Elections Matter: What Happens in Between them Matters More.

 

By Takura Zhangazha*

Zimbabwean politics is as fluid as it is historically conservative.  That is it is not characterized by a specific dynamism of new political ideas beyond its existential history and culture.  Even with the advent of social media and its attendant populism. 

Our national political character and culture since independence in 1980 which we recently commemorated in Gokwe, Midlands Province, indicates the dominance of the history of our liberation struggle over our politics.  

Moreso in a period in which war veterans of the same said liberation struggle are fighting among themselves to wrestle national political power from each other.   This includes but is not limited to the recent calls for stay-aways or demonstrations by their now various factions.  But also the events that occurred in late 2017 with the ouster of Robert Mugabe.  

It’s a reality that we have to face in the now. The narrative of the liberation struggle is now evidently hegemonic and probably only challengeable either from within the ruling Zanu Pf party itself (ditto Geza and his war veterans' faction).  Or an organic counter revolutionary non-violent movement because no one wants or has encouraged war in post Unity Accord Zimbabwe.    

Any political ambiguity has emerged mainly from the ruling Zanu Pf party itself amidst its own leaders either clamouring for seats at the power and economic table based on ethnocentrism or previous roles in the liberation struggle.  And this is where the major elitist power battles in the contemporary are. 

They are not really about electoral politics.  But more about maintaining hegemony via electoral processes that in reality are not designed to change Zimbabwe’s political power and economic dynamics since the year 2000.  A year in which it countered a global neo-liberal democracy narrative around elections as a panacea for national development by undertaking what we now know as the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) in which it defied both global neoliberal perceptions of the infallibility of private property rights and also the incremental approach to resolving colonial injustices.

Zanu Pf then undertook at least two tasks by default in the aftermath of the FTLRP.  And it did so by default, that is, it was not directly intentional.  It retained a ‘democratic’ constitutional framework  as to  how the country should elect and have leaders. While secondly, creating an entirely different national political economy based on land as nationalized but behind the facade, increasingly privatized and politicized private capital. With multiple beneficiaries that would have to either remain loyal to the party or at least ensure its continued retention of power beyond globalized neo-liberal narratives.  And stubbornly, forcefully so. As is now the case with title deeds for land acquired under the FTLRP and the compensation for former white commercial farmers.

This is where the important question of elections and democracy emerges. 

Indeed we have had political opposition to Zanu Pf since national independence.  Including former Rhodesian prime minster Ian Smith who served in our post independence parliament under what was called the Conservative Alliance of Zimbabwe (CAZ).  Then followed by the maverick Edgar Tekere, former Zanu Pf secretary general who led the Zimbabwe Unity Movement (ZUM).  And also our former chief Justice Enock Dumbutshena who led what was then referred to as the Forum for Democracy in Zimbabwe (FODEZI and the charismatic war veteran Margaret Dongo who inspired  movement of independent candidates for parliament in the mid and late 1990s.

All of these historical political opposition movements were to try their best at political power via electoral processes against Zanu PF.   

They did not succeed but were part of a progressive democratic national narrative of seeking democratic electoral processes as a means of political change in Zimbabwe. 

The major electoral political and progressive change process emerged from the labour movement which was the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU). It formed what it referred to as a ‘working peoples party’, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).     

This party went on to be the main challenger of Zanu Pf’s hegemonic control over Zimbabwe since national independence.  Including for the first time historically taking away the ruling party’s majority in parliament in 2008 via elections.   

A defeat for Zanu Pf that eventually led to not only, and its important to note, the violent July 2008 presidential run-off election (please don’t forget the role of war veterans in this) and the eventual SADC led mediation process that gave us the Agreement on an Inclusive Government (GNU).  Including the revival of the post of the Prime Minister (Morgan Tsvangirai) in the executive from 2009 until 2013.

