabe’s government

15

combatants from both ZANLA and ZIPRA found their place in the police force, the British

South Africa Police (BSAP), also under a former Rhodesian commander but later renamed, in

July 1980, the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP). Subsequently, its command was also

“Africanized” with Wiridzayi Rodwell Nguruve, a former member of the BSAP, taking

command, to be succeeded by another former BSAP member, Henry Mukurazhizha, before

Augustine Chihuri, a former ZANLA combatant, took over in 1993. Similarly, the Rhodesian

Prison Services, into which a number of ex-combatants were recruited, before it was also

renamed the Zimbabwe Prison Services: “Africanized” accordingly in 1980, to be headed

subsequently by a former ZANLA commander (who became a senior member of the Zimbabwe

National Army), Paradzai Zimondi in 1994 Finally, the former Rhodesian Air Force which

remained almost autonomous as largely a white outpost, even though it was also baptized the

Zimbabwe Air Force in 1980, until much later in 1986 when Josiah Tungamirai, a former

member of the ZANLA High Command (virtually third in line after Tongogara and Mujuru),

was appointed its commander. It has to be recalled that, in the early years of independence that

also witnessed the internecine conflict between ZANLA and ZIPRA forces at Entumbane and,

subsequently, the Gukurahundi episode, this white manned and/or former Rhodesian Air Force

was a key instrument in the defeat of ZAPU and its military wing as the Zimbabwean state under

Robert Mugabe exorcised itself of any rivals to him30.

It was against this background, in addition to the various constitutional and institutional

arrangements that constituted the Zimbabwean State at Independence in 1980, that Robert

Mugabe ascended to the “throne” on which he would remain for 36 years, at first as the Prime

Minister and then (Executive) President in 1987. The foregoing section has outlined in some

detail the trajectory of power that produced the “Big Man.” However, in explaining how Mugabe

became the centre of a state power matrix in which the “national security” factor was

increasingly writ large, there is need to highlight two issues that are also attendant to the origins

and development of the securocrat state.

First, the inherited Rhodesian state apparatus and how this provided a level of continuity through

which Robert Mugabe was able to establish and develop his power base, in a transition that

simultaneously reduced the threat of a white military backlash and deconstructed the former

30 Ibid. see also Joshua Nkomo, The Story of My Life, Sapes Books, 2001

16

guerilla armies – especially the hitherto dominant security-military factors within both ZANLA

and ZIPRA – into a national institution, the defence and security forces, under the command and

control of the President, the Head of State and Government and Commander in Chief of the

Defence Forces. This was the process through which the state – composed of the old and new -

also dispensed with any would be rivals to Robert Mugabe; and herein the origins of the

“national security” axis that developed with the virtual destruction of Joshua Nkomo’s ZAPU

and ZIPRA through the bloody Gukurahundi episode of 1984 to 198731, and became

synonymous with the self-preservation of Mugabe’s incumbency and the securocrat state itself.

Also significant in this regard, is how the Zimbabwean state inherited an apparatus so central to

the doctrine and command structure of the Rhodesian military-security state: the Joint Operations

Command (JOC) which was chaired by General Peter Walls and became virtually parallel, in

terms of its power and influence during the last years of the Rhodesian regime, to the political

civilian leadership of Ian Smith and, from 1978 to 1979, with Bishop Abel Muzorewa in the

aborted Rhodesian/Zimbabwean episode32. In post-independent Zimbabwe, JOC became a

central feature of the state’s military-security complex, prominent as ever during such “war time”

periods as Gukurahundi, anti-RENAMO war in Mozambique (1977-1992), the DRC escapade

(1998), and during the elections from 2000 onwards, as the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission

(ZEC) also became, at least operationally and functionally, an extension of the military-security

establishment, and election periods degenerated increasingly into virtual “war zones”. As others

have pointed out with respect to the laws and legislation that the Zimbabwean state inherited –

and perfected - from Rhodesia, continuity has been a central feature of the securocrat state33.

The following statement by Sydney Sekeremayi, the then Minister of State for National Security,

constitutes an apt summary of the origins and development of the Zimbabwean state and its

“national security” mantra.

May I take this opportunity to urge you to remain steadfast against the rhetoric and cheap propaganda by retrogressive forces about the need for security reforms in Zimbabwe. Our security establishment is very professional. The British Military Advisory and Training Team left the country in 2001 after a 20 year stint

31 Joshua Nkomo, ibid. 32 Ken Flower, ibid.33 See, for example the following Chapters in Ibbo Mandaza and Lloyd Sachikonye (eds), The One Party State and Democracy: The Zimbabwe Debate, Sapes Books, 1991 : Jonathan Moyo and Weshman NcubeSee also Alex Magaisa, “The Big Saturday Read: How Zimbabwe inherited and perfected a repressive state”, 19 March, 2016

17

with our army. They did not complain then, why now? In the same vein, the President’s Department held various exchange programmes with other Western Intelligence Services among them CIA, BND (Germany Intelligence) and M1634.

