Age, Conversation and Changing Consciousness in Zimbabwe.

By Takura Zhangazha*

I have a couple of friends that like to remember what they refer to as the good old Zimbabwe days.

Be it when they were in primary or secondary school. Or undertaking one or the other state sponsored tertiary education.  They talk of getting milk at school, eating well, getting student payouts/loans and how everyone was generally happy in Zimbabwe.

They debate this broadly until you broach the subject of the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) of the late 1980s.  While we were too young to understand this then new neoliberal policy thrust of the Zimbabwean government at the time, our contemporary conversations immediately depart from nostalgic reminiscence to anger at what then befell us by the time we arrived at adulthood.  

And this is largely toward the turn of the century when not only ESAP was in full flight but the ruling Zanu PF party was now trying to re-discover some sort of its revolutionary ethos via a now hurried Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) in the year 2000. 

While at the same time using state and no-state orchestrated violence on supporters of the newer opposition political party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) as then led by trade unionist Morgan Tsvangirai. 

Some of us still remember those terrible years and in particular the calamitous periods of cholera, hyper-inflation and poverty that were stark between 2005 through to 2010 when the then Global Political Agreement  and government of national unity as mediated by SADC had sort of got a foothold on our economic predicament. 

In this, a decent number of us who were political and civil society activists at the time assumed we were in some sort of progressive revolutionary struggle to challenge the ruling Zanu Pf party’s hegemony.  And a lot of suffered and are still suffering for this.   Be it here at home or in the global Zimbabwean Diaspora. 

What we may have missed however is the passage of time and the fact that there are others that while having been young in they year 2000, are now adults.  And they have a different experience of what they consider their priority realities and ambitions.  They are also referred to as ‘ama 2000’. 

These and other younger comrades have a different consciousness template from many that have nostalgia for a previous Zimbabwe prior to for example ESAP.  Theirs remains an immediacy of material consciousness.  Be they male or female. 

Based on not only the fact that they have greater access to multiple nodes of information and lifestyles but also because they experienced the worst of our longstanding economic challenges since the early 2000s. 

And their politics and political activism are also more immediate.  Based on both religious perception as well as celebrity dynamics as motivated by both mainstream and social media. 

They are definitely not going to read Marx, Cabral, Luxembourg, Nyerere, Nkrumah, Gramsci or de Beauvoir unless its for an academic examination.    

And this a reality that we now have to accept across class, geographical location and even claims at ethnicity.  

Age, conversations and consciousness have come full circle in Zimbabwe.  With the latter being the least relevant.  Mainly because consciousness in and of itself is not only less fashionable but it is challenged by the hegemonic and behavioural moderation media that we can no longer avoid consuming.  Be it via social media or streaming platforms that are carried over to the mainstream television and radio stations such as Tik-tok, Netflix, Youtube and Whatsapp (in no particular order). 

So when I am in some sort of debate (online or offline) with people younger than me I am aware that if I overdo any sort of intellectualism I will be met with an equally resistant counter-intellectualism that focuses on everyday realities as opposed to any sort of idealism. Or one that emphasizes one celebrity over another or one faith in challenge to others. And a derisive turn of phrase about age and no knowing whats really going on in the world

This is something I first experienced in a radio interview in 2010. I had prepared well for it, crosschecked my facts, re-read on the relevant ideological contexts of how to challenge neo-liberalism  for a progressive new social contract. Lo and behold the interviewer, young as she was didn’t care about that.  She just wanted to know about the significance of the celebrity like infighting in the then inclusive Zimbabwe government and its constitutional reform process.

I then realized that perhaps because of age, experience and also being more ideologically oriented, I was beginning to miss new realities about how young Zimbabweans are beginning to think about their country and their lives.

As a final example, I once interacted with a young artists group who vociferously laid claim to being a network of progressive young minds seeking out new ways of expressing their challenges in the public interest.  This was assumedly in relation to unemployment, poverty and ambitions to go to the Diaspora. 

It turned out that most of them found their best spaces in quoting the bible and relying heavily on the Christian Gospel for their own consciousness. 

It struck me that we (my nostalgic comrades and I) had been brought up on Ngugi, Marechera, Mungoshi, Vera, Soyinka and many others but these ones I was interacting with at that time, mainly had the Bible and very business focused motivational writers and speakers from the global north. 

This is still something I still cannot shrug off.  And I am not sure who’s fault it is. But it is a fault.  WE need to talk consciousness age.  More-so where we have imperial presidents like Donald Trump talking about racist ‘Golden Ages’ for their own countries and controlling social and mainstream media narratives. 

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

A Not So New Meaning to Being White and (South) African in Africa and the World.

