Citizenship, Disability Politics and Disability Inclusion in Zimbabwe

Disability is among the major sociocultural constraints that define, underlie and overlap with other bases of inequality, insecurity, alienation, polarisation, and misinformation. Scholars and practitioners have acknowledged the embeddedness of disability in people’s diverse, dynamic, everyday and complex social worlds. While disability inclusion and rights are heralded at global, regional and national levels as exemplified in the United Nations conventions, continental protocols and national policies, most of the people with disabilities are the poorest, highly marginalised and least empowered while acknowledging differences along place, class and other categories of differentiation. The paradox is that enduring and in some places and contexts, intensifying wellbeing woes are occurring in a context where citizenship is advanced in terms of inclusiveness, leaving no one and no place behind, development with and for all, and in a global order where multiple instruments for enhancing people’s wellbeing are in available. Based on Zimbabwe’s rural and urban areas as the heuristic cases to interrogate the differential influence of place and context, relating the National Disability Policy of 2021 complemented by regional and international frameworks on disability with lived realities and situated meanings of inclusive citizenship, researching with and for people with disabilities, and adopting a scholar activist approach, this paper addresses five questions: a) What are the lived and officially reported socioeconomic situations of persons with disabilities, and the overlaps and differences across geographical categories? b) What is the texture of the political, institutional and legislative landscape of disability policy and citizenship? c) What are the critical junctures and turning points in disability politics and inclusion? d) How are disability inclusion and politics shaping citizenship in and between for example, rural, urban and peri-urban areas? e) How can lessons of success and lessons of failure in disability politics and inclusion facilitate improvement of the theory and practice of active citizenship for persons with disability? Overall, the paper is anchored on advancing active citizenship and transforming the lives of people with disabilities against inequality, poverty and marginalisation.