ED’s New Establishment Project: An Attempt at Elitist Permanence.

By Takura Zhangazha*

When President Mnangagwa made overtures for ‘national dialogue’ to his political rivals in the 2018 harmonized elections, it was understandably viewed as some sort of political grandstanding.  Not least because the mainstream MDC-Alliance opposition, has not participated in the same while holding out for its own terms to be accepted. Even though of late it has been making overtures of reconsidering its overall position as reported in the mainstream media.  

   

The opposition political leaders that have been part of the national dialogue have now agreed, in tandem with Mnangagwa, that their outfit is to be called the Political Actors Dialogue (POLAD) whose programmatic intentions are to be publicly launched on 17 May 2019, according to media reports. 

Mnangagwa however has not stopped there.  He has also decided to get some special advisors through what he has called a Presidential Advisory Council  (PAC).  This is comprised of what have been referred to as prominent and successful Zimbabweans largely drawn from the private sector to advise and assist the president ‘in formulating key economic policies and strategies that advance Vision 2030.’  The latter being one that sees Zimbabwe being a ‘middle income’ country/economy by the same year. 

Beyond PAC and POLAD, Mnangagwa has also engaged big players in private capital (not just its associations) on not just price increases but also by actively encouraging and promoting private-public partnerships in line with his neo-liberal economic policy dubbed ‘ease of doing business’.

While the media has remained slightly elusive, government has also sought to engage it from a business interest angle to ensure that while a few editors and journalists of mainstream media platforms may not support him, the media owners are in step with the intentions of government.  Not only by way of a broad pro-business economic policy but also the caveat of opportunities for media ownership expansion into either radio, television, digital and print media subsidiaries. 

I have cited these four distinct categories of political parties (POLAD), PAC, private capital and the media because Mnangagwa’s engagement of all of them points to one hidden but probably anticipated creation of what can be called an ‘establishment’ (and not a new dispensation).  That is, a set of permanent political actors that will symbiotically work together to maintain their preferred status quo that benefits them mutually.

I also first learnt of this term from the excellent book by British journalist and activist, Owen Jones, titled, ‘The Establishment and How They Get Away with It’.  For Jones the establishment is comprised of powerful groups that need to protect their position and manage democracy to ensure it does not threaten their interests.  In doing this they are guided largely by the ideological precepts of neoliberal capitalism. 

While Mnangagwa’s intentions at establishment are not so nuanced, it is apparent that it would be one that is founded on the key ideological common ground of neoliberalism, i.e the ease of doing business while assuaging international expectations at the observation of human rights. 

The general unsaid objective is to give each of these players a place at the table of the state.  Not just in way of electorally determined government, but more how to be recognised as having a right to be seated at the table.  The point is however not to upset the apple cart.  Or quite literally overturn or smash the dinner plates through an understanding of a shared neoliberal functional framework and specific rules thereto under the aegis of the ‘ease of doing business’. 

Some might argue that I am seeing conspiracy theories here.  The truth of the matter is that this is a basic reading between the lines of political events as they unfold.  And yes, there is a new emerging political/economic establishment in Zimbabwe.  It has Mnangagwa’s ruling Zanu Pf (and the security services) as the power broker, opposition political party leaders as appeasable ceremonial players, private capital/business owners as beneficiaries of a ‘market motivated’ political benevolence and the media as purveyors of the establishment’s interests to the public. 

The intention is to create not just a new hegemony (dominant political, economic and cultural system) but also an ideologically permanent one.  That is, they intend to create a political system in which all other options are off the table except for neoliberalism, an ideological system that requires elite cohesion (inclusive of opposition political parties, all of which, you guessed right, are neoliberal, even if they don’t know it). 

The key question that should be answered is, ‘Will it work?’  It probably will not and by default. But what is certain is that Mnangagwa is definitively going to go all out and try through using largely the carrot and occasionally the stick method. That is why even more than ever, there is an urgent need for an alternative ideological trajectory in Zimbabwe.  For now that alternative  is non-dogmatic,  contextual democratic socialism.

