This talk documents the rise and fall of environmentalism in postcolonial Zimbabwe across three different economic and political periods from 1980-2017, seeking to answer: why did the Mugabe government consciously make ecological development at independence a top priority yet this aspiration had remained an almost non-existent issue during the liberation struggle? Why did Mugabe who, for the first decade of independence vowed to create a socialist state consciously make ecological development an indispensable component of redressing the colonial ills of the past as well as social and economic development? When the economy was in the doldrums, the environment was subordinated to political and economic agendas resulting in the state’s failure to pay acute attention to pollution control, land use planning or the sustainable use of natural resources.

Muchaparara Musemwa is Associate Professor of History, Department of History, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa and editor of the South African Historical Journal.