ABSTRACT
The struggle within Zimbabwe during the 2000s has been accompanied by a vigorous debate over the nature of liberation movements in power and the prospects for a new form of politics in Southern Africa. Lined up on one side have been those stressing continuity with the past, insisting that the terrain and dramatis personae have not changed, that the battle is only the latest chapter of the struggle which brought Zimbabwe to independence (Mamdani 2008; Moyo and Yeros 2005, 2007; Yeros 2002). A central proposition of the opposing position is that the current crisis is less about completing the final stages of Zimbabwean liberation than a reaction by the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) to the most serious challenge to its power since independence (Concerned Africa Scholars 2009; Raftopoulos 2006; Moore 2004; Raftopoulos and Phimister 2004; Bond and Manyanya 2002). In sum, the first approach puts an emphasis on external factors and regards President Robert Mugabe as leading a vanguard for national sovereignty and revolutionary transformation. The second focuses more on internal dynamics – the nature of ZANU-PF in power and its determination to exclude opposition forces.
