Zimbabwe, Africa , TikTok and Behavioral Digital Capitalism

By Takura Zhangazha*

So the American Congress wants to ban a social media application known as TikTok.  It is owned by a Chinese based company but as with global financialised neoliberalism also has owners on American financial shores.  It would appear the major problem with this social media platform is the fact of its ownership by a company based in a country (China) that does not permit it in its own geographical territory but is relatively popular in the global west/north. Especially with young people.

It would also appear that there is no major political dispute on this matter between either the Congress and Senate of the same country on this matter.  Unlike on health care or abortion and in rare occurrences, the war in Ukraine.  Or the genocide in Palestine. 

There is however some sort of consensus between at least what can be considered the legislature and the executive (presidency) on the matter of the social media application that is Tiktok. Mainly because TikTok is considered a Chinese threat in one cultural, political and economic form or the other to American global (or at least) internet and intelligence hegemony.  

I recently had no idea what this Tiktok application was or is.  Like many others it is downloadable on Google Play Store or it’s competing opposite Apple.  And probably among many other internet based platforms. 

The American Congress has now recently passed a draft law, subject to the President of the United States (USA) Joe Biden’s approval/signature it would make for any American shareholders to either buy off the company in country or it will be shut down in the near future.  Or else the platform would be banned in the USA and probably with a similar follow up ban within the territories of the USA’s allies

This all, again, being based on the assumption that the TikTok platform is being used to influence young people’s minds via short, fashionable and entertaining videos that arguably target their own age groups. Without being algorithmically controlled from the Global North but the Global East.  Albeit in what is evidently an increasingly multipolar world and with its alleged multiple proxy wars.  Not just politically but also culturally.

So I also popped over to Zimbabwean TikTok online to check it out with a little bit of trepidation. The latter stemmed from the fact that I had always been told its about young people and their emerging issues and consciousness in short self made video clips. 

While asking myself about what this was all about, I noticed that the platform appeared relatively harmless, Diaspora focused and morbidly about lost loved ones (funerals) in our Southern African context.   

What then struck me is that it is now part of our new digital normal for young Zimbabweans.  At least for the young urbanites who have access to it and also platforms that easily link up with it such as WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook (in that sort of particular order). 

So when you join/ subscribe to TikTok the most striking thing is that fact of  young cdes subscribing to it.  And then not asking any questions about who owns it.  Or why there is what would appear to be an initially minor global power (China/USA) dispute about it.  Then you realise, ah it’s about a desire for actual recognition of their existence by many of our young cdes.  They may either believe in their false immortality (this is after all the age of Netflix where everyone is a superhero) or only a few can become millionaires and mimic the Global North rich by purchasing not only cultural or political icons, mimicking them (as they did with Obama) but also by straddling a false, ahistorical national consciousness.  (This is a debate for another day)

One that links up with a materialistic religiosity in which belief, wealth and simplicity of existence are intertwined to no particular benefit or avail for the betterment of collective society.  And not to sound like a broken record our labels of individualism have probably been as high as they are now.  “Angova mazvekezvake” (individualism) as Thomas Mapfumo once sang.

What remains astounding however is what I refer to as the formal hypocrisy of the global media and its repressive attendant Global North hegemony.  Almost as though you would need to remind Africa and in tandem with other Global South cdes that whatever happens to Earth, it happens to all of us together.  Be it in the proverbial political (kingdom, religious or apocalyptic) realms.

To assume free expression is not universal is to reverse progressive history. In our African context, we must remain true to this value.  We should feel no pressure to follow a Chinese or American example on this issue.  As Nyerere once wrote, and I am paraphrasing here, “ In Africa, we sit under a tree, until we agree.” 

The proposed ban on Tiktok in the USA is reflective of Orwellian tendencies that assume some animals, technologically, are better than others.  And that we, in the Global South, can still not tell the difference. But in reality we can, we will and we will eventually remember Amilcar Cabral.

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

 

 

   

 

 

Discussing Ideology and Mimicry in Zimbabwe (Again)

By Takura Zhangazha*

Zimbabwean political conversations over the last twenty years have generally become predictable (black or white, either-or) 

They are conversations that we have chosen and in a greater majority of cases, given.  They are also somewhat highly emotive about what should either be a political or economic way forward.

In the emotional output there is also always comparative analysis with other countries  and how ‘things’ are done there.  From our neighbour South Africa, through to the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Europe and in some cases Russia and China as models to follow or in some cases emulate.

In most conversations the big issue is usually about money, individual wealth and infrastructural development.  And these are conversations that are happening beyond physical spaces as enabled by social media and its hegemonic (cultural/perception) influence. Some of the debates also ridiculously refer back to the settler colonial era and its racist modernization programme for the then Rhodesia.

No doubt these are important conversations. Even more when they are about the immediacy of individual livelihoods and the role of the state.

A role that in the same debates is placed in electoral frameworks and language about who to vote for.  Or who we should have voted for.  While at the same time ignoring the fact of the passage of time between the same said electoral processes.  As well as coupling it with departure from the state for assumedly better state pastures that arguably meet individual livelihood needs. 

The elephant in the room however is how we view the role of the Zimbabwean state. Especially from an ideological perspective.

Given the fact that as Zimbabweans we have been classified as highly literate by not only our government but also international organizations, we tend to be highly opinionated.  Not only about various issues such as religion but more significantly our national politics.  

