Abstract
Eritrea and Zimbabwe are African states liberated from colonial rule after years of guerrilla warfare. Both generated great hope and enthusiasm in their early years of independence yet they have now become bywords for authoritarianism, fear, and violence. There are many similarities in their experiences of war and of peace. However, they also raise questions about the impact of guerrilla warfare and of transitional arrangements on the prospect of democratic governance after conflict. Political scientists expect liberation wars to result in governments “born powerful”—with the capacity to mobilize their populations and reform institutions and transform state-society relations in dramatic ways. Nevertheless, in his 1995 account of African politics, Chris Allen concluded that despite winning independence through “prolonged warfare” African postliberation states were “following similar paths to … the peacefully decolonised majority.”1 As Allen noted, the dominant party states formed after the end of the cold war organized state-society relations in much the same way as the earlier generation of states.2 However increasing authoritarianism and destabilization has now overtaken many of these states and “liberation” has become a rallying cry of aging politicians seeking to justify their continued rule.
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Notes
Chris Allen, “Understanding African Politics,” Review of African Political Economy 65 (1995), p. 315; he suggests that Mozambique and Angola would have followed similar paths, but for external intervention.
See for instance, Aristide Zolberg, Creating Political Order: The Party States of West Africa (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1966);
Lionel Cliffe, One Party Democracy: The 1965 Tanzania General Elections (Nairobi, Kenya: East Africa Publishing House, 1967).
R. Southall, “Post-Colonial Legitimacy in Lesotho” in Limits to Liberation in Southern Africa, ed. H. Melber (Cape Town, South Africa: HSRC Press, 2003), p. 129; See also
Henning Melber, “From Liberation Movements to Governments: On Political Culture in Southern Africa,” African Sociological Review 6, 1 (2002), pp. 161–172;
Henning Melber, Re-examining Liberation in Namibia: Political Culture since Independence (Nordiska, Sweden: AfricaInstitutet, 2003).
Gavin Williams, Brian Williams, and Roy Williams, “Sociology and Historical Explanation,” African Sociological Review 1 (1997), p. 89. Emphasis added.
Ruth Iyob, The Eritrean Struggle for Independence: Domination, Resistance, Nationalism, 1941–1993. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
For Zimbabwe see, Terence Ranger, “Nationalist Historiography, Patriotic History and the History of the Nation: The Struggle over the Past in Zimbabwe,” Journal of Southern African Studies 30, 2 (2004), pp. 215–234; For Eritrea see
Sara Rich Dorman, “Narratives of Nationalism in Eritrea: Research and Revisionism,” Nations and Nationalism 11, 2 (2005), pp. 203–222.
On Zimbabwean civilian experiences see especially Terence Ranger, Peasant Consciousness and Guerrilla War in Zimbabwe (London: James Currey, 1985);
Norma Kriger, Zimbabwe’s Guerilla War: Peasant Voices (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)
Jocelyn Alexander et al., Violence and Memory: One Hundred Years in the “Dark Forests” of Matabeleland (Oxford: James Currey, 2000); on the war see
Terence Ranger and Ngwabi Bhebe, Soldiers in Zimbabwe’s Liberation War (Harare: University of Zimbabwe, 1995);
Terence Ranger and Ngwabi Bhebe, Society in Zimbabwe’s Liberation War (Harare: University of Zimbabwe, 1995);
Josephine Nhongo-Simbanegavi, For Better or Worse? Women and Zanla in Zimbabwe’s Liberation Struggle (Harare, Zimbabwe: Weaver Press, 2000).
Critical literature on Eritrea is much more sparse, see Kjetil Tronvoll, Mai Weini (Lawrenceville, NJ: Red Sea, 1998);
Soren Walther Nielsen, “Reintegration of Ex-Fighters in Highland Eritrea: A Window into the Process of State Formation and Its Lines of Social Stratification,” Unpublished PhD dissertation (Roskilde University, 2002);
David Pool, From Guerrillas to Government: The Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (Oxford: James Currey, 2001).
Masipula Sithole, Zimbabwe: Struggles within the Struggle (Harare: Rujeko, 1995);
Luise White, The Assassination of Herbert Chitepo: Texts and Politics in Zimbabwe (Bloomington: University of Indiana, 2003);
David Moore, “The Contradictory Construction of Hegemony in Zimbabwe,” Unpublished PhD thesis, (York University, Canada,1990);
David Moore, “The Zimbabwean ‘Organic Intellectuals’ in Transition,” Journal of Southern African Studies 15 (1988), pp. 96–105.
For Zimbabwe see Christine Sylvester, “Simultaneous Revolutions: The Zimbabwe Case,” Journal of Southern African Studies 16, 3 (1990);
For Eritrea, Dan Connell revisits these issues in Conversations with Eritrean Political Prisoners (Trenton, NJ: Red Sea, 2005).
