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)