Contradictions of Wealth and Capital in Zimbabwe.

By Takura Zhangazha *

No, this is not a motivational blog about how to make money, keep it or even how to ‘scramble’ for it.  Instead it is about a basic understanding of two things.  The first being what we in Zimbabwe perceive as ‘wealth’ and secondly about what we also think is ‘capital’. 

“Wealth” in Zimbabwe generally tends to be observationally comparative.  It relates to where you stay, the lifestyle you lead, cars you drive or are driven in, where your children go to school and something as ridiculous as how many parties you hold for relatives and friends.  

It all comes off as normal Zimbabwean cultural behavior. Except that it has connotations of how we regard each other.  Including assumptions of either continuity of these demonstrations of wealth and sadly also those of when it will all end for those that hold this wealth.  Or when it will start for those that do not have it. 

On the face of it, it is not a class issue.  Though it is driven by middle class/ white collar job social and cultural material desires. Both in urban and rural areas. It’s a lifestyle and recognition of ‘success’ or wealth crisis. 

One that essentially remains materially ephemeral because in the final analysis, if the money runs out, the lifestyle also changes. Something that many of us are guilty of the misunderstanding that this invariably affects our immediate families, children and where we still have them, friends. 

At the risk of sounding slightly self-righteous, what we probably need to stop doing is ‘exhibitionism’. While the welfare of our children, families matter, we should embrace more of a material realism than a worry about what the next person thinks about the life you are living. 

I have mentioned ‘exhibitionism’ because it relates the issue of “Capital” in Zimbabwe.  The latter being something we rarely dig deep into.  While wealth can be exhibited as outlined above, the ownership of its almost perpetual physical component tends to be off our social and intellectual radars.   

Exhibiting wealth is very different from owning capital. And for most of us know primary capital as either owning land, house/urban properties, vehicles or cattle. All in what can be considered competitive isolation. It is capital to either be gazed at or flaunted while its owner is still alive. While at the same time not being part of either a system of a national ‘means of production’ that we deliberately understand or participate in. 

So there are at least two strands to the ownership of capital in Zimbabwe.   The one is the desire to quite literally acquire it through physical commodities for the purposes of exhibiting wealth or material well-being on the basis of either savings or benefits from employment and working the banking financial system to your benefit.

Then there is actual capital based on those that control the system of private property and its links to globalized financialised capital. These are the people that own (historically/colonially/ post-colonially) your mines, vast tracts of agricultural land, cities and the middle-men that run their transactions. They also own a majority of your national and international conglomerates that are listed on the local stock exchanges as they are also linked to regional and international ones (Muzarabani anyone?)

Some of this capital is inherited from colonialism.  Some of it is also handed over from the colonialists to post-colonial political and other more opportunistic entrepreneurial leaders. This has been outlined in the French economist Thomas Piketty’s epic book “Capital in the 21^st Century”.

What however remains important in the Zimbabwean context is our understanding of the contradictions of what we consider wealth and what we consider capital.

And I will try to keep it slightly simple.  Purchasing cars, buying houses, affording expensive schools and universities is not a sign of success.  It is a sign of not understanding the ephemerality of what you consider comparative wealth.  It is also a sign of material culture capture by a system that you have no control over if you do not understand it. 

With the oddity that it always presents many of us with a fear of going back to the ‘ghetto’ or if you are already there in the ghetto a fear of going back to your rural homes and as we jokingly say in Shona parlance ‘akadzokera kumusha’.  Even when in reality our rural political economy is the backbone of a majority of our Zimbabwean families. 

When you think about ‘wealth’ remember that even in your exhibiting it, it remains an expression of ‘capital’ that in almost all likelihood you do not control. Unless you own an actual ‘means of production’ inherited or otherwise. It will always be ephemeral. Until that day you seek economic equitability.

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

 

 

   

Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe: Love Not in the Time of Cholera-

By Takura Zhangazha*

So there is a sub-regional cholera outbreak in Zambia and Zimbabwe. There was also one in Malawi towards the end of last year. 

