Waiting for the Rain: Realities of Zimbabwe’s 2023-24 National Drought.

By Takura Zhangazha*

There is currently a major drought in Zimbabwe.  Its impact is somewhat not as felt in the urban as it would be in the rural areas of the country.

In the urban areas it is more or less about the depth of boreholes and the setting up of support committees to deal with water shortages due to the inability of urban councils to deliver everyday use of water for reasons that vary from general incompetency through to actual water and attendant water-treatment chemicals shortages.

It however rarely appears to be immediate given the fact that those in urban lifestyles have no immediate direct relation to weather patterns and livelihoods. 

This is mainly because urban Zimbabweans go to formal and informal jobs trying to eke out a living that is almost a daily hustle that has limited understanding of the weather.  Or even the physical environment.

In the rural  areas of the country, the impact of the drought is much more immediate.  There is an evident shortage of water for human beings and also inevitably livestock.  There is also a shortage of food, higher costs of basic commodities such as maize for human sustenance. And as a priority food aid has to be given for many rural families that cannot afford to purchase maize on the market.

It is much worse for domesticated animals such as cattle, goats or sheep due to not only a lack of edible green grass but also stock feed and water. 

This also means that these animals are in a precarious situation at the moment.  Particularly in the Southern and Eastern regions of the country which rely more on these for sustenance. While also taking into account the fact that they are much more densely populated.

We are therefore all literally “Waiting for the Rain”, to use the title of Charles Mungoshi’s seminal novel.  Moreso in the rural areas.  The boreholes that are there can only do so much as the underground water levels dwindle. And once a day feeding schemes for primary school level children still does not provide adequate nutrition. 

The Zimbabwean government has already declared the current drought a national disaster. And it appears it is trying to provide the necessary mechanisms through which it can feed people but also prepare them for the next agricultural season.

The point however is that its efforts appear to still be inadequate.  The fact of climate change is no longer as simplistic as it used to be.  It is now a lived reality where a lot of Zimbabweans do not understand changes in weather patterns and how they are now impacting their everyday existence and livelihoods.  

So there is a political economy to our current drought. One that is as global as it is localized.  We have those in central and local government that control the distribution of food resources as well as agricultural inputs. Then there are those that are in control of social welfare for vulnerable families. The latter include food aid organisations that not only predict droughts but source the necessary grains for food sustainability.

Then we also have the animal husbandry industry that provides for example molasses and dried grass for a decent profit.

In this mix is the everyday villager who is looking at his/her family and their food security situation while also thinking about their livestock and how any loss impacts on either their ability to pay school fess for their children or at least be able to afford relish and medication.  

This also includes trying to ensure proximity to the state or food and agricultural donors at village level in order to at least survive the immediacy of the challenges that this drought has wrought on.

Or even in the urban where agricultural commodity prices have already gone up and there is more or less no social welfare back fall for poor urban families.  Unless the government or charities intervene.  Something which they do intermittently and also insufficiently.

What is clear in my mind is that even if it does rain in the immediate, we are already in a drought induced economic fix for at least another six months.  And I am not talking here about listed companies that trade in food commodities on either the local or other international stock exchanges. 

Instead I am referring to lived realities of everyday Zimbabweans who may not know where their next meal comes from. 

Or whether their livestock, which they heavily invested in, can last another day without collapsing and therefore having to be sold on the cheap to opportunistic buyers. 

The latter being business persons who are closely monitoring the drought situation in order to immediately profit from it. Be it through storing critical grain or meat and just waiting for government get desperate enough to pay exorbitant market related prices for it.   

So, yes our current drought has its own political economy.  It differs from the urban to the rural.  It affects largely the latter. And is generally dismissed in the former until you cannot buy ordinary packaged maize.  Or the meat, particularly beef, we consume is evidently more prevalent at cheaper prices due to our livestock dying from hunger and lack of water.

What I do know is that we need to have a broader national conversation about the impact of the national drought we are faced with.  Inclusive of what longer term solutions we can come up with for the rural and urban poor beyond politicizing who has come to rescue us from it as it is occurring. 

