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Is Zimbabwe Poised on a Liberal Path? The State and Prospects of the Parties

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2021

Masipula Sithole
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Extract

Lamenting the proliferation of factionalism in the Zimbabwe liberation movement during the 1970s, an observer once commented, “If you were to put two Zimbabweans on the moon and visited them the next day, you would find that they have formed three parties.” This observation was a criticism of splits and divisions that tended, some believed, to weaken the liberation movement.

Type
FOCUS: Toward a New African Political Order: African Perspectives on Democratization Processes, Regional Conflict Management
Information
African Issues , Volume 21 , Issue 1-2 , 1993 , pp. 35 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1993

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References

Notes

1. Day, John, International Nationalism: The Extra-Territorial Relations of Southern Rhodesian African Nationalists, London, Routledge, 1968 Google Scholar, makes the same observation.

2. The ethnic factor dominated in the factionalization of the Zimbabwe liberation movement, resulting in ZANU’s ZANLA army concentrating its efforts among the Shona regions, while ZAPU’s ZIPRA army concentrated in Matebeleland. See Sithole, Masipula, “Ethnicity and Factionalism in the Zimbabwe Nationalist Movement 1957-79,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, January 1980 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Ethnicity continued to be a salient factor after the liberation struggle.

3. Davidow, Jeff, A Peace in Southern Africa: The Lancaster House Conference on Rhodesia, Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1984 Google Scholar, and Stephen Stedman’s authoritative book, Peacemaking in Civil War: International Mediation in Zimbabwe, 1974-1980, Boulder, CO, Lynne Rienner, 1991 Google Scholar.

4. Gregory, Martin, “Zimbabwe 1980: Politicization through Armed Struggle and Election Mobilization,” Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, vol. 19, no. 1, March 1981 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. CAZ (Conservative Alliance of Zimbabwe) is formerly the Rhodesia Front, led by Ian Smith during the colonial days. It is now led by Gerald Smith, a commercial farmer, but it has lost most of the support it used to enjoy in the white community.

6. The early ZANU(PF)–PF-ZAPU was a Shona-Ndebele framework which pitted 20 percent Ndebele against 80 percent Shona. (Percent is of black population of the country.) In the present post-unity framework, because of Shona sub-ethnicity or subregionalism, the Ndebele cease to be the minority that they have been. At 20 percent, they are the second largest ethnic group to the Karanga, who constitute about 22 percent. Of note is the fact that no two sub-ethnic groups in Zimbabwe form a majority. At least three are needed.