Zim’s Awkward Politics of Pursuing the International Gaze.

By Takura Zhangazha*

Political struggles require recognition beyond their own contexts.  This southern African side of the world it is an historically given fact that liberation struggles against colonialism had tremendous solidarity from activists and eventually some governments from the global north and east.  This solidarity and direct support came only after a much coveted ‘recognition’ of the values and principles of the struggle. 

Liberation struggle movements of varying hue and colour were to compete for this recognition.  In Southern Africa, after the earlier independence of Ghana, Tanzania and later on Mozambique, the competition for recognition was particularly high and linked to the battles of global spheres of influence during the Cold War.  Rival liberation movements and their factions would go to Dar es Salaam to claim greater struggle authenticity to justify support and solidarity from Julius Nyerere’s government.  To be specific, Zimbabwe’s liberation movements, Zanu Pf and PF Zapu had a hard time of it competing to be seen as either the largest or the most radically committed to socialist values as defined by Nyerere, Khruschev ,Mao and Wilson.

In post independent Zimbabwe, while political party competition for recognition dissipated in the 20 odd years plus, it re-emerged with the demise of Zanu Pf party hegemony over the country’s politics.  The arrival of the then labour backed Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) brought this back into vogue. Again it pitted the global West versus the global East. And as of old, the leaders of these parties Mugabe and Tsvangirai, pitched themselves as the more authentic and therefore the more deserving of support.  The latter decided to go back to the rhetoric of the anti-colonial struggle and its then staunchest supporters in the form of SADC, the African Union, China and Russia.  The former decided to pursue those that would be allies of liberalism and democratization in the form of the former colonial power the United Kingdom and its allies in Europe as well as the then global superpower, the United States of America.

This seeking out of international support and or solidarity was and is as expected.  It does however have many consequences.  Some of them good, such as the eventual SADC mediated inclusive government of Mugabe and Tsvangirai.  Some of the controversial such as the imposition of sanctions on the country.  Some of them out rightly dangerous such as the at one time serious consideration by Tony Blair to ‘liberally’ invade Zimbabwe in similar fashion to the war on Iraq.

Where it comes to the coup-not-a-coup of November 2017, again central to our domestic politics was the international gaze and pursuit of recognition.  Either by way of global legitimacy or superpower anointing.  And those that removed Mugabe from power did not hesitate to explain that everything that would happen from thereon would be all about restoring Zimbabwe’s international legitimacy. This included the July 2018 harmonised elections whose presidential election results the opposition MDC Alliance disputed and continues to do so today. 

But Mnangagwa’s government did not hold back from this international engagement and legitimation despite this.  Embracing neoliberalism, going on a diplomatic offensive with SADC, the AU and global superpowers, outlining a legal reform agenda Mnangagwa has made it his personal mission to get this ‘recognition’.  While the opposition MDC Alliance has also made it its collective mission to find means and ways of undermining it.  Its almost like deja vu.

Where we fast forward to August 2019, on the eve of a SADC summit in Tanzania, the opposition has not let up on its counter recognition intention.  It organized a demonstration that it said was about the dire economic situation but the timing is obviously intended to put pressure on SADC.  The regional body, having already recognized Mnangagwa as a legitimate president also intends to pass on the rotating chair of its Organ on Politics, Security and Defence to him.  A big score on his part, an unpalatable state of affairs for the mainstream opposition. The reality of the matter is that SADC will not change its mind easily on the matter unless unprecedentedly pressured by one global superpower or the other. 

And that should be enough to save Mnangagwa’s blushes at the next summit of the AU or the General Assembly of the United Nations. 

The bigger issue that must always remain at the back of our minds is a very difficult and borderline semantic one.  We have to ask ourselves, ‘for whom are all these things/events/policies being done?’  The most skeptical answer is that its all egocentric, i.e the politicians do it for themselves.   Another answer may say ‘we want the return of the US$’. A testament to hedonism and the commodity fetish.

A more realistic answer is that this is increasingly done as a competition for recognition by global superpowers and global capital.  One either side of the political divide.  And with limited attempt at balancing the country’s contextual domestic issues with global or international trends.  It is as tragic as it is sad.

