Emerging Global Complexities for the Next African Union (AU) Commission Chairperson

 

By Takura Zhangazha*

On Monday 13 January 2025, the former prime minister of Kenya, Raila Odinga paid a courtesy call on Zimbabwe’s President E.D Mnangagwa in Harare. It turns out he has been on a tour of a number of African states and meeting with their presidents in order to let them know that he is bidding to be the next chairperson of the African Union Commission (AUC).

The current outgoing chair is Moussa Fakki from the Republic of Chad who’s second term of office ends this year. 

The other two candidates for the AUC chairperson’s post are Mahmoud Youssof of Djibouti and Richard Randriamandrato of Madagascar.  

The latter two are yet to pay a similar campaign or bidding visit to Zimbabwe within the ambit of these lobbyist activities to run the African Union for at least five years.   

What is evident from the visit of Raila Odinga to Zimbabwe is that to be chairperson of the AUC, you need support of members states and their heads of state and government.  It is essentially a somewhat elelected position by members of the African Union (AU). 

By the time its general assembly is held and ends in mid-February 2025, there should now be a new chairperson of the AUC.  Oh and yes, the AU does have what it calls its own electoral commission to count the members state s votes for this position.

The only ambiguity is that electing the chairperson of the AU is not as easy as walking into a polling station and casting your vote for the best orator or the most education/experienced of candidates. 

The election of the AUC chairperson is a highly lobbied, continental, global international relations and historically informed process. 

I will start with the historical element of this.  Ever since the formation of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in 1963  African states either in the West, North, Centre, East and South of the African continent have tended to compete with each other about what a future free Africa should look like. 

Either on religious grounds, proximity to former colonial powers’ foreign policy interests or greater regional liberation struggle and ideological ties that converged or differed between them.  

Hence historically we had the Monrovia (moderate) and Casablanca (radical) groups that eventually compromised to form the OAU. I will not go into details on these suffice to say the relative divisions about the role of Africa in the world and international relations have not necessarily gone away between members states of the AU as they approach the selection of a new chairperson of the AUC. 

In both an ideological sense or as it is informally viewed in a regional rotational fashion for the commission chair or for the head of state chair of the AU General Assembly.

I will now turn to the continental and globalized international relations of this year’s AUC chairpersons appointment via lobbying and emergent international relations re-alignments. Especially in the wake of the Ukraine-Russia conflict, the DRC conflict, the Sudan civil war,  the fall of the Syrian government, the election victory of Donald Trump in the USA, the counterhegemonic role of China and the Israel-Palestine conflict. Also inclusive of the still recognized freedom struggle of the people of the Saharawi Republic from the recent AU member entrant, the Kingdom of Morocco. 

Any new AUC chairperson has to be able to balance all of these emergent global developments with a keen eye on AU member states interests and vulnerabilities in what is clearly a fluid international relations and loyalties’ global political environment.

And in most cases, because of the aforementioned complexities', the position of running the day to day affairs of the AU as its commission’s chairperson tend to be left to what one could consider a ‘neutral’ diplomat.  One that can talk to China and the USA while straddling the tight rope between Russia, Ukraine and the European Union.   While again all the while listening to regional treaty based organizations on the African continent and also individual member states and their interests.    

And these points bring me to the three official candidates that I have cited above for the coveted position of the chairperson of the African Union Commission. 

I had not heard much about the two candidates from Djibouti and Madagascar.  But in Zimbabwe we are familiar with Raila Odinga.  

Not only because of Kenya’s geographical proximity to us but also because he was politically close to our own former prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai and successor leaders to Zimbabwe’s mainstream opposition political parties.   

We also know the dynamics of his domestic role in Kenya in so far as he has disputed electoral results and supported a number of nascent pro-democracy movements in the east, central and southern African regions. 

This makes for a clear complexity of his candidacy even if it is eventually backed by Mnangagwa’s government or the East African heads of states.

