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Cultures of Change in Contemporary
Zimbabwe

This book investigates how culture reflects change in Zimbabwe, focusing pre-
dominantly on Mnangagwa’s 2017 coup, but also uncovering deeper roots for
how renewal and transition are conceived in the country.
Since Emmerson Mnangagwa ousted Robert Mugabe in 2017, he has been
keen to define his “Second Republic” or “New Dispensation” with a rhetoric
of change and a rejection of past political and economic cultures. This multi-​
and inter-​disciplinary volume looks to the (social) media, language/​discourse,
theatre, images, political speeches and literary fiction and non-​fiction to see
how they have reflected on this time of unprecedented upheaval. The book
argues that themes of self-​renewal stretch right back to the formative years of
the ZANU PF, and that despite the longevity of Mugabe’s tenure, the latest
transition can be seen as part of a complex and protracted layering of post-​
colonial social, economic and political changes.
Providing an innovative investigation of how political change in Zimbabwe
is reflected on in cultural texts and products, this book will be of interest to
researchers across African history, literature, politics, culture and post-​colonial
studies.

Oliver Nyambi lectures in the Department of English, University of the Free

State in South Africa and is currently a fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt
Foundation hosted by Susan Arndt in the Professorship of English Studies and
Anglophone Literatures at Bayreuth University, Germany.

Tendai Mangena is Associate Professor of African Literary and Cultural

Studies at Great Zimbabwe University in Zimbabwe and a Research Fellow in
the Department of English at the University of the Free State in South Africa.

Gibson Ncube lectures in the Department of Modern Foreign Languages,

Stellenbosch University and is currently a Fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute
for Advanced Study in South Africa.
Routledge Contemporary Africa Series

Mobility in Contemporary Zimbabwean Literature in English

Crossing Borders, Transcending Boundaries
Magdalena Pfalzgraf

Advancing Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights in Africa

Constraints and Opportunities
Edited by Ebenezer Durojaye, Gladys Mirugi-​Mukundi and Charles Ngwena

Decolonizing Political Communication in Africa

Reframing Ontologies
Edited by Beschara Karam and Bruce Mutsvairo

Africa in a Multilateral World

Afropolitan Dilemmas
Edited by Albert Kasanda and Marek Hrubec

Developing Creative Economies in Africa

Spaces and Working Practices
Edited by Brian J. Hracs, Roberta Comunian and Lauren England

Implementing the Sustainable Development Goals in Nigeria

Barriers, Prospects and Strategies
Edited by Eghosa O. Ekhator, Servel Miller and Etinosa Igbinosa

Cultures of Change in Contemporary Zimbabwe

Socio-​Political Transition from Mugabe to Mnangagwa
Edited by Oliver Nyambi,Tendai Mangena and Gibson Ncube

Indigenous Elites in Africa

The Case of Kenya’s Maasai
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For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/​

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Cultures of Change in
Contemporary Zimbabwe
Socio-​Political Transition from
Mugabe to Mnangagwa

Edited by
Oliver Nyambi, Tendai Mangena
and Gibson Ncube
First published 2022
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 selection and editorial matter, Oliver Nyambi, Tendai Mangena and
Gibson Ncube; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Oliver Nyambi, Tendai Mangena and Gibson Ncube to be identified
as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual
chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-​1-​032-​04026-​4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-​1-​032-​04027-​1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-​1-​003-​19027-​1 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/​9781003190271
Typeset in Bembo
by Newgen Publishing UK
Contents

Acknowledgements  viii
About the editors  ix
List of contributors  xi

Introduction: The 2017 coup and cultures of change

in Zimbabwe  1
O LI V E R N YA MB I , TE NDAI MANGE NA AND GI B SON N CUBE

PART I
Spectacles of change in the Second Republic  17
1 The patriotic present: The urgency of now in Zimbabwe’s
“New Dispensation”  19
C U T H B E T H TAGWI RE I

2 The spectacle and semiotics of the presidential scarf in

Zimbabwe’s “Second Republic”  38
O B E RT B E RN A RD MLAMB O AND E ZRA CHI TANDO

3 Mugabeism otherwise? A critical reflection on toxic

leadership and Zimbabwe’s “New Dispensation”  52
S H E P H E RD M PO FU

4 Theatres of struggle in post-​Mugabe Zimbabwe  67

N K U L U LE KO S I BANDA

5 Derisive imaginaries of the death and burial of Mugabe

and the nascent aesthetics of coercive power in
“Second Republic” politics  84
I R I K I D ZAY I M ANASE
vi Contents
6 The ‘spectre’ of Mugabe: Land, change and discursive
politics of dispensations in Zimbabwe  101
O L I V E R N YA MB I

PART II
Tropes of ambivalent “transitions”  119
7 “We must aspire to be a clean nation”: Ambivalences of
transition in “New Dispensation” metaphors of dirt  121
TE N DAI M A NGE NA

8 Gukurahundi revisited in the “Second Republic”:

Trauma, memory and violence in Novuyo Rosa Tshuma’s
House of stone  140
GI B S O N N C UB E

9 Spectacles of transition: Texts and counter-​texts in the

historiography of Zimbabwe in transition  156
M U C H ATI V U GWA LI B E RTY HOVE

10 A déjà vu of Orwellian proportions: Re-​reading Animal

Farm in the context of Zimbabwean politics of change  171
TH AM SAN QA MOYO AND E STHE R MAVE NGA N O

PART III
Dis/​continuing political cultures  185
11 Narrativising dis/​continuities in ZANU PF
intra-​power politics  187
TE RRE N C E MUSANGA

12 A nation burdened by an unappeased ngozi? A ‘folk’

cultural perspective on Zimbabwe’s stagnation  202
M I C K I A S M USI Y I WA

13 In and out of court: Zimbabwe’s perennial framing

of opposition politics as ‘nuisance needing judiciary
pacification’  217
E D M O RE D UB E
 Contents vii
14 Auxillia Mnangagwa’s “Amaihood” and the cultural politics
of the Zimbabwean first lady in the “New Dispensation”  232
U M A LI S A I D I

Index  251
Acknowledgements

Oliver, Tendai and Gibson would like to express thanks to each other for cur-
ating this volume on the urgent subject of cultures of change in post-​colonial
Zimbabwe, especially in the post-​Mugabe era. We also appreciate how we have
established links with Zimbabwean scholars, within and outside the country, on
this book project.
Our greatest appreciation goes to all the contributors, for their enthusiasm
and energy. Without them, this project would not have seen the light of day.
We also want to take this opportunity to thank the many reviewers for their
immense contribution to the success of the project.Their incisive questions and
probing comments helped in shaping the focus and rigour of all the chapters
in this volume.
We want to thank Leanne Hinves, Helena Hurd and Rosie Anderson of
Routledge for their professionalism and keen interest in African Studies.
Oliver Nyambi appreciates the generous funding received as part of his
fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany from May
2018 to August 2021. He wishes to thank his host at Bayreuth University Susan
Arndt and the Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies for availing a
conducive and productive space for thinking and writing. Nyambi also acknow-
ledges the support received from his department, faculty and research office at
the University of the Free State in South Africa, particularly Kudzai Ngara, Iri
Manase, Helene Strauss, Heidi Hudson, Corli Witthuhn and many others. He
also thanks colleagues as well as the team supporting him in the Department
of Higher Education’s Future Professors Programme, South Africa –​Jackie du
Toit, Neil Roos, Sibusiso Moyo (not the Zimbabwean coup announcer), Zinia
Bunyula, Jonathan Jansen and Chantelle Wyley.
Gibson Ncube would like to thank the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced
Study for facilitating an overseas residence at the National Humanities Center
(USA). It is during this stay that he joined Oliver and Tendai in crafting the idea
of this volume.
Tendai Mangena acknowledges funding from Fulbright which enabled her
to work on this project as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of California,
Riverside, USA.
About the editors

Oliver Nyambi (PhD, Stellenbosch) teaches English and Cultural Studies in

the Department of English, University of the Free State, South Africa. He
is currently an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow hosted by Susan
Arndt in the Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies at Bayreuth
University, Germany. A former fellow of the American Council of Learned
Societies (ACLS) and the Duke Africa Initiative at Duke University, USA, his
research mainly focuses on crisis/​humanitarian literatures, the Zimbabwean
crisis and the cultural politics of marginalities. His recent book is Life-​
Writing from the Margins in Zimbabwe: Versions and Subversions of Crisis (2019,
Routledge). He is an editor with Cogent Arts & Humanities –​the open
access journal published by Routledge. He is a rated researcher with the
South African National Research Foundation (NRF).
Tendai Mangena (PhD, Leiden) is Associate Professor in African Literary and
Cultural studies at Great Zimbabwe University and Research Fellow in the
Department of English at the University of the Free State, South Africa.
She was a Fulbright Research Scholar in the Department of Comparative
Literature and Languages at the University of California, Riverside,
USA, in 2020 and an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow in
the Department of Postcolonial Literary and Cultural studies at Bremen
University, in Germany from 2016 to 2018. Her research interests are in
the areas of gender, politics, power and justice in African literature and
onomastics.
Gibson Ncube (PhD, Stellenbosch) teaches in the Department of Modern
Foreign Languages at Stellenbosch University. He is currently an Iso Lomso
Research Fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (South
Africa). He is a former African Humanities Programme Fellow (American
Council for Learned Societies). His research interests are in comparative
literature, gender and queer studies and cultural studies. He sits on the edi-
torial boards of the Journal of Literary Studies, Nomina Africana as well as the
“Governing Intimacies in the Global South” Book Series published by
x About the editors
Manchester University Press. His publications have appeared in journals such
as the Social Dynamics, Current Writing, Journal of Commonwealth Literatures
and the Journal Southern African Studies. He is the Assistant Editor of the
South African Journal of African Languages and is also the co-​convenor of the
Queer African Studies Association. In 2021, he was Virtual Fellow at Leeds
University Centre for African Studies/Leeds Arts and Humanities Research
Institute. He was also the Mary Kingsley Zochonis Distinguished Lecturer
(African Studies Association UK & Royal African Society).
Contributors

