Uchena Report on Land: Losing State Capital for Political Expediency, Hedonism

By Takura Zhangazha*

The Commission of Inquiry into the Matter of the Sale of State Land in and Around Urban Areas Since 2005 headed by Justice Uchena recently submitted its full report and recommendations to President Mnangagwa. What was made publicly available was the executive summary of the report. 

In it, there were astounding but very expected findings. Some of them that were/are also being brazenly lived out.  They include the unlawful change of land use of agricultural farms adjacent to major cities, the lack of infrastructure for subsequent physical settlements on the same land, the prejudicing of the state of at least US$ 3 billion or the lack of interactive regulatory responsibility by at least two ministries and local government authorities.  Just to mention a few. 

The executive summary is scant on names of actual perpetrators but hints at land barons, housing cooperatives and political party operatives. 

What is most clear however is that fifteen years after the fast track land reform programme (FTLRP) began (in 2000) it has dramatically changed in its preferred import.  Whereas initially intended as a massive nationalization or re-possession of agricultural land for, again agricultural livelihood use by a black majority, it has morphed into a largely urban focused land (capital) utilisation reform exercise.  Across cities, peri-urban areas and even what has always been designated as growth points. 

It is reflective of not only of the urban aspirations of a lot of Zimbabweans. That is to want land for urban use. But also and tragically so, haphazard profiteering from the FTLRP by those that have been in charge of the country and local government since the latter's inception. 

The forgoing point is perhaps the most significant.  The Uchena commission report boldly states that the state was directly prejudiced of at least "USD 2 977 072 819 [two billion nine hundred and seventy seven million eight hundred and 19 thousand united states dollars]"  as it relates to 'intrinsic value.' 

This is no small change but may still not be reflective of the actual amountlost to the state.  

The key issue is that state capital was directly turned, without full legal and financial accountability, either in terms of following legal procedures or paying relevant taxes, into private capital. 

The FTLRP, it would appear, moved from being ‘revolutionary’ as regularly pronounced by proponents of a ‘third Chimurenga’.  Instead it became a smash and grab political feast on state capital.  As led by not only land barons, the politically powerful and housing cooperatives.  All within the other context of the fact that this originally state owned capital is still disputed in relation to ownership and control by the former white commercial farmers and global capital. 

So it’s a catch 22 situation.  The Uchena Commission exposes what is a Zimbabwean version of ‘enclosure’ of what the 3^rd Chimurenga had nationalized. To its re-privatisation for adjacent to urban areas rural agricultural land for direct individual private profit. 

This then leads us to the reality that by the time Uchena submits his report to the presidency, there are thousands of families that are now living and eking out some sort of livelihoods on the same land.  The heads of these families through various agents and means settled there because they were legally able to.  Or in the most political of the cases, they found opportunity to do so.  And as alluded to earlier, this is a direct result of aspirations to the urban or being irban by Zimbabweans.

The FTLRP may have been an enabler of a resurgence of a massive rural-urban migration based not only of the fact that the rural political economy had been immediately negatively affected.  But also the fact that opportunities to live closer and permanently to the ‘bright lights’ were availed by political parties, land barons and housing cooperatives.  Even those in the Diaspora took advantage for the same and have even acquired housing 'cooperatives' from as far away as Canada even though the likelihood of their permanent return for the same is next to none. 

Uchena however makes recommendations that ask central government to regularize existent residential use of acquired land, pursue criminal and civil charges against land barons, housing cooperatives and political actors who did not regularize their acquired land or duped desperate home seekers.  Uchena also recommends greater efficiency between relevant ministries and the expansion of water facilities in all urban areas as well as a cessation on new residential stand allocation across the country.

While it remains the prerogative of central government to decide what to do with these recommendations, we can only say that we know it has been complicit in creating the problems outlined as having occurred since 2015.  We also know that the Uchena reports points to the political expediency of the FTLRP.  Political actors created new urban spaces to gain electoral leverage and in tandem distribute patronage that also directly economically profiteered from.  Like having your cake and eating it too. 

What is however also subtly hinted at in the Uchena report is the inevitability of urbanization.  All via a vehicle they refer to as a proposed special purpose vehicle to be run by the Office of the President and Cabinet. 