In the meantime it appears that we are all just waiting for the rain.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

Zimbabwe and Mozambique- An Irreversible Historical Reality.

 By Takura Zhangazha*

So I once boarded a plane as an election observer to Mauritius in 2005 or thereabouts.  I was part of a delegation of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Parliamentary Forum.  On the flight I met up with a member of the Mozambique parliament.

In my naivety I thought he was from the Frelimo ruling party.  At that time there was no social media proper but I had the equivalent of a digitalized ‘walkman’. 

In it I was playing a Thomas Mapfumo song “Tongosienda”  which referred to both South African  apartheid leader Pik Botha and Mozambiquan rebel Alfonzo Dlakhama as really evil people. 

So when I learnt that my fellow passenger was from Mozambique, I assumed that he would appreciate the Mukanya song on the relatively short flight to Mauritius. 

He did not.  But he also did not say this until we were at the hotel lobby as we were checking in. I was then informed that he was a member of Parliament for RENAMO. 

I asked some of the colleagues I was with about the fact that Renamo had members of Parliament in Mozambique given what we had been told about how bad their party was. 

In my naivety  I had assumed Renamo no longer existed in Mozambique.  At least militarily because we had been involved as Zimbabwe in defeating Dhlakama at Gorongoza.  As we were taught in high school and on television after Samora Machel was allegedly assassinated by apartheid South Africa in a plane crash in 1986.

We mourned about this and assumed that it would put paid to Renamo. Moreso after Zimbabwe had lost soldiers in fighting the Renamo, South African apartheid regime backed insurgency.

 The contrary turned out to be true.  But more as a political party after the Rome Accords for a peace agreement in Mozambique in 1992 (correct me if I am wrong). 

The big catch was that it was a political reality in Mozambique that could not be wished away.  Renamo continued to exist even after the freedom of South Africa in 1994. It had re-invented itself as a legitimate party in at least Western Mozambique (close to our Eastern borders).  And was evidently electable in those regions with its leader Alfonso Dlakama even becoming a member of Parliament. 

But Frelimo continued to win national elections as they constitutionally occurred. And as Zimbabweans we were sort of comfortable with that. Mainly because we did not and probably still do not see Renamo as an ally after our experiences with “Matsanga” and how they wrecked violent havoc in our Eastern provinces. 

But because we do not speak Portuguese, there are some points we may have missed about Mozambiquan democracy.  As Zimbabweans we may have falsely assumed it was static.  Based on our liberation struggle experiences as informed by historical knowledge. Both as taught in high schools after the great liberator Samora passed away but also on the basis of liberation war narratives we read in setbooks or if you were lucky were told by real war veterans such as the  late  Cde Dzinashe Machingura and Cde Freedom Nyamubaya. Wherein they always included the narrative of the battle of Mavonde.

 Though they never claimed to have been there.  I do however know at least two now war veterans that were there and what they referred to as the “Stalin Gun” that defeated the then Rhodesian army as ordered by Samora Machel.

In writing this, I am trying to demonstrate the organic relations of the people of Mozambique and Zimbabwe. 

And how controversial the relationships between Frelimo and Zanu PF have been.

On social media there has been a familiar narrative about the stealing of elections.  And also images that depict violence over and about the same.  I do not know the realities of the matter. 

What I do know is that Zimbabwe and Mozambique are kindred countries in the fight against colonialism, neocolonialism and post colonialism. 

But if you decide on a specific electoral system you have to accept its results. 

As I sometimes say to comrades, the mechanisms pf democracy are not the meaning democracy” as instructed by Kambarege Nyerere.

What is apparent is that you cannot haunt yourself out of who you are.   Democracy has never been a liability.  It is a strength.  It just has to be organic and ‘uncultist’ as we have been witnessing in recent years.

But back to Mozambique and Zimbabwe.  We belong to each other.  Historically.  Even if you wanted to falsely deny it.

The recent elections are clearly that county’s business.  Whoever they choose as their next president, while having a bearing on Zimbabwe, is essentially their decision. 

