Zimbabwe: A failed and fragile state? Part 2

IT IS always a pleasure when ideas are challenged. No idea is immune to criticism. As a thought-democrat and an advocate of cognitive justice, I am elated by the depth of criticism which last week’s article received.

I got critical contentions of the article from some intellectual compatriots; actually one of the critics was my junior at Gloag High School. His contribution was an absolute expression of one who is reaching a fair intellectual gestation phase which needs constant nursing to produce some refined output. Bravo to you brother Rodrick. Keep reading!

On the other hand, I was particularly moved by sentiments which were shared by my learned colleague, Venencia Paidamoyo Nyambuya, a Doctor of Philosophy candidate from the University of KwaZulu Natal (UKZN). Cde Nyambuya argued that last week’s article sanctified the failures of the ruling at the exaggerated expense of the West historical plunder to Zimbabwe. However, I had a problem with the ahistorical posture of her analysis. This is because it is intellectually remiss for any academic to pretend that our present condition has no past. It is also wrong to think that the internal state of our affairs as a country has no external inducements. This is why we are defined by “others” as “failed/ fragile” and not by ourselves.

Sadly, I was disappointed by the pathetic state of one comrade’s failure to appreciate the conceptual framework of the article as he expected me to regurgitate the thematic phrasing of the article in the body of the essay. Instead of giving it a pause when the article’s contents began wrecking the nerves of his vulnerable intellectual capacity, he continued to torture his brain cells on writing whose contents superseded his ignorance of current affairs and his pretentious organic intellectualism. After the high intellectual voltage of this piece grossly subjected his antiestablishment narrowness, Bhekumusa Moyo was quick to lament that the article was shallow and badly written.

A compliment from a fool is an insult However, I don’t blame Mr Moyo — the Protest Poet for his stray thinking. After all, I do not expect my pan-African intellectual discourses to be positively appreciated by reactionary poets who are sponsored to propagate rehearsed thinking whose main thrust is to glorify the West’s plunder of the motherland as modernity. What stands out when all has been said and done is that the regime-change fellowship programmes have produced “overnight” scholars whose brilliance is measured by the magnitude of their unpatriotic virtues underpinned in that redundant “Mugabe Must-Go” soliloquy. Therefore, I must make it clear that my literary patriotism cannot be outwitted by superficial patriots who survive on denigrating our good republic.

I want to make it clear that I have no problem whatsoever with Bhekumusa Moyo — the Protest Poet (as he calls himself). However, I have a problem with the way he is quick to vent out vain profanities when approached by matters beyond his cognitive elasticity. Moyo — the Protest Poet is not categorically qualified to define me as a shallow writer/intellectual. This untutored utterance insults the dignity of the institution that qualified my expertise in political analysis and other institutions which are yet to give me accolades in this respect. I must remind him that my contact with politics as a science was certified by a university council and endorsed by a whole senate of educationists not NGO workshops (as it is the case with the Protest Poet). Therefore, I urge my good associate to go to school and stop thinking that being a sponsored poet translates to being a scholar of note.

Picking up the pieces Last week’s review of Philip Barclay’s book, Zimbabwe: Years of Hope and Despair (2011) attempted to unpack the authenticity of Britain’s antagonism to Zimbabwe. In the first instalment, I plainly clarified that Britain’s diplomacy with Zimbabwe soon after independence was advantageously positioned to normalise the evil exploitative horse and the rider game. The two countries’ diplomatic eat al fresco came to a halt when the horse demanded a fair share of the ride. Prior, the British-Zimbabwe diplomacy was grounded on conditions of favouring the subjugation of Zimbabwe’s sovereign interests to enhance post-humus colonial power. Upon realising this diplomatic delusion, Zimbabwe had to shift loyalties from imperial subjugation towards high interests of self-determination, (President Mugabe: 2001).

This decolonial turn sanctioned Britain to re-activate its centuries of hate to this land. The success of Britain’s attempt to crush forces of national continuity only depended on curating mechanisms of change. The nationalist movement became the target enemy; its continuity had to be adjourned to pave way for Western crafted liberalism — the Movement for Democratic Change. The new mechanisms of marshaling neo-liberal (colonial) democracy were characterised by hyped pronouncements of eradicating the old order entrenched in liberation values. The same liberation perspectives are a mirror of real post-colonial national goals and interests which had to be obliterated.

As Mbembe (2013:4) explains it, the burden of history enshrined in Zimbabwe and Africa’s liberation memory is trivialised and is aptly alienated from the logic of global modernity:

“Why are we so addicted to the past? . . . fighting over the past because of our inability to build a future which . . . is mostly about each of us turning into an entrepreneur, making lots of money and becoming a good consumer?”

The observation by Mbembe exhumes the prejudice anchored perspective of Africans being unable to build a future. In fact, a particular group of Africans has to be inducted into the Western system of doing things and do away with the hoary breed of leadership. This is because Africa’s old leadership, mainly Robert Mugabe, who is their main villain is supposed to be feeding people with propaganda (history which informs Afrocentric continuity). The nationalist legacy is demeaned for its lack of material enrichment for the masses and this has popularised thinking in “neo-liberal market” related terms. In light of this perspective, Mbembe further probes:

“Is this the only future left to aspire to — one in which every human being becomes a market actor; every field of activity is seen as a market; every entity (whether public or private, whether person, business, state or corporation) is governed as a firm; people themselves are cast as human capital and are subjected to market metrics (ratings, rankings) and their value is determined speculatively in a future’s market?”