I will end with a relatively extensive quote from Amilcar Cabral speaking at the Tri-Continental Conference of the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America in Havana, Cuba as far back as 1966.  He explained in his ‘Weapon of Theory’ address to this historically important gathering of revolutionaries the following:

“When the African peoples say in their simple language that “no matter how hot the water from your well, it will not cook your rice,” they express with singular simplicity a fundamental principle, not only of physics, but also of political science. We know that the development of a phenomenon in movement, whatever its external appearance, depends mainly on its internal characteristics. We also know that on the political level our own reality — however fine and attractive the reality of others may be — can only be transformed by detailed knowledge of it, by our own efforts, by our own sacrifices. It is useful to recall in this Tri-continental gathering, so rich in experience and example, that however great the similarity between our various cases and however identical our enemies, national liberation and social revolution are not exportable commodities; they are, and increasingly so every day, the outcome of local and national elaboration, more or less influenced by external factors (be they favorable or unfavorable) but essentially determined and formed by the historical reality of each people, and carried to success by the overcoming or correct solution of the internal contradictions between the various categories characterising this reality. The success of the Cuban revolution, taking place only 90 miles from the greatest imperialist and anti-socialist power of all time, seems to us, in its content and its way of evolution, to be a practical and conclusive illustration of the validity of this principle.”

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

Heroes Day 2019: Ideals Overcoming the Individual

 By Takura Zhangazha* 

Annually in August, Zimbabwe remembers its national liberation struggle heroes.  And it is the correct thing to do.  This, despite arguments that the definition of a national hero has been politicized by the ruling Zanu Pf party to mean only those that were part of the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA) or the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA).  Or founding nationalists and activists of either Zanu PF and PF ZAPU.  

A view that was most stridently observed by former president Robert Mugabe when in a speech delivered in early 2013 he pronounced that those who were complaining of their leaders being denied national hero status were better off building their own commemorative shrines.

It was a statement which  left a sour taste in the mouths of many Zimbabweans.  This was mainly because of the narrowness of its import and its immediate indication of ‘exclusivity’ of hero status to the ruling party.  Even in death. 

Of late Mugabe’s successor, Emerson Mnangagwa has sort of gone on a different trajectory.  He has bestowed national hero status on some who do not fit into Mugabe’s previously strict criteria.  Luminaires such as musician Oliver Mtukudzi and even nationalist but by the time he passed was an opposition leader Dumiso Dabengwa come to mind.  Further to this Mnangagwa appears to have also ‘de-territorialised’ the Heroes Acre by accepting individual family requests that they bury the national hero at a place of their choosing. And not as is tradition, at the actual national heroes acre in Harare. 

It is an interesting development in the fact that it sort of depoliticizes defining a national hero.  Though this remains to a greater extent the prerogative of the president and the ruling party.  It also in contradiction to its purported intent, makes the actual Heroes acre remain exclusive to those that the ruling party prefers to bury there.

But I guess what is important is not so much where one is buried but the contribution to the liberation struggle or our post-independence national democratic public interest.  All of which can be measured in reality or inferred by popular public opinion. 

Because of the passage of time between the liberation struggle and the present, together with highly partisan perceptions of what it is a national hero, we tend to forget the actual struggle against minority settler colonial rule.  And its somewhat understandable.  National imaginations do not find new life in dwelling on the past. Especially in our contemporary times where we appreciate more the immediate than what occurred in order to found the nation that is called Zimbabwe.   Or in particular, we would not easily want to remember or acknowledge the immense personal sacrifice and bravery of those that took up arms in the 1890s and from the late 1960s-1980 against colonial repression.  And even those that we in those liberation struggle periods we were either temporarily defeated by and eventually overcame do not prefer for us to have long memories of the same.

So literature and objective cultural products about our struggles for liberation are becoming fewer and scarcer. Or are now limited to burial ceremonies and the disparaging of war veterans for their never ending demands on the state based on their own assumptions of the exclusivity of their personal sacrifices.  Ideally issues of the welfare of war veterans should have been resolved at least in the first ten years of our national independence.  But they were not and probably won’t be a for a while yet. 

All of these contradictions about hero status’ are however not reflective of the meaning of the liberation struggle in its own occurrence.  And this is the most significant point I wish to make here.  With heroes’ day we do not just remember individuals, we remember in particular the pain that was the liberation struggle in its fullness as well as its eventual necessity.  At that time.  While we now have the benefit of hindsight of this remembrance, where occasionally we may find fault with how the struggle may have been waged or who was more authentic than others in it, the essential point is to acknowledge the broad vision and mission of the struggle itself.  And to measure if indeed we are still focused on its people centered objectives that many took up arms for.