Second, the role of Solomon Mujuru and the former ZANLA guerilla army in sustaining both the

military-security factor that underpins the “national security” axis and the ideological rhetoric (of

the liberation struggle) which seeks to legitimize it ad nauseam. Solomon Mujuru (nom de

guerre, Rex Nhongo) had been instrumental in having Robert Mugabe accepted by the ZANLA

guerillas as head of ZANU, after almost two years (1975-1976) of virtual “house arrest”35

(together with Edgar Tekere) in Quelimane, some 1 547 km from Maputo. Not only Samora

Machel and other Frontline leaders like Julius Nyerere and Kenneth Kaunda, but also the guerilla

leaders themselves36, deemed Robert Mugabe unsuitable and unacceptable as leader of ZANU

and ZANLA during those days. But Mujuru made it his objective to have Mugabe gradually

accepted as head of ZANU: he kept contact with Mugabe and Tekere, by driving under the

stealth of night to Quelimane and on many occasions during that period, a journey that would

take 20 hours, to and from37; and it was through the consultation that the two nationalists were

kept abreast about the war effort, including, presumably, the balance of forces among and

between the guerillas themselves, until the circumstances for their arrival in Maputo and

subsequent participation in the Geneva Conference on Zimbabwe in October 1976, with Mugabe

now de facto head of ZANU, a position to be confirmed at Chimoio, Mozambique, in 1977

Reference has already been made to Josiah Tongogara’s pre-eminence as Chief of Defence and

Security in ZANLA, and the extent to which these functions by nature rendered the national

liberation movement virtually subservient to the military-security factor. No doubt, the last phase

of the struggle, 1977 to 1980, would have been one characterized by a tension, albeit a benign

one, between Tongogara and Mugabe38. But Mujuru would have quietly mediated throughout,

34 Sekeramyi speaks on security chiefs http://www.herald.co.zw/sekeramayi-speaks-on-security-chiefs/ 24-04-2013

35 See, for example: Edgar Tekere, ibid; Wilfred Mhanda, Dzino: Memories of a Freedom Fighter. Weaver Press, 2011

36 Wilfred Mhanda, ibid37 Personal interactions with Solomon Mujuru over the years since 1978 to the time of his death 38 Tekere, ibid

18

until he succeeded (as Chief of Defence and Security) Tongogara with the latter’s untimely death

on 26 December 1979, on the eve of independence. Throughout the 3 months ceasefire period

that preceded independence in April 1980, during the transition that saw the three armies

(Rhodesia, ZANLA and ZIPRA) integrated into the Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA), and even

upto the 2008 elections when their relations deteriorated alarmingly, Solomon Mujuru remained

both Robert Mugabe’s indispensable source of strength for the power base that he wields to this

day, and the anchor on the basis of which the ZANLA military-security factor was sustained and

developed as an integral component of the securocrat state. Together with Josiah Tungamirai and

Vitalis Zvinavashe, Solomon Mujuru had established a strong ZANLA chore within the

Zimbabwean defence and security forces; and all three, in conjunction with those of their ZANU

who were in the first Cabinet at independence, sought to ensure that the legacy of the national

liberation struggle would continue to inveigh, if not sustain, the state well into the 1990’s and, to

some extent, to this day.

It was also Solomon Mujuru who was instrumental in the promotion and appointment of the

second tier (in the hierarchy of ZANLA) of former guerillas that subsequently succeeded

himself, Josiah Tungamirai and Vitalis Zvinavashe: Constantine Chiwenga the Chief Defence

Forces (CDF), Parence Shiri as the Commander of the Air Force, Augustine Chihuri as

Commissioner of the Zimbabwe Republic Police, Paradzai Zimondi as Head of the Prisons and

Correctional Services and Happyton Bonyongwe as the Director-General of CIO39. Also, the

“militarization” – through the infusion of former ZANLA from the ZNA (e.g. Happyton

Bonyongwe in 2002) – of the CIO itself is attributed largely to Solomon Mujuru, as he sought to

reproduce the structure, so central to ZANLA during the liberation struggle, in which the

military-security complex developed into an integrated force under his invisible hand. Similarly,

the development of the War Veterans Association as part of the State apparatus; consisting of a

chore of former guerillas whose numbers are fast depleting naturally, a corterie of war

collaborators, former political prisoners and detainees, the war veterans have been integral to the

process through which the defence and security infrastructure has developed and strengthened.

As former or serving military and security functionaries, many of them would have been party to 39 Similarly, the appointment, in, of Philip Valerio Sibanda, a former senior ZIPRA commander as Commander of the Zimbabwe National Army, to succeed Chiwenga who had been elevated to CDF: Mujuru explained to me then that he was … to have him appointed so as to sustain some semblance of the ZANLA/ZIPRA bound in the military. It was his intervention, so as to sustain a semblance of the ZANLA/ZIPRA bond, that ensured Sibanda was appointed to a post otherwise earmarked for Parrence Shiri at that time.

19

the operations and massacres associated with Gukurahundi, and, likewise, the violence that

accompanied some aspects of the fast track land reform exercise at the turn of the century.

The war veterans have been until recently a major political weapon in the armory of ZANU PF

and its state since 2000, especially during all the elections since then, as their political and

combative role had almost become indispensable to the disputed outcomes of the poll in 2002,

2005 and especially 2008 and 2013. In the latter role in particular, the war veterans have been an

extension of the military-security establishment, under the virtual command and direction of the

defence and security chiefs at KGVI Headquarters, and remunerated accordingly, possibly out of

the possibly budget of the “Office pf the President and Cabinet”, an open-ended facility that

enjoys both a disproportionate chunk of the national budget and is beyond the scrutiny of audit

and parliament40. Not surprisingly, given its conflation with the (ZANU PF) party and state, the

war veterans association appears to be splintering and disintegrating as the force it has been over

the last three decades, under the weight of the current implosion afflicting the establishment.

