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In Search of Régime Security: Zimbabwe Since Independence
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2008
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The relatively peaceful decolonisation of British and French Africa in the 1950s and led, for the most part, to the capturing of state power by a new political élite rather than a throughgoing transformation of the state structures inherited at independence. Instead of refashioning institution in ways that might increase political participation and social justice, existing state capacities tended to be marshalled for exclusionary and, in many cases, authoritarian purposes.
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page 529 note 1 On variations within this overall pattern, see Nwabueze, B. O.Presidentialism in Commonwealth Africa (London, 1974);Google ScholarCollier, Ruth, ‘Parties, Coups, and Authoritarian Rule’, in Comparative Political Studies (Beverly Hills), 11, April 1978, pp. 62–93;Google ScholarJackson, Robert H. and Rosberg, Carl G., Personal Rule in Black Africa: prince, autocrat, prophet, tyrant (Berkeley and London, 1982);Google Scholar and Zolberg, Aristide R., Creating Political Order: the party-states of West Africa (Chicago, 1966).Google Scholar
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page 536 note 2 The Herald, 14 November 1983.
page 536 note 3 In June 1983, the Government established a commission of inquiry into allegations of atrocities by security forces in the Western Region, but is not bound either to accept or to implement its recommendations.
page 536 note 4 The Ministry of Home Affairs is not a perfect replica of the Ministry of Law and Order in that its activities extend beyond security. ‘The Ministry of Home Affairs’, Harare, 1984, D12/47a.
page 536 note 5 Interview, Central Intelligence Organisation official, June 1983; also Africa Confidential (London), 15 December 1982.
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page 542 note 1 The ‘illegal’ imposition of a one-party system today would not only inflame domestic white opinion and the minority parties, but could be expected to prejudice international investment at a particularly difficult time economically. Secondly, a declaration of one-party rule would only become a serious option in the event that the ruling party began to lose power. Presently, there is little that the régime cannot do because of the parliamentary system.
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page 543 note 1 The Herald, 4 February 1983.
page 543 note 2 Sunday Mail (Harare), 10 March 1983.
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page 544 note 1 The Herald, 27 March and 19 April 1983.
page 544 note 2 The Guardian (London), 21 June 1984.
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page 546 note 3 Assembly Debates, 6, 3 February 1983, col. 1219; and Moto, March 1983.
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page 546 note 5 Interview, C.I.O. official, June 1983.
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page 551 note 3 Agreement, para. 15, in Southern Rhodesia, Report of the Constitutional Conference, Lancaster House, September–December 1979 (London, 1980), Cmnd. 7802.
page 551 note 4 Ibid. para. 2.
page 551 note 5 Soames had served previously as British Ambassador to France during the negotiated decolonisation of Algeria. Sec Musamirapamwe, O. N., ‘The Evian Agreements on Algeria and the Lancaster Agreements on Zimbabwe’, in Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law (Athens, Ga.), 12, 1982, pp. 153–70.Google Scholar
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page 553 note 1 Isaacman, A Luta continua, p. 30.
page 553 note 2 From a similar number of 250,000 whites during the war, four years after independence Mozambique was left with 20,000 and Zimbabwe with more than 100,000.
page 553 note 3 Ehrenreich, op. cit. p. 242.
page 553 note 4 The Lusaka Agreement, 7 September 1974, para. 18.
page 553 note 5 Isaacmans, Mozambique, p. 111.
page 554 note 1 In terms of overt destabilising forces, Mozambique has been under greater siege than Zimbabwe. In the last half of the 1970s the Rhodesian régime launched hundreds of military interventions against Mozambique, while in the 1980s the destabilisation efforts of South Africa have been extremely troublesome. The Pretoria-sponsored Mozambique National Resistance movement has waged a campaign of insurgency against the Maputo régime far in excess of the disorder caused to Zimbabwe by dissidents. See Fauvet, Paul, ‘Roots of Counter-Revolution in Mozambique: the Mozambique National Resistance’, in Review of African Political Economy (London), 29, July 1984, pp. 108– 21. The M.N.R. is estimated to number 12,000, compared to the 300 insurgents operating in Zimbabwe at any one time.Google Scholar
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page 556 note 1 Minister of Home Affairs, Assembly Debates, 5, 13 July 1982, col. 628, and 7, 13 July 1983, col. 416.
page 556 note 2 See Zvobgo, Eddison, ‘The Abuse of Executive Prerogative: a purposive difference between detention in black Africa and detention in white racist Africa’, in Issue: quarterly journal of opinion, 6, Winter 1976, pp. 38–43Google Scholar, for a spirited contrast of human rights abuses by the current Minister of Justice and Minister of Legal and Parliamentary Affairs. He maintain then that repression was ‘haphazard’ and given to ‘spurts of limited duration’ under black rulers, as opposed to being permanent and comprehensive in settler régimes. The outrages of Idi Amin were dismissed as ‘un-African’.
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