I will end with a bit of an anecdotal narrative.  I have known a number of former freedom fighters a bit personally.  Two are my blood brothers. Others were post independence development or democracy activists.  The most prominent of whom were Cdes Dzinashe Machingura or Cde Dzino as he was affectionately known. And Cde Freedom Nyamubaya who was also a writer and rural development practitioner.  In my conversations with all of them, they would lament the chasm between the ideals they were fighting for and the ambiguous and contrarian reality that they lived out after independence itself.  Not for themselves and their welfare. But in relation to the country as a whole. 

What I know is that this is the gap that we must fill and bring our country closer to the ideals of the liberation struggle from a reality in which we are walking in the opposite direction, away from them.

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

Virtue and Sophistry: Economy As the Superstructure in Zimbabwe.

 By Takura Zhangazha*

There were a number of by-elections in Zimbabwe over the last month.  One for local government in my rural home district of Bikita East in Masvingo province.  The other(s) for Parliament and local government in Lupane East which is in Matebeleland North province.  Both are rural constituencies in our first-past-the post parliamentary and local government electoral system.  The ruling Zanu Pf party won all of these by-elections.  The margins of Zanu Pf’s victories in both elections were comparatively not that high but they were victories all the same. 

Astounded opposition Movement for Democratic Change- Alliance (MDC-A) leaders and members blamed their losses invariably on having been caused by either their lack of funding from central government via the Political Parties (Finance) Act.  Or alternatively, the vote buying tactics of the ruling party.

Zanu Pf in turn claimed the victories as a testament of the voters’ understanding and support of president Mnangagwa’s austerity economic policies. 

Conversations elsewhere were lost in perplexity as to how Zanu Pf can possibly win by-elections at a time when prices of basic goods and services are going up. 

Even as finance minister Ncube announced a mid-term budget review annotated in Zimbabwe dollars for the first time in almost a decade while promising further austerity. 

What struck me was the fact of the contradictions of an assumed unpopular ruling party’s by election victories amidst a full throttle implementation of  an assumed unpopular economic austerity programme.  All the while disparaged by an assumed more popular opposition party that does not differ from a similar economic blueprint but only questions the personalities implementing it than raise any serious counter-ideological questions.   Not only among the latter's leaders and members but also their supporters and voters.

The contradiction and irony threw me back to my undergraduate studies days a the University of Zimbabwe and what I used to painfully consider as ‘false sophistry’.  And yes you probably guessed right, this would have been in reference to a political theory class  lecture on the Socratic dialogues. That is the battle of wits between the ‘Sophists’ and Socrates as outlined by Plato.  The Sophists (go ahead google them) believed more in the establishment of societal truth based on self-centered reasoning.  Socrates on the other hand believed in an arrival at what we would now controversially refer to as an ‘objective’ truth.  Or  a more thorough and long term understanding of 'virtue'. (And also as taught to me by Masipula Sithole of the University of Zimbabwe.)

Even though this may appear or seem ‘sophisticated’, the essential issue here is that we need to be more circumspect about what we want to hear versus what can be an objective truth.  An element that is quite hard to swallow for many a middle-aged and above Zimbabwean today.

The main reason for such a cognitive state of affairs is that there are certain things that a lot of us expect as a given.  Especially if we live in urban environs.  Electricity, running water, individual cars (not public transport) and the fuel that comes with it and having our children live better lives than ourselves, even in the immediate. 

This includes, for those of us that went to high school in the 1990s and state sponsored university at the turn of the century, an ingrained assumption that there is no alternative to free market economic solutions because we were witness to an individual, materialistic but short lived ‘economic boom’ under the then and now reinvented ‘Economic Structural Adjustment Programme’ (ESAP). 

So we all wanted cars (Mazda 323’s), a house in the suburbs (out of the ghetto), and children that would go to the ‘private’ schools we secretly envied.  We took on a ‘dog eat dog’ consumerist approach to our existence to the extent that we failed to anticipate the unsustainability of such a future in a post-cold war global economic order.  Especially if we perpetually ignored historical injustices and assumed that the most progressive way forward was to be part of the bandwagon of what then remained a minority run national political economy. 

