Reclaiming Zimbabwe: The Exhaustion of the Patriarchal Model of Liberation (review)

Horace Campbell has written an ambitious book that adds a new dimension to the growing number of critical appraisals of the Zimbabwean political economy under the control of a ZANU-PF government since 1980. Drawing on his twenty years of committed scholarly engagement with Zimbabwe, Campbell critically analyzes the economic policies, military ventures, and particularly the conduct of politics of the Mugabe regime through a feminist pan-African lens. In so doing, he has written a book that supplements existing critical scholarship, adding engaging and novel interpretations to the scholarship on the Zimbabwe state and African governments more broadly. Although the book is weak in some spots, on the whole it should be read as a substantive rejoinder to those within and beyond Zimbabwe, particularly in African diasporic communities, who uncritically celebrate the putative victories of "Mugabe" over white colonial and imperialist interests.

The book is divided into five sections that are ordered somewhat chronologically in terms of events covered and dates of original publication. The chapters in the early sections were written in the 1980s and the early 1990s (although unfortunately the original publication information is not given). These chapters, particularly those from the early 1980s, are slightly dated, as the euphoria of the defeat of the Rhodesian government leads to some noticeable elisions in the analysis, particularly the downplaying of the class and political tensions within ZANU-PF and between it and Joshua Nkomo's ZAPU, and the overtly optimistic appraisal about the democratizing tendencies and desires of the leadership of the ruling party. To his credit, Campbell notes in his introduction that the book is written as a form of "auto-critique" of a generation of pan-Africanists and nationalists who neglected the importance of tackling patriarchy as well as colonialism and capitalism in their analytical and material struggles. Some of these early chapters would have benefited from more critical comments in the introduction or footnotes on how Campbell's own analysis has shifted since originally writing them, as demonstrated by his later chapters. But they do provide insights into important events in Zimbabwe, including the transition to the Mugabe government and the integration of the different guerrilla and Rhodesian forces, and they also serve to remind the reader that Campbell has a long history of committed scholarship on the pan-Africanist movement.

The two chapters in the third section, entitled "Executive Lawlessness and the Politics of Intolerance," form a sustained critique of the conduct of the ZANU-PF government. The basis of the critique lies not only in the examination of the increased violence and enhanced inequities resulting from the government's actions since 1980, as well as since the start of the so-called Third Chimurenga (revolution) of 2000, but also in the demonstration that the government was simply extending European colonial forms of governance and thinking. Campbell lays out an argument for an African ideation system that shaped precolonial land and water uses and property regimes while creating flexible gender relations; this system, he argues, has been undermined and challenged since the late nineteenth century by colonial systems of government and science, international capitalist enterprise, and postcolonial regimes seeking to remain in power. Weaving together specific events in Zimbabwe, examples from other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, and a larger moral and analytical commentary on the differences between what he calls the African and European ideation systems, Campbell examines the land question more broadly as well as homophobia in Zimbabwe and Africa. He argues that the so-called pan-Africanist Mugabe regime is actually enforcing European patriarchal principles in some of its violent actions, which end up impoverishing the majority while benefiting a few. The fourth section presents a series of chapters on the Zimbabwean military and financial involvement in the bloody conflict in the D.R.C., providing details on particular events, battles, and the acquisitive ambitions of African and Western government officials...