Extended Electoral Contestations Debate

Gravitas Volume 1. Issue 8. Extended Electoral Contestations Debate 

This Battle is not Lost: Restating the Case for Democratic Change in the Age of Cynicism.

Tendai Biti*

Despondency and Derangement of the National Psyche?

Wananchi, as we enter the shadows of yet another election, it appears that the gods of dementia have unleashed their angels on the motherland intoxicating in the process the native, his goats, his pigs, his dogs, his cattle and his rats. Wananchi, that the gods of Derangement have taken over the national psyche, has been self-evident in the past seven days. Firstly, was the proclamation by the Spirit-In-Chief at the World Economic Forum (WEF) that the motherland is not a fragile state and that the Zimbabwean economy is the second most developed economy in Sub Sahara Africa only after South Africa. Now if we did not know this man well, we would have thought that he had discovered a new intoxicating variant of prepared Indian Hemp that was so potent that it required to be protected by a patent.

Fig 1.0 Mugabe: Zimbabwe is one Africa’s advanced economies ?

Wananchi, with 95% of the population unemployed, 75% living in extreme poverty, the motherland is a banana republic. A little tin-pot chocking in debt, with collapsed social services. Someone should wake the spirit from a slumber and remind same that while it was sleeping, Ethiopia, Kenya, Zambia, Angola, Mozambique, Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Sudan, all have doubled up their GDP and long surpassed Zimbabwe. Speaking of sleeping, the suggestion by Presidential spokesperson Charamba that the spirit does not sleep but merely rests its eyes is an astonishing reinvention of spin. Proof beyond reasonable doubt that Lyssa the Greek god of madness was reigning supreme.

For us, our real beef is not with a President who after all is 94 years old but the genius of the WEF who hatched the idea of abusing this man and inviting him to expose himself and all of us in Durban. Wananchi, then there is a man named Toneth Tobaiwa Mudede who hails from the Central Kingdom of Zvimba. Despite the fact that he turned 60 some 20 years ago he continues to serve masquerading as the Registrar General of the country. He is in fact the Rigstrar-General of the country personally responsible for NIKUV and the NIKUVED 2013 election. This man has a tremendous capability to speak with another part of his anatomy which is not his mouth. This week he postulated that the concept of dual citizenship so proudly entrenched in Chapter 3 of our constitution and indeed one of its real bright spots was anathema that ZANUPF would move to repeal. This coming from a mere civil servant, even one that is 20 years past his retirement date is unacceptable and high level madness.

Gravitas: Gravitating Towards Devaluation of the Democratic Opposition?

Wananchi, this was the week that also saw the release of the Afro-Barometer report on Zimbabwe which proclaimed that the Spirit was the most popular and trusted leader in our country. The truth of the matter is that in all dominated and captured societies the Bandit-In-Chief masquerading as the head of state is always the most popular and most trusted citizen. The reason for this is of course fear. Fear is the unarticulated premise that holds a vice like grip on captured societies. However, unlike others we content that these academic surveys are valuable and a major source of material. Indeed, they are a constant reminder of the citizen’s structural weakness.

The challenge of the Wananchi is that at material moments it is anti-truth and anti-intellectual.Wananchi, the attack on the online intellectual newsletter, Gravitas must be understood in this context. The young intellectuals running Gravitas namely Tamuka Charles

Chirimambowa and Tinashe Lukas Chimedza must be commended for starting this project and seeking to implant intellectual discourse within the body politic. The three articles they published recently have raised controversy. These articles are titled:

1. Reflections on the National question: Land, Transformation and Progress.
2. Zimbabwe’s reconfiguration: The New Sites for Electoral Contestation
3. Mass discontent: The rise and decline of the MDC?

Wananchi, it is important for these articles to be read and for comrades in the struggle to celebrate the diversity of intellectual engagement. The common theme in the articles is regrettably a devaluation of the change project on 4 main premises which are:

1. Its failure right from the beginning of linking itself to organic social struggles beyond the neo liberal rights discourse

2. The fall of the working people or what Professor Raftopoulos calls the reconstructed social base

3. Under playing ZANU’s redistributive agenda and creation of a genuine social base

4. The opposition’s failure to reinvent itself, to adapt and its own divisions and splits

Wananchi, whilst there is evidently value and truth in the central theme of the papers it seems to us that a lop sized attempt to deal with the problems of the opposition unintentionally creates preposterous self-serving conclusions. The one self-evident conclusion is that in the short-term ZANU cannot be dislodged. That its control of the patronage economy and the new social base is absolute. That despite its fractures, the opposition even in a grand coalition can't dislodge the same. Such conclusions lead to the dominant discourse of the day, that a solution must be found in ZANU. That a post Mugabe candidate must be found who is first of all strong but with an acceptable veneer of reform capacity. Inevitably this self-serving proselytizing leads to destination Emmerson Mnangagwa, fondly, if not foolishly referred to as ED in the papers.

Another unintended and unarticulated premise is that the change project has expired. That it reached a peak in 2008 and therefore fizzled out naturally. To that extent, the change project is equated with the democratization agenda, the conclusion, Fukuyama-like in its aberrations is that “we have reached the end of history.” Democracy is dead in Zimbabwe. Long live democracy. With the death of democracy and the democratization agenda comes the new apostasy, that Zimbabwe needs stability over democracy. That achieving or maintaining stability leads on an incremental scale to democracy. This surely can only be described as startling heresy.

Stability: A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothes.

Wananchi, but this heresy is not new. We saw this heresy in the era of constructive engagement led by President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher who postulated a soft line of engagement against the heinous apartheid regime in the early 80s. A line that chose stability over black majority rule.Wananchi, it is what led President Mbeki ironically to deny the change project’s outright victory in 2008 and led him to construct a creature that subordinated the people’s will to so called stability. But that short-term adventurism did not lead to democracy, rather it simply allowed exhausted nationalism to regroup and reinvent with the known result of an electoral grand theft in 2013. The new stability project which now finds new support from the coldest and strangest of places will be no exception. It will simply pave way for the reproduction of a further four decades of crude authoritarianism anchored by a mass murderer. Wananchi, it is simply ridiculous to see democracy as being exclusive to and destructive of stability. We would submit that democracy is the ultimate underwriter of stability. Not the other way round.

The Myths of the Developmental State

All those countries in pursuit of the Beijing model, being the somewhat lame thrust that a Developmental State led by a strong man can be fathomed, which is undemocratic but reproduces its self through delivery, are aware of their mortality. Speaking of strong man, it is argued that in the context of stability and underdevelopment, what Zimbabwe needs is this strong man who will purchase his legitimacy through performance. Performance legitimacy is an old slogan, in new bottles. Singapore and its Lee Kuan Yew are posited as exhibit A of this Developmental model. So too China under comrade Mao. Now we have Rwanda and the affable Kagame, add Meles Zenawi’s Ethiopia and Sisi’s Egypt and the picture is almost complete. Libya and its collapse appear to have spurred the new-found appetite of stability over democracy. But this, coming from some of those who bombed Libya must be rejected. Wananchi, what after all is the definition of a strongman? The man who assaults his wife on a daily basis is not a strong man.

A butcher who commits mass murder and genocide is not a strong man. A tribal war lord who sees ethnicity as a point of negotiation is no strong man. The balance sheet of liberal democracy on the African continent remains chequered but in reality, there is no sustainable alternative to democracy. Further any developmental model not rooted in democracy and transformation is ephemeral. In the context of Zimbabwe, it would be wrong and foolish to ignore the immutability of the democratization agenda. Yes, we have made mistakes but our mistakes must not blemish the purity of the change agenda. After all there is no manual for fighting dictators. You will not find in Waterstones, Amazon or Barnes and Noble, a “Dictatorship for Dummies” manual.To write off the democratic aspirations and capabilities of the present is simply ahistorical and intellectual laziness. It is timidity and appeasement. Wananchi we will not take refuge in such rank heresy.

