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)