By Takura Zhangazha*
What has brought contemporary Zimbabwean politics to where it is
today? The easy answer is the Southern
African Development Community (SADC) mediated Global Political Agreement (GPA) in
2008.
While we can talk about the legacy of Zanu Pf’s rule, the
liberation struggle there is always a time when the past meets the
present. The past is never enough of an
explanation of what obtains today. Nor
is it adequate to understand future political nuances as they occur.
In fact there are always seismic events that change a country’s 'national' political trajectory. And the GPA
was one of them. Not just because of the rise of the initially leftist and labour backed
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in the late 1990s but also because of the passage
of time and changing global political-economy dynamics after the end of the
Cold War between the United States of America (USA) and the then Union of Soviet
Social Republics (USSR) now known as Russia.
Even more important is the passage of time and a changing
generational consciousness. The
politics that were important to my mother or father in the 1980s or 1990s may not be as as important to you or me. Neither are my
own political values as important to my own children.
And this is a completely understandable development except
that it has historical nodes that cannot be wished away. As cited above you
cannot forget the liberation struggle, independence, the one party state project,
the introduction of Economic Structural Adjustment Programmes (ESAPs) and their
eventual impact on a differentiated national consciousness.
Equally one can also not forget the coming into effect of
the GPA in the midst of not only political violence but also the economic
hyperinflation that lost us a currency and introduced a multi-currency regime
that we live and suffer with today.
The key point to be made is that the GPA has irreversibly
shaped our current nationalist and opposition driven politics. It set the framework for the multi-party
parliamentary system that we have today, as controversial as it remains. Based on both our lived economic-political realities and the negotiated
national constitution that we have to live with.
A constitution that came as a direct result of the tenets of
the GPA and one that was also going to fracture the opposition even further
than it already was by the time we had the harmonized general election in 2013.
And after another five years, brought the opposition together
to form what was then referred to as the MDC-Alliance in a bid to finally
defeat the ruling Zanu PF party from the presidency in 2018.
That did not work. Though
it also led to divisions and factionalism in Zanu Pf itself for fear of losing the
harmonized general election together with the eventual populist coup-not-a coup
in November 2017 that ousted Robert Mugabe from power.
The GPA is therefore our current political base and
superstructure (to use Marxist lingo).
It has spawned a number of long-duree political developments that historically
are informing our political culture.
In the first instance, it, with the unity government formed in 2009, made it more politically acceptable to have liaison between the ruling and opposition political parties. Something that was etched into the national imagination and is still talked about as some sort of possibility today. Even though the Political Actors Dialogue (POLAD) is generally looked down upon.
In the second instance, the new negotiated constitution sort
of reigned in both the ruling and opposition parties about what the courts/judiciary
could do to their political or other ambitions based on not only the newer Bill
of Rights but also the clauses that limited the powers of the President and
Parliament. Together what were then
considered progressive electoral reforms that everyone still keeps harping on about even after the 2013 constitutional referendum and subsequent electoral act
amendments.
More significantly, the economic policy intentions of both
the ruling party and opposition were never markedly different since 2013. The key issues were around who would get
greater regional and international capital’s attention. Including of course the global West and East
superpowers willingness to either lift sanctions or provide bilateral aid.
What has however not happened between 2013- 2018 is a growth
of the political opposition in Zimbabwe, proper. Whereas the assumption that the GPA laid a significant
base for the expansion of an organic opposition politics, it became more
populist. The fact that with the 2017
November coup-not-a coup developments came with opposition support while it was
largely a Zanu Pf internal succession matter
did not make matters any better.
These developments essentially meant that the opposition cannot
talk about revolution anymore. Nor will
the ruling party.
What we have is a ‘slow change’ approach to our national
politics. Almost as though the
parameters of what political ‘change’ can be have already been set. Both electorally and in relation to any understanding
of how the state power relates to private global and local capital. Hence the general narrative of the ‘ease of
doing business’.
Whereas the opposition had been formed on the basis of a
social democratic ideological agenda, it regrettably has been co-opted into a narrative it
no longer controls and one in which it has demonstrated little desire to
challenge anyway.
One could almost argue that we are all now neo-liberals imbued with religious and inferiority complex fervor. We no longer engage intellectually as we did prior to the GPA and its subsequent government of national unity. We are more straitjacketed in our political views and are highly emotional but we do not have time for thoughts or opinions that are not ours.
And our national consciousness
is much more materialistic both by way of our newfound conservatism and very majority
female controlled perceptions/ assumptions that God saves. And we are losing our young minds to the
Global North. Both intellectually, culturally and physically.
*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity
(takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com)
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