Robert Mugabe ruled Zimbabwe for nearly four decades with an undisguised ambition to forge a one-party state. He said so openly in the late 1980s. The Unity Accord of 1987, which dissolved ZAPU into ZANU, was designed to cement that outcome.
Yet despite this sweeping consolidation, Mugabe never succeeded in eliminating political competition. The arrival of the MDC in 1999 marked a historic break that he could never fully reverse. Court rulings, parliamentary contests and the gradual growth of civic space created pressure points that Mugabe constantly struggled to neutralise.
His dream was clear but the path to its fulfilment constantly slipped from his grasp. Emmerson Mnangagwa has approached the same dream with a different temperament and a far more calculating political intelligence. Where Mugabe relied on charisma, revolutionary legitimacy and a dense web of patronage networks that often competed with one another, Mnangagwa has relied on quiet institutional capture, incremental coercion and the strategic alliance of the state with the security sector.
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In less than a decade he has built the architecture that Mugabe pursued for nearly 40 years. Zimbabwe has not become a one-party state in constitutional language but in political reality it increasingly behaves like one. To understand this development, it is necessary to begin with Mugabe’s own failure.
Throughout the 1990s he attempted to centralise political authority under ZANU PF. Yet he tolerated a surprising degree of internal contestation. His cabinet contained competing factions.
The security sector was powerful but not singularly aligned. Parliamentary backbenchers could revolt as they did during critical legislative battles. Most importantly, Mugabe did not eliminate the possibility of genuine electoral competition within the formal political system.
The shock defeats of 2000 revealed the existence of an electorate that was no longer fearful and of an opposition that was confident enough to challenge him in open political combat. Mnangagwa inherited that fractured landscape and understood the lesson Mugabe refused to internalise. The survival of ZANU PF required more than charismatic authority. It required the systematic disabling of rival centres of power while maintaining a public narrative of constitutional rule.
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