The Graceless Fall of Robert Mugabe
The Graceless Fall of Robert Mugabe

Author: Geoffrey Nyarota

Publisher:

Published: 2018-12-19

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9781776093465

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The ousting of Robert Mugabe as Zimbabwe's president took the world by surprise. In this book, veteran Zimbabwean journalist Geoffrey Nyarota explains how and why the events of November 2017 happened as they did. The book describes the rifts within ZANU-PF as Mugabe sidelined anyone who might challenge his power, and the creation of opposing factions that supported vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa and First Lady Grace Mugabe respectively. It traces the growing ambition and power of Grace Mugabe, culminating in the sacking of Mnangagwa as vice president in November 2017, and shows how this finally spurred ZANU-PF to rid itself of the president who had done so much damage to the country over the decades. Written with the insight of a journalist from inside Zimbabwe, this is a fascinating account of the rise and fall of one of Africa's longest-ruling dictators.

The Graceless Fall of Robert Mugabe
The Graceless Fall of Robert Mugabe

Author: Geoffrey Nyarota

Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa

Published: 2018-08-01

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13: 177609347X

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The ousting of Robert Mugabe as Zimbabwe’s president took the world by surprise. In this book, award-winning Zimbabwean journalist Geoffrey Nyarota explains how and why the events of November 2017 happened as they did. Nyarota evaluates the political and economic impact of Mugabe’s presidency, showing how he managed to reduce a prosperous nation to a state of destitution through extreme misgovernance. The book describes the rifts within ZANU-PF as Mugabe sidelined anyone who might challenge his power, and the creation of opposing factions that supported Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa and First Lady Grace Mugabe respectively. It traces the growing ambition and power of Grace Mugabe, culminating in the sacking of Mnangagwa as vice president in November 2017, and explains how this finally spurred ZANU-PF to rid itself of the president who had done so much damage to the country over the decades. Written with the insight of a veteran Zimbabwean journalist, this is a fascinating account of the rise and fall of one of Africa’s longest-ruling dictators.

Robert Mugabe and the Will to Power in an African Postcolony
Robert Mugabe and the Will to Power in an African Postcolony

Author: William J. Mpofu

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-03-04

Total Pages: 410

ISBN-13: 3030478793

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This book is a philosopher’s view into the chaotic postcolony of Zimbabwe, delving into Robert Mugabe’s Will to Power. The Will to Power refers to a spirited desire for power and overwhelming fear of powerlessness that Mugabe artfully concealed behind performances of invincibility. Nietzsche’s philosophical concept of the Will to Power is interpreted and expanded in this book to explain how a tyrant is produced and enabled, and how he performs his tyranny. Achille Mbembe’s novel concept of the African postcolony is mobilised to locate Zimbabwe under Mugabe as a domain of the madness of power. The book describes Mugabe’s development from a vulnerable youth who was intoxicated with delusions of divine commission to a monstrous tyrant of the postcolony who mistook himself for a political messiah. This account exposes how post-political euphoria about independence from colonialism and the heroism of one leader can easily lead to the degeneration of leadership. However, this book is as much about bad leadership as it is about bad followership. Away from Eurocentric stereotypes where tyranny is isolated to African despots, this book shows how Mugabe is part of an extended family of tyrants of the world. He fought settler colonialism but failed to avoid being infected by it, and eventually became a native coloniser to his own people. The book concludes that Zimbabwe faces not only a simple struggle for democracy and human rights, but a Himalayan struggle for liberation from genocidal native colonialism that endures even after Robert Mugabe’s dethronement and death.

Personality Cult and Politics in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe
Personality Cult and Politics in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe

Author: Ezra Chitando

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-06-08

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 1000095657

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This book approaches perceptions of Robert Gabriel Mugabe within Zimbabwe and beyond during his period in power and towards the end of his time in government. The book examines how Mugabe became the focus of a thriving personality cult, studying the argument that Mugabe could be regarded as the founder of a new religious movement in Zimbabwe and the Global South. The contributors analyse the use of ideology and mythology in promoting Mugabe’s hegemony in Zimbabwe, looking at the appropriation of religious ideas by the Mugabe government and the impact this had on perceptions of Mugabe both within Zimbabwe and beyond. Focusing on the final years of Mugabe’s rule, the chapters provide new insights into how different actors, including politicians, African Traditional Religions, African Independent/Initiated Churches, Pentecostal churches, the media and others deployed religious idioms to support or critique Mugabe at a time when his tenure was coming under serious threat. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of Southern African politics and religion.