With the evident risk that it may spread beyond the two countries’ borders where and when it is reported. 

Cholera outbreaks are now run of the mill news stories in Southern Africa.  And there are many reasons for this.  The main one being the fact of their actual occurrence. 

The second being a false narrative of assuming that we, as Southern Africans are unhygienic and therefore will be afflicted by such diseases.

The third, which is a bit more realistically debatable, is that of our rapid regional urbanisation. Due to urban population expansions and lack of relevant water and other amenities render our cities, towns and peri-urban areas to be overwhelmed.

I am not a public health expert but it is important to note from a layman’s perspective that the continual re-emergence of Cholera outbreaks in the region point to a critical need for us to re-think our rural and urban landscapes and planning. And also our approaches to public health. 

The first thing that I have noticed, even as slightly historical as it may seem, is that Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi have very similar local government planning systems.  Each of the three countries’  have somewhat similarly designed cities dating back from the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (even if Southern Rhodesia-Zimbabwe was the ultimate beneficiary of that federation). 

Our cities are similarly designed.  We have the former white suburbs being the most privileged in relation to access to water and health amenities.  We have what we call the ‘high density areas’ having less amenities and being densely populated by rural to urban migrants.  And also migrants who historically were part of the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association (WENELA) labour recruitment route. 

Then we have the rural areas where the majority of our people still reside, even as they age, with limited access to basic health care, communications and transport where and when related emergencies occur.

We also have to consider the fact that in our cultural practices we, be it in urban or rural areas, still have to gather for that wedding, funeral or memorial and/or church service among many newfound reasons for get-togethers.

The problem however is the fact of how our health systems do not match our lifestyles. And I will give at least one example.

This being that in many of our cities, based on again the fact of our collective historical urbanisation and rural codification history in Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe, we have not anticipated the explosion that would be not only rural to urban migration.  But also the necessity of planning for the important health, water, sewage and reticulation amenities that should come with it.  In many of our cities, our rapid urbanisation in which one can build a mansion without concomitant urban toilets or even rural pit latrines, even if temporarily, in an urban shack while having no running water is almost a norm.

Or even in rural areas where we still have a problem with where people openly defecate because they cannot afford to build pit latrines as advised by the World Health Organisation. So when it rains or when major gatherings are held, the likelihood of an outbreak in the remotest of rural areas increases. 

But this is not about our African inability to deal with what has been called a ‘medieval disease’.  It is a very serious matter that requires an urgent and holistic approach.  Never mind the global narratives about us as Africans from Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe.  We have experienced the pain and anguish of losing loved ones to this affliction. 

There are a number of things that we therefore need to deal with.  The primary issue being the most pragmatic.  We need to manage our urban and rural amenities much better in a people-centred manner.  Even as we understand the rapid urbanisation as well as the also rapid 'lifestyle' urbanisation of our rural areas.  Clean water and safe toilets are more important than ever. 

These are things we have to remember based on our own African health wisdom about the fact that you cannot defecate in the village well.

But this is where we are.  Our people are dying of cholera, a completely preventable and curable disease. Calling it medieval may assume a superiority of your economic placement in society but we all go to the toilet, have to wash our hands and remember that you cannot, with this Cholera outbreak, assume it will never get to you.  We need to fix this. 

-Title paraphrased from Gabriel Garcia Marques’ novel “Love in the Time of Cholera”

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

 

 

  

Zimbabwe’s Hidden Economic Class Struggle Dilemma

 By Takura Zhangazha*

This may appear to be a very complicated subject matter.  It is not.  And in most cases, it relates to ‘material desire’.  Or one in which you have to ask yourself , “What economic and social/lifestyle class are you in?” or alternatively, “What economic/social class do you think you are in?”, or, “What economic/social class do you want to be in?”  With the final question being, “What economic/social class are you realistically currently in, and how sustainable is it?” 

These are questions that we answer every day in our interactions and expressions of our material desires.