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

Zim Workers Day 2019: Re-Linking the Idea of State with Working People

By Takura Zhangazha*

Zimbabwe’s biggest labour federation the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) has given the theme for  the 2019  Workers Day commemorations as ‘We are at a Crossroads! Unite, Fight  Neo-liberalism and Austerity.’

This is a radical theme to say the least.  It is also directly ideological in that it immediately challenges the free market economic reform policy trajectory of Mnangagwa’s government.  Even if by assertion of intent. 

While we wait to hear in their May Day and after addresses what the leaders of ZCTU will outline as an alternative, it is however an important departure point.

Not that there has been no previous outline of alternatives from labour or human rights civil society.  There are a couple that come to mind.  These are for example the 1999 resolutions of the  ‘National Working People’s Convention’ which apart from tasking ZCTU to form a working peoples party, also outlined social democratic values as the panacea to resolving the country’s economic challenges.  There is also the Zimbabwe People’s Charter which distinctly sought to give a holistic and ideological outline of how the country should be governed on the basis of democratic more leftist ideological values.

These are but a few examples and there are others, though these may have been less political-economic in outlook.  Or would have confirmed neo-liberalism and austerity in the same way as is being pursued by the current government.  Or with a specific focus on seeking a change of personalities/implementers of the same free market ideological template in order to suit the interests of global financialised capital.  Or follow post-cold war assumptions of an ‘end of history’ and falsely believe that capitalism as being beyond defeat by the working class and poor.

But this is not to say that capitalism as represented in the contemporary by globalized neoliberalism is down on its knees in anticipation of annihilation.   On the contrary, it is sometimes when it appears at its weakest that it turns around and reinvents itself. The global financial crises of 2008 being a case in point.  Either with false populism or with the direct use of force (in a majority of cases- ditto the re-emergence of political roles for the military via coups-no-coups).  Even if theoretically we would still be wont to argue in Marxian terms that it remains confronted by its own contradictions. 

So when the ZCTU boldly asks the people of Zimbabwe to unite against austerity, it is not a simple matter.  It is a serious indictment on the broad economic policies being undertaken by the government. 

As however is often the riposte from our social and mainstream media commentariat, there will be and already are derisive comments about how Zimbabwe no longer has a ’working class’ let alone the industry to sustain it.  These would be fair comments only if we did not know the ideological context from which they were coming from.  Those that would argue as such are in most cases active sympathizers of free market economic policies and would prefer in most cases a return to the past of either a minority run economy  or the disastrous years of economic structural adjustment (ESAP). The latter in our contemporary case being what we can now safely refer to as 'ESAP 2.0' thanks to government's commitment to austerity.

This is probably what they would rather prefer instead of learning from the past and re-imagining working peoples centered national political economy.

And for the purposes of clarity, it is important for us to understand what it means to be a worker in Zimbabwe, the socio-economic (hegemonic) challenges that workers are faced with, and how to strive continuously to overcome these same said obstacles.

To begin with the first, being a worker in Zimbabwe is to be part of what ZCTU has already described as the ‘working peoples of Zimbabwe'. And this relates largely to class- namely a working class that now includes not just the formally employed and unionized worker, civil servants’ associations/unions, but also the peasant farmer, the farm worker and those that are regarded to be in informal trade as ‘vendors’.  

But in defining workers as broadly as outlined above, it is also significant to understand that at each turn the free market and its advocates in the form of state actors and private capital have also been working hard to weaken the ability of working people to organize themselves either in the form of strong unions and associations.  Or at least for working people to be able to believe in the importance and utility of collective action and above all collective solidarity. 

This is where the second point in relation to the socio-economic challenges faced by the working people of Zimbabwe is significant.  In this, increasingly high levels of individualism and a diminishing understanding of the common public good beyond one’s own pocket has meant acts and understanding of solidarity have not only become infrequent but are also expected only to be undertaken by private capital. And only in the most extreme of cases such as natural or man-made disasters.

This is also despite what should be the political-economic reality that it is the primary responsibility of the state to look after its citizens.  

And this immediately points to another socio-economic challenge faced by workers. That of being essentially left on their own.  Where the state is supposed to be the guarantor and provider of social services, again, it has outsourced this to the private sector and shows no sign of changing tact. This is at the heart of neoliberalism and austerity. An intention to almost do away with the state save for in pretense at regular elections/ democracy and retaining control of state violence/force (security services).  All the while leaving workers salaries to be determined by the ‘market’ together with prices of other basic commodities that are essential but unaffordable to workers’ livelihoods. 