Apparently, the war veterans is now split between the various factions within ZANU PF, while

another portion of it is angling towards the new Zimbabwe People First, led by Joice Mujuru, the

former Vice President who was purged, along with many others (including war veterans and

former military and security chiefs), in the political tsunami that has been raging through the

ruling party and its state. So far, the most significant component of the war veterans is that

which, over the last decade, has been associated with, if not also commandeered from, KGVI

Headquarters, the latter being also the euphemism for both the purported nerve centre of the

Zimbabwean state, and Constantine Chiwenga, the current Chief of the Defence Forces and, until

recently, the apparent power base for the besieged Emmerson Mnangagwa and such of his allies

as Christopher Mutsvangwa.

Clearly, with Solomon Mujuru’s decline in influence since 2008 and, ultimately his death in

August, 2011, the security-military complex has been centred around Mugabe himself and a

State House headed by his family members and loyalists and, combining within it, selected

elements from the army, military intelligence, the presidential guard and CIO. This has been the

weapon behind the Grace Mugabe tsunami over the period since late 2014. Conversely,

Solomon Mujuru;s exit from both the military-security complex over which he superintended till

40 For example, in the 2016 Budget, the Office of the President and Cabinet was allocated more than $205 million out of the national budget of $ 4 million.

20

2008, and the political sphere in which he was a senior member of the ZANU PF politburo, until

his death in August 2011, also marked the beginning of the end of Joice Mujuru’s fortunes in the

ZANU PF party/state.

However, it is significant that the second tier of the leadership of the guerilla struggle - at one

time, and for that matter, all of Solomon Mujuru’s products and protégés - have remained in

office as heads of, the defence and security services, to this day; and in all five cases –

Chiwenga, Shiri, Chihuri, Zimondi and Bonyongwe – well in excess of the two-term periods

specified under the constitution and the Defence Act. A fair indication of the contrived and,

perhaps, even tenuous bases, under which the liberation struggle mantra continues to inveigh the

securocrat state. Time will soon tell whether, given the vagaries of the party/state as evidenced in

the role of the First Lady and the accompanying succession battles around Mugabe, Zimbabwe is

fast entering the final stages of the securocrat state, as the current members of the military-

security complex leadership are either purged, retired or replaced. Certainly, whether by design

or coincidence, the Grace Mugabe tsunami appears intent on casting aside almost all of those

associated with the liberation struggle era, as a prerequisite for a presumed, if not also imagined,

dispensation. Whatever the outcome of the current succession debacle in the ZANU PF party and

state, herein lie the death throes of the latter, including even those, like the First Lady, who

appear now to have the upper hand; and the possibilities and prospects for political and economic

reform, as elaborated in the following sections.

(iii) The decline of cabinet rule and consequent relegation of socio-

economic policy imperatives

An obvious consequence of the over-emphasis and concentration on the security requirements of

a securocrat state has been the relegation of socio-economic imperatives, as the policy

framework itself became increasingly distorted, amorphous, inconsistent in import, and even

contradictory and uncoordinated. This was, in turn, an outcome of a process whereby the

collective responsibility so central to Cabinet rule became subservient to the priorities of

“national security.” In the 1980’s, the Cabinet system followed very closely the Westminister

model, and the inherited Rhodesian personnel remained in office long enough into post-

independence to ensure continuity of best practices in this regard. Besides, the cabinet which met

21

weekly every Tuesday, 8.45am to 12.45pm, with the requisite agenda and accompanying

documentation for the day, there were also several Cabinet Committees which fed systematically

into the main Cabinet. The most important of these was the Cabinet Committee on Development

which was chaired by the Minister of Finance and Economic Development, and constituted the

main crucible for economic and social policy throughout most of the 1980’s, and well into the

era of the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) in the early 1990’s.

In addition to the inputs from the various ministers and their ministries, these Cabinet

Committees were essential to the information and data collection necessary as a prerequisite for

the interaction that constitute policy formulation and, ultimately, the policy framework itself.

The latter is meant to reflect and reinforce the collective that is Cabinet rule, inform and

influence leadership within the state, and help to enhance the legitimacy of the latter and its

ideological superstructure that is public policy. This also constitutes the interface between the

Executive and Legislature, as the necessary process towards a public policy framework for the

nation.

References to three issues will suffice in illustrating the decline of both Cabinet rule and the

policy framework during the era of securocracy. First, the gradual devaluation of the principle of

“ Ministerial responsibility” and the consequent erosion of “collective responsibility” within a

Cabinet rule system that therefore became, from 2000 onwards, more a formality than a forum

for robust interaction towards informed policy decisions. As such, the President appointed his

Ministers less on the criterion of suitability and/or qualifications for the post, than as an exercise

in patronage and the expectation of unbridled loyalty to the President, Head of State and

Government and Commander-in-Chief of the Defence Forces. With the passage of time, critical

issues of policy were made less in Cabinet than between the President and the individual

Minister responsible for the sector: sometimes, after the Cabinet meeting itself, as Ministers

queue with their files outside the President’s office, to have their respective matter cleared, far

from the glare and scrutiny of collective responsibility; and, at other times, President and

Minister will meet as circumstances or expediency demands, to deliberate and decide upon a

policy issue that might have otherwise been rejected in Cabinet.

