Mugabeism?: History, Politics, and Power in Zimbabwe (African Histories and Modernities)

What is distinctive about this book is its interdisciplinary approach towards deciphering the complex meanings of President Gabriel Mugabe of Zimbabwe making it possible to evaluate Mugabe from a historical, political, philosophical, gender, literal and decolonial perspectives. It is concerned with capturing various meanings of Mugabeism. Front Matter....Pages i-x Introduction: Mugabeism and Entanglements of History, Politics, and Power in the Making of Zimbabwe....Pages 1-25 Front Matter....Pages 27-27 Robert Mugabe: An Intellectual Manqué and His Moments of Meaning....Pages 29-44 Mugabe on Land, Indigenization, and Development....Pages 45-59 Mugabe’s Neo-sultanist Rule: Beyond the Veil of Pan-Africanism....Pages 61-74 Front Matter....Pages 75-75 Intransigent Diplomat: Robert Mugabe and His Western Diplomacy, 1963–1983....Pages 77-91 Sheriff in the “Club of Dictators”?: Robert Mugabe’s Role in the Politics of Southern Africa, 1976–2013....Pages 93-106 In the Footsteps of Robert Gabriel Mugabe: Namibian Solidarity with Mugabe’s Populism—(Bogus) Anti-imperialism in Practice....Pages 107-120 Robert Mugabe: The Will to Power and Crisis of the Paradigm of War....Pages 121-133 Front Matter....Pages 135-135 Mugabe the Man-Nation: Two Views of Culture in the Construction of Masculinities in Zimbabwe....Pages 137-156 Grappling with Mugabe’s Masculinist Politics in Zimbabwe: A Gender Perspective....Pages 157-179 Corruption and the Comrades: Mugabe and the “Fight” against Corruption in Zimbabwe, 1980–2013....Pages 181-199 Front Matter....Pages 201-201 Mugabe’s Land Reform and the Provocation of Global White Antiblack Racism....Pages 203-216 A Fanonian Reading of Robert Gabriel Mugabe as Colonial Subject....Pages 217-236 African Leadership in the Age of Euro-North American-Centric Modernity: A Decolonial Critique of Robert Mugabe....Pages 237-248 Mugabe and the Military Alliance: Zimbabwe’s Prospects of Democratic Transition....Pages 249-272 Back Matter....Pages 273-319 President Robert Gabriel Mugabe of Zimbabwe is an enigmatic figure who has been in power for over three decades. He is a difficult subject to understand because his political life has attracted both admirers and critics. This book is the first of its kind to try and make sense of the meaning of Mugabe from an interdisciplinary vantage point. It poses the difficult question of what Mugabeism means. What emerges is Mugabe as colonial, nationalist, and postcolonial subject manifesting complex ambivalences, ambiguities, and contradictions. Mugabe is at once a liberator, Machiavellian dictator, champion of socio-economic justice, patriarch, pan-Africanist, anti-democrat, and an anti-imperialist revolutionary. He is at once a progenitor and undertaker of Zimbabwe. He is at once popular and unpopular. It is these meanings of Mugabe that are explored in this book