SADC's Newfound Radicalism: A False Assumption that the Future Reverts to Our Past

By Takura Zhangazha*

The Southern African Development Community has decided, probably by default, to become a little bit more assertive on the international global stage.  At its latest Heads ofState and Government Summit (HOSG) it decided to throw its weight around on the issue of Zimbabwe and issued a resolution against  the sanctions that have been imposed on the country by the global north because of the Mugabe led Fast Track Land Reform Process (FTLRP). Meeting in Tanzania, it agreed the following,

“Summit noted the adverse impact on the economy of Zimbabwe and the region at large, of prolonged economic sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe, and expressed solidarity with Zimbabwe, and called for the immediate lifting of the sanctions to facilitate socio-economic recovery in the country. 16. Summit declared the 25th October as the date on which SADC Member States can collectively voice their disapproval of the sanctions through various activities and platforms until the sanctions are lifted.”

In this region of what is derisively referred to as Sub Saharan Africa this is unprecedented.  Almost like a throwback to the days when the then Southern African Development Coordinating Community (SADCC) would defend the African National Congress (ANC) against the diplomatic initiatives of the then racist National Party of apartheid South Africa.

Basically the SADC summit found its new radicalism. As of old, and almost in reminiscence of a past Pan Africanism as led by luminaries such as Julius Nyerere and Samora Machel.  Except that it was not the same. 

The 39^th HOSG SADC summit was intended as a talk back to the rapacious global north vis-à-vis the latter’s assumptions of a now derelict uni-polar world.   Essentially the central message was that minus nuclear power capabilities, SADC retains its uniqueness in political independence.  Almost in token appreciation to Kwame Nkrumah, Kambarage Nyerere or Amilcar Cabral.

Zimbabwe’s official opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change- Alliance had organized a nationwide protest against the current government to coincide with this August 2019 summit.  That action was repressed but probably did not have the required regional attention that had been planned.  But it did manage, in the final analysis, to get global superpower attention.  This as evidenced by the statements issued from the European Union, USA, Canadian and Australian embassies condemning the brutal crackdown on the protests as they occurred. 

What is interesting is the fact that there has been limited analysis of these developmetns from an historical perspective.  (And for writing this, this blog will not appear in any of the private local newspapers as happened to a previous one I wrote on Zim’s Awkward Politics of Pursuing the International Gaze.)

The reasons for this are best answered by the journalists that practice for these private media organizations.

But the fact of the matter cannot be wished away.  SADC has decided, via its own HOSG summit to make the sanctions against Zimbabwe an issue worthy of its full attention.  In undergraduate international relations class this is a major victory for the ruling Zanu Pf government. Especially because after its removal of Mugabe from power, it has retained two things. First an assumption of historical and revolutionary anti-colonial struggle history as defined by the Frontline States that preceded SADCC and SADC.  Secondly in relation to its own (Zanu Pf) international re-engagement agenda that would still put the country up for sale to the highest international bidder.

I make the latter point because SADC’s political leaders are functioning from the same economic template.  And it’s a neo-liberal one.  A majority of the current presidents and prime ministers' may have served or participated in our regional liberation struggles but they in effect constitute a leadership that is ideologically captured. By global financial capital whether it comes from the east or the west.   They may appear to be functioning in lieu of the spirit of Nyerere, Nkrumah, Machel, Mandela and others, but they are hiding under the cloak of noble pan Africanism to disguise the probable fact of their continuing complicity in the material, social and ideological exploitation of the African continent.  Whether they are at the G7 global world economies summit or at the Japanese Tokyo international Conference on Africa’s Development (TICAD). 

What may however remain more important to Zimbabweans is the fact that Mnangagwa is not looking back on his international re-legitimation processes. Even if not for him, but also his ruling party.   And that’s the catch.  Southern African governments no longer view themselves as appendages of a post-cold war requirement of loyalty. They tend to think more of themselves as firm negotiators for their independent nationalist processes.  Except for the fact that they are not as ideologically revolutionary as in the past. 