What matters more however is the fact of history. Zimbabwe and Mozambique are not a walk in the park countries.  We fought joint liberation struggles to be free.  Our people died. We are not a fiction.   We need to become better at who we can be.

*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity

 

 

A Changing African Global Political Placement.

By Takura Zhangazha*

I am from the Global South.  For many that do not quite understand this latter term, it is one that replaced what used to be referred to as the “Third World”. 

This was based on colonialism and assumptions of the superiority of the Western World as well as attendant simplistic perceptions of what was in the 1980s referred to as “underdevelopment”. 

All within the ambit of a global Cold War that defined international relations between the United States of America and its allies (NATO) against the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and its allies post the Second World War. 

So the Global South as an emergent term is historical, geographical and a lived economic reality.  It means that I am from the poorer parts of the world where and when it relates to comparative economic well-being or even societal happiness.  Both at an individual and societal level.

It is something that I know many comrades for the same said Global South cannot shrug off. 

Both materially and epistemologically. 

For me however, there is also the fact that I am from a Global South that is African.  And one that is also  therefore historically and physically othered as  ‘black’.

So I could have been from Venezuela, China, Palestine, Cuba or Aboriginal Australia but I am from the continent of Africa that is viewed in comparatively racist eyes by those that own the Global North but also those that claim closer proximity to it. 

By way of colour or in some cases integrated cultural practices.  As designed by colonial history and again ingrained attendant cultural,  economic and social practices that we live with today.  As well as pass them on to our children in ways we perceive to be progressive and in tandem with what our colonial, religious affiliations or material life experiences or aspirations have taught us. 

But as an African, barring the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and within the context of contemporary international regionalized proxy wars between the global west and east, I am increasingly aware that we are faced with a changing global world order.  One in which we, as Africans have little serious say. 

Not for a lack of words but because of the immediate threat of our weaknesses when it comes war on a global or even regional scale when the elephants are fighting.

Whereas when we fought against direct colonialism, we were emboldened by our own resolve and our allies to find what we then considered human and global egalitarian freedom.

 In the contemporary we are essentially powerless about determining how global wars affect us.  Let alone how to either prevent them or as the general term used in the present to ‘de-escalate’ these same said global wars. 

Be it at the United Nations, the African Union or in our own Zimbabwean instance, at the Southern African Development Community (SADC) level.

In some instances we have been complicit in inflicting harm upon ourselves as was the case with UN Security Council Resolution 1973 on Libya (a security council that included South Africa as a key international player). 

As we all now know, Libya will never be the same.  And that it is now a haven for multiple insurrections and instability across the Sahel region. 

But this is not the essential point to make.

As Africans we need to contend with the point that what has happened since COVID 19 as a global pandemic, the regional and global wars we are now witnessing as in the cases of the Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Libya, Palestine-Israel, Ukraine- Russia or in any other regional of the world, are not of our own making. 

In reality we are increasingly bit part players at the hands of those who we either refer to as allies, friends or ‘investors’.  Or in rare cases, enemies. 

What I find most curious is how we as Africans view our placement in global affairs as they occur.  A majority of us are familiar with its racist and repressive past. But tragically an even greater majority of us are not so familiar with its nuanced racist and repressive present.   

Or the groundwork for its racist narrative for the future as it tackles migration and race relations in the Global North.  Inclusive of our contradictory migratory desires to be there anyway despite the evident populist racial discrimination. 

What is important to bear in mind is that Africa in the global scheme of things is in a very bad space.  Particularly where it concerns regional or global wars for both material (economic)  and hegemonic (cultural) reasons.  

Based on recorded UN General Assembly voting patterns we are one day with the USA, another with Russia, on another day we are neutral and on other days we are with China.   Almost as though African countries are global “yo-yos” at as an important an organization as the UN. 

In my view, we need to return to the original spirit and letter of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU). 

While we have the African Union as our current major representative in the global scheme of things, including wars and economics, we might have missed the boat at the point of a continual understanding of the fact of our historical global (dis)placement. 

