ABSTRACT
From the late 1980s onwards, Zimbabwe has witnessed an historic awakening of new forms of social creativity and resistance in virtually all components of civil society. This chapter argues that militancy in civil society arose initially in direct response to the state's desire to create a one-party state and more recently due to unfavorable changes in the inherited economic structure. Spurred by the oppressive nature of settler practices, much of civil society's activities prior to independence centered on opposition to settler authoritarianism. The chapter recaps the theoretical and practical underpinnings of the economic and political liberalization processes in Zimbabwe. It provides some explanations of why the Mugabe regime ended up swallowing the prescriptions of the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) after a decade of debating and rejecting them. The chapter analyzes the domestic, regional and international factors behind the democratization push from the late 1980s onwards. It examines the current and future liberalization trends in Zimbabwe.
