Social movements and civic organizations often face profound strategy dilemmas that can hamper their effectiveness and prevent them from contributing to transformative change and peace. In Zimbabwe two particular dilemmas have fed into and fueled destructive processes of political polarization-dividing society, leadership, and decision-makers well beyond its borders. As conceptualized in this study, the first is whether to prioritize political or economic rights in efforts to bring about nation-wide transformative change (rights or redistribution). The second is whether and how to work with government and/or donors given their political, economic, and social agendas (participation or resistance). This book investigates these issues through two social movement organizations-the National Constitutional Assembly and the Zimbabwe National War Veterans' Association-and the movements they led to achieve constitutional change and radical land redistribution. Through in-depth case study analysis and peace and conflict impact assessment spanning the years 1997-2010, lessons are drawn for activists, practitioners, policy-makers, and scholars interested in depolarizing concepts underpinning polarizing discourses, transcending strategy dilemmas, and understanding how social action can better contribute to transformative change and peace.

Challenges depictions of law as a façade for political repression by examining political trials in Zimbabwe after 2000.

This book investigates the role of the internet and social media in political processes in non-western and non-democratic contexts. Using Zimbabwe as a case study, the book demonstrates how activists and ordinary people deploy social media, particularly Facebook, to subvert an enduring hegemonic state. However, the book also highlights how authoritarian regimes are in turn learning and adapting to the information age, challenging the impact of digital activism. Studies of digital activism in the Global South are often centred around democracy, but this book paints a more complex picture, examining the role and effect of digital activism in challenging state hegemony in authoritarian contexts. The book notes that while communication technologies help mediate activism, they are also simultaneously constrained by pre-existing and emergent challenges tied to the social and political context and the inherent limitations of those technologies. The book investigates the tactics used by digital activists, the contextual factors and restrictive political environment they operate in, including the role of pro-government activists, and ultimately, the impact of digital activism given these constraints. From the case of Zimbabwe, the book builds out a broader theoretical analysis of the evolution of ‘third world protest’ in the digital age, examining the limitations of activists’ actions and the ideological deficit in online activism to ferment a virulent counter hegemony.

Civil society plays an increasingly powerful role in the global landscape, emerging as key actors in preventing and managing conflict, and building more peaceful and sustainable societies . The multiple case studies featured in this volume illustrate the growth of civil society involvement in national, regional, and international peacebuilding policy. The focus is on multi-stakeholder, systems-based approaches to peacebuilding and human security that involve diverse civil society groups (NGOs, religious organizations, media, etc.), government agencies, intergovernmental organizations, and security forces. This unique comprehensive approach encompasses diverse stakeholders seeking to understand the drivers of conflict and the possibilities for working together to build peace. The book illustrates how the involvement of civil society can result in better informed, more inclusive, more accountable government decision making, and more effective peacebuilding policies. Importantly, a number of the case studies provide a gender perspective on peacebuilding and civil society issues, voicing and giving attention to women’s perspectives without being focused only on gender issues. Further, authors from the Global South offer the perspectives of those directly immersed in ongoing struggles for justice and peace.

Is the impression of a new dynamism in African-Asian relations empirically correct? Is it a process that will once be accepted as one of the fundamental transformations of World Society in the 21st century? This volume addresses these questions in 14 chapters, from a look back to 2000 years of African-Asian contacts and exchange to the analysis of the origins of this new inter-regional dynamism. On the Asian side, the focus is on China, which has - with the Forum on China-African Cooperation (FOCAC), the Belt and Road Initative with numerous infrastructure projects, development assistance, resource deals, and the support for the African Union in Africa - drawn most attention, but also recent initiatives by India and South Korea are described. On the African side, the recent developments in Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Angola, Guinea, Tanzania, Ghana, Zimbabwe and South Africa are analyzed in detail, with a special focus on the various impacts of the recent and ongoing projects and initiatives and the conditions under which they exert developmental or detrimental economic, Do we witness the repetition of past mistakes of development policies at higher level, or is this time everything different? Patrick Ziltener is an Associate Professor at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. Christian Suter is Professor of Sociology at the University of Neuchâtel and President of the World Society Foundation, Zurich, Switzerland.

