Review
Henning Melber (ed) (2002) Zimbabwe's
Presidential Elections 2002: evidence, lessons
and implications. Discussion Paper 14, Uppsala:
Nordiska Afrikainstitutet
David Moore
At first glance it seems very impressive to have what is almost a book (an
88 page 'discussion paper') out within weeks of the event with which it is
concerned. Zimbabwe's Presidential Elections 2002 is noteworthy on that
score and more - even if many of the nasty things one could say about the
crooked victory the book marks could have been said (and often were) about
the June 2000 parliamentary elections, and even if the structural context of
both elections was substantially the same (see Bond and Manyanya 2002,
for a view taking structural adjustment and debt as the relevant fundamental
constraints, or even causes). Indeed, the book could almost be entitled
'Zimbabwe's Long Election'. The Zimbabwean African National Union-
Patriotic Front (not 'popular' front: Ian Taylor makes a double slip with that
one) was shocked into more repressive action than usual by its defeat at the
February 2000 constitutional referendum. It had been pushed into holding
that contest in order to meet a challenge mounted by the National
Constitutional Assembly, but that provocation also signalled a contest with
the September 11,1999-born Movement for Democratic Change. From then
on ZANU-PF and its ageing but cagey leader used every trick in the book
to maintain power in the midst of economic meltdown - and invented a few
new ones, learning as the 'long election' moved along through the June 2000
parliamentary election to its final stage in March 2002. Perhaps the most
intriguing new wile was the 'land invasions', apparently led by the war
veterans association (with lots of help from the army).
   To get to the root of that phenomenon would entail examining yet another
power struggle, going back at least to the southern spring of 1997 when a
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 group of 'war vets' confronted the president to make demands that would
 destroy Zimbabwe's fiscus and catalyse the latent powder-keg of land
 redistribution for many years. When one looks to that moment and its
 consequences,1 one is forced to ask another 'election' oriented question:
 will Zimbabwe's next era be ruled by any 'party' in the sense of which
 orthodox political scientists are familiar, or will it be ruled by 'warlords'?
 Melber's team does not quite grapple with that question, or the antecedent
 of just what is the nature of the relationship between the 'veterans' and the
 ruling party, although there is lots of evidence in the book to force one to
 ask it, especially if one has beenreading Norma Rriger (2001 and forthcoming)
 or Joanne Macgregor (2001) in the context of writers such as William Reno
 (1998) and Mark Duffield (2001) on the nature of war-torn Africa (Moore
 2002).
    There is enough evidence in Zimbabwe's Presidential Elections 2002 to
 contemplate seriously the probability of Zimbabwe slipping down into the
 vacuum of shadowy states and networked wars. Kenneth Good's 'Dealing
 with Despotism,' at 23 pages the longest essay in the book, admirably rounds
 up Zimbabwe's most recent events with a comprehensive historical scan.
 Reminding us of the Matabeleland massacres in the mid-1980s, and
 Zimbabwe's involvement in the Democratic Republic ofthe Congo's war, his
 words bring in both domestic and international aspects ofPresident Mugabe's
penchant for solving problems with force and leaves plenty of room for
 contemplating 'warlords' gaining accumulative power abroad and at home.
Tandeka Nkiwane's observations on the motley crew of election observers
and Ian Taylor's prognosis on Zimbabwe's effect on NEPAD's hopes for
peer reviewed good democratic governance illustrate how well ZANU-PF' s
foreign policy makers can manipulate global 'democracy' promoters and
their closer peers' alacrity to rally around perceived threats to their
'sovereignty': thus it looks like Zimbabwe's near and far neighbours will
leave it to its fate. Amin Kamete persuades us to ask just when the urban
'rebellion' willbecome more violent: what will happen, for example, ifMDC-
run Harare demands that ZANU-PF (note well: that is the party alone!) pay
its Z$300 million of debt to the city, or if Bulawayo tries to collect the Z$ 102
million owed to it by central government (38-39)? Scholar-activist Brian
Raftopoulos's few words - from the trenches, as it were — predict ZANU-
PF's increasing reliance on' surveillance, threat and arrest' in the light of its
'rapidly depleted political andmoral authority' (49). It does notlooklike there
is going to be an armed opposition arising from civil society, so the nascent
warlords will have free play.
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   Melber's own chapter invokes Fanon's 'pitfalls of national
consciousness' to place Robert Mugabe and his coterie in the company they
deserve, and thus also serves to position Zimbabwe on a trajectory to
national purgatory. Stefan Mair's 'German view' predicts that, amidst
generalised economic and political deterioration, 'war veterans and youth
militia will increasingly use their repression and control apparatus for self-
enrichment and the plundering of rural areas' (86). In the meantime, his
awareness that European Union and G8 policies find it easy to look at the less
than democratic, but geostrategically interesting, Ugandas and Rwandas of
the world with less jaundiced eyes than Zimbabwe, suggests thatthe African
forces of light will not get much help from global headquarters. Patrick
Molutsi lists the reasons for failure of (all) Zimbabwean politicians, African
leaders and Europe, the USA and the international financial institutions to
create anything other than a Cambodian style election, achieving 'nothing
but misery for ordinary people' (78), but also situates the Zimbabwean
debacle within the larger framework of the country's post-1990 economic
slide. He takes the reader out of the confines of Zimbabwe for a moment,
reiterating that the democratisation literature suggests 'democracy without
sustainable economic development is very fragile', and that an active state
must ensure that the two critical requirements of democracy - 'political
liberation and associated freedoms and security on the one hand and social
welfare of the majority of the impoverished population on the other' (81) —
are met. In Zimbabwe, the combination of a decade of structural adjustment
and two of Mugabe's misrule has led to the state's crumbling around an
empty edifice of 'presidentialism'.