The default position where we now come the contemporary economic situation  is that we have class based aspirations and expectations of a political economy that is not, at the moment, favourable to private and also state controlled global capital.  Or to put it a bit more simply, we are at the tail end of Samsung, Google. Facebook’s and Exxon Mobil’s expectations of what a ‘good market economics’ for an investor can be and should be.  Yet all the time we envy and yearn for that recognition across class and geography in Zimbabwe.  With the full knowledge that it is least likely we can be a Singapore or Malaysia let alone a China in the long term. 

But we still want to be part of the consumerist game.  Hence our political opinions are persuaded by what lifestyles we want to have than what in reality the global political economic system will allow us.  Even without the basics that should be provided for by a state as in the global north despite its firm embrace of free market economics and radical white nationalisms in one form or the other. 

But abstract as my argumentation may seem, the dilemna that we are faced with is that we are increasingly citizens of ‘envy’.  And I use the term as borrowed from the global north’s intellectuals such as Zizek.  We want what we know we will never get.  Not in this part of the world and not with climate change, emerging nationalism therefrom and not with a pre-occupation with what global satellite television shows us.  Either by way of news or sports.

In returning to my initial point about by-elections and how Zanu Pf has won them at the height of a real and also perceived economic crisis, it is evident that we need to think more about the future than the present.  Not only in relation to the fact of our concerns about our own individual children but those of those we would refer to as our neighbours and fellow citizens.  We need to learn that everything we do is not always about the immediate but a collective future. Including the fact that in order to progress it is not always about envying or coveting what the originally ‘progressive other’ has but more of what we can attain.  Even in the most difficult of circumstances. 

And this is where the original Marxian analysis of ‘base and superstructure’ comes into vogue.  As Zimbabweans and Africans we cannot progressively allow ourselves to be subjected to a global political economy we neither invented nor control. We may need, as Nkrumah said, to seek first an organic political kingdom.  For everything else to follow. Not in dogma but in democratic pragmatism which even in the global north is now being referred to as democratic socialism. Without being again, 'othered.'

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

Electricity Cuts, Lifestyles and Modified Behaviour in Zimbabwe.

By Takura Zhangazha*

Electricity and access to it is a big issue in Zimbabwe at the moment.  Not least by admission of our own government but more importantly by the lived realities of many urban based Zimbabweans, civil service workers, social service providers, informal traders and formal or informal private business owners. I have mentioned ‘urban’ Zimbabweans because that is where the medium and commodity that is electricity is most used, most craved and because of low connectivity to the national power grid in rural areas, most needed.

So understandably emotive urban conversations about power cuts are focused on determining (as with every other problem the country has) what the cause of the heavy load shedding is.   The reasons range from allegations of corruption about alternative energy supply tenders (Wicknell Chivayo and cohorts), connected politicians and actors’ inability to pay humongous energy bills, the shortage of water in Kariba, inefficiency at the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) and most significantly, the inability or refusal of consumers to pay for electricity. 

The cabinet minister responsible for the supply of electricity, Fortune Chasi,  has already indicated that he is of the firm persuasion that people must pay their debts toZESA. 

In other relatively privileged conversations, not so influential persons have strongly recommended in tandem with the intentions of government that electricity tariffs will eventually have to increase for domestic household and commercial users.

Some informal elitist opinion would immediately point to the possibility that those who can pay should be able to do so as long the commodity is available.  In fact, one of the elitist jokes doing the rounds is that ‘it is no longer pragmatic to pay a Multi Choice digital satellite television monthly subscription if there’s no electricity?’ Or alternatively, it is better to pay in order to get the commodity that is electricity to be available to you personally. Never mind those that cannot afford because for our elites, it would be assumed to be better if they were off the grid altogether!

With an ever expanding urban population, electricity supply was always going to be a major problem for Zimbabwe.  And not only just because of the demographics but also the changing use and need for electricity.  New(ish) gadgets such as the ubiquitous (smart) mobile phone, laptop, smart television, digital decoders, wireless network routers, the need for internet access and rechargeable audio speakers, everyday electricity use was always going to rise spectacularly.

These examples of electric gadgets are not just for the sake of tech-savvy perceptions of the same.  They are reflective of a changing Zimbabwean (urban and peri-urban) lifestyles.  Even if one cannot really afford some of the gadgets, the intention is to own or share one laptop, mobile money phone and (bar-stool) football match motivated satellite TV decoder.  

