Dear South Africa: Shallow, Trump-Style Electoral Xenophobia Will Not Work.

By Takura Zhangazha*

A couple of months ago, after the November 2021 South African local government election results were officially announced I came to the realisation that xenophobia was becoming an electoral issue in our neighbouring country.  This was mainly because some of the emerging parties that had made some sort of newfound headway in the elections had carried a 'South Africa first' message.  And in the process had affected the traditionally anticipated majorities of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party.  Even with the mainstream opposition parties such as the Democratic Alliance (DA) and the seemingly radical Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). 

Even when the issue of special permits for Zimbabweans came to the fore in the aftermath of these local government elections, I had penned on this platform an article titled, ‘Special Permits as Passes:  Countering South African False Consciousness’.  In it I had argued in the main about the umbilical cord that binds all black Southern Africans historically on what would be considered a basic and easily understandable historical point.  Based on again historical migration patterns, the colonially forced labour migration to mines and farms from countries surrounding the settler colonial state that was South Africa.  

And how a lack of a more popular understanding of this history has led to what would be a false consciousness among South Africa’s majority black population.  By way of a regrettable assumption of proximity to colonially inherited capital and ‘whiteness’ as a symbol of post independence national success.  Let alone revolution. 

Not that I thought my brief write up would amount to much in South Africa itself since it was written more to reach out to our own Zimbabwean colleagues in the regional Diaspora as well as try and affect our local policy makers’ understanding of emerging foreign policy concerns. 

What has happened since the turn of the year (2022) in South Africa should raise a lot of Zimbabwean eyebrows. The current minister of home affairs of the South African government Aaron Motsoaledi undertook a visit to the Beitbridge border post between Zimbabwe and South Africa to briefly inspect preventative measures of what were referred to by the media as illegal border crossers. With the South African mainstream and social media referring to them as mainly Zimbabweans as a predetermined media story line that thrives on raising (black) xenophobic alarm and despondency.

More recently, the whole xenophobic aspect of the local government election results has been playing itself out in disputes at forming coalitions or electing council committees by political parties in major South African cities such as Johannesburg and Pretoria.

And only this week opposition leader of the EFF Julius Malema launched a rather convoluted programme of visiting restaurants, farms and security companies to inspect how many foreign nationals are employed there.  Even though before the local government elections he had taken on a Pan African tone of seeking to embrace all Africans in South Africa’s political economy. 

All of these immediate events between December 2021 and now January 2022 point to a newly reinvigorated desire by South African political leaders to exploit what they now know to be a general xenophobic sentiment among their electorate. 

Especially after the results of the local government elections indicate to any serious analyst that this will be in an electoral issue within the context of internal party congresses leading up to the 2024 general elections in that country.   Especially because the newer opposition political parties have been effectively but tragically playing to its populist gallery.  Never mind how it will also spiral into ethnocentric connotations given the divisions within the ruling ANC as well as the white liberal counter hegemony of the opposition DA in the Western Cape. 

Cutting across these populisms and assumed counter narratives is the common factor again of South Africans and their leaders assuming an ‘exceptionalism’ of their country as separate from the rest of the African continent.   Almost in similar fashion to that of Donald Trump’s American populism.  Where everything foreign is seen as a threat to either jobs or a populist South African ‘way’.  Which in reality does not exist because the history of the country has no singular trajectory or narrative.  But it is all now being done in order to reposition parties in the expected highly contested general election of 2024 . 

It is really a question of who can rise above this Trumpian parapet in order to counter such shallow xenophobic populism we are seeing today. 

Let me turn to a penultimate point that some of my colleagues here in Zimbabwe and in South Africa will obviously raise.  And this, again, is a populist argument that Zimbabwe must fix its own country in order for its citizens not to want to cross borders.  While the Zimbabwean government can never wash its hands of its own complicity neither can its South African counterpart instrumentalise populism at the expense of regional historical solidarity that extends beyond even Zimbabwe.  Neither should we as ordinary citizens either side of the border gate-keep political-economic histories of colonialism and its post/neo-colonial political economies to our collective detriment. 

