ABOUT GRAVITAS

The Political Context

Zimbabwe has been gripped by what can be called a ‘political economy of crises’ especially after the year 2000 and the electoral contestations between 2000 and the 2013 General Election have not resolved that deep seated crisis. This is evident with government policy inconsistencies and a general economic meltdown with the International Monetary Fund

(IMF) saying Zimbabwe faces an ‘economic deceleration’ and severe ‘vulnerabilities’.¹ This state of affairs led Masunungure (2009) to write about how the ruling class is ‘defying the winds of change’ and further state, much later, that Zimbabwe has become ‘mired in transition’ (Masunungure and Shumba, 2012)². The internecine face-offs both within the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front(ZANU PF ) and afflicting the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDCs), which has splintered, point to a serious impasse in Zimbabwe’s political economy trajectory. How this political economy will change, the contestations and contradictions it embodies and the impact this will have in people’s lives is the spirited intellectual concern of this semi-journal.

Global Political Economy

State Societal Relationship

Politics and ideologies

The publication of the journal and the establishment of the Institute for Public Affairs in Zimbabwe (IPAZ) is related and linked intellectually to the ‘Progress Conference’ which was held in Bulawayo in 2010 from 4-10 November³. There was a realisation especially amongst the younger ‘scholars’ who gathered under the Zimbabwe Scholars Network (ZIMSCON) that there was need of sustained intellectual debates and exchanges directly related to influencing public affairs in Zimbabwe. Every two weeks the Institute for Public Affairs in Zimbabwe (IPAZ) will publish a brief semi-journal called Gravitas as part of the need. The major objective of the semi-journal is to provide an open platform which facilitates

intellectual analyses of the evolving political economy and how this impacts the everyday life of citizens. On the other hand, and this is where we will intensively weigh on, is the building of ongoing intellectual critiques and ideas by people and institutions focused on influencing the public policy processes in Zimbabwe by presenting policy alternatives and different thinking frameworks. Ultimately the vision is the generation of serious ideas that can contribute to extricating Zimbabwe from what has been called Sub-Saharan Africa’s ‘development impasse’; what Professor Sachikonye called Zimbabwe’s ‘lost decade’ and present alternative frameworks to what Professor Brian Raftopoulos has called ‘nationalist authoritarianism’ and also present important counter-narratives to a very particularistic ‘patriotic history’ according to Ranger (2004) and Tendi (2012)⁴.

Economy, Politics, State and Ideology: The Re-configured Political Economy

In our view there are five important processes, amongst others, that have converged and have had a particular and distinctive impact on Zimbabwe’s post 2000 political economy. This journal will begin a dialogue around these and other processes which must be interrogated and responded to adequately especially because any ‘development project’ which aims at expanding democracy and economic opportunities in any meaningful way faces a differentiated political economy than that of the 1980s and 1990s which generated the contestations for civil and political rights especially through the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) and then the Movement for Democratic Change;

Economy

Zimbabwe’s political economy has been restructured in controversial but very fundamental ways especially as a result of the fast track land reform program; the discovery of minerals especially gold and diamonds; the extensive informalisation of the economy, indigenisation and also the spatial penetration of what has been called a ‘patronage economy’..

Politics and Ideologies

The ‘nationalist authoritarian state’, which Moyo and Chambati (2013) alternatively called the ‘re-radicalised nationalism’, has also been ideologically active and making what Ranger (2004) called ‘patriotic history’…

Global Political Economy

The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and its aftermath has brought back important contestations around the role of the state and this has re-ignited…

State and Society Relationship

Zimbabwe’s civil society and the opposition seem to have been befuddled about the state of affairs after the 2013 general election (Chirimambowa and Chimedza, 2014). Civil society interventions have been made weaker especially after the new ‘democratic’ constitution was passed and ZANU PF’s ‘resounding victory’ this has led others like Ncube (2013) to argue for a re-thinking of the ‘human rights discourse

Gender Relations & Political Economy of Crisis

A critical element to the actual existing contemporary political economy is the question of gender relations in Zimbabwe’s and how these have become sharply contested in the post-colony. Essof (2012) has done a critical political history of the women’s movement and how they mobilised different strategies and ideas to contest this exclusion. As part of this journal’s intellectual exchanges the position of women in the current political economy and how this can be changed permanently will be deliberately incorporated into the debates.