For mobile telecommunications companies (MTCs)  power cuts as evidenced by a recent glitch in connectivity for Zimbabwe’s largest one, Econet,  the electricity shutdowns also have  as serious dent on profit and reputation. Even though the most affected by the latter is the small to medium enterprise that relies heavily for example, on mobile phone money transactions.  So where there’s no readily accessible electric power, there is basically no individual happiness of access to social media but more importantly limitations to accessing private profit (with some sort of state tax) on the basis of a keen desire by many Zimbabweans to be ‘online’. 

Or in the case of political activists of any hue, there is potentially no capacity to mobilise via social media for assumedly urgent political causes.  A development that would no doubt be welcome to either the ministry of home affairs, the police and domestic or other ‘intelligence’ agencies.  The key issue in this instance is that whereas in the last year we have had internet shutdowns, we now have electricity shutdowns. A situation in which the primary source of the medium (electricity) being the message is not just its content (social media) but its mechanism (again, electricity). 

What the last month of these severe power shortages in Zimbabwe also indicate is that electricity is not just an anticipated ‘medium’ or ‘commodity’ that enables a ‘normal’ literally powered (urban) existence but that it is now highly personal.  Almost to be popularly considered a private right more important than a number of others that would be less immediate or linked to technological or ‘modern’ aspects of our everyday lives.  Hence the scramble for options such as domestic solar energy, electric invertors and gas stoves, if you can afford any or all of the above.   Or alternatively to ask the ‘urbane’ question, if you don’t have electricity and what it allows you to access, what else can you have?

And there’s the rub.  The Zimbabwean government has embarked on a default privatization of access to electricity that most of us do not see out of desperation for the commodity.  By the same default, they have come to control what we can access on social media and mobilise for when our mobile phone batteries are flat or the MTCs have run out of petroleum gas or solar power fuel to keep their base stations operational.

Even if we are sometimes in the right loop about solar energy and mitigating climate change, which factually we, in the global south and in Zimbabwe have contributed an almost negligible amount to be accused of having significantly caused by way of our economic or social activities.   

So our electricity crisis puts us as Zimbabweans at a difficult standpoint.  None of us in urban or rural areas want to miss out on the ‘bright lights’ but we may miss out on how the same was used to help determine our expectations of what it is to live among the ‘enlightened’. With a fully charged mobile phone battery, a private hospital that’s got a backup system for electric power and a landlord with an inverter. We will suffer and we will hopefully continue.

By the time our local minister of energy gets to a relative comfort zone of declaring a normalcy of supply of domestic and industrial electrical energy, we will still have to first ask ourselves the questions of how do we charge our mobile phones, exchange mobile money or watch television and have lighting in our domestic functions if we do not have money.  Hence in some circles the debate is ‘if you cannot pay, you do not get.’ The latter being a casual turn of phrase that is for the few, not the many, despite our expanding urban demographic.

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

Considerations on Zimbabwe’s Future

By Takura Zhangazha*

Zimbabwe’s future is rarely discussed in holistic terms in everyday conversations.  This is because the future is always in the immediate.  This may appear contradictory or even complex but it is reflected in the everyday struggles of Zimbabweans to make the proverbial dollar out of fifteen (15) cents. It is almost as though our national mindset is now auto-tuned to what I will call ‘short-termism’.  That is, an approach to our political and economic existence that emphasizes the immediate as opposed to the future. 

In this, an immediate follow up question would be, what has caused this ‘short-termism’.  The answers are varied and in most cases highly politicized.  They range from blaming the ruling Zanu Pf party’s fast track land reform programme (FTLRP) for ruining the national economy and good governance.  Through to sanctions, corruption, hyperinflation and of late the decision by the government to abandon the use of multiple currencies in favour of the return of the Zimbabwe dollar. 

Whatever reason one chooses, it is also apparent that there is a lot of public anger/angst at the present political-economic situation.  And where there’s anger, there is also a search for some sort of catharsis or a moment of immediate relief. Hence in some cases anger is shown via public demonstrations or strident, rhetorical and in some cases violent language on the streets of social media. 

What is however more complex is a systematic and ideological understanding of how Zimbabwe got here in the first place.  Even after the departure of Mugabe and the introduction of what has come to be dubbed the ‘new dispensation’ of his successor Emmerson Mnangagwa.

