Democracy and Development in Zimbabwe: Constraints of Decentralisation

By John Mw Makumbe

Publisher: Sapes Books, P.O. Box MP 111, Mount Pleasant, Harare. 1999

Pages: 96

Reviewer: Kofi Akosah-Sarpong in Montreal, Canada

If Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe has his way; the one-party system will be there forever and so design all results, as the author of this survey alludes. The book focuses on Zimbabwe's political and administrative systems in the structure of the one-party monolith without any iota of vision that the global system is fast changing and that there is the need for some room of multiparty system and its attendant democratic callings.

This book reveals the one track thinking of post-independence Zimbabwe local government system deliberately created from above with the ZANU (PF), the ruling party, imposing its ideology on the people without listening to grassroots whether the local government structures being imposed meets the local culture, tradition and history.

The author alludes that the present global climate, and importantly the recent referendum on the country's new constitution which saw the NO side defeating President Mugabe's YES side, informs us that from scratch the local government system is a farce.

The material for this book comes from interviews given by both the citizens and the elective/appointive officials and tests the local government structure with contemporary theories. The result is that both democracy and development have failed the people of Zimbabwe simply because the decentralisation programmes of the ruling ZANU (PF) didn't come from below but from above.

Added to the above is Harare forgetting that decentralisation has its problems, more so if it is not informed by the people's culture and history. Makumbe says that critics of decentralisation talk of its divisive and separatist character and effect, and therefore a negation of national unity and integration. "Because it requires that goods and services be provided at local rather than national level; it is said to reinforce narrow sectional interests and is, therefore, 'anti-egalitarian'.