What is apparent is that with the necessary effort, a former prime minister, foreign minster or president can re-invent their political careers by seeking regional and international roles. Backed by their multiple reputations, loyalties and emergent international relations dynamics and global economic powerhouse interests or direct support.  

And it is sort of a good thing that we get to see the candidates and can now google their backgrounds.  But the reality of the matter is that we are not the ones that vote for them as Africans.  It is our heads of state and government that do so.  Not for democratic purposes but within the ambit of global international and economic relations dynamics.  

But for now we can only appreciate that we still have the African Union and we have an understanding at both elite and national continental levels of its importance. It is complex but we can only wish the next chairperson of the African Union Commission all the best in these trying global times.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Government Enabled Water Barons: Waiting in Opportunist Profit Wings and a Disaster for Zimbabwe

 By Takura Zhangazha*

In the first calendar week of 2025, the Zimbabwe government announced its intention to privatize water in the capital city of Harare. 

The minister for local government, Daniel Garwe, in a recent press conference said the following,

“Last week Friday, we were given the green light to privatise water services. We are now in the process of inviting private sector players, both local and international, to bring proposals, expressions of interest. These are going to be unsolicited bids. We want somebody with the capacity to engineer, to procure, to construct and manage the finance. That’s the model that we are working on. Engineering, procurement, construction, management and finance.”

He indicated that the processes of making this a reality had already begun when he added,

“These are unsolicited bids. So, as we speak, we’ve already received about five expressions of interest from local players and three from international players. So, it’s work in progress. By end of next week, we would have identified the most suitable people that have applied and appointed them, at least signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), and then a Memorandum of Agreement…we want by the end of this month (January 2025) to have dealt with the issue of water in Harare”

For many a progressive and accountability activist the question that may immediately emerge is one of procurement and tender procedures.  And of course a blind worship of capitalism in its local neo-liberal formats such as the misplaced ‘ease of doing business’ mantras.  More-so where it now appears that the government is now focused on privatizing the precious natural and global resource that is water. 

And no doubt there are those that have been announced as having submitted expressions of interest (whom the government only knows) that are probably waiting with bated breath to pounce on this new ‘get rich quick’ monopolization of water and its treatment for public consumption.

This is mainly for at least three reasons. 

The first being that they know the Harare water crisis context and quite literally see an opportunity to make profits based on the disastrous water treatment and management by the current Harare City Council (HCC).  In seeing this opportunity, they are, together with central government, aware of how ‘disaster capitalism’ works.  

One in which interested parties argue that the failure of a component of the state to provide a key public service can only be remedied by passing over that responsibility to private players and ‘market forces’. 

Including entering this new so called ‘water market’  with the attendant tax exemptions and concessions from central government.  And for sure there will be some sort of official launch of the first such project as we have now become familiar with when it comes to other such investment frameworks in mining and infrastructure construction. 

The second reason is linked to the first.  Essentially this move by the minister of local government is one made with a probable awareness of the political meaning of water and water supply.  And also with a keen understanding of the desperation of many a Harare resident to simply wake up with a tap that has clean running water in their homes or within their immediate vicinities. 

This desperation has led many Harare residents to seek underground water at high cost, put together mini- water collectives to put up boreholes in a number of our high density areas.  With others reverting to their political parties to at least get basic wells (covered and uncovered) to be dug at a central point (kuchibhorani).  I won't talk about the churches, their faith related boreholes and their role in this water conundrum.

So almost any immediate solution to a water crisis is welcome to many a Harare resident. 

Many have individualized their solutions to their water problems based on their own income/wealth (and occasionally boasting about it in social circles- a shocker to be hones- how can one boast about having water when others don’t.  It not as if Cholera skips houses in its occurrence). With limited consideration of the fact of the dwindling underground water supply in Harare.  You now basically have to dig deeper for your borehole. 

The third reason is that as it is, water and its provision, not only in Harare but other major cities has been undergoing what I consider to be an 'experimental commercialization'. 