The Global North has limited respect for us.  In fact even progressive comrades who are based there are losing electoral and other social grounds as to either the equality of universal human rights or the fact that for example we need to reign in social media company ownership monopolies. And their control of ‘public progressive narratives. Even in their own backyards.  Twitter’s Elon Musk anyone?

But as the great African revolutionary Amilcar Cabral once wrote, “No matter how hot the water from your well is, it will not boil your rice”.

We need to re-think Africa’s role in global international relations.  Beyond our historical anger and beyond our desires for global mimicry. 

And we need to be more organically radical about this. 

Indeed we may need all the help we can get to meet the demands of modern industrialization and organic democratic governance.  But going forward we should not be proxies of anyone or any country.  We need to believe in ourselves again. Ditto Nyerere.

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

 

 

 

 

Culture and Praxis in Zimbabwe.

By Takura Zhangazha*

A friend recently asked me about what I meant many years ago about “generational praxis”. I will come back to this concept/issue later. But if you want to crosscheck Antonio Gramsci on Google, please go ahead.

 He asked me this in an awkward context wherein we had listened to the new music that is now very popular with the youth of Zimbabwe and also somewhat over-similar in its instrumentation and lyrics. This music is either called dancehall or hip hop as motivated by social media.

We were in Dzivaresekwa high density suburb where I partly grew up. (I also grew up in Chitungwiza and Waterfalls)

The music was blaring at the braai spot and it was not what we were used to when we used to watch Mvengemvenge /Ezomgido. Or go to watch Pengaudzoke or Somandla Ndebele live in concert at Nyaguwa nightclub. Or get over-inspired by Thomas Mapfumo and the Blacks Unlimited’s Chimurenga Music.

The music we were listening to was more brazenly individualistic, self-celebratory and somewhat abstract. But it suited the moment and also helped with memory and nostalgia of belonging. Both to the proverbial ghetto but more significantly of meeting with friends from long back.

In the conversations we had with my friend, I still looked around at the evident poverty of the neighborhood and its contradictory pride. Almost as though, in our dancing and inebriation, the cdes were saying, as in the songs they were dancing to, “ This is who we are! We were born here”

Lyrics that are also derived from popular musician “Killer T” who represents an iconic figure of both recognition of origin from the ghetto but also departure from it. Only to return in pride to prove that things worked out well elsewhere. 

This is not a new comparative argument for many Zimbabweans.  We all encounter it at church, work and in social spaces.  Sometimes with individual pride and competitive work experience.  Or in some cases with individual envy and competitive desire to be better than the ‘other’. Be they from high school, college or university.

It is a very interesting paradox. That is, to want both life experiences in post-independent Zimbabwe.  You were born, grew up and educated in either a rural enclave or urban ghetto and now you can argue about your successful point at arrival in the leafy suburbs of Harare, Bulawayo, Gweru, Masvingo or Mutare among many other towns and cities.  

This is a very realistic and emotional point to make because the majority of colleagues who went to high school, college or university between the late 1980s to the new millennium have this mindset.  The ones that were the first to get colonial education before independence are probably more embedded in specific lifestyles and habits that are too ingrained in them to be challenged intellectually or socially. 

But lets get back to “generational praxis” by asking the question of how do we now construct an understanding of a global progressive human existence. Regardless of race, colour, origin or class?

 Within an African context.

The reality of the matter is that this has not yet happened.  Mainly because of our own African materialism and regrettable simplicity over our lifestyles.  As we interact with global capitalism via money, movies and the attendant re-objectification of the female body (black, brown or white).

In this, we are not learning from history. We are entrapped in a neoliberal cycle of assuming that the world is our oyster.  Even as we Africans from all regions die going to the global north in the Mediterranean sea.

Or as we clamour to be recognized as equal human beings via various United Nations conventions that we fought hard for in the past and in the contemporary.

The question that however hangs over our heads is “What  do we now teach our children?” And also one about, “Who teaches them?” 

We all know from an African perspective that mothers are the best teachers of children.  Especially in their infancy. Your first song, sense of understanding of reality always stems from your mother.    

Though with the passage of time, depending on your gender, this can be ahistorically disputable.

