Blog

From Zimbabwe to Bolivia: what makes a military coup?

Saturday 23rd November 2019

Evo Morales, president of Bolivia since 2006, resigned on November 10 following weeks of demonstrations triggered by a disputed election in October. Morales won the election amid allegations that the result was rigged in his favour. The turning point in Morales's departure from office was the intervention of Williams Kaliman, commander of the Bolivian armed forces. Speaking at a press conference, Kaliman urged Morales to resign "for the good of our Bolivia". Morales has since gone into exile in Mexico and the manner of his departure has sparked passionate debate about whether it was tantamount to a military coup. Two years ago this month, the Zimbabwean military placed former President Robert Mugabe under house arrest. Subsequently, SB Moyo, a major general in…

view more »


Dumiso Dabengwa: an Intelligence Czar and the Zimbabwean State in the Making

Tuesday 28th May 2019

On the night of 15 August 2011, I attended the launch of Wilfred Mhanda's (nom de guerre Dzinashe Machingura) memoir, Dzino: Memories of a Freedom Fighter in Harare. Mhanda was an important figure in Zimbabwe's independence struggle - particularly for his role in the formation of ZIPA and the crafting of the Mgagao Declaration in 1975. I had recently commenced researching a scholarly biography of General Solomon Mujuru (nom de guerre Rex Nhongo), another major actor in part of the Zimbabwean liberation struggle, who crossed swords with Mhanda in the mid-1970s, resulting in momentous change in the character and direction of ZANU's contribution to Zimbabwe's independence. 'Make sure you interview Dumiso Dabengwa about General Mujuru', my interviewees repeatedly counselled me at the…

view more »


Rotten Political Culture is Strangling our Democracy

Thursday 8th September 2016

If recent events, in which women's roles in Zimbabwe's liberation war are degraded through sexualised accounts, have taught us anything it is that our rotten political culture stands in the way of democratisation. During the struggle for liberation, ZANU PF lacked ideological devotion to the rights of women. Chrispen Mataire (nom de guerre: David Todhlana) was the first director of ZANU PF's Whampoa College, which was set up in 1976 to run wartime leadership and Marxist-Leninist studies. Mataire believed that ZANU PF's struggle for revolution in Rhodesia ought to emancipate women. But his early attempt to introduce political education about the centrality of women's rights to the liberation struggle faced resistance because of the patriarchal beliefs of ZANLA's male cadres and…

view more »


Why Robert Mugabe continues to plod on

Tuesday 1st March 2016

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe returned home from the Far East, where he had been for a month, on 22 January 2016. Mugabe was chipper and appeared physically fit, as he shook hands and exchanged greetings with a long queue of government officials, service chiefs and other ruling party dignitaries who converged on the Harare International Airport to welcome him home. This was Mugabe's first public appearance since mid-December 2015. Mugabe's reemergence put paid to long running speculation in and outside Zimbabwe that he had suffered a fatal heart attack in the Far East. Intense rumours about Mugabe's alleged demise are not new. Indeed the frequency of these rumours once led Mugabe to boast that he had croaked and been brought…

view more »


The UK needs to stay out of Zimbabwe’s succession politics

Saturday 13th February 2016

Last week, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai sparked controversy in Zimbabwe when he claimed that foreign diplomats he'd spoken to had revealed a preference over who the country's next president should be. Speaking to journalists, the MDC-T party leader said: "I was with one of the ambassadors [in Harare] who was talking about [Vice-President Emmerson] Mnangagwa being a pragmatist". Tsvangirai's suggestion that Western diplomats favour Mnangagwa made headline news in Zimbabwe and re-energised debates about who will eventually succeed the 91-year-old President Robert Mugabe. Mnangagwa, a seasoned minister within the ruling ZANU-PF, is seen as one of the most likely candidates. In the succession debate, the shifting stance of certain Western states has been deliberated amongst Zimbabwe's political elites for many months now.…

view more »


Four decades of underestimating Mugabe: how the British never expected he would win Zimbabwe’s 1980 election

Thursday 24th December 2015

In 2013, Robert Mugabe was re-elected president of Zimbabwe in a landslide victory over his longtime political rival Morgan Tsvangirai. The result - criticised by the opposition - baffled many observers. Few players were more taken aback by Mugabe's reassertion of political dominance than the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). Writing in Prospect magazine, soon after Mugabe's re-election, the director of the Royal Africa Society, Richard Dowden, commented that the Zimbabwean president's triumph was "the biggest defeat for the United Kingdom's policy in Africa in 60 years. Both the British ambassador and the MI6 head officer in Harare called it wrong". Dowden was correct that the British ambassador at the time, Deborah Bronnert, was mistaken about the likely election outcome. I…

view more »