Whether through where we go to church, the movie we like, the cars we drive, the social company we keep.  And that is very much normal.  No one individual in our current existential challenges has any self-righteous wherewithal to judge these desires.  After all, we live in very neoliberal and unpredictable economic times.  Times in which individualism, capitalism and a false liberalism intersect in such a way that they create a very short term individual-focused consciousness in many of us.  In this, we do not have the material patience to assume that in the final analysis, we are part of a national collective whole. 

Hence on social media there are jokes and satire about how one can drive a special utility vehicle (SUV) in a potholed road and get home with pride. Or how one can have a personal borehole in a majority of our very dry urban and rural areas while others stay in long queues at the local UNICEF or WHO funded borehole for clean water. And still not understand how one was or is affected by a cholera outbreak! 

Apart from this sarcastic humour, what we have been experiencing in Zimbabwe is an attempt at the obfuscation/hiding of our economic class differences as disguised by either our material desires (hence the rise in fraud or financial crimes) or an endemic lifestyle crisis in which a greater majority of us seek to mimic that which we are told is the proverbial ‘good life’.

As seen or experienced via cultural products such as music, movies, social media content, religion (TB Joshua anyone?) as we compare ourselves to individual others who we now deem to be our personal competitors. I am however not sure what we really want to compete about with each other. But it would appear the key measures of this are about issues such as what car is driven, house lived in, which schools kids go to,  which Diaspora you relocated to and as abstract an issue as to where you wnet to for your holidays (as long it is not a rural visit). 

Again this is all fair and fine if one can afford it both in the short or long term. 

Also, this is not a new phenomenon.  It has been analyzed by Marxists and left leaning economists, historians and more seminally social anthropologists (check Comaroff and Comaroff circa 2002) that for a while now have been assiduously trying to make sense of where we are ideologically at a ‘global scale’. The have referred to our turn of the 21^st century global political economic system as “Millenial Capitalism”.   This is a transnational ideological trend where global capitalism, at least to paraphrase their views, has become more than just about the production of physical commodities and its relation to the working class.  Instead it has transcended both to become more about speculative financialised capital, religious Pentecostalism, gambling and the re-emergence of complex individual identity politics.  With a hint at the fact of a diminishing relevance of Marxian ‘class consciousness’. 

In Zimbabwe we have this primary challenge of either beginning to forget the fact that we are also a class-based society.  Both by way of our modern colonial history as well as by way of our many desires to by almost any means necessary move from one ‘lower class’ rung to the next and then shouting from the hilltop that we have made it.  Only to come tumbling down again.  Or to die trying to get up the same ladder, never mind giving a pretense at still being there.

For clarity, there are at least three almost permanent structured economic classes in Zimbabwe. And these have not changed since the first days many of us started studying high school history.  The most prevalent class remains the peasantry. It is one that is based in our rural areas and survives on agriculture as its main means of production.  It is a class that remains standing mainly based on the fact of its superior numerical presence which also links it to its political importance in elections and power dynamics in the country. It is however a class that is largely ageing while those that are born into it are increasingly desirous of transition to the next permanent one.  This being the urban working class.

The latter is one that is at the moment perhaps the most fluid.  It involves both formerly and informally employed urban,peri-urban working people in every major city and town in Zimbabwe.  It is the most fluid and most politically active class due to its proximity to emerging communications technologies and population densities. It is also the most populist and easily abusable by the next class we will consider, the middle or ‘comprador bourgeoisie’ class.  This is the most educated class as well as the most ‘mimicry of colonial and global lifestyle class’.  It re-occupies spaces left by colonial and global bourgeoisie, mimics their cultural habits in as many aspects as possible and remains essentially an ‘arrival’ or no- further ambition class.  Even if they acquire political positions on the backs of the aforementioned two lower wrung classes. 

The final class is that of the bourgeoisie.  This one is not confined to Zimbabwe.  It is global.  It determines not only the economic system in which we currently live but it also greatly influences not only our material economic desires but also our lifestyle desires.  It owns ICT companies, media, mines, banks, real estate (even after the FTLRP), financialised stocks and of course a greater number of our politicians if it is not in politics itself. 

