Lessons We Refused to Learn in 2021 #Zimbabwe

By Takura Zhangazha*

The calendar year 2021 should have taught the world in general and Zimbabweans in particular a great many new lessons about our shared common destiny as humanity.  Not least because the Covid 19 pandemic did not relent and emerged with various political, social, economic and technological end effects that we are still not clear about how to equitably redress.  Or the ongoing challenges of climate change that are no longer just scientific arguments but increasingly lived realities across the globe.  Particularly in the Global South.

In this brief write up I will however only focus on my own country of origin, Zimbabwe and the lessons that we have refused to learn. Or at best only arrived at by default in this year that has come to an end. 

And there are at least three of these ‘refused lessons’ we may have refused to learn that I will focus on. 

The first being that even within the context of a global pandemic and a national vaccination drive, we still sought, as is our current social culture to politicise this global challenge.   Continued narratives about how Zimbabwe was not going to able to mitigate the pandemic as well as other countries through to other narratives about vaccine efficacy by way of origin (SinoVac vs Johnson and Johnson for example)  were widely accepted conversations.

The tragic passing on of many of our citizens, despite all the pain should also have pointed us to our under appreciation of the value, right  and principle of access to public health for all.  Instead we expanded private health services and introduced our own form of local Covid 19 treatment ‘apartheid’ or inequality.  Even though in most cases the end results were tragically the same because whether rich or poor, all of us have suffered a Covid 19 related loss of a loved one.  Or if we got it and survived it, we are still counting our material losses or our appreciating more our own luck/religion

Beyond public health we also had again, a sort of Covid 19 related inequality around access to education.  With those in government schools at primary and secondary levels of education experiencing slower school calendars and less teacher attention because they could not access online platforms and electricity. 

Again this was the same with actual access to livelihoods/jobs.  While we made jokes about how for example, those in the urban were migrating back to the rural at the extended height of the pandemic the reality was that both spheres of our lives were negatively affected.   With those in the urban, including Diaspora, facing challenges of sending remittances to their rural folks due to limited employment.  And those in the rural having to shoulder the burden of taking in their kin who were having to come back home for economic respite from urban rents, rates while under lockdown. 

Secondly, as an unlearnt lesson in 2021,  and again because of the high levels of political polarisation in our society, we also did not fully understand the urgency of new approaches to how our society is holistically run.  And this is as things/issues relate to democracy, human rights and the best public interest.   When faced with such a crisis as Covid 19, there should have been greater public knowledge and understanding about key events as they occurred, greater ideological perspectives (including the reigning in of private capital from profiteering from this)  on public health and other issues even though we were under lockdown. What we sort of had instead were all sorts of dogmatic narratives and stubborn insistence that things could still be done in the same way, at least politically.  Even though we could not meet physically.   And even as we suspended physical electoral processes we hid under the cloak of the pandemic to retain political power at varying levels (civil society, churches, political parties, social clubs, beef committees, among many others).  This is despite the fact that in select urban and per-urban instances we could do online meetings in one form or the other.  Or even, with lockdown regulations permitting hold limited physical meetings.

The third key issue I would like to raise is the contradiction of not wanting to re-imagine a new future.  Two years of a pandemic, and a global one for that matter is a very serious occurrence in the lives of our people.  In 2021 we have retained a desire for what I consider the ‘routine’.  Or even a return to a preferred ‘normalcy’ of life (though in Zimbabwe that’s a difficult proposition.)  Our re-imagining of our societal future would be one that is ensconced in neoliberal assumptions of ‘innovation’ and less embedded in our democratic values and intentions to make our society much more equitable for everyone.   Based on the lessons learnt from the pandemic.  As it is, we are more about the figures (number of infections, deaths) than we are about the urgency of ensuring that we are always partly and democratically, accountably ready for any such pandemics in the future.  Particularly with regard to creating public health service, education, transport and sanitation systems that are fair, accessible and affordable to all our citizens.  Be they in the rural or urban areas where they make their livelihoods. 

In conclusion, 2021 was initially a year in which we had placed great hope that we would be over the current pandemic.   As indicated earlier, there is probably no single Zimbabwean with friends and family or individually who has not been affected by Covid19.  Yet we still need, while using our best science to mitigate it, still need to look at the bigger societal context and future on how to learn lessons that build an equitable society.

