This article's focus is on how authoritarian politics, combined with economic mismanagement by the ruling Zimbabwean regime, has brought about the demise of an African middle class whose growth its own policies had initially fostered. Although this is scarcely an original line of argument, it is worth pursuing simply because Lipset (Reference Lipset1959) – alongside numerous other authors – suggests that the presence of a strong middle class within a country is supportive of democracy. In Zimbabwe, this issue has acquired added importance following the military's intervention into the political arena in 2017, forcing the retirement of Robert Mugabe from the presidency and replacing him with Emmerson Mnangagwa. Putatively promising ‘economic reform’, this initially implied something of an improving trajectory for the country's middle class.
The Zimbabwean middle class is viewed here as largely composed of people engaged in non-manual (notably professional and managerial) occupations, with associated status, located in middle-income bands, and with varying amounts of accumulated wealth.Footnote 1 In what follows, the analysis draws not only on extensive secondary literature but also on interviews conducted with middle-class individuals in Zimbabwe prior to the ousting of Mugabe.Footnote 2 Given the methodological problems posed by examining ‘middle-classness’, especially in African countries, the article's arguments are put forward as indicative rather than as definitive.
Beyond the colonial trajectory of Zimbabwe's middle class
Michael West explored the development of a small African middle class in colonial Zimbabwe up until Ian Smith's Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965. Composed mainly of clerks, teachers, preachers, social workers, journalists, businessmen, nurses and doctors, this small minority of Africans overcame racial barriers to achieve a degree of upward social mobility and a lifestyle that was quite different from the one their colonial rulers thought suitable for ‘natives’. Yet despite their privileged position relative to the mass of workers and peasants, for the most part these Africans were not wealthy compared with the white settlers. Indeed, because the latter would not concede equality, the aspirations of elite Africans ‘amounted to a subversion of the colonial will’ (West Reference West2002: 2). Even so, although African protestations against racial subordination were both ‘purposeful and persistent’, they initially amounted to demands for incorporation into the colonial polity rather than the overthrow of it. However, when faced by white political intransigence, the emergent nationalist movements – which the middle class both led and supported – were banned (in 1964). This led to the launch of the armed struggle for majority rule by the nationalist movements from exile, and the ultimate defeat of the settler regime.
There has been no systematic follow-up to West's important contribution. Consequently, what follows is an exploratory attempt to sketch out the postcolonial trajectory of the Zimbabwean middle class. Particular attention is paid to three propositions that emerge from the broader literature. The first is that West's African middle class transformed into a ruling party-aligned bourgeoisie. The second argues, in contrast, that, to the extent that it has not left Zimbabwe as a result of its economic plunge, the middle class has played a formative role in opposition to the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and its political elite. Finally, a third suggestion is that, in the face of ZANU-PF's authoritarian rule, the middle class has largely withdrawn from the political arena. Addressing these throughout the article, I draw them together in the conclusion.
Proposition 1: From middle class to party bourgeoisie?
The Liberation War was brought to an end by a negotiated settlement that saw the ruling settler regime conceding majority rule in exchange for guarantees of protection for the white minority (Bratton Reference Bratton2014; Dorman Reference Dorman2016). ZANU-PF proceeded to win the first democratic election, inheriting one of the most promising economies in Africa. Yet this was settler-dominated, its ‘advanced’ sectors owned by a mix of white local and foreign capital. In contrast, the African population largely served as a low-paid labour force or was confined to subsistence agriculture in communal reserves. Proclaiming its commitment to socialism, the declared objective of the incoming regime was to transform the patterns of ownership while simultaneously improving the living standards of the black African majority. For all that new Prime Minister Robert Mugabe recognized the need to retain white skills and experience, independence opened new vistas for Zimbabwe's black middle class.
The racial bargain and Africanization
Herbst (Reference Herbst1990) has depicted the Mugabe government's relationship with the whites who stayed on after independence as a ‘racial bargain’. While older whites in the public sector would be moved on, those in the private sector could continue to operate their businesses and farms and lead their privileged colonial lifestyles. Younger whites were discouraged from staying in Zimbabwe by the foreclosure of economic opportunities. Access to public employment, government lines of credit and business were blocked, while only foreign-owned companies that sold their assets to black Zimbabweans would be able to remit their funds to foreign destinations.
This situation was ripe for blacks who possessed the necessary skills and education to step into white shoes. ZANU-PF was eager to promote the rapid upward mobility of blacks within both the government and the economy. At independence, there were some 40,000 public servants, of whom 29,000 were black. Of the 10,570 ‘established officers’ (who occupied the higher posts in the bureaucracy), some 3,368 were black, but no blacks held posts above the ‘senior administrator’ level (towards the bottom of this tier). Initially, therefore, the new government had little option but to continue relying on senior white expertise, but a presidential directive requiring the Africanization of senior government posts rapidly came into effect. As a result, blacks came to account for 86 per cent of permanent secretaries and 78 per cent of undersecretaries in 1984, compared with just 14 per cent and 22 per cent respectively in 1981. Correspondingly, the number of ‘senior’ white civil servants dropped from 7,200 to 4,490 between 1980 and 1983 while that of blacks increased from 3,360 to 17,960 (Sibanda Reference Sibanda and Stoneman1988: 276; Herbst Reference Herbst1990: 30–1).