Against this background, the Cabinet Committees have become redundant, if not also itinerant

and irrelevant; and the Cabinet Committee on Development which, in the 1980’s certainly, met

22

monthly, now convenes annually. Likewise, the Cabinet meetings themselves: these, confides a

Minister, are occasions for tea-drinking; so irregular as to be inconsequential, especially when, in

the absence of the President, who is a regular traveler and is away for the festive holiday season

in the Far East for close to two months every year, there are no Cabinet meetings; and, in recent

years, there have been reports about the old man fall in asleep41 during meetings of an institution

that would otherwise be the apex of governance in any modern state.

Second, the Zimbabwean state would thus be described as being on “autopilot” were it not for

the primacy of “national security” within it, as reflected in the President’s diary on Monday, a

day before that of Cabinet. In a recent article and obviously, one designed to dispel both the

speculation about the President’s health and the widely-held public perception that the

government is “on autopilot”, Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet, Misheck Sibanda,

stated the following,. on the occasion of President Mugabe’s 92nd birthday:

He is alert, he knows what is happening. All those things (that he is no longer fit) are myths because he works – I can tell you. Sometimes he goes beyond nine o’clock or 10 o’clock…He is amazing… He is fit; that I can tell you because we work with him. He has a very very tight (weekly) programme. So, whoever says (he is not fit), we don’t know. (These are) totally, totally misplaced (notions). In fact, most of these people who say so are sometimes themselves not fit. He has stamina; that I can tell… You can therefore, see that when some people allege that Government is auto-piloting, you don’t dignify those comments with a reply because you will be wasting your time…42

Misheck Sibanda goes on to explain, albeit unintentionally and, perhaps, inadvertently, the

President’s obsession with “national security” matters43; and, as has already been intimated, these

have primacy over Cabinet and related socio-economic policy issues. Thus, the President’s

Monday – from morning till night – is devoted almost entirely to programmed meetings with the

security chiefs, individually or in collaboration with such of their counterparts in the state as

deemed necessary and expedient by the President. As one who has always been sensitive to the

view about him (and “my Zimbabwe”) in the international sphere, the President meets the

Permanent Secretary for Foreign Affairs as often as is necessary but also as part of the “security”

briefings on Mondays. But it is the office of the Secretary for Information, Media and

41 See, for example, Zimbabwe People First Interim President Joice Mujuru, BBC Africa Interview with Nomsa Maseko, 2 March, 2016. 42 Sunday Mail, “The Boss remains in full control”, 21 February, 2016.43 Ibid

23

Broadacsting Services that has increasingly become important during the period, since 2000,

when Mugabe and his party/state have been under siege, domestically and internationally. As

such, state media and the extent to which it has sought to project and sustain the securocrat state

and Mugabe in particular, as behovolent, developmental and forever indispensable, became

integral to the military-security complex; and, consequently, the current incumbent in the

Ministry, George Charamba, has had his post elevated from the conventional one of “Press

Secretary to Spokesperson”, a role reflecting as much the party/state conflation, in which case he

is spokesperson for a President of both party and state; as well as his functions as part of the

military-security complex; to control and monitor the state media as part of an increasingly self-

defeating propaganda war; accredit or bar foreign media, and wrestle with a private (and social)

media; which in recent years has become unbridled, if not also occasionally intemperate, in its

opposition to, and tirades against, Mugabe and his government.

Thirdly, the point to highlight herein is that both the structure and practice of governance in the

Zimbabwean state revolves around the military-security complex under the President, Head of

State and Government and Commander-in-Chief of the Defence Forces: in which Cabinet and

the Ministers therein become, in practice at least secondary to their Permanent Secretaries, as is

the case of Foreign Affairs and Information Media and Broadcasting Services, in relation to the

military-security complex; with the conventional relationship between Minister and Permanent

Secretary now distorted beyond recognition, except in as far both defer to a Cabinet Secretariat

that, at least in form and not content, is now responsible for all policy clusters; and, in reality, a

Cabinet Secretariat which is divested of its role as a managerial and policy coordinatory

framework for government, and reduced to a “secretariat” for the securocrat state. So, the Office

of the President and Cabinet has become an administrative complex representing the

centralization of power: consisting of the Chief Secretary (and not Secretary to Cabinet, in the

conventional sense of the post) to the President and Cabinet, whose attention is divided (as

reflected in the incumbent’s interview in the Sunday Mail on the occasion of President’s

interview on 21 February, 2016) between the secretariat functions of the military-security

meetings on Monday, and those of Cabinet on Tuesday, in addition to other matters attendant to

such an office; several permanent secretaries (and their deputies, including former diplomats and

other state functionaries), each responsible for this and that policy cluster of government and

thereby, albeit inadvertently, eroding the status and functions of Permanent Secretaries and their

24

line Ministries; and the result is not only a top-heavy and uncoordinated structure in which the

stresses and tensions in the party/state are reflected from time to time, but also around which

control and “national security” take precedence over economic and social policy imperatives.

This is reflected for example in the national budget of about $4 billion for 2016, in which 83% of

it is devoted to the salary bill and, therefore, by implication at least, only 17% to “development

issues”. Not to mention the predominance of the “national security” factor in the budgetary

allocations thereof: $205 million plus for the Office of the President and Cabinet; $337 million

plus for Defence; and $373 million plus for Home Affairs (which includes Police). With a total

of $916,706 or nearly $1 billion, these three allocations alone account for about 25% of the entire

national budget of $4 billion.

It is against this scenario that has emerged in the ZANU PF party/state lexicon, the term “one

centre of power”, as both a euphemism for, and defence of, Mugabe’s dictatorship.

