Zimbabwe's foreign policy in Southern Africa, 1980-2013

The book is an insight into the trajectories of foreign policy making in an African state, Zimbabwe, under the complexities of a Marxist-Leninist philosophy of the Chimurenga discourse. By and large Zimbabwe's foreign policy making has been the province of President Mugabe and the ruling party ZANU-PF. Zimbabwe's foreign policy has been the product of the misgivings of the Cold War at the onset of the country's independence where Harare had to be pragmatic in its dealings with the Front Line States, apartheid South Africa and the larger international community. In these strenuous circumstances, Harare emerged as the diplomatic hub for Southern Africa, a legacy that saw the country having a diplomatic fall out with the new South Africa at the close of the 90s in the formation of SADC's OPDS and the civil war in the Congo.The change in Zimbabwe's political economy and the rise of the MDC, as an alternative to ZANU-PF saw the country's foreign policy realigned within the prisms of the Third Chimurenga discourse. It was important for the country to export the Chimurenga discourse and the immediate recipient was Southern Africa.