In any direction of Harare there are multiple suppliers of water that many residents are using.  They have natural sources of this water that they store and transport at ridiculous cost to individual residents as and per request. With the most profitable being the richer neighbourhoods where council water is rarely supplied.   So water has already become sort of business.  

Especially with the current drought we are undergoing.  Water is sadly increasingly being viewed as a commodity and not a right.  A development that if not us but our children will rue or probably eventually fight over. 

In encapsulating these three aforementioned reasons it is fairly evident that the question of water and water supply in Harare is now patently ideological. 

This includes questions such as, "What is the right water in both its legal/constitutional or humanist sense? How equitable is the framework of its distribution both in urban and rural areas? And finally how fundamental is the role of the state, parastatals and public administration in ensuring clean water delivery in an equitable manner?"  

These questions are rarely raised in their ideological context because of a general mistrust and low expectations of the public good role of central or local government by Zimbabwe’s public.  Let alone the residents of the capital city Harare which is poised to become the optimal laboratory of the privatization of water in the country,

The alternative solutions to this are very ideologically apparent.  If water is a human right and also a human necessity for all, then it is the state’s primary obligation to ensure it is provided.   Not through the whim of profit motivated individuals or their corporate entities who can argue any one day that they do not have chemicals or financing and revert to the state for bailouts in one form or the other. 

If we improve our public administration of water, the relevant local  and central government owned public enterprises can function on the basis of revolving door funding based on generally affordable, accepted and accountable water taxation systems.  Through this we will have a much more people centered solution to the water supply crises.

But as most of us are now increasingly aware, the ‘politics of the belly’ have affected the political parties that are in charge of either central or local government.

We must rise above this and remember that water, though in need of treatment and transmission to homesteads and villages, is not invented in a factory. It is natural and every human being has an inalienable right to it.

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

(takurazhangazha.com)  

Politicised Rain and Undeclared Drought in 2025 Zimbabwe.

By Takura Zhangazha*

At the beginning of the year 2025, there is now some rain that covers broader parts of Zimbabwe. Our metrological experts had anticipated, via their own public pronouncements that it would rain significantly in early 2024 December. 

The reality of the matter is that no matter the science, the weather in Southern Africa is not as predictable as popularly anticipated. We are only receiving major rains now. 

And we are still not sure of their significance for our annual agricultural season.

Moreso if we are looking at long standing peasant farmers or those that were resettled after the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP).  

With or without the latter’s conundrum of the new land tenure system that was recently introduced by the current government around title deeds. As well as the compensation of former white farmers for their infrastructural land developments. (A matter that is historically and politically complicated and in my personal view, wrong and I have referred to this as "Replacement Capitalism")

What is apparent is that the arrival of our annual rainfall season for the year 2024-25 is no longer just about a natural seasonal event as we have always anticipated. 

A development that is increasingly felt in what we know to be our communal areas and also our FTLRP resettlement areas.  Not in an abstract way where you wait to be told by the district agricultural extension officer that there will be a drought. 

But more in a sense that when the rain does not fall as expected per calendar it affects your family’s livelihood regardless of whether you are an A1/2 or communal farmer. 

In the south of the country early crops planted in November 2024 have been reported as wilting and there are very serious problems with pastures for livestock. 

Particularly in communal areas.  The late rain that we are experiencing has also meant that the rural political economy has shifted to one that either relies on government/donor handouts for food aid or an individual family’s capacity to either have stored enough grain to wait for the next harvest. 

It has also meant key disruptions to everyday rural communal livelihoods not only for grain supply relief but also for the fact of paying for school fees, health care and other accessories that come with living in a rural area (soap, cooking oil, tomatoes, vegetables and even toilet paper).  

What is most apparent is the fact that ‘rain is political’ in Zimbabwe.  And I will explain this a bit lightly. One of the most prominent anthropologists who has studied the history of our country, Professor Joost Fontein in his book on “The Silence of Great Zimbabwe, Contested Landscapes and the Power of Heritage” shocked me with an assertion in the book that announcing the next seasons rainfall patterns was largely considered some sort of crime in Zimbabwe.  

