Activate the Flamingo Leg for Zim cannot be a small China!

By The NewsDay | Dec. 9, 2017 | 8 Min read

Dear Reader or one dear friend of Zimbabwe,

By Phillan Zamchiya

Hope I find you well hardly a day that the Zimbabwe national annual budget for 2018 was presented in a way that makes President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s governance path a bit clearer. Reader, to those who have been to Lake Nakuru in beautiful Kenya or heard about the Flamingo, can agree with me that flamingos are a beautiful species. What puzzles me is the flamingos’ propensity to use one half of the body.

I observed that most of the times they stand on one leg, the other tucked under that beautiful pink feather. The flamingo even sleeps with one-half of the brain and the other half partially open.

Whilst this flamingo behaviour might have its advantages, I argue that Zimbabwe in this military coup era need to walk on two legs to realise its full potential and outrun the dangers it confronts. That of civil liberties and that of economism. I therefore employ my flamingo framework to advance a two-leg thesis. Let us start by tracing it from historical foundations.

First born: a left-sided flamingo

Following Zimbabwe’s political independence from Britain, in the 1980s, the ruling class seemed concerned with socio-economic inequality and material rights. The underlying ideological construction was based on economic resource distribution with race as a central factor. This interpretation paid little attention to good governance, free and fair elections, freedoms, democratic tenets, human rights or any of the liberal jetties as you name them.

In fact, Zanu PF was delighted in directing and dictating that economic ideological advancement, whilst sowing a fertile seed of authoritarianism and dictatorship in Zimbabwe. Within this political context what mattered most to the ruling class was rhetoric around redressing colonial imbalances and maintaining the political status-quo.

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Even some progressive public intellectuals joined the bandwagon as scientific evaluations of state performance were based on a static approach of how many black jobs, schools and clinics had been created, or how much land had been redistributed.

The qualitative analysis of democratic governance was not just as fashionable as viscose or drop-west during the 80s.

Remember Viscose and Drop West Reader! If not ask the elders. The then Prime Minister, Robert Gabriel Mugabe, being not an ignoramus, delighted in this one leg material approach. He could afford to consolidate apparatus of military-state oppression and coercion and mould them on a North Korean brigade style while one half (the liberal half) of Zimbabwe half asleep, ala flamingo style.

State accumulation and consolidation of military ruling classes announced by the massacre of innocent civilians in Matabeleland evaded even a part of the “civil” civil society and international community except organisations like the Catholic Church and a few others. Some Zimbabweans believed Zanu PF would provide food to even eclipse democratic quests and even the civil beautiful flamingo component thought as much and kept one leg tucked in its beautiful pink feathers.

Second born: Right-leg flamingo

Fast forward to early 2000s, with Zimbabwe sliding into an organic crisis a new mentality was born. It was led by firebrand trade unionists, churches and fiery student leaders who began to realise the importance of tenets such as good governance, free and fair elections, democratic tenets, freedoms human rights or any of the liberal jetties. Zimbabwe’s civil component realised that with no democratisation, Zanu PF would continue abusing power and wealth as political differentiation in material-resource redistribution was largely benefiting the ruling class and its patronage appendages. Due to the collective civil efforts, the masses began to realise that they had a stake in governance issues of the day.

The ideological construction was within the realm of liberties rather than materialism. This characterised the proliferation of flamingos on the body politick in the 2000s. This growing family of beautiful flamingos amplified the democratic voice visa-vis collapse of the norms of liberal governance through the autocratic machinations of an authoritarian and kleptocratic regime led by former President Mugabe and divorced from any dream of a politike koinona.

The media, political commentators and progressive public intellectuals started to emphasise that Zanu PF’s discourse on anti-colonialism and material rights relegated the importance of good governance, democratic tenets, free and fair elections, freedoms, human rights or any of the liberal jetties. In a critical cosmopolitan style, Zimbabweans emphasised the need for due democratic process in material issues such as Zimbabwe’s brutal and regime sanctioned land invasions.

Albeit the merits, my critique of this era is that, if Zimbabwe’s civil component in the 1980s had stood on a reductionist left leg the new civil stood on a reductionist right leg; another flamingo case. This beautiful family of flamingos gave birth to the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) which is now leading the MDC Alliance into the 2018 general elections with the popular Morgan Tsvangirai as the leader.

A Zanu PF DNA counter

In the early 2000s, Zanu PF led by Mugabe countered the liberal discourse by emphasising that material deficiencies were the sole important determinant of the national revolution.

This was buttressed by a narrow and adversarial articulation of the liberation struggle which portrayed Zanu PF especially its military wing Zanla as the only legitimate voice of national sovereignty, vindicator of black African rights and champion of economic empowerment. Exclusive nationalism of outsiders and insiders supported by some intellectual vacuous positions on economism were used to justify the repressive and kleptocratic national politics such as during fast track land reform.

