Political Leadership in Zimbabwe in the Aftermath of the Military Coup. Change Without Change?

Abstract

Leadership is one of the most contentious issues in Africa. Leadership is about influencing people to accomplish certain goals and objectives shared by the leader and his or her followers. Many scholars have attributed the debilitating state of affairs in Africa to the leadership crisis on the continent. As a result, there are calls across the continent for change not merely in leadership, but also the adoption of leadership styles which are proactive and developmental to the needs of the African people. It is expected that where there is a change in leadership, there is improvement in the general socio-economic conditions of ordinary people. However, experience has shown that even in those countries where there have been changes in leadership, such as South Africa, Zambia, Malawi, Nigeria, Kenya, among others, the fortunes of the ordinary people have not been transformed for the better. If anything, the conditions have worsened. The new leaders have failed to break from the past practices of violence, human rights violations, election rigging, use of state resources as campaigning tools, corruption and politics of exclusion, culminating in a phenomenon where there is change without change. Could it be the same situation in Zimbabwe, which changed its leadership from Mugabe to Mnangagwa in November 2017? This chapter analyses the extent to which the new leadership in Zimbabwe which described itself as a  ‘New Dispensation’ changed in reality and substance, the extent to which it was divorced from the old Mugabe regime. This chapter is grounded in Paul Collier’s greed–grievance theory, which explains the causes of rebellion in Africa. A ‘coup’ that was staged in November 2017 to remove Mugabe can be explained in terms of greed–grievance theory in which the coup plotters staged a coup because of their greed for power and exploitation of the country’s resources for their own selfish gains, yet they hoodwinked the people that they were removing criminals around the former president. A qualitative methodology was used to collect data with interviews, secondary sources of data such as newspapers, articles, books and other existing literature used as data collection methods.