The final consideration is how to ensure that this new call to challenge austerity and neoliberalism by ZCTU is not lost to populism.  An immediate strategy would be for the working people of Zimbabwe to define the alternative as clearly and in as apeople centered a way as possible.  Not in a dogmatic way where we insist in an ideologically puritanist framework but a contextual one that takes into account historical workers struggle events , documents/declarations but also steers clear of the abstract rationalizing of poverty that comes with neoliberalism.  

And these new frameworks as informed by history and the present, need to reach out to young workers and Zimbabweans to understand the democratic value of having a people-centered state that gives everyone a fair, equitable chance and start in life. Despite their parents or other forms of inherited wealth. All with a firm understanding that in the final analysis we are all equal in the state and before the state. A state that should be founded as it was at national independence on social democracy at minimal ideological correctness and at best organic democratic-socialist national consciousness. All of which were betrayed by a revolution that, as Andre Astrow wrote, lost its way. 

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

Zimbabwe @39: A Return to the Source and a Liberatory State.

By Takura Zhangazha*

The number of years since our national independence may increase but its historic meaning is never lost.  And that is as it should be.  No matter one’s political or religious views, our national independence, coming as it did after years of revolutionary struggle is definitive, liberatory and organic to our national consciousness. 

That the person who became the first Prime Minister of the republic, Robert Mugabe,  was violently ousted by the still ruling Zanu Pf party does not make independence any less significant.  It never belonged to him nor to his party.  Independence will always belong to the people of Zimbabwe in their diversity and in their progressive political consciousness. 

And the people have been through a lot.  From Gukurahundi, through to Economic Structural Adjustment (ESAP), repression of opposition politics, a populist fast track land reform programme (FTLRP)  and a sanitized military coup, Zimbabweans remain exemplary on the African continent.  Specifically in relation to their ability to still try and etch out an organic path to economic and political freedom.  All the while retaining a peculiar consciousness of history and our generic struggles against repression.  From the periods of colonialism, through to the attempts at a one party state and further attempts at suppressing a workers movement led opposition. 

In the 39 years we have been somewhat free of settler colonialism we have almost seen it all.  Our national responses to the calamities that have befallen us could have led to worse situations but they did not.  We did not go to war.  We did not ask for liberal intervention from a benevolent but rapaciously predatory West.  Indeed we lost lives needlessly under Zanu Pf’s rule and watch for political reasons.  We also lost livelihoods at the behest of the neoliberal direction of the same ruling Zanu Pf party.

In some instances we have been referred to as ‘resilient’ for expedient, comparative and convenient journalistic purposes.   What is more reflective of our reality is that we suffer but we continue.  Not necessarily on a revolutionary path but taking all lessons learnt to heart.  By default we are no longer as organically political but we seek new ways to better our existence.  Most times with great impatience and less with an understanding of posterity as a political function and value.  And regrettably sometimes we seek more political saviours than we seek pragmatism in dealing with our contemporary  challenges.

What is probably required is the Cabralist concept of a ‘return to thesource’ of national consciousness in relation to our independence.  Not in a dogmatic manner but more to understand what those that came before us, those that waged liberation struggles in one form or the other intended for our country to become.  And how to link the same with contemporary developments not only in Southern Africa but also the African continent and eventually the world.

This essentially entails that we reflect more ideologically on our current national state of affairs outside of the populist personality hue that was bequeathed us by Robert Mugabe and his ruling party.

So, for example, we should query the role of the state in relation to its ability and capacity to deliver social welfare of its citizens regardless of class, race or ethnicity.   This entails a review of how the state engages global (colonial) capital in order to better the lives of the people.  The current template being used by the Zanu Pf government is a negation of the anticipated liberatory role of the state mainly because it seeks to make the state subservient to global (colonial) capital and the global (colonial) free market. 

Moreover we should work toward a state that guarantees equality not just on the basis of civil rights, but economic ones.  And these economic rights are not just the rights to jobs and a narcissist individual culture of consumption.  Instead these should be economic rights to access health, water, transport, education and general social welfare support. 

