{"id":230315,"date":"2022-07-03T12:36:19","date_gmt":"2022-07-03T10:36:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/book-on-zimbabwe-strongman-robert-mugabes-legacy-has-many-flaws\/"},"modified":"2022-07-03T12:36:19","modified_gmt":"2022-07-03T10:36:19","slug":"book-on-zimbabwe-strongman-robert-mugabes-legacy-has-many-flaws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/book-on-zimbabwe-strongman-robert-mugabes-legacy-has-many-flaws\/","title":{"rendered":"Book on Zimbabwe strongman Robert Mugabe’s legacy has many flaws"},"content":{"rendered":"

Development studies professor David Moore\u2019s new book<\/a>, Mugabe\u2019s Legacy: Coups, Conspiracies and the Conceits of Power in Zimbabwe, attempts to understand the legacy of Robert Mugabe<\/a>, who led Zimbabwe from 1980 to 2017, when he lost power in a military coup. <\/p>\n

Moore<\/a> maintains that Mugabe\u2019s legacy revolves around what he terms \u201cthe three Cs\u201d: coups, conspiracies and conceits of political power. He shows that \u201cthe three Cs\u201d have their origins in the perilous politics of the independence struggle, in which Mugabe was a key participant.<\/p>\n

The book consists of a prologue and 10 chapters. The first chapter seeks \u201cto erect a conceptual structure on which the Zimbabwe \u2018facts\u2019 will sit\u201d. Chapters two to five set out \u201cthe making of Mugabe and his legacy\u201d in the liberation struggle years. Chapters six to nine trace the independence time trajectory of Mugabe\u2019s political career through to the 2017 coup<\/a>. Chapter ten examines Zimbabwean politics after Mugabe\u2019s fall from power and death in 2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The scholars Ezra Chitando<\/a>; Sue Onslow and Martin Plaut<\/a>; Stephen Chan<\/a>; and Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Pedzisai Ruhanya<\/a>, among others, have debated the legacies of Mugabe\u2019s 37-year rule. <\/p>\n

Moore largely ignores the contributions of these important contending studies about Mugabe\u2019s legacies. This is subnormal academic practice. Consequently, the precise ways in which his book surpasses or buttresses competing works about Mugabe\u2019s legacy are indistinct.<\/p>\n

Bar an interview with the veteran nationalist politician Edgar Tekere (who had a mammoth lifelong axe to grind with Mugabe) in 2004, Moore did not interview anybody else in Zanu-PF who knew Mugabe well, or worked closely with him for an extended period. For that reason, the book is bereft of exceptionally revealing findings about Mugabe\u2019s leadership, legacy and the politics of Zanu-PF. Moore\u2019s main sources are unremarkable diplomatic cables in Western archives and material already in the public domain such as newspaper articles, NGO reports and published books. They do not make for a groundbreaking book.<\/p>\n

Missing the point<\/h2>\n

We live in an age where the decolonisation of the knowledge agenda has, rightly, come to the fore in the academy. In light of this, I expected arguments about Mugabe\u2019s leadership developed by black Zimbabwean scholars based in Zimbabwe to be central to Moore\u2019s analysis. In place of debates about Mugabe by black Zimbabwean scholars, he has the thought of 20th century Italian Marxist intellectual-politician Antonio Gramsci<\/a> as his book\u2019s central point of reference. <\/p>\n

Moore invokes Gramsci ad infinitum<\/em>, without ever properly contextualising his ideas or making clear their illuminating pertinence in debates about Mugabe\u2019s legacy. Nor does Moore use his study of Mugabe\u2019s legacy to extend and refine Gramscian theories. My comprehension of Mugabe, his legacy and Zanu-PF was not enhanced in any novel way after all that Gramsci. <\/p>\n

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Discussion of real and imagined coups is an important theme in Moore\u2019s book. This is presented as a key component of Mugabe\u2019s legacy. But, Moore does not engage relevant coup and military rule literature in order to enhance our understanding of Zimbabwe\u2019s 2017 coup, and for the coup to advance broader studies about the nature and effects of coups, such as work by Samuel Decalo<\/a>, Kristen Harkness<\/a>, Naunihal Singh<\/a>, Barbara Geddes<\/a> and Alicia Decker<\/a>, among others.<\/p>\n

Moore states that he finds coup literature \u201cboring\u201d because it consists of \u201cconservative tracts on the primordial-like prebendal and neo-patrimonial coupishness of Africans\u201d (page 164). Serious coup scholars will bristle at his characterisation of their work as \u201cconservative\u201d, and defined by a propensity to regard Africans as innately prone to coup making because of personalised patronage-based politics. <\/p>\n

Moore cursorily engages the African studies scholar Ali Mazrui\u2019s 1973 article<\/a>, called Lumpen Proletariat and Lumpen Militariat: African Soldiers as New Political Class, about the consequences of coups, to underline why he finds coup literature \u201cboring\u201d and unhelpful.<\/p>\n

The problem with this is that Mazrui\u2019s article is dated and was hardly authoritative even in 1973. Moore depicts a crude caricature of a diverse, sophisticated, instructive and evolving coup and military rule literature.<\/p>\n

Portrayal of women<\/h2>\n

Feminist scholarship has done much to challenge patriarchal erasure and trivialisation of women in political science. Moore\u2019s book does precisely what feminist scholars have critiqued for decades now. It is laden with unquestioned patriarchal notions and gendered trivialisations that impoverish the study of politics.<\/p>\n

Moore writes as if nothing can be gained analytically by treating women (Zimbabwe\u2019s former first lady Grace Mugabe<\/a>, specifically) seriously. By this I mean methodically tracing, listening to and understanding women\u2019s actual political incentives and experiences. <\/p>\n

Moore employs sexist tropes when discussing Grace Mugabe\u2019s role in politics and the 2017 coup. For example, he describes her as \u201cthe volatile former secretary\u201d, \u201cthe woman who whipped her son\u2019s girlfriend\u201d and \u201cincendiary Grace\u201d. Yet there is no mention of the equally notable emotional volatility of the powerful political men \u2013 Mugabe, Constantino Chiwenga<\/a>, Dzinashe Machingura<\/a>, Joshua Nkomo<\/a>, Samora Machel<\/a> and Josiah Tongogara<\/a> \u2013 who he discusses in his book.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/h2>\n

Moore did not unearth any treasures in his research of Mugabe\u2019s legacy. He has not even drawn a map that might lead us to an enhanced understanding of the making of Mugabe and his legacy, the politics of Zanu-PF, and coups and their corollaries.<\/p>\n

Blessing Miles Tendi is the author of The Army and Politics in Zimbabwe – Mujuru, the liberation fighter and kingmaker<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

Source: The Conversation<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Development studies professor David Moore\u2019s new book, Mugabe\u2019s Legacy: Coups, Conspiracies and the Conceits of Power in Zimbabwe, attempts to understand the legacy of Robert Mugabe, who led Zimbabwe from 1980 to 2017, when he lost power in a military coup. Moore maintains that Mugabe\u2019s legacy revolves around what he terms \u201cthe three Cs\u201d: coups, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":230316,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4584],"tags":[3257],"class_list":{"0":"post-230315","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-africa-news-2","8":"tag-mypr","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/book-on-zimbabwe-strongman-robert-mugabes-legacy-has-many-flaws.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}