Video Assisted Politics Vs Video Assisted Consciousness.

 By Takura Zhangazha*

In discussing the state of affairs of the English Premier league, a colleague joked about how its current log leaders, Liverpool FC, appear to be a little bit too lucky with the Video Assistant Referee (VAR).  He went on to joke that Liverpool FC should be spelt as Li(VAR)pool in reference to the additional match official who cross checks incidents during games.  I laughed my lungs out. And because he is a Manchester United supporter, I reminded him of the game in which VAR worked in  favour of his team.  Against mine.  All he could say and sheepishly so, was that it was a different game altogether! And of course we burst out laughing at each other and our biases. 

Later on, I reflected a little bit on the changing manner in which we now have to anticipate the entertainment of watching the globally famous EPL via the medium of television or a mobile phone or tablet. 

And how the very act of pausing real time, in a football match.  All in order to subjectively attempt to verify what occurred or didn’t with the intention of coming to a version of the truth that will remain unpalatable to one of the two parties involved.  Who, where it concerns football at least, will have to accept the eventual decision because those are the rules. 

While in our everyday African lives we do not have immediate video assistant referees to pause our daily political activities and check via camera recording whether we really did or not do something, we may be living as though our lives VARs exist.  Not only to judge but to decide the next course of action we must take. 

In this, we must also ask key questions of how we might perceive of ourselves as part of the equivalent of video reviewed or motivated lives.  Or alternatively, what we consider critical to make this even possible.

In my view, we probably look at our lives as potentially video assistant refereed by default.  And in the particular area of our political perceptions.  Via the medium of the mobile phone as it is linked to internet connectivity and the social media platforms that come with the same.  

In most cases, like two football teams, we have opposite end political preferences and we like to slug it out on social media on behalf of those that we support.  And we also like our biases better if they are ‘video verified’ or simply put accompanied by some form of audio-visual footage. Again to confirm to our biases in similar fashion to me as a Liverpool FC supporter and my friend the Manchester United supporter. 

This is now most evident during election campaign periods.  Not just in Africa but probably in the United Kingdom where they will have a general election this December.  Contemporary elections are increasingly influenced by access to online audio visual content of political parties and their candidates.  Particularly in urban areas.  This development has in part changed the organic meaning of politics as is already well analyzed through recent studies on how the big tech companies are increasingly working to not only help parties win elections but even beyond that, the ominous modification of our human behavior to suit their super profit motivated intentions.  

In this, our video assisted politics becomes a channel that confirms what we prefer to see/hear.  Just as I would in my sporting bias, keep my fingers crossed actual football VAR favours Liverpool FC.  All the time.  Not that I will  not accept a negative or objective determination by VAR on occasion.  It would be that in a majority of the cases I will not do so because of assumptions of loyalty and hypocritically decry the change in the meaning of football.  Or in the case of politics, resort to assumptions of party or celebrity loyalty via a stubborn refusal to accept an objective truth.

The other option, though it’s much harder, is to look at our newly mediated realities via videos that confirm or challenge our stubborn biases through a different lens. One that would look a the medium itself and how to utilize it to make oneself more conscious of the issue it raises.  Its not as easy as crosschecking/googling the FIFA rules on ‘ball to hand’ versus ‘hand to ball’.  

Instead it would be to seek more to understand the equivalent of how FIFA actually functions and why for example wherever the World Cup is held, FIFA takes the greatest control of products and services affiliated to it in the host country.  That is then utilizing the medium or the VAR toward a new critical consciousness. Or a video assisted consciousness. 

In the political realm this would entail a critical consciousness to the next  ‘political video’ you see. Even if it harmless news, the veracity of what is being shown should be understood from at least three angles. The ideological import of it, its impact on the national economic livelihood and what it portends for the future.  It may not be as immediate or as entertaining as a controversial moment in a football match. But I am certain it will help.

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

Othering Zimbabwe: Street Names and Populist National Unconsciousness.

