Chapter Nine

I argue in this chapter that Zimbabwe’s was initially a partially democratic transition in which the state, acting largely in the interests of the ruling party, established a policy and legislative infrastructure whose main purpose was to complement the construction of Zanu PF hegemony through the media. As the ruling party’s legitimacy came under severe battering in the wake of ESAP and numerous other crises during the 1990s and beyond, the already authoritarian state became predatory and militarised. It abandoned the coaxing and limited coercion approaches of the earlier decade, and adopted brute force as an instrument of media policy and control.