The major risk of this is to fall into a narrative of the inevitability of urbanization in Zimbabwe or Africa.  My considered personal view is that we need to resist this false narrative.  The urban may have bright lights but it may not be as humanely progressive as is touted.  We may need to look at how we can improve the rural, to try and modernize it and make it more self-sufficient beyond subsistence agriculture.

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

No Longer in Envy of the Global North

By Takura Zhangazha*

Growing up, we were always taught to admire the global north.  In fact to aspire to it.  There was even a comedy on Zimbabwean television that we loved to watch.  Its’s theme song had lyrics that said something like ‘I wanna be an American’.  In school European history was always made to be slightly more exciting. I am pretty sure a lot of us in Zimbabwe, if we studied history in high school know of the Sarajevo incident that precipitated the First World War.  We were never taught that Africans also fought in the war but we knew the name Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria.  

Add to this, the expansion of satellite television and African American rap music or rhythm and blues, we would be all set for desiring the global north as the definitive version of life’s success.  Never mind the fact for example that Tupac Shakur was railing against the establishment in his own country of birth. 

By the time we got to university our aspiration was (probably still is) to know the most profound thinkers of the European enlightenment era (John Locke, anyone?)  or the latest developments around Einstein’s theory of relativity. 

Coming full circle to adulthood or assumptions of self-sufficiency, we would still be green with envy about the lives of those that live in New York, London, Paris or Edinburgh. We even aspired to eat fish and chips as a signal of personal arrival at success.  And also why inevitably your Chicken Inn easily persuaded us to ‘luv dat chicken’. 

But the issue that most concerns me is how we fell in love with the politics of the global north.  I, to my great regret, once had a Time Magazine cover of Tony Blair stuck up on my wall at university.  Right there alongside bigger posters of Nelson Mandela and Steve Biko.  

Our naïve assumption was that politics would always be better in the global north.  In fact we considered it more progressive and envied it.  We would think the world of Bill Clinton, Jacques Chirac and the partisan purveyors of the political brands such as CNN, Time magazine and the like. 

Even when the invasion of Iraq occurred few of us thought to call it out for what it was, a war fought under false pretense with devastating consequences.  I remember a friend who watched the invasion of Baghdad with the equivalent glee of seeing a Rambo movie.  Always expecting the victory of the west over the east. 

By the time we get Obama as the likeable image of politics in the global north, we were in over our heads.  We had already formed opposition political parties made in the image of the politics of the global north, all with the intention of anticipating ‘acceptability’ and ‘recognition’. Not that we were without cause, but it was always easier to have it affirmed by those that we envied. 

Correctly we had also accepted the universality of human rights and the freedom of movement of all human peoples. 

A lot of things have happened since then.  The liberalism of the global north began to wane.  Particularly after the global financial crisis of 2008 (incidentally in Zimbabwe we still don’t think that directly affected our economy.) The emergence of nationalism's and to the east of state capitalism, left us increasingly high and dry where it came to our initial assumptions of global solidarity or even belonging.  The people of the global north demonstrated our worst fears by electing leaders that lean to the right and reflect a newly strident (and possibly racist) nationalism.  

With the election of Trump and more recently Boris Johnson in the UK, we now know that contrary to our feel good assumptions, the majority of people in those countries and probably in the majority of European states, still want to remain exceptional.  They still want to be different from our preferred assumptions of ‘equality’.  And these are not the people that we were all along seeing on CNN or the BBC.  These are the very real people of the global north.  They evidently do not like immigrants, they also do not like being similar to everyone else.  And this is a hard truth to swallow for us in the global south who had been taught to hold those societies in awe. 

We had all along preferred the elitist version of societies in the global north, where it would have been unfathomable for a man who referred to Muslim women as ‘letter boxes’ to become a prime minister.  In this, we were wrong but have not been wronged.  We have just misjudged those societies and misunderstood what is meant by a global universality of human values.  There is them and then there is the rest of us. 

I will end with an anecdote.  I have a Zimbabwean friend based in the Diaspora.  The UK to be exact.  I asked him to vote Labour in that country’s recent election.  He was startled.  He retorted that he would not vote for a party whose leader looked like a homeless person.  He works in the social services field.  He however wanted acceptance as being truly British.  And argued as such.