   One might expand Molutsi' s start at an analysis to examine the relationship
between Zimbabwe's faltering state and the fits and starts of democracy in
and around it, to the country' s emerging class structures (and their relationship
to race). Where is Zimbabwe's 'bourgeoisie' in all of this, ifthere is a 'real'
one? What are its state and party politics? Is there a landlord class (not just
the white commercial farmers) emerging in a feudalistic sort ofway from state
actions? How do these class forms relate to the working class (Stephens and
Huber 1999) and other components of 'civil society'? How do they affect the
land question- that is, the issue of the transformation of communal tenure
relations, under which more than half the Zimbabwean population lives, to
capitalist ones - which is also an issue not investigated in the collection?
How did the era of structural adjustment affect these class relations and
accumulation strategies?
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    These issues, however, are not within the book's remit. Its focus on, and
barely constrained anger about, the Zimbabwean elections forces even the
usually class conscious Ian Taylor to pin hope upon an otherwise unspecified
 'clear-headed African leadership [to] create the right conditions for a
constructive process contributing to the rebuilding of Africa' (73). Can this
be the same 'leadership' he had been criticising for the rest of the chapter?
This sort of voluntarism, and its resultant despair, pervades the volume. It
is as if the beginning and the end of such stories rest with 'leadership', but
this vague political category is in a social vacuum.
    Nevertheless, at a political rather than political economy level, the
book(let) is a worthy addition to Zimbabwean studies. It is a shame that it
does not have a snappy title, a good distributor and a fancy cover, so that
it could be positioned in South African bookstores alongside the invariably
British published reporters' books (Blair 2002, Meredith 2002), the slightly
too economistic Zimbabwe's Plunge (Bond and Manyanya 2002) the 'tears
for Zimbabwe' genre (Buckle, 2001; Hunter et al 2001) and the cynical output
of Peter Stiff (2000).
Note
1. As Zimbabwe watchers will know, the August 1997 agreement—quite probably
     made at gunpoint during a meeting resulting from an 'invasion' of ZANU-PF
     headquarters - between the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans
     Association and Mugabe meant that nearly ZS4.5 billion (then over £260
     million) was committed to Z$50,000 (£3,000) in once-off payment and ZS2.000
     (£125) per month for approximately 50,000 'war vets' although fewer than
    30,000 were registered in 1979 at the end of the war of liberation (Blair 2002:39;
    Good in Melber: 14, claims 50-70,000). When the deal was formally implemented
    in November the Zimbabwean dollar lost seventy-five per cent of its value.
    Promises to hasten land reform were also made at that meeting, following which
    came a hasty slew of donor conferences and their plans alongside government
    acquisition edicts, none ofwhich bore much fruit. Thus was another reason, aside
    from the elections, for the March 2000 land invasions (Moyo 2002).
References
Blair, D (2002) Degrees in Violence: Robert Mugabe and the struggle for power
    in Zimbabwe. London: Continuum.
Bond, P and J Masimba Manyanya (2002) Zimbabwe's Plunge: exhausted
    nationalism, neoliberalism and the search for social justice. Pietermaritzburg:
    University of Natal Press.
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                                                                       Review
Buckle, C (2001) African Tears: the Zimbabwe land invasions. Johannesburg:
    Covos Day.
Duffield, M (2001) Global Governance and the New Wars: the merging of
    development and security. London: Zed Books.
Huber, E and J Stephens (1999) 'The bourgeoisie and democracy: historical and
    contemporary perspectives', Social Research (66)3.
Hunter, G, L Farren and A Farren (2001) Voices of Zimbabwe: the pain, the
    courage, the hope. Johannesburg: Covos Day.
Kriger, N (2001) 'Zimbabwe's war veterans and the ruling party: continuities
    in political dynamics', English version of 'Les Veterans et le Parti au
    Pouvoir: une cooperation conflictuelle dans la longue duree;' Politique
    Africaine 81.
         (forthcoming) Guerrilla Veterans in Post-war Zimbabwe: symbolic and
    violent politics, 1980-1987. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
MacGregor, J (2001) 'The politics of disruption: war veterans and the local
    state in Zimbabwe', African Affairs (101)402.
Meredith, M (2002) Mugabe: power and plunder in Zimbabwe. London: Public
    Affairs. (Published in the USA as Our Votes, Our Guns: Robert Mugabe and
    the tragedy of Zimbabwe.)
Moore, D (2002) 'Democratic blues in Zimbabwe', Arena (59).
Moyo, S (2002) 'The land occupation movement and democratisation in
    Zimbabwe: the contradictions of neoliberalism', Millennium: Journal of
    International Studies 30(2).
Reno, W(1998) Warlord Politics and African States. Boulder: Lynne Rienner.
Stiff, P (2000) Cry for Zimbabwe: independence - twenty years on. Alberton:
    Galago.
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