Zimbabwe and Canada: Historical Struggle Meets Historical Vacuum

This article argues that a poverty of historical understanding of Canada’s relations with Zimbabwe has had a debilitating effect on Canadian government policy in southern Africa in recent years. More particularly, this vacuum of Canadian historical understanding has encouraged a profound scepticism on the part of African governments about the Canadian government’s motives for intervening in Zimbabwean affairs, and has helped to create an atmosphere of mutual incomprehension. The Canadian government’s approach generally fails to put rights-based criticisms in any sort of historical context, and leaves Mugabe’s historically-based propaganda largely unanswered. The article argues that there are structural reasons why Canadian government policy is pursued in an historical vacuum. These relate to the organisation of government and the academy in Canada; as well as to Canadian nationalist and ideological preconceptions, which impede a more clear-sighted understanding of the broader historical and British imperial context of Canada’s engagement with southern Africa.