By Takura Zhangazha*

Zimbabwe’s government recently announced a change to street names and state owned buildings in all of its majors cities and towns.  The roads that were renamed mostly had former Rhodesian settler state’s heroes names.  In their place government named some of the busiest or iconic city and town roads after persons such as the current president, Emerson Mnangagwa and a host of other national heroes of the liberation struggle.  Or those of the precolonial period. 

And urban as well as Diaspora social media went apoplectic. Quite literally.  If any Zimbabwean wanted to quote Shakespeare in his epic romantic play Romeo and Juliet, we would have ask the famous question, ‘What’s in a name?’ 

The answer would not be, and I am paraphrasing here, by any other one a rose would still smell as sweet. Mainly because urban and Diaspora based Zimbabweans are in perpetual search of catharsis.  Especially on social media.  So names do matter to them.  Except in the opposite historical direction.  For many of us, recognition of the liberation struggle nationalism of old is of limited economic and political consequence. 

They want the immediate.  Hence on social media the stories are palpably clear in their angst at the prioritization by central government of street name changes.  A great many are arguing, why change the names of roads that are in a bad state.  Fix them first is the argument.  Or alternatively, a derision at the retention of liberation history as the sine qua non of the basis on which streets or national symbols should be renamed.

These widely shared opinions are as astounding as they are laden with political meaning.  In this, the palpably high emotion is reflective of a dead national consciousness.  I would have preferred to say a dying national consciousness ala carte Fanon but in our Zimbabwean case, we are already lost at sea. 

We have essentially ‘othered’ ourselves to the extent of being exceedingly dismissive of our own history.  Almost as though we do not want to remember it.  

Or if we do, we would probably want our own convoluted and biased versions of it.  Depending on which political party one sympathizes with.  And its all fair game. Except that it is one with diminishing national return and a decimation of a collective whole.  Which is something that those in the ruling Zanu Pf party should be extremely worried about.

The populist urban desire to ‘un-recognise’ liberation struggle history in favor of a materialist present does not bode well for Zimbabwe’s future.  Instead it makes for a soulless national and country when its supposedly best and brightest will give the global mainstream media and social media companies so much behavioural data against their own being.

We could choose to blame the ‘patriotic history’ narrative engineered by Mugabe with his ‘ndisu chete’ (it is us only) narrow perception of the liberation struggle.  A narrative that stubbornly sticks to how ordinary Zimbabweans are made to recall their own liberation struggle history. 

That our real and lived struggles against colonialism are now dismissible in today’s raw and ephemeral populism is something that quite literally breaks my heart.  Even at the risk of sounding ridiculous.  We are at a place in which even our ancestors are asking themselves many questions as to how things have turned out like this.  Not only I relation to the material/economic suffering of our people but more significantly the chasms in what was always a progressive national consciousness. 

But someone has switched of the brain plug in Zimbabwe.  The erosion of a critical national consciousness began with the narrow historical narratives of Znau Pf.  And are now firmly in the hands of the would be and wannabe purveyors of neoliberalism accompanied by hedonistic religiosity.  

Simply put, we are no longer ourselves.  We want to be viewed by others in order to be validated.  To the same extent that this then becomes a process of othering ourselves. 

So we will make headlines for doing something as mundane as renaming our streets after heroes of the liberation struggle.  In fact we ironically desire these derogatory headlines and social media feeds only to spite ourselves.

But because of our ahistorical embrace of populism and warped mix of religiosity and hedonism, we will continue to forget ourselves. Deliberately so. What we may require is a return to pragmatic Pan Africanism. One that views the world and its developments from a critically conscious Pan African lens.  And with a focus not just on the past but more significantly, on the future and the collective posterity it should embody. 

So yes I long ago put it into my middle aged head that Second Street Extension is now Sam Nujoma Street. Or that Foruth Street is now Simon Muzenda Street.  And I will do the same with the new fact that colonial Charter Road with all its historical implications is now called Fidel Castro road.  Or that formerly Speke Avenue is now Agostino Neto Avenue. And that the road to Dzivaresekwa formerly known as Kirkman Drive is now Solomon Mujuru Drive.  All because it helps me remain historically grounded. Warts and all. Even though I do not have to wear a poppy on Remembrance Day.