Its almost like how most of us would argue in favour free market economics in the Zimbabwean context. It is not that they would truly believe in such a neoliberal approach.  

They want to be recognized for sharing that opinion with the wealthy persons of the global north.  No more no less. We need to value ourselves better and to stop looking for the approving gaze of those in the global north. 

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

Being Educated but Unconscious to a Fault in Zimbabwe.

By Takura Zhangazha*

My father probably hoped I would be a mathematical genius like him. My mother might have hoped the same but with an anticipation that I would encounter a religious calling to become a Catholic priest. Regrettably I did not meet either of my parents’ expectations. I never became a mathematical genius nor a Catholic priest.  But I did know at some point that in everything I was to eventually become, formal education was given as key.  As taught not only by my parents but also by the Zimbabwean government. 

And education also had a success hierarchy.  The most educated among us would eventually become medical doctors, engineers, lawyers (thanks to Herbert Chitepo) or priests.  The least educated would become bus drivers, security guards or God forbid what we derisively refer to as ‘garden boys’.  

And Robert Mugabe insisted on this hierarchy for a while. He also set up various state universities that demystified the acquisition of degrees and made it almost normal to have one.   

Until at some point the most educated became restive.  Those that were educated to blue collar levels decided that his stay in power was too iniquitous to their own aspirations and formed trade unions that challenged the very same hierarchy. 

In challenging it however the aspirations were the same.  That their children would via further education escape their own blue collar or peasant lives to being the nouveau rich in the leafier suburbs of Harare. 

And this is very ironic.  In being educated and struggling to get our children similarly or better educated we aspire for the same things, same lifestyles that those who would historically deny us already have. 

This is the bane of what I have previously referred to as the ESAP (Economic Structural Adjustment Program) generation of the 1990s.  We were taught that success, which was defined as driving a car, owning a television and living in affluent parts of capital cities comes through success in formal education.  Only for that education to be made redundant with economic liberalization where jobs became not only based on your actual education but also your willingness to take risks and forgo a diligent studious past. 

But we insist in believing that the type of education your child receives will make them cross the Rubicon  of success.  Or will ensure that they remain north of Samora Machel Avenue.  The truth of the matter is that we are leading our children down a false garden path.  If like me, you were privileged enough to go to a school like St Ignatious College, Chishawasha, there is no logical reason why you would not want your offspring, to go to the same.  Regrettably a lot of us who went to the same school believe that it would be beneath their aspirations for their children to go to the same schools they went to. 

Education then shifts from being a route to success to being an emblem of lifestyle success.  Almost as though we are watching how others perceive of our own personal success.  Never mind the children. 

But I must get back to my main point in this blog. 

As Zimbabweans we assume we are bright sparks because of our education system and our own personal education.  The truth of the matter is that while we may be formally smart we are organically dull. Our formal education regrettably does not always see the future.  It is too selfish, too self centered and too focused on immediate recognition.

This is what would explain our inability to think, even as educated as we would be told we are, collectively. Tell me, what intelligent, educated people even consider privatizing as natural a right as water?  Our mothers would have to defrock themselves in Bikita if that were to ever happen.  But it is being planned and for execution by the most educated of us.  PhD’s and all. 

The key issue is that we are at fault for assuming flaunting education certificates as the sine qua non of individual success. 

We have forgotten that you should never become educated in order to be a copycat.  Or to mimic others.  We should be educated to produce new knowledge.  Always.  Especially in our African contexts where the Global North thinks we are exceedingly dull. Or that we are not organic about our won knowledge production.  

If you were to walk in Harare and ask young comrades the exact role of Mbuya Nehanda in our African liberation struggles you are least likely to find any affirmation of her role.  Even as you read this blog, if you are Zimbabwean, you will probably google her name. 

We cannot assume that the more educated we are, the more organically conscious we are.  I know comrades who have gone to Bible school and become pastors but still exhibit a naivety that cannot be considered progressive.  Or comrades who think being called a comrade is Russian and therefore anti-American.  Educated as they are.  Yet we know, historically, we would never have triumphed in the liberation struggle without calling referring to each other as comrade. Or friend.