These classes are somewhat hidden because we have sort of muted ourselves about them. We have forgotten about class struggle. And a majority of us assume we can always get to the next rung of our hidden class struggle ladder. We falsely assume that these classes in Zimbabwe are recognizable by lifestyle, when in essence they are based on a mirage of an assumption of their interchangeability or fluidity.

Whatever these desires we may have, our economic system is still as class based as it can be within a globalized neoliberal context.

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

 

 

2024: An Abnormal Year for Zimbabwe, Africa in International Relations

 By Takura Zhangazha*

The year 2024 is a year where international relations, economics, politics and conflicts will greatly impact what happens in Zimbabwe.  And probably many other African countries.  Probably at a scale that will reflect the previous Cold War dynamics of the 70s, 80s and the early 1990s’.  This is obviously not a one-off or one-calendar year incident.  It has been building up for a while but I almost predict that in 2024 this will likely reach similar heights in relation to international relations dynamics. 

In essence we are witnessing, globally, and in our own African contexts, the end of a uni-polar world.  Whereas before we had been told about either the “End of History” (Fukuyama)  in relation to the triumph of neoliberalism or a foreseen binary “Clash of Civilisations” (Huntington)  with the unwritten assumption that the 'civilised' would be the victor. 

In the contemporary, it is now a much more fluid global state of affairs.

Post the American “War on Terror” and invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, there have been many other globalised conflicts that indicate that there are new international relations dynamics at play.  These are characterised by a number of factors.

The first being the continuing rise of China on the global economic stage and in relation to its strengthened role in global financialised capital (or its embrace of illiberal/state capitalism).  

Secondly the contradictory rise of internal Western nationalism and conservatism that derides immigration and military excursions. Raises religion to new political levels and assumes everything that is happening is a global 'great replacement theory' and therefore a nemesis to what obtains. 

Thirdly, the emergence of a newfound though limited resistance to the financial might of the United States dollar backed global financial system.  

Fourthly, the revival of a new Global South “consciousness” and still ever so slight resistance to the imposition of either cultural values or political templates as to how previously colonised countries matters should be countenanced or implemented.   

And in the fifth instance, globalised/internationalised conflicts such as the Ukraine- Russia war, Palestine-Israel emerging war, the Sudan civil war, the Democratic Republic of the Congo civil war, the ongoing internationalised conflicts in for example Syria, Yemen, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso.  And this is before one begins to discuss political imperialism in South America that has been longstanding against Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and of late Argentina among others. 

But let me return back home to Africa and Zimbabwe specifically.  Events as they are occurring at a global scale, be they conflicts, economic support/investment reconfigurations, emigration or electoral imperatives are no longer ‘business as usual’.  Loyalties are being tested of us.  On a more regular basis than in the last twenty years.  I have never seen so many United Nations resolution votes that have asked so much of us as African countries at the General Assembly or Security Council of the same. We are now constantly being asked to prove our loyalties. A thing that Amilcar Cabral would have probably squirmed at.  

Africa is in the thick of it because of its re-embrace of neoliberalism without a clearer alternative except some mimicry and acceptance of the Chinese economic model and its attendant investments.  With the false assumption that it is simply ‘economics’ or about the ‘free market’. When in reality it is now a mixture of international political allegiances and what will eventually emerge as tragic entrapment in a multi-polar globalised political economy.  One in which, contrary to the mantra by the Zimbabwe government of “being an enemy to none, and a friend to all” we will have to take ‘sides’ to remain afloat or at least protected as we had to when South Africa, China and Russia came to our defence in striking down that 2008 UN sanctions resolution. 

The essential point to bear in mind is that 2024 will not be a ‘normal’ year in how Zimbabwe, let alone Africa is placed in international relations. Or how it chooses to place itself in the complicated schematics of global relations.  Let alone the dynamics that will impact not only our national economy but also assumptions of financial(ised) investment in return for loyalty at UN general assembly votes or any other international platform. 