Africanization was speeded by the return of black Zimbabweans who had received higher education in exile (Sachikonye Reference Sachikonye2012: 26). They were to form the core of an emergent politico-bureaucratic elite. Meanwhile, the lower tiers of the middle class were swelled by the rapid expansion of the public service to 80,000, the majority of the new recruits being African teachers, nurses and clerks (Sibanda Reference Sibanda and Stoneman1988: 276; Herbst Reference Herbst1990: 30–1).
The early years of independence were years of promise. Inequalities were extreme, but the economy recorded high levels of growth, stimulation of internal demand due to wage increases, and increased manufacturing output and agricultural exports. Meanwhile, the government rapidly expanded opportunities for blacks. Initiatives included ‘a massive exercise in teacher training’ (Ndlovu Reference Ndlovu2013: 4), vigorous efforts to train doctors and nurses (Gaidzanwa Reference Gaidzanwa1999; Masakure Reference Masakure2012) and expansion of the student intake to the university (Bennell and Ncube Reference Bennell and Ncube1994). Those who emerged were largely absorbed into public service. The steady exodus of whites eased the movement of such upwardly mobile blacks into previously exclusive white suburbs, a process that had begun in the late 1970s (Cumming Reference Cumming, Zinyama, Tevera and Cumming1993).
Class formation and accumulation
These were years of rapid class formation. Most commented on was the rise of a small but highly visible ‘bourgeoisie’ aligned to the incoming nationalist elite. ZANU-PF may have officially espoused Marxist-Leninism, but serious ideological commitment never extended beyond a small party intelligentsia and gained only limited traction among the wider political elite, for whom the conquest of the settler state represented the opportunity to accumulate wealth as much as to redress historical grievances (Moore Reference Moore1991). Rapid Africanization and the growth of the public sector fostered an extensive machinery of party patronage, as corruption among politicians and civil servants became entrenched, surfacing in many scandals. Meanwhile, pressure on private companies led to the appointment of politically connected individuals to their boards or offers of other opportunities to enrich themselves (Compagnon Reference Compagnon2010; Southall Reference Southall2013).
An emergent bourgeoisie of politicians, civil servants, military officers and police chiefs adapted to the lifestyle previously reserved for whites: ‘moving into spacious houses; driving expensive cars; dining in fashionable restaurants; and buying farms, hotels and businesses’, as well as staging expensive parties, weddings and funerals (Meredith Reference Meredith2002: 81). Many sent their children to the country's thriving private schools, increasing their chances of entering university, where children from professional and middle-level social strata were massively overrepresented (Bennell and Ncube Reference Bennell and Ncube1994).
It remains difficult, during this period, to differentiate Zimbabwe's expanding middle class from its emergent black bourgeoisie.Footnote 3 Broadly speaking, the former was overwhelmingly composed of professionals and semi-professionals (such as teachers and nurses). They were to be among those who benefited most from the expansion of opportunities during this period. Nonetheless, in terms of accumulation and lifestyle, they were to be left far behind by the higher ranks of the politico-bureaucratic elite who laid serious claim to the character of a bourgeoisie. The lines of this differentiation were to become clearer as economic crisis increasingly placed the middle class under stress.
Proposition 2: The middle class under stress: exodus and opposition
The new politico-administrative elite proved more interested in private accumulation than in structurally transforming the economy. By the late 1980s, the ZANU-PF regime had begun to earn a reputation for profligacy that discouraged inflows of foreign aid and investment. True, its ambitious expansion of education and social services had initially improved prospects for the many, but this had been matched by heavy spending on the military, much of this incurred by a genocidal crackdown – the Gukurahundi – on Joshua Nkomo's rival Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) and its popular base in Matabeleland in the early 1980s. Given a simultaneous fall in export prices, the government soon ran into trouble. Already, during the early 1980s, it had had to turn to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to bridge its growing deficit. By the early 1990s it was forced to implement a structural adjustment plan that demanded massive cuts in public expenditure (Bond and Manyana Reference Bond and Manyana2003; Southall Reference Southall2013). Unable to compete with cheaper imports, the manufacturing sector lost over 50,000 jobs between 1991 and 1997 while the government itself made 23,000 employees redundant during the same period (Tevera and Zinyama Reference Tevera and Zinyama2002: 28). Nonetheless, even when faced with growing popular discontent, the government maintained a de facto alliance with white commercial agriculture, upon whose exports it remained heavily dependent. But this, too, was soon to collapse.