The arguable reality of the matter is that the country has come full circle from radical nationalism (under Mugabe) to moderate neoliberalism (under the inclusive government) to full scale neoliberalism (under Mnangagwa. 

It is the latter’s policies and ideological model that matters the most in any discussions about Zimbabwe’s short and long term future.  Mnangagwa’s tight embrace of the free market and cosying up to global capital through his promotion of the ‘ease of doing business’ is the base that helps us outline what is in store for Zimbabwe’s political economy.

In relation to the political and most times politicized future, the economic ideological base that is neoliberalism will require Zimbabwe’s political institutions and practices to pass the test of ‘international standards.’  Basically our electoral processes and systems together with the functions of the three main arms of government- the executive, the judiciary and the legislature will be more regularly subject to measurement by regional, continental and global institutions and treaties.  

This does not mean they will strictly adhere to these standards but Mnangagwa’s government will most certainly do some serious public relations on that front.  Hence even after the ‘coup-not-a-coup’ the ruling Zanu Pf party went ahead with calling for elections with the primary objective of ‘international legitimacy’ which with the benefit of hindsight, they appear to have acquired.  

This however means that the art and meaning of politics in Zimbabwe will be highly ‘performative’ and populist, especially in the run up to constitutionally anticipated elections.  Politics will be undertaken in order to satisfy the basic expectations of a hegemonic neoliberal audience and global capital. Not necessarily the people.  The latter, it is hoped by Mnangagwa and his supporters will benefit by way of an anticipated ‘trickle-down’ effect of a ‘free market’ political economy.

Where we examine what possibilities lie ahead with the national economy, it is much clearer to explain.  The Zimbabwe government has declared itself as pro-private capital and the free market.  Its economic policies increasingly also indicate so as outlined in its Transitional Stabilisation Programme (TSP). 

This essentially means the future holds a host of realities that range from eventual privatization of state assets/entities, the expansion of the private sector into social service delivery also known as public-private partnerships and the reduction of the regulatory role of government in the economy/market.  So those that will bear the brunt of ‘austerity’ are ordinary working people of Zimbabwe.  Costs of goods and services will definitely become unaffordable to many.  The priority will remain private capital in servitude to what many an economic pundit and the World Bank or IMF will approve as global best practices of ‘emerging economies’.   Economic benevolence will however be shown during electoral periods in order to curry favour with voters. 

This brings us to the third consideration on the future of Zimbabwe, namely its social environment.  Over the years and as a direct result of attendant political-economic hardships endured by a majority of people, Zimbabwe has become a highly individualistic society.  For students of global political economy this is arguably a result of neoliberal economic policies that deliberately focus on the individual and the market.  

In Zimbabwe’s case, the breakdown of social services and abandonment of the welfare system under Robert Mugabe’s tutelage and now being followed through by his successor has meant that socially Zimbabweans focus on their individual and immediate needs for everyday social services.  This tendency toward individualism has also been strengthened by a global consumerist culture for goods and services that again, focus on the individual. Hence many young Zimbabweans are always seeking out ways and means to emigrate to countries that can make their individual lives ‘better’.

This is a trend that is least likely to dissipate in the near or distant future.  For collective perceptions of reality, citizens will continue to turn to religion for a sense of self-worth and belonging.  Especially those religions that emphasize wealth individual wealth accumulation. 

To conclude, I will revert back to my opening line on how for many Zimbabweans, the future is in the immediate and not in the long term.  And as I have argued in later paragraphs, this future is perceived in highly individualistic ways.  In order to get out of such a future we will have to learn to always think about the bigger ideological future as a whole and seek pragmatic ways to try and ensure it is people centered, welfarist and fully considers those that will come after us.

*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity. This article first appeared on Zimbabwe's factchecking website zimfact.org  More of his writings can be found @ takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com

Magaya Abuse Allegations and Evils of Commodifying the Female Body

 *By Takura Zhangazha

A local weekly, the Sunday Mail newspaper recently carried a very disturbing story on allegations of sexual abuse of female worshippers by well-known clergyman Walter Magaya.   Titled, ‘Magaya Bombshell’ the story gave accounts of some of the worshippers and how they were either victims or witness to the alleged sexual abuse.  One of the victims also claimed that ‘…the police were compromised and so were most of the journalists…’  so recourse to the law or the court of public opinion was by implication, difficult. 