Zanu Pf however re-grouped.  It had a new political economy structured around the FTLRP, a divided opposition and retained its parliamentary majority by the time we had elections in 2013.  Thus putting paid to the fact of challenging its hegemony for the next five years. Especially via the electoral process. 

All except for the fact that its own internal divisions and the splitting of the opposition led to the ouster of Robert Mugabe in 2017.  It however did not cancel scheduled elections in 2018.  Highly contested as they were, it still won a parliamentary majority and the presidency against populist expectations. 

It was to controversially do the same in 2023 under Mnangagwa’s incumbency minus constitutional court challenges. 

So elections feature strongly in Zanu Pf’s and Zimbabwe’s political lexicon.  They are not only constitutional but also have created a new pattern of public anticipation of the transfer of power.  But they have not done so since 2000. Almost like a false consciousness that occurs regularly every five or so years.

 It is a development that makes elections quite complex in Zimbabwe’s context.  They are known as the democratic means of selecting a national government. They have not generally met populist expectations of a change of government.  They are held (for now) every five years. But it appears that they are increasingly less effective either side of the political divide.

Not because of their results.  But because of how they have become the epitome of periodical five year ‘performance, populist politics.  With religion and in particular Jesus or God included.  Together with factionalism on both sides of the political isle. 

The cyclical nature of our electoral politics have rendered them organically meaningless.  Not only because in between them (including by-elections), we as Zimbabweans are always waiting for the next cycle.   Which is a good thing.  Excpet for the fact that we rarely ask what is happening in the time-spans in between them.  

We pick political sides , remain partisan and never see the bigger picture.   Be it in Zanu PF with its multiple factions.  Or in the mainstream opposition and its continued abstract metamorphosis.

To conclude, there is a sense that elections, as universally accepted as they are as best democratic practice in Zimbabwe and globally are not reflecting the meaning of what should be democracy for all of us. 

This is a controversial point to make but it is also a global question about their progressiveness. Including in the assumed bastions of democracy that are the USA or Western Europe.

What we may need to think more deeply about is how we build progressive movements in-between elections, fortify democratic culture in society from local to central government level and create a broader organic culture of people centered counter democratic narratives.  

So true, elections matter.  What happens in between them matters more.

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

 

 

 

 

We are not Numbers. We are African and We Will Talk Back as Zimbabweans.

By Takura Zhangazha*

There is an ease with which we as Zimbabweans refuse to discuss international/foreign aid to our  national existential circumstances.  And here I am not yet talking about the Private Voluntary Organisations Act (PVOA) signed into law last Friday.  

Together with self censorship about what the recent closure of the United States Agency of International Development (USAID) via the current American President Trump’s executive order directive contextually means.

Or rather shockingly, the European Union (EU) ambassador to Zimbabwe’s  Jobst Van Kirchman recent weekend statement about cancelling aid to ‘governance programmes’  and what it may mean for our local civil society organisations.  Particularly those that have been assiduously working on human rights and democracy issues with EU support. 

It is a self censorship that is cautious not to upset the solidarity apple cart.  Mainly because a lot of comrades and colleagues who have been genuine progressive democracy activists are saddled with solidarity support intentions to improve the lived reality of many Zimbabweans. Even after our national independence. 

And this has been the case from Zimbabwe's liberation struggle where we interacted with many global/international partners who were in solidarity with us and our progressive causes.  

To put it simply, we have as Zimbabweans always been recipients of donor aid for many reasons. We received it for the purposes of supporting the liberation struggle.  We have received it in times of famine and we have received it in order to help countries like Mozambique, Namibia and South Africa arrive at sustainable peace.

The only time we averred from this relationship with international aid was when we were involved in the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (then Zaire) in the late 1990s. 

So Zimbabwe has always had a relationship with international aid.  Particularly left leaning progressive dimensions of it.  By the time we had the Economic Structural adjustment Programs (ESAP) which were African continent wide, we lost our bearings in relation to international relations and negotiating our place in them. 