In a quid-pro-quo situation, this also means that the ruling Zanu Pf party has the latitude to insist on its own version of progressive politics beyond the gaze of what would be regarded as universal human rights. Not only with regard to its own version of ‘nationalism’ or ‘capitalism’ but also to protect specific investments and interests of global allies and business partners.  The latter who will not hesitate, given their already huge investments in either mining or agriculture to hold fort on international stages for Zimbabwe.

So if you are Zimbabwean or African it is important that you look at the year 2024 as a year in which you must learn or at least keep in mind the global ‘bigger picture’ of global events as they occur.  Be it a globalised conflict, a blocking of a trade route for oil or wheat, an election result in the global west, a natural disaster or even a link your country may have to what may be considered a pariah state.  It will matter. One way or the other. 

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

Teaching the Future : The Importance of Young Teachers in Advancing the Pan Africanist Agenda in Zimbabwe

 By Takura Zhangazha*

A Presentation to the Young Teachers Association of the Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe

15 December 2023.

ZESA Training Centre, Harare, Zimbabwe.

Dear Cde Young Teachers of the Progressive Teachers Union (PTUZ),

Let me begin by thanking you for inviting me to this important gathering which you are holding under the theme, “Young Teachers, The Bedrock of a Credible Teaching Profession” with the subtheme that I have been asked to hold a brief discussion about concerning, “The Importance of Young Teachers in Advancing the Pan Africanist Agenda”. 

Before I go into the brief presentation I have been asked to make, I must thank Cde Ray Majongwe the Secretary General of the PTUZ and Cde Takavafira Zhou, PTUZ president and also  the general leadership of the PTUZ for not only remaining true to their unionism on behalf of the teaching profession but also being even truer to what I am certain are their progressive ideological values.  The latter values being those I am certain you share or else you would not be part of this meeting. 

Let me begin my brief presentation with a few historical pointers.   The teaching profession is one of the most liberatory professions in Zimbabwe.  Never mind that it has be denigrated in various circles and undermined by various post-independence governments’ and neo-liberal political economics in recent years.

 It is as you say, the ‘bedrock’ of what is and can be a progressive national consciousness.  Most of our nationalist leaders and also those that left schools to become guerrillas knew that the one thing that was always important was the passing on of again, progressive knowledge through the practice of teaching.

Teaching was one of the most radically conscious professions of any African liberation struggle.  And it remained so even after our national independence.  As trade unionists you would understand this better than I do. 

It was the teacher who always brought new knowledge to a remote or marginalised community.  The one who taught young Zimbabweans to read and discern.

 It was also the teacher who was the most recognised intellectual in a village or ghetto (with or without the money) and the one who would eventually disrupt repressive colonial discourses to lead to a new national consciousness among the youth, the middle aged worker and the old. 

Hence the still revered and indefatigable term, “Mwalimu” in Swahili.  Whether in reference to the great African Julius Nyerere or in our own Zimbabwean context, just “teacher” and how he/she would make us quake in our bare feet about a pending punishment for underperforming in one form or the other.

So the teaching profession that you have chosen, for various personal reasons is almost a calling, an historical national consciousness vocation.  And let no one lie to you about this. Even though I know that the aforementioned issues may appear abstract to trade unionists, they remain an historical fact.  

Members of the teaching profession are the bedrock of our national consciousness.  Second only to our mothers and sisters in our African contexts. 

I know as young teachers you have conversations about the material benefits of your profession. Your salaries and other benefits. Or whether you bought a stand, a flat, solar panels or cattle.  It is completely understandable.  But even if you did not want it or will it, you are the contemporary bedrock of our national consciousness. 

You teach young Zimbabweans how to perceive, behave and realise success in life at an early age.   Even if in a good number of cases you get disappointed in things that are beyond your control such as family issues and also monetary/economic considerations of what was once your brightest student. 

But let me quickly get back to the agreed discussion  point. This being the teaching profession and what we now refer to as Pan Africanism (thanks to our own organic historical struggles against colonialism and neo-imperialism) 

There are few revered nationalists on the African continent who did not either start off with teaching or who did not eventually end up teaching in our refugee or training camps. 

