Race And Diplomacy In Zimbabwe

The 'Rhodesian crisis' of the 1960s and 1970s, and the early-1980s crisis of independent Zimbabwe, can be understood against the background of Cold War historical transformations brought on by, among other things, African decolonization in the 1960s; the failure of American power in Vietnam and the rise of Third World political power. In this history of the diplomacy of decolonization in Zimbabwe, Timothy Scarnecchia examines the rivalry between Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe, and shows how both leaders took advantage of Cold War racialized thinking about what Zimbabwe should be. Based on a wealth of archival source materials, Scarnecchia uncovers how foreign relations bureaucracies in the US, UK, and South Africa created a Cold War 'race state' notion of Zimbabwe that permitted them to rationalize Mugabe's state crimes in return for Cold War loyalty to Western powers. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

"This book examines the archival evidence related to the negotiations around Zimbabwe's decolonialization. The argument concerns the preoccupation with race as the primary way decolonization was negotiated. The first two chapters contextualize how the white settler states of Southern Africa, next two chapters detail the sudden shift in Cold War thinking about Rhodesia caused by the decolonization of Angola and Mozambique in 1975, including US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's negotiations with Front Line State Presidents and South Africans. The Geneva Conference in late 1976 is explored, with attention to the ability of Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo to take advantage of Kissinger's diplomacy. The next chapters look at attempts by the British, Zambians, and Nigerians to negotiate a transfer of power from Ian Smith to the PF. It would take another two years for the British to oversee a transfer of power to Mugabe's ZANU party in April 1980. The final two chapters examine the fallout between Mugabe and Nkomo in the early 1980s, arguing that obsessions with race and ethnic conflict in earlier negotiations enabled the Americans and British to provide Mugabe Cold War cover for state crimes committed against Nkomo's supporters in the Matabeleland and Midland provinces"--

This book covers not only the political situation in Zimbabwe, but its international context and those areas of privation, exclusion and silence within the country that are beneath the everyday face of politics. Written by either a Zimbabwean or an internationally acknowledged expert on aspects of Zimbabwe, all the authors agree that the silences in and surrounding the African state cannot continue. This volume utilizes the perspectives of diplomacy, health, law and literature written in both English and Shona, and of those deeply concerned with democratization in Zimbabwe and its surrounding region. Zimbabwe and the Space of Silence will be of interest to students and scholars of African studies, African and Third World politics and international law. This book was previously published as a special issue of The Round Table.

An essential biographical record of General Solomon Mujuru, one of the most controversial figures within the history of African liberation politics.

The first single-volume history of Zimbabwe with detailed coverage from pre-colonial times to the present, this book examines Zimbabwe's pre-colonial, colonial and postcolonial social, economic and political history and relates historical factors and trends to recent developments in the country. Zimbabwe is a country with a rich history, dating from the early San hunter-gatherer societies. The arrival of British imperial rule in 1890 impacted the country tremendously, as the European rulers exploited Zimbabwe's resources, giving rise to a movement of African nationalism and demands for independence. This culminated in the armed conflict of the 1960s and 1970s and independence in 1980. The 1990s were marked by economic decline and the rise of opposition politics. In 1999, Mugabe embarked on a violent land reform program that plunged the nation's economy into a downward spiral, with political violence and human rights violations making Zimbabwe an international pariah state. This book will be useful to those studying Zimbabwean history and those unfamiliar with the country's past.

Focusing on political trials in Zimbabwe's Magistrates' Courts between 2000 and 2012, Susanne Verheul explores why the judiciary have remained a central site of contestation in post-independence Zimbabwe. Drawing on rich court observations and in-depth interviews, this book foregrounds law's potential to reproduce or transform social and political power through the narrative, material, and sensory dimensions of courtroom performances. Instead of viewing appeals to law as acts of resistance by marginalised orders for inclusion in dominant modes of rule, Susanne Verheul argues that it was not recognition by but of this formal, rule-bound ordering, and the form of citizenship it stood for, that was at stake in performative legal engagements. In this manner, law was much more than a mere instrument. Law was a site in which competing conceptions of political authority were given expression, and in which people's understandings of themselves as citizens were formed and performed.

The establishment of legal institutions was a key part of the process of state construction in Africa, and these institutions have played a crucial role in the projection of state authority across space. This is especially the case in colonial and postcolonial Zimbabwe. George Karekwaivanane offers a unique long-term study of law and politics in Zimbabwe, which examines how the law was used in the constitution and contestation of state power across the late-colonial and postcolonial periods. Through this, he offers insight on recent debates about judicial independence, adherence to human rights, and the observation of the rule of law in contemporary Zimbabwean politics. The book sheds light on the prominent place that law has assumed in Zimbabwe's recent political struggles for those researching the history of the state and power in Southern Africa. It also carries forward important debates on the role of law in state-making, and will also appeal to those interested in African legal history.

A truly satisfactory history of Rhodesia, one that takes into account both the African history and that of the whites, has never been written. That is, until now. In this book Luise White highlights the crucial tension between Rhodesia as it imagined itself and Rhodesia as it was imagined outside the country. Using official documents, novels, memoirs, and conversations with participants in the events taking place between 1965, when Rhodesia unilaterally declared independence from Britain, and 1980 when indigenous African rule was established through the creation of the state of Zimbabwe, White reveals that Rhodesians represented their state as a kind of utopian place where white people dared to stand up for themselves and did what needed to be done. It was imagined to be a place vastly better than the decolonized dystopias to its north. In all these representations, race trumped all else including any notion of nation. Outside Rhodesia, on the other hand, it was considered a white supremacist utopia, a country that had taken its own independence rather than let white people live under black rule. Even as Rhodesia edged toward majority rule to end international sanctions and a protracted guerilla war, racialized notions of citizenship persisted. One man, one vote, became the natural logic of decolonization of this illegally independent minority-ruled renegade state. Voter qualification with its minutia of which income was equivalent to how many years of schooling, and how African incomes or years of schooling could be rendered equivalent to whites, illustrated the core of ideas about, and experiences of, racial domination. White s account of the politics of decolonization in this unprecedented historical situation reveals much about the general processes occurring elsewhere on the African continent."

Based on rich oral histories, this is an engaging study of citizenship construction and practice in Liberia, Africa's first black republic.