How politics destroys home-grown solutions

FOLLOWING the success of politics in liberating African countries from colonial injustice, a mindset that has been planted in Africa is that politics has a monopoly on all solutions. Unfortunately, this has overridden people’s capacity to explore solutions outside politics.

For resource-rich countries like Zimbabwe, politics has been allowed to dominate the landscape in terms of resource allocation, capital, land distribution and opportune time that could be used for other pursuits outside politics.

Sadly, the dominance of politics has overshadowed traditional leadership and local capacities to address socio-economic challenges.

Traditionally, community leaders and local inhabitants would seat down and discuss their needs and issues before coming up with localised solutions that would be addressed using local resources. Community-led leadership and strategies would collectively address socio-economic challenges.

Among other setbacks, the increasing dominance of African politics has:

Destroyed home-grown solutions that have existed for centuries.

Created parallel structures that are in conflict with traditional African structures. The new political structures are targeting the same people, making it difficult for communities to know whether they are expected to listen to traditional leaders, political leaders or government officials.

Created disharmony among neighbours and destroyed the social fabric within communities, starting from the household level where, by context, one is forced to belong to a certain political party.

Created a big divide between rural and urban people yet the same families have rural and urban relatives.

Those in rural areas are being associated with a certain political party while those in urban areas are being claimed by the other although these people are related.

This is causing a separation in the understanding of economic issues among the same people who should be working together to build the national economy.

Created conflicts among young people who should be working together to build a bright future.

Big questions

What solutions are in politics, whether as a science or a strategy? How well are those solutions understood by the majority? Since the electorate is being persuaded to vote for individuals, what criteria are they using to decide which one is going to be a good or a bad leader?

Such decisions are obviously different from promoting socially-related strategies to come up with solutions or address challenges.

Politics resides within a society and the same applies to economics, culture and religion.

That means addressing challenges should be led by social-related strategies because it is within society that we find resources needed to address challenges and such resources are natural, human and capital.

Without leaning on principles related to politics, how can Africans use societal principles to develop their agro-based economies?

Such principles include self-reliance, social cohesion, working together (nhimbe concept), sharing knowledge and information through matare, sharing of resources and, more importantly, transparency (in farming communities everyone knows how many bags of food his/her neighbour has harvested), strong relationships at different leadership levels (village heads, headmen and chiefs relating amicably in line with their abilities and responsibilities).

Politics has taken advantage of existing desperation

The arrangement mentioned above has been destroyed by politics as communities are encouraged to fight each other through political parties.

On the other hand, foreign countries are choosing which party to align with, resulting in Africans who should be working together calling each other sellouts.

Politics has taken advantage of the crisis and desperation of African populations by selling false narratives to unsuspecting people. The same is being done by churches that are taking advantage of people’s desperation by selling miracles.

Leaders are misdirecting people just because they want to lead. They are not thinking of other strategies outside politics to make people see that the solution is within communities.

When we fight for one blanket, we cannot overcome the cold. Political parties do not work together or share ideas during one political party’s tenure but continue picketing waiting for a turn to lead.

By dividing people, societal ideas are suppressed because there are no pathways for such ideas to get to the leader whose party is in charge at particular time.

This has been extended to the distribution of resources in terms of who dominates which community.

Do African countries really need institutions whose role is just to adINSTEAD minister elections?

Why do African countries establish institutions whose responsibility is just to administer elections and spend millions on such activities.

If everyone has a national ID, is it not very easy for people to submit information that is required instead of establishing a whole institution and give it more resources than institutions responsible for economic development such as agricultural marketing authorities, extension services and meteorological services?

Why have we allowed politics to take the bigger share of economic resources like capital, including the distribution of resources such as urban land?

Now they are encroaching onto the jurisdiction of chiefs, creating political boundaries that are not related to traditional boundaries that were defined under certain norms, principles and for certain purposes. Besides assisting in planning developmental activities, boundaries define identity and safeguard resources.

Why should electoral bodies set and control new boundaries that are only related to politics as defined by the number of inhabitants? Using the number of people in a constituency cannot be a good criterion for creating boundaries because people are mobile.

This is totally different from using immovable features within communities such as rivers, mountains and production zones, among other traditional tools or approaches used by traditional leaders to negotiate boundaries so that their subjects have access to resources for survival.

If we use the number of people in communities to demarcate political constituencies, how are the methods used by electoral bodies informed by understanding of the existing natural resources, strengths and weaknesses of already existing boundaries?

When a young Member of Parliament is elected to preside over a big constituency with diverse natural resources, how is s/he expected to fully grasp the existing riches, which are better understood by local people and traditional leadership like chiefs who have been in that area for generations?

The more political parties we have, the more the economy is divided and, the more challenges we sweep under the carpet. Meanwhile, politicians continue to pretend they have all the solutions instead of encouraging people to explore other economic options.

The majority of people expect to get support from public institutions where civil servants are the service providers who are expected not to belong to any political party. However, the fact that civil servants are human beings means they have their own preferred political parties.