Alois S. Mlambo

Postcolonial higher education in Zimbabwe: The University of Zimbabwe as a case study 1980–2004

Extracted from text ... Postcolonial higher education in Zimbabwe: The University of Zimbabwe as a case study 1980?2004 Alois S. Mlambo* INTRODUCTION In 2004, higher education in Zimbabwe was in crisis. The once internationally respected educational system is collapsing, as evidenced by the dramatic decline of educational standards at Zimbabwes largest and oldest university, the University of Zimbabwe, as a result of poor working conditions, inadequate funding and too much political interference in university matters, which have led to the deterioration of academic staff morale. The situation is also partly due to a crippling brain drain, which has seen scores of senior academics ..

From Education and Health for All by 2000 to the Collapse of the Social Services Sector in Zimbabwe, 1980–2008:

After having earned international accolades for its pro-people policies in the 1980s, especially in the provision of health and education services, the Zimbabwean government then presided over the progressive decay and near collapse of the very same sectors, despite continuously presenting itself as a people’s government. This article investigates the factors accounting for this decline and its impact on the Zimbabwean society.

The culture of crisis and crisis of culture in Zimbabwe

If one looks at the news, it appears that Zimbabwe is a country in lonely crisis. When the world does pay attention to Zimbabwe, it is to sanction its leaders. This issue is solely about Zimbabwe and Zimbabwe’s ongoing struggle for freedom that is under threat both from within Zimbabwe itself and from the outside world. The concept of Zimbabwe as home for its citizens is one fractured along historical, spatial, political, racial, ethnic and personal lines, and indeed it is a multidimensional intersection of all these factors. It is within this agglomeration of identities, often under extreme threat, that ordinary Zimbabweans are daily constructing themselves and their lives – not only to survive the crisis that has pervaded so many facets of their lives, but to go beyond it. The disquieting aspect is that there is now in Zimbabwe a culture of crisis; leaders taking crisis as normal, thriving from it, and holding the lives of the people to ransom. When the crisis has been formalised as a culture within state institutions, it distorts attempts at resolving tensions and conflicts that lead to crisis in the culture. Since culture reflects on the materiality of the nation, there can be a crisis of culture when leaders, people and writers joust and fail to move out of the orbit of this culture of crisis that produces crisis in the culture. This is what the articles in this issue of African Identities prod. Whilst rigorously analysing the issues that have lead to the profoundly difficult conditions in Zimbabwe today, this issue also records the inspirational way that ordinary Zimbabweans have moved beyond the crisis and are living successfully. In the second article in this issue the author quotes Mungoshi’s poem ‘If you don’t stay bitter and angry for too long’ (1998), which challenges the reader to move beyond bitterness and anger, so that they might finally rescue ‘something useful’ from the situation. This issue aims to proclaim this challenge and demonstrate how ordinary Zimbabweans have taken it up, interrogating both the culture of crisis and the crisis of culture. The first article in this issue, ‘ Zimbabwe’s creative literatures in the interregnum: 1980–2009’ by Maurice T. Vambe announces the strength of creative literary cultures. It suggests that, unlike the visible political institutions such as education, law and the security forces, culture is often less amenable to total destruction even in the face of the most brutal and dictatorial regimes. In fact a social, political and economic meltdown can even be the suitable condition of possibility for the rebirth of creative art as creative cultures authorize their own narratives in ways that both confirm and interrogate the conditions of the country and of the arts, and allow for a myriad of suppressed voices and interpretations to be heard. ‘Where is my home? Rethinking person, family, ethnicity and home under increased transitional migration by Zimbabweans’ by Thabisani Ndlovu is the second

‘This is Our land’ The Racialization of Land in the Context of the Current Zimbabwe Crisis

This study seeks to trace the role of race in the evolution of the land question in Zimbabwe from Occupation to the ‘fast-track land reform programme’ of 2000 and beyond to explore the extent to which the era of colonial domination made the racialization of the land issue in the post-colonial period almost unavoidable. It contends that Mugabe’s use of race to justify the campaign to drive whites from the land from 2000 onwards was facilitated (in part) by the fact that race had always been used by the colonial authorities as a decisive factor in land acquisition and allocation throughout the colonial period and that using the alleged superiority of the white race, colonial authorities alienated African land for themselves without either negotiating with the indigenous authorities or paying for the land. Consequently, Mugabe’s charge that the land had been stolen and needed to be retaken clearly resonated with some segments of the Zimbabwean population enough to get them to actively participate in the land invasions of the time.

‘We have Blood Relations over the Border’: South Africa and Rhodesian Sanctions, 1965–1975

Abstract When the Rhodesian Front Party under Prime Minister lan Smith declared unilateral independence (UDI) from Britain on November 11 1965, the international community responded by imposing economic sanctions against the rebel regime. At the time, the British prime minister, Harold Wilson was convinced that given the smallness and the fragility of the Rhodesian economy, international economic sanctions would quickly bring Rhodesia to its knees. Sanctions did not succeed, in the short run, in bringing the Rhodesian economy to its knees, however, partly because South Africa and Portugal refused to participate in sanctions and helped Rhodesia circumvent sanctions. This study examines South Africas economic support for Rhodesia in the early years of Rhodesias unilateral declaration of independence. It argues that South Africans defied international opinion over the Rhodesian question partly because of the widespread sympathy for their kith and kin across the border that were fighting the same battle against black nationalism as the South African ruling party, but also because of South Africas need to protect and promote national interests through a demonstration of the inefficacy of international sanctions and boycotts at a time when it was, itself, a possible target for international sanctions because of its apartheid system.

From an industrial powerhouse to a nation of vendors : over two decades of economic decline and deindustrialization in Zimbabwe 1990–2015

From being the second most industrialized country in Sub-Saharan Africa at independence in 1980, Zimbabwe’s economy has declined rapidly to a point where the country ranks among the poorest economic performers in the region. The three pillars which had underpinned the country’s vibrant economy, namely, agriculture, mining and manufacturing, have suffered greatly from poor government policy choices, resulting in the near collapse of each of the sectors and massive unemployment. As a result, an estimated 90% of the Zimbabwean population was unemployed at 2015 and was forced to eke out a living in the informal sector, mostly through vending of second-hand clothes and other basic items. With regard to the manufacturing sector specifically, the sector had all but collapsed by 2015, as companies either folded or relocated to escape the country’s harsh economic climate. This article traces the decline of the Zimbabwean manufacturing sector from 1990 to 2015 and seeks to explain the factors contributing to this decline.

Mugabe on Land, Indigenization, and Development

President Robert Gabriel Mugabe’s over three-decade tenure as president of Zimbabwe has been characterized by controversy, more recently over his government’s growing economic nationalism, or what some commentators have called its “nativism,” that resulted in contentious policies such as the fast-track land reform and the black empowerment or indigenization campaign. Not surprisingly, his policies have stimulated animated debate between his supporters who hail the measures as long overdue in order to correct the inequities of the past and to consolidate Zimbabwe’s political independence and some commentators, particularly in the West, who dismiss these policies as irrational and motivated merely by political expediency and the racist and nativist tendencies of one man, namely, Robert Mugabe.