But we need to look at the bigger picture. We need to get ourselves to quite literally believe in our being.  As Africans and beyond what we see on television, Netflix, the pastors pulpit or on other social media platforms.

Even if wanted or willed it, we are not all main actors or survivors.  We are a people that should treat each other with equality and fairness.  In as democratic a ways as is possible beyond the bright lights syndrome but an organic understanding that progressive change belongs to everyone. 

Indeed the global political economy sets out the standard for that house, car, trophy husband or wife, but it will never change the reality that life must be lived as honestly and obejctively as possible.  Beyond what you see on television and social media. 

Materialism is not a ‘life standard’.  It helps with how an individual or individuals can be perceived in a given society but it doesn’t change much. Unless you find yourself in a church organization. Or political party with ambitions for both local or national power. Or your remember the Nkrumah maxim, “Educate a Woman, You Liberate a Nation”

The major question however is what are we teaching our children?  Is the praxis of whatever we are teaching them going to make them better Zimbabweans?  At this rate, it is least likely. 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Zimbabwe’s New Land Policy As Replacement Capitalism

By Takura Zhangazha*

Zimbabwe’s President Mnangagwa recently announced a change to land policy within the context of under what we now historically refer to as the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP).  This was done at a routine weekly cabinet briefing by his minister of information. 

This new land policy essentially changes the tenure system for the beneficiaries of the FTLRP. There will be changes to the 99-year lease regime to one in which ‘bankable’ title will be given in various forms in order for farmers and investors to either get new loans or on the other side, lose land for failure to pay whatever they owe.

As reported in various online and mainstream platforms, this is a significant shift to the FTLRP.  One that appears to generally be welcomed by 99-year lease or offer letter farmers who were not defaulting on their state guaranteed loans. 

This new framework will prioritize (no surprises) veterans of Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle, youths and women that are already beneficiaries of the FTLRP. 

This new policy will also be appealing to current and potential urban land developers whom it identifies as another priority target group of investors/businesses. 

The referred to ‘bankability’ of the tenure system also immediately means that the financial services sector is another key priority target group.  Especially where and when they can invest in a loan system that can/will cyclically allow them to retain physical capital.  

Be it on behalf of individuals or corporate entities such as urban land developers that already either have permits, 99-year leases or offer letters. 

It will however not affect colonially designed communal land tenure.  That land will still fall under the purview of traditional leaders and Rural District Councils (RDC’s). 

This is also a new policy that will take a little bit of time to be effected due to necessary legal processes that follow such government announcements.

But be that as it may, it is a huge and economically significant one seeing as it is coming from cabinet and in the name of the current president of Zimbabwe, it must be taken with the utmost seriousness it deserves. 

Especially where it has occurred after an already given government position on a compensation deal for former white commercial farmers as provided for by the constitution for developments on the land at least.

Even if it is not yet fully formulated for the purposes of governance and remains a policy announcement.

In this new and sort of expected development there are however some ideological, political and economic considerations that must be part of the public debate or acceptance of the emergent new land policy.

The first being the ideological question of when the liberation struggle was fought was this the envisioned land tenure system?  What exactly did ‘Ivhu kuVanhu’ as a major motivation for the liberation struggle entail? 

The answer to this is multifaceted because we are at least 44 years after independence and its promises.   From our socialist ideals at the inception of our freedom through to our highly unpopular neoliberal  Economic Structural Adjustment Programmes (ESAP’s) and now our newfound state capitalist projects wherein the government is functioning on behalf of private capital in its variegated local and international interests.

Ideologically this new land policy is a return to the privatization of land that though acquired with the ‘revolutionary’ premise of ‘land back to the people’  reflects more of governments intent to do what I would call ‘replacement capitalism’.

It is a pretty basic concept.

It’s a return to a past or pre-FTLRP land ownership political economy.  Except for the fact that the now majority land owners are black, not white.  Almost as though we are flipping an ahistorical coin. 

Those that benefitted from the FTLRP are being given an opportunity to either use it as a bankable investment or sell it to the highest bidder based on the tenure granted to them by government.  Or to lose it based on the fact that they will now be able to get bank loans which if they do not remit, their land will be lost to financial services institutions or loan sharks. 

