Zimbabwe’s
Complex Balance of Forces: Thinking Beyond the Cosmopolitans
Tinashe L. Chimedza and Tamuka C. Chirimambowa*
In the past few weeks Dr Nkosana Moyo launched the
Alliance for People’s Agenda, Advocate Fadzai Mahere announced she will stand
as an independent, and Arthur Mutambara at his book launch in Bulawayo toyed
with the possibility of a return to politics. Within the ruling elites the
fissures are boiling leading to a showdown between Jonathan Moyo and the Genarillismo. Mugabe and the President’s
office have catapulted the party-state’s existence to the ‘youth bulge’ hence
the emphasis of ‘meet the youth’ and generous land distribution to the youth in
the form of 20,000 residential lands. It
has been a maelstrom for our friend and brother Dr Alex Magaisa who was caught
up with the factional gladiators at the The
Plot Café – but we know that the learned doctor is made of sterner stuff
and an independent mind. What is at stake is simple: state power. The question
which arises and we have hinted before in previous Gravitas issues, is how do the old and new political movements
measure up under the contemporary balance of forces. We pose four questions: how does this
political project differentiate itself from the post-nationalist movement like
the MDC or the radical nationalist coercive hegemony of the ruling party-state;
secondly how do these political projects organize themselves ‘strategy &
tactics’ wise to assail the party-state
networks; thirdly and historically political movements generally emerge from a
process of protracted contestation which feeds, mobilises and builds some form
of class solidarity and in the case of APA there is no such history, and fourthly Zimbabwe’s terrain is already
dominated by political formations, civil society and social movements of some
kind how do these emerging ‘independent’ candidates and APAs relate to them?
Fig 1.0 Dr Nkosana Moyo at the World Economic
Forum: Old Bottle with New Wine ?
Fleeting
with Ephemeral Modernity: the flight of Political Economy Analysis
It was very significant that APA was launched at
Meikles Hotel. For now, we will put the history of Thomas Meikles aside and
confine ourselves to the very worrying infantile political adventurism of
Zimbabwe’s advanced intellectual class. This adventurism is not limited and or
monopolized by Dr Nkosana Moyo, it is a malady which fatally infects not
Zimbabwe but Africa’s advanced intellectual class. Having walked down the
cobbled streets of London, felt the electricity in Washington DC or walked down
to the chiming bells of
Prague, they return home and do not for a moment
think that they are a minority within a minority. That reality is a complex
lingering of the colonial-settler political economy which pushed the urban
enclave into existence and had its fortunes tied to the colonial metropole.
With the advent of independence, suddenly Muchadeyi
Masunda can sit on the board of London based corporates, Arthur goes to Oxford
with the Royals and Nkosana Moyo sits on the boards of global corporates with
real capitalist power.Feted with luncheons abroad, donned in cosmopolitan and
almost imperial gowns, with access to global networks of power and paraded as
the acceptable face of ‘African modernity’ this class can almost degenerate
into a comic caricature of its possible potential. When they return home their
lenses fail to understand the obtaining material and social conditions of the
homeland as well as the objective balance of forces. Unwittingly, they long for
the homeland to follow closely in the
steps of the metropoles and this logically leads not to Mai Misodzi Hall or
Stanley Hall or an open land in Dotito but straight to Meikles Hotel. Then watch the Fannonian tragedy which
ensues: interviews on BBC, CNN, Twitter, and Facebook gives them a sense of
over-exaggerated popularity and power divorced from the ordinary man/woman or
peasant farmer who goes on with life almost un-intruded.
