Zimbabwe

"The role of climate variability in pre-colonial southern African history is highly disputed.
We here provide a synthesis and critique of climate-society discourses relating to two
regionally defining periods of state formation and disaggregation. The first period involves
the eleventh-thirteenth century development of socio-political complexity and the rise of
southern Africa’s first state, Mapungubwe, followed by its collapse and the shift in regional
power to Great Zimbabwe. The later period encompasses the early-nineteenth century
difaqane/mfecane mass migrations, violence and ensuing state-building activity. To further
our assessment, we consider the wider contentious issues of climate causation and
determinism in a regional context, but dispute suggestions of paradigm shift towards
simplistic environmental collapse. Nevertheless, we specifically point to ambiguities in
palaeoclimate records, a narrative tendency toward monocausal explanations, and a lack of
integration among the literature as reasons for a sustained divergence in interpretation
regarding the significance of climate. We move on to discuss the potential of integrative
approaches to illuminate understanding of the complex interactions between past climate
variability and human activity. In order to do so, we highlight interlinked concepts such as
vulnerability and resilience as key for bridging the gap between the natural and social
sciences. To conclude, we point to future climate-society priorities and ways forward in the form of research areas, data prospects and questions."

"The Southern African Development Community (SADC), a largely intergovernmental regional organization, established a regional tribunal with supranational features, only to suspend it after it produced an undesirable ruling. This represents a unique and puzzling case of governance transfer ‘roll-back’. We argue that intrinsic demand for the establishment of the Tribunal at the level of the Summit – SADC’s ultimate authority – was never high to begin with, and that it was adopted mainly as a donor-pleasing accessory. When the Tribunal overstepped its mandate relatively early in its life, not only granting itself jurisdiction in the realm of human rights, but also ruling against the Zimbabwean government in a politically sensitive case, it was dismantled by the Summit. But if donor incentives played a role in establishing the Tribunal, they cannot explain its suspension. Furthermore, institutionalist approaches would claim that a ‘lock-in’ effect should prevent institutionalized commitments at the regional level from being undone. We explain this in terms of ‘reading from the donor script’, which results in poorly embedded institutions lacking real commitment at the executive level. Developing states are only willing to read from the donor script so long as it does not threaten their core interests, which in the case of SADC are strongly informed by the region’s history and political culture. Our findings are informed by in-depth interviews with twelve experts connected to the Tribunal, which took place between May and July 2013 in Botswana, Namibia, Mozambique and South Africa. The case study contributes to a better understanding of the scope conditions for progress and regression in governance transfer by highlighting the existence of a donor script informing governance transfer in recipient regions. First, we offer a brief overview of SADC’s promotion of human rights, democracy, rule of law and good governance before zooming in on the story of the establishment and suspension of the Tribunal."