SADC has a new approach to how it perceives itself.  It remembers its revolutionary past as defined by the liberation struggle but it also conveniently forgets its post-independence transgressions and unfulfilled promises. It regrettably finds more comfort in a neo-liberal recognition of who it is.  A significant departure from a contrarian and liberatory ideological world view. Even in the aftermath of the then Cuban missile crisis as a particular dystopian zenith of the Cold War. 

What is probably required and necessary is that Southern Africans find ways of informing their current political leaders that the future does not reside in mimicry. Instead it is about a constellation of pasts, presents and futures. And that the young people of the geo-political construct that is SADC don’t forget but need more often than not to remember. Not just what the pain of the Frontline States was but what a people centered and welfarist SADC should truly look like. Over and above what they see online. When they can.

*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity (takura-zhnagazha.blogspot.com0

Show Us the Money:The Changing Meaning of Cash in Zim

 By Takura Zhangazha*

The minister of finance and economic development in Zimbabwe, Mthuli Ncube, as reported in the mainstream media, recently  confirmed that government will soon introduce an actual currency.  This will be done in order  to augment what is referred to as the bond note and the ZWL or electronic  RTGS money that is currently being used.

Surprisingly in the immediate placement of the report, no one quite went apoplectic. At least not business (private capital), the workers unions, opposition political parties nor the general public.   At least for now. 

A week before, a local newspaper had carried an interesting story about the ‘cost’ of actual physical money for everyday use by urban commuters.  The story outlined in part how the cost of actual money was rising for those that were using either mobile money platforms such as Ecocash.  Especially if they wanted the money for public transport which still accepts cash.  So basically mobile money is rated at a certain percentage in order to purchase actual physical cash.  And how such transactions had already spawned a fast paced informal banking system. 

A number of issues then emerge from the instances I have cited, that is, Ncube’s reported statement of intent and the purchasing of physical bond notes by mobile money users.

The first is that he public anticipation let alone activism for the return of the United States dollar is now dissipating.  Yes, it may remain at the back of the minds of many Zimbabweans- particularly urbanites- but it most certainly no longer a popular/populist priority.  An issue that can be attributed to the fact that exchange rates between the RTGS and United States Dollar (USD) have remained relatively steady and also somewhat equal to those of the parallel exchange market. 

The second is the emerging reality of the illegality of exchanging local goods and services in the USD. Or alternatively the capitulation of private capital to the inter-bank exchange rate and the ‘ring fencing’ of their foreign currency accounts.  So if private business is not legally accepting USD the rapacious consumer cannot use it as tender.  And this will also change how they whet their appetites ( I don’t really remember any recent stories of consumer hording in recent times.

The third issue that is significant is the class dimensions to money.  It is working peoples- the worker, informal worker, peasant, civil servant- that really use any forms of local currency. Hence the biggest requests for physical liquidity is coming from these quarters, a development that Mthuli and his team only knows too well at the moment. The upper classes- the comprador bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie (actual owners of private capital), middle classes (corporate managers, NGO workers, senior civil servants) are probably more reliant on RTGS and for now ring fenced foreign currency accounts.  

Essentially Mnangagwa is intending to put everyone in their ‘class place’.  Initially in relation to accessing foreign currency, but more significantly and with the passage of a bit more time, your work, your capital and your lifestyle.  This is the promulgation of Zimbabwe’s full return to a class based society. Even if without the critical class consciousness. Especially of the working class.

It is also least likely that there will be any direct or major resistance to the re-introduction of an exchangeable outside of our borders Zimbabwean currency in the immediate and near future.  This is because the pragmatics of every day existence in Zimbabwe would point to its increasing necessity.  Hence the queues for bond notes outside banks and its necessity for basic public services and essential commodities.    

It would also appear that a grudging (but still politicized) acceptance of this exchangeable Zimbabwe dollar is beginning to set in.  And the leaders of this grudging acceptance are not ordinary Zimbabweans but private capital.  A development which directly explains why Mnangagwa is easily pro-free market economics. 