Fig 1.1 Arthur Mutambara: Real Power Remains
Elusive
These African cosmopolitans remain very few as the
African society continues to be trapped in Peter Ekeh’s ‘two publics’; where
one is modern but composed of a privileged few and the other ‘primordial’ but
composed of the majority. Convincing or penetrating this primordial majority is
the crux that the cosmopolitan Africans have to crack. In one episode of this tragicomedy, in
cabinet we gather, a very learned Professor presented a very intricate
infrastructure project meant to create billions of value and on seating down
was puzzled that the whole cabinet nodded heads and moved on to discuss
fervently and very intensely whether a recently appointed Chieftainship was
correct as predicted by the medium spirit of the concerned clan. On exiting the
cabinet meeting he huffed and puffed to a colleague about these ‘peasants’. Too
much for the modernist to gulp down his sieve of reason, science and logic.
Here is what we are simply saying: the urban sector
which is very tiny has had extended brushes with the international political
economy either first as colonized, second as neo-colonial and then generally as
part of the liberal cosmopolitan dream. Yet the stubborn rural economy
dominated by peasant subsistence remains and with it the rapid urbanization
process has multiplied the ghettos which survive outside the formal economy. Professor
David Moore has warned that Africa’s rising authoritarianism or the ‘arc of
authoritarianism’ is a direct consequence of liberal democracy’s unfulfilled
promises. Dr Simba Makoni, Dr Nkosana Moyo, Dr Manyika, Advocate Fadzai Mahere,
Prof Arthur Mutambara and even to some extend our comrade Tendai Biti find
themselves inserted in this puzzling international cosmopolitan dream. This is
the slippery slope of modernity: one night you are dining in New York, one
night you are having coffee in Brussels and the other night you are hosted at
Westminster, brushing shoulders with the world’s business and political elite,
yet when you return to the motherland, the ‘peasant’ remains trapped in what
Mamdani called the ‘bifurcated state’ which the party-states exploits fully
especially by state benevolence. Therefore, slowly and fatally, without knowing
it, the political projects that the African cosmopolitans become part of and
initiate want to jump millennia: the seduction is powerfully
infectious, yet very suicidal.
Radical
Coercive Nationalism & Social Democrats:
Now What?
It is important to note that the MDC and ZANU PF
have had some distinguishable ideological differentiations. In the
post-colonial context ZANU PF shifted from scientific/state-socialism to
neo-liberal Economic Structural Adjustment Programmes (ESAP) and over the past
few decades especially after 2000 has re-generated a radical very extractive
nationalist project. The central project is the retention of power, they forged
some kind of a re-distribution agenda (land reform and economic
indigenisation), yet more than the ideas and policy it has been the state
institutions used to ward off democratization. The MDC emerged as a
post-nationalist and social democratic project anchored in social and economic
justice. The question which arises is how are these political projects: the PDP,
Mavambo, APA and NPP building an alternative ideological framework so as to
challenge the existing political parties or is it just a matter of
personalities ? In the case of Nkosana
Moyo he haps on this very damp idea that all we need is ‘technocratic solutions’
and by that prophesy Zimbabwe’s is on the path to a modern advanced capitalist
economy. Zimbabwe’s stagnation or what Masunungure and Shumba called ‘mirred in
transition’ demands much more than ‘small government’ (like less cabinet
ministers) as promised by Dr Nkosana Moyo. Looked at from this perspective Dr
Nkosana Moyo’s policies are no departure from those elaborated by the MDC, the
NPP, PDP, NCA and even Transform Zimbabwe leaving a question as to what this
brilliant physician is up to. Perhaps his confession that he ‘respects’ one
Emerson Mnangagwa is an admission of the things we must expect from him if he
is elected?
Movements
as Organic Contestations: nationalism and post-nationalism in Zimbabwe
Often political and or social movements that become
very powerful are often a logical development or culmination of decades of
social and political contestation which have long been simmering. The political
institution in this case, the political party becomes a necessary and
reasonable development which mutates from the organic contestations. The
political parties of liberation like NDP, ZANU and ZAPU were a logical
development of national discontent which had always simmered between the
settler garrison and the large vast of the population. This national discontent
morphed from the strikes, the peasant grievances on land, the urban
insurrections against pass laws and so on. Firstly, these slowly expressed
themselves in petitions, then in strikes and eventually developed into militant
nationalism. Secondly, these nationalist movements became powerful because they
expressed social and political power that was grounded in the majority
population. The MDC in 1999 was a logical development of Zimbabwe’s disillusionment
with the post-colonial nationalist project which had become exhausted and the
party-state was now very extractive and anti-developmental.
