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Robert Mugabe resigned as Zimbabwe’s president in November 2017, following a military action called Operation Restore Legacy. This article examines the motivations and dynamics of Operation Restore Legacy, which it characterizes as a coup by military generals that had significant commonalities with historical coups in Africa. This characterization, which is informed by the accounts of coup participants and a reading of the literature, challenges interpretations of the coup as ‘a non-coup-coup’, ‘very Zimbabwean’, or ‘special’. The article argues that the coup was a vote of no confidence in Mugabe’s leadership, which succeeded because soldiers from Zimbabwe’s 1970s independence war subscribed to the coup’s stated ideal to restore liberation struggle principles in the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front party as well as party members who had been sidelined. Liberation war veterans held decisive army and air force command posts when the coup occurred. The article’s emphasis on liberation struggle principles as a crucial determinant of the coup’s success is a counterpoint to game theoretic approaches to coup dynamics that disregard political beliefs as a consequential factor in the realization of coups. In respect of motivations, the article advances interrelating motives and contends that the coup’s catalyst was Mugabe’s refusal to meet his generals on 13 November 2017, for vital talks on widening differences between both parties. Sealing off dialogue catalyzed the coup.

This article re-examines part of the literature on Britain’s role in the December 1979 to March 1980 Zimbabwe/Rhodesia ceasefire. The ceasefire ushered in an era of peace after a protracted internal war and it was an integral part of the transition from colonial white minority rule, towards black majority independence. Scholars present Britain’s success in brokering and monitoring the Zimbabwe/Rhodesia ceasefire as the result of its judicious and accordant management of the road to peace. However, this article argues that in fact deep internal divisions plagued the British managers of the ceasefire. Internal divisions centred on authority struggles between diplomats and military actors, conflicting personalities, discordant approaches to and goals in the ceasefire, and inter-institutional rivalry between the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence. The article concludes that Britain only managed the ceasefire effectively because its military’s independence, political nous, and competence ultimately prevailed over the injudicious views and machinations of diplomats.

This article revisits the history of the 1974–75 mutiny in the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA). The mutiny was primarily led by field commanders Thomas Nhari, Dakarai Badza and Caesar Molife. Dominant accounts on the mutiny maintain that the colonial Rhodesian Security Forces (RSF) influenced Nhari and Badza to stage the revolt. The article traces part of the life history of Rex Nhongo/Solomon Mujuru (a ZANLA commander who interacted with the mutineers) in order to challenge these long-standing accounts of the mutiny. The article highlights the import of conflicting understandings of loyalty in the mutiny, arguing that the revolt was not an RSF scheme. Instead, the mutineers took advantage of the absence of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and ZANLA leaderships, which were abroad on various transnational diplomatic engagements in countries sympathetic to Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle, to stage a revolt. The mutiny could have been avoided had the ZANLA commander, Josiah Tongoga...

This special issue of JSAS offers new transnational perspectives on southern Africa’s wars of national liberation.1 It does so by bringing fresh evidence to bear on the histories of Zimbabwean, Nam...

Zimbabwe is routinely depicted as a country that held considerable potential for socio-economic development following its independence from colonial rule in 1980. Today this promise is all but erod...

Since the late 1990s Zimbabwean politics has been shaped by the political succession war raging within the ruling ZANU PF party. The internal fight to succeed President Robert Mugabe pitted a faction controlled by retired General Solomon Mujuru, who was fronting his wife Joice Mujuru, against another faction led by Emmerson Mnangagwa, a government minister. The competition between these factions reached a crucial stage in 2014, when Mugabe dismissed Joice Mujuru as Vice-President and purged her key allies in ZANU PF and the government. This article examines the role of state intelligence in this struggle, arguing that the Military Intelligence (MI) leadership, which supported Mnangagwa in the succession conflict, placed Joice Mujuru under surveillance and constructed a controversial gendered case to destroy her bid to succeed Mugabe. In contrast, some elements in the principal civilian intelligence institution, the Central Intelligence Organization, conducted a surveillance operation against the Mnangagwa faction in order to support Joice Mujuru’s power bid. The article widens scholarship on the security sector’s political interventions in Zimbabwean politics, while emphasizing how the gendered dimensions of surveillance can reinforce patriarchal national politics. PRESIDENT ROBERT MUGABE has led the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU PF) party and Zimbabwe since 1977 and 1980, respectively. Mugabe, a nonagenarian, is Africa’s oldest serving president. The length of his incumbency among current African leaders is surpassed only by the tenures of Paul Biya (Cameroon), Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo (Equatorial Guinea) and Jose Eduardo dos Santos (Angola). Rising domestic discontent with Mugabe’s seemingly interminable leadership was one of the reasons for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party’s formation in 1999 and the rise to prominence of its leader Morgan Tsvangirai as an alternative national *Miles Tendi (miles.tendi@sant.oxon.org) is a Departmental Lecturer in African Politics in the Department of International Development, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford. African Affairs, 1–22 doi: 10.1093/afraf/adv074 © The Author 201 . Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal African Society. All rights reserved 1 6 African Affairs Advance Access published February 12, 2016

Since 2002, many scholars and Zimbabwean politicians have argued that Zimbabwe's Joint Operations Command (JOC), which comprises the Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF) commander and heads of the army, prisons, police, air force and intelligence, increasingly poses a threat to civilian authority. A notorious statement made by the ZDF commander Vitalis Zvinavashe in 2002 is often cited as evidence of the JOC or military elites' partisan support for President Robert Gabriel Mugabe and his Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front ZANU[PF]) party. This article argues that Zvinavashe's 2002 statement has been interpreted in selective ways, and that external factors that played a crucial part in precipitating his intervention in 2002 have been neglected. This has resulted in an impoverished understanding of the full import of Zvinavashe's 2002 statement. Using Zvinavashe as an example, the article also demonstrates that some military elites' allegiance to Mugabe and ideological commitment to ZANU(PF) rule must be seen as unstable and contradictory. Be that as it may, Mugabe retains effective control of military elites for a variety of reasons, namely power derived from his status as ZDF commander in chief and his high position in ZANU(PF)'s 1970s nationalist hierarchy; his shrewd use of prebends to maintain loyalty; and the staunch ideological commitment of sections of the military elite to ZANU(PF).

Zimbabwe staged harmonised presidential, parliamentary and local elections on 31 July 2013. I was in Zimbabwe from 2 July to late September. Throughout this period, I closely followed the political fortuna of Zimbabwe President Robert Gabriel Mugabe before and after the 31 July presidential election. I had unique access to Mugabe’s campaign managers and was allowed to observe his electioneering at close range. Thus, the following account is based on first-hand knowledge of Mugabe’s election campaign. I have interviewed Zimbabwe African National Union (Patriotic Front) (ZANU[PF]) and military elites frequently since 2010 as an independent researcher. Through this constant interaction I have developed a good degree of trust and understanding with some of my research subjects, which has enabled me to secure access. My account focuses on five themes: Mugabe’s state of mind and authority ahead of the election; his campaign message; political violence; the cohesion of Mugabe’s ZANU(PF)party; and campaign funding. I contend that the views of a number of academics, rival politicians and sections of local and international media during the campaign period that Mugabe was no longer the authoritative figure within his party and over the military and that he had lost much of his physical and mental powers were misleading. ‘Patriotic history’ and a narrative about the importance of peace during the campaigns, the benefits of ZANU(PF)’s Fast Track Land Reform programme, and a pledge to fully indigenise and economically empower the generality of Zimbabweans were Mugabe’s key campaign messages. Mugabe’s campaign was slick, well-funded, united and peaceful, in contrast to his 2008 presidential election campaign, which was underfunded, plagued with internal division and characterised by extreme violence in the June run-off. This article attempts to account for some of these changes and continuities, in addition to offering a perspective on his electioneering in July 2013.

This article focuses on the response of critical Zimbabwean public intellectuals to the ZANUPF government’s uses of Zimbabwe’s liberation history in national politics from 2000 to 2004. The ZANU-PF master narrative is referred to as ‘patriotic history’. This article examines the activities of the five most prominent critical public intellectuals in the Zimbabwean public sphere, namely Brian Raftopoulos, Masipula Sithole, John Makumbe, Elphas Mukonoweshuro and Lovemore Madhuku. It argues that these critical intellectuals were effective in deconstructing patriotic history’s distinction between ‘patriots’ and ‘sellouts’, and in underlining the role of land as one of several grievances causing Zimbabwe’s liberation war. But the article highlights their failure to disentangle a local struggle for human rights and democracy from appeals to alleged ‘democratic’ and ‘human rights respecting’ western countries. It concludes that critical public intellectuals’ challenge to patriotic history was largely ineffectual, and puts forward several explanations for this.

This paper draws on the recent experience of Kenya and Zimbabwe to demonstrate how power-sharing has played out in Africa. Although the two cases share some superficial similarities, variation in the strength and disposition of key veto players generated radically different contexts that shaped the feasibility and impact of unity government. Explaining the number and attitude of veto players requires a comparative analysis of the evolution of civil–military and intra-elite relations. In Zimbabwe, the exclusionary use of violence and rhetoric, together with the militarisation of politics, created far greater barriers to genuine power-sharing, resulting inthe politics of continuity. These veto players were less significant in the Kenyan case, giving rise to a more cohesive outcome in the form ofthe politics of collusion. However, we find that neither mode of power-sharing creates the conditions for effective reform, which leads to a more general conclusion: unity government serves to postpone conflict, rather than to resolve it.

Robert Mugabe is often presented in the international media as the epitome of the popular leader gone awry: the independence struggle hero who seemed initially a progressive egalitarian, but has gradually been corrupted through his attachment to power during a long and increasingly repressive spell in office. This article applies notions of ‘toxicity’ and ‘bad leadership’ to Mugabe, in an attempt to locate him within a comparative and historically-informed perspective.

Le present article explore les divers roles joues par la violence lors des recentes elections presidentielles au Zimbabwe. Le premier tour a ete marque par l’absence relative de violence d’Etat, alors que le second a connu une violence extreme, orchestree par le parti au pouvoir. Les comparaisons parfois faites entre le Zimbabwe et le Kenya nous semblent trompeuses: la violence electorale au Zimbabwe n’etait pas une violence ethnique et elle ne provenait pas de forces exterieures a l’Etat. Les sequelles sur les institutions, les partis politiques et sur les conceptions populaires de la citoyennete influenceront profondement la nature de tout futur accord de partage de pouvoir.