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

 

 

Book Review: “ Mugabe’s Legacy: Coups, Conspiracies and the Conceits of Power in Zimbabwe. David Moore, 2021”

 By Takura Zhangazha*

In the middle of this year I got what I now refer to as a present of privilege.  It was a yet to be fully published book by David Moore titled, “ Mugabe’s Legacy: Coups, Conspiracies and the Conceits of Power in Zimbabwe.”  

I was lucky enough to get the book not only as a personal gift from the author but also before it had been released into bookstores (though the print-run has already been done).  I had hoped that the book would be available in bookstores before the end of 2021 but that is looking least likely at the moment. 

With the permission of the author I still thought it necessary to do a non-academic review of it. Moreso within the context of shifting political allegiances of those who were Mugabe’s Generation 40 (G40) and the mainstream opposition MDC Alliance frontrunners after the end of his long-duree rule.  And also with the not surprisingly awry but politically insignificant silence of his widow, Dr. Grace Mugabe. 

There are many books that have been written about Mugabe.  There are many more that are being worked on and will soon also be published.  Most of them will probably look at Mugabe from a Eurocentric or global north lense, one that is likely to fit specific expectations of narratives around his leadership of Zimbabwe.  These narratives are largely about seeking to not only demonise Mugabe but also seek some sort of historical revisionism on the end effect of African national liberation struggles and Pan Africanism. 

Moore in his book does not take this approach.  Instead he looks at Mugabe not as just an individual leader and as he suggests in the title, the realest meaning of political power in Zimbabwe’s historical context.  Including how it is arrived at, accepted, exercised and in Mugabe’s case, lost within the framework(s) of liberation struggle movements and their attendant historical political culture. 

It is a very Gramscian  take on Mugabe’s legacy, leadership and the political culture that informed Zanu Pf;s rise to power and the contestations around its future.  With key lessons for those that would seek to challenge the ruling establishment.

What Moore does well in analysing Mugabe’s legacy is to link the passage of time, struggle and political cultural practice (exercise of power) of what in academic circles we would refer to as ‘hegemony’.  And he does so with a very personal touch by narrating his interactions with not only the leaders of the Zimbabwean nationalist movement but also those of the then emerging liberal opposition movement(s).   All in which he almost arrives at the conclusion that Mugabe was not just an individual but was more representative of a culmination of deliberate historical events that shaped his approach to leadership.  

Not that Moore reduces Mugabe’s agency in the making of contemporary Zimbabwe.  Instead Moore seeks to explore the connotations of Mugabe’s intellectualism, high sense of personal accomplishment (education) and even Messianic tendencies as being fueled by not only the context of the liberation movements but also by his (Mugabe) own egoistic inclinations. 

And Moore makes this relatively clear in assessing Mugabe’s ideological roots by outlining that the latter was never committed to Marxism or any other left leaning version of it.  Instead, and that’s the impression I get from Moore’s writing, Mugabe largely instrumentalised populist tendencies for his own political interests.  And that these interests resided largely in the retention of power.   But all working within the political culture enabled by the liberation and nationalist movement.  

Moore however also gives an historical outline of Mugabe’s Achilles heel, this being the military and organic ideological side of the liberation movements. In combination.  He walks the reader through the full import of the Vashandi rebellion (his good friend Dzinashe Machingura helped him greatly with understanding this).  And his interviews with various liberation war veterans to understand how the disjuncture between fighters of the liberation war and the nationalists was and still remains relatively palpable.  Hence in the book Moore makes references to stalled and attempted coups before arriving at what he calls the 2017 ‘coup incarnate’. 

And this is where a reader’s curiosity is likely to reside.  The making of the coup, in reading Moore was largely Mugabe’s own fault.  Never mind his wife and G40. And over a course of at least 50 years at which Mugabe was either close to or at the helm of not only his party but eventually the other 37 where he was in charge of the country.  

Moore writes this book with a very anecdotal pen.  It is very easy to relate to because he makes reference to people he met, outlines events as they unfolded and as they were reported in the mainstream media.  But where he uses wit and slight humour, he intends to make a point about the fact that Mugabe’s legacy was never going to be his own. It had and still has far reaching implications on Zimbabwean society.  From the economy and its oligarchs through to the political culture of not only the ruling Zanu Pf party but also as it affects the mainstream Movement for Democratic Change opposition formations. 

