The 'fascist cycle' in Zimbabwe, 2000-2005

Journal of Southern African Studies

Volumn 32, Issue 2, 2006, Pages 221-237

  Scarnecchia, Timothy ^a  

^a GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

LIBERALIZATION; POLITICAL SYSTEM;

AFRICA; SOUTHERN AFRICA; SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA; ZIMBABWE;

PAXTON;

EID: 33745071235     PISSN: 03057070     EISSN: 14653893     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/03057070600656085     Document Type: Article

References (114)

1. R.O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (New York, Knopf, 2004), p. 205.
2. See Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum (ZHRNF), 'Who was Responsible? Alleged Perpetrators and their Crimes during the 2000 Parliamentary Election Period' (Harare, ZHRNF, July 2001): http://www.hrforumzim.com/evmp/evmpreports/whowasresp0107/whowas0107.htm
3. In presenting this comparison, it is important to avoid the argument that President Robert Mugabe is the central reason for Zimbabwe's political crisis. For Mugabe biographies, see M. Meredith, Our Votes, Our Guns: Robert Mugabe and the Tragedy of Zimbabwe (New York, Public Affairs, 2003)
4. D. Blair, Degrees in Violence: Robert Mugabe and the Struggle for Power in Zimbabwe (London, Continuum, 2003)
5. S. Chan, Robert Mugabe: A Life of Power and Violence (London, I.B. Tauris, 2003).
6. N. Kriger, 'ZANU(PF) Strategies in General Elections, 1980-2000: Discourse and Coercion', African Affairs, 104, 414 (2005), pp. 1-34
7. S. Rich Dorman, '"Make Sure They Count Nicely This Time": The Politics of Elections and Election Observing in Zimbabwe', Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, 43, 2 (July 2005), pp. 155-77.
8. See B. Raftopoulos, 'Briefing: Zimbabwe's 2002 Presidential Election', African Affairs, 101 (2002), pp. 413-26.
9. David Moore provides the following data on political violence between 1999-2004: 'an estimated 128 murders, 37 attempted murders, 3,849 incidents of torture, 619 abductions and kidnappings, 2,042 arrests and detentions, 712 assaults, 259 displacements, 26 rapes, 33 disappearances, and 190 death threats or intimidations'. D. Moore, 'Marxism and Marxist Intellectuals in Schizophrenic Zimbabwe: How Many Rights for Zimbabwe's Left?: A Comment', Historical Materialism, 12, 4 (2004), pp. 405-25.
10. For the impact of this political violence on social life in Zimbabwe see C. Hove, Palaver Finished: Essays by Chenjerai Hove (Harare, Weaver Press, 2002).
11. As Michael Mann suggests, it is most often simply a rhetorical label used by the Left, as in 'Fascist!' and that academic discussion of fascists without the exclamation point is a much more difficult task. See M. Mann, Fascists (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. x.
12. Mann defines 'fascism' as 'the pursuit of transcendent and cleansing nation-statism through paramilitarism'. Mann, Fascists, p. 13.
13. Paxton, Anatomy, p. 21.
14. Paxton's point is that understanding the historical process is more important than arguing over what constitutes a 'true' fascist movement. He proposes studying fascism in a cycle of five stages: (1) the creation of movements; (2) their rooting in the political system; (3) their seizure of power; (4) the exercise of power; (5) and, finally, the long duration, during which the fascist regime chooses either radicalisation or entropy. Though each stage is a prerequisite for the next, nothing requires a fascist movement to complete all of them, or even to move only in one direction' (Paxton, Anatomy, p. 23).
15. Paul Gilroy has tested these troubled intellectual waters with an essay on the 'Tyrannies of Unanimism' in P. Gilroy, Against Race: Imagining Political Culture beyond the Color Line (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2000).
16. For an insightful investigation of this dilemma, see I. Sundiata, Brothers and Strangers: Black Zion: Black Slavery, 1914-1940 (Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 2003).
17. C.L.R. James once suggested that the African intellectual (i.e. the nationalist leadership) 'will be guilty of violences far closer to Mussolini's cruelties than to the unbridled savagery of Hitlerism or Stalinism seeking "to catch up with and surpass"'. C.L.R. James, Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution (Westport, Conn., Lawrence Hill, 1977), p. 19.