The notion that the liberation was about material rights became fashionable or a cliché albeit its political maladroitness.

According to this narrative the liberation war was not primarily about building democracy and state institutions that sustain it. For example, land invasions became central as an example of redressing historic inequities in a way blind to any democratic process. The state celebrated sovereignty and revolution in transgressing the law and abrogating due process and the consequences are with us today.

The new Mnangagwa’s baby: Back to left Flamingo

President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government has shown that it has potential to go back to the 1980s in over-emphasising the simplistic economic narratives and in the process relegate democratic jetties. The danger is, as we pay blind attention to the democratic jetties the new government might take the time to consolidate military authoritarian rule in ways that will take generations to disentangle.

Remember Reader, the 80s situation how the fifth military brigade was consolidated as most of the civil component of Zimbabwe and international partners celebrated number of buildings.

Yes, yesterday’s National Budget, announced by Mnangagwa’s not-so-new Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa might not have been as bad on prioritising some economic fronts.

Cutting jobs for 3 739 youths who have been lying idle except recording number plates of visitors at growth points yet still saying “mudhara buy me one” and abolishing the first class travels for mere ministers et cetera are good things.

However, the new economism does not pay much attention to relations between civil liberties and economic rights. Health funding for democratising state institution was not a central issue.

Why?

Mnangagwa’s Zanu PF in largely neglecting good governance, free and fair elections, freedoms, democratising state institutions, human rights or any of the liberal jetties might be wrong. The assumption by Mnangagwa’s special team is that resolution of the economic crisis is sine-qua-non to resolution of Zimbabwe’s longue duree crises. Yes without a bifocal analysis, ala two-leg thesis, Mnangagwa will try to sell this oversight from Checheche in Chipinge, to Southern African Development Community via African Union as afar as the broader international and academic community. Hailing just the economic and development transformation discourse can be pretty self-defeating. Zimbabwe is not China in many ways but especially in its demand for freedoms. Just check the majority of Zimbabwe’s diaspora voice which has much influence due to digital revolution.

Way forward: A Beautiful Dextrous Flamingo!

So Zimbabwe needs to stand on both the material leg and the liberal leg to sow the seeds of a National Democratic Developmental state. There is a danger of relying on sticky and parochial paradigms that have worked in the past or in other countries as far as China but in the changing 21st environment and 21st generation may prove to be blinkers. One thing that has afflicted even smartest brains in and on Zimbabwe is incomplete application of Comparative Politics. If anything happens to another country you can conclude reader they say it will happen to Zimbabwe.

There is need to amplify the voice and challenge Mnangagwa’s Zanu PF government on its new reductionist teleological economism linked to strong claims about the liberation struggle of the gun. The discourse must be clear that the liberation struggle was also about universal suffrage, one person one vote, about human rights, freedom of movement, freedom of assembly and freedom of expression. People wanted to be free to walk in First Street, Salisbury, even for window shopping and to drink hot coffee and a cold beer in the city centre with their loved ones at their own discretion. Also with the democracy the influential Zimbabwean diaspora has experienced elsewhere and the post-effects of the democratic movement of the early 2000s you can-not wish away the democratic jetties or even wish a Zimbabwe that is a small China.

Yes, the liberation war was about material inequality and economism, but it was not only about that. You cannot emphasise the material over the democratic and avoid the bifocal and Flamingo reality. Why not walk on two legs at the same time? That will dismiss even the naïve thinking that we need to prioritise one over the other. Things happen simultaneously in governance reader.

The Zimbabwe civil component needs to amplify that Zanu PF and its liberation war military wing Zanla are not the sole arbiter of the liberation struggle and claimants to Zimbabwe today. The churches and civil society played a significant role.

Even some western non-governmental organisations provided material and moral support to the liberation struggle. Povo fought for a National Democratic Revolution, but whilst one half was asleep flamingo style, Zanu PF in a classic animal farm style, deleted the word Democratic in the 1980s and is de-deleting under Mnangagwa’s new government in the 21st century under euphoria.

Now Zimbabweans are meant to believe they are in a National Revolution that never dated the word Democratic yet the opposite is true from the First Umvukela in 1896. Zimbabwe must challenge this narrow selective construction to outgun, outrun and outwit a dangerous narrative coming from Mnangagwa’s Zanu PF government and assert that any new dawn is a National Democratic Revolution that walks on two legs.

Debate remains a healthy ingredient for any dish of a family of flamingo eco-democrats I wish for. In this spirit, my two-leg thesis on beautiful flamingos is now in the public as I approach my final full-stop.

 Phillan Zamchiya is a political scientist who studied at University of Oxford, in England