Why Mugabe remains in power 37 years after independence

It is no mistake that the ongoing process of land repossession and reform is characterised as the Third Chimurenga, and it is no accident that such vehement western critique has been levelled at state policy (genuine or otherwise) seeking to regain land sovereignty.

ZANU-PF is the party of the revolution, and the president continues to instrumentalise that legitimate legacy to self-confer a lifetime mandate, one not contestable by election defeat.

As Simukai Chigudu has previously written, the president uses a narrative of “patriotic history” to legitimise himself and the party as “an ongoing vanguard of Zimbabwean liberation against an external and [neo-]colonial threat as represented by the West.”

The party’s refusal to concede to Morgan Tsvangirai in 2008 stems from a national identity-narrative of opposition to the West’s attempt to once again usurp native self-determination.

Tsvangirai was supported by the western states, most notably the United Kingdom, and the latter is both legitimately and exaggeratedly the targets of political demonisations.

Because independence was achieved less than forty years ago, memories of subjugation under colonial governance are still visceral for many people.

Beyond memories from lived experience, there has been an intergenerational transfer of memory to those born after the fall of white rule.

There are, in a number of ways, some direct tensions between more “abstracted” understandings of freedom and universal human rights (due, in some part, to resentments around institutions perceived as “Western impositions”) and the clearer “freedom” that is independence from colonial rule and the opportunity to access resources that would be otherwise rendered inaccessible by the Rhodesian government.

This is not to imply Zimbabwean people do not understand or desire political transparency or press freedom or any other political entitlements or rights that may be characterised as “Western,” but rather to attempt to parse through the relationship many people have with the relatively young postcolonial institutions.

Another component to this lack of sustained political mobilisations is an erosion of class consciousness resulting from high levels of formal sector unemployment, most notably an absence of formalised industrial labour forces.

With much of the country participating in extra-state informal labour, many people cannot sacrifice valuable work time for political activity (compensated participation in political activity, however, is another story).

And with the emigration of a potential vanguard professional/middle class out of Zimbabwe, many of the calls for or deeply sustained conversations around regime change exist within the diaspora, which is inadequate for meaningful internal mobilisation.

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