In late 1997, a crash on the Zimbabwean stock exchange precipitated a collapse of the Zimbabwean dollar. This followed the government's decision made earlier in the year to become militarily involved in the war that had broken out in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and, more particularly, Mugabe's capitulation to demands made by some 50,000 liberation ‘war veterans’ that they be granted unbudgeted financial handouts and pensions. This was soon followed by their demands for land. When these culminated in their seizure of white farms from 1999 onwards, Mugabe sought to recover declining political support among the veterans by reversing ZANU-PF's opposition to land invasions, now backing them in the name of land reform (Moore Reference Moore2001). The assault on property rights resulted in a breach in the country's already hugely problematic relations with the IMF.
The economy now plunged sharply downwards. Foreign aid and investment dried up while exports collapsed. By 2006, gross domestic product (GDP) was 47 per cent lower than in 1980. Unable to pay its way, the government resorted to successive devaluations and printing money. Inflation rocketed, and by July 2008 it reached an official level of 231 million per cent (Coomer and Gstraunthaler Reference Coomer and Gstraunthaler2011).
All this was matched by the government's resort to political repression. Following the military crackdown on the Ndebele, ZAPU had been cajoled into a merger with ZANU-PF in 1987. However, by the late 1990s, ZANU-PF was faced with a new rival in the form of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). This, too, was to meet with an authoritarian response. All this eroded the social foundations of the middle class, prompting many thousands of professionals to leave the country.
Pressures on the middle class
Middle-income groups experienced rapidly falling standards of living during the 1990s. Alongside the poor, who were hurt by the government's introduction of user fees for primary education and health services, middle-income households now increasingly resorted to a mix of strategies to pay their way (Gibbon Reference Gibbon1995). Many engaged in backyard agricultural production for consumption and sale; many let rooms in their homes or built additional structures on their properties to accommodate rent-paying tenants; many who clung to their employment took on other work; some simply left white-collar jobs, reckoning that they would make a better living in the informal economy through such activities as cross-border trading.
Yet it was the lurch into hyper-inflation that was most destructive for the middle class, although it was simultaneously socially polarizing. For the few who had access to foreign exchange, there were windfall gains to be made. Some within the political elite were enabled to purchase foreign currency through official channels at highly favourable rates, using it to purchase multiple properties on a collapsing property market. Ordinary people were enabled to pay off bonds priced in the local currency by importing trivial sums of foreign currency. One interviewee recalled paying off a bond of ‘hundreds of millions of dollars’ by importing a mere £40 from the UK. It was ‘the one good thing’ about the inflation: ‘We would have been paying that bond for twenty-five years,’ said Ashley, before noting that her pounds, earned from a stint working in London, had soon run out. Some made fortunes by investing on the stock market, which, because of regular upward adjustments of share prices, experienced an unprecedented boom. However, while the hyper-inflation allowed the rich and the politically connected to amass fortunes, it proved disastrous for the overwhelming majority of the middle class, white as well as black.
Many within the middle class saw their savings and pensions rendered worthless. Those unable to keep up with bond repayments risked their homes being repossessed; children were pulled out of schools; salaries had to be spent immediately on a dwindling supply of consumer goods or exchanged for foreign currency at a massive discount. Even those who had become well-off were reduced to selling household goods in order to feed their families or keep their children at school, and many became indebted in their bid to make ends meet. During the 1990s, a retired diplomat had accumulated the goods and chattels that flow from a comfortable income. By mid-2008 they had virtually all gone:
I've sold the two cars to pay for the girls to go to university … I don't have a vehicle any more. Then I've been selecting certain household items to sell. I used to have three TV sets, I sold two. I sold the washing machines. Last month I sold my radio stereo to another parent at my daughter's school, Queen Elizabeth, for $1 trillion. I owe the school $1.2 trillion in fees but I had to use some of the money to buy food so I'm trying to negotiate with them to pay $500 billion monthly. (McGreal Reference McGreal2008)
The trauma of this experience was replicated among several of my interviewees. One recalled:
This was a time of crazy inflation, everything was just wiped away, it did not matter if you had been in formal employment for thirty years … if you talk about banks to Zimbabweans, you remember the morning you woke up to find your balance was worthless.Footnote 4
Many made long-distance shopping trips to South Africa or Botswana to purchase basic commodities for home consumption or resale. Even the most respectable members of the middle class resorted to purchasing petrol on the black market or to illegally importing goods or foreign currency. Of more long-term significance was that galloping inflation compelled families across the spectrum of classes to send members out of the country to ensure basic survival or to meet aspirations for accumulation or education (McGregor Reference McGregor2006: 5). In addition, many left to escape the government's growing intolerance of opposition.
The professional exodus
Official statistics record a net loss of about 23,500 economically active persons over the period 1980–97. The majority of those who left in the early 1980s were whites, but they were soon followed by a flow of black Zimbabweans, largely Ndebele, who fled Matabeleland during or after the Gukurahundi. The early 1990s saw an accelerating rate of outmigration (950,000 officially recorded in 1992–93 alone) (Tevera and Zinyama Reference Tevera and Zinyama2002). Many of those who left crossed into South Africa and Botswana. Most entered these countries legally, although many remained beyond the expiry of their residence permits.Footnote 5 However, official statistics fail to record the many thousand Zimbabweans who crossed the borders illegally and stayed in neighbouring countries without legal documentation (Crush and Tevera Reference Crush and Tevera2010).
