The Liberation Movement, Polarisation Culture and Civil Society in Zimbabwe

This chapter looks at the culture of political polarisation in Zimbabwe. It begins by conceptualising what polarisation entails and proceeds to trace its historical emergence and development in Zimbabwe up to the present. Evidence presented shows that the intensification of polarisation as a way of political organising began in the early 1960s as a result of the nationalist movement split. Some of the drivers of the split were issues of tribalism, strategy incompatibilities and leadership (or lack thereof). The chapter also shows how the nationalist struggle was haemorrhaged by ethnic and leadership cleavages, which created tensions some of which are still felt at present. The chapter argues that as a political culture, polarisation has been instrumentalised for narrow ends by different players that include the party-state, civil society actors, and political parties, which has severely impacted not only the quest for democratisation but also the quality of life in other regions in the country. For a long time since post-independence, the formation, organisation and work of civil society organisations and political parties have been nourished by the ‘us-vs-them’ logic which has in many ways limited the value proposition to society of these social formations. This chapter, complimented by the discussion in Chapter 6 , evidences processes of deliberate exclusion and forms of engagement that have tended to define some social voices as not worthy of social circulation.