A Structured Crisis in Zimbabwe Local Government

By Takura Zhangazha*

There have been a number of very curious and politicized debates about the status of Zimbabwe’s local government in recent weeks.  Not least because of the Cheda Commission of Inquiry into what has been happening with the City of Harare’s financial and other transactions.  

More recently there was a media publicized allegation that the City of Harare had spent roughly US$11 million on workshops for its councilors and staff.  A figure that has recently been disputed by the current mayor.  He has whittled it down to at least US$ 2 million.

There have also been other scandals that are in the public domain.  These include land transactions, change of land use patterns from agricultural to residential or even industrial to again residential. Not only in Harare but also every other major city in Zimbabwe.  These stories do not always come out until there is a court case about either ownership or the legality of the transaction.

But as it is, local government (LG) and its general or even specific public accountability is in serious trouble in Zimbabwe.  And so is the central Ministry of Local Government and its ability to handle most of these matters as they emerge or as it may be accused of being involved in them. 

Now there are two important points to make about how we got here. 

The first being that our current LG system is one that is embedded in colonial legacy.  Both institutionally as well as in relation to aspirations of post-colonial Zimbabwean society. 

Institutionally because we never really changed either colonial by laws for urban settlements which remain not only discriminatory toward a majority black poor but also seek to set apart as of colonial old the ‘new whites’ from the ‘new blacks’.  In other words we are scrambling over an established colonial cake that is the urban settlement and its attendant lifestyles.  Almost everyone wants to move from the rural to the ghetto urban to the envied suburbs.  This is almost like a naturalized aspiration.  Hence sometimes the inexplicable greed that we read about in the media of people getting massive properties forfeited by the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC). 

The second key element of how we got here which is perhaps the most important, is that of the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) at the turn of the century.  Most urban new settlements and most urban councils’, even if they do not admit to this, are beneficiaries of the same.

When it occurred the FTLRP changed land use in many areas.  What was a farm, became a residential area. What was communal land also became the equivalent of dormitory towns at the cheap. Hence for example  one can work in Harare by day and drive back to Beatrice by evening. 

So local governments are caught in a conundrum they have not yet found a solution too.   They want to collect local taxes, they want to prove their professionalism but are caught up in a web of either things they cannot control or things they willfully let play-out to their own material undemocratic advantage. 

This is were you will see that allocation of stands without the offering of title deeds, the skipping of official housing lists and the issuing out of tenders for road and other constructions such as lighting become all interlinked in what it is turning out to be alleged rings of corruption. 

What both the legacy of urban colonialism and now more recently the FTLRP then created was this perpetual phenomenon that is now with us, the ‘Land Baron’. 

With the fact of either political affiliation or being close to city council powers that be, it has been open sesame for local government to be big business for many individuals.  All you need is either an offer letter for a farm adjacent to a town or city, your party reference (ruling or opposition), change in land use approval and hey presto, you can start pegging and selling land to vulnerable families. 

You can even call them housing cooperatives. And then when things start not going well again, you can easily abandon without an iota of guilt of where you left them off, without title and without insurance. 

I must also hazard to add that when I say ‘vulnerable families’ I do not just mean the real poor in our society.  I also mean even the aspirational middle class who have been swindled out of thousands of dollars just to be told you cannot have a title deed or to be asked to destroy a house they worked so hard to build. 

What needs to be now realized is that we need to reconfigure our LG to our realities.  And democratically so.  All these allegations of corruption in local government in Zimbabwe have no singular source.  They are merely part of its systemic breakdown.  Not just based on the fact of colonial legacies where it was designed to serve a few and not a majority.  But also because in our desires to be deemed as urbanely successful we forgot to change the system to be more democratic and transparent. 

And then when the FTLRP occurred, the floodgates to land and other related corruption activities opened up.  To the extent that by the time we read about workshop expenditure scandals, we are only tipping at the iceberg of it all. 

In all of this the scramble for urban land and its privatization, the scramble to provide urban services via illicit tenders, the scramble for peri-urban land has likely made us turn a blind eye to the structural crisis of Zimbabwe’s local government. 

