The Forgetfulness of Social Media In Zimbabwe.

 By Takura Zhangazha*

I am writing this because you will forget it. You may notice it.  It may trigger some emotions or emoticons.  But essentially you will forget it.  Unless you quite literally undertake some investigative research on my assumed digital footprint because you intend to employ or troll me. But even that too will be temporary and in your own digitally motivated moment. 

And these are essentially a series of moments of information as it relates to how you want to feel, think and where it is directly personal, act. 

But there has been a lot of important work on the true impact of social media over the years.  Including its ability to be a catalyst for progressive and also regressive political, economic and social change.   Even more important has been studies on the psycho-social impact of social media.  Though largely focused on its expansion in the Global North and issues such as the right to individual privacy, the various studies on social media remain important to our African and in particular our Zimbabwean national context.

What has been a very interesting aspect of studies of social media and its ownership is its structured approach to the modification of human behaviour. This includes the relatively established fact that social media owners are in it for the profit and we voluntarily share our personal information about lives with them.  All within a framework that has been defined by Shoshana Zuboff as ‘surveillance capitalism’. 

But there was always an abstract statement that we encountered in these new nodes of our own behavioural modification.  Even here in Africa we were told that the “internet does not forget.” Social media and the internet are generally now not considered to be one and the same thing though a decent number of us conflate the two. 

The complexity that has appeared to emerge is that it is not the internet or social media that does not forget.  Instead it is us that forget what the medium has presented to us. 

This is a relatively complex point to make.   How we have come to view for example our social media accounts and presence is essentially consumerist.   And not just in the sense of quite literally consuming information but how we also give it out with the assumption that we are in control of it . And also with limited knowledge of algorithms and their neo-colonial preferences.  Let alone their priority audiences.  Hence what trends is always what is preferable.  Both in relation to language but also specific images.

In our African and Zimbabwean context to be a bit more specific, while we may not value as much as we should rights to individual privacy, we have to contend with the fact that the impact of social media and mobile telephony is as ephemeral as it is a reflection of our shortened attention spans. 

This is likely because our interaction with the technology that brings social media to our fingertips is also a ‘status symbol’.  Not just materially (what type of mobile phone do you own/control”) but also in relation to a preferred algorithmic consciousness (does it trend?)  And with the latter question being about again the priority target audiences of the algorithm(s).

It however remains in vogue that social media and our other interactions with the internet are here to stay with us in Africa and in Zimbabwe.  What is increasingly striking is our ability to move on from what it purveys to us.  Both by way of actual information and also by way of our individual preferences, which are also referred to as echo chambers.  Not necessarily by the day or hour but by way of our own emotions and what we prefer to read, listen or watch based on our own preferences.  Except for the fact that these preferences need to be fed with the relevant content in our social media newsfeeds. Where this content begins to contradict itself, based on facts or reality, we turn to other content that feeds into the mill of our personal preferences. But if only we would also remember what was said, posted and shared in relation to our own beliefs and same said preferences.

Our contextualised social media, even though we do not own it, because of our voracious appetites for its real time content, makes us forget more than we should remember.

You may ask so what would be the way forward.  I would suggest that we begin to rethink our own true representation on these various platforms beyond an abstract mimicry of how they are used in the Global North. While holding true to the democratic principles of freedom of expression, access to information and that little considered right to individual privacy.  Within our own context.

But again we are faced with the fact of the speed of information and the modification of our human behaviour.   In this regard, it remains more important, still, to be more organizationally organically (including literarily/physically) focused than on a social media we do not and will likely never control.  That meeting, those minutes to it, that constitution, that ideology and its democratic ethos remain the foundation of any assumptions of progressive consciousness. Everything else, while it helps, is ephemeral. Because you will forget it. 