Ezra Chitando is Professor in History and Phenomenology of Religion at

the University of Zimbabwe and Theology Consultant, Southern Africa
Regional Coordinator of the World Council of Churches Ecumenical HIV
& AIDS Initiatives and Advocacy. His research interests include method
and theory in the study of religion, as well as religion and gender, politics,
security, climate change, development and leadership. With Joram Tarusarira,
he has edited the volume, Religion and human security in Africa (2019). He is
also the editor of the book Politics and religion in Zimbabwe: The deification of
Robert G. Mugabe (Routledge, 2020).
Edmore Dube holds a PhD from the University of Zimbabwe and is cur-
rently Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy and Religious
Studies, Great Zimbabwe University. His research interests are in the area
of justice resonating with the common good and mediated by religio-​
cultural processes. Some of his publications include The Great Zimbabwe
monuments and challenges in African heritage management and Enhancing human
flourishing: Reflections on the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops’ Conference as an
enduring prophetic voice (1957–​2017), both published by African Sun Media.
He is currently working on a proof copy of Pluralism as justice in religious edu-
cation to be published by UNISA Press.
Muchativugwa Liberty Hove is Professor of English and NRF-​ rated
researcher at the North-​West University. He is currently interested in gen-
erating new knowledges on how identities are expressed, constructed and
negotiated in multilingual and culturally diverse settings. He has developed,
integrated and refined qualitative methodological approaches and theoret-
ical perspectives from interdisciplinary research, educational and curriculum
studies, auto/​biography, Southern epistemologies, applied language studies
in multilingual classrooms and African-​American literary studies. He has
published a book on auto/​biography, two on the dynamics of teacher edu-
cation, several book chapters on emergent identities and over 30 articles in
both local and international accredited journals.
xii List of contributors
Irikidzayi Manase is Associate Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies and
current Academic Head of the Department of English at the University of
the Free State, South Africa. His areas of research fall within the literary and
cultural geographies of southern Africa and Africa. He has published on the
southern African city; urban youth cultures; the intersection between land
and other natural resources, politics, media and identities; representations of
the African diaspora and speculative literatures. He is currently completing
projects on the literary imaginaries and multimodal texts on South African
and African futures and infrastructures.
Esther Mavengano is Lecturer in Linguistics and Literature in the Department
of English and Media Studies at Great Zimbabwe University. She holds a
PhD in Linguistics and Literary Studies from the North-​West University in
South Africa. Her areas of interests are applied linguistics, discourse analysis,
African literature, Anglophone literature and English as a second language.
She has published in these areas.
Obert Bernard Mlambo is Associate Professor in Classical Studies and
Comparative History at the University of Zimbabwe. His research interests
include Roman history, veterans and postwar conflicts, violence, gender and
masculinity studies. Mlambo was formerly a Humboldt Fellow and Global
South Studies Visiting Scholar at the University of Cologne. He was also
a Fondation Hardt’s Young Researchers Fellow (Vandoeuvres, Switzerland)
and Nordic Africa Institute’s Guest Scholar (Uppsala, Sweden).
Thamsanqa Moyo is Senior Lecturer at Great Zimbabwe University in the
Department of English and Media Studies. He holds a PhD in English from
the University of South Africa. His areas of interest are in indigenous know-
ledge systems, communication, life-​writing, particularly in its Zimbabwean
context, and African literature. He has published fairly in these areas.
Shepherd Mpofu is Associate Professor of Media and Communication at the
University of Limpopo in South Africa. He has published several articles on
communication, media and journalism in Africa. His body of work covers
social media and politics; social media and identity; social media and protests.
He is the co-​editor (with Dumisani Moyo) of Mediating xenophobia in Africa
(Palgrave 2020), and is currently contracted by Palgrave to edit two book
volumes.The first is on digital media and humour and the second is on social
media and humour during the Covid-​19 pandemic (both focusing on the
Global South). Mpofu also offers commentary to various local and inter-
national media on issues that fall within the area of his research expertise.
Terrence Musanga holds a PhD in English and is Postdoctoral Fellow in
the School of Languages, North-​ West University (Mafikeng Campus),
South Africa. He is also Senior Lecturer in the Department of English and
Communication, Midlands State University, Zimbabwe. His areas of research
include identity and migration issues in Zimbabwean literature, gender and
newgenprepdf

List of contributors xiii

the politics of the Zimbabwean nation state. Musanga has published widely
in peer-​reviewed journals, including Journal of African Cultural Studies, Journal
of African Identities, Journal of National Identities and Interdisciplinary Studies in
Literature and Environment.
Mickias Musiyiwa is Associate Professor teaching in the Departments of
Language, Literature & Culture as well as History, Heritage and Knowledge
Systems in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the University of
Zimbabwe. He holds a PhD in language and popular music from the
University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. He has multidisciplinary research
interests covering such fields and disciplines as literary theory, African litera-
ture, oral literature, African history, indigenous knowledge systems, health
education, culture and development, popular music and gender. Currently
he is actively participating in community and national projects in which
indigenous knowledge is used for developmental purposes.
Umali Saidi is Senior Lecturer (Midlands State University, Zimbabwe). His
areas of research interest are semiotics, communication, critical discourse
analysis, onomastics, popular culture, cultural studies and related fields. An
avid researcher in landscapes and belonging; traditional religion and social-​
cultural change; BaTonga of Zimbabwe culture and identity in the Zambezi
Valley, he has published in these study fields.
Nkululeko Sibanda is Drama Lecturer at the University of Pretoria. He holds
a PhD in Drama and Performance Studies from the University of KwaZulu-​
Natal (Howard College). The need to develop a formidable, relevant and
effective performance theory and practice model within African perform-
ance practice (from an African paradigm) sits at the base of his research
endeavours. His research interests include African theatre, alternative scenog-
raphy, alternative performance and identity, and performance and memory.
He has published more than 17 peer-​reviewed research papers in theatre
design, theatre training, performance and cultural politics in Zimbabwe and
South Africa.
Cuthbeth Tagwirei is Apartheid Studies scholar whose research interests
include the ‘behaviours’ of cultural systems and how they relate to questions
of power. He has published in journals such as Journal of Literary Studies,
Critical Arts: A Journal of South-​North Cultural Media, Children’s Literature in
Education, Latin American Report, The Journal of Commonwealth Literature and
Communicatio. Currently he is working on cultural nucleation, a theoretical
approach to the study of cultural systems.
Introduction
The 2017 coup and cultures of change
in Zimbabwe
Oliver Nyambi,Tendai Mangena and Gibson Ncube

