An Apology from a Human and Political Rights Activist from Zimbabwe (We Will Recover)

By Takura Zhangazha*

We, and by this I mean comrades of the 1997-2000 political activist crew, get laughed at a lot. The key issue is always '"Ndobva zvadii paya?"

We were the frontrunners of the nascent Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in Zimbabwe. 

Our parents knew that we were there on the frontlines of challenging Zanu Pf hegemony. 

They sort of supported us but also warned us to be sure/certain of what we were doing. 

In youthful bravado we insisted that we have it right. 

And that we were going to bring the country back to a democratic path under the leadership of the late Morgan Tsvangirai. 

True to intention in the year 2000 some of us became Members of Parliament and councillors in local governemnt. 

In 2009 some of us became ministers in central government because of the inclusive government mediated by Thabo Mbeki via the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC).

The cdes that went into government at that time had a clear task of enabling a transition from Zanu Pf's long duree rule. To a more democratic Zimbabwe. 

They failed. 

They got co-opted into state largesse and corruption and lost their political moral compass which led to them losing the 2013 general elections. 

I will personally admit that by that time we had lost the popular values of the struggle against Zanu Pf's autocracy. 

We had become comfortable in our own false consciousness skins. 

And Morgan Tsvangirai's populist attitude did not help bring us back to a much needed organic national consciousness. 

Even after he passed away the emerging national opposition leaders such as Nelson Chamisa, Tendai Biti, Elias Mudzuri, Charlton Hwende, Sengezo Tshabangu, Thoko Khuphe, Job Sikhala, Douglas Mwonzora, Lovemore Madhuku, Jacob Ngaribvume among many others lost their way. 

They either became too religious or pandered to a global narrative of democracy as merely being electoral. And seeking an approval from the 'white gaze'. 

As a long-standing pro-democracy activist in Zimbabwe, I therefore feel it is prudent that I apologise. 

I have to apologise for the fact that we did not try hard enough to challenge Zanu Pf's undemocratic hegemony. 

I also have to apologise that we didnt organise the mainstream MDC better beyond Morgan's hold on it.

Including the fact that when he passed things fell spectacularly politically apart. 

My apology is also a recognition of the necessity of recovery. 

And the necessity of optimism. 

We now know that Zanu Pf has come to a general political persuasion of permanent rule. 

In fact it is in its own 'self belief' mode of an  assumption of permanent political perpetuity.

With the arrogance of assuming there is never going to be another MDC or as nationally important a leader such as Morgan Tsvangirai to rival it.

Hence they have arrogantly amended the national constitution to extend the current presidents term of office. 

Including making our national Parliament an electoral college for the next president. 

We therefore see the emergence of an oligarchy. 

Both political and economic. 

This being an attempt at creating a permanent ruling class via the Mnangagwa presidency but without a clear equivalent Chinese ideological focus. In its pepertuity.

But I am sure that pro-democracy and social justice movements will recover. 

They may be down and out in an Orwellian sense but the nodes of a progressive counter-hegemonic struggle are there.

 The mustard seed was sown. Ideologically. 

Most of the doubters are now embedded in the current state system and its patronage. With a majority of them being tenderpreneurs that are paid slowly. 

Be it in infrastructural development or state related financial and event management activities.

The key point however is that what the current Zimbabwean government is doing, even without a clear opposition party, the people are not only seeing. They are also remembering. 

As am I. 

The targeting of vendors, destruction of houses, the lack of affordable public health services and the privatisation of education and public transport are unforgettable matters.  

As progressive activists for the equitable betterment of Zimbabwe, we may be down and out. But I promise, we will recover. 

*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity

The Urgency of a Renewed Progressive People Centered Pan Africanism

In these trying times for Pan Africanism one occassionally reverts back to its intellectual origins. 

Or at least how one encountered it. 

From the intellectual writings and organic activism of the African Americans such as W.E. du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X. 

Or the amazing writings and again actions of for example the African Carribeans George Padmore and Walter Rodney. 

We can also historically crossover to the minutes of the  Pan Africanist Congresses that occurred in London and Paris in years 1900, 1919, 1921, 1923 and 1945. 

