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)

 

 

2024: An Abnormal Year for Zimbabwe, Africa in International Relations

 By Takura Zhangazha*

The year 2024 is a year where international relations, economics, politics and conflicts will greatly impact what happens in Zimbabwe.  And probably many other African countries.  Probably at a scale that will reflect the previous Cold War dynamics of the 70s, 80s and the early 1990s’.  This is obviously not a one-off or one-calendar year incident.  It has been building up for a while but I almost predict that in 2024 this will likely reach similar heights in relation to international relations dynamics. 

In essence we are witnessing, globally, and in our own African contexts, the end of a uni-polar world.  Whereas before we had been told about either the “End of History” (Fukuyama)  in relation to the triumph of neoliberalism or a foreseen binary “Clash of Civilisations” (Huntington)  with the unwritten assumption that the 'civilised' would be the victor. 

In the contemporary, it is now a much more fluid global state of affairs.

Post the American “War on Terror” and invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, there have been many other globalised conflicts that indicate that there are new international relations dynamics at play.  These are characterised by a number of factors.

The first being the continuing rise of China on the global economic stage and in relation to its strengthened role in global financialised capital (or its embrace of illiberal/state capitalism).  

Secondly the contradictory rise of internal Western nationalism and conservatism that derides immigration and military excursions. Raises religion to new political levels and assumes everything that is happening is a global 'great replacement theory' and therefore a nemesis to what obtains. 

Thirdly, the emergence of a newfound though limited resistance to the financial might of the United States dollar backed global financial system.  

Fourthly, the revival of a new Global South “consciousness” and still ever so slight resistance to the imposition of either cultural values or political templates as to how previously colonised countries matters should be countenanced or implemented.   

And in the fifth instance, globalised/internationalised conflicts such as the Ukraine- Russia war, Palestine-Israel emerging war, the Sudan civil war, the Democratic Republic of the Congo civil war, the ongoing internationalised conflicts in for example Syria, Yemen, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso.  And this is before one begins to discuss political imperialism in South America that has been longstanding against Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and of late Argentina among others. 

But let me return back home to Africa and Zimbabwe specifically.  Events as they are occurring at a global scale, be they conflicts, economic support/investment reconfigurations, emigration or electoral imperatives are no longer ‘business as usual’.  Loyalties are being tested of us.  On a more regular basis than in the last twenty years.  I have never seen so many United Nations resolution votes that have asked so much of us as African countries at the General Assembly or Security Council of the same. We are now constantly being asked to prove our loyalties. A thing that Amilcar Cabral would have probably squirmed at.  

Africa is in the thick of it because of its re-embrace of neoliberalism without a clearer alternative except some mimicry and acceptance of the Chinese economic model and its attendant investments.  With the false assumption that it is simply ‘economics’ or about the ‘free market’. When in reality it is now a mixture of international political allegiances and what will eventually emerge as tragic entrapment in a multi-polar globalised political economy.  One in which, contrary to the mantra by the Zimbabwe government of “being an enemy to none, and a friend to all” we will have to take ‘sides’ to remain afloat or at least protected as we had to when South Africa, China and Russia came to our defence in striking down that 2008 UN sanctions resolution. 

The essential point to bear in mind is that 2024 will not be a ‘normal’ year in how Zimbabwe, let alone Africa is placed in international relations. Or how it chooses to place itself in the complicated schematics of global relations.  Let alone the dynamics that will impact not only our national economy but also assumptions of financial(ised) investment in return for loyalty at UN general assembly votes or any other international platform. 

In a quid-pro-quo situation, this also means that the ruling Zanu Pf party has the latitude to insist on its own version of progressive politics beyond the gaze of what would be regarded as universal human rights. Not only with regard to its own version of ‘nationalism’ or ‘capitalism’ but also to protect specific investments and interests of global allies and business partners.  The latter who will not hesitate, given their already huge investments in either mining or agriculture to hold fort on international stages for Zimbabwe.

So if you are Zimbabwean or African it is important that you look at the year 2024 as a year in which you must learn or at least keep in mind the global ‘bigger picture’ of global events as they occur.  Be it a globalised conflict, a blocking of a trade route for oil or wheat, an election result in the global west, a natural disaster or even a link your country may have to what may be considered a pariah state.  It will matter. One way or the other. 

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