In the face of an impending disgraceful impeachment vote at the behest of his

own Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU PF) party,
Zimbabwe’s long-​time ruler Robert Mugabe, on 21 November 2017, tendered
his resignation letter to the Speaker of Parliament Jacob Mudenda. This effect-
ively ended his 37-​year stranglehold on power. Despite stating, in that letter,
that his decision was voluntary, Mugabe later claimed in March 2018 that the
military pressured him into resigning. He thus contended that his ouster was
a not-​so-​delicate coup d’état. Intricately, the Zimbabwean High Court ruled,
four days after his resignation, that besides the army’s disregard of his orders
(being the commander-​in-​chief) to desist from intra-​party succession politics,
Operation Restore Legacy which precipitated his removal was legal.1 The High
Court ruling has complicated and mystified the November 2017 event, ges-
turing to its unproblematic categorisation especially in state discourses of the
coup as simply an internal transition. However, the leadership change was far
more complex and elaborate than the camouflages of constitutional drama-
turgy promoted by the High Court to lend the event an essence of legality.
The agents, processes and instruments involved in the “transition” betray some-
thing more sinister and graver than what judicial institutions, for long a reliable
“legal” support system for ZANU PF hegemony (see Manyatera & Fombad,
2014), could bring themselves to confirm. It is no wonder, then, that, besides
the court’s ruling and the military’s spirited claim that “this [was] not a military
takeover”, the question of whether the transition amounted to a coup or not
has proved inevitable.2
Naturally, enquiries into the nature of the Zimbabwean coup and the com-
plexities of change it engendered have had to begin from questions around its
nature and phenomenology –​its various dimensions and subtleties as a histor-
ically situated event of immense social, political, economic and, indeed, moral
significance. The question of the coup’s temporality as a product, method and
process of complex and slippery factors informing post-​colonial state-​craft has
permeated emerging studies on the coup. Moore’s (2018) study is one of the
early enquiries into the coup from broader historical processes linked to polit-
ical and ideological instabilities in the ruling ZANU PF party as the single most
important stakeholder in the national development project since Zimbabwe’s
DOI: 10.4324/9781003190271-1
2 Oliver Nyambi et al.
independence in 1980. Moore’s contextualisation of Operation Restore Legacy
“in a region full of unique varietals” leads him to conclude that “Zimbabwe’s
was a ‘coup of a special type’” (2018, p. 1). Along the same lines, Munoriyarwa
and Chambwera (2020, p. 1) have used the label “soft coup” to underline the
uncharacteristic character (especially) of both the subtle and brute violence of
the method of the coup. Accompanying the military’s spectacular performance
of ZANU PF “legacy restoration” through tanks and the occasional gunfire
were military-​led constitutional procedures of internal transition that created
the impression of what Beardsworth, Cheeseman and Tinhu (2019, p. 580)
refer to as “a coup that never was”. Besides the provincial votes of no confi-
dence, guaranteeing a threshold for Mugabe’s impeachment by members of his
party, the essence of a constitutional transition was also manufactured through
the symbolic literal brandishing of the constitution by General Constantino
Chiwenga at a press conference that he called on 13 November 2017 to give the
first hint at the military’s impending intervention in ZANU PF factional wars.
However, besides these and many other histories, processes, acts, machin-
eries, personalities and events of the coup that clearly set it apart from other
coups in the region, Tendi, in his study of “motivations and dynamics of the
Zimbabwean coup” (2020, p. 39) sets out to debunk its exceptionalism. In a
rather frantic attempt to privilege his universalist reading of the coup as typical
of the “African” coup since 1956, Tendi brands scholars who have emphasised
the coup’s uniquely Zimbabwean dimensions and dynamics as “propagat[ors]”
(2020, p. 40) of the Mnangagwa regime’s “it’s not a military takeover” narrative.
In this fundamentalist and quite reductionist “exposé” of what he takes to be
uninformed enquiries into the “African” coup, Tendi vaunts his own analysis of
the Zimbabwean coup on the mere basis that it proceeds from exclusive mili-
tary sources obtained through “trust”, which he believes he has earned from
“nurturing relationships … with ZANU PF and security sector elites” (2020,
p. 39). Suffice to say we do not have the slightest of evidence that this “trust”
actually exists, and if it exists at all, how exactly it privileges him to make
the sweeping generalisation that representations stressing the coup’s uniquely
Zimbabwean facets are “inaccurate” (Tendi, 2020, p. 40).
Tendi’s curious notion of “(in)accuracy” and what sources matter in
enquiries about the coup highlights the fact that its various dimensions are far
too complex to be understood from the perspectives of any one form of source,
method or theoretical underpinning. There is little doubt that, by any “com-
parable justifications and operational attributes with military coups in Africa”
(Tendi, 2020, p. 40), Operation Restore Order was a coup. The military’s stra-
tegic neutralisation of all arms of the state including the Police and President,
seizure of the state broadcaster and unmitigated violent arrests of ministers
clearly define a military takeover of power. The onomastic construction of
this takeover as Operation Restore Legacy engenders temporalities and spatial
idiosyncrasies that form critical heuristic veneers into local factors defining its
uniquely Zimbabwean nature and phenomenology. Therefore, although uni-
versalist approaches to the coup will certainly yield different results and benefits
 Introduction 3
compared to inward-​looking enquiries, nothing about their methods, processes
or intimacies of sources privileges them to negate other approaches.
In light of this, this book centres the Zimbabwean coup’s spatial, socio-​
historical and political situation in interrogations of unprecedented changes to
many aspects of Zimbabwe’s post-​colonial existence occasioned by the coup.
The book is a study on change –​quite an elusive, problematic and slippery
concept in a country that is defined, for the greater part of the last two decades,
by various forms of enduring stagnations constituting what has been widely
referred to as the “Zimbabwean crisis”. Two constants in these stagnations
and crisis are Robert Mugabe and ZANU PF. The two are synonymous with
the two-​decade-​old economic crisis which partly fuelled the succession and
factional rancour that eventually consumed Mugabe in 2017 and installed
Mnangagwa. Mugabe and ZANU PF are two faces of the same political system
identifiable with the post-​ colonial state, particularly its failure. The failure
manifests symbolically and metaphorically in, for instance, the economic crisis,
the paranoid militarisation of the state and violent policing of the expres-
sive space and media. For long identified and constructed as indispensable to
ZANU PF, Mugabe’s forced removal from ZANU PF leadership represented a
seismic shift in the constitution, organisation and exercise of state power. In this
light, the book reads the 2017 coup as transition and, certainly, unprecedented
and even unexpected change. But what kind of transition and change? This is
the central question driving multi-​disciplinary approaches to the Zimbabwean
post-​colonial condition in the wake of the coup. It is important to clarify that
contributions in this volume do not merely seek to ask and answer the easy
question concerning what changed or is changing following Mugabe’s fall.
Rather, the chapters are more interested in the potential heuristic and hermen-
eutic function of the change, particularly the possibilities it presents for seeing
and knowing anew, the forces impacting Zimbabwean politics, economics
and society. The focus is on the multifarious meanings of the change (and also
its absence), particularly how they are produced, circulated, entrenched and
contested in the public sphere.
For many, Mnangagwa’s ascension to power brought back lost hope that the
two-​decade-​long national crisis marked by a moribund economy, hyperinfla-
tion and authoritarian rule would abate. This hope is perhaps best epitomised
by the endorsement of the coup by socio-​political protest movements such as
the #ThisFlag and Tajamuka/Sesijikile Movements and the opposition led by
the Movement for Democratic Change factions.Taking the reins on the back of
opposition to Mugabe’s well-​documented kleptocracy, retrograde isolationism
and nativist politics and economics, the Mnangagwa regime has, in response
to the national crisis, attempted to build its legitimacy around the rhetoric of
newness and discontinuances from toxic political and economic cultures of
the past. However, such disconnections have not been neat, linear and unprob-
lematic, hamstrung and complicated as they are, by historical and ideological
tentacles which embroil the “New Dispensation” in ZANU PF’s authoritarian
modes of hegemonic control. This is one of the reasons why, with each show
4 Oliver Nyambi et al.
of authoritarian tendencies by the Mnangagwa regime, it is becoming increas-
ingly apparent that Mugabe was but just one layer of a very complex political
system which requires much more than leadership change to reform. It is not
surprising, then, that besides some positive achievements especially in the areas
of currency and macro-​economic stabilisation (see Ndakaripa, 2020), more of
the Mugabe era hegemonic politics of patronage, well-​documented high-​level
corruption, manipulation of opposition and the militarisation of the state have
continued unabated and, in some cases, worsening. Contested elections, wanton
arrests of journalists, the political weaponisation of the judiciary and pan-
optic surveillance of civil dissent are some of the symptoms of a systematically
entrenched totalitarianism that manifest ZANU PF’s political culture regardless
of who leads it. These continuities constantly interject, problematise and scuttle
the state’s self-​legitimating notions of the coup as a transition heralding a New
Dispensation, “new dawn” and “Second Republic”.
The 2017 coup marks a watershed moment in the politics of transition in
post-​independence Zimbabwe where, for 37 years since independence from
Britain, Mugabe had successfully maintained a stranglehold on the ruling ZANU
PF party. Complications around the (il)legitimacy of the military operation that
catalysed Mugabe’s fall and the subsequent militarisation of Mnangagwa’s New
Dispensation have recently triggered fresh interests in state/​succession debates
in this politically unstable country that is concomitantly reeling from a two-​
decades-​long economic implosion. As hinted above, this book is not part of the
ongoing academic rush to identify changes, or lack thereof, in Zimbabwean
politics and political systems in the advent of the coup. Rather, contributors in
this book consider the coup as a political palimpsest that onion-​layers a histor-
ical trajectory of succession politics in liberation politics. As the state in ZANU
PF’s quasi-​socialist revolutionary ideology is principally the party, it is impossible
to talk about political change without references to the social change it directly
impacts. In this light, the book interrogates an array of social, economic and
political changes related to the coup as manifestations of complex, protracted,
unpredictable and unchartered processes of becoming and being post-​colonial
Zimbabwe. The book thus uses the 2017 coup as a theoretical and conceptual
point of departure to engage Zimbabwean cultures of change in the context of
internecine transition/​succession politics amidst a debilitating economic crisis.
The notion of culture is deliberately stressed in this book not least because it
reflects the book’s concern with the post-​coloniality of transition as a product of
long-​drawn events, processes, attitudes and ideas making and unmaking power
and socio-​political change in Zimbabwe. This aspect of the book not only sets
it apart from a few that have so far attempted to engage Zimbabwe’s 2017
problematic transition. More importantly, the focus on cultures of change cul-
minating in the coup and what the Mnangagwa regime has called the Second
Republic allows broader and more historically situated enquiries into the back-
stories informing the political complexities state constructions of the coup
and the New Dispensation as change, transition and “restoration of legacy”. In
their critical engagement with old and emergent cultures of change/​transition/​
 Introduction 5
succession linked to the Second Republic, chapters in this book deploy multi-​
disciplinary methods, conceptual frames and theoretical positions. These are as
varied and ranging in extent as Fanon’s liberation struggle era warnings about
the “pitfalls of national consciousness” (1968, p. 136) and the “envious native”
(1968, p. 85), Anderson’s (1983) exhortations to (re)think the modern nation
as enabled and limited by the imagination, the Shona folk concept of ngozi
(avenging spirit) and other African knowledges steeped in individual and group
experiences of post-​coloniality.
The importance of this book lies in its interest in a defining moment that
reflects deep structures characterising change in Zimbabwean politics and
society. Owing to its history as a British settler colony, the protracted war of
liberation, problematic post-​independence national cohesion, economic crises
and intermittent political upheavals, Zimbabwe has been a hotspot in African
and post-​colonial studies across the world. The country has long featured in
area and other historical, political, cultural and economic disciplines as a case
study in enquiries about complexities bedevilling the post-​colonial trajectory
of change in Africa and the previously colonised world. The 2017 coup in
Zimbabwe has intensified these interests –​making this book a timely interven-
tion. The events, processes, ideologies, politics, politicians and institutions (civil
and state) involved in Mugabe’s downfall are still unravelling and have largely
remained ambivalent, ambiguous, contradictory and too slippery to fix in any
truism of the history of the 2017 transition/​succession drama. This is despite
attempts, in state discourses of the Second Republic, to diminish political com-
plexities around the coup through, amongst many other ways, inscribing a
moral teleologicality and naturality of change on the official narrative of the
coup. Scholarship on the contested narrative of the 2017 transition is only
emerging. Much of it, however, is strictly disciplinary (political science) in ways
that tend to limit epistemological entry points, theory and methods of ana-
lysis. This book’s focus on “cultures of change” deliberately extends modes,
methods and frameworks of analysing complex socio-​political changes related
to the momentous downfall of Mugabe in 2017. It brings together scholars
from various disciplines working at the intersection of power and culture, who
critically engage cultural texts (broadly defined) inspired by (and related to)
the unprecedented socio-​political upheavals occasioned by the 2017 leadership
change in Zimbabwe. All scholars featured in this book have experienced the
Zimbabwean crisis leading to the 2017 transition in many ways and together,
they speak from points of awareness and authority that is indispensable to a
deeper understanding of the dynamics of change politics in Zimbabwe.

Succession politics and complex transitions: History

repeating itself?
The multiple dimensions of the 2017 coup in Zimbabwe, and dynamics of
the Second Republic it birthed, can best be understood within the historical
context of the country’s liberation movements. Specific focus must be placed
6 Oliver Nyambi et al.
on Robert Mugabe’s contentious ascendance and hold-​on to power within
ZANU during the liberation war and prior to independence. Three central
ideas are worth examination: the split of ZAPU and the formation of ZANU;
Mugabe’s rise to the leadership of ZANU especially the “coup” on Ndabaningi
Sithole and the history of the “violent” purging of contenders within ZANU
through Mugabe’s long and audios leadership of the ruling party. The major
premise is that factions have always existed within ZANU PF and that they led
to Mugabe’s eventual downfall.The factional fights that culminated in Mugabe’s
rancorous removal from power in 2017 were therefore not a surprise, but rather
a revelation/​manifestation of some of the defining features of a deep political
culture within the ruling party.
It is established knowledge that ZANU PF emerged as a splinter group in
1963 borne out of factional politics within ZAPU (Hove, 2019, p. 201). This
split, “in which a group of disillusioned nationalist leaders broke” from the
liberation movement led by Joshua Nkomo, provides adequate evidence that
nationalist politics during the liberation struggle was “both a struggle with the
Rhodesian state and within and between nationalist movements” (Hodgkinson,
2019, p. 984). As Mazarire (2017) aptly argues, ZANU emerged from intra-​
party violence and its history begins in the background of violence and “sell-​
out politics” where the breakaway

was largely perceived as an American “plot” spearheaded by Ndabaningi

Sithole, ZANU’s US-​nurtured leader, and supported by a broader network
of ZANU officials in contact with the US consulate in Salisbury.
(Mazarire, 2017, p. 84)

Therefore, in a sense, ZANU PF’s phases of “renewal” date back to its forma-
tive years as a breakaway “rebel”, liberation party protesting Joshua Nkomo’s
struggle tactics as leader of ZAPU.
After the split from ZAPU, ZANU “cleverly and instrumentally used par-
ticular events not only to popularize itself, but also to claim to be the sole initi-
ator of the liberation struggle” (Ndlovu-​Gatsheni, 2012, p. 5). Ndlovu-​Gatsheni
illustrates how

the Chinhoyi Battle of 1966 (in which seven ZANLA cadres were killed by
Rhodesian forces) was celebrated annually as Chimurenga Day, marking the
beginning of the armed liberation struggle … and was used ideologically …
to claim the position of the initiator of the armed struggle ahead of the ZAPU
and its armed wing, the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA).
(Ndlovu-​Gatsheni, 2012, p. 5)