Richard Werbner, “Smoke from the Barrel of a Gun: Postwars of the Dead, Memory and Reinscription in Zimbabwe” in Memory and the Postcolony, ed. Richard Werbner (London: Zed Books, 1998).
Joseph Hanlon, “Destabilisation and the Battle to Reduce Dependence” in Zimbabwe’s Prospects, ed. Colin Stoneman (London: MacMillan, 1988);
Michael Evans, “The Security Threat from South Africa” in Zimbabwe’s Prospects, ed. Colin Stoneman; Jocelyn Alexander, “Dissident Perspectives on Zimbabwe’s Post-Independence War,” Africa 68, 2 (1998), pp. 151–182.
Ronald Weitzer, “In Search of Regime Security: Zimbabwe since Independence,” Journal of Modern African Studies 23, 4 (1984), pp. 529–557.
Alexander et al., Violence and Memory; ZimRights, Choosing the Path to Peace and Development: Coming to Terms with Human Rights Violations of the 1982–1987 Conflict in Matabeleland and Midlands Provinces (Harare: ZimRights, 1999);
CCJP/LRF, Breaking the Silence: Building True Peace. A Report on the Disturbances in Matabeleland and the Midlands, 1980–1988, (CCJP & LRF, 1997).
Jill Crystal, “Authoritarianism and Its Adversaries in the Arab World,” World Politics 46 (1994), p. 288, see also pp. 280–281.
Darren Hawkins, “Democratization Theory and Nontransitions: Insights from Cuba,” Comparative Politics 33 (2001), pp. 441–461 and p. 448.
Jocelyn Alexander, “The State, Agrarian Policy and Rural Politics in Zimbabwe: Case Studies of Insiza and Chimanimani Districts, 1940–1990,” Unpublished D.Phil. dissertation, University of Oxford, 1993.
Norma Kriger, “The War Victims Compensation Act,” Journal of African Conflict and Development 1 (2000), ms p. 2. See also
Norma Kriger, Guerrilla Veterans in Post-War Zimbabwe: Symbolic and Violent Politics, 1980–1987 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 175.
For a critical account of this scheme, see Daniel Mekonnen and Samuel Abraha, The Plight of Eritrean Students in South Africa (2004).
Gregory Kasza, The Conscription Society: Administered Mass Organizations (New Haven: Yale, 1995), p. 9.
Sara Rich Dorman, “Past the Kalashnikov: Youth, Politics and the State,” Vanguard or Vandals? Youth, Politics and Conflict in Africa, ed. J. Abbink and I. van Kessel (Leiden, Holland: Brill Academic Publishers, 2004).
Government of Eritrea (GOE), A Presidential Directive on Jehovah’s Witnesses, 1994,;
GOE, “Ministry of Interior, Statement on Jehovah’s Witnesses,” Eritrea Profile, 1995.
For a more detailed discussion see: Sara Rich Dorman, “Rocking the Boat?: Church-NGOs and Democratization in Zimbabwe?” African Affairs 101 (2002), pp. 75–92.
Brian Raftopoulos and Sam Moyo, “The Politics of Indigenisation in Zimbabwe,” East African Social Science Review 11, 2 (1995), pp. 17–32.
Dorman, “NGOs and the Constitutional Debate in Zimbabwe: From Inclusion to Exclusion,” Journal of Southern African Studies 29, 4 (2003), pp. 845–863.
Alexander, “State, Peasantry and Resettlement in Zimbabwe,” Review of African Political Economy 61 (1994), pp. 325–345.;
Michael Drinkwater “Technical Development and Peasant Impoverishment: Land Use Policy in Zimbabwe’s Midlands Province,” JSAS 15, 2 (1989), pp. 287–305.
See for instance, Jeffrey Herbst, State Politics in Zimbabwe (Harare: University of Zimbabwe, 1991);
Tor Skalnes, The Politics of Economic Reform in Zimbabwe (Houndmills, UK: MacMillan, 1995);
Michael Bratton, “Micro-Democracy? The Merger of Farmer Unions in Zimbabwe” African Studies Review 37 (1994), pp. 9–38.
Juan Linz, Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000), p. 166.
Fred Halliday, Iran: Dictatorship and Development (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin 1979), p. 58.
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© 2007 Kalowatie Deonandan, David Close, and Gary Prevost
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Dorman, S.R. (2007). Born Powerful? Authoritarian Politics in Postliberation Eritrea and Zimbabwe. In: Deonandan, K., Close, D., Prevost, G. (eds) From Revolutionary Movements to Political Parties. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230609778_8
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