Zimbabwe: A Weakened Party-State?

The Zimbabwean State is weak and vulnerable. It has never been as weak as it is, ever since 126 years ago when Mr Selous and his brigands in the Pioneer Column raised the Union Jack somewhere in Matopos. The unresolved succession issue inside it is the major source of vulnerability. In the past 37 years, it has reproduced itself through a powerful leader that has been more powerful than the state. But sadly, that light is dimming. The center cannot hold.

That State is in the throes of a crunching economic crisis. A structural recession that is for all intents and purposes is now a deepening recession. De-industrialisation, unemployment and poverty are the reflective of the disequilibrium. It is an economy that desperately needs structural reform but regrettably those who it controls see reform as an unacceptable back door entry point of regime change. To compound matters, those running the economy are clueless zombies who have spent the last four years indulging in fraud and voodoo economics.The country too has a bulging demography consisting of 65% of its population being under the age of 35.

Transition: The Elephant in the Room

With the bulk of those who have controlled it for the last four decades being in their mid-70s, it is a State in transition. That transition is ideological, demographic, technological and sociological. It is that transition that needs to be captured. Stupid!The analyses in the articles are electro -centric and therefore miss the broad picture of transition.The real challenge of all democrats is not in the event of 2018 but capture of the on-going transition. That is the point sadly being missed. That transition must be captured to ensure it is not derailed by shareholders of the status quo. It must be captured to buy the peace. It must be captured to create a soft landing for our country and in the process, deny the merchants of violence who want a civil war or a coup de tat in this lovely country we are privileged to call home.

Fig 2.0 Coalescing: Will the opposition confluence hold ?

In this debate, the opposition can never be written off. With great respect to Afro-Barometer there is no genuine Zimbabwean who can think that ZANU can win a free and fair election in this country. Never. But of course, they control the infrastructure of rigging. They survive through electoral authoritarianism. The Securocrats are the trump card. Party State conflation is however the foundation. Wananchi, to criticise the opposition without acknowledgement of the state of State capture by ZANU is being ZANU, an adjective of deception and mendacity.The efforts of the opposition in the context of the above are to find ways and means of decimating the infrastructure of electoral authoritarianism. If this is no longer possible within the time available to 2018 then the second option is to by-pass authoritarianism through the creation a formidable mass movement that will use the streets as the point of entry.

If not then the creation of an NTA remains the only viable alternative.

For some of us, perhaps the only way in the short term.

Zikomo. Zikomo.

Tendai Luckson Biti (Wanachi) is a top Lawyer and President of the PDP. He is also a former Minister of Finance and Parliamentarian.

A reconfigured state - recasting Mahmood Mamdani’s dual role of coercion and consent- a rejoinder to Tendai Biti’s Wanachi

Dr Toendepi Shonhe*

Existing Reality vs. Historical Permutations

The intervention by Tendai Biti and angry reactions by leaders and activists in the opposition movement revealed an unfortunate gap in knowledge about contemporary issues driving Zimbabwean politics and voting patterns. We are discussing the material question about – to borrow from historical materialism – ‘the existing reality’ and not historical permutations or our wish list of some Zimbabwe we may want or may have wanted. The risk is in the labelling and name calling, and this we always budget for. It will not break the camel’s back! To his credit Tendai Biti has sought to engage in a discourse rather than throwing stones in the direction of ideas. We are obliged to applaud and respond. Upfront, we have to warn that our effort must not be viewed with a binary polemic of Zanu PF/MDC divide. To do so, will be to miss the bigger point and arrest the debate. Those who accuse us of having crossed the line are better off coming to terms with the view that there is no line to cross in academia, we just venerate.

In this article, a rejoinder to Tendai Biti’s Wanachi – also published in this edition, I will trace the issues with a bit of detail to expose in more elucidated fashion, the issues I have highlighted in my previous articles and those of the editors of Gravitas – Tamuka Chirimambowa and Tinashe Chimedza have sought to illustrate. I will also take advantage of the MPOI/Afrobarometer survey results and infuse them in the article because they validate our analysis. The question of methodology that others have raised will not be raised here, suffice to say, there is no methodology without a weakness (be it positivist, post-positivist, constructivist and critical theory), a researcher has to mitigate. Even more, the survey results provoke the need for follow-up studies, a good thing for academia. So, I debate their meaning and not their validity. The article will benefit from Zimbabwe’s rich literature on political economy analysis by leading researchers before us. Because this is not a court of law, I will not argue on a point-to-point basis.

Coercion and Consent

First off, the basic argument in our analyses is that when it comes to power and transition, Mugabe has ruled by both coercion and consent. As such investigating, how the future might pan out, ignoring how consent may impact on political power dynamics will be catastrophic. Even though we have highlighted the question of ‘fear, poverty and patronage’ as party of the capture of variegated constituencies, Tendai Biti remains of the firm view that our analyses are both ‘an adjective of deception and mendacity’ that misses the bigger picture about a transition involving ‘ideological, demographic, technological and sociological’ shifts. As Mahmood Mamdani observed in 2009, writing in Concerned Africa scholars Bulletin no. 82, ‘There is no denying Mugabe’s authoritarianism, or his willingness to tolerate and even encourage the violent behaviour of his supporters. His policies have helped lay waste the country’s economy, though sanctions have played no small part, while his refusal to share power with the country’s growing opposition movement, much of it based in the trade unions, has led to a bitter impasse… For he has ruled not only by coercion but by consent, and his land reform measures, however harsh, have won him considerable popularity, not just in Zimbabwe but throughout southern Africa. In any case, the preoccupation with his character does little to illuminate the socio-historical issues involved’.

Terrence Ranger (same issue) was quick to agree that beyond being a crazed dictator, Robert Mugabe was promoting a programme and ideology popular with many in Africa and Zimbabwe itself, even though he warns that this is not the way to go about it.  The point to ponder about here is that Mugabe’s policies are projected as ‘mass justice’ and create a sense of championing for the poor, never mind what the reality might. There is obvious political opportunism but this backed by historical injustices that were not addressed in 1980, as land remained in the hands of a minority white who owned 39% of the land and controlled industry and commerce, had tentacles in the mining and tourism sectors. The social order remained skewed in favour of the minority white settlers. While this could have been handled peacefully, to invoke emotions, a haste and violent processed had to be the option. Yet, to a large extent, this went on to address substantive national grievances around land, a social and economic justice dent that the Lancaster House had postponed.

This is where we bring in the land question, which the liberation struggle promoted to the level of the national question. We argue that the opposition missed the opportunity to align itself with the masses because corporate interest had gained ground within their ranks, and a radical ‘false-start’ had dissipated. The national constitutional reform struggle swayed the opposition, as a response to a clause inserted in the 1999 draft constitution at the last minute on non-compensation led to white farmers shifting allegiance from ZANU PF to aiding the No Vote campaign with funding. Off course, the plot was to defend their interests and not advance democratisation. However, for now we reserve this debate for the future. This was a turning point for the MDC, as we knew it then. The point we make here is that the war veterans under the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association (ZNLWVA) numbering up to 200,000 - led by Hunzvi and others had been at the fore-front of agitating for redistribution of land and many other associations had been formed to push for indigenisation and empowerment (Indigenous Business Development Centre -IBDC, AAG and IBWO) and the opposition would have gained in associating with this socio-economic justice agenda. Instead it was the ruling party which initially looked lethargic that came on the side of all these social movements.

Redistribution of Taxes or Profits?