Finally, and this is primarily a message to South African politicians who are seeking to mimic Trumpism on this African side of the Global South. The making of progressive, Pan-African history is never realised in immediate populist or hate motivated languages based on gatekeeping colonial political economies. Or the ‘othering’ of those that you are, have been, essentially struggle comrades with.  The xenophobic electoral strategies that the ANC, EFF, DA and newer political parties now seem to be employing do not bode well for who we were, we are and who we can be. As Southern Africans and as Africans.

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

 

What Happened to Zimbabwe's MDC?

By Takura Zhangazha*

When Zimbabwe’s largest post-independence opposition party the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) was launched in September 1999 it was as popular as it was organic. Stemming from the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) it was a party defined initially by pro-poor and centre left (social democratic) ideological leanings.  It was however also a multi-stakeholder project beyond the working class as led by ZCTU.  It also involved civil society organisations namely the then National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), the Association of Women’s Clubs (AWC), the Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZINASU), the Zimbabwe Chapter of the International Socialist Organisation (ISO) and a selected few progressive religious organisations. 

The organic aspect of the MDC was that at inception it was ideologically social democratic in its internal and external intentions.  All largely because it was challenging the hegemonic narrative of free market and economic liberalisation that had led to dire economic circumstances for ordinary Zimbabweans because of the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP).

The popular aspect was due to the fact that mass actions such as labour strikes and stay-aways as led by the ZCTU under Gibson Sibanda and Morgan Tsvangirai’s leadership had made an indelible imprint into the public imagination.  And a new popular culture of defying Zanu Pf was fortified via the 2000 constitutional referendum which delivered an historical ‘no vote’ to the intentions of Mugabe’s government. 

The subsequent parliamentary elections of the same year and the presidential plebiscite of 2002 saw the cementing of the MDC as the most formidable challenger to Zanu Pf’s hegemony since national independence. To the extent that a lot of Zimbabweans (young and older) came to view the party as a vehicle of organic struggle. Or as the only hope for an alternative and better economic future for Zimbabwe. 

This success and show of political strength by the MDC brought in other stakeholders.  Private capital in its domestic and international formats also got involved in the nascent party and was to eventually water down its leftist narrative to one that while remaining popular and even populist was in tandem with a neo-liberal outlook.  Particularly in the midst of the Fast Track Land Reform Programme instigated by Zanu Pf. 

The internal dynamics of the evolution of the MDC are however something that a lot of us tend to overlook.  Or in some instances choose to forget. 

As big as it was not only at inception but also over the last two decades, the MDC has had its fair share of internal challenges.  The most prominent and one that started the ball rolling toward an almost permanent state of flux was the initial split of the party in 2005 over senate elections.   By the time the controversial and disputed 2008 harmonised elections were held there were two MDCs’ on the ballot paper. One led by Tsvangirai and the other led by his former secretary general Welshman Ncube and Arthur Mutambara.  Both versions of the MDC would go on to be part of the SADC mediated Global Political Agreement and the unity government that lasted until 2013. 

In the immediate aftermath of the 2013 harmonised elections, the mainstream MDC as led by Tsvangirai split again resulting in the formation of what came to be known as the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) led by former secretary general Tendai Biti. The PDP was also to subsequently split when Biti and his secretary general Elton Mangoma disagreed with the latter going on to form what came to be known as the Renewal Democrats of Zimbabwe. 

When Tsvangirai passed on, again his MDC was to split into at least two factions.  One led by his then  recently appointed vice president Nelson Chamisa and the other elected one Thokozani Khuphe. Both went on to contest the 2018 elections separately with the former ironically leading an alliance of two splinter groups of the MDC and a few other opposition parties.

In the contemporary, even what is now referred to as the MDC Alliance has also split into two with former secretary general Douglas Mwonzora now leading what he refers to as the MDC-Tsvangirai. 

I have deliberately given a cursory overview of the history and splits within the MDC to demonstrate at least two things.

The first being that these splits were fundamentally about clashes of egos and assumptions of either popular/populist or academic individual superiority.  Inclusive of undeclared desires for recognition as being individuals who are most able to challenge Zanu Pf hegemony by neoliberal/ private capital global players with vested economic interests in Zimbabwe. This in itself being a key departure from the original founding values of their own party. They may not find each other ever again, but they need to return to the source of their original values and the organic expectations the Zimbabwean people had and may still have of them.

