Gender, Coups, and Diplomats
By Blessing-Miles Tendi
The Overthrow of Robert Mugabe argues that the 2017 coup, which ousted long-time Zimbabwean president Robert Gabriel Mugabe, cannot be accurately or rigorously understood without examining the crucial role of gender and women’s politics in military seizures of power.
Tendi’s book demonstrates that gender and women’s politics shape military coup causes, dynamics, justifications and international responses. As a result, the author challenges influential representations of Zimbabwe’s 2017 coup and other recent coups as fundamentally different from past coups. Instead, he draws on long gendered histories of military coups in Africa. Through this perspective, he argues that coup characteristics show significant continuities across time.
The background of the 2017 coup
The Overthrow of Robert Mugabe provides a highly original study of the 2017 coup. Tendi identifies the motives, dynamics and trigger of the coup. He shows how, despite the existence of an international anti-coup norm and democracy promotion efforts in Africa by Western states, Zimbabwean coup makers directly intervened in politics.
Western and African diplomats did not publicly condemn or penalise them for this intervention.
To address this important puzzle, Tendi uses original interviews with diplomats and politicians involved in external responses to the coup. Their testimonies reveal the complexity of international reactions. This strengthens his argument about the importance of gender and women’s politics in coup-making processes.
Furthermore, The Overthrow of Robert Mugabe highlights how military takeovers cannot be separated from broader global and regional political calculations. It shows that gender analysis provides an essential lens for interpreting diplomatic silence or selective condemnation in African coups.
Author the author
Blessing-Miles Tendi is Associate Professor of African Politics at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on civil-military relations, intelligence, gender and politics, and the existence and uses of ‘evil’ in politics. He is also the author of Making History in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe: Politics, Intellectuals and the Media (2010).
- PUBLISHER | UJ Press |
- ISBN | 9780906785362 |
- Recommended Retail Price | R375.00 |
- Classification | Politics |