By Takura Zhangazha*

USA president Donald Trump recently issued an executive order about South African domestic politics.  In it he was basically protecting white South Africans and in particular those of Afrikaner (Dutch) origin. This was after one of his infamous and closest political advisors, Elon Musk had warned via his social media platform X, that there would be consequences for South Africa’s new Land Expropriation Act.

It would appear that this executive order suspending USA aid to South Africa by Trump is the immediate consequence. And one which has had ripple effects within South Africa’s white community.  To the extent that they held a weekend press conference to explain their reactions to this mainly via the again infamous AfriForum group that is assumed to represent a lot of Afrikaner or Boer individual and collective economic and social interests.

In this they stated, via their website,

“The civil rights organisation AfriForum is going to write an official letter to the United States government and request that the punitive measures that President Donald Trump wants to introduce against South Africa should rather target senior ANC leaders directly and not South Africa’s residents. AfriForum’s request follows in response to an entry that Trump made on his social media last night, around 18:00 Eastern Standard Time (EST) in America.

AfriForum is also going to make an urgent request to the South African government to, in an attempt to avert this crisis, table an amendment to the Expropriation Act that will ensure the protection of property rights in South Africa.”

I have quoted this at length in order to demonstrate what can be viewed as not only a sense of gratitude for Trump’s executive order (EO) but also a strange sense of entitlement to still be able to live in a land that their new benefactor, the USA government, perceives to be a threat to their Afrikaner (also read as white) livelihoods.

I refer to this entitlement in a particular historic respect that the AfriForum is likely to be quite clear that based on Trump’s EO, they are now quite literally untouchable in the short and probable long (4 year term of his presidential tenure).  Or as long as Musk is still his right hand man.  Not only in South Africa but also other parts of Africa such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) where they have major economic, mining and attendant military interests.

While I am not South African by birth my Pan Africanism cannot let this matter simply be drowned away in abstract notions of what current and former settler states and their outpost communities deem to be preferable.  

Especially with either the threat of implementing economic sanctions and in some cases (as in the previous Trump administration) that of military intervention on the basis of a false pretext of neo-colonial liberalized property rights to land and minerals.

More-so because I am also a Zimbabwean and we have a direct experience and long standing history  of what former colonial and neo-colonial global superpowers can and will do to stop attempts to redress colonial injustices of land dispossession.

This despite the efforts we had made since the expiry of what was then our Lancaster House Constitution through to many other conferences and bilateral agreements we entered into with our former colonial power, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK).  And now politically and technically under the aegis of USA and EU sanctions for what was then our Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP).

One which regrettably has now shifted into more of state capitalism than equitable distribution of our natural resources.

But back to the matter of the South African white community and its newfound, by default racial/ racist relationship with the new American administration.  Beyond being Afrikaner, English, Scottish, Australian or French in origin or ancestry.

It is either you value the country of your birth, with all its baggage of having fought a liberation struggle to emancipate a majority based on the principles of democracy racial and economic equity or you decide to purposefully undermine them.  

Directly as Afriforum is doing. 

Or even in liberal white complicit silence (Biko anyone?)  Or you stand up to what was the then rainbow nation that we all applauded Nelson Mandela and his struggle stalwarts for undertaking. 

What Trump has done however is not a social media fad. Or an opportunity for South Africans, particularly a white minority to prove a false consciousness on still Chinese owned Tik-tok.  

Instead it is a racist maneuver aimed at proving that it is not only global but in particular ‘white capital’ that can control the economy of South Africa.  And by default Southern Africa. 

Well we, as Africans, do not have nuclear weapons or any other military capacity to stand up to the USA, the UK or even the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).  But we have progressive and revolutionary anti-colonial history on our side. 

Where we assumed a global progressive humanity via the United Nations, we were mistaken.  Especially because of the globalized wars that we are seeing or experiencing directly. 

The Trump executive orders we are witnessing in various forms mean that we may have to revert to remembering what Africa is and who we are as Africans.  We reject racism, global inequality and we believe in a shared progressive future for all of humanity. And that at some point despite as Cabral said, “the struggles against our own weaknesses” we will have to defend this vision of a progressive humanity for all as Africans.  Beyond who owns X or what an exeuctive order from the USA can mean. 

And that there is no such thing as a return to an ahistorical former or current colonial center of power to prove a false importance of whiteness in Africa or elsewhere in the Global South.  

Finally there is a book published in 2007 by Gerald Le-Ange titled the ‘White Africans. From Colonisation to Liberation’.   It would help if cdes re-read it to understand that we too, as black Africans can talk back about belonging in a globally progressive and inclusive historical way.  Because we know what was done to us historically by colonialism and its offshoots of neo and post colinialism.  We will never forget. And we will resist.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Changing Character of Pan Africanism (Fighting Among Ourselves)

 By Takura Zhangazha*

 As an African you will regularly reflect on your being, your othered ‘blackness’ and also your material standing in a now highly globalized perception of what can be the ‘good life’.  And in all of its mimicry of the colonial legacy of global north societies.  Or if we were to be a little bit more academic, in the ambit of what the Ugandan professor Mahmoud Mamdani referred to as the “legacy of late colonialism’. 

