Zimbabwe, Africa , TikTok and Behavioral Digital Capitalism

By Takura Zhangazha*

So the American Congress wants to ban a social media application known as TikTok.  It is owned by a Chinese based company but as with global financialised neoliberalism also has owners on American financial shores.  It would appear the major problem with this social media platform is the fact of its ownership by a company based in a country (China) that does not permit it in its own geographical territory but is relatively popular in the global west/north. Especially with young people.

It would also appear that there is no major political dispute on this matter between either the Congress and Senate of the same country on this matter.  Unlike on health care or abortion and in rare occurrences, the war in Ukraine.  Or the genocide in Palestine. 

There is however some sort of consensus between at least what can be considered the legislature and the executive (presidency) on the matter of the social media application that is Tiktok. Mainly because TikTok is considered a Chinese threat in one cultural, political and economic form or the other to American global (or at least) internet and intelligence hegemony.  

I recently had no idea what this Tiktok application was or is.  Like many others it is downloadable on Google Play Store or it’s competing opposite Apple.  And probably among many other internet based platforms. 

The American Congress has now recently passed a draft law, subject to the President of the United States (USA) Joe Biden’s approval/signature it would make for any American shareholders to either buy off the company in country or it will be shut down in the near future.  Or else the platform would be banned in the USA and probably with a similar follow up ban within the territories of the USA’s allies

This all, again, being based on the assumption that the TikTok platform is being used to influence young people’s minds via short, fashionable and entertaining videos that arguably target their own age groups. Without being algorithmically controlled from the Global North but the Global East.  Albeit in what is evidently an increasingly multipolar world and with its alleged multiple proxy wars.  Not just politically but also culturally.

So I also popped over to Zimbabwean TikTok online to check it out with a little bit of trepidation. The latter stemmed from the fact that I had always been told its about young people and their emerging issues and consciousness in short self made video clips. 

While asking myself about what this was all about, I noticed that the platform appeared relatively harmless, Diaspora focused and morbidly about lost loved ones (funerals) in our Southern African context.   

What then struck me is that it is now part of our new digital normal for young Zimbabweans.  At least for the young urbanites who have access to it and also platforms that easily link up with it such as WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook (in that sort of particular order). 

So when you join/ subscribe to TikTok the most striking thing is that fact of  young cdes subscribing to it.  And then not asking any questions about who owns it.  Or why there is what would appear to be an initially minor global power (China/USA) dispute about it.  Then you realise, ah it’s about a desire for actual recognition of their existence by many of our young cdes.  They may either believe in their false immortality (this is after all the age of Netflix where everyone is a superhero) or only a few can become millionaires and mimic the Global North rich by purchasing not only cultural or political icons, mimicking them (as they did with Obama) but also by straddling a false, ahistorical national consciousness.  (This is a debate for another day)

One that links up with a materialistic religiosity in which belief, wealth and simplicity of existence are intertwined to no particular benefit or avail for the betterment of collective society.  And not to sound like a broken record our labels of individualism have probably been as high as they are now.  “Angova mazvekezvake” (individualism) as Thomas Mapfumo once sang.

What remains astounding however is what I refer to as the formal hypocrisy of the global media and its repressive attendant Global North hegemony.  Almost as though you would need to remind Africa and in tandem with other Global South cdes that whatever happens to Earth, it happens to all of us together.  Be it in the proverbial political (kingdom, religious or apocalyptic) realms.

To assume free expression is not universal is to reverse progressive history. In our African context, we must remain true to this value.  We should feel no pressure to follow a Chinese or American example on this issue.  As Nyerere once wrote, and I am paraphrasing here, “ In Africa, we sit under a tree, until we agree.” 

The proposed ban on Tiktok in the USA is reflective of Orwellian tendencies that assume some animals, technologically, are better than others.  And that we, in the Global South, can still not tell the difference. But in reality we can, we will and we will eventually remember Amilcar Cabral.

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

 

 

   

 

 

Discussing Ideology and Mimicry in Zimbabwe (Again)

By Takura Zhangazha*

Zimbabwean political conversations over the last twenty years have generally become predictable (black or white, either-or) 

They are conversations that we have chosen and in a greater majority of cases, given.  They are also somewhat highly emotive about what should either be a political or economic way forward.

In the emotional output there is also always comparative analysis with other countries  and how ‘things’ are done there.  From our neighbour South Africa, through to the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Europe and in some cases Russia and China as models to follow or in some cases emulate.

In most conversations the big issue is usually about money, individual wealth and infrastructural development.  And these are conversations that are happening beyond physical spaces as enabled by social media and its hegemonic (cultural/perception) influence. Some of the debates also ridiculously refer back to the settler colonial era and its racist modernization programme for the then Rhodesia.

No doubt these are important conversations. Even more when they are about the immediacy of individual livelihoods and the role of the state.

A role that in the same debates is placed in electoral frameworks and language about who to vote for.  Or who we should have voted for.  While at the same time ignoring the fact of the passage of time between the same said electoral processes.  As well as coupling it with departure from the state for assumedly better state pastures that arguably meet individual livelihood needs. 

The elephant in the room however is how we view the role of the Zimbabwean state. Especially from an ideological perspective.

Given the fact that as Zimbabweans we have been classified as highly literate by not only our government but also international organizations, we tend to be highly opinionated.  Not only about various issues such as religion but more significantly our national politics.  

And at very personal or individual levels. It becomes a mere coincidence that we find ourselves flocking with like-minded individuals and create default political or social collectives. 

The question that emerges is why have we been like this in the last twenty or so odd years.  

The easy answer is the historical fact of Zanu Pf’s hegemony since independence.  It was key in shaping our contemporary national consciousness.  Its shift from socialism to neoliberalism with Economic Structural Adjustment programmes (ESAP).  

The latter introducing the country’s population to an unprecedented hedonism and consumerist culture that quite literally has broken down many of our common and progressive societal values.  Even after the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) that began in 2000.   

The FTLRP’s greatest irony is that while it was predicated on righting a colonial wrong, it appears to have created a new economic elite that have no qualms about mimicking the colonial Rhodesian state.  It is a mimicry thatģ is evidently inorganic.  It does not belong the people nor does it reflect the values of the liberation struggle.

It’s a mimicry that fits into global narratives as determined by global financialized capital.  A development that points to the fact that in Zimbabwe we no longer have our own national ideological outlook on our political and economic realities. 

We are over-emphasising our desires for recognition for  doing the right thing.  Yet we have not clear idea about what is the right thing that is being referred to.  In our economics we function like we control the Federal Reserve Bank of America. In our politics we assume electoral politics should be like those of the global north.  And in our social life we assume religion will solve everything.

Where we return to the elephant in the room, we are faced with an ideological deficit in at least two respects.

The first being an evolving detachment from the people centered values of our liberation struggle. We no longer function as a collective whole that looks out for the societal well being of the other.  And this in the name of mimicry of other societies yet we should know about where we came from and who we intrinsically are and should be. 