The annihilation of the liberation memory gives the coloniser a protagonist posture, which helps in creating systematic forgetfulness of past injustices — we are oriented to forget. The victims of injustice are supposed to forget, move on and focus on economic progress. The former physically oppressed must enter into a phase of metaphysical bondage of developing means of production owned by the oppressor. The erstwhile oppressed should be “market actors” than there are ideological (historical) actors.

This simply mutilates any remembering ontological fractures of coloniality and the oppressed become commodities of the neocolonial enterprise. The popularised myth is that history cannot build a future for the African. This assumption ignores the view that the present and the future state of Western domination is a precedent of historical accumulation and plunder which needs to be assessed from the lens of history to the perspective of the oppressed. The deliberate call for the forgetting of history is meant to facilitate the embracement of the former coloniser in the present in a bid to construct the future. Revisiting the past is feared and unwanted for it will only awaken the Black man to the reality of the centuries of the West’s hate to Africa.

This is why it becomes important to critically appreciate the writings by proxies of Britain. The publication by Philip Barclay (2011) plays a critical role in giving one side of the face of Zimbabwean history. I fear for those who will access this book with no empirical comprehension of the hidden forces driving current status-quo decades from this day. This is because of its shortfall in explaining the history that ushered Zimbabwe to its 2008 political dilemma.

The reader is misled to conclude that Zimbabwe’s politics can be summarised within the little narrative patch of what Barclays characterises as “Years of Hope and Despair”(2006-2009). As a result, Barclay’s account may be misinterpreted to push the idea that Britain was pursuing its philanthropic mandate to a country in despair with no hope to rise. This is because of President Mugabe’s revisitation of history after independence, thereby pioneering the seemingly anarchical Land Reform Programme. Then all of a sudden the Government becomes heathenous, thus trade unions, pressure groups become the vanguards of a “new national-interest”. Regime change becomes the new epistemology of forgetting history.

However, this indicates that revisiting liberating history in a manner that enriches the oppressed is not justified and this kind of history must be forgotten. In the eyes of progressive global thinking people must be subjected to developing means of production they do not own. On the other hand, new history is being made — the history which demonises aspirations of decolonising the country and the continent’s political economy which has been hostage to centuries of British captivity. The reinvention of history by proxies of the coloniser is a significant catalyst for regime change to prepare the envisaged political space which will be bankrupt of the liberation legacy. That way, the genuine ideas which should build the destiny for Zimbabwe will be forgotten. In other words, literature produced by Britain’s proxies like Barclay buttresses the idea of the interests of regime change in Zimbabwe. The abandonment of “history” to usher

“regime change” The selective rejection of history in appreciating the Britain-Zimbabwe relations does not begin with Barclay (2011). It is as old as Zimbabwe’s post-independence political consciousness to challenge the dog-master relationship which had existed between Zimbabwe and Britain. This is what led to the abandonment of Britain’s marriage vow to Zimbabwe as clearly pronounced in the letter by Britain’s Foreign Affairs Secretary, Clair Short:

“I should make it clear that we do not accept that Britain has a special responsibility to meet the costs of land purchase in Zimbabwe. We are a new government from diverse backgrounds without links to former colonial interests. My own origins are Irish, and as you know, we were colonised, not colonisers . . . I am told Britain provided a package of assistance for resettlement in the period immediately following independence. This was, I gather, carefully planned and implemented, and met most of its targets. Again, I am told there were discussions in 1989 and 1996 (with the Conservative government) to explore the possibility of further assistance. However, that is all in the past.”

The above remarks by Short indicate that the regime-change prospects in Zimbabwe were meant to abolish the mandate of Britain in fulfilling terms of the Lancaster Treaty as highlighted by Blessing-Miles Tendi (2014: 7):

“New Labour lacked appreciation of the significance of the history of the Lancaster House negotiations on land. Lord Carrington, for instance, alleged that despite being the broker of the Lancaster House agreement and the person who, Mugabe claimed, made financial assurances to him on behalf of the British government to sponsor land reform, he was never consulted about the history of the 1979 land negotiations by Short or any other relevant New Labour government member.”

This is clear that some responsibilities accorded to some by history must be forgotten to solicit fraudulent tendencies of some international actors at the expense of vulnerable states. In the case of Zimbabwe, this has further taken its toll through the regime-change projects falsely customised as democracy initiatives.

Richard Runyararo Mahomva is an independent academic researcher, Founder of Leaders for Africa Network — LAN. Convener of the Back to Pan-Africanism Conference and the Reading Pan-Africa Symposium (REPS) and can be contacted on rasmkhonto@gmail.com AFRICA Day which was being celebrated recently is a very important day in the history of Africa.

The African continent which was being referred to as dark Africa by our colonisers is now among the best with economies in most African countries being on a recovery path. We must all thank the continent’s leaders who sat down and formed the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) on 25 May 1963 in the Ethiopian city of Addis Ababa.

We are happy to see that most tribes in Africa are busy reviving their traditional cultures which were destroyed when the Europeans invaded the continent.

Most African countries are now free from colonial rule but there is need for everyone in the continent to spend sleepless nights trying to bring the solution to endless wars in some countries.

As a continent we need total freedom from these wars. If we take a look at some countries especially those in West Africa you find they are always fighting and this is what African leaders must fight to end.

We always have coups and some abductions of innocent people by the overzealous Boko Harram and our leaders should bring this to an end.

There is also the issue of poverty in most African countries. However, I would like to thank the founding fathers for the role they played to free Africa. Eddious Masundire Shumba, Allexandria, Egypt.