This is where we challenge the definition of civic society. Because the ‘No’ Vote was premised on the notion of property rights, the discourse on liberties, democracy and freedoms came to dominate the civic society and opposition movement, whilst the socio-economic rights discourse became dissipated. Our point of departure here is that this, first the definition of democracy is narrowed as it excludes substantive democracy which speaks to issues of socio-economic justice, to the extent that redistributive policies are viewed as retrogressive. Neo-liberal approaches where taxation and social grants is viewed as the only tool of wealth redistribution is opted for. Yet redistribution targeted ownership of the means of production. Redistribution of the means of production stands way ahead of redistribution of profits through taxation, then social grants, because taxes are always a lower percentage of the total profits made. How a party with a social democratic leaning misses this glaring point is very worrying. This is where we raise issues around ideological bankruptcy. In part, it is the labour background that influenced the thinking in the party – regrettably, emphasis is on job creation and not ownership of the means of production.

Our second point is that the definition of civic society tended to exclude rural social movements, including ZNWVA and concentrated on those promoting human rights and democracy. This fell too well and advanced the white settler agenda regarding the land issue. Unfortunately for the MDC, it alienated the party from a strong mobilisation force which proceeded to work against it in subsequent elections. Many analysts get confused when we raise these issues. Raising issues around consent dynamics does not eliminate issues around the coercion. The point to be emphasised is that a combination of the two was a fatal blow to opposition politics, yet to date, the opposition has tended to rely on coercion for strategic planning, policy making and message development – jobs and not ownership! Again, in terms of policy and ideology, this creates a disjuncture where parties with social democratic leaning overemphasise the positions of capital- bereft of socio-economic justice.

Beyond the Mushrooming Peasant Narrative

The whole redistributive agenda is narrowly seen as coercion, corruption and incompetency, cronyism in the redistribution of land and capital flight – which led to ‘villagisation’ of the farm land or mushrooming of peasants (howa rwunomera pese pese). Many studies have since revealed that much more is happening on the land. There is an exaggeration of challenges on the land which is never compared to what is transpiring economy-wide. Studies by Prof Sam Moyo – may his soul rest in peace - and Prof Ian Scoones and their teams have revealed that much more progress is happening in the former white commercial land. Indeed, my own study has revealed a growing middle class on the back of own-financing. Contract farming and tobacco farming have brought about a completely new agrarian economy in the rural areas.

Fig 1.2 Sharing the Tobacco Millions:  New Faces and New Classes ?

There is a growing class of independent farmers who are not tied to any politics and have established a variety of pathways to economic and social upward mobility. Prof Ian Scoones also dealt with the five myths: as Mamdani recites; ‘that land reform has been a total failure; that its beneficiaries have been largely political cronies; that there is no new investment in the new settlements; that agriculture is in ruins; and that the rural economy has collapsed’. Indeed, these are myths which are unfortunately relied upon as facts by players in the opposition space for strategic planning.

A failure to understand and appreciate this fundamental reality and an over reliance on emotions, spiritual and prophetic advice results in many analysts and politicians disputing results from surveys by reputable organisation, much to their further demise. These players are stuck in 2000, yet 17 years down the line much has transpired across the economy. In as much as not all can be painted with the same brush for the ruling party, the opposition is not a complete failure. It has survived under one of the most brutal regimes ever known. That the people’s convention of 1999 was attended by 42 civic society organisation was a big plus. Yet not all still exist and most have been disenfranchised from the movement, a few remaining complain of the big brother attitude. The transfer of power at the University of Zimbabwe from the pro-democracy contingent to those linked to the revolutionary party can’t go unnoticed, because Zinasu has been a cog in the democracy movement. That today, it is the farmers running battles with the police at the auction floors is not conjectural.

Fig 3.0 Tobacco farmers running battles with the police

Yet the opposition movement cannot speak to the issues being raised by the farmers – because in their narrow view – the land reform was chaotic and the beneficiaries are Zanu PF! The civic society is totally disconnected to contemporary struggles by different social groups, as the agenda has been defined mainly by the well-wishers, perhaps also stuck on the democracy agenda, as narrowly defined.

Understanding the Data

When the surveys say, people trust Mugabe it may be because they don’t trust the opposition. Because the opposition is disconnected from their issues. It may also be because the GNU revealed tendencies in the opposition that voters had never imagined and now see not much difference between ruling and opposition parties. The voters are frustrated that the economy is moving in the wrong direction (31%) that employment is a problem (51%) yet 56 % still support President Mugabe. It must be noted that it is 79% of those with no formal education that support him, and 71% of those with primary school education, 52 percent of those with secondary education, compared to 37% of those with post-secondary school education.  Quite clearly, the Zimbabwean population carries more numbers in the first three categories than the later. The latter may agree on many issues, including academic discourses but they constitute a minority. The same group agree that a coalition is good but much less of the first three group do so. Again, this is an elite discourse, disconnected to the issues of the masses and only tied to electoral democracy and not livelihood issues. A real ‘Trump’ surprise may be in the voting patterns than in Tsvangirai’s refusal to accept electoral results.

Compare this with the indigenisation and empowerment agenda, the land reform program and command agriculture, command economy etc, you quickly come to a conclusion that no counter proposal is coming from the opposition by way of policy direction. It is well and good to characterise all these as partisan and therefore advancing cronyism and corruption, but many people, beyond the leadership in Zanu PF have benefitted, accounting for how some may vote in 2018.

The Post-Colony and Role of Academia

Moreover, this also illustrates the dis-connect between the ruling party and some social groupings. The reconfigured political economy is not necessarily a planned outcome out of Zanu PF ingenuity. Indeed, Franz Fanon posited long ago, in The Wretched of the Earth, as the case seems to stand today for Zimbabwe, that:The objective of nationalist parties as from a certain given period is, we have seen, strictly national. They mobilize the people with slogans of independence, and for the rest leave it to future events. When such parties are questioned on the eco­nomic programme of the state that they are clamouring for, or on the nature of the regime which they propose to install, they are incapable of replying, because, precisely, they are completely ignorant of the economy of their own country. This economy has always developed outside the limits of their knowledge. They have nothing more than an approximate, bookish acquaintance with the actual and potential resources of their country's soil and mineral deposits; and therefore, they can only speak of these resources on a general and abstract plane.

Yet this is now a reality with which we have to grapple with as we seek options for a NEW future. Because in our article we have not sought to provide solutions, Tendai Biti finds joy in borrowing from Fanon and labelling our effort, ‘intellectual laziness’. This is hardly the case. Academia is complementary. No single research or paper can close all the knowledge gaps. In part his frustration and indeed that of many others is that our writings are perceived as feeding into the Zanu PF agenda. What they would prefer is a situation where we dismiss evidence and propagate for the opposition movement’s cause, hardly the role of academia. Those in the employee of the opposition movement and indeed in the ruling party can ‘party’ with our findings and earn a living, not us.

Blame Not the Seer: The Roots of the Benevolent Dictator

Our conclusions that hope seems to be findings space from within Zanu PF succession politics is based on the prominence of the issue in today’s body politic and discourse and from the tendencies we observed from across a broad spectrum of stakeholders. We take cognizance of the fact that some from the mainstream MDC openly support a Mnangagwa presidency, some key figures from MDC Renewal retreated from the formation after failing to placket the project into the ED agenda. Indeed, admirers of ED cite the prospects of performance legitimacy. We can only add that sources of legitimacy are far wider than electoral legitimacy and the opposition need to acquaint itself with the different strands and conceptions. This space disallows this debate.

We also arrive at this conclusion after observing that many civic society organisations have now entered into some form or another of MOU with the government, choosing to be coopted rather critic from outside as defenders of the ‘have nots’ as must be the case. The position of the war veterans and securocrats is well known. In addition, even some of the prodemocracy intellectuals and actors have been whetted by and morphed around Karanga ethno-nationalism that has slowly found congruency in a Mnangagwa presidency. Indeed, they mimic in admiration and owe ‘Zvokwadi, chinhu chive vene vacho’ or some of have privately questioned that but they are also Karanga. The reminiscing and romanticisation of a Karanga strongman has not been our manufacture but an observation of the unravelling political phenomena within our polity. Our role has only been being observers, analysts and communicators of the existing realities. And that there are foreign missions openly pushing for strong hand politician fashionably called – a benevolence dictator – seeking for a strong economy and possibly poor human rights agenda positioning. Could these be some of the strangest places that Tendai Biti could be referring to? Whatever the case maybe, it is not out of our making, our role is to analyse and lay bare, including the obvious.