Even more importantly is the perpetual question of ‘generational praxis.’ It is one that cannot be solved via ‘schools of ideology’ or religious political proclamations.  We need to ensure that we pass on the knowledge of struggle to younger generations not as dictat but as an organic understanding of our history.  In this, we need to understand that dogma no longer works.  Young Zimbabweans want solutions that they not only understand but consider directly relevant to their personal and collective experiences.  So passing on struggle knowledge is not a lesson in history, it is a lesson in the past, present and future. A lesson that ensures that despite the conformity that is sought by social media, we do not lose ourselves in a global community that largely still ‘others’ Africans.

Indeed it has been 39 years of national independence. The passage of time and occurrence of negative events does not however take away from the significance of national liberation.  Warts and all.  Again, we suffer, but we continue. Consciously.

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

Zimbabwe’s Version of Disaster Capitalism, Couched as Resilience

By Takura Zhangazha

A local Zimbabwean artist, Dereck Mpofu, recently released a song called ‘Mweya wechiZimba’.  Even though the title of the song may suggest it to be religious, it is upon listening to it, far from being so. 

Instead it is a satirical song that applauds with humour how Zimbabweans are now almost able to survive any calamity that befalls them.  Or where you hear of someone who, for example, has ‘farmed in the desert’ he/she is likely to be Zimbabwean, jokingly sings Mpofu.

Apart from laughing with sad trepidation at the lyrics (and also appreciating the instrumentation), the song also made me think a little bit on how sometimes we occasionally refer to ourselves (Zimbabweans) as resilient.  Or again as referred to by Mpofu, ‘survivors’. 

And this, with the hindsight of how those still around to tell any tale, may be somewhat true.  Only in an allegorical/ symbolic sort of way.  Because it is only those that actually survive an ongoing economic catastrophe, a cholera outbreak, a natural disaster such as a cyclone that live to tell tales of survival. 

Of late the term 'resilience' has started popping up in government or non-state actors public statements.  This is especially with regards the national political economy.  The official government economic policy of ‘austerity’, which is actually neo-liberalism, has been accompanied by propagandist statements such as 'no pain no gain'.  And a call for Zimbabweans to suffer a little bit more in order to get to a neo-liberal and elitist 'promised land.' 

The state and private capital have joined hands in a way that has created a dominant political and economic elite who intend on determining public perception as to what can be deemed progress.  Hence at every turn, government has courted the private sector to assist it with the fundamentals of dealing with either natural (cyclone Idai) or man-made (cholera outbreaks) disasters.  

And given the urgency of these disaster situations, we may generally overlook the significance of this strengthening relationship between those who have political power and those who have money/private capital. 

There has already been a consortium of private companies (including, you guessed it, Econet Zimbabwe) that are leading a reconstruction programme for Chimanimani and Chipinge as announced via full colour double page adverts in the local print media. 

On the face of it, the intention may be noble but it would be very correct for us to analyse the structure and impact of such private sector led investments at such a large scale.

All with the immediate permission of the state/government.

And to do so we must always undertake a comparative analysis of other disasters as they have occurred in different countries.  Where books on the same are available we must read and again learn to comprehend what exactly to make of an amorous relationship between the state and private capital.

For this, I turn to Naomi Klein’s seminal work on the Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.  In this book Klein gives numerous examples of the devious hand of private capital in collusion with neo-liberal states/ governments to profit from natural or man made disasters.  From Haiti, New Orleans, through to Iraq, Klein outlines the exchanges of tenders, money and the immediate forcible removals of peoples from disaster areas to make way for new forms of enforced gentrification and privatization of state capital. 

To quote her at relative length from an article that appeared in the Guardian UK newspaper in mid 2017, titled ‘ How Power Profits from Disaster’ she writes, ‘After a crisis, private contractors move in and suck up funding for work done badly, if at all. Then those billions get cut from government budgets.  Like Grenfell Tower, Hurricane Katrina reveled a disdain for the poor.’