And this is a big dilemma for those that would have wanted the re-introduction of the exchangeable Zimbabwe dollar on the basis of the democratization of the national political economy.  The ease of access to a local currency, even as experienced by the working poor in the country, does not mean the edifice of societal inequality goes away. Instead, it fortifies and domesticates it rather more systematically by reinforcing an establishment composed of political leaders and those in charge of private capital.  Agreement between the latter and the former then become the priority. 

So yes, the government has placed a strategic timeline for the introduction of this new exchangeable local currency.  All in keeping with what they consider regional and international global best practices.  Much to the delight of the Bretton Woods institutions and global private capital.  And yes, Zimbabweans will come to initially and grudgingly accept it for lack of evident options.  Yes, there will still be currency exchanges and shady players in the money market but expectations of catastrophe would be far- fetched.

For ordinary citizens, the issue is to contend with the neo-liberal fundamentals that are informing their government’s national economic policy.  Beyond political party loyalty, with full knowledge of class, and with considerations of people centered economic alternatives.  And not the trickle-down effect that government naively expects and (global) private capital silently scoffs at.

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

Zim’s Awkward Politics of Pursuing the International Gaze.

By Takura Zhangazha*

Political struggles require recognition beyond their own contexts.  This southern African side of the world it is an historically given fact that liberation struggles against colonialism had tremendous solidarity from activists and eventually some governments from the global north and east.  This solidarity and direct support came only after a much coveted ‘recognition’ of the values and principles of the struggle. 

Liberation struggle movements of varying hue and colour were to compete for this recognition.  In Southern Africa, after the earlier independence of Ghana, Tanzania and later on Mozambique, the competition for recognition was particularly high and linked to the battles of global spheres of influence during the Cold War.  Rival liberation movements and their factions would go to Dar es Salaam to claim greater struggle authenticity to justify support and solidarity from Julius Nyerere’s government.  To be specific, Zimbabwe’s liberation movements, Zanu Pf and PF Zapu had a hard time of it competing to be seen as either the largest or the most radically committed to socialist values as defined by Nyerere, Khruschev ,Mao and Wilson.

In post independent Zimbabwe, while political party competition for recognition dissipated in the 20 odd years plus, it re-emerged with the demise of Zanu Pf party hegemony over the country’s politics.  The arrival of the then labour backed Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) brought this back into vogue. Again it pitted the global West versus the global East. And as of old, the leaders of these parties Mugabe and Tsvangirai, pitched themselves as the more authentic and therefore the more deserving of support.  The latter decided to go back to the rhetoric of the anti-colonial struggle and its then staunchest supporters in the form of SADC, the African Union, China and Russia.  The former decided to pursue those that would be allies of liberalism and democratization in the form of the former colonial power the United Kingdom and its allies in Europe as well as the then global superpower, the United States of America.

This seeking out of international support and or solidarity was and is as expected.  It does however have many consequences.  Some of them good, such as the eventual SADC mediated inclusive government of Mugabe and Tsvangirai.  Some of the controversial such as the imposition of sanctions on the country.  Some of them out rightly dangerous such as the at one time serious consideration by Tony Blair to ‘liberally’ invade Zimbabwe in similar fashion to the war on Iraq.

Where it comes to the coup-not-a-coup of November 2017, again central to our domestic politics was the international gaze and pursuit of recognition.  Either by way of global legitimacy or superpower anointing.  And those that removed Mugabe from power did not hesitate to explain that everything that would happen from thereon would be all about restoring Zimbabwe’s international legitimacy. This included the July 2018 harmonised elections whose presidential election results the opposition MDC Alliance disputed and continues to do so today. 

But Mnangagwa’s government did not hold back from this international engagement and legitimation despite this.  Embracing neoliberalism, going on a diplomatic offensive with SADC, the AU and global superpowers, outlining a legal reform agenda Mnangagwa has made it his personal mission to get this ‘recognition’.  While the opposition MDC Alliance has also made it its collective mission to find means and ways of undermining it.  Its almost like deja vu.