You see comrades, we are not as educated as we think. In Africa.  We suffer. We continue. But we know how to talk and act back.

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

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)

Job Incapacitations and Strikes: The Personal vs the Collective

By Takura Zhangazha*

There are a number of strikes or ‘job actions’ that are being undertaken in Zimbabwe.  The most significant of these has been an over a month long junior doctors strike at a majority of our state owned referral hospitals.  This has also played out very badly in the public discourse with government issuing veiled threats against the striking medical doctors.  While also taking them to the labour court which has since reserved its judgement.

Teachers unions, civil service associations and nurses associations are also in one way or the other undertaking varying forms of strike action.  In some statements the worker’s representatives have issued statements advising their employer (government) of their ‘incapacitation’.  By this they mean they are unable to regularly attend to their work stations for lack of either access to transport and other amenities that have been negatively affected by the high costs of goods and services in the country.

The statements relate directly to the individual union/association member’s immediate material needs.  And its entirely understandable.  The main demand is that salaries be annotated either in the United States dollar (USD) or its free market (also the parallel market) equivalent.  This demand is shared across the board by all unions and associations. 

Other demands include improved working conditions for both the employees and in part also members of the public that require their services.  But there is no doubt that the immediacy of their own personal remuneration is paramount.  Be it the medical doctors, civil service associations and teachers unions.

And salaries have basically come to be designed as highly personal commodities in our neo-liberal economic framework.  Both as designed by the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) or as is now being re-emphasised by the austerity measures under Mnangagwa’s government.

So the issue of remuneration is highly personal.  Even in the unions and associations that are representing the workers, this contradiction can be both glaring as it is inspiring for current strike actions. 

The contradiction therefore becomes the ability of the unions/ associations to combine the motivated member to understand the bigger economic picture beyond their actual salaries.  And not on behalf of the employer.  But on behalf of their own collective. 

This is evidently much harder to undertake because it is either not populist enough or it appears rather complicated to the member of the association or union.  The populism required appears to be in two parts.  Either having a charismatic figure or a seemingly catastrophic event affecting the association or union in order to whip up immediate emotions and actions.  Even if they eventually become ephemeral. 

Moreover it is also important to take into account the actual after effects of strike actions and the perception of the same with the general public.  Particularly with regards how the actions may consolidate a perception and culture of individualism within the public to the extent that they lose sight of the importance of public services. And seek instead an unsustainable solution in private services either in education, health or transport.  And may in turn not value specific professions for their public service importance and therefore inviolability of their work and work ethic. 

 In these trying economic times, it is predictable that a neo-liberal economic framework is destined to produce regular actions of resistance from workers.  Even if they had not even been conscientised and are acting on angry responses to being treated unfairly. 

It would be therefore be fair to argue that unions and civil services associations are between a rock and a hard place. They have to carefully navigate the immediate and highly individual demands of higher remuneration from their members without losing the collective value or ethos of the union.  Or without making theirs a single issue and inevitably cyclical agenda.  

To put it more straightforwardly, the unions and their leadership now need to go a gear up and provide alternative holistic frameworks to the way in which their professions/associations function nationally.  And not just in the immediate but with perspectives that relate to posterity.  For example where it concerns the health services sector, is the commercialization template that is being touted by government the panacea? Or do we clearly need a system similar to a publicly funded and supported national health service that makes public hospitals not only viable but give everyone a chance of professional treatment?

Or if we are in the teaching profession, what are the key elements around public education that would make affordable education a reality for many poor children? And how would value, even beyond the material, be retained by the teaching profession.  After all, those that are causing problems in the education sector both for teachers and affiliated workers, all must have gone through a better education system than at present.

Or if we are in any other profession, raising key questions about how we do not anticipate any provision of mass urban public transport (ZUPCOs) should not be designed as a political stop gap measure but a public good and service. 

These are questions and issues that do not preclude the right of workers to strike or to increasingly choose either the private sector or the Diaspora.  Instead they bring to the fore the importance of teachers unions, civil service associations expanding the public and people centered values of their sectors to ordinary Zimbabweans.  Even if it appears mundane and difficult. 