However, the struggle to attain and maintain hegemony has not always
been successful for the ruling party. According to Ndlovu-​Gatsheni, ZANU/​
ZANU-​PF “has never at any time been a monolithic political formation free
from intraparty dissensions, conflicts, and crisis” (Ndlovu-​Gatsheni, 2012, p. 6).
 Introduction 7
The “little unity of a hegemonic sort” (Moore, 2008, p. 32) goes beyond the for-
mation of ZANU out of ZAPU to incorporate how Robert Mugabe became
the leader of the former liberation movement.
Ndabaningi Sithole was the first president of ZANU in 1963, but Mugabe
whisked away the leadership from him in what was interpreted as a “coup in
prison” (Moore, 2005, p. 176). In the words of Moore:

Mugabe captured Zanu’s leadership in what a surprised Samora Machel-​

freshly installed president of Mozambique-​called a “coup in prison” … that
coup was never confirmed by a full party congress until 1984. The route
to that authentication is simultaneously the root of his need-​and ability-​
to stay in power until his disposal in 2017. … neither the frontline states
nor Zanu rank and file accepted Mugabe’s rise easily-​although “deposed”
Ndabaningi Sithole’s bad choices did nothing to slow the usurper.
(More, 2005, p. 176)

Mugabe usurped power within his party in 1963, yet in the context of the
recent coup that put Mnangagwa into power, the usurpation was at the national
government as well as party level.
According to Mazarire, “since the ‘reconstruction’ of the party under Robert
Mugabe after the Chimoio congress of 1977, ZANU has tended to expunge
from its past figures who disagreed with the leadership’s hegemonic trajectory”
(Mazarire, 2017, p. 83). Here we invoke two deaths that could be considered as
central to the politics of “succession” in ZANU during the liberation struggle
and prior to independence. The then chairman of ZANU, Herbert Chitepo was
assassinated in Lusaka in 1975. Josiah Tongogara, the popular ZANLA commander,
was killed in a car accident in Mozambique in December 1979, on the eve of
Zimbabwe’s independence. Both deaths “remain subject to the fiercest contro-
versies” and “are mired in rumours of ZANU power struggles” (Fontein, 2018,
p. 52). Tongogara was implicated in Chitepo’s death. Significantly, for our discus-
sion in this section is how Mugabe is rumoured to have had a hand in both deaths.
According to Fontein,“it is often rumoured that Mugabe is haunted by Tongogara’s
ghost, implying that he had a hand in the guerrilla commander’s death” (Fontein,
2018, p. 52). In his interpretation of Luise White’s book The assassination of Herbert
Chitepo:Texts and politics in Zimbabwe (2003), Rotberg talks about the hint

that Mugabe was behind not only Chitepo’s assassination but also the death
of Tongogara, thus enabling Mugabe to assume full control of Zimbabwe’s
move to independence in 1980. The argument is built on guilt by associ-
ation: Since Mugabe, while in power after 1980, is known to have had his
own Central Intelligence Organization eliminate, maim, and intimidate
opponents, rivals, and suspected dissidents, surely his ruthlessness in power
implies that he clawed his way to ZANU dominance over Chitepo and
Tongogara as he did over Sithole.
(Rotberg, 2004, p. 599)
8 Oliver Nyambi et al.
What can be gleaned from these accusations is the fact that in nationalist circles,
Mugabe was suspected to be disposed to get into and hold onto power. This
determination to hold onto power played out throughout his reign over ZANU
PF and the country often as an “obstacle to change” (Ranger, 1980, p. 71).
Whilst it is possible to argue that “Mugabe was both a creation and beneficiary
of factionalism from the wider nationalist movement and within his party, both
before and after independence” (Hove, 2019, p. 201), in November 2017, he
was a victim of the same political culture of factionalism which he had overseen,
like a chess master, during his rule. In his first public statement after the coup in
2017, made in an interview with Sophie Mokoena of SABC, Mugabe said the
following about Mnangagwa’s presidency:

he must be proper. He is improper where he is. Illegal. … We must undo

this disgrace which we have imposed on ourselves. We don’t deserve it. We
don’t deserve it. Please we don’t deserve it. Zimbabwe does not deserve it.
We want to be a constitutional country.Yes, we may have our shortcomings
here and there, but overall, we must obey the law and become constitu-
tional. People must be chosen to government in the proper way.
(SABC News, 2018)

This statement by Mugabe judging the coup and Mnangagwa’s (il)legitimacy

is ironic. It represents a selective memorialisation of Zimbabwean history
which distorts Mugabe’s hegemonic machinery. To be certain, it should be
noted that Mugabe himself had in the past, during the liberation struggle and
after independence, led the ruling party and government often in contentious
circumstances, for instance, when he unleashed violence to turn around his and
ZANU PF’s electoral loss in the 2008 election.

Cultures of change: Discursive politics of dispensations

and legacies
As stated in the preceding section, Mugabe ruled over a country and a party
that were plagued by internal strife and factions. The strife and factionalism, we
will argue here, were an effect of how Mugabe had ruled and the kind of legacy
that he had set out to create about and around himself.
Understanding the kinds of political legacies and dispensations in Zimbabwe
begins by appreciating the fact that the political landscape has been characterised,
and continues to be characterised, by the cult of personalities. Sachikonye (2011,
p. 62) explains this pervading reality of Zimbabwean politics as follows:

There is a strong element of personalisation of leadership in the

Zimbabwean political landscape, and this is in line with the trend in most
African political parties. In Zimbabwe, there is a campaign for Mugabe to
be the country and party President for life, often referred to a God-​sent, as
God’s second son, as a gift from God. Other symbols of personality worship
 Introduction 9
include activities of the 21st February Movement that celebrates Mugabe’s
birthday every year, and the emblazoning of his face on caps, t-​shirts, and
dresses.

This personalisation of leadership goes beyond Mugabe, the ruling ZANU PF

as it is also evident in opposition parties. Mugabe undoubtedly perfected the
cult of personality. ZANU PF and indeed state institutions were focused around
him. Siziba and Ncube point out that during his reign, there was a “deification
of Mugabe” (2015, p. 517) (see also Chitando, 2020) to such an extent that there
was a “fetishisation of Mugabe’s power and his person. From the time Mugabe
assumed power, the Zimbabwean government has mythologised Mugabe’s
person” (2015, p. 520). What is particularly worth noting on this deification
and fetishisation of the person of Mugabe is the fact that he created a legacy
that began and virtually ended in and with him. What this meant was that the
ruling party, and by extension national politics, pivoted around the person of
Mugabe. In this way, the ruling party and state institutions were considered in
their dependence on the person of Mugabe. Interestingly, efforts by Mugabe
towards a one-​party state worked in tandem with the centralisation of executive
powers around himself. The legacy of Mugabe was intricately tied to that of the
nation. Ndlovu-​Gatsheni (2009) coins the term “Mugabeism” to describe the
inordinate personalisation of political and state institutions around the character
of Mugabe. Ndlovu-​Gatsheni (2009, p. 1139) defines Mugabeism as:

a summation of a constellation of political controversies, political behaviour,

political ideas, utterances, rhetoric and actions that have crystallized around
Mugabe’s political life. It is a contested phenomenon with the nationalist
aligned scholars understanding it as a pan-​African redemptive ideology
opposed to all forms of imperialism and colonialism and dedicated to a
radical redistributive project predicated on redress of colonial injustices.
A neoliberal-​inspired perspective sees Mugabeism as a form of racial chau-
vinism and authoritarianism marked by antipathy towards norms of liberal
governance and disdain for human rights and democracy.

Crystallising the political life of the ruling party and the country around his
own life and person, Mugabe did not imagine or fathom ZANU PF and
Zimbabwe beyond him. Given such as state of affairs, he did not actively seek to
groom any potential successor. For example, in 2004, there was an attempt led
by then Information and Publicity Minister, Jonathan Moyo, to clandestinely
lobby ZANU PF provincial structures to have Emmerson Mnangagwa replace
Mugabe. Moyo was fired from his ministerial position and from the party
and Mnangagwa was relegated to marginal position in government. Mugabe
ensured that discussion of his succession did not see the light of day and if it did,
those involved were punished accordingly.
Despite his public announcements after his ouster that he was preparing
one of his trusted lieutenants and Defence Minister Sydney Sekeramayi to
10 Oliver Nyambi et al.
succeed him, the ways in which Mugabe ruthlessly descended on potential
successors, particularly his former deputies Joice Mujuru and Mnangagwa,
attests more to his desire to extend his rule for as long as possible.3 Discussion
of succession and imagining a Zimbabwe and ZANU PF beyond and without
Mugabe was rendered taboo. Mugabe thus presided, especially in the last half
of his presidency, over a ruling party and nation in which factions sought
to outwit each other, not just to replace and succeed him but often times
to please him. This engendered a culture and legacy of patronage in which
different individuals and factions sought to please Mugabe in exchange for
positions and protection. Mpondi (2015, p. 514) describes the functioning of
this system of patronage:

Zimbabwe is defined in personal terms as an entity that belongs to the

person of the president. Government ministers, top security chiefs, and
judges have openly pronounced their allegiance to Mugabe. Even those
who were purged from ZANU PF after the December 2014 Congress still
sing praises to the president. One plausible explanation is that they want to
protect their wealth that they got through the patronage system.

Interestingly, it is the culture of patronage and factionalism that eventually led

to Mugabe being overthrown from his long rule of Zimbabwe and ZANU PF.
There is need to understand “Operation Restore Legacy” and how it fits into
the question of dispensations in Zimbabwe’s political history. What and whose
legacy was being restored by the coup? Mudau and Mangani (2018, p. 179) try
to answer these questions by explaining that:

By code naming the operation as “Operation Restore Legacy”, the soldiers

were absolving themselves from direct involvement in politics and at the
same time constructing a narrative which appeared to be an effort to
safeguard the gains of the liberation struggle and the legacy of the then
President Robert Mugabe.

It is obvious from what happened after the overthrowing of Mugabe that it

was not his legacy that was being restored. It was rather a question of erasing
Mugabe’s legacy and replacing it with that of the New Dispensation.
Mnangagwa’s regime, however, has grappled with fashioning itself beyond
Mugabeism. Zimbabwe and ZANU PF remain in the almost same state as
when Mugabe ruled over them. Patronage has been coupled with cartels which
control virtually all facets of the economy and politics. According to Sachikonye
(2011, p. 35):

The ZANU PF reigns supreme in the governance sphere-​it is difficult to

disentangle party structures from state structures regarding the allocation
of state resources; there is an inter-​penetration of the two sets of structures,
especially at local levels.
 Introduction 11
These were used to describe the rule of Mugabe. These same words can easily
be used to refer to the Mnangagwa regime. This is very telling of the oper-
ation and functioning of dispensations in Zimbabwe, especially in the post-​
independence period. The supposed New Dispensation and Second Republic
of Mnangagwa is but an extension of the Mugabe dispensation. In essence, it is
simply a set of new, but largely recycled, actors performing the same Mugabeist
script. Time will possibly tell if Mnangagwa will be able to break away from
Mugabeism and chart a legacy and dispensation distinct from that of Mugabe.

