Saturday 19 January 2019

Zim’s Fuel Demos: Whose Class Consciousness/Contradiction is it Anyway?


(With Reference to Nyerere, Cabral, Fanon and Lenin.) 

By Takura Zhangazha.*

It ostensibly started in the poorer parts of  Harare and Bulawayo.  At least according to viral social media posts.  Both as representing events as they occurred as well as how they were/are generally preferred by those with smart phones. 

Fact, rumour and conjecture intermingled as the day wore on from mid-morning to midday Monday 14 January 2019 and its eventual deluge of late afternoon rainfall (at least in Harare).By the time the state shut down the internet and its off shoot, social media next day, Tuesday 15 January 2019, all of the major cities were eerily quiet.  People had decided to stay at home for probably two key reasons: the safety of their families and also the shock at how the government had decided to add proverbial fuel to the fire through now widely reported disproportionate use of the army against civilians. 

At the heart of it all was what is referred to as the ‘ghetto’.  Also representative of Zimbabwe’s urban ‘underbelly’ or urban poor working class (formerly/informally employed and unemployed).  Or where an urban majority who would be most affected by the Mnangagwa governments recent decision to double fuel prices at least in terms of the local unofficial currency (bond notes/RTGS/mobile-money).

The effect was almost immediate.  Local transport fares soared and public opprobrium was the national temperament.   For varying reasons that sociologists and political scientists will historically and eventually come to explain.

In the mainstream print media, the versions of what was to come and what has occurred almost had a religious tone.  For some private newspapers, the fuel price increase had all the makings of Zimbabwean version of ‘armageddon’.  Or a dystopian end to the Zimbabwean state as we (still) know it.  Even if ephemerally.

For state controlled media (print and electronic) the editorial lines of their stories sought more to defend the neoliberal policy decisions of Mnangagwa’s government.  With the added attempt at giving policy direction as to potential inquiries into how fuel imports were being distributed or corruptly repatriated across our national borders.  While all the time blaming the opposition for the violence. 

One thing that was apparent however in the midst of the demonstrations (and stayaway) was that they eventually had their epicenters being the ‘ghetto’.  And that where they were at their most violent, it all occurred in places with the highest urban proximity to poverty.  Both historically and in contemporary reality. 

Hence the jokes on social media about people in more affluent suburbs not knowing what’s happening in poorer parts of town. 

Sadly the minister of state for national security in the presidents office has already confirmed the needless and tragic loss of life.  And there are and will be many unconfirmed reports of injuries more as a direct result of the actions of the state or those of protesters.

The reality of the matter is that there are class dimensions to these events.  And the state with its violent apparatus (security services) is very much aware of this.  Not only in the moment but also in the long term.   Hence the evident political approach of the ruling party not viewing the urban working class as more important than the working/ farming peasant.  Let alone panicking about the former.  

To talk about class in our context however is no longer ‘fashionable’.  Nor is it preferable for many an opinion maker.  Mainly because the latter are largely schooled in viewing our national political economy from what is now referred to as an ‘entrepreneurial’ perspective.  One that prioritises ‘ease of doing business’ theoretical hand me down approaches from the global north. Or relatively abstract motivational books and bio-pics of the leaders of global private capital (Davos anyone?)

Hence the term the ‘people’ invariably refers to the lower economic strata/class of our society.  

It is important to point out that in our historical context, political perceptions of class, politics, the economy and progress have had clearly Marxist leanings. A trajectory that was long since abandoned in the late 1980s (ESAP) via the ruling party and in 2005 via the mainstream opposition MDC (still)  labour backed party. 

And in the case of the current public disaffection with the fuel price (with its knock on effect) this would have been a Leninist moment.  That is, an organized grouping of committed radical leftists taking advantage of the situation to announce and effect a much larger political programme of state takeover. On ideological grounds.  With the support of a disaffected and war/poverty ravaged proletariat.  In our specific case it did not and will not happen that way.  Even though no one seriously expected the equivalent of Lenin’s ‘ State and Revolution’ or ‘ What is To Be Done’ seminal essays prior to the contextual fuel price increases.

