An analysis of the recent political developments in Zimbabwe. Research & Advocacy Unit (RAU) Background This is the second time in this country’s history that the country has been precipitated into a constitutional crisis. The first was in 1965 with the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) by the Smith government, and second is the coup that took place in November 2017. 1 Whilst both looked innocuous at the beginning, the long-term consequences might not be so. UDI took a long time before the real consequences became apparent, and a bloody civil war emerged. It is to be hoped that this new constitutional crisis will not have such serious longterm consequences. The conditions leading to the coup It is crucial to any understanding of the current crisis to recognise the growth of the securocrat state. This was described in considerable detail last year in Ibbo Mandaza’s analysis of the ―securocrat state‖,2 and we not need to go into all the details and the lengthy history, but merely deal with the process of military capture of the state in the past decade. The period following the Unity Accord in 1987 through the 1990s was largely a period of peace with an absence of political violence. This is not to period saw the growth of an increasingly assertive civil society, a powerful labour movement, and the emergence of a variety of human rights groups. This was quickly followed by a very assertive and popular citizen-driven constitutional process under the NCA, and finally the birth of the MDC. The military were not an obvious factor in dealing with the increasing threat to ZANU-PF’s hegemony. To all intents and purposes this ended in 1998 with the Food Riots, and the mass expression of dissatisfaction of ordinary citizens with the state. This saw the army on the streets and against the citizens for the first time since 1987, and severe human rights violations were recorded.3 This was followed by the defeat of ZANU-PF’s constitution in 2000, its first major reversal in 20 years. The regime now faced a very serious challenge, and rapidly moved to eliminate the threat, and it did so in several ways:  1 The neutralising and finally capturing the judiciary; That this was a coup remains the position of Zimbabwean civil society. See Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, CiZC Statement on SONA. 21 December 2017. 2 Mandaza, I (2016), Introduction. in I Mandaza, (2016) The Political Economy of the State in Zimbabwe: The rise and fall of the Securocrat State. Harare: Southern African Political Economy Series. 3 Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum (1998), Human Rights in Troubled Times: An Initial Report on Human Rights Abuses During and After Food Riots in January 1998. Harare: Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum; Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum (1999), A Consolidated Report on the Food Riots 19—23 January 1998, Harare: Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum.

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