The Party-State, Labour and Student Movements and Democratisation in Zimbabwe

This chapter traces and analyses the development of labour and student movements pre- and post-independence in Zimbabwe, and shows how these two movements contributed to the liberation struggle, and beyond. This discussion is presaged by Najam’s 4 Cs model, which would help the reader to make sense of the complex modes of engagement that have characterised relations between the party-state, labour and student movements in the country. The chapter posits that the post-independence split of the labour and student movements, leading to the emergence of ZFTU and ZICOSU out of ZCTU and ZINASU, should be understood within the polarisation dialectic discussed in Chapter 2 . In addition, the relationships that ZINASU and ZCTU went on to develop with opposition parties, including sharing personnel, just like their protagonists’ close relationship with the party-state were premised on the polarised nature of the political environment in Zimbabwe, which in many ways has weakened the power and relevance of both these movements. The hegemonic consolidation and counter-hegemonic roles that civil society plays as conceptualised by Gramsci, as well as their effects on the quest for democracy, are transversed in this chapter, as well as in Chapter 4 . In the main, the chapter shows that these two movements had a sense of presence in their remaking as they sought to assert their identities as independent organisations.