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| Title: | Why the African Renaissance is Likely to Fail: The Case of Zimbabwe |
| Author: | Maundeni, Zibani |
| Year: | 2004 |
| Periodical: | Journal of Contemporary African Studies |
| Volume: | 22 |
| Issue: | 2 |
| Period: | May |
| Pages: | 189-212 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Zimbabwe |
| Subjects: | economic development traditional polities State Inter-African Relations Development and Technology nationalism Politics and Government |
| External links: | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/cjca0258900042000230014 http://ejournals.ebsco.com/direct.asp?ArticleID=AD2BJY8WV01P2EQGV35H |
| Abstract: | African economic and State failure can be linked to the continent's ancient State cultures. Zimbabwe is a case in point. Precolonial Zimbabwean State institutions (the army, kings and chiefs, and the priests) were structured in ways that worked to promote the temporary enrichment of a few warlords who easily lost to others, the utilization of war as a ritual function for purposes of purifying the land, the fragmentation of chiefly power that led to the failure to exercise leadership in economic matters, and the rendering of economic matters as part of religious rather than State functions. The colonial State's intention of preserving indigenous culture and its failure to recruit and train a large number of indigenous people for its army, bureaucracy and economy combined to ensure the survival of precolonial State culture. The nationalist and postcolonial Zimbabwean State elite was embedded in the precolonial Shona State culture. They used it to reorganize the inherited Rhodesian State institutions and build a nondevelopmental State that catapulted the country into economic decline. The strong links between pre and postcolonial Zimbabwe show that the continuity of the indigenous State cultures in Africa could be the primary problem and not the solution to State and economic failures. Without a developmental State, it is difficult to see how the idea of the African Renaissance can be realized. Bibliogr. [ASC Leiden abstract] |
