Youth, Violence, and Political Accumulation: Urban Militias in Zimbabwe

The chapter examines the ways in which urban militias with political relations and connections engage in practices of violent accumulation in the city of Harare. Writing on and about political violence is characterized by “temporalities” and “materialities” of doing and understanding violence and how it is instrumentalised for both material and political ends. This chapter examines the emergence and the changing practices of politically connected militia groups in Harare. The main argument of the paper is that being a victim of political violence is never permanent, neither is the status of being a perpetrator. The chapter problematizes the “temporalities” and “materialities” of doing and understanding violence in authoritarian regimes with specific reference to Zimbabwe.