The second element has been a Fanonian ‘pitfall of national consciousness’.  Since the year 2000 our own narrative has been of a failed state and anticipating national failure no matter what happens. Or unless there is a change of government and subsequent recognition by the global north.  The reality  of the matter is that it does not work like that. And as Amilcar Cabral once said, “No matter how hot your water, it will not boil your rice.”

Our national dilemma is learning to believe in ourselves again.  And to do so with the people.  A matter which requires renewed ideological clarity on not only the role of the state but also what it can and should enable.  Without abstract mimicry.

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

The Political Economy of Zimbabwe's 2024 Drought

So it is now official. Zimbabwe is faced with a national state of disaster because, like a significant number of countries in Southern Africa we will have an El Nino induced drought.  The current President ED Mnangagwa made an executive announcement this week to the same effect. 

Essentially outlining that this is no small matter and assuring us of his government's commitment to enabling hunger and food shortage mitigation measures that will not only involve the state but also reach out to the private sector and international food aid donors. 

His state of the nation address may be taken lightly by some  but it is an extremely serious one. Especially for those that experienced previously devastating droughts such as the one when some of us were teenagers in 1992-93 agricultural season and we learnt one or two things about what ‘food for work’ meant in the Chishawasha valley of Mashonaland East while at boarding school. 

We did not have social media or mobile phones but the national mood was somber because it was both experienced at our young ages and also real when we had to eat what we referred to as ‘Kenya’ maize meal that we were told was donated from the Global West. 

 We were also told that it was normally fed to farm animals such as cattle and horses. 

But we were too hungry to ask too many questions about it.  We ate it in boarding school, we ate it at home (urban or rural) and other comrades ate it in supplementary charitable or state sponsored feeding schemes.  But we learnt very quickly what a national drought was. 

Now we have another major one that is correctly a major national and regional concern.  I cannot speak or write for comrades in Malawi or Zambia where national state of disasters  have already been declared. 

It is however clear that  this is a nationally important matter that must be looked at beyond what the state president has announced and what the international aid agencies or the media will argue about how to handle the emergent humanitarian climate change induced challenge that is the national drought.    

There is however a political economy to the drought. One that we cannot allow ourselves to evade.   

And it is in three parts.  The first being that of the directly political and its impact on national politics.  The sitting government and the ruling party are obliged, at least democratically, to lead the country through this national state of disaster induced by the drought.  While what remains of the national political opposition (official and unofficial) are expected to hold the latter to political account on the same important national matter. 

This means that the political dynamics of our already existent drought, as announced by the state president, are also essentially about political capital.  Which ever way you want to look at it.  They are now keenly about what in political science is referred to as ‘performance legitimacy’. That is, “Who can feed the people?’

The second element is the fact of what is also referred to as ‘disaster capitalism’.  There will be private capital players (businesses) who will deliberately seek to profit from this national drought disaster.  And there are many.  From grain millers, to what I now refer to as ‘water hawkers’ in both urban and rural areas.  Some of them linked to the state.  Others are just basically private opportunists who for example sell bread, maize and other subsistence commodities.  And they will also speculate on stock exchanges about what will happen next either with currencies or minerals because of the drought and an officially declared state of disaster.

The third and final strand is what has been referred to in the Global North as the Non-Profit Industrial Complex.  These are players that will trade on the international philanthropic sentiment to show us how bad the drought situation can become, or is.  They will raise money, purchase the relevant subsistence commodities but at the same time retain within their same said Global North capitals, the majority of the funds raised. 

In the final analysis, we are faced with a monumental task to feed the people of Zimbabwe. Indeed while it may be sensationalized on social media or alternatively fit into a given but incorrect narrative about Zimbabwe being a failed state , the drought is a serious national matter for the country. It is not abstract.  But sadly, it now means Zimbabwe’s 2024  political economy and planning around it at state, private capital and individual levels has significantly shifted.

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

 

An African Understanding of the Global Dangers of a World War 3.

 By Takura Zhangazha*

In primary school we had an amazing headmistress, Ms. Thomas. This was when we were approaching our final year in that phase of our education.  She had decided for reasons of her own that we needed an impromptu lecture on the import of the Iraq-Kuwait war in 1990. 

We were in grade seven (7).  She showed us a map of Kuwait and one of Iraq.  And proceeded to explain to us the full impact of both chemical warfare and also nuclear weapons deployment. If I remember correctly at my young age then, she indicated the possibility of how after a nuclear weapon was deployed there would be some cloud that affects not only the Middle East but also drift toward Africa and eventually drift further southwards to affect us. 

We were somewhat shocked and surprised that we had to learn this. We mainly knew of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa.  We never thought that a war that far away from us would affect us.

It was mainly because we did not understand at least two things at our young ages.  We did not know the global political economy.  And we did not know the global threat that is nuclear war. Nor did we have any inkling about what was then referred to as the Cold War and its eventual false end on the assumption of an ‘end of history’. 

As we grew up under neo-liberal economic policies such as the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) and its end cultural imperialistic effect of us seeking departure to the now “Global North”, we also learnt of other wars.  We learnt of the globalised war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in which we as Zimbabweans participated. There were the wars in Eastern Europe that we watched almost for entertainment on global television networks and of course there was the ‘war against terror’ in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Almost as though we were re-watching the ridiculous Rambo movies of old. 

But here we are in 2024.  And again globalised war is the main international discourse of not only global superpowers but also their proxies, surrogates or affiliates.

It may seem an abstract point, as far as we are from Global North centres and here in the opposite Global South in Africa.

But we know what happens in the same said Global north or Global east affects not only our trade, Diaspora remittances but also our local politics.

What matters more is our perception of the same.  Both historically and in the contemporary. 

As Africans we have always been involved in wars that are not ours.   Especially between the west or the east.  Be it the first World War or the second one, we ended up dying in lands/countries’ that were never going to be ours.  The only important lesson that we learnt was that we also had to fight to liberate ourselves from colonialism. 

Now we find ourselves between a rock and a hard place as Africans. We have witnessed and taken sides in wars that are not ours.  Except for the Palestinian, Western Saharawi republics we have not had a direct say in other globalised post-cold war conflicts.  Be it in Ukraine, Myanmar or closer to home in Libya, Haiti, Mali or Sudan. 

What is more apparent is that we now need to see what’s coming.  And why.  The world is faced with a colossal dangerous situation in which it is on the brink of global war. Not just globalised as I have been referring to in this article.  But global, whether we as Africans are complicit in it or not.  From Taiwan to China, Ukraine to Washington, Palestine to Israel, Syria to Yemen or in West Africa.

The global superpowers that are the United States of America, China, the European Union and Russia are at loggerheads that they make it clear are not going to be easily resolved by their own diplomacy or the internationally recognised channels of the United Nations. 

We just should not get caught up in the mix of fights that are not only not ours but those that have material (oil, gas) and racist overtones to them. 

Finally, even our great African luminary Kwame Nkrumah tried to warn us in his famous statement,

“We face neither East or West.  We face forward!” And indeed that is what we should do. Face organically forward.

