By Cheryl Hendricks and Lauren Hutton. Institute for Security Studies, 2009.
Through years of intensifying politicization and a unique historical development, the security sector in Zimbabwe has become firmly entrenched in the current regime and developed a vested interest in its continuity. With the emergence of a new unity government following national elections in 2008, however, two analysts from the Institute for Security Studies sound an open call for Zimbabwe’s impending security sector reform challenge. SSR in Zimbabwe will be unique; existing security institutions function and need only transformation rather than whole-scale construction. Given current tenuous and tense political conditions, security sector reform will need to first take a long view and avoid destabilizing measures that may prompt a coup. Ultimately, SSR may be delayed in deference to other strategic accommodations to political pressures, these authors caution.
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