But we all know that the global poltical economy context has changed.  There is no longer a direct ESAP.  There is now neoliberalism writ large.  Which we never thought would affect us in the distant global south.  Until USAID funding was cut to what we as Africans and Zimbabweans always assumed was humanitarian solidarity. Or when even the EU also has decided to reduce bilateral funding to good governance and democracy programmes as of old.   

What complicates this matter is the fact of an assumption by international partners including the USA government and other global north governments that we as Africans, while having worked with them, and grateful for their multi-faceted solidarities, that we cannot talk or argue back against what it turns out were non-contextual development ideas. 

And this is not a complicated argument to make.  What has happened with the real changes to aid and progressive solidarity support from the Global North to the Global South is tragic. Or when vice verasa we in the Global South support causes that relate to tackling global ‘techno feudalism” only to be shocked by the fact that electoral results indicate how racist Global North societies are. 

What needs to now happen is that Africa needs to re-lecture itself. Historically and in the contemporary. 

Whereas we used to rely on the progressive wisdom of for example the United Nations (UN) we now  have to revert to a new Pan Africanism.  One that is beyond the false hope that had been previously offered by Thabo Mbeki (South Africa), Tony Blair( United Kingdom), Abdel Aziz Bouteflika (Algeria), Bill Clinton(USA) and Abdoulaye Wade (Senegal). And what they then referred to via much pomp and fanfare as the ‘third way’. 

In our naivety as Africans we thought we were global equals. 

It turns out that the reality of the matter, as Africans and Zimbabweans, with Donald Trump as the USA president we are not.   

Despite our ‘third way’ assumptions of an ‘African Renaissance’ as initially argued by Mbeki. We have now been shown the reality of what is global and international relations.  And our over-reliance on assuming their stability and continuity as Africans.

With a list that is awkward in an emerging multi-polar world for Africa.  Be it on the Chinese and Russian side or in our Zimbabwean government case where we seem to be leaning to the Americans.  At least business wise. 

What is imperative about Zimbabwe’s intelligentsia, in finance, political, health, gender, agricultural youth and entrepreneurship programmes that were funded by international donors is the key element of understanding emergent global funding realities. And realizing that we are on our own. Inclusive of changing our lifestyles to be more realistic.  Even if we get donor support.  And remembering to value progressive democratic causes over material wealth. 

We do know that after Trump the world and assumptions of solidarity will never be the same.  Neither in the short or long term.  What is beginning to rule the roost are the politics of money and power.  But as Africans, we have the revolutionary option of rethinking our Pan Africanism beyond the trade tariffs (they were never ours anyway).  And rethinking what China means to us in the global economy that is where we are in the global south. 

What we cannot be anymore is to be slaves to a global political economy that views us as a market. 

We are not numbers. We are people.

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

 

 

 

Conversing with Zimbabwe's Rural Life: Bikita and Being

 By Takura Zhangazha *

I am from Bikita, Masvingo province in Zimbabwe. I was born there. But I grew up in Harare with the regular school  holiday visit during public holidays. As instructed and directed  by my mother and father.

 Upon attaining adulthood and sort of passing my Advanced Level courses and arriving at the University of Zimbabwe (UZ) I did a Political Sciences course on the Theory and Practice of Public Policy research project in Bikita.

I went to the Nyika growth point satellite office for the Bikita  Rural District Council and got the necessary information for my short term study. And  at the same time my father, Teacher Francis Zhangazha was in a bank queue at the Post Office Savings Bank (POSB) collecting his savings book recorded salary. We had met on a Tanda Tavaruva/Mhunga  bus that day.  And happily accompanied each other to Nyika growth point.  And no he did not buy me a beer that day.

 This was in 1998 and also at least 7 years after my own father, his younger brother Ignatious Zhangazha had passed away.  And where he had  already decided  (as my mother explains) to be buried at his own homestead in Tamirepi village. 

 This was a homestead he had acquired via  his elder brother Teacher Franics Zhangazha who persuaded the local headman to give him and now by defualt his children/us the land on which we  can live without being questioned. 