Chapter summaries
The volume is divided into three distinct, though neatly interrelated sections.
The first section entitled “Spectacles of change in the Second Republic”
examines diverse iterations of attempted change by the Mnangagwa regime.
The overarching focus in chapters in this section is on various forms of efforts
to depart from the ancien regime and how these, to date, have largely highlighted
more continuities instead of discontinuities between the First and Second
Republics. Chapters in this section grapple with what this dimension of change
means especially in the context of a spirited campaign by the Mnangagwa
regime to create, circulate and entrench notions of transition, newness and diffe-
rence from the “old” dispensation. In the opening chapter, Cuthbeth Tagwirei
coins the novel concept of “the patriotic present” which he uses to critically
engage the politics and political cultures of being (in) the “new” dispensation.
Ultimately,Tagwirei shows that “while distinguishable from it, the patriotic pre-
sent carries traces of the old, including the motivation to monopolise narratives
about Zimbabwe and entrench ZANU PF hegemony”. Tagwirei notes further
that regardless, the patriotic present’s methods are different: “it is decentralised,
fluid, expeditious, and always in the process of unfolding”. The second chapter
by Obert Bernard Mlambo and Ezra Chitando picks up on the historical and
political complexities of nationalist iconography through a focus on the presi-
dential scarf as an important iconographical element in the symbolism of the
new patriotism that the Second Republic sought to embody. Mlambo and
Chitando argue that the politically fetishist spectacle that is the presidential scarf
represents a not-​so-​new-​national force which has sort to diffuse and disestab-
lish the stronghold that Mugabe had exercised on the political and nationalist
landscape of Zimbabwe. This chapter examines how the public spectacle of the
scarf locates itself within discourses of legitimacy that the Second Republic has
sort to foster.
The third chapter by Shepherd Mpofu deploys the concept of pol-
itical toxicity to theorise broadly the persistence of the First Republic in
destabilising the Second Republic’s framing and performances of newness
and difference. In this chapter, Mpofu explores the multifaceted and yet
often times conflicting concept of Mugabeism. He argues that Mugabeism
as a political philosophy and practice constitutes a malignant ideology and
concept of leadership that continues to haunt and materialise itself in the
12 Oliver Nyambi et al.
violent and militarised regime of Mnangagwa. Through an examination of
four central issues (violence, corruption, human rights abuses and leadership
failure), Mpofu highlights the importance of discerning that whilst the New
Dispensation has celebrated newness and departure from the First Republic,
its modus operandi is deeply engrained in Mugabeism and relies, for its hege-
monic efficiency, in the past.
In Chapter 4, Nkululeko Sibanda pursues what he calls “theatres of state
terror” and its associated culture and traditions of violence in the Second
Republic as a politico-​cultural inheritance from what Mpofu in Chapter 3 calls
“Mugabeism”. Sibanda reads the “theatre” of power and powerlessness in the
“staging” of public demonstrations that took place in August 2018 in which
members of the opposition, civic societies organisations as well as ordinary citi-
zens were ruthlessly suppressed by the military and some killed. This macabre
theatre and spectacle of violence, Sibanda contends, has served to illustrate the
need to understand ZANU PF hegemony across the dispensations as produced
and sustained by an entrenched system that thrives on violence.
In Chapter 5, Irikidzayi Manase examines media framings of the death and
burial of Robert Mugabe as a potential site to understand the cultural yet
political nuances of transition. Manase fleshes out Mpofu’s observation that
“Robert Mugabe, even at death, remained one of the most complex characters
in global and Zimbabwean politics” by tracing sites of legitimation and de-​
legitimation in various controversial processes and discourses of his death and
burial. The chapter engages questions of Mugabe’s national heroism and how
Mugabe’s eventual burial at his rural home in Zvimba, instead of the monu-
mental National Heroes Acre shrine in the capital city Harare, is illustrative of
instabilities and the impermanence of loyalties in ZANU PF. Manase argues
that even in death, Mugabe’s was still a potential impediment to the entrench-
ment of impressions of newness “hence the ruling elite’s fight to take control
over his body and the meanings and political capital it held”. Manase views
the death and burial of Mugabe as theatres in which the aesthetic and discur-
sive effect of media texts are central to the political (re)generation of popular
imaginaries of Mugabe’s bygone power and the charting of an embryonic New
Dispensation ethics of power. The first section of the volume is concluded by
Oliver Nyambi’s chapter, “The spectre of Mugabe: land, change and discursive
politics of dispensations in Zimbabwe”, which focuses on land and land reforms
as sites to understand the complicated project of the Mnangagwa regime to
construct and perform change and difference. Through an analysis of the state’s
emergent land discourse, Nyambi argues that the Mnangagwa regime has
operationalised discourse to grapple with the political yet moral conundrum
of negotiating Mugabe’s radically racialised land discourse. Nyambi views this
new, racially toned down land discourse as part of the new leadership’s broader
discursive process of self-​re-​invention to reinforce the regime’s impressions
of its new, markets-​respecting neo-​liberal economics. For Nyambi, however,
this new discourse of land is hamstrung by the New Dispensation’s incapacity,
 Introduction 13
inability and sometimes convenient unwillingness to totally disengage from
Mugabeism’s nativist definitions of belonging and citizenship.
The chapters in the second section, “Tropes of ambivalent ‘transitions’”,
pursue some of the eminent cultural modes of transiting used by the Mnangagwa
regime, showing how the transition has been messy in many ways to such an
extent that sometimes the boundaries between the old and the purported new
are overwhelmingly blurred. Tendai Mangena’s chapter on the ambivalences of
the metaphors of dirt in the New Dispensation opens this section. The chapter
highlights the subject of corruption which Mpofu’s chapter listed as one of
the toxic cultures underpinning the political patronage system associated with
Mugabeism. The chapter focuses on how the trope of “dirt” can be used as
a prism of examining the psycho-​social framing of newness and difference
from Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. By evoking a mission to clean the country, literally
through a National Cleaning Campaign and figuratively through a symbolic
“sanitisation” of governance, Mnangagwa has attempted to forge a new culture
of responsibility. The chapter contents that there is no ostensible transitioning
from “dirt” to “cleanliness” but rather an extension of and coexistence with
“dirtiness” in the New Dispensation. What links Mangena’s chapter to the
next is how she interprets Mnangagwa’s (in)famous declaration “let bygones
be bygones” as reflecting a consistent motif of difference (from Mugabe) in
his self-​re-​invention as an agent of change. Mangena argues that, through that
statement, Mnangagwa invites the nation to edit his political history in a way
that naturalises his claimed disconnection with aspects of Mugabe’s ruinous
rule. Similarly, Ncube, in Chapter 8, shows the manner in which through the
phrase “let bygones be bygones” Mnangagwa enforces collective amnesia to
forget the Gukurahundi –​the massacre of over 20 000 civilians (see Gusha,
2019) by the national army in the Midlands and Matabeleland provinces in
the early to late 1980s. Through an analysis of Novuyo Rosa Tshuma’s novel,
House of stone (2018), Ncube argues that literary texts open up new spaces of
remembering and conversation on what Zimbabweans have been forced to
forget. Ncube shows that there is an uneasy attempt to deal decisively with
Gukurahundi.
The other two chapters in this section also deal with literary form.
Muchativugwa Liberty Hove in Chapter 9, through an analysis of selected
texts, questions whether the installation of Mnangagwa initiated any new
authenticities or is simply attempting to erase Mugabe’s (in)famous legacy. The
closing chapter in the section by Thamsanqa Moyo and Esther Mavengano
offers a (re)reading of George Orwell’s classical novel Animal farm. In this
chapter Moyo and Mavengano draw fascinating comparisons between the
political satire offered by the novel and the events that have taken place in
Zimbabwe leading to and following the 2017 political transition. Drawing
on Henri Lefebvre’s concept of space as reflective of power, they argue that
the patterns represented in Animal farm reproduce the standstill transition over
which Mnangagwa presides.
14 Oliver Nyambi et al.
The ultimate section of the volume, “Dis/​continuing political cultures”,
is composed of four chapters which zero in on how efforts by the New
Dispensation to usher in newness in the political landscape of Zimbabwe has
to some extent involved replicating previous political cultures and legacies.
Terrence Musanga’s chapter, “Narrativising dis/​ continuities in ZANU PF
intra-​power politics”, opens the section and examines how the concepts of
New Dispensation and Second Republic are fraught in moral ambivalences
traceable to the indispensability of what Mpofu (in Chapter 3) calls Zanuism.
Musanga explores how, in history, cultures and traditions of becoming and being
ZANU PF throw into disarray the Mnangagwa regime’s attempts and capacity
to reimagine itself outside Mugabeism. In Chapter 12, Mickias Musiyiwa looks
to Shona folk cosmology and the concept of “ngozi” (haunting spirit) to argue
that the ineffectiveness by the New Dispensation to transition to some form of
newness lies in its failure to deal with diverse avenging and unappeased spirits
that have haunted the nation’s psyche. Musiyiwa suggests, through a lens of
Shona causality, that a transition is possible only if the New Dispensation deals
with the countless unappeased ngozi (haunting spirit) so as to foster sustainable
ways of redressing the nation’s present challenges.
The penultimate chapter, by Edmore Dube, interrogates the enduring
vicious culture of keeping the opposition in court and how its political
dynamics complicate discourses of positive transitions. Dube argues that there
is undeniably no difference between the old regime and the New Dispensation
in that the opposition continues to be rigged in numerous court cases. This
has had the effect of incapacitating and enfeebling the opposition movements.
In the volume’s last chapter, “Auxillia Mnangagwa’s ‘Amaihood’ and the cul-
tural politics of the Zimbabwean First Lady in the ‘New Dispensation’”, Umali
Saidi examines how first ladies Grace Mugabe and Auxillia Mnangagwa are an
important site of thinking through the political transition necessitated by the
November 2017 “coup”. Saidi argues that Mnangagwa’s wife sets out to frame
herself as different from Mugabe’s wife. Saidi wonders if there is indeed any
difference between the two women especially in thinking through their agency
and independence outside the influence wielded by their powerful husbands.