Moore does not present Mugabe as a larger than life character.  He presents him as both the product of historical circumstances, ambitions and an ambiguous Zimbabwean hegemony that is yet to be fully explored.  Hence Moore’s consistent reference to the Gramscian ‘interregnum’.  Mugabe’s legacy is that there was never a terrible beauty that was born after his departure. 

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

 

Steph Curry’s 3-Point Feat and the Importance of Basketball as a Sport in Zimbabwe.

By Takura Zhangazha*

Being a basketball fan, a predominantly American but now universally recognised sport, I am completely impressed by the accomplishments of USA All Star player and Golden States Warriors point guard, Stephen Curry’s recent record breaking accomplishments.  He is the highest three-point scorer in National Basketball Association (NBA) history.  Its an amazing feat given the fact that he has done it in a shorter period of time and with less games than his legendary predecessors Ray Allen and Reggie Miller. 

Some of you may ask what would this have to do with Zimbabwe or even my own aficionado proclivities to the sport?  The key issue is that basketball has had a great influence on Zimbabwean sporting culture.  Not as much as football, athletics, netball or volleyball but all the same it helped shape a lot of  mind-sets and approaches to contextual lives when we were growing up in the 1990s. 

 While mainly regarded it as an elitist sport, because it was considered relatively expensive and difficult to play.  

One needed not only an actual basketball but also sneakers, a decent court and colleagues who were more interested in using both hands and feet in playing sports. 

Personally I was drawn to it mainly by my brothers.  One (my elder cousin) who played for the then Prince Edward team and then a bit of Harare league basketball, my elder brother who admired the latter and hanging about with friends at the Lord Malvern high school basketball courts in Waterfalls, Harare. Especially if the television was not working or after church service on Sundays when the then Zimbabwe Television (ZTV) Channel 1 would show weekly NBA highlights.  We would hang about with what was then called the Waterfalls Trail Blazers and its amazing manager (sadly now late) Lynos Mushonga and an able player manager, Don Westerfall.  

Without a doubt our appreciation of the sport also came with mid 1990s expansion of African American hip hop culture, with the Sounds on Saturday music show that we would watch as and when the black and white television was functional.  So it was not just a sport but what we would now call a trend. Until you learnt how to play the sport beyond its fashionability.

Short as we were and comparatively still are (we knew we would never make the NBA let alone any other more organised leagues.)  But it gave us decent enough dreams of playing like Michael Jordan, Clyde Drexler and above all else it helped us occupy youthful idle time (especially with my friend Terrence.)

But this is not where this ends for me at a personal level. I played for and captained at the end of my high school tenure the basketball team of St Ignatius College, Chishawasha (we once defeated basketball powerhouse Peterhouse Group of Schools in 1996). Again playing the game helped us to learn teamwork, practice and shared responsibilities for wins or losses. It also taught us how to learn to collectively lead and to be reflective upon defeat.   

Having moved from Waterfalls to Dzivaresekwa, I was taught how to understand the even greater community importance of basketball as a sport beyond mimicry of celebrity statuses.  My brother and I joined the amazing Dzivaresekwa Raiders Basketball team where the famous baller Vitalis Chikoko once played.  It was then led by Ngoni Mkukula who now runs an amazing local basketball charity called Hoops for Hope. 

My sister, Tsitsi, also played for the first womens' team of Raiders. 

Because I was unemployed I tried out more for the team and eventually made the team with amazing athletes (Coaster Mashati, Maynard Masawi) among many, many others.  We would go on to contend for the Harare Basketball league title though we, in the season I played we were always second/third best to what was then the Harare Cavaliers and Arcadia Bucs. 

Due to my own, by basketball standards, short physical height restrictions I sort of knew that I would need to learn how to shoot the ball from a distance. Not quite like Curry because he is much more taller, but I had a rough idea about strengths and weaknesses.

Sure, driving it into the key would still remain an occasional option but I was too short for this. So I learnt to practise how to shoot the 3-point shot and play from outside the key.  And was ably taught by the teammates and management at Dzivaresekwa Raiders. It also included having to go up the ‘water tank hill’ multiple times for a physical fitness test I know I will never be able to do again in my lifetime.