Simultaneously, it describes a subverted bourgeois state model in which the legislature lies lame

and the judiciary rendered vulnerable to an executive now synonymous with securocracy itself.

This is a state in crisis: incapable of reform, neither politically nor economically; and, therefore,

pregnant with enormous contradictions now expressing themselves in the current political and

economic implosions. This is because political reform (e.g. implementation of the new

Constitution and electoral reform perse) would amount to “undressing the emperor” and undo

his empire; while economic reform is not possible as long as those elements of the state – e.g. a

bloated public sector of 530 000 (of which 300 000 is the military and security establishment) –

that sustain the empire remain intact and impervious to political reform.

IV The Role of Re-Engagement

By all accounts, this the final phase of the Mugabe era: beginning as it did with the 2008

elections in which he was defeated but afforded a life-line by the Government of National Unity

(GNU) which ended with the equally disputed elections of 2013; closing, as being witnessed

now, in the intersection between efforts towards the international re-engagement of Zimbabwe,

on the one hand and, on the other, the growing divisions in the ZANU PF party/state.

Engagement has been a persistent theme in the history of modern Zimbabwe, not only given the

latter’s colonial backdrop and the series of brokered negotiations which culminated in the

25

Lancaster House Agreement of 1979, but also because the country’s post-colonial situation itself

has developed against the background of pervasive, if not also intrusive, oversight of global

factors. For, Zimbabwe’s post-independent history also coincides with the period during which

Southern Africa as a whole experienced intense global scrutiny, with respect to the defeat of

apartheid in Namibia (1990) and South Africa (1994), and some of other the post-Cold War

developments which yielded peace in Angola and the demise of the Mobutu regime in what

became thereby the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Besides, “engagement” refer to both

the political and economic spheres of international relations: Zimbabwe is a member of the

United Nations and many other international organisations, and a subscriber to the International

Monetary Fund and World Bank, multilateral institutions with whom Zimbabwe has had heady

relations at times, but which nevertheless have maintained a subtle hegemonic overview in the

country’s economic life. In turn, this also explains why international capital in particular and

the western world in general, cannot – and will not – disengage permanently from a country who

economy is historically and inextricably part of its system.

Therefore, re-engagement here refers to the process whereby Zimbabwe’s relations with mainly

the western world is being restored after a period, since 2002, when the European Union, the

USA and other western countries imposed “sanctions” or “special measures” against it,

following the violence and acrimony attendant to the presidential elections that year; and in the

course of which period the country has been isolated internationally and subject to economic

tribulations. This includes the return of the multilateral institutions, led by the IMF which is

negotiating with Zimbabwe for resumption of business terminated in 1999, but on condition the

country clears its arrears, against a debt of about $10 billion owed to the IMF itself, the World

Bank, African Development Bank and several other bilateral lenders.

A backdrop to the current re-engagement process has been the facilitation exercise in which

President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, with the blessing of USA President George Bush and

British Prime Minister Tony Blair who visited Pretoria in the course of 20005, became the

“pointman” for the resolution of Zimbabwe crisis44. Purportedly under the aegis of SADC, but 44 It has to be recalled that Nigeria was regarded as a virtual member of the “frontline” states during the period of the liberation struggles in Southern Africa, as both a key resource factor in the OAU’s Liberation Committee and a major benefactor to the Liberation movements themselves. Therefore, it was not sympathy to find President Obasanjo so engaged in the Zimbabwe Crisis in 2002; he remained so engaged until Zimbabwe’s suspension from the Commonwealth at the latter’s meeting in Abuja in 2003, at the sole initiative of Mugabe himself, withdrew from the Commonwealth in 2003.

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initially with the support of Nigeria’s President Olesegun Obasanjo45, the facilitation process

began in the immediate aftermath of the disputed outcome of the 2002 presidential election in

Zimbabwe, the event which sparked the fall-out between the latter and the rest of the western

world, with the European Union and the US both imposing “sanctions” or “special measures”

against Mugabe’s government. In fact, it was the report of the Commonwealth election observer

mission to the 2002 elections that had given the latter a thumbs down verdict and prompted such

a drastic global reaction, including Zimbabwe’s breach with the Commonwealth itself in 2003.

The 2002 elections had been accompanied by political violence, largely a continuation of that

associated with the fast track land reform exercise that had begun in February, 2000 but

thereafter a central feature of the emergent securocrat state, as has already been outlined in the

foregoing.

As indicated in this collection of papers, particularly the Foreword by Dave Peterson and

Minister Patrick Chinamasa’s opening address to Conference on re-engagement seeks to give

impetus to an assumed (political and economic) reform agenda, but in which Zimbabwe’s re-

engagement with those it has had strained relations is but a part of that process. In his Foreword

to this collection Dave Peterson intimates the close relationship between the earlier NED/SAPES

Conferences in 2012 and 2013 on the one hand and, on the other, the expectation that the 2013

elections in Zimbabwe would hopefully yield a new dispensation in the nearly universally-held

prediction that Robert Mugabe would be defeated at those polls and the securocrat state dented at

its chore. That this failed to happen will have no doubt detracted from the momentum towards

re-engagement and the anticipated political and economic reform agenda that would accompany

such a process. But the 2014 conference, of which this collection is a record, sought to renew the

hope that all was not lost. Since then, the pace of the re-engagement has been both slow and

tentative, depending on how the respective factors in the Western bloc have been responding to

political and economic development in Zimbabwe. The U.SA has remained reticent throughout,

insisting on evidence of concrete political reforms and an improvement in the human rights

situation, before any possibility46 of full re-engagement with Zimbabwe. Likewise the (white)

members of the Commonwealth, namely Canada, New Zealand and Australia, as reflected in the

paper by Mathew Neuhaus herein. The position of the European Union has remained as flexible

45 “Consolidating Constitutional Reforms and Strengthening National Institutions”, Harare, 5-6 May 2014. 46

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as it has purported to be, as outlined by its ambassador Aldo Dell'Ariccia during the same

Conference in May 2014, even though the… would amount to a higher level of re-engagement

with Zimbabwe than hitherto the case47. In all these cases, the Itai Dzamara case (in which the

young man was abducted in March 2015 and has most likely been murdered in an alleged state-

sponsored sting) has been another reminder that the securocrat state is ready for neither reform

nor re-engagement.

