Freedom Mazwi and Rangarirai Muchetu explore the exploitative emergent agrarian relations in the sugarcane plantation estates in eastern Zimbabwe following the fast tracked state-driven land reform program in 2000. Zimbabwe’s initial violent land reform program and the resultant uncertainties over land tenure security and political instability saw a number of banks suspending agriculture financing to the beneficiaries of land redistribution. Fifteen years later, the financial institutions are slowly re-financing agricultural production, albeit not directly to peasant farmers but through large plantation estates. These contract farming arrangements that are emerging away from state policy spaces in the agriculture sector, Mazwi and Muchetu argue, are promoting exploitative asymmetrical relations between the monopolistic and powerful plantation estates and the poor sugarcane small to medium farmers whose net incomes are being reduced through unfair pricing structure and high interest rates on input loans they access through these plantation estates. Against the backdrop of this politics of impoverishing farmers, Mazwi and Muchetu, argue for the need to strengthen and reconstitute the land administration institutional system through decentralisation, and for the proactive intervention by both political and policy elites through a functional legal framework that protect poor farmers from monopoly control of the sugar market by a few players, and to provide alternative ‘pro-poor’ agricultural financing schemes for the peasants. 

Gorden Moyo, Cornelias Ncube and Philani Moyo examine the potential of a devolved government system to promote a democratic developmental Zimbabwe state. Zimbabwe adopted a new constitution in 2013, which provided for devolution of power. Moyo et al. argue for the fuller implementation of this constitutional provision, because a devolved governmental system enables people to participate and influence policy and decision making in their communities. They further argue that devolution of power can be the mechanism for the construction of a democratic developmental Zimbabwean state because it facilitates transformative economic policies; it enhances democratic institutions; and it inculcates selfless policy elites that are supportive, participative, facilitative, collaborative, committed and visionary about the needs of the governed.

Sunday Angoma Okello analyses the problem of inequality amongst youths in Africa. Okello argues that both in the pre- and post-2015 Millennium Development Goals era, the problems of youth inequality and poverty in Africa are being pushed to the periphery of development processes and policy spaces. Specifically, Okello argues that in almost all African countries, youths are excluded economically (e.g. unemployment, underemployment, lack of livelihood, ownership of assets); politically (e.g. lack of political participation, voice and decision-making power); socially (e.g. access to services like education, health, water, sanitation and housing); and culturally (e.g. lack of recognition of group‘s cultural practices, discrimination, loss of status/respect, humiliation/honour, lack of identity). As a consequence of this exclusion, youths are vulnerable to manipulation and abuse by elites, which Okello argues, explain the politics of frustration by youths that played out in the Arab Spring against sclerotic leaders. Okello therefore proposes deep socio-economic structural transformation in Africa in order to empower youths, promote their rights and include them in political and policy processes.

Hyacinth Nnaoma Iwu interrogates the relationship between communal conflicts and the pervasive electoral violence in south eastern Nigeria. Iwu argues that political violence that is common in Nigeria during election periods is not only driven by the need to capture power by elites. Iwu ably demonstrates that election related violence in Ebonyi state are structurally rooted in the long history of communal conflicts and struggles over land access, use and ownership rights. In Anambra state, Iwu argues that the Ogbunike community is historically known for its hostility towards outsiders, and that therefore, election periods only provide an opportunity to mete out ‘xenophobic’ attacks on outsiders. The River State, is ‘notoriously known’ for communal clashes over access and ownership of land where crude oil is found, and over leadership tussles. These clashes, unrelated to electoral politics, are nonetheless amplified during electioneering against perceived competitors. Drawing from these case studies, Iwu argues that violence and conflict prevention and resolution mechanisms during the violent-pervaded elections in Africa, should go beyond the immediate inter-political party and intra-political party conflicts. Instead focus should be on the deep structurally rooted factors that contribute to election violence in Africa. Addressing the deep rooted structural factors of poverty can deprive elites of a manipulative tool that fuels election violence for self-centred ends.

Mandlenkosi Maphosa, Nevel Tshuma and Grascious Maviza discuss the factors hindering the full realisation of gender equality and empowerment, with regards to political participation in Zimbabwe, despite the ratification of numerous regional and international instruments on gender. Maphosa et al. argue that there has been little change in women’s numeric representation in political institutions and processes. The few women that have occupied public political space, according to Maphosa et al., seem not to have done so on merit but at the benevolence of male persons in their personal lives (i.e., husbands, brothers or other relations with political clout). Maphosa et al. argue: ‘Women enjoy these “borrowed robes” in so far as their familial political backers control the levers of political power. In fact, in some cases the rise of women can be linked to their “usage” as pawns by male political players to checkmate their male political rivalries’. They blame the continued experiences of gender inequalities in Zimbabwe on the institution of patriarchy that pervades Zimbabwe’s political space and processes.