This is neoliberalism writ large.  Or as a close cde of mine reminded me recently, it can be a form of ‘Socialism for the Rich or Politically Connected’.  

Except that the beneficiaries of the FTLRP are not all rich or politically connected.   They are as vulnerable to these emerging government facilitated market trends as much as the communal farmer with the newly proposed policy. 

Politically though, this is a relatively populist move for many farmers that can either pay back the state backed loans they acquired during the height of the FTLRP or those who recently got the necessary state leases and offer letters.  They will be sloganeering all the way to the banks so long they can develop their acquired farms or pay back the money in one form or the other (sub-lease or sell). 

The key political issue is that it is likely that with this policy, the ruling Zanu PF party intends to create a specific farming political class that it will protect, nurture and create new political meaning about the FTLRP.  It already has the seedlings for this and in all likelihood with this new policy will expand it.  Both at a technical, political and economic level.

And it is the latter that I will seek to lastly deal with.  The economic effects of this are that if you are already a landowner via the FTLRP, you are basically in a position to expand or retain your capital with the support of not only this new policy but also your ability to maneuver around financial investments on your property. 

This also means that government expects that you will understand the necessity of a ‘trickle down economics' benefit for your investments based on the land that you got under the FTLRP to create be it employment or find new ‘markets’. 

In all of this, there is an unwritten and unspoken assumption from officials in the government and the ruling party that Zimbabwe’s agricultural and urban development sector can rise in the same manner that either China or Singapore did.   Mainly via prioritizing private but sitting government friendly global and local capital.

But also giving the impression that they know better in land policy mimicry that will pass the test of time because of radical historical nationalism.  Without revolutionary praxis but impressionable neoliberal false populism. 

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

 

 

 

 

 

A Journey Through #Zimbabwe Political Consciousness.

By Takura Zhangazha*

Most of us as Zimbabweans do not examine the trajectory of our contemporary but also individual national consciousness.  For example we do not really ask, what shapes our individual political opinions?  Is it the school we went to?  The churches we attended or the political processes that we witnessed or experienced?  Let alone the economic success desires we harbored, did not achieve and blamed multiple political establishments as to how we did not get to where we wanted?

Or how we got to where we materially wanted to get to via affiliation to particular political and economically linked political establishments? 

The truth of the matter is that we do not have to.  We generally live in the moment.  And we do not also have to overthink our existence as individuals or as a society.  Mainly because we assume everything is already established is unchallengeable.  At least not in the short term.

This might appear like a complicated concept but it basically means, there are now things that we think can no longer be challenged economically or even in a societal equitability sense.  At least in terms of our own opinions.

And this is the point of this blog or brief write up.  

Where we remember how we all grew up, the aspirations our parents or even grandparents had of us, we suffered an initial primary weakness.  One that was embedded in an ahistorical desire for success that remains essentially one of mimicry of colonial and post-colonially defined material success.

This is a debate I occasionally have with comrades that tends not to go beyond organic discourse because at our (multiple) ages, certain decisions and social behavioural standards have already been conservatively set. 

The questions we must however begin to ask ourselves, even if you are a rich person in the now, an urban or rural urban worker, a nascent youthful or successful entrepreneur (as is the global trend), a pensioner or civil/public employee, is how did you come to your specific political and/or economic consciousness in Zimbabwe?   

I am talking here about you, if you are reading this, at a personal level.  It is always something to reflect on as it relates to what your value the most, individually and in relation to like-minded individuals.  Be they from your workplace, your place of worship, your sports club(s), Whatsapp groups or any other social activities that motivate you to feel you are human and belong to some sort of social value based community. Beyond what you earn or what you can earn. 

This is a non-gendered introspection since we are all equal intellectually. Though gender remains not only a societal construct but a lived repressive reality for many women in Zimbabwe.  

 But back to the main question.  What informs your political and economic consciousness?  What makes you have an opinion on either anything or everything?  Do you read, do you feel it, do you pray it? Do you pay for it?

