Abstract
The rise of the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, in 1999 marked the beginning of an intense fight for political power that would challenge the foundations of human security in Zimbabwe. Opposition parties heavily contested every election from 2000 to 2018. The Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front government used a plethora of stratagems for political survival, including violence and intimidation. In this context, the elite of the former national liberation movement sought to maintain its hegemony in the Zimbabwean state and society using its nationalistic rhetoric, liberation worldview and the militarisation of politics. Consequently, efforts to secure the Zimbabwean state have relied less on strengthening its functional capacity and legitimacy, and more on coercive and controlling measures that are consistent with the logic of militarisation, but erode the bases of human security, which include promoting political freedoms and social justice. This study explores and critically examines how the militarisation of politics impacted on the nexus between human and state security in Zimbabwe between 2000 and 2019. It contributes to the existing body of knowledge on civil-military relations and human security in Zimbabwe directly bringing these different works together as they have hitherto developed in parallel to each other. Guided by the critical security studies paradigm and an in-depth and empirically grounded analysis, this study finds that the mutual relationship that theoretically exists between human and state security is complicated in practice. There are constraints to emancipation in the human security concept’s vision of security through the role of the state. The elusiveness of the emancipatory goal of human security is strong in the context of a militarised authoritarian state such as Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwean military and political elites maintain a liberation worldview promoting a narrow conception of human rights, citizenship and national identity expressed through valorising state sovereignty ideals. The argument in this study is that both state capacity and the citizens’ human security are undermined when the governing elites expand the militarisation of politics and the state. This is worsened by the post-colonial state’s sustained links to colonial matrices of power. This study asserts that, ideally, there is need for a radical reshaping and decolonisation of the state in order for the emancipatory vision of the human security concept to genuinely promote the everyday security needs and aspirations of citizens. The Zimbabwean case helps to not only unravel the complexity of the relationship between human and state security in the context of militarised politics and governance. It also assists to interrogate the very concepts of human security and statehood in the African context. The study concludes that a militarised authoritarian state is not a source of citizens’ security because it fails to generate the conditions for a positive connection between human and state security to thrive.
D.Litt. et Phil. (Politics and International Relations)