I may have missed some but the last one of that period in 1945 gave us on the African continent the likes of Nkrumah (Ghana) , Cabral (Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde), Kenyatta (Kenya), Neto (Angola) and Nyerere (Tanzania). 

But even before the political struggles there were the cultural ones. 

We had our critical anti-colonial authors, musicians and religious leaders. 

These included those that were griots or spirit mediums during our initial anti-colonial struggles such as those that shaped for example the Maji Maji rebellions in Tanzania. 

The first Chimurenga in Zimbabwe. 

The Mau Mau rebellion as led by Dedan Kimathi and others in Kenya. 

And in the post second world war era those that shaped Pan African liberatory and literary discourse like Amos Tutuola, Chinua Achebe and later on the likes of Ngugi wa Thiongo, Peter Abrahams, Bessie Head and many youthful others like Dambudzo Marechera. 

But the point of this article is not the historicity of Pan Africanism

It is more about its future. 

One that however must be grounded in the same said history of progressive struggles against the repression of racism, colonialism and a renewed neo-colonialism.

But more significantly review the contemporary versions and understandings of what it Pan Africanism now means. 

I am sure I have written about Pan Africansim before. And perhaps in a very Fanonian and Nyerereist sense. 

But its most dominant version, which I disagree with is its African Rennaisance 'Mbekite' (Thabo Mbeki, former South African president) version. 

Mainly because of its comparatively easy desire to integrate Africa into a 'third way' global neoliberalism. 

Even if it sometimes had moments of brilliance such as having prevented an invasion of Zimbabwe in 2008 by Tony Blair (UK) and George Bush (USA) based on their doctrine of 'liberal interventionism'. As they did in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

What is however now obtaining is a convoluted assumption of Pan Africanism being about 'capitalism' and in my own country Zimbabwe's case 'the ease of doing business'. 

Or generally, an abstract, distant seat at the table for geographically 'African' businesses/even oligarchs at the seat of global (western) capitalist tables. Inclusive of hobnobing with techno-feudalists such as Musk for a dollar out of the African peoples 15 cents! 

All without an organic understanding of why Pan Africanism was an urgent ideologically lived struggle for the continent beyond geographical placement. 

So we need a renewed, revived and organic Pan Africanism. 

One grounded in our own historical realities but primed to meet the past with the present and the future. 

One that understands that technologies such as artifical intelligence (AI) are both the equivalent of a Maxim gun but also an enabler of better human development like a solar energy panel. 

We need a Pan Africanism that responds more to global realties with a people-centered lense. 

And pro-actively prevents proxy wars for rare-earth minerals and talks back to the global north's still imperialistic and racist foreign policies. 

Even where we argue for Pan African self-reliance we would do well to remember the resolution of the United Nations General Assembly (sponsored by Ghana) (Resolution 217A III) on reparations for slavery.

We are, as Africans, owed these reparations not only for slavery/the slave trade but also for colonialism and its devastating afyer effects via our loss of agency.

So we cannot argue simplistically about 'self-reliance' when we do not analyse why we are where we are in the first place. 

Ask any African crossing the Sahel why they are going to Europe and most times they will give an explanation of having been told that thats where life is better. Even as  the mineral wealth of where they are going comes from their own countries of origin.

We therefore have to re-confront a racist global imperialistic infrastructure for what it exactly is via a revived Pan Africanism.

Moreso in an age of AI and clear oligarchal techno-feudalism.

And above all, we must remain optimistic. We shall overcome. 

Only if we retain our own Pan Africanist consciousness.

*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity

In Defence of Zimbabwe's Continuing Struggle for Further Democracy

By Takura Zhangazha*

Back in February 2008, before the same year's disputed harmonised general elections that gave us an inclusive government by 2009, some cdes (I cannot name them without their persmission) and I decided we needed a Zimbabwe People's Charter.

We had read on the South African anti-apartheid struggle "Peoples Charter" history ( it was very fashionable at the time) and decided to sort of contextually, organically structure the same for our own country's -post independence further democratisation struggles.

Not in a legalistic way. But more in a visionary but ideological format. 