Where we fast forward to August 2019, on the eve of a SADC summit in Tanzania, the opposition has not let up on its counter recognition intention.  It organized a demonstration that it said was about the dire economic situation but the timing is obviously intended to put pressure on SADC.  The regional body, having already recognized Mnangagwa as a legitimate president also intends to pass on the rotating chair of its Organ on Politics, Security and Defence to him.  A big score on his part, an unpalatable state of affairs for the mainstream opposition. The reality of the matter is that SADC will not change its mind easily on the matter unless unprecedentedly pressured by one global superpower or the other. 

And that should be enough to save Mnangagwa’s blushes at the next summit of the AU or the General Assembly of the United Nations. 

The bigger issue that must always remain at the back of our minds is a very difficult and borderline semantic one.  We have to ask ourselves, ‘for whom are all these things/events/policies being done?’  The most skeptical answer is that its all egocentric, i.e the politicians do it for themselves.   Another answer may say ‘we want the return of the US$’. A testament to hedonism and the commodity fetish.

A more realistic answer is that this is increasingly done as a competition for recognition by global superpowers and global capital.  One either side of the political divide.  And with limited attempt at balancing the country’s contextual domestic issues with global or international trends.  It is as tragic as it is sad.

I will end with a relatively extensive quote from Amilcar Cabral speaking at the Tri-Continental Conference of the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America in Havana, Cuba as far back as 1966.  He explained in his ‘Weapon of Theory’ address to this historically important gathering of revolutionaries the following:

“When the African peoples say in their simple language that “no matter how hot the water from your well, it will not cook your rice,” they express with singular simplicity a fundamental principle, not only of physics, but also of political science. We know that the development of a phenomenon in movement, whatever its external appearance, depends mainly on its internal characteristics. We also know that on the political level our own reality — however fine and attractive the reality of others may be — can only be transformed by detailed knowledge of it, by our own efforts, by our own sacrifices. It is useful to recall in this Tri-continental gathering, so rich in experience and example, that however great the similarity between our various cases and however identical our enemies, national liberation and social revolution are not exportable commodities; they are, and increasingly so every day, the outcome of local and national elaboration, more or less influenced by external factors (be they favorable or unfavorable) but essentially determined and formed by the historical reality of each people, and carried to success by the overcoming or correct solution of the internal contradictions between the various categories characterising this reality. The success of the Cuban revolution, taking place only 90 miles from the greatest imperialist and anti-socialist power of all time, seems to us, in its content and its way of evolution, to be a practical and conclusive illustration of the validity of this principle.”

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

Heroes Day 2019: Ideals Overcoming the Individual

 By Takura Zhangazha* 

Annually in August, Zimbabwe remembers its national liberation struggle heroes.  And it is the correct thing to do.  This, despite arguments that the definition of a national hero has been politicized by the ruling Zanu Pf party to mean only those that were part of the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA) or the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA).  Or founding nationalists and activists of either Zanu PF and PF ZAPU.  

A view that was most stridently observed by former president Robert Mugabe when in a speech delivered in early 2013 he pronounced that those who were complaining of their leaders being denied national hero status were better off building their own commemorative shrines.

It was a statement which  left a sour taste in the mouths of many Zimbabweans.  This was mainly because of the narrowness of its import and its immediate indication of ‘exclusivity’ of hero status to the ruling party.  Even in death. 

Of late Mugabe’s successor, Emerson Mnangagwa has sort of gone on a different trajectory.  He has bestowed national hero status on some who do not fit into Mugabe’s previously strict criteria.  Luminaires such as musician Oliver Mtukudzi and even nationalist but by the time he passed was an opposition leader Dumiso Dabengwa come to mind.  Further to this Mnangagwa appears to have also ‘de-territorialised’ the Heroes Acre by accepting individual family requests that they bury the national hero at a place of their choosing. And not as is tradition, at the actual national heroes acre in Harare. 

It is an interesting development in the fact that it sort of depoliticizes defining a national hero.  Though this remains to a greater extent the prerogative of the president and the ruling party.  It also in contradiction to its purported intent, makes the actual Heroes acre remain exclusive to those that the ruling party prefers to bury there.