A colonial legacy that we are living today in multiple facets of our everyday existence.  From our politics, our religious and cultural norms and how they inform the futures of subsequent young Africans going forward.

And it is something that we cannot historically wish away.  We were once colonized as Africans.  A decent number of us fought liberation struggles or negotiated political settlements to become independent.  We also, via the then Organisation of African Unity (OAU) now the African Union (AU) accepted the historical reality of the Berlin Conference borders as drawn by the then European colonial powers.  

Borders which were largely defined by either rivers, mountains and also last minute negotiations for territory because of assumptions of minerals or colonially strategic positioning of their military outposts. With one such example being the Caprivi Strip (named after a German general at the turn of the 19^th century).

The catch however is that we have a composite history of struggling against colonialism, winning these struggles but at the same time, in the contemporary, sort of seeking by default to repeat the same said history. 

And this is a complicated argument to make.  Particularly if we consider the current Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Rwanda 2025 conflict as recognized by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the East African Community (EAC). 

On social media there have been historical references as to why this conflict persists.  From issues to do with the recognized Rwandan genocide through to the role that SADC played in the toppling of Mobutu Seseseko Wazo Wabanga from power in the DRC. And the retention of Laurent Desire Kabila as president of the same country in the years that followed.  An issue that is not historically explained and understood by many Zimbabweans or Congolese to this day.

The key issue however is the fact that the DRC is not a simple country.  It is etched in the historical cauldrons of the full meaning of what colonialism was in Africa.  Particularly where we consider South of the Sahara Africa and the role of King Leopold the second of Belgium and what his government did to us. 

Further, beyond arguments about borders and their coloniality, the DRC is representative of what colonial capitalism and extraction is and can be.  Including the fact that capitalism comes with war against people who do not even understand what they are fighting against or for what cause they should be fighting for we now have a global reconfiguration of the meaning of Africa.  One which is pointing to a repetitive historical narrative of ‘extract and control’.  On either side of the West or East global divide. 

This is a development that begs the question of what is Pan Africanism in the contemporary? Who imagines or re-imagines it?

If you are African you have to remember Kwame Nkrumah’s eternal slogan of how “Africa Must Unite!” And Julius Nyerere’s pivotal role in making African political unity a reality with the OAU and its liberation committee.

But now we are at a crossroads. Albeit an easily populist one after the emergent changes in the United States of America (USA) foreign policy about its interactions with our continent. From the closures of the USA Agency for International Development Aid (USAID) through to its own foreign diplomatic missions and how we react to the same. More so beyond social media and mainstream media posts about what all of this means.   

We are in desperate need of a new Pan Africanism.  One that contends with new global political economy realities of China versus the USA but also recognizes the history of colonialism and post-neocolonialism. 

This is a difficult ask because as post liberation Africans we are sort of embedded in false realities that we are never able to handle. Not only for our internal but external conflicts without being ‘hand-held’ by either side of the global political divide.

So what does a new Pan Africanism look like? It is one that understands the historical reality of the fact that as black people from the African continent we know our past. And we also know our present.  And we can envision our future.  Never mind the slave trade, colonialism, or neo-colonialism, we simply remember our realities in the present. 

So major traditional donor agencies can and will close from the global north due to an increasing racist political culture but we have been there before.  We know who we are and who we can be.  `

For all the wars that are happening globally and affecting Africa in variegated ways, as Africans, we will need to learn that we are between a rock and a hard place.  But we have options.  One of them being a proper, “Return to the Source” as argued by Aime Cesaire. 

Almost like a return to the river.  Except for the fact that the river was always as Ngugi wrote in his novella and explained it metaphorically, a river that was always going to be put it ‘In between”.

The form and character of our new Pan Africanism can only be historically grounded without the abstract populism of 'velvet' or 'carpet' revolutions'.  

It has to be about what we can believe in as liberatory beyond the global preferable moment.  Even in abstract mimicry we also need to put Africa First. And make it Great Again. 

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

takurazhangazha.com 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Zimbabwe Churches and the Dangers of Political Overreach

By Takura Zhangazha*

The Zimbabwe Heads of Christian Denominations (ZHOCD) recently issued a statement on an issue which essentially waded into a Zanu Pf debate around extending the current president E.D Mnangagwa’s term of office from 2028-2030. 

I deliberately mention Zanu Pf here because this issue of 2030 is essentially a ruling party one.  It obviously has national connotations but it remains the prerogative of the ruling party. With or without some sort of resistance to its intentions by existent opposition political parties and broader civil society (churches included).    

