War Veterans: Continuities Between the Past and the Present

Abstract: This article makes the case for strong parallels in the collaborative relationship between veterans and the party in the first seven years of independence and in the extended election campaign period from February 2000 to the presidential election in March 2002.Just as the ruling party used ZANLA veterans to build power in the army, the bureaucracy, and among urban workers in the first seven years of independence, so it used veterans alongside others, and especially youth, to try to preserve its power among these constituencies. The fast-track land resettlement program, like the earlier cooperative movement, provided valuable symbolic support for the party's revolutionary credentials but demonstrated the party's low commitment to achieving large-scale economic transformation. As in the first seven years, so in the post-2000 campaign period, veterans often had their own agendas, distinct from the party's, as they sought power and privilege, both of which were threatened by a change in regime. Whereas from 1980 to 1987, ZANLA veterans and the ruling party targeted the opposition party, ZAPU, and its former ZIPRA guerrillas, in the post-2000 campaign period the party and veterans colluded against the new political opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Across both time periods, veterans and the party relied on liberation war appeals, violence, and intimidation to attain their distinct and overlapping objectives. Another parallel between the two time periods is in the political discourse about "authentic" and "fake" veterans. INTRODUCTION The emerging conventional wisdom is that guerrilla veterans' power was first visible in their violent 1997 protests against the ruling party Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front or ZANU(PF). Their subsequent extraction of sizeable lump-sum payments and monthly war service pensions is portrayed as the birth of a new alliance between the ruling party and veterans. This came to play a pivotal role in the parliamentary and presidential electoral campaigns between 2000 and 2002. [1] In Guerrilla Veterans in Post-War Zimbabwe, I examine the political dynamic between veterans and the ruling party in military integration and demobilization programs in the aftermath of the negotiated Lancaster House peace settlement. [2] A central argument of the study is that veterans and the ruling party were both collaborators and antagonists, often simultaneously. Each sought to build power and privilege through mutual manipulation of the other, through the use of violence and intimidation, and through legitimating appeals to their participation in the liberation war. The epilogue (the basis for this paper) makes the case for strong parallels in the collaborative relationship between veterans and the party in the first seven years of independence as well as during the extended election campaign period from February 2000 to the presidential election in March 2002. In the epilogue, and elsewhere, I also argue that public debates about whether those involved in the post-2000 campaign violence and land invasions were 'real' war veterans ought to be understood as a continuation of a political discourse about 'authentic' and 'fake' veterans that has been used by veterans and the party since 1980. [3] Despite the contextual differences between the founding years of independence and the post-2000 extended election campaign period, there was an underlying continuity in the collaboration and conflict between veterans and the ruling party across these time periods. I focus on their collusion. Just as the ruling party used Zimbabwe National Liberation Army (ZANLA) veterans to win electoral power among the rural majority in 1980 and then to build power in the army, the bureaucracy, and among urban workers in the first seven years of independence, so it used veterans (ex-ZANLA and ex-ZIPRA [Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army]) alongside others, and especially youth, to try to preserve its power among these constituencies. …