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)