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

Five Awkward Incidents of Zim’s November 2019 Political Economy

By Takura Zhangazha*

I have recently skipped a week before posting my personal blog. And for that I apologize most sincerely to those that either fully read or crosscheck my blog.

There are five specific incidents in November 2019 that I wish to point out in recent political, economic and social developments in Zimbabwe that would merit a decent enough return to writing on the same said developments in the country of my birth. 

The first being that it has been a full two years since Robert Mugabe was forcibly ousted from power by his own liberation war allies in the ruling Zanu Pf party as defined by remnants of its own guerrilla army, nationalists and their offspring.  A development that has not been lost on many a pundit.  Some of whom have written extensively on the matter since its own occurrence.  Or its significance.  The difference of the latter would however remain the same.  Robert Mugabe is not only no longer in power but he also in the intervening period passed away.  All as accompanied by what we now know to be one of the most controversial and probably longest burials of African liberation struggle leaders in history.

Secondly, Mugabe’s successor, Emerson Mnangagwa in full but disputed flight of a five year presidential term, also announced via his appointed minister of finance and economic development Mthuli Ncube, the projected national/state budget of 2020 in the month of November.  Maintaining a very neo-liberal stance to his macro-economic policy, Mnangagwa demonstrated what can only be now a familiar embrace of global capital’s interests in the increasingly and evidently post-colonial state that is Zimbabwe.  All with the caveat of a ‘carrot and stick’  method to anyone who seeks to contradict, at least ideologically the full import of his intentions.  A development that is so far, judging on the basis of the performance legitimacy challenges of the mainstream opposition MDC Alliance, is least likely to happen. 

This was immediately against the backdrop of a further incident of the related slightly earlier release of  additional currency into the monetary system by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. A development that for some inexplicable reason somewhat coincided with a highly unpopular ‘system upgrade’ of Zimbabwe’s largest mobile money supplier, EcoCash.  With the latter serving to undermine, by default, the actual supply of liquid currency into the Zimbabwean retail/consumerist economy. 

It should have ended there in relation to reminiscent political events of November 2017.  But it did not. 

In a third incident the minister of International Relations of Zimbabwe’s hegemonic neighbor, South Africa decided to hold a conference on what she considered Zimbabwe’s pressing issues.  Naledi Pandor, went on to comment on what she considers a ‘path’ in which South African economic support to Zimbabwe should be determined by a shared vision from all stakeholders.   

While mentioning international sanctions on Zimbabwe, it was clear that she was at pains to couch her statement in the language of the resolutions of SADC against the same said sanctions on Zimbabwe. In doing so, our regional hegemon, South Africa, knew it was playing the diplomatic devil’s advocate to the SADC resolutions by claiming to take the lead on resolving what she invariably referred to as a Zimbabwean crisis.  All the while with Zimbabwe’s president serving as the chairperson of the SADC Organ on Politics, Security and Defence. Zimbabwe’s government is least likely to respond to the provocation.  At least not publicly for the moment.

In a fourth incident, the Chinese government also then decided, in this same month of November 2019, to dispute it’s geographically strategic Southern African ally’s figures on its development aid contribution as juxtaposed with that of the United States of America and others.  All as announced by Mthuli Mcube in his projected 2020 state budget statement to the Parliament of Zimbabwe. In a statement through its local embassy Xi Jinping’s government advised that its Zimbabwean counterparts and its  “relevant departments…make comprehensive assessments on the statistics of bilateral supports and accurately reflect its actual situation when formulating budget statement…”

By implication and as far as China is probably concerned, the Zimbabwean minister of finance is not being honest.  Which is also diplomatic double speak for outright lying. 

China claims to have put out far more than what Mnangagwa’s government claims in aid to Zimbabwe. It argues its total figures are in stark contrast to the equivalent of US$ 3,6 million outlined by finance minister Mthuli Ncube’s presentation to parliament.  China states that this statement “is very different from the situation on the ground.”  Instead direct aid to Zimbabwe according to the Chinese embassy topped the equivalent of US$136 million excluding donations to other non-state actors.

