Individual Life Experience as National Consciousness in Zimbabwe.

By Takura Zhangazha*

Our Zimbabwean national consciousness is a debate we continuously need to engage and debate upon.  Even if a decent number of us may consider it relatively abstract. But it must be had all the same.  With the key question being “What really informs contemporary Zimbabwean national consciousness?” By way of history, generational interactions and the multiplicity of its progenitors in the present. And as a result in the future.

I am also aware that this is a Fanonian question and that a decent number of comrades may imagine this to be part of the past than it is of the present.  Let alone the future.

What is increasingly in vogue however about this national consciousness question in our post independence era is that initially it is no longer popularly considered to be an urgent one.  At least not universally. We have sections of our society that may still hold it dear in their own recollections of it during the liberation struggle. Others still who consider it within the context of the first decade of independence with feelings of exclusion.  And those who at the turn of the first independence decade largely frame it within the context of economic failure.

Moreso in the present day where the latter perceptions of pessimistic perceptions affect organic  national consciousness. And I will return to the issue of organic national consciousness toward the end of this brief write up.

As is historically appreciated, at the occurrence of our national independence ‘national consciousness’  was popularly collective. Both by way of struggle and life experiences. Almost every adult Zimbabwean was clear on the reality of the necessity of national independence and its long term collective goals. 

This became somewhat ethnically charged with the tragic occurrence of  Gukurahundi which was eventually temporarily calmed with the signing of the Unity Accord between our then two main former liberation movements, PF Zapu and Zanu Pf. A development that surprisingly remains underplayed in the contemporary.

What was clear in the first decade of independence was the fact of former liberation movements actively leading the narrative on what would be considered progressive national consciousness.  In this, regrettably they failed even before the end of the decade that was the 1980s.   Their one party state endeavor floundered at the hands of not only the trade and student unions but more significantly because the Zimbabwean population had no particular interest in it. 

And this lack of public interest was based on downturns in the national economy after the introduction of the IMF and World Bank inspired Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP).  With the latter it became clear to the Zimbabwean public that there was an ‘us’ versus the ‘political elite’ situation in the country.  Hence there were so many hit protest songs during the 1990s.  From Thomas Mapfumo’s ‘Mamvemve’ and also Leonard Zhakata’s “Mugove” and many other songs that came to reflect a shift away from a collective understanding of what can be a progressive national consciousness.

Or by the time the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions  (ZCTU) escalated questions of what can be the newer national consciousness through its performance legitimacy questions beyond the combined ruling Zanu Pf party’s nationalist ethos.  And going one further by founding a working peoples party in the form of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) with the deliberate intention of changing the discourse on national being and national consciousness from focusing solely on liberation but also national economic wellbeing. Initially for the collective national good.

What has happened in the interceding years after the turn of the first decade of the millennium has been completely astounding.  Based on both the expansion of economic globalization and austerity or Fanonian desires for recognition by the Global North. And as fundamentally personally experienced. 

And this is the key point to consider that Zimbabwe’s contemporary national consciousness is now derived as a result of the foregoing on the basis of what it is that we have individually experienced. Whether as we grew up or fell from material favour.  We have a very angry national consciousness and sentiment.  And as with such emotive perceptions of who we may think we are, this emotion is generally easy to take advantage of.  Or to hold onto.

If you lost an urban shelter during Operation Murambatsvina or were a victim of politically motivated violence and survived, it is least likely you will ever forget about it. Let alone change your mind about the ruling party. 

Or if you suffered the end effects of the 2008 inflation while growing up and are now an adult it is within your memory to refuse to accept those that you have been told all along caused it.

Even after the 2017 coup-not-a-coup, assumptions individual Zimbabweans may have had of what change meant forgot that national consciousness essentially is always collective and not individual.

In our contemporary context it is now clearly individualistic and not collective.  Even as we seek the comfort and acceptance of those that appear to be more collectively conscious than we could ever wish for in the global north. To the extent that they create fortresses around their continents and generally have no qualms about deportations and setting up asylum bases on our own African continent.

What I have however learnt is that we need to regain a more organic sense of national consciousness that cuts across generations of Zimbabweans.  We cannot wish away our own history as at the same time we cannot forget our own lived realities. But even our personal life experiences should never defeat the collective well-being of our society.  After all, geographically, politically, economically and generationally, it is one country.

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