Chaos is the mother of new order
ZIMBABWE, like many African countries, was born out of war, struggle and blood. These are the key themes that have underlined our post-independence discourse. The same themes have been used to ringfence and portray a discourse that is so sacred and an unquestionable truth – more like religion.
Those who preside over this discourse are cult heroes whose authority should never be challenged even though they describe the country as a democracy. It is for these reasons that the country finds itself arrested in an oppressive, impoverishing and plunderous regime that is more vicious than its former colonisers.
It has taken the nation decades to figure out that the struggle for freedom and development should not have ended in 1980. Those decades were both painful and eye-opening. The nation was blinded by the euphoria of witnessing a racial transfer of power. However, the political morphing obtaining within the ruling party has provided an emancipatory revelation of their tyranny enabling the nation to critically attend to what has been perceived as a political problem with the same lenses as our forefathers did with the colonialists. People now realise that a strategy to launch a new liberation struggle is now long overdue. In any case the system has left them with nothing else productive to do other than to liberate themselves.
To move forward with unimpeded clarity, it is urgent to discard the discordant political illusions clouding the people’s view of situation for decades. They need to realise that autocratic systems will never develop societies because they thrive on weakening the people. Dictatorships are not amenable to political reforms because reforms weaken them. Criminal syndicates masquerading as governments will never negotiate unless they are pressured to do so. They never negotiate in good faith. For their legitimacy, autocratic systems play the “nice card“to their external audience while brutalising their people, so elections are not an effective way of dislodging autocracy.
These characteristics reveal the selfishness of autocratic systems which puts paid to the muted suggestions of a government of national unity. Unity implies inclusivity, transparency and people-driven project, tents of which autocratic systems are allergic to. They unsettle the system which is why they are forbidden in the sacred cult that is the ruling party.
Frantz Fanon, a political philosopher, is one of the most important writers in the age of anti-colonial liberation struggle. The omnipotence of his revolutionary ideas transcends generations and eras and are an inspiration in shifting thinking from theorisations of freedom and development that occurs on those social media platforms to practical approaches and struggle to displace oppressive systems and replace them with people power.
One of his chapters in The Wretched of the Earth (1961) is both inspiring and provocative because of how it places chaos and disorder as preconditions to liberation and freedom. His concern with chaos is critical in understanding the trajectory of societies in liberating themselves from the stage of oppression, to political agitation, chaos and victory leading to a new political order before the beginning of a cultural formation characterised by freedom, a people-driven enterprise and development. These are not achieved via negotiation but chaos.
Our forefathers who fought in the war of liberation always remind us that when the coloniser refused to budge or negotiate, they resorted to disruptive chaos. They always remind us that it was chaos that weakened the colonisers and forced them to the negotiation table. They continue to remind us today at every State event that no amount of weaponry and State intimidation deterred the power of the people from persistently pursuing what was rightfully theirs. Those who remain and are in office today continuously remind us that chaos was effective and it actually works. There is no harm in drawing these lessons from our forefathers who may have transmuted from liberators to oppressors.
It is partly for these reasons that we have to resort to Fanon’s ideas which are a stark reminder that the liberation of the people from oppressive system is always a violent enterprise and a programme of complete disorder. These may be physical or otherwise but the intention is to pressure an autocratic system into negotiation, submission or complete elimination from authority. Fanon cautions that in doing so the people must guard against diversionary tactics by the autocratic systems by shifting people’s attention to fictitious internal or external enemies of the State bent of destabilising the nation. People are now aware that they are suffering because of the current establishment and, therefore, there is no more need to invoke colonial enemies.
It should now be clear to the people that the purported order, peace, and security referenced by the autocratic system are a façade to mask the ugly underside of its own violence against the people. The system does this guised as enforcing law and order and constitutionalism. They discourage chaos on the pretext that it destroys what remains of development. People need to realise that structures that represent development are of no relevance, if their lives are in danger due to poverty, hunger and oppression. Structures are made for and by the people and not the other way around. The sanctity of life is above everything else.
Another impediment to the people’s liberation project are weaker advocates for democracy who prefer taming autocrats through democratic processes managed by the same autocratic order. They shun chaos. Many African nations have pursued this futile course for decades. It must be noted that the autocratic system thrives on imposing rules, regulations, laws and structures that establish its control and oppressive character. Part of the agenda is to ensure every tab of democracy is stifled to death before it sees the light of the day. Chaos, in this case acts as a language to say no to autocracy and saying yes to freedom and development. In order to achieve freedom and effectively dismantle the autocratic system, destruction of the entire entablement is priority before replacing it with a new order. Unfortunately, that process tends to result in disorder and chaos. Ask our freedom fighters.