The announcement had to come from officially sanctioned central government predictions. 

This essentially meant, given our own traditions, we were always expecting a good harvest after a drought. Especially if we consulted our ancestors and spirit mediums at the end of a previous drought.

Well, we have a previous drought and what appears to be a current one.  Hence our current government is publicly stating that we have enough staple grain stock to feed the country. 

Including the wheat we got from Russia. 

With the intention of giving the impression that the country’s worst affected provinces (mainly in the south and the west) by this late rain will be covered by government food aid.

For Zimbabweans that experienced the 1992-93 drought where we ate what was referred to as ‘yellow maize meal’ this is a nostalgic experience of uncertainty and fear.  Neither should it be re-lived.  But it should be re-thought.

Especially when the global north narrative is about climate change, global wars (Ukraine, Palestine, Sudan,  Democratic Republic of the Congo ((DRC))) and all of their impact on sustainable food/nutrition livelihoods in relation to global financialised climate and mining capital.

In the contemporary, what should be apparent for us in Zimbabwe is that the rains have not fallen as expected this season.  Unless you are on irrigated land and have the material capital (never mind financial) to demonstrate your uniqueness at farming like our current president, you are bound not to have a good harvest to sustain your family.  And this is the reality for many a number of communal and resettled farmers. 

And also unless you have a plan-B for your livestock such as buying hay and molasses, your herds will dissipate with relative ease.  

And when this happens you will not be able to use that material capital to pay school fees, buy clothes and other amenities for your children.

A situation which leads one to either rely on your immediate or extended family for financial support or borrow in perpetuity. 

I am writing this based on not only personal experience but also the view that our central government has not changed its approach to how we deal with what are no longer predictable planting seasons.  Moreso after the FTLRP. 

We are in a dilemma in which we rely on the science to tell us what will happen about ‘rain’ and then if it does not happen as planned we then make it political.

Especially if you are a ruling government where the argument is we do not control nature or argue that the ‘ancestors are angry’ (midzimu yakatsamwa). 

With a veneer of optimism that in some areas the rains fall well and that they will be able, with government assistance, be able to feed those in dire need of food aid.  As long as they are of the clear understanding of the politics that they must support. 

All we can do as Zimbabweans is no matter our religious/spiritual affiliations is pray for the rains. And to think beyond our political preferences, hard as that may be for the next distribution of maize or wheat programmes.

The only problem is that we tend to shrug our shoulders and think about ourselves, our both urban and urban individualistic families for what we consider our survival.

But the much vaunted government ‘trickle down’ economics of beneficiation of either land redistribution or urban housing and entrepreneurship are directly affected by a drought. Particularly this undeclared one.  Even if we cannot always be allowed to argue about its occurrence without risk of arrest. 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Dying Progressive Global North, War and Consciousness.

By Takura Zhangazha*

In conversation with a comrade (yes I generally have many of those), we discussed what in our African context constitutes a ‘World War’.  We didn’t have an evident answer except to borrow from history . 

We knew about the First World War at the turn of the 20^th century which led to among many others, the Russian revolution in 1917.  We also knew it led to the rise of the nefarious Hitler and his Nazi republic that killed not only many but established a regrettably enduring culture of racism and assumptions of exceptionalism of colleagues in the global north.

We also learnt via Eurocentric history text books of the Second World War and its full import on how eventually the Union of Soviet of Socialist Republics (USSR) as led by Stalin, with the eventual assistance of the British, the Americans and in part the French defeated Hitler in 1945 Berlin.

We however did not know enough of the fact that in both world wars, Africans had been key in winning the wars on behalf of what we now know as the global west/north.  Our forefathers from all corners of the African continent and former African colonies had fought on behalf of colonial empires against two German regimes that intended to dominate the global political economy.  With the one under Hitler intending to be globally and a racist hegemony. 

As is now historically given, wars and battles were fought.  As Africans we won some in for example Ethiopia.  We lost many lives (African and African American) in the European hinterland where we are now no longer wanted.  Even though we have many recruits in their armies by both descent and now contemporary voluntary recruitment. 