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

 

 

 

 

In Solidarity with the People of #Palestine from #Zimbabwe.

By Takura Zhangazha*

There are many internal and internationalized conflicts currently going on in the world.  They are “internationalized” mainly because there are global powers interests in them.  The latter can be for historical, economic or holistic geo-political reasons.

In the last twenty years global conflicts have allegedly been linked to mineral wealth (oil, lithium, platinum, uranium, gold) of geographical locations by mainstream and alternative professional media. With accusations of sponsoring one form of terrorism or the other by global superpower nations to poor or former vassal state ones.   Easy examples of this include Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan and Venezuela (in part).

The key issue for me as a Zimbabwean has always been an understanding that war is always a final resort.  Especially war between countries that can be considered by any measure ‘unequal’.   

With the coming into existence of the United Nations in 1945, there was also a global general acceptance of the dictum ‘never again’ would we allow wars on as colossal a scale as the Second World war.  In subsequent years, the UN was also an important multilateral organization for the liberation of Africa from the 1950s through to 1994.  Even though it still has the outstanding matter of the freedom of the Saharawi people to continuously attend to. 

But here we are in 2024 faced with multiple global conflicts on scales that should be unimaginable.  We have a war in Gaza, Palestine. One in Sudan. Another in Ukraine. Ongoing ones in Syria, Iraq and in part Afghanistan where the Americans abruptly withdrew their formal troops.

And we also have threats of a second Cold War between the United States of America and China with added discourse around what are referred to as space and technological wars. 

As an African and in particular a Zimbabwean, there is a general assumption that first of all, I am probably not expected to have an opinion on the global state of war that we are in.  Not least because of my skin colour or my geographical placement in what is still referred to as the “third world”.  But also because of an assumed powerlessness that we as Africans are supposed to have in international relations. As derived from the colonial and imperialistic legacy of our being ‘othered’ as ‘inferior’ human beings.

There is however a particular matter that torches (not touches) my personal consciousness. This is the one of the Palestine- Israel conflict. For at least two reasons.  

The first being that I became aware of the dispossession of Palestinians of their land by way of reading on their history, interacting with both Palestinian and Israeli cdes in university and also by way of my own personal curiosity about the role of Palestine in broader struggles for African liberation.

On the latter point, it turns out that even in Zimbabwe’s own liberation struggle among other Southern African states, we either fought or were trained together with Palestine cdes about the struggle for liberation.  Both militarily and ideologically.  And that after we had already attained our own independence, the legendary Yasser Arafat was and is still revered by progressive cdes across the globe.  And the late Palestinian ambassador to Zimbabwe Ali Halimeh who regularly reminded of his peoples struggles on mainstream local media. So we have known about the people of Palestine’s struggles for liberation even before 07 October 2023.  We also know of the 1948 Nakba.

The catch however is the assumed Christian religious complexity that we as Zimbabweans have had with Israel and the biblical ‘Israelites’.  And how we have a false popular perception that Israel is some sort of religiously promised land. 

This is far from the truth.  The Israel you read in the bible is not the Israel of our contemporary reality. It is a settler state that with the help of the British government colonized land that belonged to the people of Palestine after the Balfour Declaration of 1917. 

But because most of us Zimbabweans are of the Christian religion we tend to assume our faith is the same as our realities and in the process believe every other mistruth we are told, we become political cannon fodder that regrettably ignores the rights of the people of Palestine. 

Yes we may sing songs about ‘Jerusalem being our home’ at funerals and other religious related functions but Jerusalem originally and in historical reality belongs to the people of Palestine. And we should always support their historical struggle for freedom from oppression and occupation. This will not change your faith or beliefs.   

As a final point, I have many profoundly Christian friends who will probably not be happy with this write up. As abstract as their religious views are, I have no doubt that the death toll of 30000 Palestinians since October 2023 must have a bearing on their religious Christian consciences.   

I also have a number of friends that will ask why I am arguing for the freeing of Palestine from occupation and in support of the UN backed two-state solution.  My reply is that the people of Zimbabwe will always have a symbiotic relationship with the people of Palestine.  As determined by our shared struggle history and common human equality values.

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

 

 

 

Remembering #Zimbabwe ’s Opposition Political Movement.

By Takura Zhangazha*

Someone accused me of betraying the mainstream opposition political movement.  I laughed out quite loudly.   I have not been involved in opposition politics for at least eight years.  I however am a founder member of at least two organizations in the mainstream civil society and opposition politics. 

The first being the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) which I left after internal disagreements about the format of changing it into a political party.  The second being the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) which when we formed/formalized it in Chitungwiza in September 1999 what we considered a proper working people’s leftist movement. 

So I know most of the actors’ in the current debacle about the future of the national political opposition. Including those who have passed on and those that are alive.  I also know those that joined well after. Either in opportunistic or religious fervor.

I am also slightly tired of the tag that I could have been a better political leader in one respect or the other.

And for this reason I will explain my personal political journey in Zimbabwe’s opposition politics between 1999 and 2008. After that I have had temporary solace in working in the development NGO sector. 

As abstract as it may seem, I was involved in the formation of the original MDC at the National Working Peoples Convention in 1998 through to its launch via the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) in 1999.

I was also a bit part player in the negotiations that led to the Global Political Agreement on an Inclusive Government of 2009 until 2013. As facilitated by SADC under the aegis of the legendary former South African president, Thabo Mbeki.

I never worked for the inclusive government but I understood its nuances and its mechanics. By the time the inclusive governments tenure was over, based on constitutional court cases, I also quickly realized that opposition politics in Zimbabwe had changed. 

Within the then social and civil society movements we had already done the Zimbabwe People’s Charter, one that was deemed too ‘leftist’ to receive international rightwing support.  The NCA had also decided to transform itself into a political party, a decision me and a few colleagues agonized over and eventually had to leave the organization because we saw a regrettable lack of organic political direction. An issue which still vindicates us today. 

But back to the inclusive government and the failure of the opposition to defeat the ruling Zanu PF establishment in 2013. To be honest we were shocked at our electoral loss.  We assumed it was a given that the vote would go in our oppositional favour.  We had failed to factor in the rural vote, the changes in urban settlements and also the moral questions around our then national opposition leader. 

But we lived to fight another day in one form or the other.  We were products of two processes.  The labour unions and the students unions.  The front runners were the ZCTU and for us, as leaders of students unions was the Zimbabwe National Students Unions (ZINASU).  For the latter our able leader was Hopewell Gumbo, popularly referred to as “Msavayha” because he was studying surveying and our Secretary General was Nelson Chamisa who was at that time studying marketing at the Harare Polytechnic.

There were many other comrades that helped with the expansion of opposition politics in Zimbabwe.  Suffice to say it was both the labour and student movements that formed the mainstream opposition as we know it today. 

The key point however is to explain the disastrous state of our opposition politics today.  We were originally leftist opposition comrades.  We derided ESAP and also initially argued for a land reform programme before the Chinotimba war veterans started invading farms in what they called the 3^rd Chimurenga.