18. M. Amis, Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million (New York, Vintage International, 2002).
19. See Terence Ranger's introduction and J. Alexander and J. McGregor, 'Democracy, Development and Political Conflict: Rural Institutions in Matabeleland North after Independence', in T. Ranger (ed.), The Historical Dimensions of Democracy and Human Rights in Zimbabwe. Volume Two. Nationalism, Democracy, and Human Rights (Harare, University of Zimbabwe Publications, 2003), pp. 24-6, 113-33.
20. Gilroy, Against Race, p. 229.
21. For an analysis of this racial element in ZANU-PF nationalism, see B. Raftopoulos, 'We Are Really Sleepwalking, Corpses, Zombies ... We are Carrying Other People's World View: Nation, Race, and History in Zimbabwe Politics' (unpublished paper, University of Edinburgh Centre of African Studies Annual Conference on 'States, Borders and Nations: Negotiating Citizenship in Africa', May 2004).
22. T. Ranger, 'Nationalist Historiography, Patriotic History and the History of the Nation: The Struggle over the Past in Zimbabwe', Journal of Southern African Studies, 30, 2 (June 2004), pp. 215-35.
23. A. Chikwanha, T. Sithole, and M. Bratton, 'The Power of Propaganda: Public Opinion in Zimbabwe, 2004', Afrobarometer Working Paper No. 42, (August 2004) (http://www.afrobarometer.org). Use of evidence of this kind has limits, given the level of fear and intimidation associated with discussing politics and leaders with a pollster, an issue the authors of the Zimbabwe Afrobarometer analysis take into account.
24. Paxton, Anatomy of Fascism, p. 217.
25. Martin Clark's comparative work on vigilantism establishes conditions in which squadrismo were most likely to occur. Like Paxton, the most important condition appears when, 'Elites and ruling groups at local level are under threat, or think they are, e.g. from the wrong party winning at local elections, from locally powerful unions, local strikes, and so forth' ... Clark also notes that it is essential, for squadrismo to be successful, that 'local branches of the central state - army, police, etc - ... are willing to help the local elites, or at least to turn a blind eye, even against the wishes of their own superiors'. M. Clark, 'Italian Squadrismo and Contemporary Vigilantism', European Historical Quarterly, 18, 1 (1988), pp. 34-5.
26. B. Rutherford, Working on the Margins: Black Worker, White Farmers in Postcolonial Zimbabwe (London, Zed Books, 2001), pp. 245-6.
27. See also B. Rutherford, 'Belonging to the Farm(er): Farm Workers, Farmers, and the Shifting Politics of Citizenship', in A. Hammar, B. Raftopoulos and S. Jensen (eds), Zimbabwe's Unfinished Business: Rethinking Land, State and Nation in the Context of Crisis (Harare, Weaver Press, 2003), pp. 191-216.
28. M. Clark, Modern Italy: 1871-1995 (Second Edition, Longman History of Italy) (London, Longman, 1996), pp. 215-6.
29. For a similar account, see A. Tosca, The Rise of Italian Fascism, 1918-1922 (New York, Howard Fertig, 1966), p. 109.
30. Chikwanha, Sithole and Bratton, 'Power of Propaganda'.
31. Mann, Fascists, p. 81.
32. D.B. Moore, 'Democracy, Violence and Identity in the Zimbabwean War of National Liberation: Reflections from the Realm of Dissent', Canadian Journal of African Studies, 29, 3 (1995), p. 397.
33. See N. Kriger, 'ZANU(PF) Strategies in General Elections, 1980-2000: Discourse and Coercion', African Affairs, 104, 414 (2005)
34. Amnesty International, 'Zimbabwe: The Toll of Impunity' (25 June 2002), AI-index: AFR46/034/2002.
35. For a fuller analysis of the implications of these repressive laws, see B. Raftopoulos and I. Phimister, 'Zimbabwe Now: The Political Economy of Crisis and Coercion', Historical Materialism, 12, 4 (2004), p. 367.
36. US State Department, Human Rights Report, 2004 http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41634.htm (released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, 28 February 2005).
37. See also A. Hammar, 'The Making and Unma(s)king of Local Government in Zimbabwe', in Hammar, Raftopoulos and Jensen (eds), Zimbabwe's Unfinished Business.