The majority of those formally emigrating belonged to professional, technical, administrative, managerial and clerical occupational categories. Some headed for the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, attracted by the prospect of higher living standards. Yet more stayed nearer home. According to one estimate, there were some 60,000 Zimbabweans working in South Africa as teachers, academics, doctors, nurses, engineers and accountants in 1998 (Zinyama Reference Zinyama, Tevera and Zinyama2002). Those obtaining jobs in Europe and North America would also have belonged to those categories.
After independence, the government had encountered the major problem of doctors and nurses leaving for the private sector or for other countries (Gaidzanwa Reference Gaidzanwa1999). Despite the increased training of doctors, the number of medical practitioners increased only slightly (from 1,575 in 1995 to 1,626 in 1998), and fewer than half of these were employed in public health institutions. However, it was nursing that was most affected by the brain drain; the number of nurses working in the public sector fell from 8,662 in 1996 to 7,007 in 1999 (Chikanda Reference Chikanda2004). The failure of salaries to keep up with inflation and unreasonable workloads imposed by understaffing led to the steady migration of health professionals from the public to the private sector, and from Zimbabwe to other countries, as well as to sustained strike action in the late 1990s (Masakure Reference Masakure2012; Saunders Reference Saunders, Raftopolous and Sachikonye2001). In the early 2000s, over two-thirds of health professionals taking part in a survey indicated that they were considering leaving the country (Chikanda Reference Chikanda2004). Many were to act on their intentions.
The ambiguity of departure
Professionals leaving Zimbabwe did so from a variety of motivations. Overwhelmingly, they were pessimistic about the country's future, citing fear of political persecution or violence alongside the increasing problem of making ends meet, the deterioration of working conditions and lack of advancement opportunities. Yet most were simultaneously reluctant to go and envisaged their departure as temporary.
Professionals who left tended to maintain close links with home. McGregor (Reference McGregor2006: 17–25), reporting on Zimbabwean teachers and nurses working in the UK, recorded how 36 per cent of her respondents who had children had either left them at home to be cared for by relatives or had brought only babies and toddlers with them, leaving older children in Zimbabwean schools. Such arrangements were not always by choice, as parents were forced to negotiate restrictive immigration regulations. When they did manage to live with their families in the UK, they were often concerned that their children would lose their Zimbabwean identity; if they left their families behind, it imposed a strain on their marriages or relationships, and they risked distancing themselves from their children.
Retention of close ties with family meant that destination countries were envisaged as a home away from home. Working in neighbouring countries had the advantage that returning to Zimbabwe for short visits was more affordable. On the other hand, salaries paid in harder currencies stretched much further. After all, working abroad was about escaping economic insecurity, having the capacity to save and earning enough to dispatch remittances to family and relatives left behind.Footnote 6
It was common for those leaving Zimbabwe to think that they would work elsewhere for a few years before returning home. Yet the longer professionals stayed away, the more they and their children became embedded in diasporic and host communities. Furthermore, the more Zimbabwe relapsed into crisis, the more they put off returning. Some 80 per cent of Zimbabweans in a sample of tertiary-level students from across Southern Africa expressed a desire to help build their country. At the same time, they were the least proud of their country of origin, the most pessimistic about its future, and the most likely to have thought of emigrating. Many Zimbabweans who left the country appreciated that they might be doing so for good. Dissatisfaction among Zimbabwean professionals was ‘pervasive and deep’ (Tevera and Crush Reference Tevera and Crush2003: 24).
The middle class in opposition
The MDC administered a first major shock to ZANU-PF in February 2000 after successfully steering a defeat of the government's proposed new constitution, which it had put to a referendum. Thereafter it performed remarkably well in presidential and parliamentary elections in 2002 and 2005, despite the government resorting to campaigns of violence, intimidation and electoral chicanery against it. Then it inflicted a narrow defeat over ZANU-PF in the parliamentary elections of 2008, while its leader, former trade unionist Morgan Tsvangirai, ran Mugabe into second place in the accompanying presidential election.
The official result recorded that Tsvangirai had won less than 50 per cent of the vote, forcing him into a run-off with Mugabe. This time round, ZANU-PF took no chances. Backed by the military and police, it ran a campaign of such brutal violence that Tsvangirai chose to withdraw from the fray, leaving Mugabe as the only candidate. His re-election was then endorsed by regional power brokers who were alarmed by the prospect of a popular displacement of a sitting liberation movement from power. Nonetheless, compelled to recognize the opposition's victory in the parliamentary elections, they exerted pressure on ZANU-PF to enter a government of national unity (GNU) with the MDC. This was to last until the next election in 2013.Footnote 7
The outcome of the 2008 election was less a democratic compromise than a compromise of democracy. This has encouraged a mode of analysis that has characterized the MDC as an originally militant labour-based party whose radical political direction was subverted by ‘neoliberal middle classes’ under the guise of a popular front. Readily accepting IMF policies and backed by the white farming community, it adopted a right-wing position on the land issue (Slaughter and Marsden Reference Slaughter and Marsden2000; Gwisai Reference Gwisai2017). Furthermore, under middle-class leadership, it downplayed mass action in favour of electoral opposition to ZANU-PF. This change in direction appealed particularly to an intelligentsia embracing ‘bourgeois democratic values, like rule of law, human rights, and good governance’ (Fataar Reference Fataar2017).
