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7 Mai Mujuru: Father of the nation?1 LENE BULL CHRISTIANSEN Women have a great role to play in uniting the nation because they are the household builders, mothers of the future generations and wives to the rulers. The more women cooperate, the more prosperous will be our nation (Joyce Mujuru/ Teurai Ropa2 ). Can ‘Mother Mujuru’ become the icon of power in Zimbabwe? Can she establish herself in the Zimbabwean political imaginary of power in a position above ‘the boys’ club’ – as a new ‘Father of the Nation’? And if so, will this in effect make her ‘one of the boys’ appearing on the political scene as ‘a man’, or can the imaginaries of power be negotiated? Are there slippages and fissures in the gendered language of power and authority in Zimbabwe, through which a woman president might emerge? And if so, will this be perceived as a victory for a Zimbabwean feminism? These questions come to mind when analysing the debates that surrounded the appointment of the well-known liberation war veteran, and former Minister of Women’s Affairs, Joyce Mujuru aka Teurai Ropa3 in 2004 as Vice-President of Zimbabwe. This debate4 that took place in the few ‘independent ’ newspapers and in internet-communities concerned her credentials as a politician and as a representative of ‘Zimbabwean women’. The question around which they centred was: is she a woman (e.g. a feminist) – or is she a ‘pawn’ in the games of men? The debates were framed by a vigorous infighting going on in the elite of ZANU-PF, the party which has been in power since Zimbabwe’s liberation in 1980. As the ageing President seemed likely to be replaced in the foreseeable future, leading members of the party had begun positioning themselves in a bid for his succession. These power struggles within ZANU-PF cannot be said to have diminished since 2004 – their details the subject of a different study. Mujuru’s appointment as Vice-President was, however, part of President Mugabe’s immediate intervention in the struggles that surfaced in 2004. In addition he ostracised a faction of the party headed by the formerly powerful information minister, Jonathan Moyo, who was expelled from the party in the same move. The events that led to Mujuru’s appointment have been depicted by Moyo as an ethnically based 88 demonstration of power by the President and his ‘old guard’ in the Politburo, disguised as a promotion of the female agenda. ‘[I]n reality’, he argues, the ZANU-PF Women’s League had been ‘hijacked’ by the President and the First Lady so as to appoint Mujuru as their candidate (Moyo, 2006a, 2006b & 2006c). However events may have unfolded within ZANU-PF, the context gave rise to speculation about the background to Mujuru’s appointment: critics of the regime considered her a conservative ‘safe bet’ for the President and his loyal party supporters, of whom Mujuru’s husband is considered the leading figure. At the ZANU-PF conference in 2004, President Mugabe presented Mujuru with the words: ‘Don't be deceived by that body, she is a young woman’ (BBC, 2004) apparently pointing to her stature which could be described as traditionally built. However, in the few comments made by Mujuru herself, she neither highlighted her age nor her gender. Rather, she made references to her liberation-war credentials, her long-standing loyalty to the nationalist cause and to party influence through the ZANU-PF Women’s League. But, while President Mugabe defined Mujuru’s appointment as a ‘victory for women of Zimbabwe’, a number of feminist critics as well as political opponents downplayed this so-called victory by ascribing her political ascendancy to the political power held by her husband, Solomon Mujuru,5 a retired army general, and one of the original leaders of ZANU and ZANLA;6 or to Mujuru’s relative political pliability that would render her a ‘safe bet’ to the rest of the ‘boys’. Speculation about the relationship between Mujuru and her husband developed into a regular discourse in the independent and foreign press, where the Zimbabwean Vice-President was curiously but repeatedly described as ‘wife of powerful former army general Solomon Mujuru’. Thus this chapter discusses how the power relations in the Zimbabwean political elite work through and iterate particular gendered imaginaries of power. It goes on to consider how these are both contested and maintained in certain feminist discourses, so that arguably the elite ZANU (PF) female politician remains in a liminal (or...

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