38. E. Wiskemann, Fascism in Italy: Its Development and Influence (New York, St. Martin's Press, 1969), p. 19.
39. For Gubbay's resignation, see G. Feltoe, 'The Onslaught against Democracy and Rule of Law in Zimbabwe in 2000', in D. Harold-Barry (ed.), Zimbabwe: The Past is the Future (Harare, Weaver Press, 2004), pp. 193-224.
40. Kriger, Guerrilla Veterans in Post-War Zimbabwe, p. 202.
41. See S. Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini's Italy (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1997).
42. Falasca-Zamponi also notes how the motto, '"La terra ai contadini" ["Land for the peasants"] had been a popular slogan during the Great War' and how the fighting of the rural peasants in the First World War was seen by the fascists as a more valuable contribution than that of the urban population. Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle, p. 149.
43. 'Since I was born, I've never seen such hunger', Guardian Online UK, 7 November 2002
44. Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, 'Crisis in Zimbabwe Report', 20 June 2002.
45. Amnesty International, Zimbabwe Power and Hunger - Violations of the Right to Food (15 October 2004) AFR 46/026/2004 http://web.amnesty.org/library/print/ENGAFR460262004
46. and Human Rights Watch, 'Zimbabwe: Fast Track Land Reform' (March 2002) 14, 1A. http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/zimbabwe/ZimLand0302.pdf
47. 'Militia Invade Journalism School', Zimbabwe Standard (Harare), 27 November 2002
48. 'Zimbabwe: Another Election Chance', Crisis Group Africa Report, 86 (30 November 2004), p. 3
49. 'Mutare Sued for Firing Recruits', Daily Mirror, 23 August 2005.
50. The Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum reported '238 individual cases of human rights' abuses against teachers for the 18-month period between January 2001 and June 2002'. '32 Teachers Fired', Daily News Online, 20 July 2001.
51. Chenjerai Hove writes, 'For a desperate politician, the bus is as dangerous as the Teacher who is as dangerous as the road which carries both of them.' Hove, Palaver Finished, p. 49.
52. '$500m for Youth Camp Renovations', Zimbabwe Independent On-line, 9 July 2004.
53. Kriger, Guerrilla Veterans in Post-War Zimbabwe, pp. 156-62.
54. 'War Veterans Take over NRZ Security', The Standard, 5 September 2005.
55. 'Zimbabwe General Warns Army on Backing Opposition', Reuters, 13 December 2005 (report based on Zimbabwe Television news broadcast for Monday, 12 December 2005).
56. Gentile continues: ' ... Those who did not swear allegiance to the fascist State ceased to be part of the Italian nation. They were treated as traitors of the nation and banned from public life'. Gentile, Struggle For Modernity: Nationalism, Futurism, and Fascism, pp. 80-81.
57. Mann, Fascists, pp. 70-91
58. E. Worby, 'The End of Modernity in Zimbabwe? Passages from Development to Sovereignty', in Hammar, Raftopoulos and Jensen (eds), Zimbabwe's Unfinished Business, pp. 49-82
59. R. Ben-Ghiat, Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922-45 (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2001).
60. A. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (New York, International Publishers, 1971), p. 242, Note 42.
61. Ibid.
62. See W. Adamson, Hegemony and Revolution: A Study of Antonio Gramsci's Political and Cultural Theory (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1980).
63. Marina Ottaway's work has emphasised the weaknesses within American policy on this point, especially policies which overlook the difficulties of developing a truly participatory parliamentary democracy to correct for past authoritarian regimes. See M. Ottaway, Democracy Challenged: The Rise of Semi-authoritarianism (Washington, DC, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2003).
64. See also R. Fatton, Jr., 'Bringing the Ruling Class Back in: Class, State, and Hegemony in Africa', Comparative Politics, 20, 3 (April 1988)
65. E.P. Skinner, 'African Political Cultures and the Problems of Government', African Studies Quarterly, 2, 3 (1998) http://web.africa.ufl.edu/asq/v2/v2i3.htm
66. and M. Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005).