As most of you based on your own post-independence theoretical or philosophical training may know, there was a left leaning cde called Paulo Freire who taught us what he referred to as the “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”. It was not only a revolutionary teaching philosophy but also one that has stood the test of time.  In this, we are all historical beings, and who better to pursue and teach that understanding than young teachers themselves!

You teach in order to let others become free of ignorance!

Not only an ignorance of letters and figures but also to free our pupils and students of an ignorance of organic historical consciousness. 

So when you are asked about Pan Africanism and teaching there are at least two key elements that you must always bear in mind. You are not only teaching mathematics, accounts, business studies, geography, agriculture, history, economics or general science. You are teaching the future. 

And let me briefly explain what I mean by “teaching the future.” The knowledge that you have, that you will also have as you further your own studies and stations in life, is knowledge that is perpetually not your own to keep. 

In your profession, in your unionism, you know that it has to be passed on.  Even if you were not adequately rewarded for it.  It is unavoidable.  As a teacher, young or old, the raison’ de ’etre of your work is essentially to pass on and create knowledge to the best of your ability. 

Let me turn to Pan Africanism as a concept as advised by the organisers. It is both geographical and more significantly ideological. By this I mean that indees you are physically in Africa but it does not mean you exude Pan Africanist consciousness. The latter is all about intellectual and cultural fortitude of what it means to be African. And what you infuse in your work about being African. 

Locations of where you teach remains important. But what you teach is even more important. Young African cdes need, want to be infused with their own African being. 

The teacher is therefore a harbinger of historical knowledge about African being and African identity. But as alluded to earlier, the teacher is also like a weather forecaster about what the future holds. 

The specifically young teacher in the contemporary has a lot more pressures beyond patriotism and nationalism.  Both at a personal and a professional level.

But the default Pan Africanist knowledge in the young teacher is also about contextual presence, being, analysis and foresight. 

You have to ask yourself, “ Why do we teach?Is it only for the money or for a newer Pan African Educational Consciousness?”

 Indeed teaching is a profession but it remains beyond meagre salaries.  I know some of you young cdes want to quit it to pursue for example care work abroad.  But even in your departure your students look up to and  yearn for your knowledge and expertise. 

Yours is a noble profession.  It is a profession that helps shape Zimbabwe’s future.  Even if you are in the deepest of a rural area. You matter.  Never forget that.

Let me conclude my brief remarks by way of encouragement. Times are tough in the teaching profession.  They may even get tougher.  Hold fast to the future.  You are always going to be organic to this country and its future.

I will end with a Marechera quote about teaching.  He was asked why he does not want to be a teacher.  He replied, and I am paraphrasing here, “I would not want the next generations’ mistakes on my conscience”.

If you read and understand between the lines, what Marechera recognised was the historical burden you have on your shoulders. Even when you are frustrated, dissapointed, keep at it. 

Young teacher cdes, you will rise. I am confident. Believe in your work and the future of Zimbabwe. 

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

 

 

 

 

Why Zimbabwe’s Global Narrative/Story Appears Negatively Set in Stone.

 By Takura Zhangazha*

I have on occasion grimaced in international fora when Zimbabwe is mentioned.  Or when watching a media programme about any new developments that will have occurred in the country.   From a cholera outbreak, to a naturally occurring tropical cyclone, a general election or even a visit by one or the other international celebrity. 

This is mainly because Zimbabwe’s narrative and placement in global discourse appears to be set in stone. 

Its without doubt a negative narrative.  One that is neither preferable nor always truthful.  But one that has become somewhat almost run of the course, pre-ordained perception of what our country was, is and will ‘inevitably’ be.  Unless specific and somewhat pre-approved  ‘things’ or ‘events’ happen in it.   Especially as they relate to our recent history. Be it in relation to the globally derided fast track land reform programme (FTLRP), our continually contested general elections and as with many other countries on the African continent, a perceived failure to meet the requirements of a global capitalist economy. 

