SOUTH AFRICA — Zimbabwe is a landlocked country located in southern Africa with an area covering 150,872 sq mi (390,757 sq km) and a population estimated at about 13 million.

 

A British colony from the end of the 19th century to 1965 and then a rebel state ruled by a white minority (1965-1980), Zimbabwe became independent in 1980 under the Lancaster House Agreement that provided a constitutional framework for a legally independent and democratically governed republican system. 

 

 

Zimbabwe continues to be governed under the 1979 constitution as amended. 

 

One of the founding principles of the new nation was the universality and indivisibility of human rights regardless of race, gender, religion, ideology and tribe whether they concerned civil and political issues or the right to freedom from hunger and access to social and economic justice. 

 

The terms such as nation, country, land, and state often are used interchangeably to describe a particular area or territory or for the government of the day. 

 

The concepts of nation and nationality have much in common with ethnic and ethnicity but Zimbabwe as a nation state expresses a legitimised institutional decision making structure governing the affairs of the Shona tribe who make up about two-thirds of the population and the Ndebele, Chewa and people of European ancestry who make up the balance. 

 

Post colonial Zimbabwe is internationally recognised as a sovereign state with sovereignty vested in citizens who should ordinarily have the ultimate say in who becomes the President to represent their interests. 

In the elections of April1980, ZANU led by Robert Mugabe won by a comfortable margin making him the country’s first black prime minister of the Republic of Zimbabwe on April 18, 1980. 

 

He took over from Lord Soames who had temporarily assumed control of Rhodesia as part of the transitional arrangements agreed at the Lancaster House conference.

Over 25,000 people had been killed in the struggle for independence whose main objective was to create a unitary state.  The policy of reconciliation espoused by the post colonial state was the most visible attempt to build a new nation founded on principles of justice, liberty and equality.

Everyone thought that a new Zimbabwe was born with values deeply rooted in the belief that the future belonged to all irrespective of their colour, tribe or religion but a shared history and common destiny. 

Zimbabwe was born out of a protracted struggle and represented the collective desire to build a new civilization of laws and a framework governing the relationship between citizens, citizens and the state, and finally between the state and other states. 

The nation-state became the dominant form post colonial societal organisation and the hope was that citizens and their leaders would invest in the new project to build a new future less blinded by race and prejudice.

A government of national unity was then put in place by no other than Prime Minister Mugabe on the firm belief that Zimbabwe belonged to all who believed in it. 

It did not take long to expose how fragile and perishable the founding principles of the new nation were.

In 1982, Mugabe removed his liberation struggle colleague, Nkomo, from his cabinet and using the state machinery launched a campaign against the so-called dissidents in the Matabeleland region, an area in which Nkomo’s ZAPU was politically strong. 

The founding philosophy of the post colonial state’s leadership was that a one party state led by one leader was the most desirable political arrangement for nation building. 

Political pluralism was frowned upon as was popular participation in political activities.
The state was transformed from a people’s project to a politicised institution dominated by one leader who was presumed to be a repository of wisdom and intelligence. 

After the ousting of ZAPU from the post colonial state, the following five years were characterised by state administered political repression, human-rights abuses, mass murders, and property burnings until Nkomo whose party was in a politically induced disarray relented by finally agreeing to a peace accord in 1987 that resulted in ZAPU's merger (1988) into the ZANU-PF and Nkomo's return to the government.

Mugabe was then elected president in 1987 and re-elected in 1990, 1996, and 2002 and controversially in June 2008.   

One of the founding principles of the new nation was the dictatorship of the proletariat and by framing the anti-colonial struggle as a fight against capitalism; the post colonial leadership became the founding fathers of trade unionism and by default became the spokespersons for the working people as well as the majority poor. 

President Mugabe was and remains committed to Marxist principles and power sharing has never been applicable in any socialist/communist leaning society. 

Absolute power in the hands of the revolutionaries is the operative ideology and the notion of two leaders at the top of a national democratic revolution is unheard of.

President Mugabe reluctantly gave up his plans for a one-party state in 1991 after skilfully co-opting ZAPU leadership in the command centre as junior partners. 

The sustainability of the post colonial economic model was always problematic not only because of the limited revenue base available to the new state with unlimited ambitions but the faulty founding values and principles that informed the construction of a post colonial order. 

The state became the centre of gravity and by 1987 it was obvious that the economy could no longer afford the social investments that the new nation had initiated and hence the need for an economic structural adjustment program in the early 1990s. 

The economic and social challenges that have confronted the post colonial state were predictable and the resultant nationalism and false patriotism was inevitable in order to explain away the failures. 

Can the post colonial state be divisible?  What are the implications of two centres of power on social cohesion, economic progress and nation building?  Zimbabwe finds itself with a SADC-mediated power sharing arrangement in which it will have two centres of power occupied by individuals who have strong personalities and whose world view may not be reconcilable. 

The notion that a progressive nation like any organisation requires leadership clarity to advance its cause is a key foundational principle and yet as President Mbeki is due in Harare for yet another attempt to get Tsvangirai to append his signature to an arrangement that may throw the country into a confusion unless the framework is revisited, there appears to be no change of mind on the part of President Mugabe on the kind of power configuration that will allow the country to move forward.

 

President Mugabe starts from the premise that he is the one leader that Zimbabwe cannot do without and, therefore, any power sharing arrangement must be framed around this basic principle. 

It is already evident that President Mugabe has used the inter-party negotiations to regain credibility among his SADC and AU colleagues to the extent that he is now confident that he can form a government without the involvement of Tsvangirai.

Notwithstanding, it cannot be denied that two centres of power now exist in post colonial Zimbabwe and even President Mugabe would understand the absurdity of him ignoring the historic decision by Zimbabweans on 29 March to change the language of political discourse from one Zimbabwe, one nation, one leader (whose name is Mugabe) to one Zimbabwe, one nation, two leaders (one with popular support and the other with state support).

 

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