From Mobilisation to Sustainable Peace? Reassessing the Peacebuilding Potential of ZANU PF Youth League Initiatives in Zimbabwe, 2008–2025

Abstract

This article reassesses the peacebuilding potential of the ZANU PF Youth League in Zimbabwe between 2008 and 2025. Moving beyond the dominant literature that frames political youth primarily as instruments of violence or authoritarian reproduction, the article uses original doctoral fieldwork from Harare/Highfields and Bulawayo/Entumbane to evaluate whether, how and under what conditions the League can function as a conduit of sustainable peace. Six clusters of peace-related initiative are identified: economic empowerment, political socialisation and mobilisation, inter-party tolerance and dialogue, social cohesion through sports and arts, disability inclusion, and representation and governance reform. The article shows that these initiatives create real opportunities for local stability, particularly when they connect peace to economic participation and widen spaces of youth action. However, their peacebuilding potential is constrained by six structural barriers: adultocracy, tokenism and negative inclusion, bureaucratic and financial exclusion, political polarisation, corruption and nepotism, and educational misalignment. A major cross-site divergence further emerges around historical justice: while Harare/Highfields evidence foregrounds mobilisation, coexistence and digital peace messaging, Bulawayo/Entumbane evidence insists that sustainable peace is impossible without credible truth-telling and restitution around Gukurahundi. The article concludes that the ZANU PF Youth League can contribute to sustainable peace, but only if it shifts from symbolic mobilisation and patronage-heavy engagement toward youth-led, institutionally accountable and genuinely inclusive peacebuilding practice.