Overall, however, there are currently negotiations between Zimbabwe and the International

Monetary Fund (IMF) towards the resumption of a Comprehensive Country Financing

Programme, but after the roll-out and conclusion of the Debt Arrears Clearance Strategy (which

Zimbabwe presented to her creditors in Lima, Peru at the IMF/World Bank Annual General

Meeting in September 2015). So far, Zimbabwe has successfully completed the Staff Monetary

Programme that was one of the key prerequisites to the re-engagement process: promote both

macro-economic stability and inclusion growth; address weaknesses in the financial sector;

improve the external position; and lay the foundations to build the capacity to repay the

outstanding debt. In turn, the Comprehensive Country Financing Programme has the following

as its main priorities: power generation, irrigation infrastructure, enhanced agricultural support,

industrialization and social protection48.

Notwithstanding the euphoria which accompanied the during which the Minister of Finance and

Economic Planning, Patrick Chinamassa, announced the significant benchmark in Zimbabwe’s

re-engagement with the IMF (and, by implication, the western world in general)49, doubts linger

as to sustainability of an economic reform programme without concrete political reform, or, to

put it more bluntly, while President Mugabe remains at the helm of the state Not to mention the

related theme, or the report that, so far as the IMF/World Bank and such Western countries as

Britain and a number of the EU member states are concerned, the current efforts towards

economic reform in Zimbabwe have been premised on the belief and/or expectation that Mugabe

was about to retire and hand over to Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa . That recent

political developments in the ZANU PF party/state have all but pre-empted such an outcome for

the time being, of course, exacerbates the pessimism about the possibility of economic reform. In 47 EU Document on Zimbabwe 48 See, Minister of Finance and Economic Development Patrick Chinamasa, “Closing Remarks,” Roundtable Discussion on Zimbabwe’s Vision and Policy Options for 2016 and Beyond, Harare, 10 March 2016. 49 Ibid

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the meantime, Patrick Chinamasa and Governor of the Reserve Bank John Mangudya, appear to

be afforded the latitude with which to pursue negotiations with the IMF, even though the

persistence of those pursuing the “indigenization” policy agenda50 continues to reflect an overall

policy regime characterized by inconsistencies and contradictions.

As indicated in the scenarios outlined in the following sections, it is likely that the re-

engagement process, as represented in part by the current efforts at economic reform, will soon

coincide with inevitable, if not also, imminent and immanent political upheavals, given the self-

immolation process at play within ZANU PF policy/state. If such characterization of the last

phase of Mugabe regime is correct, there will be required a greater level of engagement with the

Zimbabwe situation, on the part of the sub-region, Africa as a whole, and the global community

in general. The danger is that all these factors appear almost indifferent as Zimbabwe rolls to the

precipice.

Historical precedents with respect to political “transitions” in Zimbabwe would suggest that such

urgent and requisite engagement begins, as in the case of the Lancaster House talks of 1979, at

the global level, with London and Washington, quietly an diplomatically, encouraging key

factors in both SADC in particular and the African Union in general, towards supporting an

evolving National Plan of Action. As proposed herein, the Plan of Action should be contingent

one, in the event that the political and economic situation in Zimbabwe implodes and deteriorates

to levels that give rise to violence and bloodshed. Therefore, the contingent Plan should be a

requisite is a thereby pre-empt a possible violent and bloody end to the securocrat state. It

consists of three interrelated processes:

(i)Facilitation Team

On the basis of appropriate diplomatic consultations between key SADC, AU and global factors,

there should be found an individual, or a team of no more than 3 persons, who can, at an

appropriate moment within the coming weeks, months or years, engage President Mugabe (and

the First Lady) in confidence, highlighting both the crisis and potential for violence, and thereby

also offer the option of safe passage for him, his family and close associates. The main objective

of such a closely guarded initiative would be two-fold: to pre-empt or minimize the possible

violent and bloody confrontation between the factions in ZANU PF party/state in the first 50 Zhuwawo

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instance, or the kind of mass uprisings that might accompany such an end of the regime; and to

facilitate and kick start the next process, as outlined in (ii) below.

(ii) The National Transitional Authority (NTA) and its Truth and Reconciliation

Commission

The NTA should be composed of about 10 persons, all of whom recognised for both non-

partisanship and technocratic backgrounds, and led from among them by a prominent citizen of

unquestioned stature, dignity and integrity. As such, no member of the NTA should harbour

political ambitions or seek office in government after the tenure of the NTA. The role of the

NTA would be to govern the country until the next elections, to be held only after the requisite

and full implementation of the National Constitution (which will also need the necessary

amendments such as those provisions left hanging or denying the vote to Zimbabweans in the

diaspora), electoral reform, and the kind of economic reforms as outlined in (iii) below.