Our narrative in global spaces however remains particularly unique.  We pop up in narratives of failed states as though one cannot land an aeroplane at Robert Mugabe International airport. Or stories about cholera outbreaks that have a unique angle to them when it comes to Zimbabwe when this is clearly a general sub-regional problem with the same occurring in neighboring countries.  

Never mind stories about our Diaspora when again, across the whole African continent we have very serious problems with emigration to the global north where it is now increasingly clear we are not wanted.  Even, in some cases, for the cheapest of our labours.  All the while losing precious lives in the Sahel or in the Mediterranean sea on what are more perilous journeys than a flight via Dubai to Europe or North America. Or an illegal crossing of the Limpopo river to South Africa.

Even when we crosscheck how the Zimbabwe story is perceived by those that are our neighbors such as South Africa, they also look at us through lenses that assume a Conradian ‘darkness’ about us.  Even as they lynch us.  While this also happens to other African brothers and sisters living and working in South Africa, we, thanks to social media, generally get falsely blamed for issues we have no inkling about. 

The key question is why does this narrative persist?  Moreso when we have one of the most neo-liberal governments since 1980 under the present Zanu Pf leadership of Emmerson Mnangagwa. The latter has been attempting to tick all the neoliberal boxes as it were under his engagement and re-engagement policies.  Something that it appears private global capital appears not to have a major problem with.  Except where and when it comes to political matters such as elections, human rights- and where it concerns in particular the human right to private property. 

So the first reason why Zimbabwe’s narrative in the global arena will probably not change in the lifetime of persons my age is because of the fact that our country defied that one most seemingly sacrosanct right to private property with the FTLRP.  And also former president Mugabe’s ‘indigenization’ economic policy.  Hence we now have a national ‘compensation’ policy for former white farmers.  And also a courting from the highest national levels of global financialised private capital into our mining industry in a relatively clumsy attempt at ‘normalisation’ of the national political economy.  I use the term ‘clumsy’ here because it is a mixture of nationalism and profit, two elements that in a globalized economy are not good bedfellows.

The second reason why our negative narrative persists is because it has become almost a given culture when people in power in the global north look derisively at African and/or global south states that they definitively do not agree with ideologically or in some cases, historically.  Or at least those that will not side with them.  Be it in favour of their erstwhile rivals such as China, Russia or any of the left leaning governments of South America. 

And this is where the global media comes into the mix.  Zimbabwe has been lumped with almost propagandistic comparisons with countries where there has been or is existent outright conflict/war.  So much so that when you watch cable television or view clips on social media you ask yourself, “How am I still in this country?”  Yet there are still millions of us here. With variegated understandings of our own existence and futures.  But no, we are not dying in numbers or in the equivalent of concentration camps that we are now clearly seeing in some parts of the Middle East.

The third and final reason why our house of stone’s narrative appears set in stone, is that in most cases, out of general naivety, we will it on ourselves.  In contrast to the rebelliousness that for example Fanon and Biko among many others so desired. It is regrettably almost as though a good number of influencers want this negative narrative on Zimbabwe.  Even where it has no factual basis but fits a specific twenty-plus year narrative. 

You may ask is there a contrary narrative to what obtains.  My answer is yes.  It is a narrative that relates to facts and not what you feel you want to hear.  Zimbabwe is not by any stretch of comparison a ‘failed state’.  It is not at ‘war’.  We need to counter these ‘set in stone’ narratives. We may not be up there in terms of various neoliberal global indices, but we will be alright.

I will end with an anecdotal comment.  Upon arriving in the United Kingdom in the early 2000s, a British cde asked me if we had an airport back at home.  I asked him why? He said based on what he had seen on the media and heard from his local MP and the asylum seekers, he thought I had arrived by ship from Zimbabwe! I replied, no I came on British Airways.

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

 

 

 

 

 

Belief, Passion and a Newfound Functionalism in Zimbabwe.

By Takura Zhangazha*

On occasion you get asked the awkward question, “What do you believe in?”  In most cases this is a question that relates to religion and religious affiliation.   With an assumption that religion is largely Christian in Zimbabwe the question also has connotations about which version of the same religion do you follow.  With the caveat question, “Why”?