We posit, most importantly that the opposition need to realign its politics to speak to issues of the new social base, and that until this happens the prospects of defeating Zanu PF are between slim and lean. We also argue that, to the contrary Zanu PF has understood these changes and are speaking to some of the issues in resonance with the different groupings emerging under the reconfigured political economy. To the extent that the hope is now located in Zanu PF, regrettably; we argue that the democratization agenda, as it is narrowly defined by the opposition, has reached a cul de sac. To gain a new impetus, the opposition needs to broaden its definition to include substantive democracy.

When the Lizard Fell off the Iroko Tree.

To dismiss our analysis as ‘rank heresy’ on the basis that the economy is in recession is rather weak and bereft of intellectual input. It is only fallacious self-gratification, that does not take the prodemocracy movement to anywhere, at best it only leads to abyssal comfort zones of grand delusions. Suffice to say for now: When the Lizard fell of the Iroko tree; it looked up and in sang in praises, “This is how far I have jumped’.  The reality was that the lizard had indeed fallen off the tree and not jumped. The economy has been in recession and may continue to be so, but the majority of the voters are in the farms where they rely on auto-consumption from own production. The unemployed now find refuge in Zanu PF captured zones of autonomy – makorokoza, vendors, etc. We have stated this point sufficiently to drive this point home. That the demographic show that 65% of the population is young is not helpful because the Afrobarometer show that, of those between 18-35 years, 32%will vote for Zanu PF compared to 16% for MDC if an election was to be done tomorrow. Off course the margin increases with the ages. Those who want to find refuge in the 78% fear factor must be warned of the possibility of the same respondent taking that fear into the ballot box, given the well-known role of the traditional leadership.

In spite of the critique, it does appear to us that we are in agreement with Tendai Biti that Zanu PF controls ‘the infrastructure of rigging. They survive through electoral authoritarianism. The Securocrats are the trump card. Party State conflation is however the foundation’. We suspect he raises the broader argument of the transition as acknowledgement that 2018 may be a foregone conclusion. Nonetheless, it is difficult to comprehend how our analyses can escape being electro-centric given that our central theme, prospects for 2018 which demands that we engage with the issue, directly.

In conclusion, we differ vehemently and forcefully with the view or perception peddled, that the debilitating economic crisis may lead automatically to increased sympathy for the opposition. That has not happened. Simple. In the long term, the emergence of the variegated classes has come along with new ways of survival some independent some tied to Zanu PF’s infrastructures of patronage and fear, decimating the opposition base and taking advantage of the poverty created by the collapsing economy. Thinking beyond this will be useful in terms of scenarios into the future especially for the pro-democracy movement.

Toendepi Shonhe holds a PhD in development studies from the University of KwaZulu Natal and a master in management in public policy from Wits University. He is involved in policy, land and agrarian change research. He writes in his personal capacity. Views can be directed to tonde.shone2@gmail.com

Lest We Forget: Fast Track ‘Fast-Tracked’ the Authoritarian Restructuring of the Zimbabwean State with a Bearing on Ugly Elections Today

Dr Philani Zamchiya*

The Herald’s Infantile Opportunism.

In the past week, Dr Toendepi Shonhe has rigorously constructed and forcefully articulated his argument on land, elections and opposition politics in Zimbabwe. The evidently malicious state owned ‘Herald’ seeking to demonise and isolate him from his friends awarded him star of the week. I am sad that some people have labelled him ZANU PF. He is not ZANU PF. This is a result of the polarization of our society, dearth of tolerance and intellectual debate. In some instances, when we lack content to respond it is easier to say s/he is now ZANU PF.

The Party-State and DNA of Violence.

My submission is that Fast Track Land Reform heralded a new era where one cannot just acknowledge, mention in passing or downplay partisan and coercive politics in intellectual analysis and let alone the bearing on contemporary national questions and opposition electoral politics. During Fast Track, the state’s authority became ‘grounded in political loyalty and patronage, not expert knowledge and bureaucracy, a transformation that set in train a series of struggles that deeply [morphed] the state’ (Alexander 2006:187). Within this shift, patronage took centre stage (Zamchiya 2012), signified by coercion (Sachikonye 2011) and justified by ideology (Tendi 2010). Formal state institutions were disrupted and were in most cases superseded by ad-hoc arrangements as the bureaucratic approach of early independence was set aside for a partisan and authoritarian mode of domination that plays out in political mobilization, governance and electoral politics today! We cannot underestimate that ‘nationalism was recast in violent and intolerant mode as the foundation of the Third Chimurenga’ (Alexander 2006:194) with a debilitating effect on opposition.

Fig 3.0 War Veterans: Shifting between Collaboration &Cooptation

The violence that characterized Fast Track was mainly state sponsored and institutionalized (see Alexander and McGregor 2001, Marongwe 2008, Raftopolous 2003, Sachikonye 2003). As Sachikonye (2011:33) argues, ‘it [violence] was used to seize land from 4, 500 white farmers…and to destroy the political base of MDC amongst farm workers whose households had a population of about two million’ and instill fear. For example, a farm worker survey by the General Agriculture and Plantation Workers Union of Zimbabwe (GAPWUZ) found that one in ten of the 167 respondents reported ‘at least one murder amongst fellow farm workers’ and 38% of respondents reported that ‘children on the farms were forced to watch public beatings or torture’, 54% had received death threats and 65% experienced torture. David Stevens was shot dead on his farm in Macheke and Martin Olds was also shot dead in Nyamandhlovu area (ZNGO Human Rights Forum 2010:10). By June 2000, more than 30 opposition supporters were killed by state security agents, war veterans, youth militias and ZANU PF supporters (Sachikonye 2003: 31). This fear is still harvested by the ruling elite.

Coercion Embedded in Patriotic Propaganda

In order to legitimise and seek to intellectualize the use of violence against political opponents and for material benefit ZANU PF articulated a calculated ‘nationalist’ ideology. The land invasions were built on the symbolic appeal to war and metaphor of war. To ZANU PF, it became the third phase of the war of liberation, the Third Chimurenga, but this time the enemy was presented as colonialism’s economic injustice as represented in the dual agrarian structure which ZANU PF had maintained and even defended for two decades. The state used ideology to cast Fast Track as anti-colonial and anti-imperial. In particular, ZANU PF articulated an exclusive, adversarial and racial nationalism to justify material accumulation and acts of state violence during Fast Track land reform.

The state’s ideology of exclusive nationalism created outsiders and insiders which haunts society today. The former were usually opponents of the government programme and were denigrated as sell-outs, traitors and stooges of western imperialism and neo-colonialism (Tendi 2010). As Hammar et al. (2003:11-12) write, ‘such traitors are being systematically denied the right to citizenship, freedom of expression, protection under the law, access to land, or even in some cases access to food’ in ways that still play out in ugly elections today.

Securocrats and Land: From Co-option to Collaboration

Fast Track land reform did not only engineer violence and patronage but perfected ZANU PF’s construction of a party-state and the reconfiguration of formal state institutions in ways that perpetuated disorder. To subvert formal state institutions, ZANU PF co-opted traditional leaders, war veterans and later youth militias in their ideological, patronage and violent mobilisation campaign for political hegemony. Sadomba (2011:194) reveals that President Mugabe invited Chenjerai Hunzvi, then chairman of ZNLWVA, to a central committee meeting on 18 February 2000 and asked him to lead the ZANU PF election campaign and offered him a special position in the central committee of ZANU PF. President Mugabe encouraged the war veterans to collaborate with state security institutions to suppress the MDC. This culture still undemocratically affects the opposition.

