Indigenization, the State Bourgeoisie and Neo-authoritarian Politics

Abstract

When a liberated Zimbabwe came into being in 1980, a political injustice was finally redressed with the establishment of majority rule, but not the economic and social imbalances between the white and the black communities, in particular the glaringly unequal distribution of economic capital. Very little has changed in the twenty years since independence: although the civil service was Africanized within the first five years.2 The state gained control of a significant section of the national economy, both in the financial and productive sectors, but the private sector is still largely owned by the 70 000 white Zimbabweans (out of 12 million citizens) or by international companies such as Lonrho and the Anglo-American Corporation. Indeed, whites are preponderant among the 4000 commercial farmers and largely dominate the manufacturing and mining sectors. However, there are no statistics for the racial composition of local company ownership, and since independence many blacks – including ruling party cadres – were co-opted into business by sections of white capital.3 However, figures from the early 1990s show that 63 per cent of senior management in the corporate sector are still white (Strachan 1993, 41).