Lorem Ipsum

Tuesday 15th December 2015

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Duis a pulvinar ligula. In gravida lacus eu nunc finibus, quis tincidunt est eleifend. Aliquam maximus, arcu et tincidunt ultricies, massa eros efficitur tellus, sit amet feugiat ligula justo sit amet sapien. Fusce bibendum interdum odio vel consectetur. Suspendisse hendrerit fringilla velit quis condimentum. Nullam elementum condimentum augue id pharetra. Mauris nec consequat elit. Integer vestibulum ligula a maximus cursus. Praesent consequat dolor quis accumsan euismod. In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Donec eu tempus eros. Sed nec turpis euismod, vulputate risus vel, congue nisi. Suspendisse tincidunt ante vitae ex gravida, eu euismod tortor semper. Quisque condimentum sapien faucibus justo molestie, non congue orci interdum. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia…

view more »


Lorem Ipsum

Tuesday 15th December 2015

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Duis a pulvinar ligula. In gravida lacus eu nunc finibus, quis tincidunt est eleifend. Aliquam maximus, arcu et tincidunt ultricies, massa eros efficitur tellus, sit amet feugiat ligula justo sit amet sapien. Fusce bibendum interdum odio vel consectetur. Suspendisse hendrerit fringilla velit quis condimentum. Nullam elementum condimentum augue id pharetra. Mauris nec consequat elit. Integer vestibulum ligula a maximus cursus. Praesent consequat dolor quis accumsan euismod. In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Donec eu tempus eros. Sed nec turpis euismod, vulputate risus vel, congue nisi. Suspendisse tincidunt ante vitae ex gravida, eu euismod tortor semper. Quisque condimentum sapien faucibus justo molestie, non congue orci interdum. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia…

view more »


Lorem Ipsum

Tuesday 15th December 2015

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Duis a pulvinar ligula. In gravida lacus eu nunc finibus, quis tincidunt est eleifend. Aliquam maximus, arcu et tincidunt ultricies, massa eros efficitur tellus, sit amet feugiat ligula justo sit amet sapien. Fusce bibendum interdum odio vel consectetur. Suspendisse hendrerit fringilla velit quis condimentum. Nullam elementum condimentum augue id pharetra. Mauris nec consequat elit. Integer vestibulum ligula a maximus cursus. Praesent consequat dolor quis accumsan euismod. In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Donec eu tempus eros. Sed nec turpis euismod, vulputate risus vel, congue nisi. Suspendisse tincidunt ante vitae ex gravida, eu euismod tortor semper. Quisque condimentum sapien faucibus justo molestie, non congue orci interdum. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia…

view more »


Lorem Ipsum

Tuesday 15th December 2015

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Duis a pulvinar ligula. In gravida lacus eu nunc finibus, quis tincidunt est eleifend. Aliquam maximus, arcu et tincidunt ultricies, massa eros efficitur tellus, sit amet feugiat ligula justo sit amet sapien. Fusce bibendum interdum odio vel consectetur. Suspendisse hendrerit fringilla velit quis condimentum. Nullam elementum condimentum augue id pharetra. Mauris nec consequat elit. Integer vestibulum ligula a maximus cursus. Praesent consequat dolor quis accumsan euismod. In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Donec eu tempus eros. Sed nec turpis euismod, vulputate risus vel, congue nisi. Suspendisse tincidunt ante vitae ex gravida, eu euismod tortor semper. Quisque condimentum sapien faucibus justo molestie, non congue orci interdum. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia…

view more »


Lorem Ipsum

Tuesday 15th December 2015

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Duis a pulvinar ligula. In gravida lacus eu nunc finibus, quis tincidunt est eleifend. Aliquam maximus, arcu et tincidunt ultricies, massa eros efficitur tellus, sit amet feugiat ligula justo sit amet sapien. Fusce bibendum interdum odio vel consectetur. Suspendisse hendrerit fringilla velit quis condimentum. Nullam elementum condimentum augue id pharetra. Mauris nec consequat elit. Integer vestibulum ligula a maximus cursus. Praesent consequat dolor quis accumsan euismod. In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Donec eu tempus eros. Sed nec turpis euismod, vulputate risus vel, congue nisi. Suspendisse tincidunt ante vitae ex gravida, eu euismod tortor semper. Quisque condimentum sapien faucibus justo molestie, non congue orci interdum. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia…

view more »