This is potentially what appears to be emerging in the aftermath of the devastating after effects of Cyclone Idai.  The corporate scramble for recognition for having donated goods and services to the disaster areas does not occur out of intuitive charity as it did with individual Zimbabweans.  Corporates always have vested interests.  And this is what we should query.

Our queries must however be established on our preferred form of direct and accountable assistance to the victims of a national disaster.  With three clear principles.  Firstly that the state must take an independent and people centered lead in providing post disaster reconstruction and assistance.  This, in order to ward of direct profit motives by private corporations that may seek to win state supply and procurement tenders or alternatively gentrify/privatize Chimanimani and other directly affected areas. 

Secondly, corporations and their aid must be subject to independent and direct scrutiny with key accountability and transparency measures put in place to track not only the donations but also the potential for crony aid in return for state favors.

Thirdly and finally, we must come to terms with the reality that neo-liberal approaches to addressing disaster situations may give the impression of solving the immediate problems but may in the final analysis, cause the further disempowerment of ordinary people in favour of corporate/private capital.  While we may be caught up in the tragic and emotional conundrum of the natural disaster that has been Cyclone Idai, and even as we applaud immediate interventions of various stakeholders, we must keep an eye open for our own newer version of what quite literally would be individuals/corporates/state seeking to profit from a natural disaster. Or as Klein calls it, ‘Disaster Capitalism’.

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

Robert Mugabe’s True Legacy: A Nasty, Materialist and Populist Individualism.

By Takura Zhangazha*

There have been a number of books written on Robert Mugabe in his many leadership roles.  As a leader of a guerrilla movement/army, as a prime minister, as a president and even from a western perspective as a complicated/sophisticated dapper dictator.  And make no mistake, many more will be written about him.  As an ousted or disgraced long ruling repressive leader and also as a belatedly glorified Pan Africanist. 

And it is the assumptions of future published perspectives on Mugabe’s long rule that are of interest. What I am however concerned with is the lived realities of Mugabe’s legacy.  And by legacy here I am not inferring something to be celebrated but more something to be understood.

In the aftermath of the coup that toppled him, Mugabe has largely been holed up in his Borrowdale mansion and giving the impression of a bitter self-righteousness.  He emerged publicly at least twice.  The first time to endorse the mainstream opposition presidential candidate in a long drawn statement and questions and answer session with the press. The second time to vote for the latter in Highfields, Harare. 

I am sure he has had other interviews and publicized conversations with visiting leaders from African countries.  Or his wife as his spokesperson has occasionally put out the same.  Together with his still many apologists and runners either in remnants of the G40 faction he spawned or on social media and in the mainstream opposition. 

Beyond the immediacy of his ouster from power, we are however reeling from the effects of his leadership of the state.  And there is little that is positive that can be objectively discerned from it or assumed to be as a result of his own individual leadership effort.

Having ridden on the noble but painful cause and struggle that was the liberation struggle, Mugabe managed in his at least 37 years in power, to undermine the values and principles that the liberation struggle was motivated by.  

While conveniently embracing socialism as his then ruling party’s ideological foundation, he was to actively undermine it in practice.  Foregoing the democratic values of socialism, he went on to attempt a violent clampdown on his then main opposition rivals in the form of Joshua Nkomo’s Pf Zapu under the pretext of preventing a civil war in the southern parts of the country.  An attempt that has come to be infamously called ‘Gukurahundi’. 

After co-opting the same opposition, Mugabe was to try to establish a ‘one party state’ which was eventually rejected via the activism of his former colleagues in the struggle but also due to the fact that it was no longer popular in Southern Africa after Nyerere had abandoned the same in Tanzania. 

What was to prove colossal in his intentions at retaining power with global western power endorsement, was his economic about turn to embrace neoliberalism/ capitalism as advised by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.   

Where he had previously had some sort of obligation to collective and people centered economics he abandoned this to begin his worship at the altar of free market economics.  Contrary to the values of the liberation struggle.  And this was the beginning of the unraveling of our national consciousness as had been established by the liberation struggle.  It quite literally became about Mugabe and his hold on power while serving the interests of global capital. 

It was labour that was to try and rein in Mugabe’s neoliberalism by first of all recalling the values of the liberation struggle and using the same to challenge an elitist political economy.   The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) and its allies in the students and womens' movements as well as human rights focused civil society organisations went on to establish what was then referred to as a working people’s party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). 