This narrative simplifies a more complex situation. While the MDC drew its major strength from urban areas, it built on a much wider cumulative popular frustration with ZANU-PF and constituted the first major broad-based alliance of social forces mobilized against the liberation movement (Raftopolous Reference Raftopoulos2006). With bases ‘in unions, business, academia and NGOs’ and with ‘support from the urban electorate and the rural residents in Matabeleland and Manicaland’ (Dorman Reference Dorman2016: 156), the MDC represented ‘a genuine multi-racial, cross-class alliance … with a democratization agenda’ (Onslow Reference Onslow2011). Yet while many of its leading activists came from professional backgrounds, they lacked sufficient weight within this broad coalition to be unambiguously capable and desirous of steering its political strategy. As a result, its ‘middle-class leadership’ was continuously subject to extensive pressure from the left (Gumbo Reference Gumbo2002).
What is clear is that the political and civic groupings that backed the MDC failed to give sufficient attention to the intimate links between human rights questions and economic issues, prioritizing ‘rights’ over ‘redistribution’. This was reinforced by the foreign funding showered upon the MDC, which allowed Mugabe to lampoon the MDC as being in the pay of imperialists. Correspondingly, the implementation of the land reform programme effectively excluded the opposition from most rural areas, allowing ZANU-PF to consolidate its dominance outside the towns and cities (Raftopoulos Reference Raftopoulos2006). In addition, professionals (especially teachers) in rural areas became targets of persecution by ZANU-PF, while within urban areas the middle classes came to be regarded with deep suspicion; this inhibited the commitment of many among their ranks to political activism.
Proposition 3: Engagement or withdrawal? The Zimbabwean middle class from 2008 to 2017
Under the GNU, the economy staged a significant recovery, recording an average growth rate of over 8 per cent per annum. This was achieved not merely by the pursuit of more rational policies (steered by the MDC's Tendai Biti as Finance Minister) but by ‘dollarization’, a move forced upon ZANU-PF just prior to the 2008 election whereby the hopelessly devalued Zimbabwe dollar was replaced by a basket of foreign currencies (of which the US dollar soon came to predominate) as legal currency. This brought an immediate end to hyper-inflation and improved investor confidence as well as increasing government revenue. Against this, the GNU was unable to reap the rewards of windfall discoveries of diamonds in Eastern Zimbabwe. These had rapidly fallen under the control of rent-seekers with strong political connections to ZANU-PF and overtly backed by the army, so diamond earnings that should have flowed to the exchequer were largely exported, diverted into conspicuous consumption, or directed into the hands of the presidency and ZANU-PF.
The MDC failed dismally to negotiate the dilemmas of coalition government, allowing ZANU-PF to manipulate a sweeping victory in the 2013 election (Raftopoulos Reference Raftopoulos2013). The gains of the GNU were soon largely reversed. Because dollarization made the price of Zimbabwean exports artificially high, the economy was even more prone to balance of payments deficits. Accordingly, the return of the ZANU-PF government to spendthrift ways meant that it was soon facing a chronic lack of liquidity. In response, the government announced the introduction of ‘bond notes’ issued by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. These were officially pegged as equivalent in value to the US dollar, but they were immediately trading at a marked discount on the black market. As even this was not enough to balance the books, the government also issued more treasury bills, massively fuelling public debt (Southall Reference Southall2018).
By late 2017, the economy was again confronting bankruptcy. Yet rather than attempting to tackle the looming crisis, ZANU-PF was absorbed by vicious intra-party factional battles around the successor to the ninety-seven-year-old Mugabe. When these culminated in the latter dismissing Mnangagwa as deputy president, seemingly to clear the way for his wife to succeed him, the military intervened to displace him (Moore Reference Moore2018).