We learnt the hard way in the second world war that, as an historical fact that, we are as human as ‘white people’ and also that ‘they also die in war’.  That is, if they get shot, they die too.

From thence we also learnt to launch our own liberation struggles as learnt from the USSR and the emergent philosophy of the Chinese and its metaphoric/ideological Maoist linking of the people as “fish to water”.    

Eventually we won our liberation struggles for African independence barring the Saharawi Republic by 1994, a case which remains outstanding with the African Union (AU). 

And in our naïve assumptions we thought the age of global war, cold or otherwise was over.  We thought we had become equal nations before the global United Nations (UN) except for the fact of the UN Security Council veto of the five member states of the same.  A matter that remains outstanding today.

As African, people,  states and governments, never mind our democratic credentials as measured within the context of  international allegiances based on the then global Cold War, we  punched above our global weight and formed not only the Organization of African Unity (OAU) but also further expanded it into regional anti-colonial organizations such as the Southern African Development Community (SADC) which thankfully we still have in the contemporary. 

But there is one thing that as Africans we have generally agreed on.  Given this historical background and across many of our regions, we know that we have experienced war.  We have experienced it in an immediate pre-colonial context (where we have some victories), a colonial context in which we lost some major wars such as the First Chimurenga in Zimbabwe and subsequently won the Second one in the late 1970s (even if the white settler regime negotiated and refused to accept complete defeat, we still won that war.)

The key point however of this blog is that we know war.  We have experienced it and we have said to ourselves, as Africans, that never again should we allow it to visit not only our shores but also our interiors. 

The only problem is that we are not the ones with a proclivity to war.  Given what is going on in Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Libya and  what failed but might be revived in Afghanistan or what might happen in Iran, we know who the real war mongers are.  Globally. 

It is the governments’ of the global north (North America, Western European and now Eastern European).  Be they conservative or liberal.

One may ask what is the basis for proclivity to war by people in power in the global north and east.  The easy answer is always access to strategic resources such as oil, gold and of late lithium. 

The aforementioned point is generally accepted across ideological divides.  Including progressive ones in the global south or the global north.

What remains a bit more perplexing is that ‘progressiveness’ in the global north is no longer a flag post as to what can happen in the global south.

Progressive leftists and liberals are losing ground in the global north.  They are becoming fewer and far between for reasons that they are probably best able to explain themselves.  With the cold reality that they are unable to win national or even local government elections as an example to comrades in the global south,

I wanted to write this short blog almost as an indictment of the progressive global north comrades.  But that would be unfair. 

I am of the firm view that whether we are in the global north or global south, progressive ideological thinking is dying.  Electorally but more sadly, organically.  But I remain optimistic.

Indeed I will argue with many colleagues in European and North American capitals about why they voted for Trump, Steimer or a conservative government that hates immigrants of colour in particular .  They generally tend to say ‘we tried’.  The only catch is that we are also trying over here.  Perhaps in less free circumstances.  But we are trying.

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

 

 

Understanding Wicknell and His Money as Ambiguous Influence in Zimbabwe

By Takura Zhangazha*

Controversial Zimbabwean businessman Wicknell Chivayo has been quite literally dishing out both luxury and basic utility cars to celebrities and individuals at an alarming rate.  Both unilaterally or upon social media requests/ pleas from long known celebrities.   

He has also been helping, at least according to his social media accounts and some media reports, well known national figures in their times of medical, accommodation or welfare needs. 

This is a very interesting political and social development in our country.  Both by way of its meaning and also how it is popularly perceived by many urban and rural Zimbabweans.  Some of whom have actually joined social media to make their claims to whatever fortune they think he has in order to help with both deep or abstract social problems them may be facing. 

I will not mention names (tisataure mazita) but indeed a good number of local celebrities in the sporting, music and film entertainment circles have been recipients of his astounding 'generosity'. 

Officially I know of one legendary one who has stubbornly refused at least two offers while asking questions as to where the money is coming from.  