Morgan Richard Tsvangirai is arguably the most polarising figure and advocate of democracy and human rights in the history of opposition politics in Zimbabwe. He is as much a topic of debate in Zimbabwe and beyond as the late president Robert Gabriel Mugabe. Tsvangirai's legacy, like Mugabe's, remains indisputably controversial and conflicted. Broadly, the divided opinion on the Tsvangirai legacy can be represented, firstly, by those who argue that Tsvangirai was the champion of democracy and the face of the struggle for human rights in Zimbabwe. In this light, Tsvangirai has been variously described as a "selfless...people's hero", a "colossus of the struggle for democracy", "the commander of the struggle", "a symbol of courage and resistance", and "the doyen of constitutionalism" in Zimbabwe. On the other hand, critics have described Tsvangirai as a "sell-out", "a Judas Iscariot", "traitor", and "coward", among other nefarious and pejorative characterisations. Drawing on all these opinions and the various characterisations of Tsvangirai, this book provides a comprehensive and multi-disciplinary appraisal of a gigantic trade unionist and political figure who, in his life and in death, inspires different narratives, emotions and values. This book is therefore about a mortal but "living" figure who left an indelible mark on Zimbabwe, Africa and the rest of the world in fields such as trade unionism, governance and politics. As such, the book is handy for students and practitioners in African studies, political science, policy studies, economics, history, global studies and development studies.

This book presents insights into the governance challenge associated with the management of the lockdown measures in relation to the welfare of citizens in selected African states. The intention of the project is to present a critical analysis of the effectiveness and the consequences of the measures adopted by the government of these African countries to contain further spread of the virus, within the context of existing governance challenges in the management of the public sector. This will expose the contradictions in the implementation of public policy and the actualization of its intendment for the promotion of good governance and the welfare of citizens. The benefit thereof is the feasibility of arousing further intellectual engagements on the need for effective management of public sector with strong infrastructural support for the good of all in Africa.

Zimbabwe’s party-internal ‘coup’ of 2017, and deposed president Robert Mugabe’s death nearly two years later, demand careful, historically nuanced explanation. How did Mugabe gain and retain power over party and state for four decades? Did the suspected and nearly real ‘coups’, the conspiracies behind them, and their concurrent mythomaniacal conceits ultimately, ironically, spell his near-tragic end? Has Mugabe’s particular mode of power reached a finality with his own downfall, as his successors struggle more to balance Zimbabwe’s political contradictions? Will the phalanxes arrayed against Mugabe’s control fray further, as Zimbabwe fades? Mugabe’s Legacy delves deeply into such questions, drawing on more than forty years of archival and interview-based research on Zimbabwe’s political history and current precariousness. Starting with the mid-1970s, it traces how Machiavellian moves allowed Mugabe to reach the apex of the Zimbabwe African National Union’s already slippery slopes, through the complexities of Cold War, regional, ideological, generational, inter- and intra-party tensions. The lessons learned by the president and the nascent ruling party then turned gradually inward, ultimately arriving at a near-collapse that may now pervade all of the country’s political space. David B. Moore vividly charts this rise and fall, all the way to Zimbabwe’s tenuous chaos today.

Human Rights and the Judicialisation of African Politics shows readers how central questions in African politics have entered courtrooms over the last three decades, and provides the first transnational explanation for this development. The book begins with three conditions that have made judicialisation possible in Africa as a whole; new corporate rights norms (including the expansion of indigenous rights), the proliferation of new avenues for legal proceedings, and the development of new support structures enabling litigation. It then studies the effects of these changes based on fieldwork in three Southern African countries – Zimbabwe, Namibia and Botswana. Examining three recent court cases involving international law, international courts and transnational NGOs, it looks beyond some of international relations’ established models to explain when and why and legal rights can be clarified. This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of African politics and human rights, and more broadly to international relations and international law and justice.

This book probes the vitality, potentiality and ability of new communication and technological changes to drive online-based civil action across Africa. In a continent booming with mobile innovation and a plethora of social networking sites, the Internet is considered a powerful platform used by pro-democracy activists to negotiate and sometimes push for reform-based political and social changes in Africa. The book discusses and theorizes digital activism within social and geo-political realms, analysing cases such as the #FeesMustFall and #BringBackOurGirls campaigns in South Africa and Nigeria respectively to question the extent to which they have changed the dynamics of digital activism in sub-Saharan Africa. Comparative case study reflections in eight African countries identify and critique digital concepts questioning what impact they have had on the civil society. Cases also explore the African LGBT community as a social movement while discussing opportunities and challenges faced by online activists fighting for LGBT equality. Finally, gender-based activists using digital tools to gain attention and facilitate social changes are also appraised.