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

Zimbabwe Opposition Has Lost Its Organic/Peoples’ History

By Takura Zhangazha*

Recently a senior and experienced teacher from a rural area told me of his political disappointment in what remains of Zimbabwe’s mainstream opposition political party in its original but now various forms.

 We have known each other since the late 1990s.

He said, within this current Zimbabwean political context, it turns out we had given them false hope about the future of the opposition and what we then generally referred to as the ‘struggle for a democratic Zimbabwe’

It was a fair but very hurtful point.   
Now he, unlike us was not a founder member of the then Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in 1999.  

He learnt of it later via the grassroots campaigns of the mainstream Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), the Association of Women’s Clubs (AWCZ), the International Socialist Organization (ISO), the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), the Zimbabwe National Students Union(ZINASU), the Zimbabwe Nurses Association (ZINA) and some church organisations that I will not mention here for their safety.

All of which had formed a very broad urban to rural alliance to help form what we would then refer to as the Working People’s Party (WPP). One that became the MDC in 1999 and would contest the referendum for a new constitution in 2000 together with the NCA. 

 It would also contest parliamentary elections in the same year since they were not harmonized at that time with those of the presidency.  The MDC made a strong showing for a nascent opposition political party and took a majority of the urban constituencies. 

Now let me go back to the rural teacher.  He may have joined in the opposition political and mobilization narrative a bit later.  But this was before the presidential campaign of 2002.  

He was already buoyed by the fact of the electoral successes (not quite victory) of the opposition as a movement of varying stakeholders and was keen in participating.  

Then the politically motivated violence accentuated toward the presidential elections.  Some of the teachers, nurses, youth activists and community leaders such as headmen were displaced from their rural homes, others allegedly killed or maimed.  Some left for the Diaspora on asylum missions.

But even after that and the violence that was the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) and its spill over to rural areas, those that remained in Zimbabwe did not give up on the hope that they saw in the opposition.  

Neither did many of us as founder members in one respect or the other.

What however emerged was a culture of what is now referred to as a either a “founder member syndrome” or a ‘suffered the most syndrome’ to get the party or other movements to where they were. 

 Especially with regards to two things, marginal electoral success or entitlement to the material trappings of electoral office. Be it in parliament, local government or even civil society or trade unions.

As I continue, please bear in mind the conversation I have cited above with the rural teacher.  He is seeing the mistakes of the mainstream MDC.  All through the reported and very real internal splits until the 2008 harmonised elections.  Where by that time the MDC had effectively split into two.  The Tsvangirai- Mutambara factions. 

With also a smaller player in the form of the Solomon Mujuru and Dumiso Dabengwa backed Mavambo Kusile Dawn (MKD) party. 

Those of us old enough will recall the tremendous politically motivated violence that occurred in that 2008 Presidential election run-off.  And how it changed the social fabric of our society to an extreme political partisanship.  

To the extent that SADC had to intervene and help us form an inclusive government based mainly on a combination of measuring Parliamentary seats as well as the ‘officially’ declared presidential election run-off result.   

For my rural teacher cde who had gone through these political processes in a remote area, hiding and avoiding the violence as much as is possible, he still held firm to the principle that the opposition was sincere and standing its ground on the basis of not only its founding principles of social democracy but also a generically people centered approach to its politics. 

With the formation of the SADC backed inclusive government, it was evident that the sharing of power with the ruling party would sort of appear like a cooption of the opposition unless founding principles and practices cited above were applied.

 
Unfortunately, being somewhat close to some of the processes of the opposition side of the GNU, they were not followed upon.  Hence the opposition lost the harmonized election in 2013 at both parliamentary and presidential level. 

This signified the beginning of the ebbing of organic support for Zimbabwe’s mainstream opposition.  And with it also came some other splits that we don’t have enough space to historically narrate but their end effects are being felt today. 

