Dynamics of Political Entrepreneurship among the Elites in Post-Colonial Zimbabwe
The political arena is now abounding with people who either live ‘off ’ or ‘for’ politics. The ferocious competition for people’s votes is akin to economic competition, and as this study submits, the politicians are just like business people. Both productive and predatory profi t opportunities ha...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Department of Political Sciences , University of Pretoria
2022
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/11408/5032 |
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| Summary: | The political arena is now abounding with people who either live ‘off ’ or ‘for’
politics. The ferocious competition for people’s votes is akin to economic
competition, and as this study submits, the politicians are just like business
people. Both productive and predatory profi t opportunities have pervaded
the Zimbabwean political arena, where politics is a type of business. Political
positions have afforded some people access to economic resources, making
politics the quickest way to untold and unending riches. As a result, the political
landscape has invited abuse of power, thereby decimating not the physical being
but the entire moral fi bre of the nation. This study shows how Zimbabwean
political leaders have become the primary controllers and distributors of power
and resources with the capacity to penetrate society politically and secure
their hegemony. Reference is made to politicians belonging to the ruling
party Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and the
opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), where politicians from
either party have exhibited, though not uniformly, patterns of misconduct
characteristic of political entrepreneurship. This paper applies the entrepreneur’s
theory to political behaviour to identify political entrepreneurs and analytically
distinguish them from other government agents. |
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