This blog however is not an analysis  about  Zanu Pf’s newfound political controversy around seeking an extended term for its president and by dint of the same its two-thirds majority in Parliament. 

It is about the role of religion (or if you want, the church) in Zimbabwean society and how that assumed role must be observed with caution on political matters that essentially should be beyond its purview or mandate. 

To begin with, religion is essentially functional to Zimbabwean (or any other society).  Be it African tradition, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Judaism or in any other format.

It helps stabilize and give some form of morality as to how we interact as human beings on a day to day basis.  Based on one’s own preferred history but also with the comfort of knowing that belief systems essentially help prevent us from being perpetually at war with one another.

Even though ironically it has also historically been the major cause of many regional and world wars.

The ‘functionality’ of religion is also based on the fact that it is, in a stable and somewhat democratic country, not expected to over reach the parameters of its political influence.  It may have done so in the past but in the contemporary and also secular societies, religion is generally expected to ‘give unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar’.  As once stated by Jesus of Nazareth in the New Testament bible. 

In Zimbabwe while we have the right to freedom of worship, there is still a general assumption that religion and its religious leaders also understand the basic need not to ‘over reach’ from the spiritual to the political.  Especially because we are a majority Christian country with a highly African traditional background. With the latter having been key to how we waged our liberation struggles against colonialism.  A reality that is evidenced by the fact of our Mbuya Nehanda statue in the heart of Harare’s central business district. 

As it is however our dominant Christian faith leaders have found it easier to wade into our national politics.  Something which is debatable given the economic hardships that many Zimbabweans are facing. Even as they pray.  (No I will  not mention Marx’s dictum about religion being an opium of the masses)

Be that as it may, a little bit or immediate history of electoral politics and the church may be necessary. 

In 2019, ZHOCD  issued a statement calling for the postponement of the then anticipated 2023 elections.

It stated through its spokesperson Reverend Kenneth Mutata, that given the history of  disputed elections,

“We are calling the nation to Sabbath to all political contestations for a period of seven years for rebuilding of trust and confidence, reset our politics, and chart a shared way forward towards a comprehensive economic recovery path in an non-competitive political environment.”

It was a good thing that the statement was largely ignored by the state as it was patently undemocratic in meaning and intent.  And that we still went on to have the general election in 2023, disputed as it was after the event as is the norm in many African countries now.

Where we fast forward to 2025, ZHOCD appears to want elections as prescribed by the constitution. In a statement issued last week Christian leaders said,

“The call to extend the presidential term limits and postpone the 2028 elections is an invitation for the president to be a co-conspirator in overthrowing the constitution of the country which the president is elected to uphold, respect and defend.” 

This is an important volte farce/turn-around from the ZHOCD.  They appear to have come full circle to understanding the significance of constitutional democracy and its principles surrounding the necessity of holding regular, free and fair elections. 

The reasons for this change in their attitude are not clearly outlined but within the current context of the Zanu PF debates, at least the Christian church leaders are now more democratically grounded than in 2019. 

And this is where my more controversial point comes in. Any attempts to exert the influence of religion over the state or politics is never revolutionary in the progressive sense of the term.  Churches, mosques, synagogues,  ‘krawas’ , ‘gungano’, amphitheaters and ‘crossovers’ are places of worship not politics.

In the same vein, pastors, priests, rabbis, imams, svikiro were not sent to save the country but to save souls.     

Indeed any religion can get you electoral votes.  But it is not the core or Zimbabwean political activity.  If there is a promised land as outlined in the bible or elsewhere it remains elsewhere. 

Here we have with the reality of political economy and the class and cultural divisions that are increasingly evident in our society.  And in order to do this diligently religion must not over reach its influence.  Not only because it is functional and by default part of the establishment that protects it. But mainly because Zimbabwe is a secular state. Warts and all.  And long may it remain so.

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

(takurazhangazha.com)  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Global Online Free Expression as Cold War: Tik-Tok, USA, China and the Rest of Us.

 By Takura Zhangazha*

The United States of America (USA) Supreme Court on Friday 17 January 2025 unanimously upheld a decision by both the executive government and congress to indefinitely ban the hugely popular social media platform Tik-Tok.  

The main reason for this was/is the security threat the social media application would cause the USA from China.   With the key element to this being that Tik-Tok is partly owned (at least 20%) by entities affiliated to the government of China. 

The key condition to a reversal being cited as that the current owners of the platform remove the part Chinese ownership and give control of it to American companies or investors.  

Also add to this the assumption that the new owners will get the Tik-Tok algorithm that makes it so popular and different to other social media platforms. 

