Narrating Organic Zimbabwean Opposition Politics.

Takura Zhangazha

Monday 27 May 2024

Narrating Organic Zimbabwean Opposition Politics.

By Takura Zhangazha*

I got asked about the future of Zimbabwean opposition politics.  It was an abstract conversation.  But one in which I winced once or twice because I am also a founder member of the then mainstream opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)  

This question hurt more because recently I met current opposition Members of Parliament (MPs) at a local hotel.  They were peers during the formative stages of the mainstream opposition MDC.  Either as former student leaders, trade unionists or former school teachers in remote areas.

So I had a moment of reflection. I remembered how we started with the constitutional reform movement.  How we moved from elitist boardroom politics to people centered mobilization.  How we against the advise of our parents and guardians we sought to lay claim to a democratic change agenda for Zimbabwe. 

We did not end there. 

 We followed the leadership of the then Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) and pursued a left leaning ideological framework of seeking social and economic justice in what was called ‘Beyond ESAP’.  The latter being a World Bank sponsored economic structural adjustment programme (ESAP).  One which eventually de-industrialised Zimbabwe and a decent number of Southern African countries due to neoliberal economic policies that worshipped and still do so at the altar of the ‘free market’. 

We struggled and we lost a number of comrades during both our constitutional reform struggle as well as the one that led to the formation of what we initially referred to as the “Working People’s Party’ the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). 

And perhaps I might sound somewhat repetitive in my previous blogs/write -ups, the movement got highjacked by the same forces that in our people centered way we were trying to fight.  Much to the advantage of the then and still ruling Zanu Pf party.  

Whereas we were fighting neoliberal and capitalist imperialism, we got trapped in the framework of seeking allies from those that were our apparent ideological enemies.  Indeed we needed the material support but our then leadership took to that assistance like ducks to water.  And regrettably never looked back. 

As young activists with our own ideological clarity, we began to disagree with the the opposition leadership.  They also demonstrated their materialistic power by sidelining us and embarking on populist campaigns’ against anyone who differed with their views.  At some point their views became cultist and we were left shocked at the fact that comrades we had come so far with could act in specifically un-ideological, unhistorical ways.

A number of us took it in stride.  We knew the global forces that were against a left leaning opposition political movement in Zimbabwe.  All they wanted was a ‘colour revolution’ of pots and pans that would make us as a country, with hindsight, the equivalent of present day Libya.

We dodged that bullet and insisted by the time we had the Southern African Development Community (SADC) mediated Global Political Agreement (GPA)  that Zimbabwe was not a Southern African territory for the then trending neoliberal interventionism international relations strategy of George Bush and Tony Blair.  The African Union and SADC really helped with this via Jakaya Kikwete, Thabo Mbeki and Olusegun Obasanjo. 

By the time the GNU period was over with an abrupt election in 2013, we knew that we were in trouble.  We had been defeated electorally by the ruling Zanu Pf party.  We also had a new constitution with clauses that gave way to internal power transition processes within the ruling party and tragically we also lost the mainstream opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirayi.

Because of multiple interests in the political opposition after the GNU we had to encounter the ‘big man syndrome’.  Everyone and anyone who was in the GNU began to claim bragging rights about either the dollarization of the economy or essentially keeping the peace.  But these explanations were not necessarily for the people of Zimbabwe.

  They were for the neoliberal comrades of the global north and former commercial farmers who had changed the structure and focus of the movement.

What then happened is that post Tsvangirai, in keeping with what is referred to as “Millenial Capitalism” the MDC political opposition party morphed into an uncomfortable cultism. It is one of the oddest moments in which I encountered religion and politics taking on a shallow populist trait to the extent that I remembered the Biblical phrase, “ Give unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar”.

The key issue however remains what is the future of Zimbabwean opposition politics? It can can be answered in three ways.

The first being the most obvious.  Opposition politics is about internal organization and sharing of political responsibility. 

 Just like we used to do with the Zimbabwe National Students Union (Zinasu) an organization that shaped a decent number of us politically.  If you do not have internal and democratic accountability, you will fail in your long term political objectives.