We argued among ourselves about what should be the way forward and the legendary Morgan Tsvangirai accused us of being ‘nhinhi” for refusing the new constitution in 2013.  A term we accepted after the 2013 referendum ‘yes vote’ as the peoples will.

But the question remains about the state of our contemporary opposition politics.  I have not been involved in it for at least ten years.  What I know is that it has lost its organic link to the working people of Zimbabwe

It has a new mix of religion, politics and a very abstract populism.  It does not belong anymore to the people as it used to.  Never mind the vote counts.  It remains a created construct that many comrades flow toward because of materialist reasoning and inferiority complexes.

Personally, I take responsibility of the state of affairs of the opposition given my own history.  We saw what was coming.  We did not think through it.  And we are between a rock and a hard place. But we will recover.

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

Creation and Control of Political Narratives in Zimbabwe.

By Takura Zhangazha*

Zimbabweans are familiar with the historical question that relates to “What made us?” In most cases the historical answer is the first and second liberation struggles against colonialism. The other answer is the fact of our economic suffering after the first eight years of independence when we underwent rapid economic liberalisation at the behest of global financialised capital which we refer to as the ESAP period that took at least another ten years to take hold.

Where we take it take it a step further a number of us post ESAP children ask a key question “What made ‘me’?”, and how should we remember or reflect this question’s importance for a perceived  contemporary ‘individuality?’ As assumedly conscious adults and with the baggage of our own personal experiences as informing our attitudes to our contemporary lives and its attendant materialist, comparatively competitive demands.

This can come in many forms.  But it can be generally assumed to initially and in most cases sequentially  stem from our sense of belonging to family, cultural practices/language/religion, geographical location, history and contemporary political/economic placement in the society(ies) that we live in. 

The key point however would still remain that a majority of us assume we are somewhat societally ‘created’ to have a sense of being and belonging for some of the reasons cited above.  But even more importantly based on what we not only experience but also what we desire.   Be it in the form of recognition from family, the church you attend or in more cases now, the work and company you keep.  Or the comparative, competitive wealth that you are in adulation recognised by your immediate close and personal society to have made. 

These senses of ‘belonging’ and ‘being’ in Zimbabwe are however no longer static.  It appears that they depend on the fluidity of one’s individual economic or material circumstances.

One day you can be a firm believer in orthodox religion as it relates to your everyday work/employment or tomorrow you can wake up in an African Apostolic Faith church understanding of your existential circumstances. Or you can find yourself as a rabid or even moderate political activist on behalf of one party or the other for many years only to make an abrupt u-turn for in most cases what can be mainly a livelihood reason.  And in some rare cases, you can decide to be a neutral and cynic about many things and functioning on an abstract philosophical basis that each day brings what it will. So long you follow the money.

The essence of this argument being that however as we seek to personally identify or deem we are authentically socially created, we also have, in the contemporary, what can be considered “political personas”.  These being a combination of our personal political experiences (painful or placated), our preferred political beliefs and our more realistic material ones.

In our contemporary political elections we appear to be seeking more a reflection of ourselves and the language of what we personally consider our political and economic realities.  And this is completely understandable given the general direction our political processes are taking.  Zimbabwe is enthralled in what can be considered populist electoral politics.  Even when there is no immediate pending election which is made to seem closer than it legally is. (We are due for a constitutional one in 2028.)

And this is where the argument around ‘politically created personas’ emerges.  It is a straight-jacketed approach to our national politics based on the fact of who we think we are individually and finding others on social and other mediums like-minded persons.  Or alternatively people who believe what we  as friends believe until the next electoral defeat or the next ‘democratic angst’ at some sort of electoral defeat of the political side we chose.  As based on societal influences that either relate to our personal wealth, religious affiliation or general historical stature as sons/daughters of revered nationalists/ opposition activists or religious pastors.  In the past or in the present.

In this, we get lost to the fact that for all of our emotive conundrums and angst about what a future progressive Zimbabwe can or should look like, for the moment, it is not necessarily or progressively designed by us.  Mainly because we are all over the place ideologically, emotionally and economically. And there are many  jackals ready to take advantage to shape our thinking of the way forward.  Both in our politics and our economics'.  

We take what we are given by others and accept it into our own intrinsic cultural fabric to the point of personalised argument.  Even if we do not control the narrative. 

So those that create for us, in our own popular imaginations, those that they think  should lead us, will always have tea and a hearty laugh at the fact that they can create not only celebrity style leaders for us.  But also determine what we can consider as our political personas. Or who we can be politically. That is, who we can think we are and who we can be. As sophisticated as that may appear.

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

 

 

 

 

A Needed Criticality On Narratives on Land and its Political Economy in Zimbabwe.

 By Takura Zhangazha*

There is what should be a relatively urgent and revived “national interest” debate about land tenure/ ownership in rural, peri-urban and also former agricultural farms in Zimbabwe.  This is based on the recent central government's official policy announcing and effecting the eviction of what it considers illegal settlers on land that was allegedly distributed by village headmen with or without the approval of chiefs and rural district councils.  This also includes urban councils who have also been accused of allegedly distributing land in either wetlands or former urban farms for insidious profit or political patronage. 

In all of these there is reference to a common denominator called a ‘land baron’.  This term did not exist in ordinary Zimbabwean political parlance before the official Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) in 2000.  It also took its time to take effect in our local lingo until perhaps 2010. 

It doesn’t quite have an official definition but would be generally assumed to mean that a ‘land baron’ after the FTLRP is someone with either access to political patronage within the ruling party, access to financial capital to lease or purchase state land, can or is selling and partitioning original land acquired for different uses. As acquired from the state or former white commercial farmers who were either forced off the land or sold it for a pittance at the height of the FTLRP.

 Which in some cases relates to urban residential land use even if it is in a rural or peri-urban setting.  Hence emergent cases of forced evictions on the outskirts of Harare, Bulawayo, Masvingo, Chipinge, Mutare, Gweru and Gutu. 

The key element to bear in mind is that the centre of all these newfound evictions is based on central government proclaiming illegality of settlements after the FTLRP. Not just as a political, historical, and liberation struggle based radical nationalist policy.  But as one that relates to the political economy of land and belonging in contemporary Zimbabwe.   

This is a somewhat complicated argument to make.  The meaning of land and land ownership (especially as capital) appears to have shifted from its historical connotations that related to historical identity and arguments about dispossession.

What has been happening since the FTLRP began and was assumedly completed is that ‘land’ has become a ‘business’.  In a holistic sense.  Particularly land acquired with or without government approval after 2000 to present.

If you go to any major city or emergent town, land ownership is key to urban development.  Add to this either emergent agricultural mechanization programmes as led by government and related agricultural and mining entrepreneurship, you may come to conclude that ‘land’ in Zimbabwe is now essentially viewed as short and long term “capital”.  In a post-colonial and newer economic neo-liberal sense. 