The application has a reported 170 million users in the USA.  And as expected these users have sort of gone up in social media arms against the move.  Citing reasons such as how the platform allowed them greater access to new information that they would not have gotten via the usual ones that are owned by American companies or individuals.

They also cite the fact that Tik-tok was key in either promoting their small businesses or influencer incomes to the extent that they not only managed to pay off debts but also earn decent regular income from it or its promotional reach.  And this is just within the USA before we look at the application’s role in free expression in the rest of the world, including its other version for domestic use in China. 

The outgoing Biden administration has said it will not make any decisions about the implementation of this ban.  The incoming president Donald Trump has hinted at the fact that he will think about the possibility of also not implementing the ban or alternatively issuing an executive order to keep it going in the USA for a specified period of time. 

Tik-tok itself, (at least its American and Singaporean ownership side of things) has been busy lobbying to get this ban removed.  Its executive officials have made representations to the US Senate while also promoting free expression and the American constitution’s First Amendment (the almost absolute right to free expression in the USA) as a key issue around this matter.

Well it turns out that for now and the short term future, national security concerns override freedom of expression.  More-so when the threats are coming from the USA’s newest hegemonic threat in the form of China and its technological advancements.

Or how China, in the words of members of the USA Senate, Congress and Biden’s outgoing administration, is trying to change the cultural lifestyles of Americans. And therefore influence how their politics, economics or even military technologies may be understood, spied upon or deployed.

The only catch however is that there are also other social media platforms that shape, spy on and influence human behavior that are already present in America and globally.  These are the well-known Meta (Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp), X (Twitter) and Youtube to cite just a few.  With all of the latter’s owners having a vested profit interest in ensuring that Tik-tok does not expand its market influence in the USA as well as globally. 

So essentially it is a head on collision of what Greek activist Yanis Varoufakis has referred to as ‘techno-feudalists’.  These being those that monopolise emerging technologies and social media companies in the name of capitalism and with the aid of the dynamics of emergent global cold wars between the USA, China and partly Russia. 

You may ask, “But where is the rest of the world in this?”  The quick answer is that this would appear to be a dispute between the USA and a part Chinese owned social media platform.  

The more organic understanding of this is however about the fact that there is now a renewed global battle to control ‘hearts and minds’ via social media and faster or more efficient algorithms.  Such as the one that Tik-tok represents. 

And this is somewhat symbolized by how even the Americans themselves are attacking their own government about the ban and its impact on their economic livelihoods or mental well being.  Or how they have been shifting to other even more Chinese owned platforms such as RedNote. 

Where we consider the rest of us in this dispute, there is the global north and the global south.

In the global north, it is almost a given that Europe, though not affected by this ban, will not necessarily challenge it.  Even if it could. The European Union, NATO and other related organisations tend to fall in line with America’s position on China.  More-so when it comes to issues around technology and allegations of military and civilian espionage. 

For the global south and specifically in our African context, this issue is probably perceived as a small matter that is geographically far away from us. But the usage of Tik-tok is expanding on the continent.  It may not have as many of the profits for small businesses or influencers as it does in the USA but for sure, Tik-tok is not going away from Africa anytime soon.  It has however not raised any geopolitical or Cold War queries as it has done in the global north.

We would however do well to take note of at least two issues.

The first being that the format of understanding what online free expression should democratically mean is changing. 

For us in Zimbabwe, we are very familiar with the whole idea of ‘national security’ trumping’ freedom of expression’. 

And when the same dictum is used in the USA we also know it can also be used here at home and across our highly opportunistically repressive governments across the continent. More-so because the judgment of the USA Supreme Court will now forever be a point of global legal reference for this sort of censorship and protectionism.

Secondly, as Africans, we need to know that now we may be played one against the other in this new global cyber cold war between the USA and China. Even if it all just appears to be about social media.  It is now also about the right to privacy versus the right to free expression versus a state’s national security interests.  It is almost an ideological question around what comes first and following whose model?   

In this we need to balance the same three issues, free expression, national security and privacy in a much more democratic manner.  Even if we do not control the algorithms and probably never will. 

While this new global cold war over social media platforms is something we can only watch from a distance, it should not change our commitment to specific contextual democratic values that ignore the profit motivation of the techno-feudalists and their governments’ interests. 

We just need to know that in this instance of the American Tik-tok saga, emperors tend to have no clothes. 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Emerging Global Complexities for the Next African Union (AU) Commission Chairperson

 

By Takura Zhangazha*

On Monday 13 January 2025, the former prime minister of Kenya, Raila Odinga paid a courtesy call on Zimbabwe’s President E.D Mnangagwa in Harare. It turns out he has been on a tour of a number of African states and meeting with their presidents in order to let them know that he is bidding to be the next chairperson of the African Union Commission (AUC).

