Robert Mugabe’s True Legacy: A Nasty, Materialist and Populist Individualism.

By Takura Zhangazha*

There have been a number of books written on Robert Mugabe in his many leadership roles.  As a leader of a guerrilla movement/army, as a prime minister, as a president and even from a western perspective as a complicated/sophisticated dapper dictator.  And make no mistake, many more will be written about him.  As an ousted or disgraced long ruling repressive leader and also as a belatedly glorified Pan Africanist. 

And it is the assumptions of future published perspectives on Mugabe’s long rule that are of interest. What I am however concerned with is the lived realities of Mugabe’s legacy.  And by legacy here I am not inferring something to be celebrated but more something to be understood.

In the aftermath of the coup that toppled him, Mugabe has largely been holed up in his Borrowdale mansion and giving the impression of a bitter self-righteousness.  He emerged publicly at least twice.  The first time to endorse the mainstream opposition presidential candidate in a long drawn statement and questions and answer session with the press. The second time to vote for the latter in Highfields, Harare. 

I am sure he has had other interviews and publicized conversations with visiting leaders from African countries.  Or his wife as his spokesperson has occasionally put out the same.  Together with his still many apologists and runners either in remnants of the G40 faction he spawned or on social media and in the mainstream opposition. 

Beyond the immediacy of his ouster from power, we are however reeling from the effects of his leadership of the state.  And there is little that is positive that can be objectively discerned from it or assumed to be as a result of his own individual leadership effort.

Having ridden on the noble but painful cause and struggle that was the liberation struggle, Mugabe managed in his at least 37 years in power, to undermine the values and principles that the liberation struggle was motivated by.  

While conveniently embracing socialism as his then ruling party’s ideological foundation, he was to actively undermine it in practice.  Foregoing the democratic values of socialism, he went on to attempt a violent clampdown on his then main opposition rivals in the form of Joshua Nkomo’s Pf Zapu under the pretext of preventing a civil war in the southern parts of the country.  An attempt that has come to be infamously called ‘Gukurahundi’. 

After co-opting the same opposition, Mugabe was to try to establish a ‘one party state’ which was eventually rejected via the activism of his former colleagues in the struggle but also due to the fact that it was no longer popular in Southern Africa after Nyerere had abandoned the same in Tanzania. 

What was to prove colossal in his intentions at retaining power with global western power endorsement, was his economic about turn to embrace neoliberalism/ capitalism as advised by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.   

Where he had previously had some sort of obligation to collective and people centered economics he abandoned this to begin his worship at the altar of free market economics.  Contrary to the values of the liberation struggle.  And this was the beginning of the unraveling of our national consciousness as had been established by the liberation struggle.  It quite literally became about Mugabe and his hold on power while serving the interests of global capital. 

It was labour that was to try and rein in Mugabe’s neoliberalism by first of all recalling the values of the liberation struggle and using the same to challenge an elitist political economy.   The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) and its allies in the students and womens' movements as well as human rights focused civil society organisations went on to establish what was then referred to as a working people’s party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). 

Mugabe in populist turn decided to by embark on what we officially know to be the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP. All in a vainglorious and individualist attempt at retaining the loyalty of war veterans and the peasantry.  While at the same time echoing long abandoned principles and values that had motivated the liberation struggle. 

It worked, albeit briefly.  Mugabe’s neoliberal economy could not sustain the FTLRP and it expectedly reeled under not only sanctions but also the fact that its populism was never going to make it revolutionary. 

That it happened and has been said by Mnangagwa’s government to be irreversible does not make it any less violent or populist in serving Mugabe’s intention at retaining power.

Even by the time he was forced by SADC to form an inclusive government with the opposition, Mugabe’s particular version of individualism in politics would not allow him to even consider his own succession.  In his own party nor for posterity. 

And where we fast forward to his ouster from power, his particular streak of individual political stubbornness eventually led him to be hoist by his own petard. He quite literally fell on his own sword. Even if he didn’t see it coming.

It is a combination of Mugabe’s inability to see into the future or beyond himself and his deliberate abandonment of liberation struggle socialist democratic values as accompanied by neoliberal/free market economics that led Zimbabwe to its current parlous state. 

The end effect of this on our own society has been catastrophic.  Not only just in relation to our one time critical national consciousness as informed by the liberation struggle but also to our own individual perceptions of what should be a progressive society.

Mugabe’s long rule has the unenviable legacy of having created a highly individualized, materialistic and populist society.  One that perceives progress by the day and rarely considers collective posterity.  And with a default admiration of neoliberalism and ideological austerity.  Mugabe, via his ruling party Zanu Pf have taken us into the trap of ‘millennial capitalism’ where a combination of free market economics, superstition (religion), gambling and individualism have stymied the collective national consciousness.

There are many ways to regain a critical collective national consciousness.  The first step to doing so is to identify what caused its demise.  Historically and in the contemporary, that begins at identifying Mugabe’s real legacy and role in getting us to where we are as a country. Where we are saddled with a nasty/violent, materialist and populist individualism.

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

A Dying (Public) Intellectualism in Zimbabwe.

