'State of emergency': the politics of Zimbabwe's cholera outbreak, 2008/09

Thesis

This thesis examines the politics of Zimbabwe's catastrophic cholera outbreak in 2008/09, which caused an unprecedented 98,000 cases and over 4,000 deaths. Epidemiologically, the outbreak can be explained by the breakdown of the country's water and sanitation systems. Such a reading, however, belies the byzantine political, economic and historical processes that precipitated the dysfunction of the water systems, that delineate the socio-spatial pattern of the outbreak and that account for the fragmented and inadequate response of the national health system. The complex causal factors and the far-reaching consequences of the outbreak indicate that cholera is a unique prism through which to view different political phenomena including the dilemmas and contradictions of political change, bureaucratic order, humanitarianism, crisis and citizenship in Zimbabwe.

Drawing on extensive field research, I make three inter-locking arguments in this thesis. First, I argue that Zimbabwe’s cholera outbreak was a 'man-made' disaster. It was the final stage of both path-dependent and contingent processes rooted in questions of political economy such as the collapse of public health infrastructure, failing livelihood strategies and violent repression. Second, I argue that cholera reproduced and exacerbated a multiplicity of socio-political crises pertaining to the legitimacy of the Zimbabwean state, the nature of structural inequalities in Zimbabwean society and fundamental flaws in the global humanitarian response to epidemics. Third, I look at the myriad meanings, memories and narratives the epidemic has left in its wake across public institutions and in civic life. I argue that cholera has been committed to historical memory as a health crisis, a political-economic crisis, and a social crisis as well as a crisis of expectations, history and social identity.

Authors: Chigudu, S

• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Keywords: Humanitarianism; Epidemics; Zimbabwe; Politics; Cholera
• Subjects: Global health; Politics and government; Development studies