Sara Rich Dorman's study of Zimbabwe seeks to understand how the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU PF, often abbreviated as ZANU), led by Robert Mugabe until November 2017, has managed to stay in power since 1980, despite significant political opposition and severe economic crises. To summarize: in Chapter One, Dorman focuses primarily on domestic politics, arguing that the authoritarian regime has depended upon three sources of state power: material, coercive, and discursive, with the salience of each varying over time. Rooting her analysis in colonialism and the liberation war in Chapter Two, Dorman traces patterns in the state's relationship with political parties, non-government organizations, churches, students, and trade unions.
Chapter Three (1980–1987) shows how ZANU incorporated new groups into its liberation war coalition, which it demobilized or selectively integrated into the state apparatus. This politics of inclusion ‘typified ZANU's approach to nation and party-building’, although ZAPU (Zimbabwe African Peoples Union), a significant political party opponent, was ‘summarily crushed and incorporated by force’ (33–4). ZANU legitimated its rule with a dominant discourse of unity, nationalism, and development, and through successful development.
Dorman describes an ongoing emphasis on a politics of inclusion in Chapter Four (1987–1997), with the regime again incorporating new groups (for example, black businesses and the war veterans) to preempt them from becoming autonomous opposition groups. Regime coercion was used against a broader set of social groups, including the trade union federation. In 1997, Mugabe awarded war veterans huge compensation payments for their war services. Trade unions and others successfully protested against increased taxes, and the unbudgeted payments made by the state thus resulted in an economic tailspin.
Chapter Five (1998–2000) charts contestations around the writing of a new constitution between the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) (a new association including churches, NGOs, and trade unions) and the government-formed commission, as well as struggles within each side. Faced with a growing economic crisis and loss of control of public discourse, ZANU PF lost support to the NCA and suffered its first electoral defeat in the referendum on its draft constitution.
The contested elections between ZANU PF and the newly formed Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and its civil society supporters is the subject of Chapter Six (2000–2008). ZANU PF mobilized its supporters to occupy white-owned land, which it distributed to win support. The party's appeals to ‘patriotic history’, which demonized local whites and the opposition as stooges of the British, were ineffective when most Zimbabweans faced hyperinflation and other economic crises. Consequently, ZANU PF used state coercion and state electoral institutions to ensure electoral victories, particularly in 2000, 2002, and the run-off presidential election of 2008.
Chapter Seven (2008–2014) examines the coalition government that was set up after the election of 2008, a contest that Mugabe won but which was widely viewed as illegitimate. ZANU PF used its control of almost all state institutions to rebuild support, in part by hijacking diamond revenue to benefit the security services and ruling elite. It continued to rely on a patriotic history discourse. The coalition government ended hyperinflation and produced a new draft constitution, which was approved in a referendum, but it did not introduce electoral reforms. As a result, Mugabe and ZANU PF won the 2013 presidential and parliamentary election using state electoral institutions for their benefit, as in the past. The final chapter revisits the key themes: demobilization, nationalism, post-liberation politics, and the struggle to capture the state and represent the nation.
While welcoming Dorman's interpretative approach, I was not convinced by her characterization of the periods of ZANU PF's rule. I would not portray ZANU PF's use of state coercion against ZAPU supporters (an estimated 20,000 killed) as an ‘important exception’ to an era of inclusive politics (1980–1987), but rather as a period defined by exclusionary politics (45). To label that period as one where ‘the politics of inclusion’ dominated, and the 2000–2008 years that followed as characterized by ‘the politics of exclusion’ misses the profound continuities (which Dorman acknowledges) in how the regime mobilized state institutions and social groups to defeat opposition with violence. Similarly, the 1980–1987 period following the first government of national unity (GNU) was as much ‘winner takes all’ as was the 2008–2014 period, which Dorman labels as such, following the 2008 GNU.
Dorman also emphasizes that from 1980 to 1987, veterans were ignored and forgotten, and ZANU's liberation discourse was subdued. She argues that veterans were only incorporated into the party with the 1997 payments, and that the liberation discourse became widely salient from 2000. But I have previously highlighted the incorporation of ZANU's guerrillas as a privileged group from 1980 to 1987 and the centrality of ZANU's liberation war discourse to the political landscape since 1980. In short, Dorman's periodization conceals the remarkable continuities in ZANU PF's strategies of rule, which have persisted through changing contexts. Finally, the periodization of ZANU PF's rule should not blind us to the likely cumulative impact of decades of regime electoral violence, intimidation, and manipulation on voters’ behavior, which necessarily complicates any straightforward understanding of party ‘support’ and voting data. (At the level of granular detail, the book has a number of careless errors – particularly dates of legislation.)
The broad interpretive issues that Dorman tackles should nonetheless encourage debate. Dorman asks a critically important question about the durability of authoritarian rule in Zimbabwe and the failure of democratization, despite economic crises and organized political opposition. Dorman's conception of the cultural, economic, and coercive forms of state power is extremely valuable, as is her historical approach that focuses on processes of change and continuity. The book deserves wide use in courses on African politics, authoritarian regimes, and democratization.