Whereas before the FTLRP we decried white monopoly capital ownership of land, now we have a replacement but highly politicized system of ownership of the same.  Admittedly it has a sense of “black empowerment’ but one that is complicated by assumptions of mimicry of its predecessor. And again because it is mainly based on a system of capitalist accumulation, it appears to be leading toward a system of displacement coupled with an asymmetric control of the majority poor and their urbanized material desires.  Even if they are in rural areas.

That’s why when we are witnessing destruction of houses or evictions of comrades who have lived in certain areas for the last twenty years and are now being forcibly evicted for allegedly legal reasons we have to re-ask the ideological meaning of the initial FTLRP.

It would appear on the face of it that while benefitting and fulfilling a liberation struggle expectation it is now more complicated for our political economy.   This is because the ‘open for business’ policy of government has now meant that land ownership and in particular as ‘capital’ cannot be open sesame or simply related to the liberation struggle values and objectives.

The courting of mining, agricultural and ‘private city investors’ means that those that were initial beneficiaries of the FTLRP face greater insecurity of tenure on the land that they had initially assumed they ‘deserved’. Historically or by way of political or economic patronage.

Especially where and when it concerns the ‘infrastructure development’ thrust of the current government.  Even if they are war veterans or ruling party supporters or just ordinary people that really needed a place to call ‘home’. Hence the continually unfished story of Chiadzwa in Manicaland or Lupane as examples.

I will end with an anecdotal conversation I once had with my brother about the future of our rural homes in Bikita, Masvingo when we were much younger.  The issue was whether it would be preferable to ‘urbanise’ Bikita or modernize it while retaining the communal system of land tenure.  We sort of agreed on modernization while retaining traditional values and ethos of what we knew was essentially a ‘reserve area’ as the Rhodesian government deliberately designated it. Our ancestors had been displaced from the Save Valley, Chipinge and Chimanimani.  Others were eventually forcibly displaced further to Gokwe.   

In that University conversation, we argued and agreed in part that privatizing communal rural land was never going to be a good idea.  Based on the experiences of what we had read about Nigeria and Kenya after their independence and what had happened with attempts at giving title for what was originally communally owned land.  Even if it had been originally been designated by British and/or settler state governments.

In any event, as Zimbabweans must debate the full and realistic political economic meaning of what was the FTLRP.  It took away what was once private capital and nationalized it. Many celebrated this.   It is however now in a state of flux wherein the state/government is approaching it in a hybrid private/public format and outsourcing it as domestic capital for mines, carbon credits and eventual trickle down agricultural investments.   

What is increasingly self-evident is that we still do not have an organic sense of what the land we took must be used for except where and when it is part of mimicry of what we overcame/ overthrew and assume to be land use success. 

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

 

Revisiting “ Educate An African Woman, You Liberate A Nation”

 By Takura Zhangazha*

One of the most complex and limitedly explored subjects in Zimbabwe is Feminism.  If you want a definition from me of the same, I will easily reply that I have only read texts on it as my claim to understanding it.  But my view of it is that I have no wherewithal to argue its case to broader society even as I support it as a liberatory ideology. Mainly because I am not a woman. Even if I am born of a woman. I can only support feminist struggles on the basis of human equality struggles but I have to be cautious of the anecdotal fact that I cannot cry more than the bereaved. 

And I will start from my own beginning in interacting with feminist ideology.  At least from a liberatory political level.  

I once wore a Mbuya Nehanda t-shirt that I had purchased from an African curio shop in Kwame Nkrumah Avenue in Harare, Zimbabwe.  It had on it inscribed the words, “ Educate An African Woman, You Liberate A Nation.” With an iconic image of our legendary national hero Mbuya Nehanda and based on a quote from Kwame Nkrumah.

I innocently wore this t-shirt in the departure lounge of the newly refurbished and renamed OR Tambo International Airport in South Africa.

Because of the financial crisis in Zimbabwe at that time (2007-8), a lot of comrades were shopping in South Africa for basic commodities such as cooking oil, rice, pampers and alcoholic beverages. 

One iconic female comrade asked me to add her luggage to mine for the flight back home.  And there I was with my Nehanda t-shirt.  In the queue behind us was a middle aged white Zimbabwean woman who could read and understand Shona, my own tongue. 

She did not know that we were together with the comrade who just wanted to push her commodities beyond the borders with my assistance.  But she asked what she considered a pertinent question about my t-shirt logo concerning why and how ‘educating an African Woman would liberate a Nation?”

I replied that she should crosscheck her knowledge of Nkrumah’s speeches. She got slightly upset and sort of replied that “All Women should be free”. 

With hindsight she was correct.  Except for her desired appropriation of black women’s rights and struggles to equate these with those of white women in post-colonial Southern Africa. 

The key point however is how educating a black woman is quite literally the equivalent of liberating a nation in an African context.  Nkrumah was correct. 

It is Zimbabwean women, mothers that shape the national consciousness. Even in the most conservative of senses.  They teach our children/offspring how to react to society, what to value and what to believe.  With or without our permission.  And this is not just within our children’s infancy but through to which schools they go to and what religious beliefs they eventually ascribe to as adults. 

These days, we are in a dilemma.  We have to deal with emergent forms of feminism that are contradictory. 

Even if you are in support of feminism you have to consider ‘agency’.  The key issue being arguing on behalf of the bereaved. 

I once asked a very critical comrade about Simone de Bouvouire and the latter’s arguments about the ‘Second Sex’.  She drew a blank.  And then I asked about the import of Bell Hooks and her impact on contemporary civil/social activism.  Again I drew blanks.

A key lesson that was learnt in the process was that ‘feminism’ and women’s equality across the board is an existential struggle. It means more than what it appears to mean. But you sometimes have to realise that you cannot own the struggle.  Except to support it.    

While as men we can consider ourselves as feminists, we would do well to understand that we are only both intermediaries and contradictorily perpetrators of gender inequalities. 

If you ask me why does this matter, I would easily ask you in return, “Do you have a daughter?”

And finally back to the Nkrumahist issue of “You Educate a Black Woman, You Liberate a Nation”.  He was correct.  Our national consciousness and liberation resides in what our mothers, sisters, aunts and grandmothers teach their children. Everyday. They are the harbingers of initial societal and historical knowledge for young Zimbabweans.

If they are in Africa, based on colonial history, despite arguments of cleanliness via the missionaries, and with the relevant liberation struggle consciousness, then they will liberate us.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Experiencing Zimbabwean Politics Versus Being Conscious of It.

By Takura Zhangazha*

Many of us in Zimbabwe are talking about the state of our national politics and economy.  Albeit in short word stanzas, two minute promotional or real time videos or what I understand to be voice notes on social media.  In real time conversation you then ask yourself, “So what motivates these sometimes literally animated conversations?”

Especially those that exhibit, even via technological mediums such as your mobile phone and its attendant social media access, such raw human emotion.   