The ZANU PF national leadership even co-opted the security forces so that they could play a coercive role and support the auxiliary forces (war veterans and youth militias) in the mobilization and consolidation of the party-state, either behind the scenes or overtly. Paradzai Zimondi, the head of the Zimbabwe Prisons was clear that, ‘If the opposition wins the election, I will be the first one to resign from my job and go back to defend my piece of land. I will not let it go…I am giving you an order to vote for the President [Mugabe]’. The Army Chief of Staff Major General Martin Chedondo summed up this symbiotic relationship, ‘we have signed and agreed to fight and protect the ruling party’s principles of defending the revolution. If you have other thoughts, then you should remove that uniform’. As Hammar (2003:31) writes, there was ‘politicisation and co-optation of the army, police and intelligence agencies …for partisan ends’. Alongside the co-option of war veterans the co-option of traditional authorities intensified during Fast Track as ZANU PF perfected its strategy of closing off the rural areas to opposition supporters. The ruling party restored the powers of traditional authorities in order to regain control in the rural areas.

From an intellectual defense, such co-option of war veterans and traditional leaders would in ZANU PF’s imagination lend ‘legitimacy to the government’s on-going anti-colonial rhetoric’ and ‘appeal to a rural constituency’ (Fontein 2006:238) as ‘part of a continuing struggle of liberation against the forces of imperialism’ (McGregor 2002:10) ‘at a time of political discontent’ (Chaumba et al. 2003:599). Yet behind the big ideological rhetoric and mean intellectual linings was a very specific authoritarian project that morphed state institutions and led to the consolidation of party-state with a huge bearing on today’s politics, elections and national questions! Full stop.

*Dr Philani Zamchiya is an independent researcher and earned his doctorate in International Development from Oxford University 

Debating Zimbabwe's Reconfigured Political Economy and the Forthcoming 2018 Elections.

The Prospects of a ‘Grand Coalition’ in Zimbabwe’s 2018 Elections: An Ideological Lens. 

Dr Toendepi Shonhe*

This article locates the proposed opposition coalition within Zimbabwe’s comprehensively changing political economy in its attempt to assess the potential for regime change in 2018. There appears to be somewhat growing consensus that a grand coalition is the ultimate answer to the complex and regressive challenges in Zimbabwe. This article posits that the proponents and architects of the ‘grand’ coalition may somehow be both simplistic and green in exaggerating the usefulness of this solo tactic.   In his chapter in Zimbabwe’s Prospects in 1988, writing about ‘Trade Union Organisation and the Working class’ Brian Woods observed that ‘For emergent nations on the periphery of world capitalism, where class and strata relations are usually more volatile and reflect a wider variety of non-capitalist processes, the existing theory is often misleading and can appear distinctively Eurocentric’. Yet other scholars concede that not much transformation took place in the first decade after independence given the constraints imposed by the limitations and power dynamics associated with the Lancaster House settlement. For instance, Arnold Sibanda in the same book, was quick to observe that ‘with the transformation of the mode of production not being seriously on the agenda, the new state could only tackle the most glaring features of neo-colonialism’ resulting in token reforms in the form of Africanisation of the public sector and parastatals. 

The Reconfigured Political Economy

However, post 2000, immense structural changes in the economy – property relations, social and labour relations culminating in today’s artisan economy may have gone unnoticed by the opposition. I raise this point because the grand coalition strategy seems to be resting on the democracy and transition narrative propounded by scholars within the liberties and neopatrimonialism framework where the tendency has been to adopt a narrow definition of the state and civil society and as such miss many variables at play. It is important to reveal that beyond the electoral law flaws and systemic repression by state agents, Zanu PF’s redistributive agenda in response to threats at power from 2000 have had far-reaching consequences on the political economy of the country such that it is idle for the architects of the coalition to pose serious questions beforehand. Raftopoulos put it squarely well in his post 2013 election assessment that Zanu PF has retained a substantial social base and ‘Moreover the maintenance of this social base has not been based solely on violence and coercion but on a combination of the ideological legacies of the liberation struggle, the persistent memories of colonial dispossession, and the land reform process’. 

Following these observations and Fontein’s 2009 conclusion that the radical changes in land ownership appealed to some localised aspirations despite the corrupt, politicised and violent nature of the process, Jos Martens was later to observe on 14 August 2013 that: Returning to the overarching question, it remains to be seen whether MDC would have won the 2013 elections if no rigging had taken place.

Mbare Musika: A Captured ZANU PF Territory?

Mbare Musika: A Captured ZANU PF Territory

What would you have voted if you had been that communal dweller who had received a fertile piece of land; if your small mine claim had just been registered; if you were a jobless ex-farm worker; if your small business was gradually getting off the ground (whom would you credit?);  if you had lost your livelihood under Murambatsvina in 2008; if you had just received U$1,500 dollar at the tobacco auction; if you had been struggling with corrupt MDC council officials about a plot for your house; if you had a job in a mine and were hoping to get a share of it?

Assessing the utility and relevance of a grand coalition and electoral reforms must be done in a manner that takes into account the changing political economy in Zimbabwe. The politics of coalitions in Zimbabwe must be carried out from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives as this will help in bolstering the coalition that emerges as we move into the 2018 elections. The question of numbers is the easiest of all. To begin with, the MDC won the 2008 election but failed to seize state power due to some qualitative issues that are yet to be resolved. These issues included limited strategic thinking, absence of

timely and effective intelligence, deficiencies in state craftiness and inferior infrastructural capacity to compete with the vast governmental scheme that is underpinned by state bureaucracy and state security. Will a grand coalition disentangle this circumstance? 

Reclaiming the Political Economy

Even though some of the structural changes to the economy have been retrogressive and impact negatively on citizens’ livelihoods, the changes have worked favourably regarding the advancement of Zanu PF patronage system. The emerging classes and groupings are ‘captured’ by poverty, fear and the patronage system. Over 2 million artisan miners - makorokoza are controlled by the ruling party.

Panning for Gold

 Over 3 million voters in the farming areas are in no-go areas for the opposition and thank the party for their progress. A few and diminishing Zim PF and NPP supporters are scurrying for cover, mostly back to the Zanu PF ambit. As Raftopoulos noted, the news forms by which Zanu PF and state organs have penetrated these new social relations have changed the way the ruling party dominates the spaces. The farmers are organised through village heads while the informal miners are now more organised and directly linked to Zanu PF structures, as Mawowa and Martens have already highlighted. Jos Martens therefore concludes: Add to this the continued exclusion of maybe more than 2 million voters (almost a quarter of the electorate!) living outside Zimbabwe and the open threats from army and police bigwigs that they would never accept Tsvangirai as president and it becomes clear that the stage for the elections had been set much earlier

Moreover, the urban population has also been ‘arrested’ by poverty and are living on hand to mouth, mainly through Zanu PF controlled infrastructure of violence and patronage. The vendors at Siyaso, Glen View and other centers spread across the cities and growth points operate at the whims of Zanu PF lords while urban stands being dispensed on partisan grounds all speak to the growing multi-faceted patronage network. The civil servants housing project must be understood from the same viewpoint. How will the grand coalition reverse this trend?

The Contours of Electoral Fraud

Much of the rigging by Zanu PF is done prior and outside the actual polling station. The rigging machinery operates on three levels: patronage, violence and fear and the tampering with the voting system, including the voters roll. The elaborate reliance on the Traditional leadership to coerce citizens to vote for Zanu PF is well known, yet no counter strategy has been developed to mitigate on its impact. The fear brought about by violence in particular leading up to the 2008 presidential run up remains in force among the voters betraying an urgent need to restore confidence and re-inspire the voter. Beyond this, the vote must be protected. Is the grand coalition structured to achieve these? If so, how? 