And also as an attempt to bring a run-away working people's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party as led by the late great trade unionist Morgan Tsvangirai to heel.

We then (and still) understood ourselves to be social democrats or outright socialists!

You know those that wanted to balance the progressive interests of the people with those of neo-liberal private capital in a Mbekite "African Rennaisance" sense. 

It was a Pan Africanist 'fad' at that time. 

And in any event we, also again at that time, liked Thabo Mbeki's (former South African president and SADC appointed mediator on Zimbabwe's 2008 political crisis ) version of a modernised, contemporary, pro-democracy Pan Africanism. 

Until accusations of him siding with the late Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe came to the fore as he led the SADC mediation team after the still disputed 2008 election results where we had to have an opposition boycotted presidential run-off election.

But prior to that, in February 2008 as cdes we had pushed on with what we considered a very important Zimbabwe Peoples Charter.

Despite a shoe-string budget, multiple and nationally representative Zimbabwean civil society organisations came up with what we considered a progressively balanced but left leaning Zimbabwe Peoples Charter.

The event that endorsed this happened at what we still know to be the Rainbow Towers (former Sheraton Hotel) in Harare in February of 2008 prior to the harmonised elections scheduled for the same year. At least 3000 people attended. 

Given the multiple global private capital interests in the economic future of Zimbabwe after the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) we were navigating difficult ideological waters. 

We had for an example the remnants of the Commercial Farmers Union of Zimbabwe (CFUZ), the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) representing the right. 

With the General and Agricultural Plantation Workers Union of Zimbabwe (GAPWUZ), the broader and most powerful workers union in post independent Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) representing the left all supporting us without reservation. 

But for different reasons.

We also had the the 'never say die' attitude of a progressive Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZINASU) accompanied by the then radical feminist organisation, Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) and also the then nascent Women's Coalition of Zimbabwe (WCZ) which to us was a legitimate crossover from the Association of Womens Clubs of Zimbabwe. 

Among them were many other progressive organisations, in no particular order of preference, such as the International Socialist Organisation of Zimbabwe (ISO-Zimbabwe), the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition (CZC), the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN), the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR), the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (ZimRights) and the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA-Zimbabwe) where I worked at that time. 

We suffered but we continued in this peaceful non-violent and human rights based struggle for a more democratic Zimbabwe. 

Cdes were arrested, beaten, abducted and in some cases killed for their progressive activism. 

But we knew we were not leading an outright revolution. 

We were doing what at that time was contemporary pro-democracy public advocacy. 

With elections as a key instrument for delivering progressive political change. In an almost given unversal format of pro-democracy activism.

Including in the phase of the then SADC mediated inclusive government of 2009-2013. 

Until the then MDC morphed into a bastion of a global neo-liberal ideological outlook. 

Contrary to the history of its own working peoples movement genesis (beginning/origin). 

What we did not see/envision was the political pushback of the neo-liberal and state-capitalism establishment. 

That is to say, we rarely thought of the historical state and global capitalist underbelly that was also watching us and making its own plans to retain its economic and ideological hegemony/ supremacy. 

As is now apparent the ruling establishment co-opted some of us ( in Parliament, local government or national commissions) and re-invented itself and survived to the extent of now talking about how to manages its assumed permanence. 

With money, 'zvigananda'/ 'mbinga' culture, religion and a 'trickle down' national political economy as its populist neo-liberal ideological functional pretext. 

But we have come full circle in the struggle for the further democratisation of Zimbabwe. 

And we must atone for our own sins in how we have let it come to this. 

The progressive labour and student movements are faltering. 

The ideological arguments are becoming vague. Even if I personally remain a socialist.

And while the people of Zimbabwe are no longer imbued with any collective political optimism but materialist individualism.

But as my high school basketball coach, Blah Roderick, used to shout at us in his Arcadia accent, "YOU'VE GOST TO RECOVER EXE!!"

The struggle for a more democratic, people centered Zimbabwe continues. Its in a bad space and place at the moment. 

But I am optimistic it will reconfigure itself with nationally motivated agency and a required urgency beyond personalities or racist attacks about international solidarity. 

Even if the ruling establishment seeks to create an oligarchy.

*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity