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Introduction: The Space of Many Voices—Zimbabwe since the Unity Government

When we edited issue 384 of The Round Table in April 2006 (which was followed by an expanded book edition—see Primorac and Chan, 2007), the power-sharing government in Zimbabwe had not yet come into existence. We called the 2006 special issue ‘Zimbabwe and the Space of Silence’, because, at the time, certain key issues and/or voices in the national debate seemed suppressed or stifled—as the articles in the issue sought to demonstrate. Since the advent of the powersharing government, marked by the swearing-in of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai on 11 February 2009, almost all public commentary has been to the effect that Zimbabwe’s new government is a coalition of unequal parts, and that both groupings of the former opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) were either ineffectual, or being persistently and successfully bludgeoned into a junior role. The purpose of this special issue is not to dispute, but to refine and problematise this simple picture. Notwithstanding the many political machinations, stalemates and bad faith, debate and plurality of expression have increased in Zimbabwe. The multiplicity of voices is due in part to the fractionation of almost all the key players in Zimbabwean politics. Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union–Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) suffered a key defection before the controversial 2008 elections, with the departure and independent Presidential candidacy of Simba Makoni (backed, it was thought, by military heavyweights such as Solomon Mujuru). Two years later, there are clear cleavages between military (or ‘Securotocratic’) ZANU-PF and civilian ZANU-PF, with further cleavages within the military as well as the civilian wings. In some ways, the party has become a loose coalescence of competitive oligarchies that benefit from ‘ZANU-PF’ as a name. The MDC itself split in 2006, and both the Tsvangirai and Mutambara versions of the party have since had their own dissensions. In August 2010, as this issue was being prepared, Welshman Ncube was challenging Arthur Mutambara for the right to contest the leadership on what was seen as an Ndebele platform. Dumiso Dabengwa had revived Joshua Nkomo’s Ndebele-based ZAPU, having first himself left ZANUPF. The Tsvangirai-led MDC’s first year in office saw grave tensions between Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and his Finance Minister, Tendai Biti. Those have considerably softened now and there is also the spectacle of some cross-party The Round Table Vol. 99, No. 411, 601–604, December 2010