The settlements in Zimbabwe, Namibia, and South Africa were constructed around a mutual acceptance by the major contending forces of a mix of liberal democracy and capitalist economics. Settler populations lost political power in exchange for guarantees of rights of minorities and property; liberation movements were promised control of the state in exchange for an accommodation with domestic and international capital. However, there were fundamental contradictions at the heart of all this. On the one hand, the liberation movements prioritized exclusive nationalisms over democracy. This meant that while they viewed democracy (via transitional elections) as a legitimizing route to gaining power, their principal concern then became to consolidate their control over the state. The thrust thereafter was that democracy was acceptable, as long as they won. On the other hand, reaching an accommodation with capital was vital if the economy was to generate sufficient surplus to fuel the party and its various constituencies, but if it failed to do so, then the liberation movements' already ambiguous commitments to democracy were placed under considerable threat.

This chapter will seek to provide an overview of the transitional settlements and the contexts in which they were located. In so doing, it will provide a reference point for subsequent chapters which explore selected dimensions of the record of NLMs in power.

The political settlements

The foundations which underpinned Zimbabwe's new constitution were to prove substantially less sound than those upon which the political architecture of the other two states was to rest. Laid in Lancaster House, where so many other constitutions for Britain's postcolonial brood had been conceived, the political settlement formally provided for a constitutional state, where parliament was subject to the constitution.