 When my father passed my mother and uncles kept the land for us. She did not have to but chose to do so. 

We then inevitably grew up knowing that Bikita is home. Even as we grew up in Harare. And went to Mission schools that both our parents in their devout Catholicism valued greatly. 

 In this growing up we did not know that the question of our rural and urban upbringing would come back to haunt us. Not as a horror story that is seen in movies. But as a lived reality where we are faced with the primary question of the fact that we are, as Zimbabweans, saddled with a dual consciousness.  And this is the key issue of the matter.

 A majority of us black Zimbabweans are rural by upbringing. And where we claim we are both combined urban and rural in the minority, we still want to be urban. And be recognised for the material success that comes with the same said urban success and recognition. 

 We are forgetting our own historical realities of where we have come from. And who we are. 

 Including the fact of as is now generally said in times of crisis (funerals) and even happiness (weddings), " ngatimirire vakomana or vasikana vari Harare, Mutare, Bulawayo, Jonhi kana ku UK ne Canada". 

 The key issue however is the fact of the reality of our rural, urban and Diaspora contradictions.

 With the key point being we have to recognise our origins as important.  No matter where we now are. And how we cannot change that particular historical reality.

 As alluded to earlier, I am from Bikita. And I recognise that basic historical fact. 

 One that I cannot and do not want to wish away. Even if I tried.

 Just like a cde from Gokwe, Tsholotsho, Nyanga or Gwanda cannot  wish their historical realities and existence away. 

 What however remains in focus is the fact of balancing our rural life experiences with our urban and also Diaspora ones. 

 When we read Charles Mungoshi's "Waiting for the Rain".  Or Dambudzo Marechera's "House of Hunger" the prominent narratives were about the contradictions between the urban, rural and colonially induced poverty and again contradictory national consciousness induced by cultural colonialism. 

 What has since happened is the fact that we cannot wish the 'rural' away. It's intrinsic to who we are as a Zimbabwean people.

Even if colonially designed. And countered by our national liberation struggle. And then reinforced by post colonial education and administrative systems that oddly we are still using to this day.

 My conversations with the Zimbabwean rural life are more aboit the recognti9n of colonial migration and how to handle it.  

 Rural cdes are not at all dull. They know who tbey are and they now how to handle their challenges with or without central government. 

 To conclude I mentioned Bikita my own rural home because I have an historical sense of belonging to it. Not only by having been born there but because there are very many Zimbabweans that do not come from the same historical background.

 Our historical native reserves remain intrinsic to who we are. Historically. But I have no idea what the future holds. 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Takura Zhangazha

Email: kuurayiwa@gmail.com

Skype: kuurayiwa1

Blog: takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com

Twitter: @TakuraZhangazha

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Was it Too Soon or Too Late? ZanuPf, Geza and Monday 31 March 2025.

By Takura Zhangazha *

I have recently made very general comments about Zanu Pf succession politics as they are occurring in 2025. And their newfound contestations about current president  ED Mnangagwa's term extension beyond 2028.

I have done this on social media and in one or two instances for mainstream media. 

This succession question in Zanu Pf  has caused a very public and social media motivated  factionalism within the ruling party's war veterans of the liberation struggle. 

But also at their elite leadership and likely their own presidium/presidential level. That is, at least allegedly power contestations between Mnangagwa and his first deputy president Retired General C. Chiwenga.

Especially after this week's Monday 31 March 2025 abortive protests against the current government. 

 Where in particular they have been playing various war veteran (Zanla/Zipra), ethnic, economic or other interests/factions against the other.   

 With the same said interests in also full or semi flight into various nodes of the patronage and potential wealth that the ruling party Zanu Pf's factionalism can offer them. Individually, ethnically and as a combination of both, factionally. 

This initially internal Zanu Pf factionalism has after Monday 31 March 2025 taken on a more populist angle. With at least the two major cities in Zimbabwe (Harare and Bulawayo) experiencing what eventually became a default stay away by their residents. 