By Takura Zhangazha*

The late Masipula Sithole taught me (and many others) how to perceive and think about our country, Zimbabwe’s, politics.  Not only formally via the university lecture room but also more significantly via informal engagements with him, long after we had graduated from the Political and Administrative Studies (POLAD) degree  that most of my own university peers (R97s) regarded with great derision.  And I promise you, we were never favourites in University of Zimbabwe (UZ) social and future scenes.

Another venerable lecturer at that time was A.M Kambudzi  now working for the African Union, who taught us, at a specific time in the late 1990s and in-between John Stuart Mill motivated lectures, that there was no need for a Chicago pie franchise in the heart of Harare, Zimbabwe.  Let alone that the packets had a Chicago City skyline emblazoned on them.  In Harare.

Or the late John Makumbe who because of his albinism and much to the humour of the UZ Students Union  ‘galas’ would always refer to himself as ‘the only white man from Buhera’.

And it would be he who was to teach us, in a very abrasive way, what local government, in its democratic sense should be. 

Then there was also Bertha Chiroro who took us through the motions of understanding ‘State, Politics and Society’ in what was then referred to as the ‘Third World’. And how she taught us that we should always think, intellectually at least, beyond our own borders.    

Or Solomon Nkiwane giving us a run down on ‘international relations’ and Zimbabwe’s difficult placement in the same.  Albeit briefly. 

In between the suspensions for engaging in student activism we learnt that there was always a greater cause and struggle as to how we perceived our and how we were perceived by our own society.  As learnt from the above and below cited public intellectuals of our ‘wannabe intellectual’ heyday.

By the time I met the legendary Morgan Tsvangirai (personally and subsequently in the company of Hopewell Gumbo, Nelson Chamisa, Phillip Pasirayi, Innocent Mupara, Ellam Gozho, Artwell Ruzivo under the aegis of the Zimbabwe National Students Union ((ZINASU)), I had already encountered the likes of Brian Raftopolous (whose surname we couldn’t quite pronounce), Lloyd Sachikonye both of whom were at the then reputable Institute of Development Studies which is now a computer centre.)

 And also Ibbo Mandaza , the late Prof Sam Moyo and believe it or not Joyce Kazembe (ZEC deputy chairperson as at present) as the key persons of what was then the Southern African Political Economic Series (SAPES) Trust. 

And the enlightening feminism of Prof Patricia McFadden,  Everjoice Win, Nancy Kachingwe and Prof Rudo Gaidzanwa. 

However we never understood what public intellectualism in the late 90s Zimbabwe meant to the future of the country. If anything at all. And in this it turned out to be phenomenal.

As student leaders of that time, we knew that our limited intellectualism was also associated with our proximity to opposition politics.  As led at that time by others who would prove to be legendary in their own right.  

The likes of Cde Munyaradzi Gwisai and Tafadzwa Choto (who taught us Marxism/Trotskyism), Brian Kagoro, Tawanda Hondora (who liberated us from student leadership suspensions at no legal cost), Tendai Biti (who dabbled in representing private capital and labour- an amazing feat if ever anyone asks you), Arthur Mutambara ( who addressed us at the University of Zimbabwe public transport rank prior to the 2000 elections and eventually joined the 2009 short lived government of national unity as deputy prime minister) and Prof Lovemore Madhuku (who initially had a people centered approach to human rights activism).  They may not have understood it at the time, but they were organic intellectuals. And as Castro says, “ History will absolve them.’

What we didn’t know, at that time as sons and daughters of lower class peasants and workers was that it would somehow and eventually become our turn to represent and protect the intellectualism of younger generations of activists that would come after us. Not only at the University of Zimbabwe but in the many other universities that would be spawned in the name Zanu Pf’s expanded access to education.  In the process we forgot about the lived reality that was the liberation struggle. By birth, by design and by default. 

Nor did we have (enough) access to the internet to understand our own African placement in contextual global history.

Where we consider public intellectuals of contemporary times we can list the likes in our time of  Prof Gatsheni- Ndhlovu (an ardent decoloniality intellectual, if he can at all be labelled as such), Hayes Mabweazara (with a firm understanding of media freedom in Southern Africa), Eldred Masunungure (who incidentally taught me an undergraduate course on Introduction to Political Science ), Tendai Murisa (a passionate proponent of the democratic developmental state), Nhamo Mhiripiri, Memory Chirere who pointed me toward literature in English)

The primary challenge however is how to move this commendable intellectualism out of the university lecture room to lived experience by young Zimbabweans.  Or to at least attempt at occupying social media and challenging ‘echo chambers’ of populist public opinion. 

Especially where it concerns the very necessary fact of Fanonian democratic national consciousness.  Pitfalls and all.  In all of its criticality.

And contending with the reality that we have arrived at a period in which being a public intellectual is less appreciated in Zimbabwe . Even in Hegelian terms where it is only done to pursue ‘recognition’. Or in what would personally be preferably Gramscian intellectualism. And we wont even mention the Cabralist assumption of ‘class suicide’ of the revolutionary intellectual. Despite formal academic qualifications or a lack thereof.