Notes
1 Operation Restore Legacy was the military’s code name for the 2017 coup.With this
code name, the military sought to project its power grab as a corrective intervention
to save ZANU PF and the nation from what Major General Sibusiso Moyo, in a
broadcast speech, called “criminals around [Mugabe] who are committing crimes …
that are causing social and economic suffering”.
2 The statement was made by Retired Lieutenant General Sibusiso Moyo in his
announcement of Operation Restore Legacy on 15 November 2017.
3 Just like Mnangagwa in 2017, Joice Mujuru was fired from her positions as Mugabe’s
deputy in ZANU PF and government and haunted out of the ruling party in 2014.
In both instances, Mugabe’s wife Grace Mugabe played a major role in establishing
what she framed as “sinister” plots to succeed Mugabe.
 Introduction 15
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Part I

Spectacles of change in the

Second Republic
1 
The patriotic present
The urgency of now in Zimbabwe’s
“New Dispensation”
Cuthbeth Tagwirei

Introduction
Over the past three decades, history was a defining feature of Zimbabwe.
Colonial injustices and the liberation struggle, which resulted in the end of
white minority rule, served as the standard by which Zimbabwe was defined.
Robert Mugabe, leader of the Zimbabwe African National Union-​Patriotic
Front (ZANU PF) and Zimbabwe since 1980, was a key figure around whom
Zimbabwe’s past was constructed and a narrative of nationhood described by
Ranger (2004) as “patriotic history” could be institutionalised. The forced
removal of Mugabe in November 2017 was accompanied by a reframing
which was marked by the separation of past and present. Zimbabwe, it was
announced, had entered a “New Dispensation” (sometimes referred to as the
Second Republic) whose key pledge was to break from the past of bad gov-
ernance, international isolation, corruption, economic decline and political
polarisation. A new discourse came to eclipse patriotic history. I call it the
patriotic present. While distinguishable from it, the patriotic present carries
traces of the old, including the motivation to monopolise narratives about
Zimbabwe and entrench ZANU PF dominance. Regardless, its methods are
different. It is decentralised, fluid, expeditious and always in the process of
unfolding. The chapter traces the shift from patriotic history to the patriotic
present and discusses the tenets of the latter in terms of its methods, signifi-
cance and future.
The phrase “New Dispensation” is used in this chapter in respect of the
government of President Mnangagwa’s self-​referentiality. Contrary to what the
phrase suggests, patriotic history and the patriotic present do not represent
two discursive epochs with distinct propagators, forms, methods, media and
messages. There are of course significant differences and departures. However,
the central motif, “patriotism”, remains constantly narrow and partisan across
“dispensations”. State institutions, media, functions, policies and practices
remain the visible theatres where patriotism is rehearsed and enacted. A recent
addition is social media, in terms of how state actors and government supporters
have escalated their use of Twitter and Facebook in defence of the government’s
narrow and partisan version of patriotism. The instrument of social media is

DOI: 10.4324/9781003190271-3
20 Cuthbeth Tagwirei
therefore central to the expression of patriotism. Resultantly, most of the empir-
ical data, in the reflections of patriotism, is derived from social media content.
It will be noted that social media content resonates with state-​controlled print
media’s framing of the Zimbabwe government under Emmerson Mnangagwa.
Purposively selected stories from the state-​ controlled newspapers, The
Herald and Chronicle, and tweets on the handles of government officials and
sympathisers are utilised to explain the patriotic present. Newspaper stories and
tweets published between November 2017 and December 2020 were chosen
for an expansive view of how the patriotic present has evolved during the first
three years of the New Dispensation. It is important to note that material on the
patriotic present is widely dispersed across different media, heterogenous, in a
flux and is constantly being produced.What the chapter hopes to do, by utilising
purposively selected content from both state-​controlled newspapers and social
media, is register a coherence on the patriotic present while remaining cogni-
zant of its multiplicity and instability. Stories and tweets explicitly promoting or
defending the notion of a New Dispensation were selected as a way of deter-
mining their discrete and complementary contribution to the emergence and
sustenance of the patriotic present. Subsequent sections shed more light on the
attributes of these stories and tweets.

From patriotic history to the patriotic present

Patriotic history and the patriotic present both hinge on specific
conceptualisations of patriotism.While patriotic history betrays ZANU PF his-
toricist tendencies, its relationship to the patriotic present invites us to rethink
the significance of history, temporality and change to the idea of patriotism.
The shift from one to the other demonstrates that historical representation is a
subjective construct which cannot avoid multiple interpretations (see Ricoeur,
2004; Foucault, 1971). How the past and present are represented plays a key role
in the formation of patriotism. Consequently, the degree of subjectivity and
construction inherent in the idea of patriotism cannot be overstated. These are
questions that have dominated debates and play out in the decline of Marxism,
the rejection of modernization theory, the dominance of cultural history and
the (post-​structuralist) linguistic turn, the promotion of microhistory and rejec-
tion of master narratives, as well as the emergence of neo-​liberal and neo-​
Marxist approaches to historical change.
A corpus of work, on the deposition of Mugabe and the ascension of
Mnangagwa in November 2017, addresses these subjects from various
perspectives. Among the topics the research has covered include the role of the
military in Zimbabwean politics before and after Mugabe (Ndawana, 2020), the
semantic debate and significance of alternately labelling the events of November
2017 a “coup” or “military intervention” (Asuelime, 2018; Beardsworth et al.,
2019), determinants of the “coup” (Tendi, 2020; Moore, 2018), the performance
of the post-​Mugabe government across eight clusters including corruption,
social service, civil rights and international engagement and the economy
 The patriotic present 21
(Murisa, 2019), and whether Zimbabwe’s trajectory was that of “stepping for-
ward” or “sliding back” (Masunungure, 2020). Significantly, studies have also
addressed the politics and problems of periodisation in Zimbabwe (Hodgkinson,
2019; Helliker & Murisa, 2020). In the various conversations, continuities and
discontinuities between the periods before and after November 2017 dominate.
Such comparisons are largely motivated by the post-​Mugabe administration’s
propensity to periodise and frame the post-​Mugabe period and government a
New Dispensation.
For Mnangagwa’s administration, newness, nevertheless, came at a price.The
past had to die and, for a country that had hitherto been subjected to persistent
evocations of the past, new frames of conceiving Zimbabwe were required.The
difficulties of seeing a shift from past to present in corporeal terms were evi-
dent from the start. The people who had constituted Mugabe’s cabinets over
the 37 years of his rule and the military commanders who had unconstitu-
tionally campaigned for Mugabe during national elections were posing as new
leaders. There was, however, another way of conceptualising a metamorphosis,
and this was temporal. November 2017 came to be interpreted as an end of an
era and the beginning of another. The era that was coming to an end, particu-
larly patriotic history, around which distant and immediate ZANU PF pasts
hinged, found embodiment in Robert Mugabe and constituted the parameters
upon which Zimbabwe had been imagined for more than three decades. With
the ebbing of the past, the present was amplified. Entreaties were made to see
Zimbabwe in the here and now.
The notion of “patriotic history” in Zimbabwe is now familiar, thanks
largely to Ranger (2004). Its escalation is traced to the political polarisation,
characterised by intimidation of government opponents, state propaganda and
a shrinking democratic space since 2000 when the Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC) emerged as a serious contender for power on a scene that had
been dominated by Mugabe and ZANU PF for 20 years. In particular, the
appeal to history was intensified ahead of the 2001 presidential elections which
were framed as “history versus ‘the end of history’” (Ranger, 2004, p. 220).
Although violence and accusations of treason had previously been deployed
against opponents of the government prior to MDC’s existence (Tendi, 2010,
p. 152), and history had been a key component of ZANU PF campaign strat-
egies, the emergence of the MDC was a game changer. A referendum which
did not go ZANU PF’s way in 2000 and a parliamentary election where
ZANU PF conceded half the seats to the MDC the same year and presiden-
tial elections which were fiercely contested between Mugabe and Morgan
Tsvangirai of the MDC in 2002 set the stage for entrenched political divisions
which pit ZANU PF on the one side and any form of opposition on the other.
Meanwhile, disputes with white commercial farmers and Britain over the unre-
solved land question got embroiled in the changes taking place on the political
landscape and resulted in, among other outcomes, a reconfiguration of the idea
of Zimbabwe and how to belong to it. This reconfiguration, the discourses
in particular, occurred in the realm of history. Patriotic history became a site
22 Cuthbeth Tagwirei
of legitimation and delegitimation. Mugabe’s ZANU PF government became
an ideological machine anchored on a monolithic, standardised and bifurcated
historical narrative of heroes and villains, that is, patriots and traitors, around
which belonging to Zimbabwe was predetermined.
Because the MDC rose at the back of urban support and enjoyed the backing
of white commercial farmers who had hitherto not openly concerned them-
selves with the politics of the country, ZANU PF quickly moved to discredit
the party on account that it had no liberation war credentials and was fronting
a regime change, neo-​colonial, agenda. Seizing white-​owned farms became
fundamentally ideological and the protagonists of the exercise were projected as
ideologues of chimurenga, the war against colonialism and neo-​colonialism. The
exercise was dubbed the third chimurenga as an indication that the war against
Zimbabwe’s enemies was ongoing and, therefore, the past was alive and well.
The binary pitting patriots against traitors, and a reified, static and essentialist
view of what it meant to be Zimbabwean came to glue the narrative of Robert
Mugabe’s Zimbabwe with the objective of creating a consensual hegemonic
national identity (Fisher, 2010). The economic collapse that followed a chaotic
land reform and punitive economic sanctions from Western countries were
interpreted in historical terms as the persistence of colonialism and the struggle
for liberation (Thram, 2006, p. 75). In other words, there was an urgency to
reclaim and weaponise history. History subsequently came to occupy “the
centre of politics in Zimbabwe far more than in any other southern African
country” (Ranger, 2004, p. 234).
The only history which mattered was that which was political and fed into
ZANU PF’s purported role as “progenitor and guardian” of Zimbabwe’s inde-
pendence and sovereignty (Ndlovu-​Gathsheni, 2012, p. 1). Through a self-​
serving revision of the past, the space to question the existing political system
was foreclosed (Kriger, 2006, p. 1164). This history ranged “from the relatively
sophisticated to the crudely racist” (Ranger, 2004, p. 218). The narrative was
propagated in state media, educational institutions and the National Youth
Service through which the youth were enlisted as “warriors into the ‘third
chimurenga’” (p. 219). The militia became available “to discipline their own
parents; to attack the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) supporters;
and to intimidate teachers and other educated civil servants in the rural areas”
(p. 219). Highly acclaimed public intellectuals, in government and academic
institutions, played a key role of formulating, articulating and defending patriotic
history to the public through their unfettered access to the public space (Tendi,
2010).Television and radio programming deliberately loaded with performances
and displays of patriotism (Chiumbu, 2004, p. 34), commemorations during
national holidays and live tributes to the deaths of Zimbabwe’s vice presidents,
Joshua Nkomo (see Ndlovu-​Gatsheni, 2017) and Simon Muzenda (see Bhebe,
2004), augmented the intellectuals’ efforts. During election campaigns, ZANU
PF ensured that communities, particularly those in the rural areas, relived the
liberation war days by carrying out night vigils consisting of war songs, dance
and stories similar to the liberation war period.
 The patriotic present 23
The content of patriotic history was straightforwardly narrow and Manichean
(Ranger, 2004; Dande & Swart, 2018; Ndlovu-​Gatsheni, 2012; Kriger, 2006).
Zimbabwe had two races: indigenous Africans and foreign whites. The Africans
consisted of patriots and traitors. Patriots towed the revolutionary line embodied
by Mugabe and ZANU PF, while traitors trailed the MDC and civil society
which criticised government policies and conduct. Tendi (2010, p. 65) breaks
down this historical narrative into four themes: land, race, “sellouts” versus
“patriots” and anti-​Western rhetoric. This construction of history made it pos-
sible for Mugabe to campaign directly against Tony Blair, UK’s prime minister,
and George Bush, the US president, in elections where he was running against
Morgan Tsvangirai. Mugabe even took his campaign to the African Union and
the United Nations (Minillo, 2020). Such was the depth with which colonial
history defined post-​2000 Zimbabwe.
Nothing, in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, could therefore escape the parameters of
patriotic history. All elections since 2000, debates about human rights and even
factional battles within ZANU PF, towards the end of Mugabe’s reign, were
all conceived through the lens of patriotic history. History had become the
nucleus around which the social, economic, cultural and political orbited. Even
in its engagement with the MDC, Mugabe’s ZANU PF deployed history mas-
sively, as its sole and most insidious weapon, to delegitimise the opposition and
project it as a mere reincarnation of Ian Smith’s Patriotic Front. Tsvangirai was
chided as of no historical consequence, someone who was to be remembered
as “tea boy”, a reference to his alleged colonial occupation, which consider-
ably translated to perpetual errant boy of the whites. It did not make matters
easier that MDC had the support of white farmers, who came out openly at
its rallies during the formative years, and Western governments which blatantly
interfered in the country’s internal affairs for the opposition’s benefit, at times
at the behest of opposition politicians. The sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe
are one such example. There are cases where senior members of the oppos-
ition openly supported sanctions against ZANU PF despite the reality that
such sanctions included economic embargoes and tended to hurt ordinary
Zimbabweans (see Chingono, 2010; Hove & Chingono, 2013).The MDC, both
wittingly and unwittingly, played into the normative construct of patriotic his-
tory, framed as an outsider party lacking in nationalist consciousness and, thus,
an enemy of Zimbabwe.
History mattered to Mugabe because it alienated his opponents outside
ZANU PF and cemented his position within. It also positioned him and ZANU
PF at the centre of the Zimbabwean story as anti-​colonial nationalists and
legitimate guardians of liberation gains, including the land. History appealed
to a wide local base, especially among those with a vivid memory of colo-
nial injustices. It also contained a pan-​African and anti-​colonial flavour that
resonated with other African countries, third world communities and rights
groups, across the world, who were willing to ignore Mugabe’s human rights
violations in favour of his anti-​colonial rhetoric. Conversely, these were not
luxuries the New Dispensation enjoyed. The government that emerged after
24 Cuthbeth Tagwirei
Mugabe’s departure counted among its rivals some ZANU PF heavyweights,
including people who had fought the liberation war. The fissures began
during Mugabe’s reign, but they widened during the transition. Furthermore,
Mnangagwa had been in Mugabe’s shadow as the latter’s close associate, cabinet
minister and vice president in a political career of more than 30 years.
Despite the attempts to discredit Mugabe after deposing him, the history of
Zimbabwe’s struggle against colonialism could not avoid positioning Mugabe
at the centre, especially if that history sought to prop up Mnangagwa whose
story was entangled with that of Mugabe. Having assumed the presidency at the
expense of his erstwhile comrade, mentor and boss, it was highly unlikely that
Mnangagwa would champion patriotic history. Patriotic history was predomin-
antly a Mugabe-​centred history concomitant to a political system aptly labelled
“Mugabeism” (Ndlovu-​Gatsheni, 2009, 2015). While they conferred Mugabe
demi-​godly status (Chitando, 2020), they were a tainted history and political
system which held Mnangagwa complicit in the massacre of Matabeleland and
Midlands civilians in the 1980s, the subjugation of MDC supporters during
elections and corruption. To move out of this shadow, President Mnangagwa
had to chart his own course. He abandoned his characteristic contempt of
ZANU PF opponents whom he would publicly mock as dogs barking incon-
sequentially. He visited an ailing Tsvangirai within five weeks of assuming office
and announced a belated pay-​off package due to Tsvangirai courtesy of his
service as Zimbabwe’s prime minister in the 2009–​2013 coalition government.
Describing himself “as soft as wool”, he pledged to be a listening president
and declared the country open for business. This rebranding happened at the
expense of patriotic history.