But I guess what is important is not so much where one is buried but the contribution to the liberation struggle or our post-independence national democratic public interest.  All of which can be measured in reality or inferred by popular public opinion. 

Because of the passage of time between the liberation struggle and the present, together with highly partisan perceptions of what it is a national hero, we tend to forget the actual struggle against minority settler colonial rule.  And its somewhat understandable.  National imaginations do not find new life in dwelling on the past. Especially in our contemporary times where we appreciate more the immediate than what occurred in order to found the nation that is called Zimbabwe.   Or in particular, we would not easily want to remember or acknowledge the immense personal sacrifice and bravery of those that took up arms in the 1890s and from the late 1960s-1980 against colonial repression.  And even those that we in those liberation struggle periods we were either temporarily defeated by and eventually overcame do not prefer for us to have long memories of the same.

So literature and objective cultural products about our struggles for liberation are becoming fewer and scarcer. Or are now limited to burial ceremonies and the disparaging of war veterans for their never ending demands on the state based on their own assumptions of the exclusivity of their personal sacrifices.  Ideally issues of the welfare of war veterans should have been resolved at least in the first ten years of our national independence.  But they were not and probably won’t be a for a while yet. 

All of these contradictions about hero status’ are however not reflective of the meaning of the liberation struggle in its own occurrence.  And this is the most significant point I wish to make here.  With heroes’ day we do not just remember individuals, we remember in particular the pain that was the liberation struggle in its fullness as well as its eventual necessity.  At that time.  While we now have the benefit of hindsight of this remembrance, where occasionally we may find fault with how the struggle may have been waged or who was more authentic than others in it, the essential point is to acknowledge the broad vision and mission of the struggle itself.  And to measure if indeed we are still focused on its people centered objectives that many took up arms for.

I will end with a bit of an anecdotal narrative.  I have known a number of former freedom fighters a bit personally.  Two are my blood brothers. Others were post independence development or democracy activists.  The most prominent of whom were Cdes Dzinashe Machingura or Cde Dzino as he was affectionately known. And Cde Freedom Nyamubaya who was also a writer and rural development practitioner.  In my conversations with all of them, they would lament the chasm between the ideals they were fighting for and the ambiguous and contrarian reality that they lived out after independence itself.  Not for themselves and their welfare. But in relation to the country as a whole. 

What I know is that this is the gap that we must fill and bring our country closer to the ideals of the liberation struggle from a reality in which we are walking in the opposite direction, away from them.

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

Virtue and Sophistry: Economy As the Superstructure in Zimbabwe.

 By Takura Zhangazha*

There were a number of by-elections in Zimbabwe over the last month.  One for local government in my rural home district of Bikita East in Masvingo province.  The other(s) for Parliament and local government in Lupane East which is in Matebeleland North province.  Both are rural constituencies in our first-past-the post parliamentary and local government electoral system.  The ruling Zanu Pf party won all of these by-elections.  The margins of Zanu Pf’s victories in both elections were comparatively not that high but they were victories all the same. 

Astounded opposition Movement for Democratic Change- Alliance (MDC-A) leaders and members blamed their losses invariably on having been caused by either their lack of funding from central government via the Political Parties (Finance) Act.  Or alternatively, the vote buying tactics of the ruling party.

Zanu Pf in turn claimed the victories as a testament of the voters’ understanding and support of president Mnangagwa’s austerity economic policies. 

Conversations elsewhere were lost in perplexity as to how Zanu Pf can possibly win by-elections at a time when prices of basic goods and services are going up. 

Even as finance minister Ncube announced a mid-term budget review annotated in Zimbabwe dollars for the first time in almost a decade while promising further austerity. 

What struck me was the fact of the contradictions of an assumed unpopular ruling party’s by election victories amidst a full throttle implementation of  an assumed unpopular economic austerity programme.  All the while disparaged by an assumed more popular opposition party that does not differ from a similar economic blueprint but only questions the personalities implementing it than raise any serious counter-ideological questions.   Not only among the latter's leaders and members but also their supporters and voters.

