Anticipating TheTsunami: Rumours, Planning and The Arbitrary State in Zimbabwe

Abstract

Using ethnographic material alongside newspaper and NGO reports, this article explores popular responses to ZANU PF's devastating Operation Murambatsvina, commonly dubbed Zimbabwe's tsunami, which targeted informal markets and ‘illegal’ housing across Zimbabwe between May and August of 2005, making an estimated 700,000 people homeless and indirectly affecting a quarter of Zimbabwe's population. The article argues that central to experiences of these dramatic events ‘on the ground’ (particularly in Harare's high- and low-density suburbs of Chitungwiza and Hatfield, where most of the ethnographic material was collected) was a profound tension between the resonances evoked by official appeals to a reassertion of ‘order’ and formal planning procedures, and the spectacle of ZANU PF's public demonstration of its ability to deploy state ‘force’ ruthlessly, and indeed ‘arbitrarily’; that is, as, when and how it chose. Although the brutal execution of the programme was widely condemned by observers and victims alike, less reported has been the way in which official justifications for the operation were sometimes recognizable and salient to people living in urban areas across Zimbabwe, resonating with memories of past clearances, or with longstanding and divergent aspirations for respectability, urban ‘order’, and a functioning, bureaucratic state. It is argued that in the ambiguity and uncertainty generated by this tension the political advantages of the operation for the ruling party become most apparent. Relating the plethora of rumours circulating at the time (about the ‘hidden agendas’ behind the operation) to Mbembe's work on post-colonial conviviality, the article argues that like Mbembe's satirical cartoons these rumours did not so much undermine or subvert the authority of ZANU PF as reinforce its omnipotent presence. However, unlike the pessimism of Mbembe's vision of all encompassing power, it is argued that if the rumours that circulated about Operation Murambatsvina are an example of the constant re-making of ‘stateness’ on the margins, then the uncertain ambiguity of such rumours can not only reinforce the omnipotent presence of the ‘state power’, but also illustrate the omnipresence of its fundamental insecurity.

2002, Year Zero: History as Anti-Politics in the ‘New Angola’

“…In Zimbabwe, the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union (Patriotic Front) (ZANU [PF]) has monopolised the history of the independence struggle 'as means of reasserting its own legitimacy while also undermining the "liberation credentials" of the opposition party the MDC'. 17 This resignifying of history includes the promotion of a 'patriotic history' in school and university teaching, which is, as Ranger explains, 'narrower than the old nationalist historiography', and resents 'disloyal' questions about nationalism. 18 This promotes a kind of 'exclusive nationalism' to discredit any opposition challenges to its political primacy, 19 and helped to reconfigure the political crises of the 2000s as 'Third Chimurenga', thereby evoking a continuity of patriotic history to justify the fast-track land reform and positioning violence as the main form by which social and political conflict is acted out.…”

‘We have not made anybody homeless’: regulation and control of urban life in Zimbabwe

“…With Zimbabwe already high up on the news agenda, Murambatsvina captured the world's attention and rapidly made its way into the academic literature (Potts 2006, Vambe 2008, Kamete 2009, Fontein 2009). Most explained it as 'punishment' visited upon urban residents for supporting the MDC in the 2005 election (Sachikonye 2011;Mlambo 2008).…”

“…It is instead the re-emergence of discourses and practices first manifested under colonialism, but strengthened and integrated into state practice in the postcolonial, until nearly normalized. Fontein (2009) reports that many residents of Harare's poorer suburbs themselves saw merit in the re-assertion of technocracy and planning. Most of those 'chased away' from cities were in fact 'ethnically Zimbabwean' but may have lost contact with their rural roots, or been only too aware that the 'rural home' could not sustain their families.…”

'We Have A Tiger By The Tail': Continuities and Discontinuities in Zimbabwean City Planning and Politics

“…For example, with reference to Operation Murambatsvina there is evidence that some middle class black, as well as white, Zimbabweans felt that something had to be done about the overcrowded situations in the HDAs, and were uncomfortable about the visibility of informal sector trading (Fontein 2009;Potts 2010). The contemporary literature focussed on the breaches of human rights that the campaign created, and the many blatant attacks by politicians on not only the national but often also the urban identities of those worst affected in an attempt to 'other' those groups.…”