67. For discussions of how white leaders turned to increasingly fascist policies, at least as they applied to African nationalists, see J. Barber, Rhodesia: The Road to Rebellion (London, Oxford University Press, 1967)
68. J. Todd, Rhodesia (London, Panther Books, 1967)
69. and T. Ranger, 'Are We Not Also Men?': The Samkange Family and African Politics in Zimbabwe, 1920-64 (Portsmouth, NH, Heinemann, 1995), pp. 159-97.
70. Gentile, Struggle for Modernity, p. 85.
71. 'Government Draws up Travel Ban Hit-list', Zimbabwe Standard, 11 December 2005
72. 'Publisher to Take on Mugabe', Sunday Times (SA), 11 December 2005
73. 'Mugabe Party Calls for Crackdown on "Hostile" NGOs', Reuters, 11 December 2005.
74. L. White, The Assassination of Herbert Chitepo: Texts and Politics in Zimbabwe (Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press, 2003), pp. 6, 8.
75. C. Sylvester, 'Simultaneous Revolutions: The Zimbabwean Case', Journal of Southern African Studies, 16, 3 (September 1990).
76. D.B. Moore, 'The Ideological Foundation of the Zimbabwean Ruling Class', Journal of Southern African Studies, 17, 3 (September 1991).
77. Rhodes House Library, Oxford, Fabian Colonial Bureau, 99/2 f139, Brigadier Ralston to Miss Nicholson, October 17, 1950.
78. For a discussion of Charles Mzingeli and African nationalism before 1965, see M. West, The Rise of an African Middle Class: Colonial Zimbabwe, 1898-1965 (Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press, 2002)
79. B. Raftopoulos and I. Phimister (eds), Keep on Knocking: A History of the Labour Movement in Zimbabwe 1900-1997 (Harare, Baobab, 1997)
80. and T. Scarnecchia, 'Fighting for the Underdog': Rhetoric, Violence, and Gender in Zimbabwean Nationalism, 1940-1964 (forthcoming).
81. B.J. Mnyanda, In Search of Truth: A Commentary on Certain Aspects of Southern Rhodesia's Native Policy (Bombay, Hind Kitabs, 1954), pp. 142-44
82. West, The Rise of An African Middle Class, pp. 177-80.
83. Nathan Shamuyarira described this sentiment among Rhodesia Front supporters in 1964 who, just before breaking away from Britain, saw themselves as if ' ... far from being on the verge of treason, they were the only loyal Britons ... even if they happened to be Greeks or Afrikaners or Portuguese ... ' N.M. Shamuyarira, Crisis in Rhodesia (London, André Deutsch, 1965), p. 224.
84. See H. Holderness, Lost Chance: Southern Rhodesia, 1945-1958 (Harare, Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1985), pp. 216-32.
85. By the early 1960s the state possessed formidable legal powers, as the 1959 Preventive Detention Act and the Unlawful Organisation Act made it possible to ban African political parties and to detain leaders. L. Bowman, Politics in Rhodesia: White Power in an African State (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1973), p. 58.
86. J. Todd, 'Appendix: Rhodesian Front Document, "The Dilemma of the White Rhodesian: A New Look at the Vote, Can We Afford to Be Constitutional?"', Rhodesia (London, Panther, 1964), p. 189.
87. Kriger, 'ZANU(PF) Strategies in General Elections'.
88. Wiskemann, Fascism in Italy, p. 82.
89. A. Mbembe, On the Postcolony (Berkeley, California University Press, 2002).
90. The eventual abandonment of amore equitable nationalist project, and the turn against civic organisationsworking for greater equity, confirms Paxton's observation that '[e]very fascist movement that has rooted itself successfully as a major political contender, thereby approaching power, has betrayed its initial antibourgeois and anticapitalist program'. R.O. Paxton, 'The Five Stages of Fascism', Journal of Modern History, 70 (March 1998), p. 14.
91. T.K. Chitiyo, 'The ZNA in Mozambique, 1982-1991: The Limits on the Pursuance of War as an Extension of Foreign Policy', in Ranger (ed.), The Historical Dimensions of Democracy and Human Rights, pp. 101-12
92. and H. Campbell, Reclaiming Zimbabwe: The Exhaustion of the Patriarchal Model of Liberation (Trenton, Africa World Press, 2003), pp. 230-46.
93. A point made by Mahmood Mamdani when he described the expulsion of Asians as 'a result of the failure to expand the productive forces and thus the economic base of the appropriating classes', quoted in A.B.K. Kasozi, The Social Origins of Violence in Uganda, 1964-1985 (Montreal, McGill-Queen's University Press, 1994), p. 120