 Or in some cases do you experience it based on personally lived pains and experiences (Zimbabwe’s national economic and drought crisis of 2008 as an example?)  Including the possible reality of you being in the Diaspora across rivers or across seas and oceans and its multiple identity and economic implications for yourself or your immediate or extended family back home?

These are questions I also ask myself on a regular basis.  I have at least two immediate answers. 

My consciousness is based on what I have read.  It is based also on my own political activism and understanding of Zimbabwean politics.

And here I will give a specific example of once having been a progressive constitutional reform activist based in Marondera, Mashonaland East in Zimbabwe.  And how you get to grasp the reality of a dual Zimbabwean society (urban and rural) as you interact with the people for various activist reasons. While in the process realizing that at some point, in your preferable consciousness, you do not quite understand your country.  Until that experience of those moments of grasping differentiated national realities in Murehwa, Mutoko or Mudzi districts.  Before going home to Bikita for a Christmas or other holiday break.

Which included an emergent understanding of both rural and urban poverty, its attendant political economy and how our national cyclical electoral politics have never really changed since the year 2002.

The key issue however is how we as individual Zimbabweans view our political opinions and what inspires or dissuades them. 

In the majority of cases these are about our families’ survival ( school fees, rent, home construction, small scale entrepreneurship, tenderpreneurship, marriage, the Diaspora and some sort of material satisfaction or happiness). 

Where you mix this up with political ambitions you have politicians that are hard pressed to see an organic national political and economic future beyond their personal interests. Particularly those that choose to live in the moment of either their ascendancy or their victimization en-route to some sort of power ascendancy. 

But if you ask them and yourself this key question, “What motivated you to have these ideas, these values, these beliefs?” The answers you will get and you will reply even yourself remain ambiguous. 

These answers are generally multifaceted.  They will begin with history from both collective national history and also an individual’s role in it.  And end with the necessity or pragmatism of the contemporary situation. A pragmatism that essentially points either to a desire to return to the old or embed our society in a global neoliberalism and as the Chiyangwa adage goes, “Make Money!” Even before you get arrested  on allegations of corruption.

What is more of a reflection exercise that most Zimbabweans remain to talk about is that their knowledge, their personal experiences, beliefs do not make our society revolutionary.

We are now more incrementalist politically, economically, collectively and individually.  And this is historically understandable. To simplify it again, we are now a ‘slow change society’.  Even if we think  of the next general election in 2028. We are not waiting on a revolution. But a new reality of our politics.   It will be slower and less populist.  

What Zimbabwe has gone through, given the diversity of our views, and the influence of global capital on our economic systems and our politics, our collective and individual thought processes about our own consciousness, we are clearly not yet ready for what we really want. 

Rethink what makes you politically conscious. Individually and collectively in your next WhatsApp post.  

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

 

 

 

 

Africa’s Religious Misunderstanding of Palestine and Israel.

By Takura Zhangazha*

The much referred to Middle East has multiple and diverse meaning(s) for many Africans.   The majority of these meanings are religious ones.  Given our historical interaction with the slave trade,  pre-colonial trade routes, colonialism and neo-colonialism, these ‘meanings’ of that geographical place that straddles what is referred to as the Arabian Peninsula are in the contemporary mainly religious.  Stretching from North Africa, past Palestine, Israel and through to Iraq as Africans we have been influenced either by Christian, Muslim or Judaic faiths and social practices. 

Hence almost every year we have thousands of Africans making annual pilgrimages to what they consider holy sites in various religious capitals of that region.  Be it in Jerusalem, Mecca or elsewhere within the ambit of their preferred religiosity.

So as Africans and given our general propensity to religion, we also sort of have what I consider an awkward sense of belonging to this region.  Moreso where we recall various colonialisms and their creative plays on what should be considered the ‘promised land’. 

What we do not discuss as much, beyond faith, is the fact of the geo-political global dynamics behind the wars that we are witnessing in this ‘promised land’ region.

Pastors, Rabbis, Imams, Priests generally tend to leave Africa South of the Sahara to go and give libation at ancient walls and monuments on our behalf but rarely tell us about the fact that the contemporary conflicts in the region are essentially non-religious.