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

Amending Zim’s Constitution Again. The Necessity of 100% Proportional Representation

By Takura Zhangazha*

The Zimbabwean’s government recently announced that it is preparing to amend the national constitution.  This was announced via the Minister of Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, Mr. Ziyambi who informed the Zimbabwean public that government in following up on the recommendations of the Monthlante Commission was seeking, as reported by the mainstream state-controlled print media, to ‘deepen democracy’ in an arguable Second Republic. 

All this, when taken into our contemporary political context, in the aftermath of post electoral violence that has had the end effect of creating a binary international perception of whether Zimbabwe has indeed moved on from Robert Mugabe’s repressive regime, makes one pause for clearer political thought.  Even if it further delays the full international  re-engagement intentions of Mnangagwa’s foreign policy.  A policy which the latter does not appear to be giving up on.  Just yet or as easily as the opposition would assume. 

The government, according to Ziyambi, is “really under pressure to make sure that all the legislation to do with the ease of doing business to support our TSP and Vision 2030 is in place much earlier.”

They therefore intend to amend the constitution to introduce new roles for chiefs, a more technical definition of ‘devolution’ (which will remove MPs from provincial councils) and also consider introducing the constitutional office of leader of the opposition in parliament.  All before year end 2019.

It is however important to crosscheck what appears to be the fundamental motivations to these proposed constitutional amendments.  The first and perhaps most obvious is that the Mnangagwa government is prioritising re-engagement with what it considers the ‘international’ (read as Western) community as was the case with the July 2018 general election.

It is seeking to rid itself of what it has referred to as an inherited ‘pariah status’ from Robert Mugabe’s leadership of the country. Both in Africa and the rest of the world. 

Essentially it would like to get rid of ‘politics’ (however it defines it) as an albatross around Zimbabwe’s economic neck.  So it will concede ‘democratic reforms’  for almost any form of international recognition or (financial) support. West or East, with the former valuing more the private capital side of things than any assumptions of revolution outside a neoliberal framework.  And the latter following suit with greater trepidation about the ‘liberal’ side of ‘neoliberal’. 

And that is what any current proposed amendments to the national constitution are about.  They are not about the people of Zimbabwe.  But about how the state (and state power) must be repositioned in order to meet the pre-requisites of a rapacious global private capital. And how it will not brook any challenges to its hegemonic dominance, including crosschecking whether incumbent regimes pay the utmost respect to private (land) property rights. As of colonial old.

Secondly, there is the issue that the Zimbabwean government has to grapple with domestically. This being its ability to harness a local/domestic performance legitimacy question as derived from its neoliberal economic trajectory.   Its ‘no pain-no gain’ economic policy mantra does not endear it to the Zimbabwean populace.  Instead it establishes breeding ground for very legitimate dialogue, debate and dissent.    Demonstrations included.  Even if it blames hidden hands or ulterior political motives on the part of those that would organize them. 

In order to handle this delicate political situation around questions of its political performance legitimacy, the government has decided to engage in what it calls a ‘national dialogue’.  With the help of some political party leaders and a sprinkling of churches, secular civil society organisations (including private capital /domestic business) and a newly appointed Presidential Advisory Council (PAC), it intends to bring everyone together regardless of political affiliation (bias) in order to move the country forward.  What it will not brook are questions of its legitimacy or any queries of the same around the national president. 

Even if one were to argue that the latter point is fair enough, the primary challenge is that it does not quite solve anything.  It instead perpetuates political polarization.  As of old or as a return to the highly personalized politics of the Mugabe and Tsvangirai.  Where political personalities matter more than political institutions.  Let alone political loyalties based on not just charismatic leaders (or a lack thereof) but ethnocentrism, mafia like political economies being more important than contextual or organic ideological considerations for a people centered democratic future of the country.

But then again we deal the hand we are dealt.  And we have to find solutions that are beyond the immediate.

We will, in the contemporary turn of events, never be fully able to comprehend the November 2017 ‘coup-not-a-coup’.  Especially the marches to oust Mugabe as permitted by Zanu Pf’s military political complex with the direct support of even our now nascent opposition political leaders.  Nor will we come to an immediate factual understanding of the role played (and continuing to be played) by disparate pro Mugabe Zanu Pf factions in assisting the opposition in a last gasp attempt at post coup-not-a- coup electoral power.  That is now for historians to explain with hindsight.  

What we do know, is that any talk of a raft of proposed amendments of the national constitution as proposed by Mnangagwa, are meaningless for whatever would remain of our country’s democratic future if they do not introduce a 100% proportional representation system to the executive, parliament and local government.  Not in order to mimic South Africa’s representative democracy electoral system but to ensure the diversity of our own.  Meaning, that our national contextual perceptions of what democracy should mean would be enhanced by a more representative and more diverse parliament and local government political system.  And with it, a more attendant, professional mainstream media .  As reflecting both the past, the present and a potentially even more democratic future.

The counter argument will easily be and become that we must accept what is considered to be incremental (slow but sure) change.

The changes to the constitution being planned by Mnangagwa’s government may appear to be somewhat progressive but regrettably they play more to an international gallery over which we have no control.  By way of how it perceives us, how it may manipulate us and how in the final analysis, we would be asking, ‘who dunnit?’

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