The architectural mode of the patriotic present

The New Dispensation did not dismantle the architecture of patriotic history.
It retained and amplified its modes while, nevertheless, producing new content.
Significantly, the patriotic present has not abandoned patriotic history’s modes
of dissemination.The army, the police and the ZANU PF youth still play a coer-
cive part to engender “patriotic” love for Zimbabwe in the present. While the
2018 elections were relatively calm and peaceful, there have been accusations of
military interference in the elections (Tendi, 2020). The violence that erupted
immediately after the close of elections and resulted in at least six casualties at
the hands of the army on 1 August 2018 demonstrates the proximity of the state
repressive apparatus to matters of patriotism. The August 2018 violence was
followed by a commission of enquiry reminiscent of the prolonged dialogues
in the aftermath of the 2008 elections abandoned due to state violence against
the opposition. Equally, while the ZANU PF youth did not brazenly intimi-
date opponents, their presence was not diminished. In June 2018, ZANU PF
youth expressed intentions to march in solidarity with President Mnangagwa
on the same day MDC was scheduled to march for electoral reforms. The
ZANU PF march was later rescheduled to the following day. Another solidarity
 The patriotic present 25
march dubbed #EDWillNeverWalkAlone was later organised in February 2019
following international criticism against President Mnangagwa’s administration
for its fatal handling of fuel hike protests the previous month. These strategies
are not unique to the New Dispensation. ZANU PF solidarity marches were
frequent events during Mugabe’s rule.
Meanwhile, state media continues to play its polarising part as main propa-
gator of party and government policies and ideas (Mano, 2008; Chari, 2010).
Despite the political changes and its temporary lull during the transition in
November 2017, state media recalibration did not take long. Between them, the
traditional government mouthpieces Chronicle and The Herald have more than
50 headlines containing the phrase New Dispensation, all singing praises of the
emergent present, in the three years since November 2017. Headlines alleging
endorsement of the present, such as “AU satisfied with New Dispensation
reforms”, “Outgoing German envoy lauds New Dispensation”, “SADC behind
the New Dispensation”, “Zimbabwe’s new political dispensation excites
India”, “Youths hail New Dispensation”, “UN hails ED, New Dispensation”,
“NGO hails New Dispensation” and “New Dispensation charms US govt”,
are familiar reads. Headlines such as “New Dispensation stabilises prices,
says Minister Bimha”, “First 100 days of New Dispensation a resounding
success: VP Chiwenga”, “New Dispensation opened up political space: VP
Mohadi”, “New Dispensation has liberalised Zimbabwe’s economy: President”,
“New Dispensation cushioning nation from sanctions –​ZANU PF chair”,
“Economic reform in the New Dispensation”, “New Dispensation pays off
… as Zim enjoys brisk business at Indaba”, “New Dispensation real boon
for tourism”, “New Dispensation creates 3 000 jobs in Midlands” and “New
Dispensation walks the talk on corruption” constitute the triumphant narrative
of the New Dispensation. Despite the glowing headlines, the economic crises,
international isolation and sanctions, poor service delivery and political polar-
isation are unabating (Helliker & Murisa, 2020).
Artists, public intellectuals and religious figures also contribute to the dis-
semination of the patriotic present. Some of these champions are old comrades
whose role in the maintenance of ZANU PF dominance straddles the two eras
divided by November 2017. Nevertheless, the biggest addition to the archi-
tecture is social media. Its champions include government officials, ZANU PF
activists and the loosely named “varakashi” (destroyers). The term Varakashi is
used for all social media champions of the patriotic present including govern-
ment officials, ZANU PF supporters and other unidentifiable and anonymous
characters whose posts are consistent with the patriotic present. These actors
contribute variously to the preservation of post-​Mugabe ZANU PF domin-
ance by sticking to the traditional narrow, monolithic version of patriotism.
Whereas patriotic history promoted a patriotism based on connections to the
past by predominantly relying on traditional methods, the patriotic present
is based on relations to an ever-​unfolding and perennial present. The trad-
itional methods are still useful but social media has proven extremely potent
for this task.
26 Cuthbeth Tagwirei
Mugabe’s government capitalised on its control of traditional media and
public institutions, including schools, for the dissemination of history. Books,
television, radio and newspapers proliferated with narratives about colonial
injustices and the war. Social media was regarded unfavourably, even within the
party. Mugabe was uneasy about social media and its potential use during fac-
tional battles. He advised his ministers to stay away from social media, especially
when Jonathan Moyo, then minister of higher and tertiary education, started
using it against other ZANU PF members (Mugabe, 2015). State responses
to social media tended to be hostile because it was available to government
opponents and was increasingly a rallying point for activism. If the government
had any doubts about the threat of social media, the Arab Spring, a series of
anti-​government protests that spread across much of the Arab world including
Tunisia, Egypt and Libya in the 2010s, must have eliminated those doubts.
These, and other examples, only served to demonstrate that social media could
be instrumental in matters of governance and, where it failed to make huge
impacts, could be quite a nuisance. Predictably, when Zimbabwean social media
activist, Evan Mawarire, rose to prominence and encouraged a proliferation of
social media movements, Mugabe swiftly moved to constrain online platforms
by creating a Ministry of Cyber Security, Threat Detection and Mitigation.
Protestors were labelled cyber-​terrorists; leading activists were arrested and the
internet was occasionally shut down. Mugabe’s government dealt with social
media the same way it dealt with foreign and privately owned traditional media.
They belonged to the wrong side of history, not as patriotic, but as traitorous.
The New Dispensation takes a different approach. The hostility regarding
the use of social media outside ZANU PF remains. In fact, it has intensified.
In just two years, the arrests of government critics for social media offences
have increased. Social media protests against electoral fraud, fuel hikes and gov-
ernment corruption have led to clampdown, arrests and internet shutdown.
In this regard, the New Dispensation borrows from the past. What has never-
theless changed is the government’s fervent adoption of social media for its
own use. The president has a Facebook page and a verified Twitter handle. To
demonstrate his social media presence, President Mnangagwa introduced him-
self through a video recording. The permanent secretary of Information and
the Ministry of Information also have verified Twitter handles. The suspicions
towards social media remain, but the New Dispensation is not above using these
media to its ends.
The availability of social media as a tool of dissent against governments
informs the exclusive focus on the subversive quality of social media in
Zimbabwe and elsewhere. There is scant literature on the construction and
maintenance of hegemony through social media. The general tendency is to
address the uses, challenges, success and opportunities of digital technolo-
gies as e-​government in matters of development (Zinyama & Nhema, 2016;
Hikwa & Maisiri, 2014; Munyoka, 2019; Ruhode, 2016; Munyoka & Maharaj,
2019). Studies on China’s “voluntary fifty-​cent army” and their defence of
authoritarianism are nevertheless revealing (Han, 2015, 2018). Han explains
 The patriotic present 27
how these internet commentators produce what appear to be spontaneous
pro-​state messages in large volumes. Governments are usually known to clan-
destinely promote social media bots and propagandists. It took leaked emails
to unearth the secret that the Chinese government had a brigade, referred to
as 50-​cent, working flat out on social media, to project a positive image on its
behalf. Allegations made in court by a businesswoman revealed that the African
National Congress (ANC) sought to spend R50 million in a covert campaign,
comprising fake news and paid Twitter accounts, to discredit other political
parties ahead of the 2016 South African municipal elections (Comrie, 2017).
The ANC denied the allegations.
Studies of Varakashi focus on their role in election campaigns (Chibuwe,
2020) or their effect on the use of social media for civil resistance and disobedi-
ence (Moyo, 2019). Much that is “known” about Varakashi is speculative and
is found in the media (Mwareya, 2019). For instance, it is not clear whether
Varakashi are paid or volunteer. It is also unclear who operates the most dom-
inant ghost accounts. Naturally, social media permits anonymity, use of multiple
accounts and bots. Thus, some of the questions the articles address cannot be
resolved. The contribution of Varakashi to the construction of normative patri-
otism is nevertheless of significance. Originally designed as a brigade to cam-
paign for ZANU PF during the 2018 elections, Varakashi have proven more
useful in the aftermath.
While Zimbabwe’s Vakarashi approximate China’s 50-​ cent brigade, the
Varakashi are not a clandestine group feigning spontaneity. Some of the key
Varakashi are in government or display a proximity to power. Others are plainly
amateurs who nevertheless parrot and promote the New Dispensation. Between
them are ghost users with more than 150 000 followers and others bearing
the name “Murakashi” (singular for Varakashi) with less than 100 followers.
The defining feature of Varakashi is their defence and promotion of the New
Dispensation. President Mnangagwa mobilised and unwittingly christened
them during an address to the ZANU PF Youth League national assembly on
7 March 2018:

I urge you to leverage on new media platforms to protect and advance the
party’s values and programs as well as ICT for membership mobilisation. Isu
vadhara nana Mai Muchinguri vedu ava, hatizvigoni zvesocial media. Imi
zero renyu, tambai navo musocial media imomo. Musakundwa musocial
media. Pindai morakasha vanhu musocial media [Some of us are old; you are
still youthful and masters of technology. The new digital chatrooms are war
rooms. Jump in and hammer party enemies online. Don’t play second fiddle]
(Mwareya, 2019)

On 14 December 2018, four months after the elections, the president reiterated
the message by saying “Rakashanai pamasocial media. Imwi muchisimudzira
musangano wenyu” [Fight it out on social media while uplifting your party].
The New Dispensation openly launched Varakashi with a view to making
28 Cuthbeth Tagwirei
Zimbabweans monolithically patriotic. The idea of “fighting it out” on social
media was ideally a step in the right direction. A healthy contestation of ideas
on a public forum is the hallmark of any true democracy. However, as will be
shown, Varakashi seek a monologue and promote undemocratic tendencies in
their posts.

The content of the patriotic present

There has not been much consolidation of the meaning of New Dispensation
beyond the regular use of the phrase by government officials, ZANU PF
enthusiasts, government sympathisers and state media as a temporal marker
for “after Mugabe”. Despite this opaqueness, a set of refrains, “let bygones be
bygones”, “Zimbabwe is open for business” and “the voice of the people is the
voice of God”, and claims of change, novelty and virtuousness constitute the
overall discourse of the New Dispensation and are the foundation upon which
the patriotic present is constructed. All the slogans, to varying degrees, suggest
“what is” as opposed to “what was” and “what will be”. “Zimbabwe is open
to business” and “the voice of the people is the voice of God” are indexical
to the time of utterance. Today, tomorrow, next week or next year, they will
signify the present. Meanwhile, “let bygones be bygones”, despite remaining
opaque, is a negation of the past which must be carried out in the present
moment. The present evinced by the New Dispensation is one that stays ahead
of the past while indefinitely deferring the future. “Vision 2030”, the future
characterised by “a Prosperous and Empowered Upper Middle-​Income Society
by 2030, with Job Opportunities and a High Quality of Life for its Citizens”
(Republic of Zimbabwe, 2018), represents this deferment. The poor incomes,
high unemployment and poor quality of life in the present are thus expressed
as necessarily virtuous. The government can therefore cut wages, retrench
workers, raise the price of fuel and introduce punitive taxes on citizens in the
name of “austerity for prosperity”. No epoch is therefore new which resides
in the past. Once it inhabits the past, its newness vanishes. Similarly, no era is
essentially new when it belongs to the future. It is only so hypothetically and
cannot be guaranteed. Newness is only possible in the present and if that state is
to be maintained, the present must become constant. Past and future must with-
draw as temporalities inhabiting the present, something Harootunian (2007,
pp. 490–​491) cautions against in his call for “a historical present teeming with
competing temporalities” in the present.
The New Dispensation arises from the suppression of multiple temporalities
in favour of a monolithic present at odds with historical fact. It is a fact that
erstwhile comrades of Mugabe are the champions, beneficiaries and, hence,
authors of the New Dispensation. War veterans, senior ZANU PF politicians
and army generals who had supported and enabled Mugabe’s 37-​year rule pro-
ject themselves as “new”, that is, departures from the past. Some policies, laws,
institutions, attitudes and actions reproduce the old and familiar. This is not
to say the New Dispensation is unequivocally a replica of the old. Cabinet
 The patriotic present 29
appointments, among them two white ministers, Kirsty Coventry and Vangelis
Haritatos, suggest newness. Anti-​white attitudes, during Mugabe’s tenure, justi-
fied through patriotic history, reflected in the absence of white public officials
in Zimbabwe after 2003 when Judge George Smith retired from the High
Court of Zimbabwe.The last white minister in Mugabe’s government,Timothy
Stamps, had left in 2002. The remnants of white presence close to Mugabe
included Peter Haritatos, the first white person among Mugabe’s ZANU PF
members of parliament, his son Vangelis, and Joshua Sacco, elected Member
of Parliament for Chimanimani East in 2018. However, none had made it to
Mugabe’s cabinets. Despite Mugabe’s evident associations with white people,
however circumspect, state media sought to magnify the present by stating that
in appointing Coventry and Haritatos, “President Mnangagwa [had] addressed
the racial imbalance issue” (Chihota, 2018). A tweet by @Trust62777648 amp-
lified this by observing that President Mnangagwa had demonstrated that he
was “not racist”. Even while alluding to the past, both comments indicate the
deliberate amplification of the present.
The patriotic present thus reflects in the calculated dissociation from the
past. During his first speech after the coup, President Mnangagwa pleaded
that “bygones be bygones”. He would repeat this in different other forums. In
March 2018, four months after taking over, he rendered the New Dispensation
as follows:

[We do not live] in the past.The past is gone.The past is dead […] If there is
anything we can learn from the past we will, but we say the past is gone.We
must live for the future. We must prepare for the future. We want a better
future than we lived in the past.
(Office of the President and Cabinet, 2018)

Repeatedly, and with a sense of urgency, the New Dispensation progressively

devalues the past and exhibits a desire to mask and displace the patriotic his-
tory that had underwritten ZANU PF dominance for more than 30 years. At
every turn, pleas are made by ZANU PF politicians, the military elite, civil
society, some opposition members and many ordinary citizens to judge the
New Dispensation on account of the present. The future matters only in a state
of abeyance. Calls for patience, that is, to indefinitely postpone aspirations of the
present, are witnessed in reports which include “Be patient, urges Zim finance
minister as inflation continues to climb” (Thompson, 2019), “Be Patient, Says
First Lady to Suffering Zimbabweans” (“Be patient, says first lady to suffering
Zimbabweans”, 2019), and “Be patient: Mnangagwa tells UN” (Makopa,
2019). Such sentiments correspond with another popular refrain of the New
Dispensation: “Give ED [Emmerson Mnangagwa] a chance”. Those who refer
to the past or demonstrate impatience towards the pace of reform are deemed
to suffer temporal displacement. They are estranged from the patriotic present.
The New Dispensation seeks reengagement with the West. It wants to avoid
quarrels with the former coloniser, Britain, and its Western allies.To demonstrate
30 Cuthbeth Tagwirei
commitment, the international press and observers were invited to Zimbabwe’s
first harmonised elections after November 2017. Government officials openly
consort with Western countries and institutions in sharp contrast to Mugabe’s
time when the MDC was labelled puppets of the West for doing likewise. To
“open” Zimbabwe “for business”, the New Dispensation made policy changes
in the areas of indigenisation and land reform, gave written assurances that
white farmers dispossessed during the land reform would be compensated.
Reports also indicated that the government sought to return land seized
from white farmers (“Zimbabwe to return land seized from foreign farmers”,
2020). When Minister Kirsty Coventry was accused of grabbing the farm of
Mugabe’s exiled nephew and minister in his government, @GondaiMutongi
(previously @CharityMaodza) tweeted: “The allocation of land to Minister @
KirstyCoventry is above board. The land reform programme is blind to race
or colour. Like any other Zimbabwean, Minister Coventry has an unfettered
right to own land”. The changes around the land issue mark a paradigm shift in
Zimbabwe’s land policy which, hitherto, had hinged on one justification: colo-
nial injustices and the need to redress them. Patriotic history is the ideological
weapon that had been at ZANU PF’s disposal during and after the land reform.
If the end of patriotic history was ever in doubt, the New Dispensation’s con-
ciliatory approach to land reform, especially its ahistorical validation for com-
pensating white farmers and the evictions of some beneficiaries of the land
reform, put paid to those qualms. The policy directions were not consistent
with patriotic history.
Abandoning or suppressing the past serves to inoculate the New Dispensation
from the plague of Mugabe to which they are historically entangled. But
how can novelty, change and virtuousness be convincingly peddled if not by
recalling the past? More importantly, how can this be done without tainting
and condemning the New Dispensation which lies at odds with historical fact?
Of course, the past does not completely vanish. It constantly returns, but only
as myth or “speech stolen and restored” (Barthes, 1972, p. 124). In other words,
the past does not return in its original form. It does not inhabit the present
as a temporal equal. It is merely a tool in the service of the patriotic present.
A Chronicle story celebrating the first anniversary of the New Dispensation
reduced 37 years of ZANU PF rule under Mugabe to “sweet trappings of
power” which “got the upper hand of those who found themselves in positions
of authority in the government” thereby making inevitable “the new dispen-
sation that saw the government of founding president Mr Robert Mugabe
shoved away and into the shade in November 2017” (Mpofu, 2018). Without
mentioning names or what the “sweet trappings of power” consisted of, the
story had done its part.The present was extolled and embellished at the expense
of the past.
Patriotic history was well placed for blaming everything largely on Western
sanctions. It lacked the language of conciliation. The patriotic present, on the
contrary, lacks the language for belligerence towards Western governments. It
seeks conciliation and re-​engagement. Two months into the New Dispensation,
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