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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Development Denied: Autocratic Militarism in Post-Election Zimbabwe |
Author: | Bracking, Sarah |
Year: | 2005 |
Periodical: | Review of African Political Economy |
Volume: | 32 |
Issue: | 104-105 |
Pages: | 341-357 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Zimbabwe |
Subjects: | authoritarianism political repression ZANU-PF Politics and Government Development and Technology Economics and Trade |
External link: | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03056240500329361 |
Abstract: | This article examines the recent ideological position of 'Vote for Development' which the ZANU-PF government in Zimbabwe pursued during the election campaign of March 2005, and the brief period of freer expression that accompanied the campaign. This strategy of power, the willingness to seemingly embrace the democratic process, is then compared with the postelection situation in Zimbabwe, where despite having entrenched themselves in government, the ZANU-PF leadership is conducting a campaign to destroy the infrastructural, physical, economic and social assets of the urban poor. The article reviews the'Operation Restore Order' against informal traders, and the 'Operation Murambatsvina' ('Operation Clear Away the Trash' - or grime, rubbish, filth) of 25 May to early July 2005 against people's homes. It concludes that the current destruction of the livelihoods, homes and sometimes lives of the urban poor is part of a longer running turn to authoritarianism by ZANU-PF, the election experience notwithstanding. It also argues that this authoritarianism is a default mode of an anti-developmental, spoils-based political economy, which is partly conditioned by international isolation and illiquidity: excluded by the international financial institutions from access to hard currency, and initially dissembled by structural adjustment, the elite pursues a zero-sum extractive form of accumulation against its own citizens. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract, edited] |