By the time the founding leader of the then MDC, MT Tsvangirai passed on, the opposition had fallen trap to an ahistorical populism that forget the organic experiences of its original supporter.  In the form of for example my friend the rural teacher, the headman, the rural nurse, the urban youth activist, the ambitious farmer, the Zinasu members (among many others) who were there at the beginning and passed on the baton to others. 

In 2018, there was a mixture of politics, age/ and religion for the opposition to feel confident of an eventual history.  And there were many new younger supporters for variegated material reasons that had been mobilized to support my former ZINASU secretary general and colleague Nelson Chamisa and his team under the MDC Alliance.

That too unfortunately was to split.  For reasons that ranged from clashes of founder member egos to age issues through to vested foreign interests in the future of the opposition. 

The same has since happened since the 2023 elections. Again. Like a cycle of political behavior that is inexplicably repeating the same political mistakes time and time again when and where there is an election. Or its aftermath.

Again back to my rural teacher cde.  He stated his personal disappointment in the state of the mainstream opposition.  He did not regret his partial role and survival in supporting it since at least the year 2000. 

 But he made an even more worrying remark.  He said, verbatim, “We never thought it was about the money or mere proximity to the power either of the state or to foreign or private business interests.  We just thought it was for the people we lived and worked with. From Mahuwe to Gwanda. Now it has all changed.”

We were quiet for a while contemplating the conversation we had just had.  And then his phone rang. He came back with a one liner.  “We are beyond disappointed”.
*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity (takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com)

Zimbabwe and SADC: Reflections of an African

By Takura Zhangazha*

I am a Southern African Development Community (SADC) aficionado.  I believe in it.  Always.  This started when my father cried when Samora Machel died.  Young as I was, it was not easy to wish the emotions away as we also listened to songs from the then Runn family about how we were tired with the then apartheid South African government and its alleged role in Samora’s assasination. 

I make this point early on because there are many who denigrate SADC as though it was as economic an union as the European Union (EU).

Some of us grew up on SADC’s solidarity.  We knew and lost relatives that were part of SADC missions in Mozambique against for example Mozambique’s RENAMO or with the Banyamulenge in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). 

At the University of Zimbabwe we even coined the term “UBAMulenge” in light of the role Zimbabwean defence forces under the aegis of the SADC Organ on Politics, Defence, and Security were playing there.

We did not quite understand the full historical import of SADC.  But we always had it at the back of our minds as an organic regional organization. And I do not need to delve into its well known history.  From the Frontline States through to its historical evolution into a revered regional institution headquartered in Gaborone, Botswana. 

Nor do I need to over explain how post the 1980s it was defended by historical luminaries such as Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, Samora Machel of Mozambique and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.  Among many heroic others.

Where we fast forward to the present, it is apparent that the historicity of SADC to the region may be lost to some of us.  And reminders of this are necessary. 

I have written on this before but it is worth repeating.  No matter who your president is.  No matter their ideological orientation and how they got to power, they cannot wish away SADC.

Ofcourse the recent SADC summit held in Harare, Zimbabwe comes into vogue.  There are many among our pundits that would want to either dismiss it or over celebrate it. 

That is of limited consequence to the reality that is SADC.  It is not going to go away because of abstract denial or affirmatory opinions.  Moreso when they come from the global north and its attendant global media narratives.

I will add an anecdotal point here.  In 2017 I was asked to make a presentation to some young activists about regional Southern African advocacy for freedom of expression. 

 This was just before the Covid 19 pandemic. 

 This was also before Zimbabwe’s general and harmonized elections of that year after the “coup not a coup” populist marches that ousted Robert Mugabe from power. 

I told them to calm down and remember the history of SADC. 

As undemocratic as that whole process was, SADC stood by Zimbabwe.  Not because it knew better but because it had learnt lessons from what had occurred in other regions such as in North Africa, Libya where liberal interventionism led to nightmares for the people.

The essential point to be made is that SADC is not a fly by night entity. 

In August 2024 Zimbabwe has assumed a rotational chairpersonship of SADC not because we are particularly unique but more because we are part of an historical family of the regional struggle for liberation from colonialism and neo-imperialism.