And at very personal or individual levels. It becomes a mere coincidence that we find ourselves flocking with like-minded individuals and create default political or social collectives. 

The question that emerges is why have we been like this in the last twenty or so odd years.  

The easy answer is the historical fact of Zanu Pf’s hegemony since independence.  It was key in shaping our contemporary national consciousness.  Its shift from socialism to neoliberalism with Economic Structural Adjustment programmes (ESAP).  

The latter introducing the country’s population to an unprecedented hedonism and consumerist culture that quite literally has broken down many of our common and progressive societal values.  Even after the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) that began in 2000.   

The FTLRP’s greatest irony is that while it was predicated on righting a colonial wrong, it appears to have created a new economic elite that have no qualms about mimicking the colonial Rhodesian state.  It is a mimicry thatģ is evidently inorganic.  It does not belong the people nor does it reflect the values of the liberation struggle.

It’s a mimicry that fits into global narratives as determined by global financialized capital.  A development that points to the fact that in Zimbabwe we no longer have our own national ideological outlook on our political and economic realities. 

We are over-emphasising our desires for recognition for  doing the right thing.  Yet we have not clear idea about what is the right thing that is being referred to.  In our economics we function like we control the Federal Reserve Bank of America. In our politics we assume electoral politics should be like those of the global north.  And in our social life we assume religion will solve everything.

Where we return to the elephant in the room, we are faced with an ideological deficit in at least two respects.

The first being an evolving detachment from the people centered values of our liberation struggle. We no longer function as a collective whole that looks out for the societal well being of the other.  And this in the name of mimicry of other societies yet we should know about where we came from and who we intrinsically are and should be. 

The second element has been a Fanonian ‘pitfall of national consciousness’.  Since the year 2000 our own narrative has been of a failed state and anticipating national failure no matter what happens. Or unless there is a change of government and subsequent recognition by the global north.  The reality  of the matter is that it does not work like that. And as Amilcar Cabral once said, “No matter how hot your water, it will not boil your rice.”

Our national dilemma is learning to believe in ourselves again.  And to do so with the people.  A matter which requires renewed ideological clarity on not only the role of the state but also what it can and should enable.  Without abstract mimicry.

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

The Political Economy of Zimbabwe's 2024 Drought

So it is now official. Zimbabwe is faced with a national state of disaster because, like a significant number of countries in Southern Africa we will have an El Nino induced drought.  The current President ED Mnangagwa made an executive announcement this week to the same effect. 

Essentially outlining that this is no small matter and assuring us of his government's commitment to enabling hunger and food shortage mitigation measures that will not only involve the state but also reach out to the private sector and international food aid donors. 

His state of the nation address may be taken lightly by some  but it is an extremely serious one. Especially for those that experienced previously devastating droughts such as the one when some of us were teenagers in 1992-93 agricultural season and we learnt one or two things about what ‘food for work’ meant in the Chishawasha valley of Mashonaland East while at boarding school. 

We did not have social media or mobile phones but the national mood was somber because it was both experienced at our young ages and also real when we had to eat what we referred to as ‘Kenya’ maize meal that we were told was donated from the Global West. 

 We were also told that it was normally fed to farm animals such as cattle and horses. 

But we were too hungry to ask too many questions about it.  We ate it in boarding school, we ate it at home (urban or rural) and other comrades ate it in supplementary charitable or state sponsored feeding schemes.  But we learnt very quickly what a national drought was. 

Now we have another major one that is correctly a major national and regional concern.  I cannot speak or write for comrades in Malawi or Zambia where national state of disasters  have already been declared. 

It is however clear that  this is a nationally important matter that must be looked at beyond what the state president has announced and what the international aid agencies or the media will argue about how to handle the emergent humanitarian climate change induced challenge that is the national drought.    

There is however a political economy to the drought. One that we cannot allow ourselves to evade.   

And it is in three parts.  The first being that of the directly political and its impact on national politics.  The sitting government and the ruling party are obliged, at least democratically, to lead the country through this national state of disaster induced by the drought.  While what remains of the national political opposition (official and unofficial) are expected to hold the latter to political account on the same important national matter. 

This means that the political dynamics of our already existent drought, as announced by the state president, are also essentially about political capital.  Which ever way you want to look at it.  They are now keenly about what in political science is referred to as ‘performance legitimacy’. That is, “Who can feed the people?’

The second element is the fact of what is also referred to as ‘disaster capitalism’.  There will be private capital players (businesses) who will deliberately seek to profit from this national drought disaster.  And there are many.  From grain millers, to what I now refer to as ‘water hawkers’ in both urban and rural areas.  Some of them linked to the state.  Others are just basically private opportunists who for example sell bread, maize and other subsistence commodities.  And they will also speculate on stock exchanges about what will happen next either with currencies or minerals because of the drought and an officially declared state of disaster.

The third and final strand is what has been referred to in the Global North as the Non-Profit Industrial Complex.  These are players that will trade on the international philanthropic sentiment to show us how bad the drought situation can become, or is.  They will raise money, purchase the relevant subsistence commodities but at the same time retain within their same said Global North capitals, the majority of the funds raised. 

In the final analysis, we are faced with a monumental task to feed the people of Zimbabwe. Indeed while it may be sensationalized on social media or alternatively fit into a given but incorrect narrative about Zimbabwe being a failed state , the drought is a serious national matter for the country. It is not abstract.  But sadly, it now means Zimbabwe’s 2024  political economy and planning around it at state, private capital and individual levels has significantly shifted.

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