An issue that for now, is probably falling on the deaf ears of our now very national and populist ‘mbinga syndrome’.  

Almost as though we are all hymning in the back of our minds that again popular song from Marshall Munhumumwe and the Four Brothers, “Ane Mari Ndiye Mukuru’ (literal translation- he who has the money is the eldest). 

For those that are in mainstream media, civil society, opposition politics and social media influencers against corruption or shady relationships between the state and individuals, this should have been  relatively easy anti-corruption activity material.

Except that it has not been off the mark as anticipated. Neither will it be in the short term. 

When you have popular both historically and in the present sports, culture and journalistic celebrities gratefully receiving gifts in cash or ‘car’ kind from Chivayo, there is limited ground to gain counter narrative popular traction against it.  Mainly because it is a difficult task to challenge our new found Zimbabwean ‘Mbinga Syndrome’.

As argued above, a greater majority of Zimbabweans are not really seeking an understanding of the importance of societal equitability in the country as an ideal.  Let alone understand the massive national socio-economic inequalities that we are faced with in the contemporary and the foreseeable future.

We generally tend to have a perception that whoever has made their money, however they have made it, let them use it how they wish. Except where it relates to political partisanship and factions. 

Moreso if they are going to be somehow philanthropic by starting for example a football club that wins promotion to the national Premier league, or construct multiple boreholes or in the much more publicized Chivayo cases, help artists, musicians and others in their vehicular or other needs. While supporting one faction of either Zanu Pf or the CCC and whatever remains of it.  Things that the Mbingas themselves do not hide either side of the political divide. 

In our own non-partisan political instance we do not ask about the source of these individual’s incomes as much as we would even want to.  Either for fear of being excluded or for fear of being sued and in the last instance for a final lack of actual evidence of wealth related to corruption after acquittals of these individuals at the highest Zimbabwean court levels. And as usual criminal defamation charges that still subtly hang over us today.  

But our desire to receive gifts and generosity for one real or perceived problem is not limited to our celebrities only.  And besides given our dire economic circumstances, particularly for young and gendered Zimbabweans, there is no time to ask a religious pastor throwing around United States dollars in a street in Chitungwiza or Kwekwe where he got the money from.  

The pertinent and quite violent issue is to grab as much as you can while it is being thrown out of a moving vehicle while shouting ‘Mbinga Mbinga!’

So what we have now obtaining is a very complicated culture around wealth, access to it, and celebrity induced misunderstanding of how to get rich quick that can be recognized in one social media message by a ‘Mbinga’ to your favourite musician, footballer or any other person who either has national gravitas. Or has serious personal problems that social media users ask for help for.

Our political and economic realities however indicate that this is highly unsustainable.  It is an almost a live for the moment sort of situation.  Yes you can get a vehicle from the “Mbinga’.  Questions arise as to you did you even want it?  Or if you are allowed to sell it?  Or even get support to maintain it?

And before comrades accuse me of jealousy, vehicles are essentially just that. Especially if they are donations.  As are mansions that even if you build them, if you cannot maintain them, they became derelict former castles.

What I have however come to realize with most of us as Zimbabweans is that we tend to live in the moment.  Or in the materially immediate.  At highly individualized levels in which the only common thread is again our newfound high levels of individualism. 

And its easy for those that are linked to state resources, especially after the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) such as urban land barons, miners, "tenderpreneurs"and farmers can create competitive wealth in order to become the new ‘untouchables’.  As long as they have proximity to contemporary state power. 

So popularly, in both a political and economic sense, barring a major political change in Zimbabwe, the likes of Wicknell Chivayo will be revered as enablers of some sort of individual material progress for celebrities and other national figures.

But if you ask me whether we should fear them for their money?  My answer is an easy no.  We should fear them for their values and their cross generational individualistic impact.  As we are witnessing it in the ghettos and the peri-urban rural areas for now. And we should find ways and means to counter this even if at the moment it seems bleak. 

