Perfidious Ubuntisation of ZANU-PF Succession Politics : A Discursive Analysis of Grace Mugabe's Campaign Against Joice Mujuru and Emmerson Mnangagwa

The succession politics within the Robert Mugabe-led Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) created uncertainty as to whether the party remains a true democratic nationalist movement with a competitive party system that allows members to not only work together to achieve common aims but to also compete for power. An illustrative case is former First Lady Grace Mugabe's Jiang Qingian bid to succeed her husband through public campaigns to eliminate two main contenders and successive state vice presidents, Joice Mujuru and Emmerson Mnangagwa. This article critically analyses a purposely selected corpus of Grace's speeches to understand the discourses used to legitimise the demonization and elimination of contenders. It shows that Grace's political rhetoric appeals to a cultural-religious discourse of solidarity and respect for elders - deeply seated in Ubuntu - that was deployed to express, enact and produce politics of hate and intolerance towards perceived opponents. But does the Ubuntu political philosophy allow attitudes and practices unbefitting competitive democracies? I argue that politics of intolerance is at odds with the principles governing democratic struggles for power as envisaged in the (real) Ubuntu political philosophy. That Ubuntu is characterized by regard for authority must not be construed to mean high power distance between an all-powerful leader and subjects, or an uncritical regard for the leader's authority. Rather, a real Ubuntu political philosophy conjures elements of power sharing.