Zimbabwe’s Triple Crisis: Primitive Accumulation, Nation-State Formation and Democratisation in the Age of Neo-liberal Globalisation

Abstract

This paper utilizes classical and ‘modernization’ theoretical perspectives on primitive accumulation, nation-state formation and democratization to analyze the ‘conjunctural’ aspects of the current Zimbabwean crisis. Taking a structural perspective on the long-term factors, the paper provides the context to the violence-ridden and economically devastating current crisis of land reform, elections, succession, and class-stalemate. It also develops an analysis of ‘medium’ term factors such as years of structural adjustment. Written just after, and taking into account the March 2002 Presidential elections, the paper concludes that strengthening democracy is essential for the resolution of structural socio-economic problems-–even though such an assertion may appear to be a ‘voluntarist’ solution to a structural problem.