Coming to Terms: Zimbabwe in the International Arena

Robert Mugabe's ZANU(PF) party - the Zimbabwe African National Union and the Patriotic Front formed by the merger of ZANU and Joshua Nkomo's Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) - won a landslide victory in the independence elections of 1980. Mugabe came to power with an avowedly revolutionary and Marxist-Leninist programme, ehos and worldview. His dominance was butressed by victory in the brutal civil war in Matabeleland and assured by the successful marginalisation of his arch rival, the legendary Nkomo, and by rigid control over the levers of state power. Yet Zimbabwe's position on the world stage and in Africa has been profoundly affected by practical considerations of international political realities. In common with many emergent countries sharing Zimbabwe's political, economic, social and historical experience, today her political and economic relations network only very partially reflects her pre-independence Marxist positions. The country has had to jettison much of its ideological radicalism in the face of the grim practicalities of international politics. Striking examples of divergence abound in Zimbabwe's worldwide relatonships and none more so than with apartheid South Africa and in the failure to maintain friendship with powerful erstwhile supporters of ZANU in the independence struggle - China and Russia.