By Takura Zhangazha*
On occasion
you get asked the awkward question, “What do you believe in?” In most cases this is a question that relates
to religion and religious affiliation.
With an assumption that religion is largely Christian in Zimbabwe the
question also has connotations about which version of the same religion do you
follow. With the caveat question, “Why”?
You rarely
get asked about any other forms of belief. Or derided if you indicate that this is a private matter that requires
no personal intrusion or judgement.
You may
also get asked, on rare occasions, your political beliefs. In relation to which party you support, and
again also, why? Most Zimbabweans choose
to wait for their day at the ballot box and depending on the result and their
happiness or sadness it is easier to discern after the electoral event. But again without having to explain why they
hold specific political beliefs if they can be called that at all.
In all
likelihood, when it comes to political beliefs, these mutate into “political
passions”. Motivated more by either
personal experience or by following fashionable populist political opinions as
they occur. Or as they relate to
available electoral leadership positions (council, Parliament and even the
Presidency). They are rarely about any organic ideological persuasions. At best and only by default they mirror and
mimic culturally popular ones that will for example laud big business while at
the same time not realizing that a majority of our major global or local wars
stem from the cultural, political and military industrial complex as controlled
by global superpowers.
But this
does not just apply to political ‘passions’ as it were. It also applies to personal and materialist
desires. The car, the house, the job,
the individual family recognized ladder of success that one has achieved
contributes to your own understanding of “passion”. Or things that you are willing to either
personally fight for in multiple social conversations or attend an online
convoluted and neoliberal motivational speech about. Even if the latter ‘motivation’ is as
racist and ‘mimicry’ driven as they come.
It is when
you combine both your abstract beliefs and mutative passions that they then
become functional. And I use the term
“functional” in a very sociological and socio-psychological sense (crosscheck
Emile Durkheim on this one.) That is
when both of these, your abstract religious or other superficial beliefs and
passions serve to make you a somewhat ‘normal’ human being.
Where one
who shares these beliefs and passions through the gaze and cultural practice of
those that you either value the most or those that you envy in relation to
their, again, assumed measurements of societal success. Be it in your local church, where your kids
go to school, what your work boss recognizes/affirms about you and your salary
or what your extended family values the most about your capacity to get things
done. Even what your friends think is
the best societal practice about being successful. Not only material success but the way in
which you should think, act, behave and interact with those that are like
minded.
In my view,
Zimbabwe is now what one can call a “functionalist” society. This is in the social, political, economic
and probably socio-psychological sense.
It is
almost as though everything must sort of fit together in a specific way. Your beliefs (mainly religious), your passions
(mainly emotive political/ politicized and economic status anger) and how all
of this leads one into a functional mode of existence as a Zimbabwean. In a comparative sense. That is, checking out what it means to be as
successful as your next door neighbor including how they again, have a car or
multiple urban or other properties while affording to go private medical
centres. Even at the height of the then Covid 19 pandemic. Or oddly enough, which church they go to and
its concomitance with material success.
It is a functionalism
that creates a specific national ‘survival’ culture. One that focuses more and more on the
individual and less and less on collective well-being. Almost like arguing that
anything we are doing, we are doing for our “own” children while forgetting that
the same said “own” children will grow up and be part of a collective society,
let alone a country with those that we will have neglected.
There are
therefore at least two issues that we need to reflect on about our long duree “functionalism”
as Zimbabweans. Indeed historically we
have been through the worst of economic and political times with many pitfalls
that have shaped our reaction to not only the state but to matters concerning
our individual (and individual family) well-being. We have had to live almost in a survival
mode that has brought forth some of the most individualistic values of who we
think we are or we can be as a country. From the rural to the urban, the middle
to the working class and from the educated to the uneducated or even to those
with proximity to the political and capitalist elite.
We need to
shed off the proverbial skin of “societal functionalism” and return to a value based
progressive societal pragmatism that makes each life important and gives a fair
opportunity for all. Especially where it
relates to basic social services such as education, health, transport, water
and energy.
And
finally, we need to understand that we all have specific belief systems. While we may want them to be individually self-definitive
about our lifestyles and desires, unfortunately if they become “blind passions”
they return us to being “functionalists”.
People who do not think beyond what they feel or who do not feel beyond
what they consider their own personal experiences.
*Takura
Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity (takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com) _
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