It also helps even in the internal processes of unions and associations where members engage with not only the important issues of salaries/remuneration but also key ideological questions of the country and the necessary frameworks to build a better society for all. This would help tamper populist approaches and also encourage members to read between the ideological and elitist lines of their current predicament.

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

Zim’s Emerging Lifestyle Crisis

By Takura Zhangazha*

A Diaspora based friend who works in the hotel and catering industry recently and happily told me that he had completed payment for an urban residential stand at a growth point. I asked him why buy an urban property that is so close to his rural home?   His answer was in two parts.  First that it was what his peers were doing. They were part of a housing cooperative that allowed what he considered relatively easy payment terms. The second reason which was a bit more nuanced was that he basically didn’t want to die without owing an urban property. 

Or even without escaping what he evidently considered the backwater that is his rural customary law governed and ultimately state owned land. Basically he had purchased a retirement home that wouldn’t have him go back to what historically we have come to call the ‘reserves’ or in local vernacular ‘ruzevha’.

And its all fair enough.  The city in our own Zimbabwean and African contexts was always going to be etched in popular imagination as being the best place to live.  Not only because of the ‘bright lights’ but more because of having been presented by the colonial state as the place where all the 'civilized' people live.  Or at least ought to. That we were to the greater extent coerced to begin to live in cities may miss our more recent historical and collective memory.

What is however more apparent is that the city or cities are increasingly more attractive to young Zimbabweans.  And the same cities portend assumptions of better living, lives or lifestyles.  With the latter meaning not only quicker access to goods and services such as electricity, water, transport, health but more significantly in search of recognition of success by lifestyle. 

And it is this latter point that is now defining our rapid urbanization in Zimbabwe.  What we are seeing is not just a physical urbanization of the country but more tellingly, an urbanization of our minds/national consciousness.  Regardless of where we are actually living. 

So a majority of us no longer desire what would be basic necessities even of urban existence.  We would want the recognition of the designer clothes (even if they coming out of imported bales of second hand clothing), the odd car, smart phone, shoe etc.  In this we have become enamoured to commodities that we think or are told should make us feel better.  Or we are suffering from what Marx and others would refer to as commodity fetishism. Except that this is particularly with the mindset of pursuing the best possible and fashionable urban lifestyle.

In this, we are not short of comparative analysis of how ‘others’ are consuming or failing to do so.  With the first departure point of this analysis being the fact of movement from rural to urban.  And then in the urban to compare, again, how much more we are consuming i.e. how many stands, cars, etc do you have? 

Or even more sinister, very base and materialistic comparisons of where your children go to school and whether you are still stuck in the ghetto or have crossed the lifestyle Rubicon that would for example be Samora Machel Avenue in Harare.    

This is why in part, with the severe reduction of the more formal economy, the scramble for recognition is no longer in specific professions or ethical considerations about income or a lack thereof.  The key issue becomes how much money you get not why you get it.  This would also explain why for example the denigration of the teaching profession comes with the greatest of ironies from those that went through the education system only to now spite it. 

Or in the medical profession, once highly valued and respected occupations such as nursing or even medical doctors themselves find themselves struggling for not only a past respect of their important work but with greater urgency, better remuneration.   This against the evidently opulent lifestyles of other previously less well paying occupations such as politics, religious ministry or being a foreign currency exchange dealer.   

This for many an admirer of capitalism and cut-throat free market economics, would not be a problem.  The only dilemma however for those of us on the left is that it demeans democracy and a people centered state.  The hedonism we are now exhibiting, as motivated primarily by highly materialistic lifestyle desires does not bode well for posterity. 

To be drowning in our own consumption, based on lifestyles that ultimately become unrealistic and at the comparative expense of those we would call others is an exercise in national futility. 

We probably need to re-balance the urban and the rural beyond the designs of the colonial and post colonial state. But probably more importantly we  just need to manage our materialism and greed.

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

Zimbabwean Christian Churches’ Ridiculousness In Need of a Political Sabbath.