A truth and Reconciliation Commission will need to be instituted under the NTA, to probe the

atrocities of the post-independence period, cause the perpetrators to confess and be pardoned or

punished, as the case may be; and to provide the agency through which the nation can heal after

a tumultuous post-independence period.

(iii) Economic Reforms

These should be effected through the NTA and include debt relief and an internationally-

sponsored Economic Recovery Programme the main elements of which will be: the

establishment of a Recovery and Development Fund, designed to restore agricultural, industrial,

infrastructural and energy development; help the country to recover - including repatriation of -

resources plundered through corruption; and to assist through attractive loans and joint ventures

with foreign companies and investors,, those in the diaspora who wish to return home as

investors and entrepreneurs in the various sectors of the economy.

V. Possible Scenarios in the Current Debate

Accordingly, the following appear to be the likely scenarios as the securocrat state becomes

undone on the back of the current political and economic dynamics in Zimbabwe.

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A.The Election Route to 2018

Given current circumstances, this is the least likely scenario. Factionalism within ZANU PF

party/state is so fast approaching alarming proportions that it is difficult to imagine it (ZANU PF

party/state) surviving into 2018, let alone win the poll in such a state. Worse still, if Mugabe

were, for natural incapacity, reasons, to depart from the scene, with the possible scenario

outlined below in (B)

B. The Departure of Mugabe from the Political Scene before 2018

Derek Matyzak51 has provided a rare if not most comprehensive insight into the (constitutional)

process attendant in the event of the death, retirement or incapacity of the President, as presently

governed by transitional provisions (effective until 2023) set out in paragraph 14 of the Sixth

Schedule of Zimbabwe’s Constitution. These are to be read with Section 26(2) of the ZANU PF

Party Constitution.

1. Immediately upon the death, retirement or incapacity of the President Mugabe, the

person who was last nominated to act as President, acts as President until a new

president is appointed. The acting president may not, in this period, unilaterally exercise

certain presidential powers such as the deployment of the army, entry into international

treaties, make Ministerial appointments or reassign Ministerial duties.

2. In terms of section 26(2) of the ZANU PF Party Constitution, at the instance of the

Party’s Secretary for Administration (currently Ignatius Chombo), an extra-ordinary

Congress must be convened to nominate a person to replace President Mugabe.

3. The name of the person determined by the extra-ordinary Congress must be submitted

to the Speaker of Parliament (currently Jacob Mudenda) within 90 days of President

Mugabe’s death, retirement or incapacity.

4. The nominee must be sworn into office as President by the Chief Justice (currently

Godfrey Chidyausiku) within 48 hours after the Speaker has been notified of the

nominee.

51 Derek Matyzak, “The Easy Guide to Transition in Zimbabwe”, Succession and the ZANU PF Body Politic, Sapes Books, 2016.

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5. The nominee assumes office and the person acting as President ceases to do so at the

moment of the swearing in.

6. It is implicit that the new President only serves the remainder of the President Mugabe’s

term of office, which expires with the formation of a new Parliament, after the next

general election, which unless, Parliament is earlier dissolved, will be no later than July

2018.

Part B:

Since incapacity is a basis upon which the above provisions may be implemented, it may be of

interest to note how a declaration of incapacity may come about. “Incapacity” is one of several

grounds upon which a President may be removed from office. The procedure is as follows:

1. The Senate and the National Assembly, sitting together, must resolve that the question of

the President’s incapacity must be investigated.

2. A resolution to this effect must be passed by the affirmative vote of 50% of the total

membership of both Houses, and not merely of those present.

3. The Parliamentary Committee on Standing Rules and orders must then appoint a joint

committee to investigate the question of incapacity.

4. The joint committee comprises nine members drawn from both Houses and who reflect

the political composition of Parliament.

5. If the joint committee recommends that the president be removed on account of incapacity

and two-thirds of the total membership (not those sitting and present) accept the

recommendation, then the President ceases to hold office from that moment, and the

procedures set out in Part A apply

So, if President Mugabe were to die or retire due to incapacitation before 2018 but in the midst

of the current internecine conflict and factionalism in the ZANU PF party/state, there are the

possible sub-set scenarios:

(a)The Acting President ignores the Constitutional provisions of both State and party,

engage as much of the military-security complex around him, in pursuit of the interests of his

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faction ad at the unimaginable expense of the other factions, including the First Lady and the

family. Given the current balance of forces, Emmerson Mnangagwa and his “Lacoste” faction

have an edge over the rest and is likely to have 9actual or forced) precedence over Vice President

Mphoko, particularly given his alliance with the Chief of the Defence Forces, Constantine

Chiwenga, and some of (though not all, by any account) of the key elements in the military-

security complex. But given his shallow political base in both ZANU PF party/state power

matrix and the country at large, Emmerson Mnangagwa will seek to avoid the possibility of a

Special Congress (at which the party is to elect the person whose name goes to the speaker of

Parliament, as the one to serve as President for the remaining period before the 2018 elections)

or, at least, try to manipulate the attendance therein so as to maximise his prospects and emerge

the President.

The feasibility and sustainability of such a subset scenario depends of course, on Emmerson

Mnangagwa’s capacity to weather the storm of possible national and international outrage at the

blatant breach of constitutional provisions that should guide the transition, quite apart from the

reaction of the First Lady and her G40 group as outlined in subset (b) below.