I am more that certain that the Zimbabwean government will issue an apology regardless of the disclosing the facts or lack thereof of what Mthuli Ncube presented in his 2020 budgetary statement to our Parliament.

In local mythology, November is a month in which there shall be no marriages.  In our shared political history, November is also a month in which assumedly tumultuous political events occur.  Coup anniversaries, neoliberal budget statements, shocking aftermaths of delayed, controversial political burials and attempts by regional hegemons to prove unclear points about their influence in Zimbabwean politics all pointing to a country and government not certain of itself. Or with many others uncertain of what its intentions are.

Perhaps all I can say is that the country should not be for sale.  Is not for sale. By way of money or by way of pursuit of vainglorious but in the final but emerging analysis, futile recognition.

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

Passport-less in Zim: Scorned for Lack/Want of Departure and Freedom of Movement.

By Takura Zhangazha*

Acquiring a new valid passport in Zimbabwe is currently the hardest task a citizen can attempt with the Ministry of Home Affairs, Registrar’s office.  This in arguably direct violation of Section 66 of the Zimbabwean constitution which guarantees citizens the right of freedom of movement. Including the right to a passport or other travel document (Section 66c).  A point that I am certain our members of parliament with their new diplomatic passports are not wont to recall.

For over a year plus, there has been an acute passport printing backlog based on a number of reported reasons.  Chief among these is the generally high demand for passports (I will get back to this matter later). 

The other major factor is the cost of printing passports.  Because the printing of the same was outsourced to a private player, when the government decided to reintroduce a local currency, the profit seeker proprietor of the passport printing machines and paper hedged their bets and asked for outstanding debts to be paid. 

What happened post those demands made to government, the evident end effect was that it created a backlog of passport applications that surpassed printing capacity. 

So to say that getting a new Zimbabwe passport is a herculean task is an understatement. It is an exercise in a process of dehumanization that is reminiscent to the racist colonial days of pass books and marriage certificates in order to live in urban Salisbury, Bulawayo and other cities/towns of Rhodesia. 

It sort of does not work like this, at least in Harare. You go to the very crowded, disorganized single window ‘enquiries’ offices that is situated in a small courtyard. In the same courtyard are a number of entry points into a labyrinth of offices which passport form holding applicants enter after shuffling along on benches that are designed for discomfort. 

I am not sure what really happens inside the quadrangle's offices because I have not gotten the permission to apply for the passport that I urgently require for professional travel.  What I have witnessed on at least three occasions is a profound and saddening desperation of many of my fellow citizens to get this document. 

From the conversations I overheard while queuing up in haphazard fashion (watching out for the pickpockets), there were and are still those that want to go back to work in the Diaspora. Urgently so. Then there are others that want to get passports for their children in order for them to be able to go back and re-unite them with their parents who are also based in the Diaspora.  There were at least three elderly women who were almost in tears asking for urgent help because of their health and the need to travel for treatment abroad.

The passport office staff could do no more than shrug their shoulders and say, we cannot help you because there’s a backlog.  You will have to wait.  Or alternatively exasperatingly shout that if you had left your letter for application of an urgent passport, their senior officers would call each applicant.  A development that from the look on everyone’s faces, is not likely to happen.

Some leave shaking their heads in anguish. Some stay in the hope that if they explain the peculiarity of their individual cases, they may get the go ahead for the next step in the application process.  Suffice to say that really didn’t work with explanations of how there is ‘a backlog to the backlog’ of emergency passport requests.

The muted curse is barely audible and followed by words such as ‘what sort of country is this?’ It is as desultory a statement if ever there was one. And also a statement that is oft heard in everyday social circles, signifying a general desire for departure, if one could do so. Except that where such departure would be pragmatically and legally enabled i.e via the passport office, same said departure is well-nigh impossible.  Both in the immediate or the long term. 

On the other hand, the symbolism of the Zimbabwean passport as a key emblem of a departure, or even rapture is telling.  While I live and work in Zimbabwe and retain the relative individual consciousness of never wanting to depart, a lot of those I met at the passport offices are looking for this departure/rapture permanently.