Politics and Religion in Zimbabwe
Politics and Religion in Zimbabwe

Author: Ezra Chitando

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-04-03

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 1000054195

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This book illustrates how religion and ideology were used by Robert Mugabe to ward off opposition within his own party, in Zimbabwe and from the West. An interdisciplinary line up of contributors argue that Mugabe used a calculated narrative of deification – presenting himself as a divine figure who had the task of delivering land, freedom and confidence to black people across the world – to remain in power in Zimbabwe. The chapters highlight the appropriation and deployment of religious themes in Mugabe’s domestic and international politics, reflect on the contestation around the deification of Mugabe in Zimbabwean politics across different forms of religious expression, including African Traditional Religions and various strands of Christianity and initiate further reflections on the interface between religion and politics in Africa and globally. Politics and Religion in Zimbabwe will be of interest to scholars of religion and politics, Southern Africa and African politics.

The Zimbabwean Crisis after Mugabe
The Zimbabwean Crisis after Mugabe

Author: Tendai Mangena

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-12-30

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 1000520994

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This book examines the ways in which political discourses of crisis and ‘newness’ are (re)produced, circulated, naturalised, received and contested in Post-Mugabe Zimbabwe. Going beyond the ordinariness of conventional political, human and social science methods, the book offers new and engaging multi-disciplinary approaches that treat discourse and language as important sites to encounter the politics of contested representations of the Zimbabwean crisis in the wake of the 2017 coup. The book centres discourse on new approaches to contestations around the discursive framing of various aspects of the socio-economic and political crisis related to significant political changes in Zimbabwe post-2017. Contributors in this volume, most of whom experienced the complex transition first-hand, examine some of the ways in which language functions as a socio-cultural and political mechanism for creating imaginaries, circulating, defending and contesting conceptions, visions, perceptions and knowledges of the post-Mugabe turn in the Zimbabwean crisis and its management by the "New Dispensation". This book will be of interest to scholars of African studies, postcolonial studies, language/discourse studies, African politics and culture.

Cultures of Change in Contemporary Zimbabwe
Cultures of Change in Contemporary Zimbabwe

Author: Oliver Nyambi

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-11-04

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 1000470288

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This book investigates how culture reflects change in Zimbabwe, focusing predominantly on Mnangagwa’s 2017 coup, but also uncovering deeper roots for how renewal and transition are conceived in the country. Since Emmerson Mnangagwa ousted Robert Mugabe in 2017, he has been keen to defi ne his "Second Republic" or "New Dispensation" with a rhetoric of change and a rejection of past political and economic cultures. This multi and inter- disciplinary volume looks to the (social) media, language/ discourse, theatre, images, political speeches and literary fiction and non- fiction to see how they have reflected on this time of unprecedented upheaval. The book argues that themes of self- renewal stretch right back to the formative years of the ZANU PF, and that despite the longevity of Mugabe’s tenure, the latest transition can be seen as part of a complex and protracted layering of postcolonial social, economic and political changes. Providing an innovative investigation of how political change in Zimbabwe is reflected on in cultural texts and products, this book will be of interest to researchers across African history, literature, politics, culture and post- colonial studies.

Sub-Saharan Political Cultures of Deceit in Language, Literature, and the Media, Volume I
Sub-Saharan Political Cultures of Deceit in Language, Literature, and the Media, Volume I

Author: Esther Mavengano

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-12-20

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 3031353234

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This two-volume set charts a cross-disciplinary discursive terrain that proffers rich insights about deceit in contemporary postcolonial Sub-Saharan African politics. In an attempt to produce a nuanced and multi-faceted academic dialoguing platform, the two volumes have a particular focus on the aspects of treachery, fear of difference (oppositional politics), and discourses/ semiotics of mis/self- representation. The major aim of the proposed volumes is to contribute toward the often problematised conversations about the unfolding (post)colonial Sub-Saharan world which is topical in decolonial and Pan-African studies. The volumes seek to place political thinking and postcolonial political systems under the scholarly gaze with the view to highlight and enhance the participation of African cross-disciplinary scholarship in the postcolonial political processes of the continent. Most significantly, it is through such probing of the limitations of our own disciplinary perspectives which can help us appreciate the complexity of the postcolonial Sub-Saharan African politics. The first volume uses Zimbabwe as a case study, while the second volume broadens to examine postcolonial politics in Sub-Saharan Africa more broadly.

Ben Ali's Tunisia
Ben Ali's Tunisia

Author: Anne Wolf

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023-02-28

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0192868500

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Based on a wealth of new primary data, this book offers the first account of the internal regime factors that ultimately caused the fall of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali's long dictatorship in Tunisia during the Arab Uprisings. Anne Wolf's account challenges studies that focus on the role of mass mobilization alone, and demonstrates that in the last decade of Ben Ali's presidency, dissent within his ruling party - the Constitutional Democratic Rally - mounted to such an extent that followers began challenging their own powerbroker. The culmination of this was a secret coup d'état staged by regime figures against Ben Ali in January 2011, an event that has not previously been uncovered. Wolf proposes a new theory of power and contention within ruling parties in authoritarian regimes to explain how dictators seek to fortify their rule and foster party-political stability, but also when, why, and how they succumb to internal contention and with what effect.