(b) Factionalism Flares up in Opposition to the Acting President

Initially, the First Lady and G40 will try to manage the transition: including the possibility of

ensuring that Vice President Mphoko is found being the last to have been Acting President: insist

on a rigorous application of the state and party constitutions with respect to the transitional

arrangements; ensure that herself, or a chosen one from the G40, is the one elected at the Special

Congress and, therefore, emerges the President upto 2018; and then mobilise not only the party

faithful, but also the rest of the country – including the emergent Zimbabwe People First –

against Emmerson Mnangagwa, Constantine Chiwenga, Christopher Mutsvangwa and his war

veterans group; and then ensure, if that will not have already been done by the time Mugabe dies

or forced to retire, that the military-security is sufficiently sanitized and a new leadership therein

created.

Again, the feasibility or sustainability of such a sub-set scenario depends on the extent to which

the “Lacoste” faction is sufficiently neutralized and the political forces across the country

mobilized in support of the First Lady and her groups and agenda. Given the current balance of

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forces in both the ZANU PF party/state and the country at large, the level of factionalism in the

former will escalate to frightening and possible internecine violence and bloodshed, while the

opposition movements will capitalize on such an opportunity to mobilise and bring down the

ZANU PF party/state.

(c) Roll-out of the Contingency Plan

The factionalism alone that will accompany the transitional process following the President’s

death or forced retirement could be also serious as to cause an indeterminate conclusion to the

succession, as respective factions produce names of persons to be submitted to the speaker

within the 90 days specified in the national constitution. This will be enough to cause an

unimaginable crisis, untold acrimony within the ZANU PF party/state itself, and between the

latter and the various political parties and actors in Zimbabwe, and therefore, the potential for

violence and bloodshed. Yet this is also the kind of tension and anxiety already building up in the

country, as the factionalism and factiousness within and around the ZANU PF party/state

impacts negatively on an economy already in distress, and as the negotiations with the IMF and

other multi-lateral and bilateral organizations grind to a halt under the weight of political

uncertainty, lack of coherent leadership and virtual collapse of the economy.

As it is, the country is already in crisis, and it would be ideal to begin rolling out the Contingent

Plan, initially through the requisite consultations between a group of concerned but non-partisan

persons, and selected regional and global actors; and, subsequently, through a mechanism that

includes provisions for the safe passage of the President, his family and, those of his associates in

the ZANU PF party/state, whose absence from the scene would facilitate the transition or them

physical and mortal danger. As has already been explained, the National Transitional Authority

(NTA) would be established and facilitated in its functions on the back of the implementation of

the Contingency Plan.

VI Conclusion: From Securocracy to Democracy: Towards a Reform Agenda

Reference has already been made to the structure and functions of the National Transitional

Authority (NTA). Here is to highlight the main elements of the Reform Agenda with which it

will necessarily have to be seized, in active consultation with all stakeholders in Zimbabwean

society, including civic groups, political parties and representatives of people in the diaspora.

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These are the basic pre-requisites for the next elections and the Reform Agenda to which all

Zimbabweans will have subscribed, to ensure both that political and economic pathologies of the

Mugabe era are dead and buried, and a new Zimbabwean born and developed. Hence the Reform

Agenda should include the following:

1.Political Reforms: Which include the full implementation of the (new) Constitution of

Zimbabwe and if possible the amendment of such provisions as were left either tentative

because of lack of consensus between the political parties to the constitution-making exercises,

or, as in the case of the vote for Zimbabweans in the diaspora, sacrificed on the altar of political

expediency.

- Reform of all national Institutions, to ensure the requisite separation of party and state

(in addition to the necessity of separation of powers) so as render them truly non-partisan,

in adherence with the Constitution.

- Reform of the electoral process, to include, inter alia, ensuring that the Zimbabwean

Electoral Commission (ZEC) is completely independent of both political influence and

the military-security complex.

- National Consensus on Critical national policies, as broadly specified in the

Constitution in Chapter Two (National Objectives) and in Chapter Four (Declaration of

Rights) and thereby ensuring that the broad policy framework represents the wishes and

aspirations of the citizens of Zimbabwe.

2. Economic Reform which should be premised on the following macro-economic

fundamentals and policy consistency:

- Debt Clearance or, better still, Debt Relief as outlined under

- A Comprehensive Land Policy that restores the principle of property rights while

affording tenure to all landholders, whether freehold, leasehold or Communal

- Revival of the Productive Sectors through appropriate policy interventions and

incentives designed to ensure food security, create jobs, institute social policy/

welfare programmes for the economically vulnerable, and attract investment – and

joint ventures between Zimbabweans and foreign companies/ investors – into

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agriculture, the manufacturing sectors and in scientific and technological

development.

The hope here is that all this will create the conditions and environment through which to

both restore progressive nationalism in Zimbabwe and thereby reconstruct Zimbabwe beyond

the current provincializition system that coincides with ethnic or colonial nomenclature, as is

the case in such neigbouring countries a Tanzania, Zambia, Botswana or even South Africa

Equally important, the mew Zimbabwe must be an agency for generational change in

politics, as the gateways through which the country and the nation can transit to the twenty

first century.

This Article is the “Introduction” to a book to be published (April 2016) under the tittle

Zimbabwe: The Challenges of Democratization and Economic Recovery, Edited by Ibbo

Mandaza, Sapes Trust

Ibbo Mandaza is Zimbabwean academic author and publisher. He is currently the convener of

the Sapes Trust’s Policy Dialogue Forum.

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