'The Overthrow of Robert Mugabe: Gender, Coups, and Diplomats’ (Book Launch)
The Overthrow of Robert Mugabe: Gender, Coups, and Diplomats argues the 2017 coup that ousted long time Zimbabwean president Robert Gabriel Mugabe, and the generality of coups, cannot be accurately and rigorously understood without examining the crucial role of gender and women’s politics in military seizures of power.
Tendi’s book shows that gender and women’s politics pervade military coup causes, dynamics, justifications, and international responses to coups. Contrary to influential representations of Zimbabwe’s 2017 coup and other recent coups as markedly different from past coups, Tendi draws on long gendered histories of military coups in Africa to argue that there are significant continuities in coup characteristics across time. Additionally, Tendi’s highly original study of Zimbabwe’s 2017 coup identifies the motives, dynamics, and trigger of the coup. Despite the existence of an international anti-coup norm and democracy promotion in Africa by Western states, Zimbabwean coup-makers’ direct intervention in politics was largely not publicly condemned or penalized by Western and African diplomats. Tendi uses original interviews with diplomats and politicians involved in external responses to the coup, to address this important puzzle.
Date:
6 March 2025, 15:30
Venue:
St Antony's College - Main Site, 62 Woodstock Road OX2 6JF
Venue Details:
Pavilion Room, accessed via lift
Speaker:
Dr Miles Tendi (University of Oxford)
Organising department:
Centre for African Studies
Organisers:
Peter Brooke (African Studies Centre, Oxford),
Lena Reim (University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address:
events@africa.ox.ac.uk
Part of:
African Studies Centre Research Seminars
Booking required?:
Not required
Audience:
Public
Editor:
Amy Crane