What I also do know is that in the culture and sports industry, if the state was more organic, our legends would not be as materially vulnerable as they are today.

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

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Mothers as Flawed Revolutionaries

 

By Takura Zhangazha*

Mothers are correctly sacrosanct in Zimbabwean culture.  More-so given the  popular adage ‘kusina Mai hakuendwe, kune rima’ (where there is no mother, you do not go there, there is darkness) is deeply ingrained in most of our national consciousness. Especially as popularized by Simon Chimbetu  and the Orchestra Dendera Kings in the famous hit single “Kusina Mai”.      

Hence we revere motherhood.  No matter its circumstances.  Be it single, married, step or widowed motherhood. 

And whether you are female or male, you tend to hold your mother in absolute awe.  Both by way of your own personal history but also your present circumstances and your future (marriage, illness, wealth and even notions of the afterlife)

But there is a key consideration that we sometimes overlook.  This is the fact that mothers are at the heart of our national consciousness in Zimbabwe.

Be it in the past, the present and the future. 

If its in relation to the past we need not look beyond the first and second Chimurenga’s for an understanding of what ‘mothers of the revolution’ meant politically and socially.  With even the emblematic Nehanda Nyakasikana proving to be a major motivation for a subsequent struggle against the colonial Rhodesian state.  It was not just her femininity but also the assumed role of being a motherly spirit medium that embedded her to our national political consciousness. 

And this stemmed largely from a point where culturally we all know that the last stop for protection for a child is the mother.  And the first step of learning to walk, sleep or go to the toilet is in normal societal circumstances, the mother of the child. 

This applies to both the past and the present.  And will most likely apply to a nearer Zimbabwean future. 

In the present however, the meaning of motherhood has been shifting significantly.  Its no longer as cultural as it was in the past.  Its increasingly about both domestic work and also formal work where roles of motherhood and making money continually clash in our capitalist society. And where gender related vulnerabilities exploit motherhood to an extent that leads many to a path of assumptions that materialism is the only thing that makes the world go round.  Despite religious affiliations and loyalties.

This has been both empowering and disempowering.  The cultural norms that are traditional and the expected roles of mothers still obtain. Ones in which giving birth,  care, love, affection and being the last bastion of material and emotional refuge of children remain valued and important both to men and women in our society.  But mothers are also working women and therefore they have newer demands to who they are and what they are expected to deliver.

In other words they definitively have a double work load.  The traditional function of motherhood and the material importance of the same in modern times.  They are no longer expected to wait for their men/husbands to bring the money but also to earn it. 

This however comes with a consciousness dilemma.  Motherhood, from a distant analysis perspective is increasingly bout the fact of the material and the children.  It is less about what we are culturally attuned to about either agricultural activities and waiting for the father to send anticipated income. 

At the same time it is increasingly clear that these new nodes and regrettably religiously motivated understandings of what it means to be a mother are now more complex due to economic constraints.

This however does not change the indelible fact of our mothers as revolutionaries.  AS argued above they have taught us out most basic consciousness.  And will continue to do so.  They are both the harbingers of our everyday culture and also the ones that instill seeds of societal ambition in us. 

The key questions that emerge are however their ideological outlook of Zimbabwean society.  Or in some cases their lack of it. 

In most cases this is largely a materialist mimicry of mothers in the global north.  Without much argumentation.  Whether we look at it religiously or in the material sense. 

I know that this viewpoint may ruffle a few feathers but it is important to point out that our initial consciousness comes from our mothers.  Who we quite literally worship but in some cases forget that they are also human beings like the rest of us.

So we need to continually respect our mothers.  They are revolutionary because of what they made a majority of us becomes.  They also have their flaws as highlighted above but as Nkrumah once wrote, “Educate a Woman, You liberate a Nation”.   And this is for the future.   

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

 

 

 

Africa and the Potential of a World War 3

 By Takura Zhangazha*

A young Zimbabwean cde asked me about the meaning of ‘global war’.  His question was coming from a context of the general narrative of a globalilsed world war between Russia, Ukraine and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).  And of course the celebrity narrative or even movie like narrative that comes with pitting Biden, Putin and now Trump (his favourite) against each other.