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

 

 

On Leadership in Zimbabwe: We Cannot Lead People Backward

 By Takura Zhangazha*

I like motivational speakers and people that are in the profession of advising others how to better themselves.  I also like prophets, traditional healers and mainstream church leaders that help all of us improve our personal and professional lives.  This also includes those that write books on motivation, leadership and well-being in our contemporary social and economic context.  I must however confess to not listening or following them that much.  This is mainly because of their ideological pretexts that do not tally with my left leaning proclivities.

But leadership as a concept is very important in Zimbabwean society. It is one that we rarely explore to its fullest meaning in our local context.  Including questions such as, “What is it?”. “Why does one want to lead?” “What is its purpose?” “What does it result in?” 

Such questions may appear to be abstract because in our Zimbabwean context we assume in most instances, that leadership is about money and political power at varying levels.  Be it in churches, associations and political parties. 

We also assume that education is the sine qua non of acquiring any political leadership role.  While education (including our ability to be proficient in the English language) was important during our liberation struggles and in order to learn the ways of the coloniser, it remains inadequate for a new future.

Hence most of our political leaders in and outside of government acquire or are in the process of doing so, PhDs, masters degrees or law degrees.  All mainly for the title and not the academic prowess the academic qualifications are originally intended to signify. Education cannot now be the sole signifier of leadership acceptance. Values matter more.

But more prevalent is the assumption that material wealth is what makes one eligible for leadership.  Something that young Zimbabweans now consider as the ‘mbinga’ culture or wanting to be “chilling with the big boys”. This being a basic wrong assumption that materialism and wealth, no matter how it was acquired, gives one a mandate not only to lead but to be chosen to lead.  Or at worst to choose those that would lead.

What is perhaps important is a discussion on the three questions I raised. These being, “Why lead?” “What is leadership?” and “What should it result in?”

There are multiple answers to these questions and a greater number of them stem from a very corporatist understanding of leadership. This being an assumption that leadership connotes profit for a company or for oneself. And demonstrating wealth thereafter.

But the reality of the matter is that a personal decision to lead is very much straightforward.  It is to better the circumstances of those you choose and are chosen to lead.  This may seem to be an abstract point but it talks to the heart of individual ambitions of many among us.  You cannot lead for yourself no matter how big your ego. Nor should you lead because you feel you are some sort of messiah because messianic tendencies end in tragedy or coups.  And you lead in order for the organisation or entity that you lead to survive beyond your tenure or your life.  But more fundamentally one should desire to lead based on their own progressive and people centred values.  Such values are not by default but must be evidently apparent to those that you seek to lead. 

Where we look at the ‘purpose’ or the ‘why’ of leadership, we must understand that it is to enable others to learn how to lead.  It is also to enable a progressive understanding of the change that is required in a society or organisation.  While values remain fundamental they are not dogma. If you are a president or chairperson it is advisable that you focus on enabling others to eventually lead.  And to strengthen the internal and external organic understanding of the democratic values of those that you lead and will be led by others after your inevitable departure.  Including a clear understanding of inter-generational consciousness (praxis). 

In the third instance where we ask what should leadership result in? The answer cannot be more apparent. Leadership must always result in majority people-centered progress.  It’s as simple as that.  Anyone who desires leadership and the recognition that comes with it cannot lead their people backwards.  Even if they concoct excuses it is in no way progressive that by the time they leave those that they led are worse off than they were before your arrival.  Not just materially but more importantly in relation to progressive, people-centered values and principles. 

Finally, where we think about leadership in Zimbabwe, we must remember that we cannot all be presidents. And no one was predestined to become a president. Leadership is in our homes, our churches, our sports clubs, our workspaces, our unions and our companies. Moreover, progressive leadership is a value that looks more to the future than represents a contemporary fad. We must learn to lead for posterity.

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

 

 

 

 

Miseducating Our Future in Zimbabwe

By Takura Zhangazha*

We need to deeply rethink our national attitude to primary and secondary education in Zimbabwe.  I use the term ‘attitude’ because formal education is fundamentally about how we approach and value it. It is both personal and collective given the fact that it is about our children and the futures that we invariably desire for them (I will come back to this point later).