The current outgoing chair is Moussa Fakki from the Republic of Chad who’s second term of office ends this year. 

The other two candidates for the AUC chairperson’s post are Mahmoud Youssof of Djibouti and Richard Randriamandrato of Madagascar.  

The latter two are yet to pay a similar campaign or bidding visit to Zimbabwe within the ambit of these lobbyist activities to run the African Union for at least five years.   

What is evident from the visit of Raila Odinga to Zimbabwe is that to be chairperson of the AUC, you need support of members states and their heads of state and government.  It is essentially a somewhat elelected position by members of the African Union (AU). 

By the time its general assembly is held and ends in mid-February 2025, there should now be a new chairperson of the AUC.  Oh and yes, the AU does have what it calls its own electoral commission to count the members state s votes for this position.

The only ambiguity is that electing the chairperson of the AU is not as easy as walking into a polling station and casting your vote for the best orator or the most education/experienced of candidates. 

The election of the AUC chairperson is a highly lobbied, continental, global international relations and historically informed process. 

I will start with the historical element of this.  Ever since the formation of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in 1963  African states either in the West, North, Centre, East and South of the African continent have tended to compete with each other about what a future free Africa should look like. 

Either on religious grounds, proximity to former colonial powers’ foreign policy interests or greater regional liberation struggle and ideological ties that converged or differed between them.  

Hence historically we had the Monrovia (moderate) and Casablanca (radical) groups that eventually compromised to form the OAU. I will not go into details on these suffice to say the relative divisions about the role of Africa in the world and international relations have not necessarily gone away between members states of the AU as they approach the selection of a new chairperson of the AUC. 

In both an ideological sense or as it is informally viewed in a regional rotational fashion for the commission chair or for the head of state chair of the AU General Assembly.

I will now turn to the continental and globalized international relations of this year’s AUC chairpersons appointment via lobbying and emergent international relations re-alignments. Especially in the wake of the Ukraine-Russia conflict, the DRC conflict, the Sudan civil war,  the fall of the Syrian government, the election victory of Donald Trump in the USA, the counterhegemonic role of China and the Israel-Palestine conflict. Also inclusive of the still recognized freedom struggle of the people of the Saharawi Republic from the recent AU member entrant, the Kingdom of Morocco. 

Any new AUC chairperson has to be able to balance all of these emergent global developments with a keen eye on AU member states interests and vulnerabilities in what is clearly a fluid international relations and loyalties’ global political environment.

And in most cases, because of the aforementioned complexities', the position of running the day to day affairs of the AU as its commission’s chairperson tend to be left to what one could consider a ‘neutral’ diplomat.  One that can talk to China and the USA while straddling the tight rope between Russia, Ukraine and the European Union.   While again all the while listening to regional treaty based organizations on the African continent and also individual member states and their interests.    

And these points bring me to the three official candidates that I have cited above for the coveted position of the chairperson of the African Union Commission. 

I had not heard much about the two candidates from Djibouti and Madagascar.  But in Zimbabwe we are familiar with Raila Odinga.  

Not only because of Kenya’s geographical proximity to us but also because he was politically close to our own former prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai and successor leaders to Zimbabwe’s mainstream opposition political parties.   

We also know the dynamics of his domestic role in Kenya in so far as he has disputed electoral results and supported a number of nascent pro-democracy movements in the east, central and southern African regions. 

This makes for a clear complexity of his candidacy even if it is eventually backed by Mnangagwa’s government or the East African heads of states.

What is apparent is that with the necessary effort, a former prime minister, foreign minster or president can re-invent their political careers by seeking regional and international roles. Backed by their multiple reputations, loyalties and emergent international relations dynamics and global economic powerhouse interests or direct support.  

And it is sort of a good thing that we get to see the candidates and can now google their backgrounds.  But the reality of the matter is that we are not the ones that vote for them as Africans.  It is our heads of state and government that do so.  Not for democratic purposes but within the ambit of global international and economic relations dynamics.  

But for now we can only appreciate that we still have the African Union and we have an understanding at both elite and national continental levels of its importance. It is complex but we can only wish the next chairperson of the African Union Commission all the best in these trying global times.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Government Enabled Water Barons: Waiting in Opportunist Profit Wings and a Disaster for Zimbabwe

 By Takura Zhangazha*

In the first calendar week of 2025, the Zimbabwe government announced its intention to privatize water in the capital city of Harare. 

The minister for local government, Daniel Garwe, in a recent press conference said the following,

“Last week Friday, we were given the green light to privatise water services. We are now in the process of inviting private sector players, both local and international, to bring proposals, expressions of interest. These are going to be unsolicited bids. We want somebody with the capacity to engineer, to procure, to construct and manage the finance. That’s the model that we are working on. Engineering, procurement, construction, management and finance.”