This was a 'small-small' conversation about the prospects of a global third world war. Or what has been referred to as the potential of/for a World War 3 due to the conflict between Ukraine and Russia.    

What was interesting in this conversation was the assumption of distance of Zimbabwe and Africa from this assumed prospective World War 3 (WW3) territories.  

For the young cde this was an important point.  Because his major understanding was that it would all play out in Europe and North America.  That is it was all about the Russians versus the Americans and the Europeans. 

In his view, Africans were too far from the conflict to be concerned as though we were watching a movie in a film theatre.  He also hastened to add that Africa has been there before and therefore would survive any escalation of the conflict between global superpowers.

I did not pursue the matter further.  He had made his mind up and there was no need to challenge his thinking.  Mainly because we have to deal with a reality of a newer false consciousness among young Zimbabweans.  One that is stubborn, individualistic, highly opinionated and linked to materialism (influence, cars, money, capitalism and therefore power). 

And also the fact that no matter how much you think you know better, younger cdes will always dispute your opinions based on what they consider either their sharper minds or their access to more information on global events as they occur on mainstream and social media. 

Upon individual reflection, and beyond personalized conversation, it is clear that there is a potential for a WW3.  Not only because the term in itself is familiar from what we studied in global history as Africans but also because of the reality of the Russians bombing Ukraine with new sophisticated weaponry. 

Missiles that their President Vladimir Putin promised to use more broadly if NATO continues to allow Ukraine to use its missiles to attack Russian territory, especially because they will not know what hit them.

Historically, as Africans, we have generally known our place in the context of global wars and subsequent cold wars.  Even if our governments do not acknowledge these for diplomatic and international relations reasons. 

We are the low rung victims of these anticipated globalized or regionalized wars.  In fact we tend more to be proxies.  Where we either send our people to fight in other peoples wars or we become victims of the same.

The assumption is that we are so desperate, naïve and simplistic to be part of either side while at the same time not understanding the global international relations and war complexities of what we are confronted with.

These realities are at least in three parts. 

The first is historical.  Africa and Africans have been part of global wars at least since the First World War.  We have fought and died on behalf of Europeans because of colonial British, French and Portuguese empires.  We also did the same in the Second World War where the West and Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) were victorious against Adolf Hitler’s Nazi expansionist intentions. 

We became more conscious after the Second World War and realized that we had to struggle for our own national independences and freedoms.  We had seen the vagaries of war.  More-so in the instances of Mozambique, Guinea Bissau-Cape Verde, Algeria, Zimbabwe for example we had no choice but to wage liberation struggles against the same.

When we became free, barring the Saharawi Republic as recognized by the African Union (AU), we were still embroiled in the vestiges of the then Cold War between the Global West and Global East.  Nuclear war remained imminent and we were and remain bit part players in its potential import.

Where we fast forward to what obtains today, as Africans, we have to come to the realization that many of the globalized (quite literally) wars that occurred in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) were never ours to claim the spoils of war.  Neither were they in any way related to any semblance of the respect of the United Nations Charter. 

By the time we have the current war in Ukraine and its effect on world security, agronomy and food sustainability, Africa has tried to find its voice but has generally been ignored. 

Even if we have the global geo-political conundrum that is similar to the one we had at the time of the Cold War. 

What I know is that Africa has limited say in stopping a WW3.  Its an historically accepted and probably likely racist reality. 

It does not mean we cannot as Africans with our global representatives speak up against this increasingly possible reality. 

We know that the Americans have changed their government.  We know that the Russians have retained their government.  We also know that the Chinese have fortified their foreign and extractive  policies in Africa.

But in any African conversation about the possibility of a WW3, it is important to recall and remind global superpowers that we shall never again be pawns in wars that we did not create or cause.  

While international relations are complex, we have to hold fort against swimming with a global tide that we have no control over.  And I hope the African Union understands this. 

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