The Zimbabwean elections in 2008 arrived during total economic disrepair and a peak moment of national frustration with the government, which had been controlled by Robert Mugabe and his party Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) since the country’s independence in 1980. This nominally socialist party that won the right to Black-majority rule decades prior was faced in the 2000’s with resistance to the violent strong-arm tactics Mugabe used to establish single party rule, conduct unsuccessful land reforms, and retain power. Electoral resistance to the regime had been raised before, with a contested election in 2002. At that time, however, Robert Mugabe and his ZANU-PF party remained in power with the support of the African Union (AU), despite condemnations of misconduct from international observers and the opposition party: the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which was founded in 1999 by members of Zimbabwe’s trade union alliances in opposition to a constitutional referendum giving powers to the government to conduct land reforms. The AU’s support in 2002 is one of several markers showing that at the start of the decade, despite corroborated reports of political violence and social upheaval, Mugabe’s hold on the presidency was strong enough that challenges to its legitimacy—however valid—could be easily put aside (especially by other national leaders whose power may have been more or less democratically established). However, by 2007, with the environment of corruption, the growing inflation escalating from 8,000% to 100,000% by early 2008, and unemployment reaching throughout the country, the citizens of Zimbabwe were increasingly desperate for a change in regime. Continue reading “election : zimbabwe 2008”
In June 1986, in a run-off election, former UN General Secretary Kurt Waldheim was elected president of Austria—amid accusations of war crimes. Waldheim’s campaign precipitated a long-delayed reckoning by the Austrian people with their role in the murder of millions during WWII. This is the story of the events leading up to that election.
1985 : Kurt Waldheim declares his intention to run for president of Austria, as a representative of the right-leaning Austrian People’s Party. In January of this year, his memoirs are published, in German and English translation. The book details his 40-year career in the diplomatic service since 1945, spent variously as Austrian Ambassador to the UN, Ambassador to Canada, Austrian Minister of Foreign Affairs, and two terms as UN General Secretary (1972–1981). The memoirs touch only briefly on his military service during WWII, stating that he was drafted into the Germany army in 1938 and served on the Eastern Front, where he was wounded and then dismissed from service in 1942. He alleges to have spent 1942 to 1945 studying law in Vienna.Continue reading “election : austria 1986”
election : is a new series that will post weekly from election through the united states’ presidential inauguration. in it, we will be spotlighting notable past and present election scenarios from around the world. these descriptions are intended to contextualize election : united states 2020 and to unexceptionalize the state of democracy in the united states. each post will elaborate seeming irregularities and exceptionalities that can and do take place in and around democratic electoral procedures. against blind faith in the power of institutional procedure, the aim is to illustrate the opportunistic ways that ambivalences inherent in such systems are seized and exploited.
series editors : lauren k. wolfe & zach rivers
contributors to the series:
Amrita De is a 6th year PhD candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature at SUNY Binghamton. She is an interdisciplinary scholar of South Asian literature and masculinity studies. Her dissertation explores the idea of fragility in literary articulations of postcolonial Indian masculinities across different registers such as virility, stoicism, and entrepreneurship. She recently published an article on Indian and American right-wing populisms in Boyhood Studies. She is also a creative writer and is presently working on her first novel, which also explores Indian masculinities.
Amy Obermeyer is a founding member of the Barricade Editorial Collective and a doctoral candidate in Comparative Literature at New York University. Her research focuses on subjectivity, gender, and race in early twentieth-century literatures of Latin America and Japan.
Lauren K. Wolfe is a translator and educator based in Brooklyn, New York. Her translations have been published by Dalkey Archive Press, MIT Press, and University of Minnesota Press. She has taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the University of Illinois Center for Translation Studies, New York University, and is currently Second Faculty at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. She is a founding Editorial Collective member of Barricade.
Mirta Juriljis a freelance translator and writer specialized in the humanities and social sciences. She lives and works in Zagreb, Croatia.
Murage Macharia is a writer based in Kerugoya, Kenya. He is passionate about psychology, literature, and technology. He is interested in exploring how storytelling can be used to dismantle the colonial debris entrenched in all colonized cultures, as well as a tool for self-awareness and empowerment. He enjoys shallow debates on pretentious philosophy, listening to music, and playing the guitar.
Santiago Ospina Celis is a writer, translator, and editor from Colombia. He is currently a PhD student in the Department of Comparative Literature at New York University.
Siarhei Biareishyk is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, working in the materialist tradition of Spinoza and Marx. His writing on Belarus has also appeared in Viewpoint Magazine, Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century, and No Borders.
Sultan Doughan is a postdoctoral fellow at Boston University. An anthropologist by training, her scholarship is at the intersection of secularism, migration, and critical race and gender studies, approached through theories of citizenship, minority rights, and memory studies and located in contemporary Europe. She conducted research in the domain of civic education in Berlin within state-funded projects to combat Islamic extremism in working class and immigrant neighborhoods. These projects operate through the frame of Holocaust memory and the figure of the Jew in Germany, targeting former Middle Eastern immigrants through a racially gendered logic to be “tolerant” secular citizens.
Yana Makuwawas raised in Harare, Zimbabwe, and moved to the United States to obtain her bachelor’s degree at Cornell University. Afterwards she worked as an assistant editor at Graywolf Press, an independent publisher of contemporary fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction, and currently takes on freelance editing and bilingual proofreading projects. She attends New York University, where she is working towards a PhD in Comparative Literature.
Yarri Kamarais a policy researcher, writer, and translator based in Burkina Faso.
Zach Riversis a PhD candidate in New York University’s Department of Comparative Literature, whose research focuses on ancient textiles, gendered labor, and inheritance. He is a founding Editorial Collective member of Barricade, and former steward for GSOC, NYU’s graduate worker union.