The second being that populism helps significantly.  But it is not enough because as in its nature, it remains ephemeral (temporary).  It is almost like trying to remember the last Jah Prayzah song and not, again remembering it. 

Thirdly is the fundamental question of ideology.  Recently a comrade laughed at me calling me a socialist and thought I would balk at the labelling.  I laughed back and insisted I am a socialist.  The future of Zimbabwe’s opposition lies in the clarity of its ideological approach to issues.  We are not in the United Kingdom or the United States of America where political traditions are based on slavery and colonialism .

The future of Zimbabwe’s political opposition remains a balance between the past and the present.  With a firm view of the future. 

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

Takura Zhangazha at 07:56

Workers Day 2024: Remembering Trade Unionism in #Zimbabwe

By Takura Zhangazha*

Workers Day is no longer as recognized as it should be. We learnt of labour movements from the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU).  We learnt also of cdes like Clement Kadalie, Charles Mzingeli and Reuben Jamela and their role in forming the initial nationalist movements with Joshua Nkomo. 

So Workers Day or May Day as it referred to globally by the United Nations is very important for Zimbabwe and its history.  Even in post-independence it is the mainstream labour movement (ZCTU) that formed the largest opposition movement in our country’s history.

Labour was at the core of a new national consciousness after 1987.  This new national consciousness grew in 1999 into a leftist ideological movement that sought from the state social welfare and contrary to claims by the ruling party, land equity for all working peoples of Zimbabwe.

The idea of working peoples was derived from the National Working Peoples Convention (NWPC) in 1999.  It was this NWPC that gave the mandate to the ZCTU to form what would be a working peoples party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in September of 1999.  And the party was duly launched in Chitungwiza at the Aquatic Complex.

Ideologically we were social democrats.  We wanted a society in which a fair chance would be given to all regardless of your class or station in life.  And we wanted workers rights protected and guaranteed given the fact that we were coming from the bosom of the ZCTU.

As we proceeded with not only the formation of a working peoples political party and constitutional reform via referendum campaigns in 2000, we also became aware of what was a third hand in our activism.  This was that of the white liberals who had access not only to money but also international foreign policy support. 

We could not easily fend these comrades off.  They had embedded themselves within our popular support and eventually decided to influence the Morgan Tsvangirai leadership team from any leftist leanings.

But what is important is that the labour movement survived the fact of its support for a new political party.  The ZCTU still exists. And for that we are grateful.

The only challenge that appears to be emerging is that labour rights activism is increasingly being diminished.  Mainly because workers are either no longer as conscious as they used to be of their rights.  But also because scarce employment opportunities have made unionism abstract or unimportant.  Most employees in the  contemporary no longer care about workers rights.  They  simply want to keep their jobs and never question or organize on behalf of collective worker interests.

It is something I find very surprising, if not shocking.  Many of us in Zimbabwe do not understand that we are actually workers.  Or  even if we are out of employment, we were workers’ that had rights and could effectively represent ourselves. 

The emerging culture is one of fear of losing employment if one stands up for workers rights.  It is not only with many corporate organisations’ management, the media  but also with the state/government. 

There is an underwritten assumption that we are slaves to our salaries. And the persons that sign cheques.

For young workers, they do not do unionism.  They are too afraid. The only thing they know is individualism.  Get paid and go home.  If you are lucky you will keep the job and look after your family. And in sometimes unsustainable ways.

The key issue however as we celebrate May Day/Workers Day in Zimbabwe 2024 is the fact that we are doing it for posterity.  We have to remember that our progressive post-independence  politics stemmed from the labour mAovement. Without a doubt.  

We have strayed from this progressive path because of abstract populism and also because we simply had a revolution that lost its way. Not because of Morgan Tsvangirai but because of ourselves who  thought life is all about materialism and not thinking about the collective goodwill of the communities’ we live in.  We all wanted and still want to be rich and live or even love beyond our means.

I am still a worker.  I know my rights.  I understand those who assume I am ignorant.  Just as I assume that there are many who assume we are ignorant.  Because of their proximity to those in corporate or political power.  