The voter registration process is already being manipulated in favour of Zanu PF. The party machinery and the state bureaucracy are working hand in glove to ensure all party supporters are hived into the register way before the actual registration process, such that potential opposition sympathisers will inevitably be disenfranchised. To this end, the Biometric system is designed not to clean the voters’ roll and bring about transparency in the voting system, it is intended to cast a shadow over the whole process.

Testing of BVR Kits

The rigging machinery remains intact under the management of ZEC a superstructure co-managed by the uniformed forces through the Joint Operations Command at its various levels. Absolutely nothing has changed regarding the way elections will be managed in 2018. There are no prospects for further reform due to well established Zanu PF longstanding intransigence and lack of focus and strategy on the part of the opposition. The Bikita election exposed the fact that not all Zanu PF functionaries, including former VP Mujuru, were in the know about the goings on regarding electoral manipulations, putting paid prospects for the grand coalition gaining advantage for 2018. The grand coalition may re-assert the quantitative superiority back to 2008 levels at best but it will do much less in changing the strategic deficiencies of 2008 and 2013.

The Essence of Electoral Victory

The essence of electoral victory is about time, people and resources. We have established that Zanu PF has captured the majority of the suffering citizens through fear, poverty and patronage. There is no need to belabour this point, suffice to say, it is difficult to conceive how the opposition in its various strands; coalition or not, will be able to reverse this reality. What level of hope will inspire the population to bolt out of the chains of fear and patronage? Can the grand coalition offer such level of hope? At this stage, much of this remains clouded in uncertainty and is difficult to perceive. Regarding time, the country has at least 12 months to the next election. How these will be used by the opposition to reverse some of the vices already observed or by the ruling party to consolidate its hold is subject to access to effective intelligence and resources. As things stand, the opposition is in a very weak financial position because of fatigue across well-wishers. To a large extend, the collapse of momentum and subsequent splits resulting in more fragmented groupings: PDP, RDZ, ZimPF and NAPP are a manifestation of financial drought across the opposition movement. Much less to do with ideological differences or contestations around the national agenda. In any case, none of the parties has placed the people’s agenda at the core of its actions since 2013. Much more, some parties will be left out, possibly to form their own ‘majestic’ alliance/coalition.

The MDC T has benefitted from the government grant and support from its MPs and councillors who have access to public funding; and this has allowed the party to subsist with some semblance of unity and purpose. But such funding has not been adequate to propel rural vote mobilisation and sustained party growth. As some analysts have pointed out, MDC T support has remained around the famous one million mark over the years! In any event, Morgan Tsvangirai has become an obvious leader of the ‘grand’ alliance, yet the ultimate coalition will be much weaker given the splits in MDC Team and ZimFirst parties and potential differences yet to emerge among the coalescing partners. The net effect may be a ‘grand’ loss as aging President Robert Mugabe has predicted.

Even more, in the absence of funding, the coalition faces a similar fate and prospect for electoral victory are lean, not least because on its own, Zanu PF has uninterrupted access to governmental infrastructural support and resources. How will a grand coalition reverse this funding challenge? Will it reverse pervasive exhaustion among well-wishers, or stop Zanu PF from accessing state resources to create an even playing field? I postulate that in the absence of adequate resources and effective intelligence on rigging options adopted by Zanu PF, the opposition whether combined or fragmented as has been the case to date, will pose no threat to the ruling party hegemony. The tragedy is in the opposition’s reliance on a popular and simplistic narrative of a grand coalition without analysing the qualitative political dynamics about the 2018 plebiscite. Hard questions must be asked and good answers must be proffered, now! 

Ideology: The Next Frontier of Politics

The major weakness of the grand coalition is the absence of a shared ideology. Perhaps it is time to think about Munyaradzi Gwisai’s intervention on 7 August 2013 when he observed: The (only) way forward for working people is to break from MDC and lay now the foundations for a new working people’s movement to continue the struggle against the regime, yet the painstaking realities of that option is that the politics on the ground still point to the currency of the MDC. Gwisai’s dreams of a movement that does not replicate MDC’s right-wing policies but positions itself left of Zanu PF on an anti-capitalist, democratic and internationalist basis. Such a movement has to be slowly and organically built from the struggles of the poor, anchored around the newly radicalizing trade unions and social movements. It cannot be built or decreed from boardrooms and it is also not short term but medium to long term, thus discounting 2018 and toying around with 2023 onwards. Ideological bankruptcy and financial drought will lead to more fractures within parties and across the coalition as Thokozani Khupe’s aspersions have begun to show. The will to power have trumped the will to transform within this simplistic and opportunistic coalition political tactic!

In any event, by emphasising the need for coalition partners to attend to the business of signing the MoUs at Tsvangirai's Highlands house at different times, the architecture of the agreements seems to be geared on ensuring the superiority of MT as leader rather than on the strength of the coalition itself, a strategy that feeds well into the machinations and manouevers of those around Tsvangirai. Such a strategy, is self-illusory as the numerical superiority of Tsvangirai in the opposition is undoubted and therefore a useless debate. The big question is building a coalition that can get the numbers that matter and addresses the qualitative aspects of the 2018 elections.

*Dr Toendepi Shonhe is an Associate Researcher at the Sam Moyo African Institute for Agrarian Research Institute  and did his PhD at University of KwaZulu Natal.

Thinking Beyond National Electoral Reform Agenda (NERA)

Tamuka C Chirimambowa & Tinashe L Chimedza*

In Last week’s GravitasLite we argued that the political economy re-configuration that has happened since about 2000 will have a serious bearing on voting behaviour and patterns in the forthcoming 2018 elections in Zimbabwe. Our assertion is in no way discounting how the party-state network has entrenched itself using violence, state largesse, corruption and very pernicious methods of extracting benefits for its support network. This is not under dispute. In this article, we intend to pay closer attention to how the changing social structure will potentially influence voting behaviour and patterns. In other-words we want to reveal the social structural dynamics and argue that for those that are within the pro-democracy movement, they must pay close attention to these emergent classes and their changing accumulation patterns and its likely impacts on voting behaviour and patterns. These patterns will likely very much inform how political contestations will play out, simply put we are saying the analyses that informed the ‘politics of the MDC, NCA and ZCTU in the 1990s are now outdated and relying on them is not only slippery but will drive the pro-democracy movement into a cul de sac.  Firstly, the urban areas are now informalised, secondly the ‘working class’ has now depleted; thirdly the emergence of the new farmers is changing rural/agrarian class structure and fourthly the advent of the ‘New constitution’ to some extend checkmated the pro-democracy and shifted the terrain of democratisation when the ruling class acceded to its reform.

NERA & the ZANU PF Rigging Machinery

The pro-democracy movement, broadly defined, has coalesced around a very necessary agenda of dismantling and reforming the rigging machinery which the party-state has amassed around ZANU PF to ensure electoral victory for the ruling elites.  In developing the NERA coalition and mass mobilization the pro-democracy movement initiated a broad process of building social and political power to push for electoral reform. The party-state has ensured that the electoral related institutions like the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) and the Registrar General’s office are firmly controlled especially by the security-intelligence apparatchiks.

ZEC Chairperson: A Former ZANU PF Legislator

The NERA demands that laws guiding elections be realigned, that the ZEC be disbanded, that the staff linked to the intelligence be dismissed, that the Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) be run by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and that no election should be run until these demands are met constitute the mobilizing platform for the opposition coalition. While very progressive, these demands are most unlikely to be unmet and ZANU PF has been very clear that they ‘they will not reform themselves out of power’. For instance, the party-state was able to weave through the demands of UNDP managing the procurement of the BVR vendor on the technicalities of state sovereignty, a ground that has legitimate arguments in international relations, despite that our realities point to the limitations of the doctrine of sovereignty.

