Animal Farm

  By Youngerson Matete   The historical background of Zimbabwe's economic crisis   The looming economic crisis has gotten many Zimbabweans extremely worried. This is largely because Zimbabwe has experienced economic and political crisis before.   The crisis was underpinned by hyperinflation, lack of basic commodities in shops, prolonged water and electricity cuts, hunger, and outbreak of water borne diseases. Fifteen years ago, during a financial crisis, Zimbabwe recorded the second highest incidence of hyperinflation in history – the country’s inflation rate for November 2008 was a staggering 79,600,000,000% (essentially a daily inflation rate of 98%). Prices for basic commodities were increasing more than twice every day – goods and services would cost twice as much each following day. With the unemployment rate exceeding 70%, economic activities in Zimbabwe virtually shut down and turned the domestic economy into a barter trade economy. The cause of Zimbabwe’...

By Youngerson Matete   As Zimbabwe head to the polls in August this year, serious electoral flaws and human rights abuses by the government has undermined any meaningful prospects of free and fair elections. A few months to go before Zimbabweans elect a president, members of parliament and local government representatives, the country is in a "dizzy" mood. It doesn't feel like its any election year. By this time in an a normal election year the country must have been with political rallies, enthusiasm and a lot of political activities. The political and electoral playing field remains deeply uneven and stacked in favour of ZANU-PF. As the country stumbles towards the 2023 polls, party and state conflation and lack of implementation of meaningful political and electoral reforms that aligns both the electoral law and electoral practices to the constitution, Southern African Development Community’s (SADC) principles and guidelines governing a democratic election, African ...

By Youngerson Matete  On May 8, 2023, the constitutional court offered MDC-T leader Senator Douglas T Mwonzora a drying machine by dismissing his application. Mwonzora had, in March, attempted to prolong his unwelcome visit by soaking his clothes after he launched a constitutional court application challenging the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission’s delimitation report. In the application, Senator Mwonzora had prayed that the constitutional court orders the President not to proclaim the dates for the 2023 harmonized elections hence postponing elections.  The constitutional court ruling   Yesterday, the Constitutional Court dismissed Mwonzora’s court application with Justice Malaba saying that the application lacks jurisdiction.  The constitutional court claimed that “no cause of action has been advanced by the application” and dismissed it with no order as to costs. The court also questioned Douglas T Mwonzora’s locus standi and hence dismissed the case on a technical ba...

By Youngerson Matete and Liam Kanhenga  NGO-ization (or 'ngoisation') refers to the professionalization, bureaucratization, and institutionalization of social movements as they adopt the form of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). It led to NGOs' depoliticizing discourses and practices of the struggle. The term has been introduced in the context of West European women's movements, but since the late 1990s it has been employed to assess the role of organized civil society on a global scale. It was also used by Indian writer Arundhati Roy, who speaks about the “NGO-ization of resistance,” and more generally, about the NGO-ization of politics.  As Arundhati Roy will put “NGOs give the impression that they are filling the vacuum created by a retreating state. And they are, but their real contribution is that they defuse political anger and dole out as aid or benevolence what people ought to have by right. They alter the public psyche. “A hazard that the struggle for democ...

  By Youngerson Matete and Edited by Prince Gora  De-industrialization in Zimbabwe, post-independence phase From being the second most industrialized country in Sub-Saharan Africa at independence in 1980, Zimbabwe’s economy has declined rapidly to a point where the country ranks among the poorest economic performers in the region.  The three pillars which had underpinned the country’s vibrant economy, namely, agriculture, mining and manufacturing, have suffered greatly from poor government policy choices, resulting in the near collapse of each of the sectors and massive unemployment.  As a result, an estimated 90% of the Zimbabwean population was unemployed as of 2015(UN) and was forced to make out a living in the informal sector, mostly through vending of second-hand clothes and other basic items. With regard to the manufacturing sector specifically, the sector had all but collapsed by 2015 (UN), as companies either folded or relocated to escape the country’s harsh ...