Points of Entry into Zimbabwean Post-Independence Politics: Mugabe, the Military or the Social Subalterns

The question of how the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU(PF)) has held onto power has been the focus of some of the most exciting scholarly works on post-independence Zimbabwe, aside from those on the land question. Stephen Chan’s Mugabe: A Life of Power and Violence, Godfrey Maringira’s Soldiers and the State in Zimbabwe and the jointly edited volume by Erasmus Masitera and Fortune Sibanda, Power in Contemporary Zimbabwe, add to this tradition in different ways. While Stephen Chan’s contention perpetuates the narrative that ZANU(PF)’s fortunes have, over the years, been intricately tied to Robert Mugabe, Godfrey Maringira challenges the current political thinking that ZANU(PF) and the military’s relationship is symbiotic. Instead, Maringira argues that ZANU(PF)’s relations with the armed forces, as with other social and political actors in Zimbabwe, is exploitative. Opting for a radically different approach, Masitera and Sibanda’s collection cogently situates power and its contestations within either ‘subaltern studies’ or cultural theory. In this review essay, I will discuss these books separately. With a great deal of scholarly and non-scholarly material having been dedicated to Mugabe over the last 30 years, it is difficult to think of profound new insights on his politics. Indeed, any new publication risks repeating what has been said before. Chan attempts to evade this difficulty by demonstrating that the military coup that toppled Mugabe from power in 2017 provides new and exciting material that warrants another book. But rather than writing a new biography, he simply adds a chapter at the end of his 2003 edition, Mugabe: A Life of Power and Violence. He does not revisit arguments made in this edition, nor does he address criticisms of the first edition. In other words, the latest Mugabe: A Life of Power and Violence should not be seen to revise his original argument, but rather as a reissued version of the 2003 book, with an additional essay included.