While the first wave of NERA protests drew thousands, and built a necessary momentum more and more the protests are dwindling in numbers and at that rate very soon there will be very negligible numbers. The numbers are paltry when compared to the ZCTU, NCA, ZINASU and women’s movement protests which rocked the foundations of the ruling elite in the 1990s and the early 2000s. One critical factor which must not be missed is that the 1990s and 2000s boycotts, protests and stay-always were effective because they were built on the bedrock of working political power and the demands were ‘bread and butter’ issues. Effectively this agenda was concretely related to everyday material questions which easily galvanized support for the nascent pro-democracy movement. A vendor at Sakubva Bus Terminus in Mutare, a tuck-shop owner in Makokoba in Bulawayo, a cross border trader in Beitbridge, a small-scale miner in Chegutu and a new farmer in Centenary are unlikely to be moved to come to a NERA protest or identify with the agenda, not because NERA is irrelevant but because the NERA demands are not steeped in the everyday realities facing these social groups.

Instead a call to a meeting for farming inputs or housing stands will attract more attention. Effectively we are arguing here that the process of political and social mobilization is always rooted in the character of the actually existing social structure not what it ought to be or what it used to be. It is not that these social groups cannot be harnessed and organized but only that those that seek to relate to these classes must read and understand carefully just the way the ZCTU tapped into working class discontent of the 1990s.  The over-arching question becomes: what is the contemporary ‘national discontent’ and how does the pro-democracy forces intend to address them?

Jambanja Political Economy: New Farmers and the Accumulation Dynamics

We have pointed out previously that the ‘fast track land reform program’ has ushered into Zimbabwe the ‘jambanja political economy’ which is anchored around authoritarian public policy. A patently evident weakness of this jambanja political economy is that the party-state elites have parceled, amongst themselves, the bulk of the loot yet we must not be blind to the fact that beyond the self-aggrandising ruling elites there is a class of beneficiaries numbering possibly between 250,000 to 300,000 who now constitute a bedrock of the ‘new farming class’.

Tobacco Farmer

The most visible of these has been the 70,000 tobacco farmers who generated and shared close to US$700m in 2016/2017 and this is likely to be repeated in 2017/2018. Whereas previously this US$700m was largely shared amongst a few thousand white commercial farmers the bulk is now being split amongst the ‘new’ farmers. This introduces a new structural dynamic in terms of income in which the ‘farm worker’ and the ‘peasant farmer’ are now absorbed in an emerging class with a higher income but largely dependent on the party-state. Not that this nexus cannot be broken, the question is these new farmers are saddled with a complex set of problems which need to be responded to and they more likely to build an alliance with the political formation which responds to these questions.

An immediate criticism might be that these classes of new farmers are very ‘dirty’ meaning they are not pure in the sense of being clearly demarcated yet that is the point here: social classes never appear pure and without being imbricated in other classes (i.e. the new farmer is still married to subsistence economy and at the same time is seeking escape) yet make no mistake about it they are becoming aware of their power and marrying it to the party-state so as to extract as much benefit as possible (doesn’t every class depend on the state though? In the noise and dances of this rubble of a collapsed economy are emerging new realities, away from the urban ensemble, and those with keen political eyes must pay heed. The NERA, the new social movement and the ‘modern’ sector has limited power and this reality must be borne – the ‘new farmer’ wants to participate in the established markets for goods; the tobacco farmer wants a functional and cheaper credit system; the financiers want a functional ‘land market’; this is the reality, but the big question lies in how will those seeking for power in the 2018 elections provide solutions?

Urban Versus Rural Accumulation and Class Mobility Differentiations

Class mobility, that is to say the way social classes progress to a higher class, is largely dependent on the source of wealth accumulated. In the urban areas, which is 33% of Zimbabwe, accumulation is dependent on acquiring skills, getting into the labour force and or starting businesses. Consequently, the demands of the urban social classes are often very different and in certain ways in antagonism to the demands of the rural social classes. Urban areas, with their modern infrastructure, are a very small imposition on the national political economy and this is what Guy Mhone called an ‘enclave’. On the other hand, the social mobility of the ‘rural classes’ is tied to the land and ‘assets’ like cattle, goats, chickens and the yearly produce.

Cattle: Very Important Rural Asset

The skills demanded to achieve social mobility in the rural and farming areas are entirely different in the sense that a ‘former peasant’ with basic literacy skills can get an A1 farm and immediately start accumulating something almost impossible in the urban areas where college education is often the basis of access to formal employment and faster class mobility. With the urban political economy under pressure and almost non-existent class mobility has become almost impossible while the ‘former peasant’, who is illiterate and dependent on the party-state is actually building an asset base even on very insecure tenurial rights.  Professor Ian Scoones and his team of researchers has highlighted how these patterns of class mobility and consolidation are changing the rural/farming landscape. In simple words a transmogrification of immense proportion is happening right ‘before our very eyes’ and it can only be ignored by the politically blind.

 Make no mistake about it these new farmers have no interest whatsoever to remain subsistence farmers once they start accumulating. The logic of any social class is vertical mobility into some higher social strata. To get a first-hand experience of what we are arguing one has to visit the car sales, furniture shops and hardware wholesalers amongst many other merchants in Harare and witness the acquisitions of the new farmer from the proceeds of farming. That our friends, is the old dynamic of capital at work.  In essence, this means that once a social class emerges, it generates a new set of demands that may not be answered by yesterday’s policy solution. As the Shona proverb ‘Matakadya kare haanyaradzi mwana”. This is where the opportunity of the pro-democracy movement lies: in developing alternative public policies that responds to the new demands of these emergent social classes.

Political Mobilization, Ideology and National Question

Historically the liberation movements faced a very organized and very penetrated Rhodesian state which was supported by a garrisoned Rhodesian state and very recalcitrant white capitalist class. In response, the liberation movement developed a very relevant structure of organization rooted in the National Question-everyday lived realities of the actually existing social classes- which was land and the economy. While the process was very ‘bloody’ the lesson here is that political organization must be closely related to the social structure and built on the national grievances’ and often these were more pronounced in the rural areas than the urban areas. Strategically, it made sense for the liberation movement to target the rural areas and to its credit it came up with discreet mobilisation methods such as pungwes (overnight meetings) that manage to slip through Rhodesia’s Keep system and surveillance eye of the Special Branch.

The import of this is two-fold: firstly, there is no any impenetrable and unbreakable fortress of injustice no-matter how seemingly insurmountable it appears and secondly, that the prodemocracy movement has to rethink shifting its mobilisation strategies and tactics maybe from overt to covert. In this case, decentralized teams that will seek to these emergent social classes in smaller and discreet spaces such as house meetings are likely more to engage these emergent classes without exposing them to party-state’s surveillance eye. In simple terms, the situation demands the pro-democracy movement to undertake underground organising that emphasises political education on the ideology and values that will inform policy in the New Zimbabwe. The meetings are key for dialogue and marketing of alternative public policies that respond to the material and social conditions of citizens by the pro-democracy movement.

It is the Political Economy, Stupid!

Elections are not only about the technicalities of the voting process, but also consist of the socio-economic and political forces that inform and condition voting behaviour patterns. Therefore, whilst NERA has managed to highlight the deficiencies of the electoral system, it is in no way a political and economic programme that may inform or condition the social groups identified in this article to go vote and let alone for the opposition. To the Makorokoza how they will be able to continue or expand their gold scrounging activities; the cross border traders, how they will be able to bring their merchandise with less hassle from ZIMRA; the Commuter omnibus operators, how they will be protected from the marauding police on the roads and the new farmers, how they will have access to inputs, markets and cash after selling produce will most likely give compelling reasons to the electorate on why it is necessary to register and vote for change.

*Tamuka Charles Chirimambowa and Tinashe Lukas Chimedza are Co-editors of Gravitas.

