Localised politics, conflicting interests and Third Chimurenga violence, 2000-2008: Reflections from Shurugwi District, Zimbabwe

This paper, using the case-study of Shurugwi district, examines how localised politics, pettyjealousies and differing socio-economic interests fed into the national grid of political violence during the Third Chimurenga violence in Zimbabwe. It troubles the more generally accepted view that the violence was carried out by specific state agents and organised groups such as Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU-PF) and Movement for Democratic Change[s] (MDC[s]) structures, war veterans, uniformed forces, state security agents and National Youth Service Graduates. Without minimising the differing contributions of these bodies to the web of violence, the paper argues that while these larger institutions offered some sort of centralising co-ordinations and the official authorising narratives for the violence, these depended on, and were aided largely by, the existence, at the local levels, of different personal or community-level interests upon which were grafted these broad national discourses. The existence of these competing interests also concretised the meaning of the discourses at the local levels. These differences also offered a platform for the decentralisation of the structures, to the village-levels, of the commission of the violence.