ABSTRACT
Refusing to regard religion and ideology as two separate and distinctive concepts, the chapter highlights how Mugabe employed discourses and ideology to generate support internationally. The country’s foreign policy was heavily influenced by the armed struggle for decolonization, which played a central role in shaping the ruling party’s ideology. Zimbabwe, like other Southern African states, was greatly dependent on South Africa’s economy, but their relationship was marked by distrust, threats and even acts of aggression on the part of South Africa, then under the apartheid regime. The discourses and ideologies that pervade international relations have a dynamic relationship with power. Land distribution is a sensitive issue in Zimbabwe, as in other many African states, both for cultural and economic reasons. When Western states started pressuring his regime, Mugabe left the politics of racial reconciliation behind him and emphasized the unequal international order as the source of Zimbabwe’s problems.
