The Sovereign State of Zimbabwe and its Resistance to Repressive Neoliberal Democracy - Research

When African states experience the democratisation, the state becomes a target of international negative criticism. The African state becomes preoccupied with hegemonic issues and uses all means and machinery to defend its grip on power. This paper acknowledges the "Africanness" of post 2000 state in Zimbabwe. It also argues that post 2000 Zimbabwean state is a victim state. Zimbabwe`s experience in the new millennium has rarely been analysed using any views contrary to Neoliberalism. By acknowledging this gap, the paper argues that only a state that chooses to stand against Neoliberalism is forced by circumstances to earn the labels such as "brutal", "election fraudster", "totalitarian", "gross abuser of human rights" churned out of the Human Rights lexicon. The argument deviates from the conventional Human Rights and pro-Neoliberal discourse that is dominant in describing post 2000 state in Zimbabwe. The paper uses secondary sources to analyse pre and post 2000 Zimbabwe, and concludes that Global Financial Institutions were the key players in setting up Zimbabwe for a repressive resistance to democratic change. It argues that the Global Financial Institutions created a new reality that forced post 2000 Zimbabwe to respond in the way it felt appropriate as a sovereign state - to retain power or let go.