Instead they are historically man-made and follow a string of colonialist contestations over land and natural resources.  Be it over gas, oil as well as falsely constructed assumptions of religious superiority. 

But a bit of background to my argumentation may be necessary.

In what is a fairly complicated history we, as Africans, began to interact with Middle East issues politically during the First World War as recruited soldiers from mainly British and French African colonies. 

We however had limited interaction with this where and when our racially limited access to global affairs through the Syke-Pikot agreement of 1916 made us only know after the event. Religiously so via missionaries of various faiths. 

This was when the then global superpowers including Russia assigned each other territories in the Middle East.   

We however had no direct role in the establishment of the initial parameters of what was to become a Jewish state that we now call Israel.  

That was the Balfour Declaration wherein, as is historically now known, the British foreign secretary of the same name in principle agreed with a British Jewish community leader named Rothschild to establish a future Jewish homeland in a then independent Palestine.  This was in 1917. 

The pattern of Africa’s non-political but religious involvement in what remains a colonialist exercise did not change much after the Second World war.  Or when the state of Israel was established and its subsequent Western backed wars against Egypt and its allies.  Especially where we consider the Nakba (the first ‘Catastrophe’) of Palestinians in 1948.  The second Nakba was to happen in 1967.   

However, by that time we were too engrossed in coming into a new liberatory consciousness of fighting for our own African independence to have a full comprehension of what was happening in the Middle East.

Mainly because a majority of African countries were in full flight fighting against colonialism and repression.  

Despite this we began to understand the Middle East and North Africa struggles against occupation better.  In some cases almost as how they were similar to our own.  So we became allies of the Palestinian peoples in and many of our liberated African countries hosted the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO).

With the recent 2024 International Criminal Court (ICC) case against Israel as led by South Africa and as supported by many African, including Zimbabwe and other global south countries since the recent war and alleged genocide against Palestinians, it appears we have remained true to this historical and liberation narrative.

Despite this a majority of us as Africans have an unfortunate misunderstanding of how to balance our religiosity with historical fact.   

Try for example telling a die hard Christian that Israel is not a ‘chosen’ nation and see their vituperative response.  Or that Jerusalem is only biblically referred to as a ‘city on the hill’ but in reality it is a city that was historically diverse until the first Nakba and the animosity that comes with the current displacement and genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. 

Or alternatively tell a Muslim brother/sister that there was never an historical argument between either the Muslim or Christian faiths until colonial and post/neo-colonial geo-politics got involved. 

Again arguments will revolve around religiosity that dehumanizes either faiths and creates generational animosity that will probably see no end in our lifetimes.  Even as far away in Zimbabwe as if we are geographically or even culturally from the Middle East. 

But these are debates that are increasingly emotional.  Either based on the rise of a newfound false religiosity that embraces materialism on earth and in heaven as the reason why to read the Bible or Koran in its literal sense.  Or on the basis of manufacturing some sort of African consent to a conflict that is historically distant to who we are apart from, again, the interface between our religious contemporary beliefs and their often ignored repressive religious historical colonialism. 

The historical reality of African and Palestine is that we can only act in solidarity with the latter.  It is an historically necessary objectivity.  Despite our own complicated religiosity and how it affects our everyday lives and future generations.

The violence and genocide we are witnessing in Palestine and of late the bombings in Lebanon is not of our African making.  But we have to know where its racist origins are from and what it means to the peoples of those regions.   Or how it has over a long period morphed into a false religious war between what were previously amicable religions in more recent global history. Including why the United States of America and the European Union still support the callous and inhumane actions of Israel in the region. With or without religion. 

Now we are at the brink of wars that will not only have religious overtones for many a pious African but more of a global impact that may regrettably signify the beginning of a Third World War.  One with nuclear implications.  All I know is that Africa needs to remain aware of the fact these are not directly our wars or conflicts.  But we have to understand that they mean more than they portend on television and social media. Solidarity remains key with all the oppressed and occupied people of the world. As we were once oppressed and occupied. Religion and all.   

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