The same said desire/want for departure is further dehumanizing in that even where we as Zimbabweans would like to go to live, we are generally not welcome.  Even in SADC.  It therefore becomes a double dilemma. Not feeling needed or enabled at home. Not being wanted abroad. And still no passport renewal or acquisition possible.

One can only shrug shoulders at the sheer emotional weight of it all.  Al with the ministry of home affairs’ lethargic response being tellingly inadequate.  But who really wants to look at the holistic picture when in desperation of this travel document?   The entirety of the approach has been to treat the issue as one that relies fundamentally on government benevolence as opposed to a reflection of the economic reality that is millions of us living and working in the Diaspora.  Or the millions who work as cross border traders and thousands of others whose jobs though being based in Zimbabwe require the ability to travel in order to fulfill their employment obligations. 

It is no longer a matter of embarrassment for the state to fail to fulfill its constitutional obligation to enable Zimbabweans to achieve the right to freedom of movement and residence. It is an issue that goes to the governments abject failure of providing as basic a constitutionally obliged document such as a passport.  To every eligible citizen.

I know I have to go back to the passport office.  Again. Even if I am not seeking permanent or long term departure.  And again I anticipate I will have to shrug my shoulders, shake my head and be de-humanised by the state I will forever belong to. 

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

A New Democratic Socialist Deal for Zimbabwe is Possible.

 By Takura Zhangazha*

Brief Remarks to the Marxism 2019, International Socialist Organisation 30^th Anniversary Commemorations: "Crisis of Capitalism, Failures of Austerity, Neoliberalism and Elite Convergence." 

  

02 November 2019, Harare Gardens Bowling Club, Harare, Zimbabwe.

Cdes,

Thank you very much for inviting me to be part of the proceedings of Marxism 2019 in Zimbabwe. I must also take the opportunity to congratulate the International Socialist Organisation (ISO) and its Zimbabwe Chapter on its 30^th anniversary.  As one of the themes outlined for this year’s meet up state, we are correct to celebrate these 30 years of resistance and building a Socialist alternative in Zimbabwe.  Not as an act of blind faith but as a reflection of a critical and progressive national and global consciousness.

And for many an activist, both old and young, their first interaction with political consciousness has generally been based on a left leaning, people centered search for social and economic justice.  Even if we did not at that time even know either Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Fanon or Cabral, many of us clearly had an inclination toward leftist thought and leaning.

Either based on our scant or propagandised understanding of the values of the liberation struggle or our own personal encounters with traumatic social and economic injustice.  Or even upon arriving to adulthood and looking for ideological homes, either at the workplace, rural working spaces or tertiary learning institutions. 

Either way, there is no Zimbabwean who would claim to be critically nationally conscious without having made contact with Marxism in one form or the other.  And that is the importance of this annual meeting.  It is a national testament to our continuing pursuit of progressive ideas.

But apart from this ‘weapon of theory’ as advised by Amilcar Cabral, we must always have a firm understanding of national and international realities. 

In this regard, Marxism’s greatest value in our African contexts has been its ability for us to not only analyse our colonial, post colonial and neo-liberal political economies, not just with a view of interpreting them, but as Marx himself is oft quoted as saying, to change the same contexts.

And to do so in ways that in our reality reject dogma or false assumptions of the 'end of history'. Either by way of the ‘there is no alternative’ (TINA) or the increasing religious and populist characteristics of our country.  

Or the rise of an increasingly racist populism of the global north caused to the greater extent by as the title of this particular session suggests, a crisis of capitalism, neoliberalism, austerity and elite cohesion.

But back to our own African and Zimbabwean context. We should be aware that global capitalism has invariably had the most cruel impact on human livelihoods. 

This was as predicted by Marx, by Lenin and Kwame Nkrumah. Hence when we fought for liberation the ideological home of every well-meaning, well defined struggle for liberation on the continent was always grounded in Marxism.

Even in our post-independence, post liberation politics, again and again a majority of progressive opposition movements initially would revert to Marxian analysis of the failure of post-independence governments.

What however has also since happened, especially in our own Zimbabwean context is that the mainstream political actors have all begun to lose sight of a necessary Marxian consciousness about our national political economy as placed in a still stridently capitalist global world order. 

