The Politics of Exhaustion: Mental Health Crisis in Zimbabwe’s Civil Society
In Zimbabwe’s protracted crisis, exhaustion has emerged as a powerful tool of authoritarian control. This analysis explores how systemic fatigue undermines civil society’s effectiveness through a personal lens, examining the intersection of political economy, human rights, and mental health in human rights defense work.
The weight of Zimbabwe’s endless crisis manifests in the gradual erosion of hope. As a human rights defender witnessing the continuous deterioration of civic space, the psychological burden extends beyond professional challenges. Each failed promise of change, each new restriction on civil liberties, compounds into a deep-seated exhaustion that permeates both personal and organizational spheres.
I have come to understand the loss of hope isn’t merely an emotional response—it’s a calculated outcome of systemic pressure. When optimism fades, the energy required for strategic thinking, innovative advocacy, and collective action diminishes. The system benefits from this depletion, as exhausted defenders struggle to maintain the focus and resilience needed for effective accountability work.
From External Focus to Internal Conflict
What begins as passionate dedication to human rights defense gradually shifts into internal power struggles and conflicts. Organizations originally united in their mission find themselves consumed by interpersonal tensions. These conflicts aren’t merely personality clashes – they represent the externalization of deep frustration and hopelessness, as defenders grapple with their seeming inability to effect meaningful change.
A particularly troubling development has been the emergence of competitive suffering within civil society spaces. Defenders begin to measure their commitment by their level of sacrifice and exhaustion, creating an unhealthy hierarchy of martyrdom. This competition manifests in subtle ways – from comparing workloads to minimizing others’ challenges – ultimately undermining collective solidarity and support systems.
The breakdown of trust within organizations and between civil society actors creates deep fissures in once-strong alliances. Constant pressure and scarcity mindsets lead to suspicion and territoriality. Long-standing partnerships falter as organizations protect their increasingly limited resources and opportunities. This erosion of solidarity networks weakens the collective power of civil society, making it harder to mount effective responses to human rights challenges.
Organisational missions become obscured by exhaustion, personal rivalries increasingly dominate organizational dynamics. Leadership positions become battlegrounds for ego rather than platforms for service. These rivalries consume precious emotional and organizational resources, distracting from the crucial work of human rights defense and accountability.
The culmination of these toxic elements often results in organizational paralysis. Decision-making processes become bogged down by internal politics and fear. Innovation stalls as organizations become risk-averse, preferring to maintain uncomfortable status quos rather than risk further conflict or failure. This paralysis serves the interests of those who would prefer civil society to remain ineffective, creating a self-perpetuating cycle of reduced impact.
The Political Economy of Exhaustion
- Economic Pressure
Economic instability serves as a fundamental tool of exhaustion. The constant anxiety about organizational and personal survival creates a debilitating psychological burden. Civil society organizations find themselves trapped in cycles of precarious funding, forcing leaders and staff to continuously worry about sustainability rather than focusing on their core mission. This financial instability extends beyond organizational concerns into personal lives, where activists struggle to meet basic needs while maintaining their commitment to human rights work.
The scarcity of resources has created an environment of unhealthy competition among CSOs, fracturing potential collaborations and solidarity networks. Organizations find themselves competing for limited funding pools, often compromising their strategic priorities to align with donor preferences. This dependency on external funding sources further constrains autonomy and creates additional layers of stress as organizations struggle to balance accountability requirements with actual impact work.
The economic pressures particularly affect small, grassroots organizations and individual defenders who lack institutional buffers. The resulting precarity limits their ability to plan long-term interventions or invest in staff wellbeing, creating a vicious cycle of burnout and reduced effectiveness.
- Psychological Warfare
The constant state of surveillance and harassment creates a pervasive atmosphere of fear and paranoia. Human rights defenders face regular intimidation through both overt and subtle means. Administrative harassment, such as endless bureaucratic requirements especially from their funding partners creates a constant state of anxiety and readiness. This perpetual stress response depletes mental energy and emotional resources.
