Zimbabwe's severe crisis - and a possible way out of it with a transitional government, and the new era for which it prepares the ground - demands a coherent scholarly response. 'Progress' can be employed as an organising theme across many disciplinary approaches to Zimbabwe's societal devastation. At wider levels too, the concept of progress is fitting. It underpins 'modern', 'liberal' and 'radical' perspectives of development pervading the social sciences and humanities. Yet perceptions of 'progress' are subject increasingly to intensive critical inquiry. Their gruesome end is signified in the political projects of Robert Mugabe and ZANU-PF. John Gray's Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia indicates this. It is expected that participants will engage directly in debates about how the idea of 'progress' has informed their disciplines - from political science and history to labour and agrarian studies, and then relate these arguments to the Zimbabwean case in general and their research in particular. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Contemporary African Studies.

Zimbabwe's severe crisis - and a possible way out of it with a transitional government, and the new era for which it prepares the ground - demands a coherent scholarly response. 'Progress' can be employed as an organising theme across many disciplinary approaches to Zimbabwe's societal devastation. At wider levels too, the concept of progress is fitting. It underpins 'modern', 'liberal' and 'radical' perspectives of development pervading the social sciences and humanities. Yet perceptions of 'progress' are subject increasingly to intensive critical inquiry. Their gruesome end is signified in the political projects of Robert Mugabe and ZANU-PF. John Gray's Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia indicates this. It is expected that participants will engage directly in debates about how the idea of 'progress' has informed their disciplines - from political science and history to labour and agrarian studies, and then relate these arguments to the Zimbabwean case in general and their research in particular. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Contemporary African Studies.

Becoming Zimbabwe is the first comprehensive history of Zimbabwe, spanning the years from 850 to 2008. In 1997, the then Secretary General of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, Morgan Tsvangirai, expressed the need for a 'more open and critical process of writing history in Zimbabwe. ...The history of a nation-in-the-making should not be reduced to a selective heroic tradition, but should be a tolerant and continuing process of questioning and re-examination.' Becoming Zimbabwe tracks the idea of national belonging and citizenship and explores the nature of state rule, the changing contours of the political economy, and the regional and international dimensions of the country's history. In their Introduction, Brian Raftopoulos and Alois Mlambo enlarge on these themes, and Gerald Mazarire's opening chapter sets the pre-colonial background. Sabelo Ndlovu tracks the history up to WW11, and Alois Mlambo reviews developments in the settler economy and the emergence of nationalism leading to UDI in 1965. The politics and economics of the UDI period, and the subsequent war of liberation, are covered by Joesph Mtisi, Munyaradzi Nyakudya and Teresa Barnes. After independence in 1980, Zimbabwe enjoyed a period of buoyancy and hope. James Muzondidya's chapter details the transition 'from buoyancy to crisis', and Brian Raftopoulos concludes the book with an analysis of the decade-long crisis and the global political agreement which followed.

e defeat of ZANU-PF in the 2008 parliamentary election marked the end of one-party rule in Zimbabwe. The Global Political Agreement signed later that resulted in a Government of National Unity, and the former ruling party was, for the first time, faced with the reality of sharing power. The Hard Road to Reform presents a penetrating analysis of developments since the GNU was established, reviewing recent political history from a range of perspectives - political, economic, social and historical, and featuring the best work of Zimbabwe's young scholars.

Developing a Transformation Agenda for Zimbabwe analyses the political and economic constraints on the nation's reconstruction and democratic transformation and suggests options for transformation in key sectors as well as lessons learnt from other transformations. The challenges in relation to transitional justice are analysed from an historical context as well as in light of the political dynamics in the country. The urgent need to launch a stabilisation programme is discussed, along with key issues for economic reconstruction. The book also looks at military involvement in politics in Zimbabwe and concludes that robust intervention is needed to reform the security sector.

In the struggles for democratisation that emerged in the late 1980s and 1990s in Africa, labour movements often played a central role in the development of opposition politics. This book examines the emergence of labour as a strong organisational and political force in the struggles against an increasingly authoritarian state in Zimbabwe. Written by specialists in the labour movement from a variety of different perspectives, the chapters discuss the political, economic, global, organisational, legal, gender and sectoral challenges faced by the Zimbabwean labour movement in its move from the margins of liberation movement politics to a pivotal role in the post-colonial struggle for a more responsible and accountable civil society and government.

The dramatic changes in Zimbabwe's economic, political and social landscapes since the 2000 elections - referred to as the 'Zimbabwe crisis' - have raised complex critical questions at national, regional and international levels. This work addresses these points, by focusing on the shifting discourses about, and relationsips between land, state and citizenship. It argues that these changing definitions and dynamics, and their implications, can best be understood in terms of a number of overlapping, complete and incomplete projects of transformations; or as 'unfinished business'

The growing scholarship on urban historiography in Zimbabwe is neither widely published, nor particularly well known. The editors have here gathered the scattered and growing work on urban history into a representative volume, displaying the diversity of work that is available. The essays show that the study of urban history in Zimbabwe brings into focus a wide array of subjects: the spaces which were created for Africans in the urbanisation process; the contradictory responses of the colonial state; the effects of rural- urban linkages on labour organisation; and the struggles over the mapping of the city along racial, class and gender lines. The editors argue that the problems faced by colonial administrators continue to face their post-colonial counterparts, but in exacerbated form.