You may ask, ‘why a deep rethink on education?’  The answer lies in the history of formal education in Zimbabwe.  One which remains very much straightforward.  It may not be a palatable historical fact for some but formal education is a direct result of the onset of us being colonized. Even if initially a greater number of our forbearers rejected it.

Many of us with rural roots will invariably remember fireside conversations around an uncle or aunt who instead of going to school would hide in the hills in abstract resistance to the classroom or ‘kwa fata’ as it was referred to in those early days of the entrenching of the colonial political economy. With ahistorical hindsight we would find humour in this but the reality of the matter was that the introduction of formal education to young Africans via initially mainly missionaries was about disruption of African knowledge production systems. And also our forced cooption into a colonial political economy that promoted not only capitalist inequality but also the racist narratives that came with it.

What became contradictory however for us as Africans was the fact that education in itself expanded our consciousness.  It is a fact that a majority of our liberation leaders came from missionary education backgrounds.  Including those that would eventually be most militant.

Upon attainment of national independence and liberation the end effects of formal education and its contradictions were to become more apparent.  While we pursued ‘education for all’ we failed to dismantle an unequal education system as pre-defined by the colonial settler state.  We retained an unfair ‘class’ approach to education based on our desires to have our children occupy those schools that historically had been the best for white pupils and students.  And in this, we were far from revolutionary. 

Again, this is as contradictory as it is ironic.  Together with how it now applies in the contemporary.  And I will explain how this is so.  The assumption that is given is that every parent wants what is best for their children is an important one.  Particularly where it comes to education.  Hence in most cases and in conversation with a decent number of cdes, where we discuss our children the most quotable quote is that, “Whatever happens, my children should have a better education than I did.” 

And this is a completely understandable expectation of any well meaning parent.  Except for the fact that the future of all Zimbabwean children are our collective national responsibility. And here lies the rub.

There is a tragic assumption that the best primary and secondary education should be the preserve of those that can afford it.  Or even if they cannot, they should pay through the skin of their teeth to get their children to private schools that reflect more the societal reputation of parents than academic progress for the children. 

This is what sometimes crosses my mind when considering the key differences between public and private education schools in Zimbabwe. Differences that can be honed in around whether or not a student writes a Cambridge syllabus or a Zimbabwe School Examinations Council (ZimSec) one.  Even if it is established fact that the Cambridge or ZimSec syllabi equally make students eligible to a majority of international high schools or universities.

It then becomes a matter of preference via tragic inferiority complexes. As informed by a colonial education system and its attendant long duree political economy. 

And this is where I return to the point of the parents desire for their children that I mentioned  . In desiring the best education for our children we must remain aware of the reality of the whole of our society.  No matter which school we send them to, our children will come back to the mix and cauldron that is Zimbabwean society. 

Even where we may assume that a specific school grooms a child for departure to the global north, the truth of the matter, again, is that departure should never be preferable for young Zimbabweans. Especially because it cannot be defined as an organic career aspiration. 

In order to avoid the miseducation of our future generations we need to focus on at least three things. 

The first being that education will never be an isolated experience for our children.  They will eventually meet and mingle in general Zimbabwean society.  It therefore becomes a collective societal responsibility to make education equal for all.  Without the false pretenses of writing Cambridge or ZimSec (after all there are no major end effect differences between the two).

Secondly, all parents need to come to terms with the fact that their personal aspirations and experiences within the primary and secondary education system should not translate entirely into their own personal ambitions on their children.  Even if they had a hard time of getting educated their former schools are not pariah.  Never mind the fact that they helped them to be as successful as they now are to want rapture.

Finally, we should be cautious about how “education as a business” has eased its way into our national consciousness.  While people are free to set up private or even missionary schools the government has an obligation to ensure an equitable framework for providing education for all. That means prioritizing and expanding government/public schools at all levels and in all areas of the country. And ensuring that ZimSec is more efficient in its work beyond inferiority and departure complex comparisons with Cambridge.

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