Chiefly the labor movement, students, women,
resident groups, intellectuals, the landless movement, churches and other
sections of society slowly allied together and built a social democratic
alternative. The point here is that: the MDC was not conjured in a vacuum, it
was forged through solidarity actions and real confrontations with those in
charge of the party-state. There was no road for a middle ground, it is either
one was with the status quo or with the labour backed political formation. In the case of these cosmopolitan projects
one gathers their few friends, in a hotel usually, and then proceeds to go out
there and mobilize the people who have no sense of solidarity with the project,
no sense of identity with the project and this is simple: when the citizen has
been detained in daily grinds of struggle against the party-state the elites
have often been absent and there is no organic relation at all. Built on quick
sand the elite political projects melt like butter in the summer sun.
Rethinking
the Balance of Forces: The Possibilities for Confluences?
In a recent article Arnold Chamunogwa (Newzimbabwe,
05.07.2017) questioned whether Dr Nkosana Moyo’s APA or envisaged political
project will be able to engage and or mobilise social forces that are outside
the elite political orbits of Meikles Hotel. This is a serious question and we
think that the question paused by the brother requires an elaboration of
Zimbabwe’s balances of forces and the
implication this has on any political formation seeking state power. By balance
of forces we mean simply this: given the actually existing political economy
one has to ponder: which are the social, political, cultural and economic
classes with the political and social power to influence and or directly determine who rules Zimbabwe. Firstly, the labour movement has declined
after years of de-industrialization and lack of capital investment; secondly,
the student movement has whittled under defunding and nationalist
authoritarianism; thirdly, the NGOs and churches that were natural allies of
the opposition are on the dip in popularity and fundamentally, the land reform
programme has shifted the social base as ‘new’ (very unstable) social classes
emerged.
The new social base is now dominated by variegated
social classes: in the urban areas, the informal economy which is un-unionized
has emerged; on the resettled farms, a new class of farmers has emerged; on the
mining arena, artisanal miners (makorokoza) have emerged and cross-border
traders & vendors have emerged as the ordinary citizen search for
livelihoods. Interestingly, at a recent SAPES Conference on Post-Liberation
Movements in Southern Africa, Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa spoke
glowingly of the Informal Economy as one of the best thing to happen to
Zimbabwe because it destroyed the base of the MDC. Yet, benign to his
admiration of the informal economy is the full knowledge that it creates
precarious conditions in which the dominant social classes will always require
the benevolence of the dictatorship to eke its livelihood: hence, scratch my
back and I scratch yours. These are some of the challenges that Zimbabwe’s
cosmopolitans have to deal with in either their individual or collective form.
On the other hand, the security apparatus has remained hitched to the
party-state for its own reproduction.
1.2 MDC Rally: Will the cosmopolitans be with ‘the
people’?
Essentially, if the experiments by Zimbabwe’s
‘advanced intellectual class’ or what we have termed the cosmopolitans is to
impact the political scene they need to re-think how they stretch their imagination
beyond the ‘modern’ part of the country which they are well versed with. More recently the agitation, by very
brilliant people, for an National Transitional Authority (NTA) has softly
slithered into the political dustbins because the architects of the idea
ignored the question of balance of forces and or were not even concerned about
building a political project which will make the NTA the logical development
from the sharpening of political contestations. This will mean thinking
reflexively about what makes sense to re-settled farmers; to the informal
economy; to the rural political economy and importantly present some sort of
cross-class solidarity project which goes beyond their comfort zones. As Frantz
Fanon warned: our intellectual cosmopolitans will need more than a ‘bookish’
acquaintance with the African political economy.