There is no other African region that exhibits this unique historical trait in Africa.  We have less wars, less electoral disputes and less economic ‘cold wars’ than any other region on the continent. 

I know there are quick questions as to what it means for Zimbabwe?  Where and when we consider our leadership of the region. 

There are at least three quick answers. 
The first being that Zimbabwe has been presented as a pariah state in Southern Africa.  Our chairing of SADC counters this narrative, even if those that do no like us insist on the fact that we will remain the same.

Chairing SADC for Zimbabwe means we can talk back to neoliberal tendencies that dominate global media narratives about us.
And its not as though we are abstract or lucky members of SADC.  We are organically embedded in it.  

Not only because we are one of its founder members but also because we have trusted it to help us solve our own internal political problems as much as we have helped other member states. 

Secondly, SADC in its historicity represents a specific historical strand of Pan Africanism that is increasingly lost in translation by neoliberal economics. We may read all their economic blueprints and how they reflect the diplomatic etiquette of global financialized capital but we cannot lose the historicity of SADC. Even if we wanted to.   

The objective truth of the matter is that SADC means much more for economic and social justice for the people of the region. Our regional political economy has always been historically intertwined.  What has happened since the 1980s is that we have allowed ourselves to be bifurcated by private capital as of colonial old. 

In the process we have a majority of our leaders being lackeys of the same said global capital without contextual placement of their countries’ lived economic realities. 

Thirdly and finally, a little discussed matter about the role of women at the recent SADC summit.  It was Kwame Nkrumah who wrote, ‘Educate a Woman, You Liberate a Nation.’ He was correct. The progressive representation of women in SADC remains of fundamental importance.  Not only for optics but also for organic representation. 

 It is female comrades that shape national and regional consciousness.  From the day we are born through to the day they either take us to church or hospital.

In conclusion I am happy that we hosted the 44th Ordinary Session of SADC;  It was a good thing.  Albeit over-celebrated and with many cdes incarcerated for one reason or the other. 

But SADC is us. It is our history.  It cannot be wished away.
*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity (takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com

South Africa's EFF and Emerging Trends in Africa’s Opposition Politics

By Takura Zhangazha*

South Africa’s charismatic and young opposition party, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) recently held a somewhat unique and shocking press conference.  In it, their leader Julius Malema and his deputy Floyd Shivambu appeared side by side in order to announce the resignation of the latter.  

Shivambu also in the same press conference announced that he was leaving to join a new and now third largest opposition party in the South African parliament Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK).  A party that is reportedly led by former president Jacob Zuma.

Now I am not a South African citizen nor do I have any vested interests in its domestic politics save for when it comes to its foreign policy as a regional hegemon.

What is however interesting is the fact that the EFF even after the recent general elections in their country had always positioned itself as a radical, Pan Africanist and youthful party that was set sooner rather than later to political ascendancy.  

An ascendancy that even if it would have failed to defeat the African National Congress (ANC), it would surely defeat the historically white led Democratic Alliance (DA) party.  It failed to do either in the last elections.  It was also overtaken by Zuma’s MK party to become only the fourth largest party in parliament. 

Because of the somewhat continental celebrity status of not only the EFF but its leader Malema, his deputy president’s resignation sparked a number of debates on social media, especially in Southern Africa. 

 But also probably across the continent.  Moreso in Zimbabwe given his recent remarks against Emmerson Mnangagwa’s Zanu Pf government at a lecture at Rhodes University in Grahamstown. 

Add to this the continued boldness that the EFF exhibited after a dismal electoral performance which they ironically blamed on MK voters and not their own strategic failures.  

They insisted that they were stronger than ever and would continue their struggle for land for the people of South Africa despite their electoral setbacks. 

They also refused to join the ANC in an alliance at national government level. 
From an outsiders perspective, and in all of this, they gave the impression that they were hurting but were trying to forge some sort of path to electoral recovery. 