In the second instance, I wanted to illustrate that the passage of time (inclusive of age) does not also mean the passage of ideology, values, intra-party democracy or at least specific democratic principles. Opportunism is allowed in politics without a doubt.  But it must result in progress as opposed to disintegration of purpose, organisation and belief in progress. Even where cdes find themselves in inclusive governments or in alliances with their former rival’s factions. There is always need to stay the course.

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

Brief Take: Zimbabwe in 2022.

By Takura Zhangazha*

The last two years, 2020 and 2021 have been almost dystopian.  Not only for us here in Zimbabwe but also globally due to the effects of the Covid 19 pandemic which in its various mutations, still remains with us.  Having lost so many lives we can be forgiven for, at some point, having functioned in fear and without specific reason to hope that things will get better in the immediate future.  And this includes the year ahead, 2022.  And from our recent experiences during the pandemic, if previously we did not, we now know that twelve months can give the impression of a lifetime. 

And it is these ‘lifetime’ twelve months that face us in the form of the year 2022 that I will focus on.  Not on the basis of religion (I am not a prophet) but on the likelihood of events as they have occurred in the past, the recent present and how they will likely pan out in the immediate future. With a specific focus on Zimbabwe.

I will do this in at least four respects but with an underlying perspective that regrettably Covid19 is still going to cause disruptions and a continuum of fearful if not tragic national consciousness.

These are as follows; the form and shape of the national political economy (I will explain later why I combine the two), the social lives of Zimbabweans, the placement of the country in international relations and finally the potential realities that we will still have to face at the end of 2022. 

Where we consider Zimbabwe’s political economy in 2022, it must be done mainly from an ideological angle.  I have deliberately combined the ‘political’ with the ‘economy’ not for academic purposes but in order to make it more apparent that in our current context, it would appear that in 2022 neither can function without the other.  This is mainly because the ruling Zanu Pf government has taken a neo-liberal approach to how they run both politics and the national economy.   If at the beginning of their five-year tenure in power at the helm of what they have referred to as the Second Republic, they sought to create a functional framework for the ‘ease of doing business’. In 2022 they will consolidate this.  And the signs are already there with major mining deals being approved and witnessed by the president, public-private partnerships being implemented for infrastructure development. A situation which has sown the seed of the establishment of a revolving door between the state (government) and private capital (business).  Something that never re-occurred with Mugabe’s government. 

This means that all our politics will largely pivot around a neoliberal belief in the efficacy of the ‘free market’ and ‘trickle down economics’.  A template that immediately makes for very populist politics either side of the political divide.  While the greater curiosity particularly on social media will be around what the shape and form of opposition politics will be in 2022, my riposte would be that it will be more of the same.  That is divisions, splits, counter-splits but all still worshipping at the same altar of neoliberalism as is Zanu PF.  In short our politics will not have any seismic shifts beyond electoral campaigns for 2023 and the accompanying polarisation. 

On the social and livelihood side of Zimbabwean lives, 2022 will see a lot more young Zimbabweans focusing on their individual lives beyond collective responsibility.  The question, “what is in it for me?”, based on lifestyle desires and ambitions will become more prevalent.  Especially within the context of the current pandemic.  Hence our emerging populist ‘celebrity culture’ of following people who are referred to as ‘Mbinga’s’.  One that will retain a mixture of religion and material consumerism.  A materialism that religion can now only hang onto as a lifeline given the current pandemic.

Thirdly, Zimbabwe’s placement within international relations will take on a more ambiguous turn. Not that our pariah status in global media will ever go away but because of the current government’s ‘ease of doing business’ approach to support global private capital our story will become more nuanced.   It will not be human rights organisations that will be at the forefront of the Zimbabwean narrative but private corporations.  As is the case now with mining projects such as the  Invictus oil and gas endeavour in Muzarabani,  the financialisation of capital (selling of Australian listed Arcadia mine to Chinese interests) and outsourcing of infrastructural development. 

Finally, and as we look ahead, the year 2022, will likely be one that may perhaps teach us a few rapid lessons. With the most paramount one being that unless our political culture is driven by collective values beyond individual leaders, it will be subjected to materialist ‘performance legitimacy’ public judgment. In other words, very raw populism which will rise in its crescendo for 2023.  Even in a pandemic.  Beyond this political angle, we need to embrace the real possibility that 2022 should be year of greater honesty to ourselves as a country and one in which we take greater care of each other.  Personally but more importantly, institutionally.

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