Either in fear or again default support of one war veteran Blessed Geza who took to social media like a duck to water in order to spread his message of declaring that Mnangagwa and his government must go. 

While there were no major protests as envisaged, the country took both physical and social media notice. As though we were all in a movie theatre waiting for some main actors to pull a game changer. 

That did not happen. 

Not least because there is a recognition that whatever fights are happening in Zanu Pf elitist circles, they are not national in their strictest popular impression with the Zimbabwean people. 

With an underlying subtle but again popular assumption that when elephants fight it is the grass that suffers. As it did in the 2017 coup-not-a-coup that ushered in the current second republic government. 

For many Zimbabweans it is too early to leave the political movie theatre until all of this plays itself out. Almost like waiting to see if either James Bond or an assumed villain wins in the end. When we know at the back of our minds that this is almost safely scripted in Zanu Pf. And not in the country. 

Though even in Zanu Pf, there is a scramble to ensure that their chosen main actors emerge victorious. With or without the people of Zimbabwe. 

And here is the irony for Zanu Pf supporters and our national liberation war veterans. 

Their attempt to nationalise their internal, elitist and materialist political factionalism may have brief popular traction but it is nationally and politically unsustainable. 

Mainly because it lacks progressive ideological grounding and is highly personalised and highly cultist with the assistance of national, and again populist, religious leaders. And if they continue on this path, as the Shona adages "vacharumwa nechekuchera."

But this is were we are as a country. As you read this, pick any Zanu Pf afficionado, supporter or functionary and ask them what their internal fights are all about. They cannot give you a straight answer apart from mentioning the importance of either the incumbent Mnangagwa or his deputy Chiwenga. 

Similarly pick any die hard supporter of the somewhat mainstream opposition political party the CCC and ask them where they are placed in all of this. They will likely tell you about their 'floating' leadership waiting for God's call to return. Or give a constitutional argument about why they are against a 2030 term  extension. While not preparing not only for by-elections but forgetting that technically the next best chance for them to acquire power is in 2028. 

Where you add the dire state of our Zimbabwean national political economy to this you have a national consciousness conundrum. One in which as a citizen even if you pick a side it is not because you want to. But you have to. And in this you may always side on the material as opposed to the democratic value and principle side. An almost survival mode within the ambit of politics one can only observe, not influence. While waiting for the next social media post. 

I titled this particular blog, "Was it too Soon, Or Too Late? Zanu Pf, Geza and 31 March 2025" in remembrance of Samora Machel's question in an interview on why Mozambique decided to support Zimbabwe even after his own country had  become independent. With his key answer to the interviewer being No it was not too soon to help Zimbabwe to be free.'

And in a subsequent official state visit to independent Zimbabwe, he asked the then recent war veterans of our liberation struggle  such as cde Mujuru, Mnangagwa as to if the struggle was continuing, what was it against after independence? 

Many of you reading this know what Machel said in rhetorical response. The struggle continued as he said  "against ignorance, superstion, exploitation,  misery, hunger, so that someday we will all be equal"

Monday 31 March 2025 failed to meet this basic ideological standard. No matter the attire that war veteran Geza wore or the reposte that came from clearly capitalist Zanu Pf spokesperson Mutsvangwa recently. 

I will conclude by stating that what happened on 31 March 2025 was indicative of a false national consciousness that did not understand via our war veterans that there was never too soon a moment as argued by Machel. And that they have arrived late to what should have been an historical national changing moment. Decades ago before they became direct players in Zanu Pf succession politics after the 2000 Fast Track Land Reform Programme and in 2017. 

They should have done what they are factionally trying to do now many years ago. 

If you ask them, now, what does the struggle continue against? Very few of them will tell you, as they once did, against hunger, poverty, miserior, superstition or political ignorance. When they should be telling us it continues for organic Zimbabwean democracy. 

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