Mugabe in populist turn decided to by embark on what we officially know to be the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP. All in a vainglorious and individualist attempt at retaining the loyalty of war veterans and the peasantry.  While at the same time echoing long abandoned principles and values that had motivated the liberation struggle. 

It worked, albeit briefly.  Mugabe’s neoliberal economy could not sustain the FTLRP and it expectedly reeled under not only sanctions but also the fact that its populism was never going to make it revolutionary. 

That it happened and has been said by Mnangagwa’s government to be irreversible does not make it any less violent or populist in serving Mugabe’s intention at retaining power.

Even by the time he was forced by SADC to form an inclusive government with the opposition, Mugabe’s particular version of individualism in politics would not allow him to even consider his own succession.  In his own party nor for posterity. 

And where we fast forward to his ouster from power, his particular streak of individual political stubbornness eventually led him to be hoist by his own petard. He quite literally fell on his own sword. Even if he didn’t see it coming.

It is a combination of Mugabe’s inability to see into the future or beyond himself and his deliberate abandonment of liberation struggle socialist democratic values as accompanied by neoliberal/free market economics that led Zimbabwe to its current parlous state. 

The end effect of this on our own society has been catastrophic.  Not only just in relation to our one time critical national consciousness as informed by the liberation struggle but also to our own individual perceptions of what should be a progressive society.

Mugabe’s long rule has the unenviable legacy of having created a highly individualized, materialistic and populist society.  One that perceives progress by the day and rarely considers collective posterity.  And with a default admiration of neoliberalism and ideological austerity.  Mugabe, via his ruling party Zanu Pf have taken us into the trap of ‘millennial capitalism’ where a combination of free market economics, superstition (religion), gambling and individualism have stymied the collective national consciousness.

There are many ways to regain a critical collective national consciousness.  The first step to doing so is to identify what caused its demise.  Historically and in the contemporary, that begins at identifying Mugabe’s real legacy and role in getting us to where we are as a country. Where we are saddled with a nasty/violent, materialist and populist individualism.

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

A Dying (Public) Intellectualism in Zimbabwe.

By Takura Zhangazha*

The late Masipula Sithole taught me (and many others) how to perceive and think about our country, Zimbabwe’s, politics.  Not only formally via the university lecture room but also more significantly via informal engagements with him, long after we had graduated from the Political and Administrative Studies (POLAD) degree  that most of my own university peers (R97s) regarded with great derision.  And I promise you, we were never favourites in University of Zimbabwe (UZ) social and future scenes.

Another venerable lecturer at that time was A.M Kambudzi  now working for the African Union, who taught us, at a specific time in the late 1990s and in-between John Stuart Mill motivated lectures, that there was no need for a Chicago pie franchise in the heart of Harare, Zimbabwe.  Let alone that the packets had a Chicago City skyline emblazoned on them.  In Harare.

Or the late John Makumbe who because of his albinism and much to the humour of the UZ Students Union  ‘galas’ would always refer to himself as ‘the only white man from Buhera’.

And it would be he who was to teach us, in a very abrasive way, what local government, in its democratic sense should be. 

Then there was also Bertha Chiroro who took us through the motions of understanding ‘State, Politics and Society’ in what was then referred to as the ‘Third World’. And how she taught us that we should always think, intellectually at least, beyond our own borders.    

Or Solomon Nkiwane giving us a run down on ‘international relations’ and Zimbabwe’s difficult placement in the same.  Albeit briefly. 

In between the suspensions for engaging in student activism we learnt that there was always a greater cause and struggle as to how we perceived our and how we were perceived by our own society.  As learnt from the above and below cited public intellectuals of our ‘wannabe intellectual’ heyday.

By the time I met the legendary Morgan Tsvangirai (personally and subsequently in the company of Hopewell Gumbo, Nelson Chamisa, Phillip Pasirayi, Innocent Mupara, Ellam Gozho, Artwell Ruzivo under the aegis of the Zimbabwe National Students Union ((ZINASU)), I had already encountered the likes of Brian Raftopolous (whose surname we couldn’t quite pronounce), Lloyd Sachikonye both of whom were at the then reputable Institute of Development Studies which is now a computer centre.)

