The Transition State and the Dialectics of Educational Transformation in the Third World: the case of Zimbabwe

ABSTRACT This paper examines the role of the Zimbabwean State in providing education since 1980. The nature of the Zimbabwean revolution, the colonial inheritance in education, the economy and civil society will be used to explicate the failure of the emergent transition state in redressing residual and emergent imbalances within the educational system. A critical theory of the post‐colonial transition state will be used to probe the relationship between the socialist rhetoric of the government and the demands of civil society on the one hand, and on the other, the requirements of local and international capital. It is the interplay and contradictions among these four major actors that is used to show how educational reform is becoming an elusive goal in Sub‐Saharan Africa.