This paper discusses the prevalent view among ordinary Zimbabweans that only a grand coalition among select opposition political parties could potentially unseat the ruling party, Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU PF) from power in the upcoming 2018 general elections. The paper argues that the prospects for such a grand coalition are only possible if select parties coalesce around the major opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change-Tsvangirai (MDC-T). This article takes this argument as the starting point for a discussion of the role and character of opposition political parties and party systems in Zimbabwe and further considers aspects of the performance of individual parties to date and the extent to which they fall short of people's expectations, what in this paper constitutes possibilities and challenges in forging a formidable grand coalition given the magnitude of mistrust within and among them. The state-controlled daily, The Herald was examined to ascertain how it framed the coalition of opposition parties in Zimbabwe. Therefore, secondary data analysis and observation through the lenses of a qualitative approach, of the unfolding political environment in Zimbabwe was done. The Herald which is supposed to be a public newspaper is allegedly a mouthpiece of the ruling party ZANU PF. It was concluded that The Herald's representation of the coalition was propagandistic. It was also concluded that despite personality clashes, mistrust, infiltration, bloated ambitions among leaders and party egos, a grand coalition is possible and that this could possibly fare better than if individual parties contest ZANU PF individually.

This paper analyses the debilitative effects of the restraint clause in the negotiated 1979 Lancaster House Constitution that called for a moratorium on the possibility of constitutional reforms during the first 10 years of Zimbabwe’s independence. That clause effectively meant that reforms related to the nature and form of land (re)settlement, let alone radical repossession, could not be entertained until after 1990. This paper argues that George Mujajati’s play, The Wretched Ones, dramatises the negative impact that this restraint clause had on the majority of the black population of Zimbabwe in the first 10 years of their independence as the state could not radically redistribute land to correct the imbalances of the colonial era. Thus, the paper attributes the glaring poverty and misery among the majority of the black characters in the play to that restraint clause, a clause that continued to benefit white settlers, such as Mr Buffalo in this play, who had appropriated land by force during the colonial era. The paper concludes that land redistribution is a powerful tool in the fight against poverty in countries where the majority of the people live in rural areas.

The paper explores the role of the play titled She No Longer Weeps by Tsitsi Dangarembga in interrogating the prevailing status quo of, what the paper refers to as, the “scenarios.” In this paper, we focus on how the play facilitates and shapes social change in independent Zimbabwe in the 1980s. Whereas it is undeniable that social change occurs at various levels in society, we concentrate on the change that occurs in the domestic space of the family and/or home, and specifically in gender power relations, as this is the play’s main focus. The paper argues that She No Longer Weeps represents a discussion about ways in which characters attempt to change and/or resist the transformation of the Zimbabwean society. Relying on textual analysis and the historical and material conditions that informed the dramatist’s vision, the paper concludes that gender power relations, as in Zimbabwe in the 1980s, need to be rethought and transformed, but we also question the dramatist’s wholesale acceptance of radical feminism. We conclude by rejecting radical and/or Western feminism in favour of Africana womanism as the latter encourages co-existence and understanding between men and women within the family institution.

The paper focuses on the legal banning and prohibition of plays and/or theatre productions, and, in extreme cases, the arrest and harassment of artists in Zimbabwe by a variety of state actors and instruments, which include the Board of Censors, the National Arts Council of Zimbabwe, the police, and, in some cases, local politicians of the ruling party, ZANU PF. Citing concrete historical examples of such cases, the paper illustrates how these state actors and/or instruments have been used to suppress content in both play scripts and/or performances. I argue that although there was play and performance censorship in the 1980s and 1990s, play bans, performance prohibitions, and harassment of artists rapidly increased during the crisis decade (1998–2008) in Zimbabwe and the life of the Government of National Unity (GNU). Using a combination of interviews and carefully selected and documented case studies of eight plays and/or performances, the paper arrives at the conclusion that there is no one narrative that can be deduced from looking at the prohibition of plays and/or performances and the arrest of artists. However, one common feature that was confirmed was that in most of the documented cases it was the performance that was banned and not the play script. In addition, it emerged that even after the Board of Censors had cleared some play scripts, the police, working alone or in association with local politicians, stopped and/or banned some performances.

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