After the story had been published, social media also had its say on the allegations.  And one of the alleged victims cited in the Sunday Mail’s story took to Facebook to accuse the paper and journalist who broke the story of ‘using her’ to fix the clergyman.  The newspaper and its journalists in turn released video snippets of the alleged victim’s interview and promised a follow up story in its next print edition. 

In one of the videos shared by the paper, the victim makes reference to Magaya having given her US$1500 in fifty dollar notes and how she had knelt down in gratitude, a point I will come back to later. 

This particular story has caused a lot of debate on social media probably because of the popularity/populism of the celebrity religious pastor involved.  And with all matters religious the debate has focused more on the (im)morality of the figure in question. Together with the societal behavior influence he yields as a result of his ministry and his wealth.

Across the Atlantic, a billionaire financier and friend of a former and a serving American president, Jeffrey Epstein was recently arrested and faces charges of sex trafficking. For more than ten years Epstein had been accused of sexually abusing minor girls. He had even managed to strike a deal with prosecutors that stopped a federal investigation into the allegations.  Using money and probably political connections he had been almost immune from indictment.  At least as reported in American media, he will be put to his defence in that country’s judicial system. 

I have cited the allegations against Magaya and Epstein in tandem because they have a number of things in coomon.  Even if one is a clergyman and the other a billionaire financier.  The first common factor in the allegations is the alleged use of money to either pay off the abused or to lure them into abuse.  Epstein reportedly paid his victims ‘hundreds of dollars’.  Magaya reportedly offered US$1500 prior to the abuse.  It would almost be as though the fact that they have money would justify their actions. 

This is where the evil (I use this word deliberately) of the commodification of the female body comes into the picture. 

One of Magaya’s alleged victims describes the scene in which she received money as having knelt before him crying with gratitude.  It’s not difficult to picture the power dynamics at play here: standing ‘prophet’+ money and a kneeling vulnerable woman.  The assumption of power and the right of exchange is entirely with the money giver.  And the female body here is the designated/arbitrarily valued commodity. 

The same with Epstein who not only allegedly paid his victims but also recruited them to recruit others, that is to become commodities that lure other commodities. 

While we have to defer to due legal process the allegations are therefore a reflection of the tragic circumstances in which many young and economically vulnerable young women find themselves.  

But these two cases are the direct result of a neo-liberal global political-economic system that creates powerful men who live as though they are above the law and can purchase anything they want because they have money. And making this appear to be as normal as it can be.  In most cases such individuals function with an impunity garnered either from political protection, instilling fear in alleged victims and ensuring they avoid the glare of the media using either, again, money or influencing media owners. 

On the latter point of avoiding the public glare, it is also significant that they also seek to influence public opinion.  In the case of Magaya and judging by some social media responses, it is clear that members of his church are keen on defending him. In doing so they cast aspersions on the alleged victim’s credibility or morality.  Or they may get the alleged victims to retract previous statements published or given to the mainstream media. And because for many Zimbabweans, money, particularly, the $US, is a fetish in and of itself, the transaction between the alleged abuser and the abused makes the story one of morality than it would be of a crime. 

Again we must ask ourselves what causes such vulnerability of young women to predators.  It is largely the political, economic and cultural system as a whole.  Economic in the sense of high levels of poverty and exclusion from mainstream opportunity for young women and men that come from lower but quantitatively larger economic classes. Political in the sense that this system is nurtured by a neo-liberal, highly individualistic consensus between holders of political power and those that own capital (money). None wants to bring the other to account because of what appears to be a mutually beneficial relationship. 

Cultural in relation to how it mixes religion with monetary, lifestyle and even sexual desire.  Neo-liberalism has created a very strong culture of individualism in Zimbabwe and beyond.  And these individuals have aspirations of ownership and lifestyles that they may never be in a position to acquire in reality.  Even if they try the  route of the promises of prophets and their hedonistic churches.  Or even via access to the wealthy elite (normally politicians and connected owners of big business or state tenders) who equally wield such power over young Zimbabweans. All they see is what they envy, the power of it. Hence the limited public outcry or the satirical social media banter over such allegations. 

But more regrettably, as a final point, there are some (young and old) who would envy such power or are assiduously working to acquire it. 

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

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)