You rarely get asked about any other forms of belief. Or derided if you indicate that this is a private matter that requires no personal intrusion or judgement. 

You may also get asked, on rare occasions, your political beliefs.  In relation to which party you support, and again also, why?  Most Zimbabweans choose to wait for their day at the ballot box and depending on the result and their happiness or sadness it is easier to discern after the electoral event.  But again without having to explain why they hold specific political beliefs if they can be called that at all. 

In all likelihood, when it comes to political beliefs, these mutate into “political passions”.  Motivated more by either personal experience or by following fashionable populist political opinions as they occur.  Or as they relate to available electoral leadership positions (council, Parliament and even the Presidency). They are rarely about any organic ideological persuasions.  At best and only by default they mirror and mimic culturally popular ones that will for example laud big business while at the same time not realizing that a majority of our major global or local wars stem from the cultural, political and military industrial complex as controlled by global superpowers.

But this does not just apply to political ‘passions’ as it were.  It also applies to personal and materialist desires.  The car, the house, the job, the individual family recognized ladder of success that one has achieved contributes to your own understanding of “passion”.  Or things that you are willing to either personally fight for in multiple social conversations or attend an online convoluted and neoliberal motivational speech about.  Even if the latter ‘motivation’  is as racist and ‘mimicry’ driven as they come. 

It is when you combine both your abstract beliefs and mutative passions that they then become functional.  And I use the term “functional” in a very sociological and socio-psychological sense (crosscheck Emile Durkheim on this one.)   That is when both of these, your abstract religious or other superficial beliefs and passions serve to make you a somewhat ‘normal’ human being.

Where one who shares these beliefs and passions through the gaze and cultural practice of those that you either value the most or those that you envy in relation to their, again, assumed measurements of societal success.  Be it in your local church, where your kids go to school, what your work boss recognizes/affirms about you and your salary or what your extended family values the most about your capacity to get things done.  Even what your friends think is the best societal practice about being successful.  Not only material success but the way in which you should think, act, behave and interact with those that are like minded.  

In my view, Zimbabwe is now what one can call a “functionalist” society.  This is in the social, political, economic and probably socio-psychological sense.

It is almost as though everything must sort of fit together in a specific way.  Your beliefs (mainly religious), your passions (mainly emotive political/ politicized and economic status anger) and how all of this leads one into a functional mode of existence as a Zimbabwean.  In a comparative sense.  That is, checking out what it means to be as successful as your next door neighbor including how they again, have a car or multiple urban or other properties while affording to go private medical centres. Even at the height of the then Covid 19 pandemic.  Or oddly enough, which church they go to and its concomitance with material success.

It is a functionalism that creates a specific national ‘survival’ culture.  One that focuses more and more on the individual and less and less on collective well-being. Almost like arguing that anything we are doing, we are doing for our “own” children while forgetting that the same said “own” children will grow up and be part of a collective society, let alone a country with those that we will have neglected.    

There are therefore at least two issues that we need to reflect on about our long duree “functionalism” as Zimbabweans.  Indeed historically we have been through the worst of economic and political times with many pitfalls that have shaped our reaction to not only the state but to matters concerning our individual (and individual family) well-being.   We have had to live almost in a survival mode that has brought forth some of the most individualistic values of who we think we are or we can be as a country. From the rural to the urban, the middle to the working class and from the educated to the uneducated or even to those with proximity to the political and capitalist elite. 

We need to shed off the proverbial skin of “societal functionalism” and return to a value based progressive societal pragmatism that makes each life important and gives a fair opportunity for all.  Especially where it relates to basic social services such as education, health, transport, water and energy. 

And finally, we need to understand that we all have specific belief systems.  While we may want them to be individually self-definitive about our lifestyles and desires, unfortunately if they become “blind passions” they return us to being “functionalists”.  People who do not think beyond what they feel or who do not feel beyond what they consider their own personal experiences. 

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