By Takura Zhangazha*

Like any other non-state organization, the Zimbabwe Heads of Christian Denominations (ZHOCD)  is entitled to its own opinion on the state of affairs in the country. Except that its opinion is generally expected to be considered.  Its most recent one is borderline ridiculous and evidence of a misplaced messianic streak of undemocratic political overreach. Or even an assumption that with the limited levels of a critical national consciousness, Zimbabweans will probably forget the democratic principle of the separation of the Church from the State.  Or to quote Jesus, giving unto Caesar, what belongs to Caesar.  

To quote from the statement, the ZHOCD proposes what it refers to as a Sabbath that would be  ‘ national seven year Sabbath period for the purposes of establishing an emergency recovery mechanism to address the national situation’. 

This ‘national situation’ according to the ZHOCD would therefore require “the suspension of the constitutional provision of elections” that would, wait for it, be determined by a referendum. The lack of logic in the suggestion is laughable.  The ZHOCD wants the country to vote against voting.

The leaders of the ZHOCD probably prayed about issuing this statement.  Unfortunately the signal that they got from God or elsewhere is patently undemocratic that even St Augustine would be raising questions at their political theology. 

If the ZHOCD had ended there, it would have been a little less ridiculous.  In stating the problem and an anticipated result of the suspension of elections via a referendum, the clergypersons propose no actual mechanism as to who or what governs the country in the seven year electoral ‘Sabbath’. That will be determined by some sort of consultative process which assumedly, the church itself would lead.  Though it does not say so in the statement.

I am sure one of the main reasons why the ZHOCD has reasoned this way is because it knows itself to be an organization whose voice will reach the ears of the most politically and economically powerful in the land.  And because it has great societal reach, it also knows that is almost untouchable.  With millions of worshippers flocking to its affiliate churches every weekend, it can with relative ease influence public opinion in its favour.

But to influence public opinion in this way, by asking for and actively willing an unconstitutional suspension of elections, is an abrogation of the churches responsibility of ensuring peace, progress and stability in modern day nation states.  It is also probably as bad as shouting ‘fire’ in a cinema, causing a stampede, and claiming afterwards, that one was just expressing an opinion. 

There are therefore a number of reasons why progressive Zimbabweans must be able to talk back to the ZHOCD undemocratic statement.  Not only as a learning curve for that organization but a re-affirmation of a now long standing democratic value of the principle of the separation of religion from the state.  Together with the necessity of a stubborn insistence that democracy overrides religion. All the while guaranteeing freedom of worship. 

In another instance it would be useful to assist ZHOCD to recall that various religious doctrines have played important roles in our liberation struggles, they did not come to define these same said struggles. Indeed some may have been used to justify the necessity of liberatory armed struggles, others as a counter- narrative but religion remained firmly on the periphery of what in the final analysis were secular struggles.  Statements such as the one issued by the ZHOCD are a rather a vainglorious attempt to place Christianity at the centre of what should essentially be secular struggles.  Almost in messianic fashion.

Nowhere in their statement do they mention the political economic mess that has been wrought on by the ideology of neoliberalism.  Their vague generalisations about ‘healing’ without reference to structural causes of why we find ourselves where we are is not the stuff one would expect from the clergy. But then again, who wants to argue against the massive wealth that these churches preside over, their own internal dictatorships, their fraternization with the wealthy and powerful to curry favour and in this age of millennial capitalism, the devastating effect of their prosperity gospels. 

The ZHOCD  is however lucky.  The current Zimbabwean president uses religion as a political backstop.  Ever since taking over power from Mugabe and retaining it in the 2018 elections, Mnangagwa makes it a point to pop up at huge gatherings of religious worshippers.  And he makes many material promises to the leaders of these churches. 

Opposition political party leaders have also taken on the dogmatic approach to Christianity and politics. Weighing in on a fervent Pentecostalism, various politicans have put on both robes of not only being trained clergypersons but also politicians.  While it remains their democratic right to do so, the end effect is that actual church leaders at orgainsations such as the ZHOCD begin to think they and their religious inclinations are now the raison d’etre for the existence of the Zimbabwean state.

It is not Zimbabwe that must take nay sabbatical from democratic electoral processes.  It is the Zimbabwe Heads of Christian Denominations that needs a long political sabbatical.

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