He indicated that the processes of making this a reality had already begun when he added,

“These are unsolicited bids. So, as we speak, we’ve already received about five expressions of interest from local players and three from international players. So, it’s work in progress. By end of next week, we would have identified the most suitable people that have applied and appointed them, at least signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), and then a Memorandum of Agreement…we want by the end of this month (January 2025) to have dealt with the issue of water in Harare”

For many a progressive and accountability activist the question that may immediately emerge is one of procurement and tender procedures.  And of course a blind worship of capitalism in its local neo-liberal formats such as the misplaced ‘ease of doing business’ mantras.  More-so where it now appears that the government is now focused on privatizing the precious natural and global resource that is water. 

And no doubt there are those that have been announced as having submitted expressions of interest (whom the government only knows) that are probably waiting with bated breath to pounce on this new ‘get rich quick’ monopolization of water and its treatment for public consumption.

This is mainly for at least three reasons. 

The first being that they know the Harare water crisis context and quite literally see an opportunity to make profits based on the disastrous water treatment and management by the current Harare City Council (HCC).  In seeing this opportunity, they are, together with central government, aware of how ‘disaster capitalism’ works.  

One in which interested parties argue that the failure of a component of the state to provide a key public service can only be remedied by passing over that responsibility to private players and ‘market forces’. 

Including entering this new so called ‘water market’  with the attendant tax exemptions and concessions from central government.  And for sure there will be some sort of official launch of the first such project as we have now become familiar with when it comes to other such investment frameworks in mining and infrastructure construction. 

The second reason is linked to the first.  Essentially this move by the minister of local government is one made with a probable awareness of the political meaning of water and water supply.  And also with a keen understanding of the desperation of many a Harare resident to simply wake up with a tap that has clean running water in their homes or within their immediate vicinities. 

This desperation has led many Harare residents to seek underground water at high cost, put together mini- water collectives to put up boreholes in a number of our high density areas.  With others reverting to their political parties to at least get basic wells (covered and uncovered) to be dug at a central point (kuchibhorani).  I won't talk about the churches, their faith related boreholes and their role in this water conundrum.

So almost any immediate solution to a water crisis is welcome to many a Harare resident. 

Many have individualized their solutions to their water problems based on their own income/wealth (and occasionally boasting about it in social circles- a shocker to be hones- how can one boast about having water when others don’t.  It not as if Cholera skips houses in its occurrence). With limited consideration of the fact of the dwindling underground water supply in Harare.  You now basically have to dig deeper for your borehole. 

The third reason is that as it is, water and its provision, not only in Harare but other major cities has been undergoing what I consider to be an 'experimental commercialization'. 

In any direction of Harare there are multiple suppliers of water that many residents are using.  They have natural sources of this water that they store and transport at ridiculous cost to individual residents as and per request. With the most profitable being the richer neighbourhoods where council water is rarely supplied.   So water has already become sort of business.  

Especially with the current drought we are undergoing.  Water is sadly increasingly being viewed as a commodity and not a right.  A development that if not us but our children will rue or probably eventually fight over. 

In encapsulating these three aforementioned reasons it is fairly evident that the question of water and water supply in Harare is now patently ideological. 

This includes questions such as, "What is the right water in both its legal/constitutional or humanist sense? How equitable is the framework of its distribution both in urban and rural areas? And finally how fundamental is the role of the state, parastatals and public administration in ensuring clean water delivery in an equitable manner?"  

These questions are rarely raised in their ideological context because of a general mistrust and low expectations of the public good role of central or local government by Zimbabwe’s public.  Let alone the residents of the capital city Harare which is poised to become the optimal laboratory of the privatization of water in the country,

The alternative solutions to this are very ideologically apparent.  If water is a human right and also a human necessity for all, then it is the state’s primary obligation to ensure it is provided.   Not through the whim of profit motivated individuals or their corporate entities who can argue any one day that they do not have chemicals or financing and revert to the state for bailouts in one form or the other. 

If we improve our public administration of water, the relevant local  and central government owned public enterprises can function on the basis of revolving door funding based on generally affordable, accepted and accountable water taxation systems.  Through this we will have a much more people centered solution to the water supply crises.

But as most of us are now increasingly aware, the ‘politics of the belly’ have affected the political parties that are in charge of either central or local government.

We must rise above this and remember that water, though in need of treatment and transmission to homesteads and villages, is not invented in a factory. It is natural and every human being has an inalienable right to it.

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

(takurazhangazha.com)  

Politicised Rain and Undeclared Drought in 2025 Zimbabwe.

By Takura Zhangazha*

At the beginning of the year 2025, there is now some rain that covers broader parts of Zimbabwe. Our metrological experts had anticipated, via their own public pronouncements that it would rain significantly in early 2024 December. 