Tinashe L. Chimedza and Tamuka C. Chirimambowa* are
the Editors of Gravitas. Contact gravitas@ipazim.com for feedback and expanding the debate.
New
Publication Alert.
Crisis, Identity and Migration in Post-Colonial Southern
Africa
H.H.
Magidimisha, N.E. Khalema, L. Chipungu, T. Chirimabmowa, T. Chimedza (Eds.)
This book offers a socio-historical analysis of migration and the possibilities of regional integration in Southern Africa. It examines both the historical roots of and contemporary challenges regarding the social, economic, and geo-political causes of migration and its consequences (i.e. xenophobia) to illustrate how ‘diaspora’ migrations have shaped a sense of identity, citizenry, and belonging in the region. By discussing immigration policies and processes and highlighting how the struggle for belonging is mediated by new pressures concerning economic security, social inequality, and globalist challenges, the book develops policy responses to the challenge of social and economic exclusion, as well as xenophobic violence, in Southern Africa. This timely and highly informative book will appeal to all scholars, activists, and policy-makers looking to revisit migration policies and realign them with current globalization and regional integration trends. http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319592343
Special
issue call for papers from the Journal of
Public Administration and Development Alternatives
A
re-imagined Zimbabwe: trajectories for economic recovery, political
reconstruction and national development
Guest Editor
Dr.
Sandra Makwembere, University of Limpopo, South Africa
Background
and purpose of special issue
This special issue seeks
to offer scholarly thought from different disciplines on the challenges and
opportunities in Zimbabwe related to economic recovery, political
reconstruction and national development. In recent years, Zimbabwe’s extensive
economic hardships have somewhat stabilised since dollarization in 2009 but
have not entirely died out. The
economic growth potential, for example in agriculture and mining, could be
supported not only for the benefit of the country, but the region as well.
Questions that can be raised: What resources can be made available to improve
the economy? What major economic growth drivers might need to be enhanced and
how? In what ways can SADC enhance the economic capacities of Zimbabwe? In what
ways can Zimbabwe grow the economic capacities of SADC?
The political
environment is peaceful but apparent factional struggles, political party
infighting and shaky party coalitions pose a challenge to the country’s
development agenda. As the 2018 elections approach, a spotlight on political
reconstruction is appropriate. Questions to ask are: What role can democratic
institutions play in peace and stability processes? What spaces are needed to
promote constructive citizenry engagement? The Zimbabwean nation is poised to rise
from its many struggles like many countries in history that have seen yet
overcome protracted socio-economic and political difficulties. National
development strategies could achieve more if inclusivity, commitment and
sustainability are cultivated. Some questions to ask: What contributions can
women make in politics for national development? How do Zimbabwe’s national
development strategies fit within global development goals? How can
environmental vulnerabilities be managed to ensure development is not compromised?
How can youth economic empowerment support national development? Authors are
invited to submit interdisciplinary papers that push the boundaries of existing
ideas on Zimbabwe. Both empirical and conceptual papers are welcome.
Contributions on the following topics are
especially encouraged:
o
Economic recovery potential & Economic reform
o
Zimbabwe in SADC
o
Structural imperatives for political and economic development
o
National development imperatives
o
Climate change strategies and capacities
o
Illicit capital outflows
o
Employment, unemployment and informality
o
Political economy of elections
Guideline
for authors
Submitted articles must not have been previously
published, accepted for publication or under consideration for publication
elsewhere. Length of articles should be a range of 4500 to 6000 words
(including references). Abstracts should be a maximum of 250 words. Five
keywords must be provided. Use Harvard reference style. Only articles written
in English will be considered. Articles will go through a double-blind review
process. For additional information, email sandra.makwembere@ul.ac.za.
Submission of articles
Articles should be sent to the attention of the
guest editor at sandra.makwembere@ul.ac.za.
Timelines
Submission
deadline: 11 August 2017
Review
process: 14 – 25 August 2017
Publication:
September 2017