The unpredictability of enforcement actions serves as a particularly effective tool of control. Never knowing when or how restrictions might be applied forces organizations to operate in a state of constant vigilance. This hyper vigilance leads to self-censorship and reduced boldness in advocacy work, effectively limiting the scope and impact of civil society interventions without direct suppression.
Social isolation tactics further compound the psychological burden. By targeting key individuals and organizations, authorities create divisions within civil society networks. This isolation not only reduces operational effectiveness but also removes crucial support systems that could help maintain mental wellbeing.
- Systemic Barriers
The bureaucratic maze confronting civil society organizations serves as a deliberate obstacle course designed to exhaust resources and morale. The looming registration requirements, reporting demands, and compliance procedures create an endless administrative burden that diverts energy from substantive work. These barriers are presented as needed and necessary regulatory requirements, making them difficult to challenge while consuming significant organizational capacity.
The legal framework itself operates as a tool of exhaustion, with constantly shifting interpretations and selective enforcement creating an environment of perpetual uncertainty. Organizations must navigate this complex terrain while maintaining their commitment to accountability work, often forcing difficult choices between risk management and impact.
The resulting political uncertainty maintains a state of chronic stress within organizations. Planning becomes increasingly difficult, and the constant need to adapt to changing circumstances depletes strategic thinking capacity and innovative potential.
A Gendered Lens on Exhaustion
As a woman in this space, the exhaustion carries additional layers of complexity. Women human rights defenders often bear the double burden of professional responsibilities and societal expectations around care work. The emotional labor of maintaining organizational wellbeing frequently falls to women leaders, creating an additional layer of exhaustion beyond the already challenging work of human rights defense.
Women defenders face unique security concerns that contribute to heightened stress levels. The threat of gender-based violence and harassment, both online and offline, requires constant vigilance. This gender-specific targeting often extends to family members, adding another layer of psychological burden to their work.
Class and Resource Access
The intersection of gender and class creates particular vulnerabilities in accessing support systems. Women from less privileged backgrounds often lack the financial buffers that could provide respite from constant stress. Access to mental health support, security measures, and self-care resources becomes a luxury rather than a basic need, further exacerbating the impact of systemic exhaustion.
Generational Divides
Different generations of women defenders face varying challenges in coping with systemic pressure. Older defenders often carry the accumulated trauma of long-term engagement in human rights work, while younger women face unique pressures around proving their capability and legitimacy in the field. The generational divide can also manifest in different approaches to work-life balance and self-care, creating additional tensions within organizations.
Geographic and Cultural Contexts
Women defenders working in different geographic contexts face varying levels of community support and resistance. Urban-rural divides affect access to resources and support networks. Cultural expectations and traditional gender roles can either provide support systems or create additional barriers to effective human rights work, depending on the specific context.
Reimagining Interventions
- Collective Care Frameworks
The dominant narrative of individual resilience has proven insufficient and often harmful in our context. While personal strength matters, the expectation that defenders should simply “toughen up” ignores the systemic nature of our challenges. We must move toward understanding resilience as a collective property, built through mutual support and shared resources rather than individual fortitude.
- Building Sustainable Support Systems
Sustainable support systems require intentional design and consistent investment. These systems must transcend traditional organizational boundaries, creating networks of care that can withstand individual burnout and organizational challenges. In my experience, the most effective support systems combine formal institutional mechanisms with informal community care practices, acknowledging that different defenders need different types of support at different times.
- Organizational Integration of Wellbeing
Wellbeing can no longer be treated as an afterthought or luxury in organizational planning. It must be woven into the fabric of how organizations operate, from budget allocations to program design. This integration includes regular mental health support, flexible working arrangements, and explicit recognition of care work as essential to organizational success.