The reality of the matter is that no matter the science, the weather in Southern Africa is not as predictable as popularly anticipated. We are only receiving major rains now. 

And we are still not sure of their significance for our annual agricultural season.

Moreso if we are looking at long standing peasant farmers or those that were resettled after the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP).  

With or without the latter’s conundrum of the new land tenure system that was recently introduced by the current government around title deeds. As well as the compensation of former white farmers for their infrastructural land developments. (A matter that is historically and politically complicated and in my personal view, wrong and I have referred to this as "Replacement Capitalism")

What is apparent is that the arrival of our annual rainfall season for the year 2024-25 is no longer just about a natural seasonal event as we have always anticipated. 

A development that is increasingly felt in what we know to be our communal areas and also our FTLRP resettlement areas.  Not in an abstract way where you wait to be told by the district agricultural extension officer that there will be a drought. 

But more in a sense that when the rain does not fall as expected per calendar it affects your family’s livelihood regardless of whether you are an A1/2 or communal farmer. 

In the south of the country early crops planted in November 2024 have been reported as wilting and there are very serious problems with pastures for livestock. 

Particularly in communal areas.  The late rain that we are experiencing has also meant that the rural political economy has shifted to one that either relies on government/donor handouts for food aid or an individual family’s capacity to either have stored enough grain to wait for the next harvest. 

It has also meant key disruptions to everyday rural communal livelihoods not only for grain supply relief but also for the fact of paying for school fees, health care and other accessories that come with living in a rural area (soap, cooking oil, tomatoes, vegetables and even toilet paper).  

What is most apparent is the fact that ‘rain is political’ in Zimbabwe.  And I will explain this a bit lightly. One of the most prominent anthropologists who has studied the history of our country, Professor Joost Fontein in his book on “The Silence of Great Zimbabwe, Contested Landscapes and the Power of Heritage” shocked me with an assertion in the book that announcing the next seasons rainfall patterns was largely considered some sort of crime in Zimbabwe.  

The announcement had to come from officially sanctioned central government predictions. 

This essentially meant, given our own traditions, we were always expecting a good harvest after a drought. Especially if we consulted our ancestors and spirit mediums at the end of a previous drought.

Well, we have a previous drought and what appears to be a current one.  Hence our current government is publicly stating that we have enough staple grain stock to feed the country. 

Including the wheat we got from Russia. 

With the intention of giving the impression that the country’s worst affected provinces (mainly in the south and the west) by this late rain will be covered by government food aid.

For Zimbabweans that experienced the 1992-93 drought where we ate what was referred to as ‘yellow maize meal’ this is a nostalgic experience of uncertainty and fear.  Neither should it be re-lived.  But it should be re-thought.

Especially when the global north narrative is about climate change, global wars (Ukraine, Palestine, Sudan,  Democratic Republic of the Congo ((DRC))) and all of their impact on sustainable food/nutrition livelihoods in relation to global financialised climate and mining capital.

In the contemporary, what should be apparent for us in Zimbabwe is that the rains have not fallen as expected this season.  Unless you are on irrigated land and have the material capital (never mind financial) to demonstrate your uniqueness at farming like our current president, you are bound not to have a good harvest to sustain your family.  And this is the reality for many a number of communal and resettled farmers. 

And also unless you have a plan-B for your livestock such as buying hay and molasses, your herds will dissipate with relative ease.  

And when this happens you will not be able to use that material capital to pay school fees, buy clothes and other amenities for your children.

A situation which leads one to either rely on your immediate or extended family for financial support or borrow in perpetuity. 

I am writing this based on not only personal experience but also the view that our central government has not changed its approach to how we deal with what are no longer predictable planting seasons.  Moreso after the FTLRP. 

We are in a dilemma in which we rely on the science to tell us what will happen about ‘rain’ and then if it does not happen as planned we then make it political.

Especially if you are a ruling government where the argument is we do not control nature or argue that the ‘ancestors are angry’ (midzimu yakatsamwa). 

With a veneer of optimism that in some areas the rains fall well and that they will be able, with government assistance, be able to feed those in dire need of food aid.  As long as they are of the clear understanding of the politics that they must support. 

All we can do as Zimbabweans is no matter our religious/spiritual affiliations is pray for the rains. And to think beyond our political preferences, hard as that may be for the next distribution of maize or wheat programmes.

The only problem is that we tend to shrug our shoulders and think about ourselves, our both urban and urban individualistic families for what we consider our survival.

But the much vaunted government ‘trickle down’ economics of beneficiation of either land redistribution or urban housing and entrepreneurship are directly affected by a drought. Particularly this undeclared one.  Even if we cannot always be allowed to argue about its occurrence without risk of arrest. 

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