Behind The Lines Ep 3 - Zimbabwe’s Forgotten Dictatorship

09/08/23 • 60 min

Since independence in 1980, Zimbabwe has been controlled by one political movement - ZANU-PF. Outside the country this was often seen as the personal fiefdom of one man, Robert Mugabe. Undoubtedly he was the key figure, but after his removal from power in 2017, the party has continued to control Zimbabwe’s politics and its institutions. So it is a fair question whether there has ever been a legitimate election held in the country.

Last week on 4 September president Emmerson Mnangagwa, formerly seen as one of Mugabe’s most ruthless henchmen, was sworn in for a second presidential term after another election marred by serious allegations of election irregularities, violence and targeting of opposition supporters. But this time there were differences: election monitors from Zimbabwe’s neighbouring countries, which have a history of turning a blind eye to such irregularities, on this occasion chose to spell out in highly critical detail the problems with the poll. Another big difference was the way that opposition activists were able to use their smartphones and modern tech to run a highly credible vote tally, clearly demonstrating that the officially declared results were questionable at best.

To discuss these elections I was joined by Dr Sara Dorman (Twitter: @afr_pol), a Zimbabwe specialist from the University of Edinburgh and author of Understanding Zimbabwe, published by Hurst. https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/understanding-zimbabwe/ I also spoke to Makomborero Haruzivishe

(Twitter: @MakomboreroH) who is a Zimbabwean political activist now based in the UK after a year as a political prisoner in Zimbabwe.

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Vyner Street Productions

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(Twitter: @MakomboreroH) who is a Zimbabwean political activist now based in the UK after a year as a political prisoner in Zimbabwe.

If you are enjoying this podcast please subscribe via whichever platform you use and give us a positive review. Thanks for listening!

Vyner Street Productions

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Previous Episode

Behind The Lines Ep 2 - Ukraine's Radical War

Ukraine’s Radical War

Thanks to all of you that have listened to the first episode of Behind the Lines and to all of those of you that are joining this new podcast for the first time. We are taking a weekly look at a different aspect of current geopolitics. This week, it’s how the information age has transformed warfare, and particularly how it has transformed warfare in Ukraine.

Russia's war on Ukraine is the most online in history. The smartphone has become the way the war is recorded and transmitted, and it is the way we consume news of the war. But it is also a weapon. The smartphone has become part of the kill-chain, with Ukrainian civilians uploading targeting information via secure servers that are used by Ukrainian military to direct their artillery fires against the Russians. How do we understand this new kind of radical warfare?

Dr Matthew Ford, an Associate Professor of War Studies at the Swedish Defence University, is currently writing the book War in the age of the Smartphone to be published by Hurst in 2024. Matthew is co author with Andrew Hoskins of Glasgow University of the book Radical War about how the digital age has revolutionised modern warfare. He used to be a strategic analyst at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) and has recently been undertaking Open Source Intelligence work for the UK government on the Ukraine war. We discussed what is different about the Ukraine war, how the smartphone enlists civilians, both inside and outside Ukraine, and how it shapes how we talk about and understand that war.

Matthew can be found on Twitter @warmatters and his book is available here: https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/radical-war/

You can find me on Twitter @snellarthur and you can find my Substack on some of these, and related issues here https://arthursnell.substack.com/

Thanks again for listening to Behind the Lines. If you are enjoying it, please spread the word and give us a positive review. See you next time!

Vyner Street Productions

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Next Episode

Behind The Lines Ep 4 - The Threats To Global Democracy

On the 30th August a military coup took place in Gabon in West Africa, dislodging the president Ali Bongo, whose family has controlled the country for nearly 60 years. That military takeover in Gabon followed swiftly on the heels of a coup in Niger, one month earlier. There seems to have been a spate of these in the Sahel region of Africa. Indeed, within a period of just over two years, every country in a 5000km line from Conakry on Africa’s West Coast to Port Sudan on the East, has experienced a military coup.

And there’s a bigger picture here: democracy around the world isn’t doing very well. In the United States, Donald Trump’s chaotic rule ended in rejected election results and a violent insurrection. In Britain, we have had multiple prime ministers without a general election. Across Europe authoritarian populists contest - and sometimes win - elections. In Hungary, Poland, Israel and turkey, we see independent institutions under threat and in some cases entirely circumscribed. And of course in Ukraine, democracy is fighting for its life against a militarised fascist regime.

So this week I wanted to get the big picture, to understand what is the health of global democracy and what are its prospects. And who better to talk to about this than Brian Klaas, who is an expert on African coups, a politics professor at UCL, and author of the brilliant book Corruptible, who gets power and how it changes us. I hope you’ll find our conversation interesting - it was, and this surprised me - a lot more encouraging than I’d expected.

You can find Brian’s book here: https://brianpklaas.com/corruptible He is on Twitter @brianklaas and his Substack https://www.forkingpaths.co/ is also worth a read.

Thanks again for listening to this podcast. Please subscribe and spread the word. You can leave comments and thoughts on my Substack here https://arthursnell.substack.com/ I’m also on Twitter @snellarthur and now on Bluesky @snellarthur.bsky.social

Vyner Street Productions

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