Hope and disappointment
Although the MDC officially controlled economic policy within the GNU, its options were severely limited. The economy was at rock bottom, and there was a critical need to attract investment and secure a resumption of international lending (all the while having to counter ZANU-PF resistance). It remains debatable whether this is fairly characterized as pursuit of a ‘neoliberal agenda’, as opposed to tackling a ‘total mess’ and ‘laying the foundations for a return to growth’.Footnote 8
What is clear is that the policy implemented by the GNU attracted extensive middle-class support. Some middle-class people who had left the country were drawn back, optimistic that the crisis could be turned around. Notably, this allowed something of a revival of the public schooling system. Over the course of the GNU, 15,000 teachers who had left the country were attracted home (Coltart Reference Coltart2016: 494). More unusual, although indicative of the greater optimism, was an investment analyst who left a highly paid job in Johannesburg to launch his own investment company in Harare:
I always thought that there was a future, and I wanted to be part of it … There could be a space for new ideas and new ways of doing things … This was even before the GNU but the GNU was the catalyst.Footnote 9
Above all, middle-class people gave a strong welcome to the dollarization that killed the hyper-inflation and the renewed opportunities for saving. Correspondingly, although many became disillusioned by the overall performance of the MDC in office (notably, its continuing division into two wings, and the manner in which some within its leadership became seduced by the fruits of office), there was widespread disappointment with the result of the 2013 election. This led to a concerted withdrawal from political involvement in favour of maintaining a middle-class standard of living.
Paradoxes of precarity: middle-class Zimbabweans after 2013
The plunge of the economy into renewed crisis after the end of the GNU has exacerbated the precariousness of middle-class existence. Indeed, some professionals query whether the middle class as such continues to exist. Their argument is that, while they can afford a style of living that places them above the mass of Zimbabweans, the middle class has been subject to a long-term process of pauperization. The middle class, observed one interviewee, is there only by dint of history.
The middle class we used to see was one that could afford to send children to school without any problem, pay their way, go on holiday … but not many people can afford that now … so if the middle class exists, it is very small.Footnote 10
Another asserted baldly that the title ‘middle class’ no longer fitted ‘the context of Zimbabwe’ (Innocent). ‘Middle class is defined within the parameters of the formal economy,’ opined yet another. ‘That is why we do not have a middle class in Zimbabwe’ (Simba).
Even formal white-collar employment is not sufficient to guarantee middle-class status. Salaries even for the overwhelming majority of professionals remain desperately low (figures of between US$50 and US$400 a month are regularly mentioned) and need to be supplemented by the involvement of household members in informal-sector activities. Many are indebted, borrowing against their houses to fund the education of their children or to subsidize their present lifestyle. Those who have reached retirement age have had to go on working for minimal financial reward because of the loss of their pensions. Moses, a distinguished academic, retired from a public university at sixty-five but is still teaching in his late eighties. He cashed in his pension, but ‘there was nothing in my account … so I work’. ‘There is no retirement in Zimbabwe,’ observed one interviewee:
There was a story last week about council employees who had reached sixty but who were refusing to retire … their pensions had been wiped away … they are taking their cue from people in leadership positions, the Zimbabwean president is ninety-four next year.Footnote 11
Meanwhile, there has been a dramatic narrowing of possibilities for the young. While Zimbabwe's universities graduate up to 30,000 students a year,Footnote 12 few are able to obtain what they consider to be middle-class employment with appropriate rewards: ‘They are doing middle-class jobs, but not at middle-class salaries’ (Tawanda). Unsurprisingly, most parents expect their children to move abroad.
Nonetheless, if nothing else, the persistent economic crisis has called forth remarkable reserves of resilience, heralding potential changes in the composition of the middle class. One interviewee argued that the necessity for the traditional urban middle class to engage in backyard agricultural production, alongside the post-2000 land reforms and the enforced turn to the informal economy, has prompted a new ‘pioneer spirit’. On the one hand, the beneficiaries of the land reforms (or at least those who have proved adept at farming) have become considerably better off and are destined to become a new middle class. ‘This is not just a landed class, but an affluent one’ (Tanaka). They are increasingly able to own decent houses, with solar power providing electricity and pumping water. On the other hand, the informal economy has financed the substantial growth of formal housing in higher-density areas. Those who have built such homes are doing well by their own modest standards, and ‘have not gone down, but gone up … Something is going on that is amazing’ (Tanaka).
This optimism was severely qualified by Chichi, a sociologist, who argued that most of those who benefited from land reform lacked the necessary capital, skills to farm, inputs such as seeds and marketing opportunities, and ‘only a small segment of those on the land are able to better themselves’. Although conceding that the land reforms may have provided the material basis for the emergence of a rural middle class in some areas of the country, as outlined by Scoones and his associates (Reference Scoones, Marongwe, Mavedzenge, Mahenehene, Murimbarimba and Sukume2010: 238), she maintained that the chances of success were stacked against them. In any case, she continued, the appearance of relative prosperity in rural areas is in part sustained by the receipt of remittances and by middle-class plot-holders boosting their incomes by renting out urban homes.
Overall, middle-class survival has increasingly meant sheer hard work. ‘It is a nightmare … we have been resilient for so long, but now we are getting worn down’ (Tinashe). Formal incomes have to be supplemented with informal earnings, both partners in a household have to work, retirement is delayed, and finances have to be constantly juggled. Middle-class ambitions remain, but their realization has become increasingly tenuous. Yet does this dispose the middle class to radical political activity?