When I made it to the University of Zimbabwe, I also pursued the sport and played for the UZ Stars under the auspices of coach Kizito.  Again my strategy was to play around the 3 point line and not in the key.  In that first season I had made the team we shared amazing moments with players such as Benson, Taru, Brian, Masimba, Kundai, Welcome, Abel, Percy, Tonde and Mbiru.  We would practice in between lectures and try our best to improve our game.  Until, for me at least, student activism got in the way.  I never improved at the game after that.  And also my eyesight couldn’t handle the evening game floodlights.

But the key point I insist on making, based on my own personal experiences with the game of basketball, is that it helped develop my own sense of being, belonging to a collective of like minded individuals as inseparable.  The teamwork, the practice, the competitiveness and the respect for the game as a game that helps young Zimbabweans become better people will never be lost to me. Including the fact that, as is the case of Stephen Curry, if you practise hard enough, commit yourself to it, in the right enabling environment, you can become an unexpected legend. Almost as others would view their youthful football or other sport playing days. I hope the Zimbabwe Ministry of Sports and the Sports and Recreation Commission (SRC) are cognizant of and recognise this. 

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

 

 

Cross Generational Selfishness in Zimbabwe.

By Takura Zhangazha*

Public interest debates in Zimbabwe are highly politicised.  They are viewed in very binary terms or metaphorically as being  ‘either, or’. And straightforwardly as viewing things/issues conclusively in black or white terms.  You either have a side or you should stay out of it.  Including if you have assumptions that placing a ‘third way’ angle to the discourse can help.  We have generally analysed this as being about how Zimbabwe is a politically polarised society.  Almost as though, which is probably true, we think in political extremes. A thing that we do because of what we consider our own personal political experiences. 

And I will give two examples. The first being that a war veteran of Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle will hardly ever see anyone else without similar credentials governing the country.  He/she will impart this perspective to their children, relatives and friends.  It is a political view that they would consider integral to their being. 

Where you take a long standing opposition supporter, not just from the contemporary many Movement(s) for Democratic Change outfits (MDCs) but even from the Zapu or Zanu Ndonga opposition years, a similar political perspective generally applies.  In most instances most of these supporters have suffered greatly for their political opinions and lost family/friends and property at the hands at what they will likely forever consider an unforgivable ruling party regime.  This too they will teach their children, friends and family. 

The complicated common denominator in both perspectives is the basic expectation of the real or imagined benefits of having such views.  Both in relation to material gain or loss.  And in this an assumption that these binary political views will yield material benefit for one side over the other.   So it’s not just about the emotional experience of the side you choose.

Hence we have various class beneficiaries of the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP).  Some more than others.   While the most loyal ruling party supporters were the rural poor/peasants (war veterans included) based on their own historical understanding of loyalty, those that gained the most from it became land barons and the FTLRP at some point ironically stopped being about land redistribution for restorative agricultural livelihood purposes.

On the opposite end of the political spectrum are the opposition members that benefited from the urban control of city/town councils while still giving hope that by the time they take state power the livelihoods of their poorer working class supporters will eventually improve.  It hasn’t. 

The key point to be made is that political debate relates to experiential political loyalty as it does to material benefit.  Hence we are currently still politically polarised in Zimbabwe. We don’t see beyond the binary not only because of what we have previously experienced as it informs our political loyalty but also as it relates to what we can physically/materially claim to have gained for all our, again, political suffering and ‘beliefs’. 

It is this political culture, one that thrives on absolutist and borderline propagandist elements of consciousness, that limits our ability to debate or even argue beyond the immediate.  It also basically means we are blind to the future in our evident short-termism. And I will be a bit blunt here.  We behave like children enjoying ice creams for their taste without acknowledging the fact that even that taste and the physicality of the ice cream is temporary. No matter how sweet it is or how colourful it may look.  

I know a decent number of cdes either side of the political aisle, and also cdes in the global north, who often vividly quote in isolation African revolutionary thinker Franz Fanon where he refers to each generations’ task as being at risk of obscurity for lack of fulfilment.  In our own case, we probably suffer from a generational selfishness. And this, across generations because whichever one you look at, there is a glaring lack of consideration of posterity.  We live in our own (a) historical moments.  Hence for example war veterans argue always on their own behalf.  Or founding opposition members remains entrenched in assumptions of their own eventual victory- one that remains embedded in messianic populism.

Where we then have new tools of communication in the form of social media we seek to reinforce these specific perspectives to what would be public interest discourse. 