The Forthcoming 2018 Elections: A Gaze from the Economic Lens

Dr Tinashe Nyamunda*

The Political Economy Dynamics and the Electoral Terrain

This article attempts to proffer insights on the possible influence of prevailing economic circumstances and how they may play out in political dynamics in the run-up to the 2018 elections. Zimbabwean politics has been intensely competitive since the formation of the MDC in 1999, giving the ruling ZANU PF the most effective challenge since independence. Nowhere, however, did the opposition come any closer to clinching electoral victory than in 2008 where they were eventually talked into sharing power after a violent build up to the run-off elections. The two parties will face each other again in 2018 and the question that remains is whether the efforts at ‘grand coalition’ building will address the deficiencies of the opposition. However, as 2018 draws near, it is becoming crystal clear that the structural constraints facing the economy is already setting the battlelines for political parties. Therefore, debates on ‘grand coalition’ building in one way or another will have to address the question of the economy in a manner that will resonate with the ordinary men. The political parties that will see beyond electoral fraud and malpractices in their strategies will most likely have more traction with voters.

From Stability, to Illiquidity

The period of the Government of National Unity (GNU) between 2009 and 2013 allowed the ruling party to rebuild and assemble an arsenal that allowed it to retain power in the 2013 elections. The fractures within the opposition political movement did little to help their cause and this has worsened their public image ever since. The electorate supported the opposition mainly on the back of an economic crisis that deepened since the 2000s. Although the main symptom of economic decline has largely been recalled in terms of hyperinflation, the crisis was layered with a collapse in public services, health provision, food shortages, record unemployment, and disinvestment, among many other factors. The short-lived reprieve that emerged with dollarisation and the GNU soon gave way to a new form of economic crisis. This time, the crisis is not associated with shortages of basic commodities or hyperinflation. On the contrary, there are plenty of commodities on the market accompanied by declining income levels and insufficient cash notes in circulation. But the big question is can the opposition movement seize this discontent to mount a strong challenge against the ruling party? The political scene of the early 2000s and that of today has transformed. Whereas it was really easy to argue that the MDC’s support was derived from mass discontent with the ZANU PF government’s record on the economy that cannot be easily sustained today. The same is just as true when arguing that ZANU PF will argue the rains-fed harvest was a consequence of command agriculture and therefore use it as a campaign strategy.

Queuing for Cash in Zimbabwe

True, these elements are very influential in informing the attitudes of the electorate towards which political party they support. It can be argued that as much as some have erroneously chosen to believe in a post-crisis Zimbabwe, others have mistakenly viewed it also as post-land reform. But this has ushered in new perspectives on approaching politics.

After All, it is Still the Economy

The political scene has become so fractured that understanding the political dynamics of today’s Zimbabwe must be much more nuanced. Since the GNU, the MDC has split into various factions, the most recent of which witnessed Tendai Biti forming his own political party as he was unhappy with the manner in which MDC -T had managed its campaign and handled the post-election situation. It remains to be seen how the recent reconciliation among the opposition splinter groups will work out. ZANU PF also experienced increased and more visible infighting resulting in the expulsion of many of its members including war veterans. Among the most prominent leaders to be expelled from party structures include the former Vice President Joice Mujuru who went on to form her own political party. With Mujuru eliminated from the succession race, the competing factions of Lacoste and G40 continue to compete for the top job in the event that a successor becomes necessary. So, the political scene has become much more fractured that a greater degree of nuance is required in order to follow and truly appreciate how the situation is unravelling.

The rallying point in Zimbabwean politics remains ordinary people’s economic fortunes; whether it is about indigenous resource ownership or formal economic revival and the creation of jobs. What remains to be seen is how the parties will rally their respective constituencies amidst different economic dynamics. Can the opposition movement continue to make a case for jobs and a formal economic revival in a setting were a culture of informality is becoming increasingly entrenched? Can the ruling party use the rhetoric of command agriculture which is being expanded to the whole economy when many of the masses whom they say they represent have been operating in disguised unemployment in an informal sector that is not very rewarding?

If anything, the various social movement that destabilised the capital city last year in the form of #ThisFlag and #Tajamuka led by Evan Mawarire and Promise Mkwananzi respectively demonstrated that at the heart of people’s grievances was a call for accountability from the ruling government. It was not necessarily an opposition movement although there were calls for the President to step down from the Mkwananzi camp. Although Mawarire and Mkwananzi momentarily appeared as respectively the Martin Luther King and Malcom X of Zimbabwean politics, their pressure groups were soon derailed by the state. This kind of left political parties out in the cold as the protests took on a character more inclined towards calling the government to account rather than asking it to vacate its seat of power. As the momentum of the hashtag movements slowed down, the space for political movements has gained pace especially as 2018 draws even closer. However, there is much disillusionment in the voting public. The many that I have engaged argue that the more the political changes that take place in terms of fractures in both parties, the more the political crisis remains the same.

Economic Discontent and Voting Behaviour

The question that begs is how will the current economic challenges inform electoral dynamics? It is likely that the various opposition parties that are currently working towards uniting against a common foe will again ride on economic discontent, this time in the form of the continuing illiquidity in the economy. They will argue that the government has no clue about how a modern economy is managed and they will offer a better alternative. But the question is that strategy enough especially in a highly informalised and reconfigured economy like ours, or it will remain just a Nostalgia of the ZCTU working class politics era of 1990s and early 2000s.

ZCTU in its Former Glory

On the contrary, ZANU PF is most likely, to refine and continue its politics of patronage. Where in the late 1990s, they used this tactic with war veterans, this time they will turn towards farmers, artisanal miners, cross-border traders, women and youth empowerment (various facilities have already been announced by the RBZ). Already, the RBZ has dangled a US$15 million facility for Cross-Border traders and Masvingo Resident Minister, Shuvai Mahofa decreed that only ZANU PF linked people should be employed or subcontracted on the dualisation of the Beitbridge -Chirundu highway.

Can a Collective Response Emerge?

The currency crisis was a major source of discontent in the 2008 elections which resulted in increased support for the MDC-T. In the upcoming elections, the RBZ has been keen to avoid the hyperinflation of yesteryear, but its drip-feed approach has seen the deepening of the directly opposite but equally debilitating problem; illiquidity. Not having enough cash to transact with is not better than having too much money with no value that no traders will accept. In the end, the situation is simply the flipping of a coin especially as the queues remain and people are deprived of cash. Where commodities were unavailable in 2008; they may be available in 2018 but increasingly expensive in an illiquid economy.

Basic Commodities in Shops as of 2017

Just as fractured as the political space is, the economy has also taken on characteristics in which people’s interests have also become fractured as individuals make do in circumstances where individuals worry about personal rather than national gain. Either some are smuggling goods for resale, or they are supporting protectionism to resuscitate local industry, or they hope to get their remittances in less stressful ways for example. Surviving has become more about the individual instead of the nation. Certainly, the discourse on economic nationalism, on jobs versus empowerment, of what government is and should do has certainly shifted in unpredictable ways.  

In a highly fractured political and economic space, action is more individualistic than collective. It is more highly nuanced; informed by personal rather than collective considerations. So, to conclude that people will vote against ZANU PF because of the cash crisis is inadequate as they may be beneficiaries of agriculture (land reform or command) or youth grants. In the same vein, to argue that those who benefit from ZANU PF patronage will vote for the ruling party may be misleading as they may be unhappy, not just about the cash crisis as it affects them, but also about their favoured candidates being kicked out of the party or their falling out of favour with the ruling elite as is the case with war veterans.

So, the current economic dynamics do not offer a sufficient guideline over who will take the next election. Even as the coalition of opposition political parties display their confidence that reforms will occur in time for the elections, I think this is highly unlikely. If ZANU PF retains control of the electoral machinery as it is likely to, the next election really is a dead rubber for them. We may see the opposition crying foul again if they do not seriously consider a more effective approach towards electoral reform and a fresh message for the electorate. If not, the more things change in Zimbabwean politics, the more they are likely to remain the same.    

*Dr Tinashe Nyamunda is a Post-Doctoral Researcher in the International Studies Group, at the University of the Free-State.