Zim Political Opinion: Source, Recipient and a Return to Class.

By Takura Zhangazha*

Acquaintances of mine are in the regular habit of asking me a broad but utterly unanswerable (emotive) question.  Every other time we meet up they may ruefully and after a couple of potshots at the current government ask, ‘What is the future of this country?’  I have an answer that I now also routinely reply with, but I will give it at the end of this write up. 

The more significant point about my acquaintance’s question is that they ask it because they already have answers to it.  Hence in conversation, they already gives their generally cathartic take on the country’s economic state of affairs, offer one or two pro-business and pro-$US solutions that should, in their view, also protect their interests.  Both by way of the ability to make enough money to meet the requirements of increasingly consumerist lifestyles. 

And it is is all fair enough.  The political economy of Zimbabwe is such that opinions and perceptions of opinions really matter.  The key question is whose perceptions are these that appear to have a fairly strong grip on the urban and rural political psyche?

I mention urban and rural opinion as distinct because they indeed are somewhat different perception spaces.  Not least because of communications’ infrastructure but also the historical (and colonial) view of the urban as the more sophisticated and knowledgeable about what goes on in the (post-colonial) nation-state. A situation that still obtains in our contemporary times due to the urban centric reach and geographical preference of information communication technologies (ICTs), inclusive of mobile telephony and social media. 

Despite the geographical dimension to political opinion in Zimbabwe, that is to say, the urban citizen perceived as more enlightened due to its historical proximity to technology and the (former) colonial center than the rural, we will still need to answer key questions of current/contemporary motivations of the same.

Public and popular opinion in Zimbabwe is largely driven from a perception of what would be ‘knowledge’ or ‘education’.  Those that shape it in the immediate are publicly expected to be the most educated.  This is as historical a point as it applies to the contemporary. 

In the immediate post-independence era (the 1980s to be specific), it was the most educated, coming from the hearts of the global superpowers who were to determine what popular/populist public opinion would be.  Those educated in the global north and east at the height of the cold war would return home to become cabinet ministers or high level civil servants at the expense of those that were coming from the direct experience of the liberation struggle.  Marechera would write about this in his little known novella, The Black Insider. 

Hence we eventually had to contend with the relatively convoluted idea of the ‘one party state’ as well as economic structural adjustment as a battle of our public intellectuals come political leaders as they demonstrated their ideological loyalties.

The key point here was that there was an intellectual source for assumptions of progress as perceived by the public.  By the time we were into full-fledged economic liberalization via ESAP, again the public opinion followed that of the educated in the 1990s.  Until times became politically desperate and organized labor began to talk back to the received wisdom of the free market.  

Counter narratives to the latter emerged based on the fact that ESAP was not working and these came again from the intelligentsia.  Except that it was in two respects.  Labour had built its own intellectuals who were left leaning and who had begun to influence working people’s perceptions of what should be national progress.  Mainstream intellectuals from business, the clergy and academia realized this growing influence and worked closely with labour to help form the intellectual framework for the formation of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) as an alternative to the free market oriented ruling Zanu Pf party.  

This alliance was however a short lived one of equals.  Business and the clergy with the passage of time became the primary drivers of public opinion output for the mainstream opposition, particularly during the years of the inclusive government. 

Zanu Pf was however to counter the progressive direction of the new opposition by reverting to the populist intellectual recess of nationalism and historical injustice.  But at the same time attempting a Chinese version of state capitalism tallied with radical indigenization of the economy.  This however required instruments of propaganda and the threat of force for it to be reluctantly accepted as ‘progressive’. 

Therefore between 1999 through to 2017 the two dominant strands of how to influence public opinion were pre-dominantly motivated by the mainstream political parties and their apparatchiks.  And as the years toward the coup-not-a-coup got closer, both influencers were increasingly similar in their ideological tone, reserving their most acerbic attacks on each other to personalities as opposed to ideas. 

And this is where it becomes important in relation to our contemporary circumstances.  While in the past public opinion was influenced by a clear political partisanship (the party you belonged to or voted for determined many opinions) . 

In the period after the 2018 ‘harmonised’ election, public opinion has been largely motivated by considerations on the state of the national economy.  In populist terms this has also had the personalized dimension of considerations on who is best placed to solve what we consider to be the national economy’s fundamental problems. 

The solutions proffered by a majority of public opinion leaders (clergy, academics, columnists, political leaders) have invariably had one model as a solution.  This being a neo-liberal framework where whatever the government does, it must return to the global political economy by opening up the Zimbabwe to economic market forces. 

I know that this already sounds sophisticated beyond measure. But so do those that push this as the one size fits all solution to Zimbabwe’s socio-economic woes.  So it comes in cultural packages.  That is, it comes with relative sophistry and an assumption at a sense of belonging to the best thinkers, best systems in the world.  For example, talking about monetary policy would immediately necessitate a comparison with how the American Federal Reserve Bank works.  Or the touting of joining of the Rand Monetary Union immediately evokes images of a Zimbabwe that is similar to South Africa. Or even just a sense of belonging to our southern neighbour.  Basically it couches its language in that of a promised land (hence to this day we are faced with the tragedy of multitudes of young Zimbabweans and Africans migrating to the global north)and also fundamentally of envy of other countries' economic policy.  All without historical suppositions as to how those countries that appear to be the best have poverty and violence riddled underbellies. Or how historically they may have arrived where they are on the backdrop of historical injustices motivated by colonial conquest. 

And in doing so, seeking more a proximity to the already globally wealthy minus an understanding of their or more importantly our own local context by trying to see 'cause and effect' beyond political personalities in power or in opposition. 

This is why when the Mnangagwa government seeks a ‘return to normalcy’ via the ‘ease of doing business’ the language is essentially bereft of contextual meaning.  Instead it is lauded in the capitals of the globally powerful because it means we are an open sesame to global capital. 

So if you ask the question who is now shaping political public opinion in Zimbabwe, the answer is that it is hardly us as a majority of Zimbabweans. Far from it.  We are complicit in singing the tune of an already established system, neoliberalism, which though we are in deep envy of, we regrettably do not fully understand.  Hence sometimes a majority of us will insist on privatization of public services such as health, education, transport or water provision largely because we admire the system too much or we choose to be ignorant of it. Or we revert to our materialistic and hedonistic individualism mode ( so long we still have the capacity to cater for our personal as opposed to collective needs).   In most cases, the former is true.

We know there are alternatives, but we choose to ignore them.  Even when critical comrades in the global north are not only giving examples of these alternatives but also starkly warning us of the inherent dangers of neoliberalism, austerity and racism.

But back to my acquaintance’s rhetorical question about where is this country going?  I always answer it with a quote from Thomas Mapfumo’s song (and album by the same title), ‘Varombo kuVarombo, Vapfumi kuVapfumi’ –direct translation- ‘the poor to the poor- the rich to the rich’.  If probed further I state that Mnangagwa’s government is on a determined path of ‘reclassifying’ or a return to class society proper in Zimbabwe. 

First by way of lifestyle (your income should be reflected in your lifestyle- under the guise of fighting corruption).  Secondly and more importantly by rewarding capital and the rich with societal exclusivity as in capitalist societies.  Even if austerity affects the poorest, they shall remain in their place in the long term.  And not only is it probably government's hope that not only will they remain there but that they will come to accept it.  All in the vain hope that they too shall eventually make the ‘middle class’ by 2030. And the most paradoxical statement/joke of the year may just be 'it will work, it will not work.'

*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity (takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com)