You follow a thread and you recognize an immediate political emotion from multitudes of online and offline supporters (some real, some false) and you take a quick pause to ask yourself, is this simply the human behavioural modification role of the internet and social media? A debate that is dissipating in the public domain because arguably, we now have short attention spans about our common good as a society beyond our virulent individualism. 

I only mention the latter point in order to point out the key characteristics of Zimbabwe’s national politics. And what is evidently informing it. 

And there are two elements here.  Both based on important intellectual conversations that I have had with comrades as well as personally thought through for a while. 

The first being the question of the meaning of politics in Zimbabwe as being “experienced” or  “experiential”. 

Most of us in the country understand politics by way of an ‘experience’.  I do not mean this in a religious way.  This is more by way of what we know to be our initial political realities and lived, again, experiences.  It is what we witnessed, felt or emotionally got angry about that informs our most basic understanding of politics and in tandem our contemporary political economy.  Be it on behalf of self, family, friends but rarely workmates.

And there are many historical examples of this.  The cdes that fought in the first Chimurenga wars were dispossessed of their livelihoods by the colonial settlers and took to arms against them from various regions and ethnic groups.  They quite literally ‘experienced’ dispossession of their livelihoods.  There was no modern ideology except direct emotive resistance based on the fact of what had unjustly occurred.  

By the time the Rhodesian settler colony had established a racist hegemony over the majority, again the “experiential moment” re-emerged. We formed, as learnt from our regional migratory labour experiences in the then Egoli (South Africa), the then Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland to form trade unions, country of origin associations and also with the enablement of various missionary societies that had the contradictory zeal to educate ourselves with zeal even though they then considered us “natives”.

By the time of the Second Chimurenga, with our ‘experiential moments” of pain and anguish at racial and economic discrimination we tried to go the Ghana route of immediate electorally negotiated power agreements from white settler minority rule in the 1960s.  A strategy that failed and eventually led us to a painful liberation struggle that again would be motivated by the fact of what our now war veterans, peasants and urban workers ‘experienced’ via the brutality of a white settler minority regime. 

We eventually combined the reality of our political experiences with a global ideological outlook that learnt from the then USSR (Russia), Eastern Europe and the Chinese revolution to give our lived realities or “experiential moments” the visionary term of “socialism”/ “gutsaruzhinji”.  And many suffered and died for this particular vision of our society while at the same time embracing it as fundamental to the future of a progressive and revolutionary Zimbabwe.  As it linked to progressive global anti-colonial liberation movements and governments.

With the acquisition of national liberation and within this historical ambit, we assumed our ‘experiential politics’ had reached its peak.  Post-independence, we misunderstood both the global economic vagaries of the end of the Cold War and the ascendancy of capitalism, now neoliberalism, as a global economic system.  Again we sought to fight against the latter via our own labour unions in Zimbabwe. 

This was the new ‘consciousness phase’ of our national politics.  We knew and know those that fought the liberation struggle.  But we also then experienced Economic Structural Adjustment Programmes (ESAPs) and a rampant economic liberalism that put the market before the people. 

And by 1997 we had come back full circle to “experiential politics”.  Our urban and rural poverty in the decade that followed were not abstract but lived realities that led to the formation of the largest labour backed party in Zimbabwe’s post-independence history, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) at the turn of the millennium. Even as there was a counter narrative by Zanu Pf toward a return to the language and praxis of “Chimurenga”.  In the midst of economic hardship and sanctions.

While almost repeating history, the MDC was grounded in both the ‘experiential” and the “ideological“ consciousness dilemma.  This is because after the 2008 global and domestic national financial crisis we resorted back to what we “experienced” as a primary source of political loyalty and affiliation.

This is perhaps the most difficult point to make for this blog.   Because what we experience politically, and in a particularly negative sense such as political violence, loss of income and livelihood, we will never easily forget and therefore we will pick an almost eternal side for our political views.  No matter how irrational it may seem to outsiders.   More so if we experience this when we are young.    It will be a mixed bag of not only the remembered experiences but also the search for a new beginning via a culturally (religiously/spiritually) predetermined leader or group of leaders.  With the naïve ambition of some arrival at a comparative ideal society that mimics what we see on television and on social media. 

Is there a way out of this sort of ‘experienced consciousness’ in Zimbabwe?  In the short term the answer is “No”.  Our society has lost an organic national consciousness. Elections are more of populist events than they are about posterity and the common societal good. Either side of our now many political party divides.  And they are determined by a stubborn “experiential” process as outlined above. 

To be conscious of a progressive Zimbabwean political future we need to grasp a deeper reality that whatever you experienced in the past, the present cannot be isolated from a desired progressive future. It is always about posterity.

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

 

 

Returning to the Source^: The Equality Promise of Zimbabwe’s Liberation Struggle.

 By Takura Zhangazha*

Its always awkward how many of us often discuss Zimbabwe’s political economy and never have any ideological outlook on it.  Its either we have a narrative of arrival, another of pitying those worse off than us or in even more instances, a religion based explanation as to why ‘economic’ things are the way they are. 

Or alternatively how we separate our ‘politics’ from a collective ‘economy’.  Or are simply dismissive of the idea of a common ground economic equality of all Zimbabweans. 

The latter point is perhaps the most difficult to explain.  It is astounding how a country whose liberation struggle was intentionally about establishing a relatively basic economic equality for all society has turned out the way it has.   But, again, it is still historically and somewhat intellectually explainable.  

As Zimbabweans it is relatively clear that we have, particularly sine the 2008 financial/ economic national crisis lost a sense of shared responsibility for helping each other out.  At least economically.  As is now common knowledge family economic/social and state welfare systems support broke down. And so did the initial national value of what we then referred to officially in the 1980s as “Gutsaruzhinji” . A term that we interchangeably mixed for ‘socialism’ as well as ‘everybody’s happiness and freedom from hunger, access to education, health and upward economic mobility.  Except that the latter ‘upward economic mobility’ principle was unfortunately predicated on a mimicry of ‘white’ lifestyle competitive urge that took over any assumptions of broader equality. 

Admittedly, we pursued the mantra of education as being a key issue to acquiring wealth until we had to deal with seismic global political changes such as the end of the Cold War that brought ona very rampant neoliberalism through the World Bank and IMF sponsored Economic Structural Adjustment Programmes commonly referred to by the acronym ESAP’s. 

And that is when everything about our political economy really changed.   Particularly socially.  This is when we had amazing protest songs from our musicians at the state of the political economy  Including the late Edwin Hama’s “Today’s Paper”, Thomas Mapfumo’s Mamvemve or even Leonard Zhakata’s timeless ‘Mugove”.

And also the emergence of a more radical labour movement that would not be cowed into submission against many odds and as led by the late Morgan Tsvangirai and Gibson Sibanda.  As informed by not only subsidiary unions but also the Association of Women’s Clubs, the Zimbabwe National Students Union and left leaning intellectuals and eventually the recalcitrant white farmers and emergent civil society organizations. 