94. original quote in M. Mamdani, 'Class Struggle in Uganda', Review of African Political Economy, 4 (1975), pp. 26-41.
95. 'Jambanja', Zwnews, 3 December 2002.
96. P. Mutibwa, Uganda Since Independence: A Story of Unfulfilled Hopes (Trenton, NJ, Africa World Press, 1992). Similarly, during 'Zaïrianisation' under Mobutu, a new group appeared as 'the acquéreurs' (the acquirers of foreign-owned businesses and farms) in 1973.
97. See C. Young, 'Zaïre: The Shattered Illusion of the Integral State', Journal of Modern African Studies, 32, 2 (June 1994), pp. 247-63.
98. M. Mamdani, Imperialism and Fascism in Uganda (Nairobi, Heinemann Educational Books, 1983), p. 53.
99. S. Taylor, 'Race, Class & Neopatrimonialism in Zimbabwe', in R. Joseph (ed.), State, Conflict, and Democracy in Africa (Boulder, CO, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1999), p. 260.
100. B. Raftopoulos and D. Compagnon, 'Indigenization, the State Bourgeoisie and Neo-authoritarian Politics', in S. Darnolk and L. Laakso, Twenty Years of Independence in Zimbabwe: From Liberation to Authoritarianism (London, Palgrave, 2003), p. 28.
101. Similarly, in Uganda in the 1970s, as Mamdani argued, the competition between the mafutamingi 'was particularly severe', and as they competed against each other, they used ' ... the very instruments the mafutamingi, as a class, directed against the people ... Property changed hands continually. Butwhile individual robbers came and went, the pack remained.' Mamdani, Imperialism and Fascism in Uganda, p. 53.
102. It is worth noting that it was the police, and not the militia, who reportedly killed four state-employed steel workers protesting for a salary increase at the Redcliff steel works in August 2001. 'ICFTU Slams Government for Rights Violations', Daily News Online, 20 July 2002. The police, and not the militia, were said to have arrested and tortured Raymond Majongwe, the Secretary-General of the Progressive Teachers' Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) in 2002.
103. Similarly, Amnesty International reported that Tinashe Chimedza, the Secretary-General of the Zimbabwe National Students' Union (ZINASU), was arrested eight times by the police between January 2001 and November 2002. See Amnesty International, Zimbabwe (2003) http://web.amnesty.org/report2003/Zwe-summary-eng
104. Mugabe is quoted in a 2002 speech as having stated that 'Today, Britain, America, New Zealand and Australia, what colour are they, most of the people there? White. They are the ones leading in the fight against Zimbabwe, the fight of resisting the completion of the independence process that began in 1980. We are not made as a government in Washington. Let Mr. Bush know that. We are made as the government by our people here. Let foolish Blair also know that.' 'Mugabe Denounces US Criticism as Racist', Agence France-Presse, 23 August 2002
105. and 'Mugabe Calls Bush, Blair "terrorists"', Reuters News Agency, 18 October 2005.
106. Gentile, Struggle for Modernity, p. 164.
107. L. Machipisa, 'Zimbabwe - Human Rights: President Lashes Out at Gays', Inter Press Service English News Wire, 19 August 1995.
108. M. Hannan, Standard Shona Dictionary (Harare, College Press, 1959 [1987]), p. 399.
109. See Archbishop P. Ncube, Dr. R. Bate and R. Tren, 'State in Fear: Zimbabwe's Tragedy is Africa's Shame' (Short publication, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 6 July 2005), p. 1 http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.22804/pub-detail.asp
110. Anna Tibaijuka, the United Nations Special Envoy, called the campaign a 'disastrous venture' affecting 700,000 of Zimbabwe's poorest citizens, which had been done with 'indifference to human suffering'. A. Tibaijuka, 'Report of the Fact-Finding Mission to Zimbabwe to Assess the Scope and Impact of Operation Murambatsvina' (Geneva, UN-HABITAT, July 2005).
111. 'Zim a Steadfast Country', The Herald Online, 4 October 2005.
112. See also Deborah Potts' article in this issue of JSAS.
113. Gilroy, Against Race, p. 220.
114. Sundiata, Brothers and Strangers, p. 10.