Abstract:
The general understanding of a government is that of an artificial entity, created to escape a state
of nature characterised by chaos and lawlessness, and which has been given a variety of mandates
towards the people it governs. This implies that at the inception of such a government, there are a
set of obligations and duties that it owes to the governed, who in turn have obligations towards the
government itself. The thesis argues further that because the human person intrinsically and
naturally craves for freedom, its lack thereof must be compensated through the benefits of being
part of a civil state. If not, then it is more desirable to go back into the state of nature. This thesis,
then, is an investigation into the intricate nature of the obligations and duties that the government
and the governed have towards each other in the successful functioning of a polity. The thesis
argues that the formation of a government is founded on a contractarian basis, from a social
contract from which the obligations of both the government and the governed are derived. Arguing
from this position, for this contract to work, both parties must abide by their obligations and duties
which is the thesis’ conception of justice. An observation is made that power dynamics in the
social contract between the government and its citizens are tilted in favour of the government,
which has the potential to flout the terms of the contract since it controls coercive force. In the
event that the government fails to fulfil its obligations and duties, thereby creating a travesty on
this principle of justice, the thesis argues that the governed are under the moral imperative to abjure
their obligations towards the state in an act of civil disobedience. In this light, the thesis argues
that civil disobedience should be enshrined in the social contract as one of the measures to even-
out the imbalance of power between the government and the citizens. Together with other
measures to keep the government in check, the study argues that civil disobedience is one of thebest recourses to ensure that the shortcomings of the government are identified and promptly
ameliorated. Through a comprehensive textual analysis and synthesis of literature on civil
disobedience and the social contract, the thesis uses the Southern African country of Zimbabwe as
a case study to demonstrate the veracity of its central arguments.