 And also Ibbo Mandaza , the late Prof Sam Moyo and believe it or not Joyce Kazembe (ZEC deputy chairperson as at present) as the key persons of what was then the Southern African Political Economic Series (SAPES) Trust. 

And the enlightening feminism of Prof Patricia McFadden,  Everjoice Win, Nancy Kachingwe and Prof Rudo Gaidzanwa. 

However we never understood what public intellectualism in the late 90s Zimbabwe meant to the future of the country. If anything at all. And in this it turned out to be phenomenal.

As student leaders of that time, we knew that our limited intellectualism was also associated with our proximity to opposition politics.  As led at that time by others who would prove to be legendary in their own right.  

The likes of Cde Munyaradzi Gwisai and Tafadzwa Choto (who taught us Marxism/Trotskyism), Brian Kagoro, Tawanda Hondora (who liberated us from student leadership suspensions at no legal cost), Tendai Biti (who dabbled in representing private capital and labour- an amazing feat if ever anyone asks you), Arthur Mutambara ( who addressed us at the University of Zimbabwe public transport rank prior to the 2000 elections and eventually joined the 2009 short lived government of national unity as deputy prime minister) and Prof Lovemore Madhuku (who initially had a people centered approach to human rights activism).  They may not have understood it at the time, but they were organic intellectuals. And as Castro says, “ History will absolve them.’

What we didn’t know, at that time as sons and daughters of lower class peasants and workers was that it would somehow and eventually become our turn to represent and protect the intellectualism of younger generations of activists that would come after us. Not only at the University of Zimbabwe but in the many other universities that would be spawned in the name Zanu Pf’s expanded access to education.  In the process we forgot about the lived reality that was the liberation struggle. By birth, by design and by default. 

Nor did we have (enough) access to the internet to understand our own African placement in contextual global history.

Where we consider public intellectuals of contemporary times we can list the likes in our time of  Prof Gatsheni- Ndhlovu (an ardent decoloniality intellectual, if he can at all be labelled as such), Hayes Mabweazara (with a firm understanding of media freedom in Southern Africa), Eldred Masunungure (who incidentally taught me an undergraduate course on Introduction to Political Science ), Tendai Murisa (a passionate proponent of the democratic developmental state), Nhamo Mhiripiri, Memory Chirere who pointed me toward literature in English)

The primary challenge however is how to move this commendable intellectualism out of the university lecture room to lived experience by young Zimbabweans.  Or to at least attempt at occupying social media and challenging ‘echo chambers’ of populist public opinion. 

Especially where it concerns the very necessary fact of Fanonian democratic national consciousness.  Pitfalls and all.  In all of its criticality.

And contending with the reality that we have arrived at a period in which being a public intellectual is less appreciated in Zimbabwe . Even in Hegelian terms where it is only done to pursue ‘recognition’. Or in what would personally be preferably Gramscian intellectualism. And we wont even mention the Cabralist assumption of ‘class suicide’ of the revolutionary intellectual. Despite formal academic qualifications or a lack thereof.

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

Amending Zim’s Constitution Again. The Necessity of 100% Proportional Representation

By Takura Zhangazha*

The Zimbabwean’s government recently announced that it is preparing to amend the national constitution.  This was announced via the Minister of Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, Mr. Ziyambi who informed the Zimbabwean public that government in following up on the recommendations of the Monthlante Commission was seeking, as reported by the mainstream state-controlled print media, to ‘deepen democracy’ in an arguable Second Republic. 

All this, when taken into our contemporary political context, in the aftermath of post electoral violence that has had the end effect of creating a binary international perception of whether Zimbabwe has indeed moved on from Robert Mugabe’s repressive regime, makes one pause for clearer political thought.  Even if it further delays the full international  re-engagement intentions of Mnangagwa’s foreign policy.  A policy which the latter does not appear to be giving up on.  Just yet or as easily as the opposition would assume. 

The government, according to Ziyambi, is “really under pressure to make sure that all the legislation to do with the ease of doing business to support our TSP and Vision 2030 is in place much earlier.”

