Abstract:
This article discusses the complexities of political dialogues, focusing on the
reasons behind their failures and strategies for successful dialogue outcomes,
using Zimbabwe‘s political landscape as a case study. The study‘s primary
objective is to shed light on the dynamics of political dialogues by exploring
three typologies of dialogues: consensual dialogues, echo dialogues, and deaf
dialogues, as pivotal transformative paradigms for peacebuilding. The study
employed a qualitative research methodology, utilising document and content
analysis of journal articles, textbooks, newspapers, government reports, and
opinion pieces. The findings reveal that for dialogues to succeed in
transforming political conflicts, they must transition from being dialogically deaf
to being consensually oriented. Notably, Zimbabwe‘s political dialogue efforts
have failed because they have largely been deaf and echo-dialogues. Dialogues
of the deaf were most common in intra-party and inter-party dialogues, whereas
consensual and echo dialogues were predominantly observed in constitutional-related dialogues because of their national character. The study recommends the
use of consensual dialogues with listening dialoguers as a typology of trust
building and sustainable peacebuilding to resolve the current and future political
and socioeconomic crises of the country.