I will end this blog with an anedoctal point.  I knew Morgan Tsvangirai.  He was an amazing trade unionist.  I applied for an attachment with ZCTU.  I qualified, but he couldn’t hire me after he had been attacked at Chester House in Harare.  We re-met a year later at the National Constitutional Assembly.  And we discussed Karl Marx.  Extensively.  Pity we did not discuss Gramsci.  I had not yet read him. 

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

 

Zimbabwe, Africa , TikTok and Behavioral Digital Capitalism

By Takura Zhangazha*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

   

 

 

Discussing Ideology and Mimicry in Zimbabwe (Again)

By Takura Zhangazha*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Political Economy of Zimbabwe's 2024 Drought

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

An African Understanding of the Global Dangers of a World War 3.

 By Takura Zhangazha*

In primary school we had an amazing headmistress, Ms. Thomas. This was when we were approaching our final year in that phase of our education.  She had decided for reasons of her own that we needed an impromptu lecture on the import of the Iraq-Kuwait war in 1990. 

We were in grade seven (7).  She showed us a map of Kuwait and one of Iraq.  And proceeded to explain to us the full impact of both chemical warfare and also nuclear weapons deployment. If I remember correctly at my young age then, she indicated the possibility of how after a nuclear weapon was deployed there would be some cloud that affects not only the Middle East but also drift toward Africa and eventually drift further southwards to affect us. 

We were somewhat shocked and surprised that we had to learn this. We mainly knew of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa.  We never thought that a war that far away from us would affect us.

It was mainly because we did not understand at least two things at our young ages.  We did not know the global political economy.  And we did not know the global threat that is nuclear war. Nor did we have any inkling about what was then referred to as the Cold War and its eventual false end on the assumption of an ‘end of history’. 

As we grew up under neo-liberal economic policies such as the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) and its end cultural imperialistic effect of us seeking departure to the now “Global North”, we also learnt of other wars.  We learnt of the globalised war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in which we as Zimbabweans participated. There were the wars in Eastern Europe that we watched almost for entertainment on global television networks and of course there was the ‘war against terror’ in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Almost as though we were re-watching the ridiculous Rambo movies of old. 

But here we are in 2024.  And again globalised war is the main international discourse of not only global superpowers but also their proxies, surrogates or affiliates.

It may seem an abstract point, as far as we are from Global North centres and here in the opposite Global South in Africa.

But we know what happens in the same said Global north or Global east affects not only our trade, Diaspora remittances but also our local politics.

What matters more is our perception of the same.  Both historically and in the contemporary. 

As Africans we have always been involved in wars that are not ours.   Especially between the west or the east.  Be it the first World War or the second one, we ended up dying in lands/countries’ that were never going to be ours.  The only important lesson that we learnt was that we also had to fight to liberate ourselves from colonialism. 

Now we find ourselves between a rock and a hard place as Africans. We have witnessed and taken sides in wars that are not ours.  Except for the Palestinian, Western Saharawi republics we have not had a direct say in other globalised post-cold war conflicts.  Be it in Ukraine, Myanmar or closer to home in Libya, Haiti, Mali or Sudan. 

What is more apparent is that we now need to see what’s coming.  And why.  The world is faced with a colossal dangerous situation in which it is on the brink of global war. Not just globalised as I have been referring to in this article.  But global, whether we as Africans are complicit in it or not.  From Taiwan to China, Ukraine to Washington, Palestine to Israel, Syria to Yemen or in West Africa.

The global superpowers that are the United States of America, China, the European Union and Russia are at loggerheads that they make it clear are not going to be easily resolved by their own diplomacy or the internationally recognised channels of the United Nations. 

We just should not get caught up in the mix of fights that are not only not ours but those that have material (oil, gas) and racist overtones to them. 

Finally, even our great African luminary Kwame Nkrumah tried to warn us in his famous statement,

“We face neither East or West.  We face forward!” And indeed that is what we should do. Face organically forward.

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

 

 

 

 

In Solidarity with the People of #Palestine from #Zimbabwe.

