Robert Mugabe: An Intellectual Manqué and His Moments of Meaning

Abstract

Mugabeism that is invoked in this book is about what Mugabe and the context that in many ways he has created “mean” for Zimbabwean and perhaps African society at large: what do his persona and his actions “say” about Africa and its world; what do they evoke; how do they symbolize; how do they resonate with; how do they illustrate some of the uniquely configured cultural, social and political attributes of this very complex world? Do we (those of us obsessed with Zimbabwe’s history and contemporaneity) see “Africa”—and closer to home, Zimbabwe—through his actions any differently than we did before he entered our space? If so, how? And if not, how has he reinforced positive notions of “radical” negation of the colonial negation, less enticing notions of “the dark continent” as it crawls its way through the violent transitions of primitive accumulation (Moore 2003a, 2004a, 2011a)—or simply buttressed a postcolonial fatigue with grand narratives in the face of multifaceted networks of power. In any case we ask, with this book’s editor: is there ideology that could be called “Mugabeism”? Is it perhaps a political-philosophical system applicable to the consciousness of the whole continent and even beyond (Bell and Metz 2011)?