They therefore intend to amend the constitution to introduce new roles for chiefs, a more technical definition of ‘devolution’ (which will remove MPs from provincial councils) and also consider introducing the constitutional office of leader of the opposition in parliament.  All before year end 2019.

It is however important to crosscheck what appears to be the fundamental motivations to these proposed constitutional amendments.  The first and perhaps most obvious is that the Mnangagwa government is prioritising re-engagement with what it considers the ‘international’ (read as Western) community as was the case with the July 2018 general election.

It is seeking to rid itself of what it has referred to as an inherited ‘pariah status’ from Robert Mugabe’s leadership of the country. Both in Africa and the rest of the world. 

Essentially it would like to get rid of ‘politics’ (however it defines it) as an albatross around Zimbabwe’s economic neck.  So it will concede ‘democratic reforms’  for almost any form of international recognition or (financial) support. West or East, with the former valuing more the private capital side of things than any assumptions of revolution outside a neoliberal framework.  And the latter following suit with greater trepidation about the ‘liberal’ side of ‘neoliberal’. 

And that is what any current proposed amendments to the national constitution are about.  They are not about the people of Zimbabwe.  But about how the state (and state power) must be repositioned in order to meet the pre-requisites of a rapacious global private capital. And how it will not brook any challenges to its hegemonic dominance, including crosschecking whether incumbent regimes pay the utmost respect to private (land) property rights. As of colonial old.

Secondly, there is the issue that the Zimbabwean government has to grapple with domestically. This being its ability to harness a local/domestic performance legitimacy question as derived from its neoliberal economic trajectory.   Its ‘no pain-no gain’ economic policy mantra does not endear it to the Zimbabwean populace.  Instead it establishes breeding ground for very legitimate dialogue, debate and dissent.    Demonstrations included.  Even if it blames hidden hands or ulterior political motives on the part of those that would organize them. 

In order to handle this delicate political situation around questions of its political performance legitimacy, the government has decided to engage in what it calls a ‘national dialogue’.  With the help of some political party leaders and a sprinkling of churches, secular civil society organisations (including private capital /domestic business) and a newly appointed Presidential Advisory Council (PAC), it intends to bring everyone together regardless of political affiliation (bias) in order to move the country forward.  What it will not brook are questions of its legitimacy or any queries of the same around the national president. 

Even if one were to argue that the latter point is fair enough, the primary challenge is that it does not quite solve anything.  It instead perpetuates political polarization.  As of old or as a return to the highly personalized politics of the Mugabe and Tsvangirai.  Where political personalities matter more than political institutions.  Let alone political loyalties based on not just charismatic leaders (or a lack thereof) but ethnocentrism, mafia like political economies being more important than contextual or organic ideological considerations for a people centered democratic future of the country.

But then again we deal the hand we are dealt.  And we have to find solutions that are beyond the immediate.

We will, in the contemporary turn of events, never be fully able to comprehend the November 2017 ‘coup-not-a-coup’.  Especially the marches to oust Mugabe as permitted by Zanu Pf’s military political complex with the direct support of even our now nascent opposition political leaders.  Nor will we come to an immediate factual understanding of the role played (and continuing to be played) by disparate pro Mugabe Zanu Pf factions in assisting the opposition in a last gasp attempt at post coup-not-a- coup electoral power.  That is now for historians to explain with hindsight.  

What we do know, is that any talk of a raft of proposed amendments of the national constitution as proposed by Mnangagwa, are meaningless for whatever would remain of our country’s democratic future if they do not introduce a 100% proportional representation system to the executive, parliament and local government.  Not in order to mimic South Africa’s representative democracy electoral system but to ensure the diversity of our own.  Meaning, that our national contextual perceptions of what democracy should mean would be enhanced by a more representative and more diverse parliament and local government political system.  And with it, a more attendant, professional mainstream media .  As reflecting both the past, the present and a potentially even more democratic future.

The counter argument will easily be and become that we must accept what is considered to be incremental (slow but sure) change.

The changes to the constitution being planned by Mnangagwa’s government may appear to be somewhat progressive but regrettably they play more to an international gallery over which we have no control.  By way of how it perceives us, how it may manipulate us and how in the final analysis, we would be asking, ‘who dunnit?’

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