In reality what obtains in our Zimbabwean context is that there is now no longer deeper discourse about events, issues and policies as they occur or as they affect our lives.  We hang on to the past or we contest it in the populist moment. Without seeking to understand the future and its import beyond ourselves and our immediate materialism.

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

 

 

 

ED's Newfound Carrot and Stick Approach to Teachers Unions.

 By Takura Zhangazha*

Being a labour union leader in Zimbabwe’s political-economic environment is not only a difficult decision to make in professional employment. It can also be a thankless task if it is not based on pro-worker values and principles.  And before going any further, it would be important to immediately explain that most progressive  labour union or workers’ committee leaders are most likely to be ideologically of the left.  Even if they may not know it but their actions generally would point to it.  Especially in Zimbabwe’s current neoliberal (free market) political economy framework. 

I am mentioning this because the recent tiff between the Mnangagwa government and select Teachers’ Unions is a serious cause for concern.  It is one in which the former is accusing the latter of collusion with the United Kingdom (UK)  government to undermine the Zimbabwean teaching profession.  This is a serious allegation especially because it is coming from a sitting president.  One in which he promises to investigate the allegations to the full.  Meaning that such an investigations soft target would be the unions.

The teachers unions in question, or at least those that have directly responded, namely the Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) and the Amalgamated Rural Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (ARTUZ), have vehemently denied this allegation.  They have responded in various statements shared on social media and reported in the mainstream press that this is merely a government ploy to digress from the legitimate labour rights concerns of their members in the teaching profession. 

Just on the basis of the power imbalance between government and the unions, it would be evident that one should side with the unions.  And seek to promote their labour rights within the context of Zimbabwean labour law as well as the rights accorded to them by the United Nations (UN) mandated International Labour Organisation (ILO) conventions.  This includes the rights of labour unions to freedom of association.  Ideologically or otherwise. Even if they fall under the purview of the Public Service Commission(PSC), a point which I will come back to later. 

But beyond this, we must also analyze the contextual reasons as to why this relationship has reached this particular crescendo between government and the teachers unions.

While the facts of the matter around this deterioration of relations are still to be presented, it is apparent that the government views the teachers unions as being functionally more political as opposed to focusing on strictly union matters.  And in this the state is, according to Mnangagwa’s public statements, accusing the unions of being conduits of other countries’ foreign policy intentions and’s therefore interference in Zimbabwe’s sovereignty.   And this can only mean at least two things.  The Zimbabwean government is positioning these allegations as a riposte to UK foreign policy intentions after COP26. Either to indicate and strengthen or position ‘reengagement’ as the only option.  Or to somewhat threaten a hardline approach within the context of UK’s Brexit and its need for business investment. Both historical and in the contemporary as regards agriculture and mining. 

On the teachers unions’ side, one can only re-emphasise that they cross check the relevant labor law mandates that they have and function not on the basis of an allegation that they are an extension of any foreign country’s foreign policy. This includes, as is within their right, identifying regional, continental and global allies that they share progressive labour rights values with.  It would be remiss of them to take a populist approach to this tiff with central government. Even if in the short term it helps galvanize their members. 

But let me return to the issue of the PSC and the probable intentions of the state around civil servants.  At a ceremony to launch busses for the transportation of government workers President Mnangagwa indicated that while he has their interests at heart, and in his own words,  Regrettably, while as an employer government is implementing all these measures, it is disheartening that some employees as has now been revealed are working with foreign governments to undermine workplace harmony as well as national peace and security. Fortunately, my government has the requisite capacity to ensure workplace harmony and guarantee national peace and security,”

The likely intention of this is to ensure that government workers are fundamentally and probably technically (compliance) to the government of the day’s programmes and intentions.  And that they are not perceived to undermine what would be considered ‘national peace and security’. Even if they are not in the security services.  

And to add to this, the central government is well aware that the issue of US$ dollar bonuses for civil servants is likely to ameliorate angst with government workers of each and every one of its ministries. Teachers included. 

What then becomes somewhat apparent is that Mnangagwa is very much aware of the political influence that Zimbabwe’s civil service has.  Moreso the teaching profession.  His intention is to approach it from a carrot and stick methodology. And with probable full knowledge that it was the teachers unions and professionals that were the backbone of the rapid expansion of opposition politics in Zimbabwe in 1999.   

Finally, to all the progressive labour union leaders cdes out there, doing the hard work of representing workers’ rights, I salute you. Aluta continua!

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