5 - Employment programs for the demobilized

Summary

What became of the ex-combatants who demobilized? This chapter turns to this group's desires and efforts to fulfill them and how they fit (or did not) into the ruling party's agendas. The party sought to retain ex-combatant support and to build power and legitimacy by using ex-combatants in at least two ways. It deployed ex-combatants into cooperatives that symbolized economic transformation toward socialism, and it gave ex-combatants (chiefly ZANLA) privileged access to employment and training in the bureaucracy and private sector, both the preserve of its former Smith and Muzorewa enemies. It justified guerrilla privilege in terms of their war contribution. ZIPRA ex-combatants suffered the party's often violent wrath, experiencing difficulties in forming and sustaining cooperatives and obtaining employment or training where ZANU(PF) had control. Employed ZANLA ex-guerrillas used their positions of privilege to assert their authority and power over management and other workers. In the cooperatives, the ex-combatants were more adept at extracting and consuming resources than at using them productively. Ex-combatants justified their agendas with reference to their war contributions, often using violence and intimidation. The ruling party was both collaborator and antagonist as ZANLA ex-combatants sought privilege and power. Both ex-combatants and the party were skillful manipulators of NGOs.

Studies of demobilized ex-combatants in Zimbabwe tend to evaluate success in terms of subjective criteria. Some evaluate demobilization as a failure because it left a sizeable percentage of ex-combatants unemployed.