Critiquing Zimbabwe's Lancaster House Negotiations: An Analysis of Britain's Fundamentalism Posture and the Role of African Diplomacy

This article re-examines literature on the Lancaster House negotiations that led to the nation-state of Zimbabwe in 1980. To achieve this, the article reads against the grain the motivations and dynamics of the British's foreign policy within the milieu of fundamentalism theory. Fundamentalism depicts political ideologies that are self-serving and rigid. A key variable of fundamentalism is its exclusive approach that disavows any other alternatives. Consequently, this article aims to unpack the multifaceted dimensions of the British preeminence during the Lancaster House, precipitated by Cold War politics. Employing a qualitative literature review methodology, this article's findings are that a shared approach to studying revolutionary politics in Southern Africa is to locate these within the milieu of regional camaraderie, which finds currency in a transnational history of a fight against colonialism. As a result, hegemonic literature has been promoted to portray the heroic role of African diplomacy (Mozambique and Zambia) in Zimbabwe's struggle for independence. This article's findings dismiss these representations as imprecise, arguing that Mozambique and Zambia's approaches to the Lancaster House negotiations were not altruistic. Mozambique and Zambia were motivated by the limits of African diplomacy, the waning relevance of the Soviet Union, and internal political and socio-economic considerations in their respective countries.