Simukai Chigudu's book The Political Life of an Epidemic: Cholera, Crisis and Citizenship in Zimbabwe offers important lessons for all societies living through an epidemic and its aftermath. It draws attention to an epidemic's origins, the patterns of its unfolding, its social impact, official and communal responses to it, and its aftermath in civic and public life. Retelling the story of Zimbabwe's deadly 2008–9 cholera outbreak as a long political process, Chigudu explains how ‘cholera is a microorganism, a disease, an epidemic, an illness, a public health crisis, a social disaster and a political scandal at the same time’ (22).

Chigudu traces the devastating effects of the cholera outbreak to racist urban planning that segregated white settlers and black native populations. Africans were considered ‘impermanent to the city’, leading to a lasting legacy of slum removal and demolition (62). In 2005, the Zimbabwe government demolished the homes of thousands of people, displacing them with nowhere else to go. In 2008, the country had an electoral crisis. The economy was in shambles. The state could not pay doctors, and the health-care system was failing. Poor populations were forced into townships that lacked proper sanitation, malnutrition was severe, and people lived in overcrowded housing or temporary settlements. These conditions enabled the emergence of the cholera outbreak.

Chigudu is clear: Political decisions – during colonial rule and after independence – ‘converged to create a ‘perfect storm’ for a ruinous cholera outbreak’ (86). The situation was quickly politicised. The government refused to acknowledge the scope of the crisis for the first three months. Opposition parties and the foreign media blamed Zimbabwe's ‘failed state’. International claims of ‘state failure’ were pitted against nationalist claims of ‘state sovereignty’.

The strength of Chigudu's theory lies in the claim that the epidemic has multiple ontologies, which contributes to contentious politics. In other words, various actors experienced the epidemic differently, contributing to diverse behavioural responses, political subjectivities and memories. For example, politicians wanted to command the narrative and shape public perceptions. In response, the Church, international and local NGOs and ordinary people stepped in to fight the disease. Chigudu suggests that a ‘salvation agenda’ based on deliverance from harm, ruin and loss stepped into the void. Doctors, preachers, activists became humanitarians. But this was not without infighting and internal politics. Chapter 4, which I found to be the most compelling because of its focus on everyday politics, provides fascinating accounts of how people interpreted the outbreak, from a politics of disposability filled with stories of violence and suffering to a politics of expectation where citizens asserted their claims to citizenship, to a politics of adaptation based on negotiation and survival.

Zimbabwe's cholera outbreak was a man-made disaster. And from a vantage point of a decade later, Chigudu concludes, ‘Cholera was not a “tipping point” in the political life of Zimbabwean society, as the epidemic has left its underlying determinants intact’ (195). The Political Life of an Epidemic draws attention to the importance of politics at every step of an epidemic's trajectory, from the emergence to the spread to the aftermath. Politics limits the potential for social and economic transformation. This is also where Chigudu could have done more. While the book does an excellent job describing the political life of Zimbabwe's cholera outbreak, it did not offer much interpretation and explanation as to why the political actors responded in the ways that they did. I want to know more about the conditions under which political actors respond to the needs of the public, and when they narrowly serve their self-interests. In addition, it is still unclear what would have been necessary for societal transformation to occur.

The Political Life of an Epidemic teaches an important lesson amidst the global COVID-19 pandemic: the current virus will have its own political life. Chigudu teaches us that its trajectory will depend on the political choices of politicians, party activists and bureaucrats, as well as the collective actions of thousands of ordinary people.