What remains important is the fact that those neoliberal years have created an increasingly false national consciousness.  A development that is firmly at the ruling Zanu Pf’s doorstep. But aided by an opposition that unfortunately seeks similar affirmation which is the equivalent of moving from a rural area to an urban ghetto and then eventually to a leafy suburb.   

But how did we lose an initial national consciousness that sought equality for all.  An immediate pointer is how our national education system was structured after independence to mimic the Rhodesian one.  Including what was considered educational or material success based on the same. 

The second was the fact that we did not understand that with a political economy comes political culture.  We prioritized cultural products that promoted not only capitalist/neoliberal lifestyles based on both colonial legacies and also our own desires at being part of narratives of material arrival. 

This also led us into being enraptured by Western cultural productions via their media, including something as abstract as false competitive wrestling on television (many of us thought it was real). Or movies that in effect represented American and United Kingdom foreign policy via Hollywood and allegedly funded  by their Military Industrial Complex agencies (Rambo or James Bond anyone?)

In 2024 there are new realities that obtain that we are now confronted with in Zimbabwe.  We are more religious.  We are more individualistic.  We are more materialistic and ‘departure’ oriented as a result thereof.  We have a majority younger population of women. We have highly opinionated and ‘un-listening’ political, business and religious leaders with in some cases, messianic complexes.

But we remain a people with a legacy of a painful liberation struggle predicated on the pursuit of an equitable society.  One in which, despite what happens in the global political economy, we must always remember that every Zimbabwean has the right to health, education, fair employment, land and every other human right recognized by the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.

We need to return to the source

^The title of this blog is borrowed from Amilcar Cabral's Collected Speeches and Essays book 'Return to the Source' https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/1392450 

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

 

 

Contradictions of Wealth and Capital in Zimbabwe.

By Takura Zhangazha *

No, this is not a motivational blog about how to make money, keep it or even how to ‘scramble’ for it.  Instead it is about a basic understanding of two things.  The first being what we in Zimbabwe perceive as ‘wealth’ and secondly about what we also think is ‘capital’. 

“Wealth” in Zimbabwe generally tends to be observationally comparative.  It relates to where you stay, the lifestyle you lead, cars you drive or are driven in, where your children go to school and something as ridiculous as how many parties you hold for relatives and friends.  

It all comes off as normal Zimbabwean cultural behavior. Except that it has connotations of how we regard each other.  Including assumptions of either continuity of these demonstrations of wealth and sadly also those of when it will all end for those that hold this wealth.  Or when it will start for those that do not have it. 

On the face of it, it is not a class issue.  Though it is driven by middle class/ white collar job social and cultural material desires. Both in urban and rural areas. It’s a lifestyle and recognition of ‘success’ or wealth crisis. 

One that essentially remains materially ephemeral because in the final analysis, if the money runs out, the lifestyle also changes. Something that many of us are guilty of the misunderstanding that this invariably affects our immediate families, children and where we still have them, friends. 

At the risk of sounding slightly self-righteous, what we probably need to stop doing is ‘exhibitionism’. While the welfare of our children, families matter, we should embrace more of a material realism than a worry about what the next person thinks about the life you are living. 

I have mentioned ‘exhibitionism’ because it relates the issue of “Capital” in Zimbabwe.  The latter being something we rarely dig deep into.  While wealth can be exhibited as outlined above, the ownership of its almost perpetual physical component tends to be off our social and intellectual radars.   

Exhibiting wealth is very different from owning capital. And for most of us know primary capital as either owning land, house/urban properties, vehicles or cattle. All in what can be considered competitive isolation. It is capital to either be gazed at or flaunted while its owner is still alive. While at the same time not being part of either a system of a national ‘means of production’ that we deliberately understand or participate in. 

So there are at least two strands to the ownership of capital in Zimbabwe.   The one is the desire to quite literally acquire it through physical commodities for the purposes of exhibiting wealth or material well-being on the basis of either savings or benefits from employment and working the banking financial system to your benefit.

Then there is actual capital based on those that control the system of private property and its links to globalized financialised capital. These are the people that own (historically/colonially/ post-colonially) your mines, vast tracts of agricultural land, cities and the middle-men that run their transactions. They also own a majority of your national and international conglomerates that are listed on the local stock exchanges as they are also linked to regional and international ones (Muzarabani anyone?)

Some of this capital is inherited from colonialism.  Some of it is also handed over from the colonialists to post-colonial political and other more opportunistic entrepreneurial leaders. This has been outlined in the French economist Thomas Piketty’s epic book “Capital in the 21^st Century”.

What however remains important in the Zimbabwean context is our understanding of the contradictions of what we consider wealth and what we consider capital.

And I will try to keep it slightly simple.  Purchasing cars, buying houses, affording expensive schools and universities is not a sign of success.  It is a sign of not understanding the ephemerality of what you consider comparative wealth.  It is also a sign of material culture capture by a system that you have no control over if you do not understand it. 

With the oddity that it always presents many of us with a fear of going back to the ‘ghetto’ or if you are already there in the ghetto a fear of going back to your rural homes and as we jokingly say in Shona parlance ‘akadzokera kumusha’.  Even when in reality our rural political economy is the backbone of a majority of our Zimbabwean families. 

When you think about ‘wealth’ remember that even in your exhibiting it, it remains an expression of ‘capital’ that in almost all likelihood you do not control. Unless you own an actual ‘means of production’ inherited or otherwise. It will always be ephemeral. Until that day you seek economic equitability.

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

 

 

   

Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe: Love Not in the Time of Cholera-

By Takura Zhangazha*

So there is a sub-regional cholera outbreak in Zambia and Zimbabwe. There was also one in Malawi towards the end of last year. 

With the evident risk that it may spread beyond the two countries’ borders where and when it is reported. 

Cholera outbreaks are now run of the mill news stories in Southern Africa.  And there are many reasons for this.  The main one being the fact of their actual occurrence. 

The second being a false narrative of assuming that we, as Southern Africans are unhygienic and therefore will be afflicted by such diseases.

The third, which is a bit more realistically debatable, is that of our rapid regional urbanisation. Due to urban population expansions and lack of relevant water and other amenities render our cities, towns and peri-urban areas to be overwhelmed.

I am not a public health expert but it is important to note from a layman’s perspective that the continual re-emergence of Cholera outbreaks in the region point to a critical need for us to re-think our rural and urban landscapes and planning. And also our approaches to public health. 

The first thing that I have noticed, even as slightly historical as it may seem, is that Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi have very similar local government planning systems.  Each of the three countries’  have somewhat similarly designed cities dating back from the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (even if Southern Rhodesia-Zimbabwe was the ultimate beneficiary of that federation). 

Our cities are similarly designed.  We have the former white suburbs being the most privileged in relation to access to water and health amenities.  We have what we call the ‘high density areas’ having less amenities and being densely populated by rural to urban migrants.  And also migrants who historically were part of the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association (WENELA) labour recruitment route. 

Then we have the rural areas where the majority of our people still reside, even as they age, with limited access to basic health care, communications and transport where and when related emergencies occur.