Where we take a Fanonian perspective to the recent urban mass action, there would be strands of similarities in the latter’s analysis.  Especially in relation to what he then referred to as the propensity of the post-colonial state for violence with equal but ill-equipped counter fervor and violence on the part of what he referred to as the  lumpen proletariat.  Coupled with the evident betrayal of what was an original nationalist liberation project by the post- independence elite which fails to deal with what Fanon referred to as a ‘racism of contempt’ with regards to how it deals with global capital or the global north.  

Our own local national political and comprador bourgeoisie has however not turned its back to what Fanon refers to as ‘the interior’.  It has survived at least politically by manipulating and subduing the interior's (rural Zimbabwe) historical consciousness to the extent that the same ‘interior’ appears to be acting of its own volition in support of the former. Even if the center (urban) is volatile as in our current situation. 

The current government for all its fawning to global capital will never get the investments it wants and as a result it will fail in its neoliberal economic model that it touts as a panacea.  The same goes for the opposition which is largely comprador bourgeoisie in nature but rides on a vague form of personalized but ideologically similar nationalism that Fanon abhors even as as he emphasizes the supremacy of the organic political party. 

In Nyerere’s instance, the clarity was always in the placement of African countries in the global scheme of things.  Both from a Marxist and Pan-African perspective.   He understood how global capital intermingled with globalized economics worked or at least was going to work.  And the clarity he perpetually sought was one that required context.  Hence his little cited phrase, ‘the mechanisms of democracy are not the meaning of democracy’ said at the twilight of his meaningful political career.  A point that is increasingly apparent as a result of the collusion of state actors and private capital who more or less do not expect elections and other democratic processes to change global neoliberal economic policy.  

Even if these electoral processes are held as regularly as they are in a majority of states across the world.  And this is where in part the irony of class consciousness or a lack of it emerges in our recent mass action local context.  The collusion between the state and private capital (local and global) has led to a class consciousness on the part of those that would be urban working people that sympathise with principles of the free market and access to the United States dollar.  There is little differentiation of class interests.  Instead there is a merger in consciousness- across the class divide- but in favour of the narratives of the global bourgeoisie and its local comprador counterpart. It is ironic beyond measure that the demands of a person in the affluent residential area are similar to those of someone in a dirt poor part of a city. Adn that the movers and shakers of demands for the US$ or even more neoliberalism  are generally not the ones that bear the brunt of state sanctioned violence.  

Where we examine Cabral’s approach to class, there is merit to his postulation that what he refers to as the ‘petit/petty’ bourgeoisie playing a prominent role in national liberation (ditto Zanu and Zapu).  He adds however (and I quote him extensively here)  that ‘no matter the degree of revolutionary consciousness of the sector of the petty bourgeoisie, called on to undertake this historical function, it cannot free itself from an objective reality: the petty bourgeoisie, as a service class (that is not directly involved in the process of production) does not have at its disposal the economic bases to guarantee the taking over of power for it….And it never could, since political power (the state) has its foundations in the economic capacity of the ruling class.  In the circumstances of colonial and neocolonial society, this capacity is retained in the hands of two entities: imperialist capital and the native classes of workers’

In our national context, Cabral’s assertions point to a petty bourgeoisie that seeks to give ‘free  rein to its natural tendencies to become bourgeoisie.. that is to deny the revolution and necessarily subject itself to imperialist capital.’

 This is why the Zimbabwean government insists in the midst of an economic crisis on attending the annual get together of the transnational neoliberal elite at Davos.  And even on the opposition side, despite its origins in labour or the classes of workers (urban and rural), is not prepared, for now, to commit the metaphorical ‘class suicide’ that Cabral refers to.  Or to demonstrate a capacity to ‘remain faithful to the principles and the fundamental cause of the struggle.’  In what Fanon refers to as a ‘liturgical sense’. 

So it is fair to ask ourselves the key question in the immediate aftermath of the recent urban mass action in Zimbabwe, whose 'class consciousness' and contradictions are we dealing with?  
*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity (takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com)

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