- Creating Safe Spaces for Vulnerability
The development of safe spaces where defenders can express vulnerability without fear of judgment or repercussion is crucial. These spaces allow for authentic sharing of struggles and challenges, breaking down the culture of invulnerability that often characterizes human rights work. In my observation, organizations that create such spaces demonstrate greater resilience and adaptability in the face of challenges.
Strategic Adaptation
- Flexible Advocacy Models
The traditional approaches to human rights defense must evolve to meet current challenges. Flexible advocacy models allow organizations to respond to changing circumstances while maintaining their core mission. This adaptability includes developing multiple pathways for impact, creating distributed leadership structures, and building capacity for rapid response without exhausting resources.
- Cross-Generational Support Networks
Building bridges between different generations of defenders strengthens our collective capacity. Experienced defenders bring valuable insights from past struggles, while newer activists bring fresh perspectives and innovative approaches. These networks facilitate knowledge transfer while providing emotional support and mentorship that can help prevent burnout.
- Sustainable Funding Mechanisms
The development of diverse and sustainable funding sources is crucial for reducing organizational stress. This includes exploring alternative funding models, building reserve funds for organizational sustainability, and advocating for funding practices that recognize the importance of organizational wellbeing and staff care.
- Psychological Safety Nets
Creating robust psychological support systems requires both preventive and responsive measures. Organizations must invest in regular mental health support, crisis intervention resources, and long-term trauma healing programs. These safety nets should be accessible to all staff and recognize the varying needs of different team members.
Cultural Transformation: Rest as Revolutionary Practice
- This is a big one for me. It is about redefining productivity.
The concept of productivity within human rights work needs fundamental reimagining. True effectiveness comes not from constant activity but from strategic engagement and thoughtful action. Rest becomes essential for maintaining clarity of purpose and sharpness of strategy. This redefinition challenges the narrative that equates busyness with impact.
- Collective Rest Practices
Organizations must develop collective approaches to rest that normalize periods of recovery and reflection. This includes establishing organizational sabbaticals, regular reflection periods, and shared rest practices that allow teams to recuperate together. Such collective practices help prevent the guilt often associated with individual rest.
- Transformative Rest
Rest serves as more than mere recovery – it becomes a space for transformation and renewal. During periods of rest, defenders can process experiences, develop new insights, and imagine alternative futures. This transformative rest enables deeper strategic thinking and more sustainable approaches to human rights work.
- Rest as Power
Understanding rest as a form of power shifts how we view inaction. Well-rested defenders make better decisions, maintain clearer boundaries, and demonstrate greater resilience in the face of challenges. Rest becomes a tool for sustaining long-term engagement rather than a sign of weakness.
- Integration of Rest Ethics
Organizations must develop explicit policies and practices that protect and promote rest. This includes creating clear boundaries around work hours, respecting time off, and measuring success through sustainable impact rather than constant activity. Rest ethics become central to organizational culture rather than peripheral considerations.
- Community Care Through Rest
Building communities that support rest requires intentional effort and mutual commitment. This includes creating support networks that can maintain essential work while individuals rest, sharing resources that enable rest, and collectively challenging the culture of martyrdom in human rights work.
In conclusion, the exhaustion plaguing Zimbabwe’s civil society isn’t accidental—it’s a systemic challenge that requires intentional response. Recognizing this reality is crucial for developing effective strategies. Future interventions must address both the systemic causes of exhaustion and its manifestations, while building new models of human rights defense that prioritize sustainable activism and collective wellbeing.
Reimagining civil society work in this context requires acknowledging that mental health isn’t peripheral to human rights work—it’s central to its effectiveness and sustainability. The path forward demands innovative approaches that protect defenders’ wellbeing while maintaining their capacity for impactful accountability work. By embracing rest as a revolutionary practice, we transform our approach to human rights defense and build more sustainable movements for social change.
Keep up the good work Janet. You have come a long way. The road is long and the climbing steep but we shall overcome
This is a well written article, full of truth telling. I salute you Jay for writing this and i associate with almost all the points here, that is why i started cognitive behavioral therapy for professional women.