We also have to consider the fact that in our cultural practices we, be it in urban or rural areas, still have to gather for that wedding, funeral or memorial and/or church service among many newfound reasons for get-togethers.

The problem however is the fact of how our health systems do not match our lifestyles. And I will give at least one example.

This being that in many of our cities, based on again the fact of our collective historical urbanisation and rural codification history in Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe, we have not anticipated the explosion that would be not only rural to urban migration.  But also the necessity of planning for the important health, water, sewage and reticulation amenities that should come with it.  In many of our cities, our rapid urbanisation in which one can build a mansion without concomitant urban toilets or even rural pit latrines, even if temporarily, in an urban shack while having no running water is almost a norm.

Or even in rural areas where we still have a problem with where people openly defecate because they cannot afford to build pit latrines as advised by the World Health Organisation. So when it rains or when major gatherings are held, the likelihood of an outbreak in the remotest of rural areas increases. 

But this is not about our African inability to deal with what has been called a ‘medieval disease’.  It is a very serious matter that requires an urgent and holistic approach.  Never mind the global narratives about us as Africans from Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe.  We have experienced the pain and anguish of losing loved ones to this affliction. 

There are a number of things that we therefore need to deal with.  The primary issue being the most pragmatic.  We need to manage our urban and rural amenities much better in a people-centred manner.  Even as we understand the rapid urbanisation as well as the also rapid 'lifestyle' urbanisation of our rural areas.  Clean water and safe toilets are more important than ever. 

These are things we have to remember based on our own African health wisdom about the fact that you cannot defecate in the village well.

But this is where we are.  Our people are dying of cholera, a completely preventable and curable disease. Calling it medieval may assume a superiority of your economic placement in society but we all go to the toilet, have to wash our hands and remember that you cannot, with this Cholera outbreak, assume it will never get to you.  We need to fix this. 

-Title paraphrased from Gabriel Garcia Marques’ novel “Love in the Time of Cholera”

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

 

 

  

Zimbabwe’s Hidden Economic Class Struggle Dilemma

 By Takura Zhangazha*

This may appear to be a very complicated subject matter.  It is not.  And in most cases, it relates to ‘material desire’.  Or one in which you have to ask yourself , “What economic and social/lifestyle class are you in?” or alternatively, “What economic/social class do you think you are in?”, or, “What economic/social class do you want to be in?”  With the final question being, “What economic/social class are you realistically currently in, and how sustainable is it?” 

These are questions that we answer every day in our interactions and expressions of our material desires.

Whether through where we go to church, the movie we like, the cars we drive, the social company we keep.  And that is very much normal.  No one individual in our current existential challenges has any self-righteous wherewithal to judge these desires.  After all, we live in very neoliberal and unpredictable economic times.  Times in which individualism, capitalism and a false liberalism intersect in such a way that they create a very short term individual-focused consciousness in many of us.  In this, we do not have the material patience to assume that in the final analysis, we are part of a national collective whole. 

Hence on social media there are jokes and satire about how one can drive a special utility vehicle (SUV) in a potholed road and get home with pride. Or how one can have a personal borehole in a majority of our very dry urban and rural areas while others stay in long queues at the local UNICEF or WHO funded borehole for clean water. And still not understand how one was or is affected by a cholera outbreak! 

Apart from this sarcastic humour, what we have been experiencing in Zimbabwe is an attempt at the obfuscation/hiding of our economic class differences as disguised by either our material desires (hence the rise in fraud or financial crimes) or an endemic lifestyle crisis in which a greater majority of us seek to mimic that which we are told is the proverbial ‘good life’.

As seen or experienced via cultural products such as music, movies, social media content, religion (TB Joshua anyone?) as we compare ourselves to individual others who we now deem to be our personal competitors. I am however not sure what we really want to compete about with each other. But it would appear the key measures of this are about issues such as what car is driven, house lived in, which schools kids go to,  which Diaspora you relocated to and as abstract an issue as to where you wnet to for your holidays (as long it is not a rural visit). 

Again this is all fair and fine if one can afford it both in the short or long term. 

Also, this is not a new phenomenon.  It has been analyzed by Marxists and left leaning economists, historians and more seminally social anthropologists (check Comaroff and Comaroff circa 2002) that for a while now have been assiduously trying to make sense of where we are ideologically at a ‘global scale’. The have referred to our turn of the 21^st century global political economic system as “Millenial Capitalism”.   This is a transnational ideological trend where global capitalism, at least to paraphrase their views, has become more than just about the production of physical commodities and its relation to the working class.  Instead it has transcended both to become more about speculative financialised capital, religious Pentecostalism, gambling and the re-emergence of complex individual identity politics.  With a hint at the fact of a diminishing relevance of Marxian ‘class consciousness’. 

In Zimbabwe we have this primary challenge of either beginning to forget the fact that we are also a class-based society.  Both by way of our modern colonial history as well as by way of our many desires to by almost any means necessary move from one ‘lower class’ rung to the next and then shouting from the hilltop that we have made it.  Only to come tumbling down again.  Or to die trying to get up the same ladder, never mind giving a pretense at still being there.

For clarity, there are at least three almost permanent structured economic classes in Zimbabwe. And these have not changed since the first days many of us started studying high school history.  The most prevalent class remains the peasantry. It is one that is based in our rural areas and survives on agriculture as its main means of production.  It is a class that remains standing mainly based on the fact of its superior numerical presence which also links it to its political importance in elections and power dynamics in the country. It is however a class that is largely ageing while those that are born into it are increasingly desirous of transition to the next permanent one.  This being the urban working class.

The latter is one that is at the moment perhaps the most fluid.  It involves both formerly and informally employed urban,peri-urban working people in every major city and town in Zimbabwe.  It is the most fluid and most politically active class due to its proximity to emerging communications technologies and population densities. It is also the most populist and easily abusable by the next class we will consider, the middle or ‘comprador bourgeoisie’ class.  This is the most educated class as well as the most ‘mimicry of colonial and global lifestyle class’.  It re-occupies spaces left by colonial and global bourgeoisie, mimics their cultural habits in as many aspects as possible and remains essentially an ‘arrival’ or no- further ambition class.  Even if they acquire political positions on the backs of the aforementioned two lower wrung classes. 

The final class is that of the bourgeoisie.  This one is not confined to Zimbabwe.  It is global.  It determines not only the economic system in which we currently live but it also greatly influences not only our material economic desires but also our lifestyle desires.  It owns ICT companies, media, mines, banks, real estate (even after the FTLRP), financialised stocks and of course a greater number of our politicians if it is not in politics itself. 

These classes are somewhat hidden because we have sort of muted ourselves about them. We have forgotten about class struggle. And a majority of us assume we can always get to the next rung of our hidden class struggle ladder. We falsely assume that these classes in Zimbabwe are recognizable by lifestyle, when in essence they are based on a mirage of an assumption of their interchangeability or fluidity.

Whatever these desires we may have, our economic system is still as class based as it can be within a globalized neoliberal context.

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