Based on their recent press conference to announce the departure of Shivambu and supposedly others from their party, it would appear that was a lot more going on behind the scenes that I am certainly not privy to. 
But there are certain issues that appear apparent.  

And I will tackle these in three respects as an outsider.  And also because the South African cdes tend to also overdo it when it comes to Zimbabwean issues. Almost in a big brother like fashion, from xenophobia through to condescending exceptionalism attitudes to our own national politics. 

The first element of the split of the EFF, because essentially that is what it is, never mind the conspiracies, is that electoral politics cyclically matter in Southern Africa.  Especially if you have been in opposition for a long time.  With the same leadership.  

 On the face of it, the fallout within the EFF is probably a direct result of the party’s recent poor electoral performance and a hidden from the public blame game.  Until the awkward press conference. 

This is increasingly a trend within Southern Africa opposition parties where splits or a much more fervent internal factionalism emerges.  And in Zimbabwe’s case this is easily true with what is still the opposition Citizens Coalition for Change in our own parliament. 

Their election results also caused their split.  And I am sure it will be the same for opposition parties in Namibia, Botswana and any other country in SADC due for elections soon.

In this we see that waiting for elections or the electoral cycle to up the political ante in national politics is a strategy that is not working.  And at best will result in either governments of national unity, outright defeats, eventual splits and attempts at ambiguous restarts for many opposition parties. 

Mainly because there is less organisational opposition capacity until the election occurs and also because in some cases it is all about playing to an international gallery that will not be interested if their desired results do not come to reality.   

The second key point to examine is a continual trend of opposition political parties conflating age and any globally trending ideology with youthful ambition.  Almost like an attempt of many young politicians to do away with what they refer to as the ‘old’ simply based on again, their youthfulness.

 While at the same time demonstrating tremendous support for what we know to be repressive ideologies such as neoliberalism as given by what we consume on social media or are made to compare with when for example we wrongly envy the increasingly racist politics of the global north.   

Admittedly the EFF is somewhat ideologically grounded in Pan Africanist and at best social democratic ideology.  But it put forward more its youthfulness as the key to its both assumptions of longevity on the political scene as well as its traction with young voters. 

 Its principled position on being anti-xenophobic while admirable and principled also missed out on the populist nature of the South African electoral process. As well as also misunderstood the nature of the ideological forces that were against it both in relation to financialised global capital as well as domestic weaknesses of South Africa’s national consciousness. 

A national consciousness that exudes an inferiorty complex to former apartheid masters while ironically treating fellow Africans with disdain.  Remember that infamous Zuma phrase, “This is not some road in Malawi”? 

Lastly, the split of the EFF is clearly a sad development for many a Pan African activist across the continent.  Not least because a lot of young and older comrades I interact with used to be quite consciously entertained by their antics in their Parliament (pay back the money anyone?).  

There were even other parties with the same EFF name in countries such as Namibia.  As their leader Malema said in his press conference, they will remain around. The South African constitution’s proportional representation system will allow that to happen in the next election.  As it has done for other smaller and newer parties. 

But in the short term, barring seismic political events in their country and with a significant change to their national consciousness, it is least likely they will achieve power.   

The only sad development is that in times where they should have found newer approaches to their politics, they did the typical opposition move across the region as an opposition.  

They succumbed to the ephemeral and emotive politics of the electoral cycle. They split and are waiting upon the next elections to prove each other wrong. As individuals and as factions.  I hope they recover. 
*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity (takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com)   

Explaining the Fluidity of Young Zimbabwean Political Minds

By Takura Zhangazha*

When persons of my age, not necessarily generation, were growing up in the 1990s, we knew the importance of the library.  In most cases, it was considered a sort of sanctuary and serious space for either studying for examinations or alternatively a place to escape whatever issues were happening at home or in the mainstream classrooms. 

In this, books, or at least how we perceived their knowledge giving prowess, tended to shape our individual or even examination driven consciousness. 

And we used to scramble mainly for the relevant set books.  Or alternatively become friends with the colleague who had his own personal copies of the coveted same. 