If ever the term ‘capture’ applied politically, it would be to say that on either side of the political divide, our mainstream political actors, not only in Zimbabwe, but across the majority of the continent, have had this capture done to them by ‘neo-liberalism’.  All laced with a strong desire to be associated with the real capitalists of the global north. 

In our particular case, the ruling Zanu PF party has made it abundantly clear that its raison 'd’etre apart from power itself, is to open up Zimbabwe to the ravages of neoliberalism. While the main opposition MDC-Alliance argues that it would be better at doing the same. Except a bit more liberally.

It would be easy to try and argue that the ideological convergence of the ruling Zanu Pf and the opposition MDC-Alliance is what we could simply refer to as elite cohesion.

That would not be correct.  Elite cohesion in our case would relate to the collaboration of three key arms of capitalism. This being the state, capital and bourgeoisie civil society.  These three create what Gramsci would refer to as hegemony or a unique symbiotic cultural-economic dominance over society.

In our case we have  the Zanu Pf government intent on constructing such a hegemony.  It is courting private capital as a priority.  A development which it believes will make it much easier for it to co-opt bourgeois civil society to accept what would be an elitist social contract.

That there is resistance from the mainstream opposition at the moment is regrettably not enough until the latter departs from a relatively baffling commitment to neo-liberalism. Both domestically and globally.

What is however more significant is the perceptions of the people of Zimbabwe about their current predicament. 

If Che Guevara once said that at the risk of sounding ridiculous, revolutionaries must always be guided by the greatest feelings of love, in the Zimbabwean context, those who would seek to understand how to construct a democratic socialist alternative must be guided by the greatest understanding of  collective human emotion as motivated by a heightened materialism/commodity fetishism.

And in the process to crosscheck the increasingly false blurring of class differences in which envy and desire for the commodities of the affluent has come to be sold as the epitome of social success.

This materialism and commodity fetishism as causing a  blurring of class differences in Zimbabwe is exactly what neo-liberalism and global/local capital desires. All in order to give the impression the ‘free market’ is fair to everyone regardless of whether they are in Bikita or Borrowdale. Luveve or Hillside.

The end effect of this is a false or unrealistic and unsustainable aspiration of the individualised citizens of the state.  This being a context in which even relatively minimal progress is temporary and short lived.  Thus creating a cycle of false but highly emotional expectations of what the individual and state can deliver. While at the same time destroying the organic fabric of what should be a distributive,  egalitarian state. 

This is a difficult point to make in our context largely because it always has a double meaning.  We all aspire to the good life.  Our problem is that we now do so too individually and without a collective sense of economic and social justice even within what we can control. That is the state.

This is where a Cabralist understanding of democratic socialist values becomes imperative.  There is an urgent need to clearly outline the alternatives of what we are fighting against with a firm understanding that it is not enough to tout only individual happiness as the panacea to solving the economic crisis in Zimbabwe. 

This means for the trade unions/ associations, fighting for salaries in whatever form it is no longer enough to function on the basis of catharsis.  We need a holistic framework and understanding of what neo-liberalism is and what it does. 

And this begins by us working together on a democratic socialist deal for our country.  Not just for ourselves but also as an example for the region and the African continent. 

This democratic socialist deal for Zimbabwe would entail ensuring a fair start and fair life for all. As enabled by rejecting neo-liberalism. No matter from which quarter it is being pushed from.  And it would be characterized by the stopping of the privatization of social services and goods such as transport, health, water, education. 

Including the strengthening of the civil service to meet its public service role as opposed to its purging.  

And to ensure that the same said social services are distributed evenly across class with a special emphasis on a rapid infrastructure development of our rural areas (as opposed to their urbanization).  And again with a clear understanding that climate change is no longer a rumour but a firm reality that we have been currently undergoing directly with the increased frequency of droughts and cyclones.

 And that foreign direct investment no matter where it comes from, does not compromise the people’s welfare or cause damage to the environment.  All the while with the state remaining committed to the observance of the political, socio-economic rights of the people.

Thank you cdes. The struggle continues.

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