By Takura Zhangazha*

There are many internal and internationalized conflicts currently going on in the world.  They are “internationalized” mainly because there are global powers interests in them.  The latter can be for historical, economic or holistic geo-political reasons.

In the last twenty years global conflicts have allegedly been linked to mineral wealth (oil, lithium, platinum, uranium, gold) of geographical locations by mainstream and alternative professional media. With accusations of sponsoring one form of terrorism or the other by global superpower nations to poor or former vassal state ones.   Easy examples of this include Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan and Venezuela (in part).

The key issue for me as a Zimbabwean has always been an understanding that war is always a final resort.  Especially war between countries that can be considered by any measure ‘unequal’.   

With the coming into existence of the United Nations in 1945, there was also a global general acceptance of the dictum ‘never again’ would we allow wars on as colossal a scale as the Second World war.  In subsequent years, the UN was also an important multilateral organization for the liberation of Africa from the 1950s through to 1994.  Even though it still has the outstanding matter of the freedom of the Saharawi people to continuously attend to. 

But here we are in 2024 faced with multiple global conflicts on scales that should be unimaginable.  We have a war in Gaza, Palestine. One in Sudan. Another in Ukraine. Ongoing ones in Syria, Iraq and in part Afghanistan where the Americans abruptly withdrew their formal troops.

And we also have threats of a second Cold War between the United States of America and China with added discourse around what are referred to as space and technological wars. 

As an African and in particular a Zimbabwean, there is a general assumption that first of all, I am probably not expected to have an opinion on the global state of war that we are in.  Not least because of my skin colour or my geographical placement in what is still referred to as the “third world”.  But also because of an assumed powerlessness that we as Africans are supposed to have in international relations. As derived from the colonial and imperialistic legacy of our being ‘othered’ as ‘inferior’ human beings.

There is however a particular matter that torches (not touches) my personal consciousness. This is the one of the Palestine- Israel conflict. For at least two reasons.  

The first being that I became aware of the dispossession of Palestinians of their land by way of reading on their history, interacting with both Palestinian and Israeli cdes in university and also by way of my own personal curiosity about the role of Palestine in broader struggles for African liberation.

On the latter point, it turns out that even in Zimbabwe’s own liberation struggle among other Southern African states, we either fought or were trained together with Palestine cdes about the struggle for liberation.  Both militarily and ideologically.  And that after we had already attained our own independence, the legendary Yasser Arafat was and is still revered by progressive cdes across the globe.  And the late Palestinian ambassador to Zimbabwe Ali Halimeh who regularly reminded of his peoples struggles on mainstream local media. So we have known about the people of Palestine’s struggles for liberation even before 07 October 2023.  We also know of the 1948 Nakba.

The catch however is the assumed Christian religious complexity that we as Zimbabweans have had with Israel and the biblical ‘Israelites’.  And how we have a false popular perception that Israel is some sort of religiously promised land. 

This is far from the truth.  The Israel you read in the bible is not the Israel of our contemporary reality. It is a settler state that with the help of the British government colonized land that belonged to the people of Palestine after the Balfour Declaration of 1917. 

But because most of us Zimbabweans are of the Christian religion we tend to assume our faith is the same as our realities and in the process believe every other mistruth we are told, we become political cannon fodder that regrettably ignores the rights of the people of Palestine. 

Yes we may sing songs about ‘Jerusalem being our home’ at funerals and other religious related functions but Jerusalem originally and in historical reality belongs to the people of Palestine. And we should always support their historical struggle for freedom from oppression and occupation. This will not change your faith or beliefs.   

As a final point, I have many profoundly Christian friends who will probably not be happy with this write up. As abstract as their religious views are, I have no doubt that the death toll of 30000 Palestinians since October 2023 must have a bearing on their religious Christian consciences.   

I also have a number of friends that will ask why I am arguing for the freeing of Palestine from occupation and in support of the UN backed two-state solution.  My reply is that the people of Zimbabwe will always have a symbiotic relationship with the people of Palestine.  As determined by our shared struggle history and common human equality values.

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