This also meant that the most available ‘book’, the Christian bible (at least in Zimbabwe was key to our behavioral consciousness. Never mind the role of the church and its clergy.   

That is why a lot of us in our teenage years would receive our first individual letters from the Scripture Union by post.  Just for the individual recognition of not only being able to answer questions and quizzes but also to actually wait for the postman to hand you a letter in your own name. 

The key point however was the centrality of the ‘book’ to our consciousness in the 1990s and even before.  Even before we discuss the fact that we would return opinions on what we have read via the written word, by pen, in a hardcover notebook.  If your parents could afford it. 

By the time we got to college or university, the issue was, again, reading books in order to pass and also protect government student grants that still sort of existed before the full privatization/outsourcing of tertiary education.   

The central importance of for example the University of Zimbabwe main library was not lost to us.  Or how we would wait in anticipation of the next blockbuster analysis of our society via our then at least three main publishing houses. That is the Zimbabwe Publishing House, Mambo Press and College Press.   

In our then ‘youthfulness’ we were a bit more patient and almost set in our ways of thinking and perceiving of our Zimbabwean society.  A decent number of us were leftists.  A lot more were conservative and increasingly leaning toward Western perceptions of economic and business success.  Not only because of the books they were reading but also because of the movies they were occasionally or regularly watching via video cassette recorders or at Ster Kinekor cinemas. 

Then just before the turn of the millennium, the internet and Yahoo came.  Instead of us queuing to a library stack room we started queuing to a computer in the corner of the library.  Followed shortly after by the behemoth that was to become Google and Gmail.

And things were never the same after that.  The book died (to paraphrase Soyinka) And in its place came a new fluidity to youth consciousness.  One that was quick and ephemeral.  Moreso by the time we had done the first decade of the 21st century with Facebook, Whatsapp and other forms of social media.

Knowledge and information, true or false could be acquired at the click of a computer mouse.  Which then also became at the touchscreen button of a mobile smart phone. 

Whereas in prior years our young Zimbabweans were a bit more patient about what they consumed via books, in these emerging circumstances, they became hungrier for whatever the internet  and its attendant social media had to offer.  Both for educational purposes but even more so for entertainment and lifestyle human behavioural change. 

And this is what now obtains today or in the contemporary. 

There have been multiple debates about Generations X, Y, Z or even the most confusing one the boomers.  What is rarely discussed is what shapes the consciousness of contemporary young people. 

Apart from the fact of their ages and assumed impatience or free market motivated ‘demographic dividend’. 

One in which age is seen on the African continent as a significant numerical factor about shaping opinions and politics before we even question any ideological pretexts of why neoliberalism is so keen on young Africans? 

But the reality of the matter is that in a period in which young Africans are a deliberate target of global capital especially in relation to their consumption habits and also their desires to leave the continent, it is a given that their thought or consciousness processes are increasingly more fluid.  

Or susceptible to a defiance of whatever we had previously referred to as either Pan Africanism or even historic African nationalism. 

This is not a specifically new thing.   With the onset of new access to technologies, people and in particular, young people change their behavioral patterns in society.  First came the bible and how it taught many of our forbearers how to read and write in its Christian name in the colonial Rhodesian context. 

With it also came the radio, then the television, then the fixed telephone line, then satellite television (which brought us closer to Western lifestyles), then the internet, then mobile telephony and social media. All as they impacted largely various impressionable young Africans. 

This historical continuation of technology and its impact on a people’s national consciousness cannot easily be dismissed. 

 Especially when we are discussing inter-generational interactions and progressive historical narratives that can easily be lost in the moment. 

Not because we want to lose them but more because we do not own either the technologies or the mediums in which repressive narratives can be purveyed. 

So we have learn how to deal with the fluidity that has come with social media in our national consciousness.  Together with the egoistic, celebrity style individualism it is creating in our society.  Devoid as it maybe of a critical ideological consciousness and sadly defined by a mimicry of the global west/north culture.
*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity (takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com)