Dystopia and disillusion
The middle class, declared one interviewee, is ‘browbeaten, disillusioned and disenfranchised’. Her ‘heart was broken in 2008’, and she vowed to protect herself from Zimbabwe's political circumstances by withdrawing into the securities of middle-class life. ‘Yes. It's very clinical, you need to jettison all these other things to survive … life for me and others is lived in a bubble’ – although she went on to add that she would be on the street again to demonstrate when next there was a need (Rejoice). Her views were largely echoed by others.
Interviewees indicated that they felt powerless and subject to the whims of an authoritarian government. ‘Everything is politicized in Zimbabwe,’ claimed one respondent who worked in a public university (Chichi). Individuals who do not demonstrate loyalty to ZANU-PF are marginalized and end up being squeezed out of the system, denied any chance of preferment. Generally, there is widespread disillusionment with traditional party politics, with the MDC coming in for particular criticism following the disappointments of the GNU.
Hope placed in the MDC was rapidly dashed. One interviewee, who had served as a consultant to an MDC minister, observed: ‘All those guys in power’ lost their sense of direction. Once in office, they determined to ‘eat’, ‘to get a house, car, accumulate assets … rather than saying we are here to serve the economy’. Nonetheless, buoyed by the fact that life did improve for most ordinary people under the GNU, the MDC proved overconfident when it entered the 2013 election. Yet by this time it had lost touch with the aspirations of ordinary people, failing to speak to them in a way that would resonate, about ‘jobs, poverty and social inclusion … and how you get more money’ (Innocent).
Prior to the ousting of Mugabe, respondents lacked confidence that Zimbabwe would experience meaningful political change in the foreseeable future. ‘It all boils down to politics,’ argued a self-employed accountant, but ‘our political leaders have no sense of economics’. Betraying a widespread cynicism about politicians of all parties, this respondent argued that ‘the present crop of political leaders’ lacked the willingness and capacity to either tackle corruption or implement necessary economic reforms (Tinashe). ‘You need someone to change the system,’ remarked another respondent (Joseph), ‘but the looting is such that the change cannot happen … unless you get a radical shift in the people running the state’ – and that was not likely to happen ‘so long as they control the diamonds’. We are not facing a Somalian situation yet, opined another, but added that it might prove difficult to avoid (Bongani).
Disillusionment in political parties was accompanied by a loss of faith in elections as harbingers of change. Interviewees expressed deep distrust in the independence of the electoral machinery, prompting some to say that they saw no point in registering, let alone bothering to vote (Moses). On the other hand, there was a fear (later justified) that the forthcoming elections in 2018 would lead to violence. This was, in part, driven by expectations at the time that Mugabe would run for the presidency yet again, and that this risked an implosion within ZANU-PF given its then massive internal divisions over the succession. In any case, it was unlikely that ZANU-PF would concede power whatever the result. While ‘another government of national unity would serve us much better than another ZANU government’, ZANU-PF held all the cards and had all the money. Anyway, there was no real opposition capable of confronting the ruling party, and ‘Tsvangirai is finished’. If respondents were inclined to vote, it was viewed as simply a matter of registering a protest, and ‘voting for the lesser devil’ (Emmanuel). In any case, at the time ‘the middle class in Zimbabwe is uncoordinated and does not have the resources to mobilize’ (Vumile).
Complaining about the lack of mechanisms for rendering politicians accountable, there was a general reluctance to become engaged in political activity because expressions of political opinion were viewed as divisive among family and friends. Some had parents who had formerly been active in the liberation movement and who remained staunchly attached to ZANU-PF. It was therefore best to avoid any mention of loyalty to MDC when attending family events. Some continued to socialize with school friends who remained loyal to ZANU-PF, but deliberately directed their conversations with them away from political matters. Even so, avoidance of politics remains difficult. Most respondents professed strong religious faith and attested to their personal involvement in churches, which were viewed as sites of social solidarity. However, they recognized that even the churches had become penetrated by politics. Some had lost their capacity to speak out, especially when it came to denouncing corruption and abuses of human rights. It was therefore easier for them to deal with poverty and humanitarian issues, while otherwise keeping their heads down (Zabe).
The trouble with the Zimbabwean middle class, laments a commentator who at one time worked closely alongside Tsvangirai, is that it is a ‘balcony class’, willing to criticize those who are politically engaged, but unwilling to go down to the dance floor. The middle class is ‘not easily moved to outright political action’. On occasion, it will take up political causes in so far as they further its livelihood objectives, and will unionize, form associations and, if need be, utilize temporary mass action to further its interests, yet it remains pliant in the face of state-sanctioned violence and will risk political involvement only to the extent that it does not intrude upon family life (Magaisa Reference Magaisa2014). ‘South Africans wonder why Zimbabweans tolerate it,’ but ‘people are just tired and there is a lot of fear’. Rather than opting to fight, many people were simply ‘working on a project to get their kids out … young people are pouring out of the country’ (Chichi).