The contradiction and irony threw me back to my undergraduate studies days a the University of Zimbabwe and what I used to painfully consider as ‘false sophistry’.  And yes you probably guessed right, this would have been in reference to a political theory class  lecture on the Socratic dialogues. That is the battle of wits between the ‘Sophists’ and Socrates as outlined by Plato.  The Sophists (go ahead google them) believed more in the establishment of societal truth based on self-centered reasoning.  Socrates on the other hand believed in an arrival at what we would now controversially refer to as an ‘objective’ truth.  Or  a more thorough and long term understanding of 'virtue'. (And also as taught to me by Masipula Sithole of the University of Zimbabwe.)

Even though this may appear or seem ‘sophisticated’, the essential issue here is that we need to be more circumspect about what we want to hear versus what can be an objective truth.  An element that is quite hard to swallow for many a middle-aged and above Zimbabwean today.

The main reason for such a cognitive state of affairs is that there are certain things that a lot of us expect as a given.  Especially if we live in urban environs.  Electricity, running water, individual cars (not public transport) and the fuel that comes with it and having our children live better lives than ourselves, even in the immediate. 

This includes, for those of us that went to high school in the 1990s and state sponsored university at the turn of the century, an ingrained assumption that there is no alternative to free market economic solutions because we were witness to an individual, materialistic but short lived ‘economic boom’ under the then and now reinvented ‘Economic Structural Adjustment Programme’ (ESAP). 

So we all wanted cars (Mazda 323’s), a house in the suburbs (out of the ghetto), and children that would go to the ‘private’ schools we secretly envied.  We took on a ‘dog eat dog’ consumerist approach to our existence to the extent that we failed to anticipate the unsustainability of such a future in a post-cold war global economic order.  Especially if we perpetually ignored historical injustices and assumed that the most progressive way forward was to be part of the bandwagon of what then remained a minority run national political economy. 

The default position where we now come the contemporary economic situation  is that we have class based aspirations and expectations of a political economy that is not, at the moment, favourable to private and also state controlled global capital.  Or to put it a bit more simply, we are at the tail end of Samsung, Google. Facebook’s and Exxon Mobil’s expectations of what a ‘good market economics’ for an investor can be and should be.  Yet all the time we envy and yearn for that recognition across class and geography in Zimbabwe.  With the full knowledge that it is least likely we can be a Singapore or Malaysia let alone a China in the long term. 

But we still want to be part of the consumerist game.  Hence our political opinions are persuaded by what lifestyles we want to have than what in reality the global political economic system will allow us.  Even without the basics that should be provided for by a state as in the global north despite its firm embrace of free market economics and radical white nationalisms in one form or the other. 

But abstract as my argumentation may seem, the dilemna that we are faced with is that we are increasingly citizens of ‘envy’.  And I use the term as borrowed from the global north’s intellectuals such as Zizek.  We want what we know we will never get.  Not in this part of the world and not with climate change, emerging nationalism therefrom and not with a pre-occupation with what global satellite television shows us.  Either by way of news or sports.

In returning to my initial point about by-elections and how Zanu Pf has won them at the height of a real and also perceived economic crisis, it is evident that we need to think more about the future than the present.  Not only in relation to the fact of our concerns about our own individual children but those of those we would refer to as our neighbours and fellow citizens.  We need to learn that everything we do is not always about the immediate but a collective future. Including the fact that in order to progress it is not always about envying or coveting what the originally ‘progressive other’ has but more of what we can attain.  Even in the most difficult of circumstances. 

And this is where the original Marxian analysis of ‘base and superstructure’ comes into vogue.  As Zimbabweans and Africans we cannot progressively allow ourselves to be subjected to a global political economy we neither invented nor control. We may need, as Nkrumah said, to seek first an organic political kingdom.  For everything else to follow. Not in dogma but in democratic pragmatism which even in the global north is now being referred to as democratic socialism. Without being again, 'othered.'

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