Given the risks incurred by political involvement in Zimbabwe, it is trite to condemn the middle class for political passivity. However, middle-class re-engagement in politics is arguably a requirement for any future transition to democracy.
Conclusion: the state and the middle class in Zimbabwe
For the middle class, this country has changed for ever … there may be infrastructure, but the middle class is the most hard hit. (Rejoice)
What has happened to the middle class in this country? It is no longer there, it is now at a lower level, there has been a continuous downward movement of the middle class. (Aldrin)
When I grew up, if you did the right things, the future was bright … there was upward mobility … but now there is nothing … teachers, bank tellers, civil servants, etc. were the core of the middle class, and the core was educating children … that foundation does not apply any more. (Bongani)
Carola Lentz (Reference Lentz2020) highlights the important role played by the state in the global South in either making or breaking the middle class (or classes). In a significant number of African countries, neoliberalism, promoted by institutions such as the World Bank, has fostered the growth of middle classes as an accompaniment to structural reforms away from state-led development to market-led growth (Deloitte 2013). Yet neoliberal policies have been unevenly adopted across the continent. Zimbabwe is one African country where, with the exception of the GNU period, neoliberal policies have been either positively resisted or simply subverted. In this particular case, at least, this has had overwhelmingly negative consequences for the middle class.
This article has sought to outline this process by examining three propositions. The first, embedded in much of the literature on Zimbabwe's first decade of independence, suggested that, now unconstrained by racial barriers that had held it back, the small black middle class that had emerged under colonialism transformed into a postcolonial bourgeoisie constructed around the new political elite.
This analysis suggested that, while the literature was broadly correct in identifying the consolidation of a new bourgeoisie around ZANU-PF, any conclusion that the middle class and bourgeoisie were one and the same is problematic. Certainly, the early years of independence brought rapid upward social mobility in their wake, allowing for rapid class formation centred around the rapid expansion of the public sector. Correspondingly, however, once economic growth was reversed, the upward momentum of the middle class was halted, and distinctions between professionals and the political elite widened.
The second proposition was that the middle class responded to the mounting economic crisis from the 1990s onwards with a mix of leaving the country and playing a significant oppositional role to the political elite under the umbrella of the MDC. This was cautiously endorsed. However, while the exodus of so many professionals almost certainly deprived the MDC of support and leadership, it is equally certain that some provided solidarity from afar (financial donations or party activism in host countries), although how extensive this was has yet to be assessed. Simultaneously, it was recognized that the middle class constituted only one element within a much wider coalition, and that, given intra-class tensions (such as between civil society organizations and some churches), middle-class participation in opposition was diverse rather than coherent. Furthermore, it was accepted that middle-class activists doubtless punched above their numerical weight, diverting the MDC from mass action in preference to electoral opposition. Yet if this were so, it remains questionable whether they were unwise to do so in the face of ZANU-PF's capacity for brutalizing its opposition. In short, any narrative of ‘middle-class betrayal’ of the masses seems simplistic.
Finally, the third proposition that the middle class has very largely withdrawn from the political arena following the 2013 election was largely endorsed. As Therborn (Reference Therborn2012) has argued, middle-class political engagement is neither inherently regressive nor indubitably progressive; rather, it is situational. Interviews suggested that, in Zimbabwe, the precariousness of middle-class existence and disappointment with the MDC's chequered role within the GNU and its post-2013 divisions rendered the middle class highly sceptical about the viability of political activism for as long as ZANU-PF remained hegemonic.
It is against this background that the excitement that greeted Mugabe's demise must be judged. Middle-class individuals joined the crowds that thronged the streets of Harare and other towns in support of the army as it jostled ZANU-PF into forcing Mugabe to resign and elevating Mnangagwa to replace him. Yet their disillusionment with political engagement will have been reinforced by ZANU-PF's repeat victory in the general election that followed in June 2018 and the violence deployed by the military in repressing MDC protests challenging the result (Moore Reference Moore2018).
If, following the classic work of Lipset (Reference Lipset1959), we accept that the presence of a strong middle class is closely associated with the development and survival of democracy, then the quotes cited at the beginning of this conclusion – all three of which express a widely shared sentiment that the middle class within Zimbabwe is in long-term decline – reveal worrying prospects for the country's immediate future.
‘What should the middle class do?’ asked one interviewee before answering his own question: ‘They should become more involved’ (Joseph). Perhaps they should, yet present indications are that, beset by the sheer difficulties of day-to-day survival and the risks of political opposition, most will opt to either leave the country or stay out of trouble.
The 2018 election and the violence that followed it severely undermined Mnangagwa's post-intervention popularity. Nonetheless, in the long term, he will be judged principally by his capacity to tackle Zimbabwe's economic crisis and improve the quality of life of the mass of people. That he would gain middle-class compliance were he to genuinely pursue economic reform seems likely. However, the course of events since the election suggests that there is little prospect of change for the better. In the absence of economic reforms accompanied by greater political freedoms, there is minimal chance of his regime securing the support of Zimbabwe's battered middle class.
