On the question of an unfinished revolution?

On the question of an unfinished revolution?

KWINJEH

• Nobuhle Nyathi: Matshazi's mind frozen in bad theories

• Your Shouts!: Kwinjeh ridiculed Africans

• Tony Namate: Matshazi's abject Pan-Africanism

• Julius Dewa: Mugabe has scathed African pride

• Matshazi: 'Kwinjeh ridiculed Africans'

• Mugabe's celebratory rant as Zim turns 25

• Zim gone 25 years backwards, says MDC

• Kwinjeh: Happy birthday to an unfinished revolution

• No cheer as Zim turns 24

• Independence war mass graves found

• Mugabe calls on exiles to return

Grace Kwinjeh's Independence Day article 'Happy birthday to an unfinished revolution' has attracted several comments from our readers. Kuthula Matshazi accused her of distortion. Tinashe Chimedza writes to support Kwinjeh

THE debate that has been sparked by Grace Kwinjeh and was picked up Kuthula Matshazi reminds me of reading a book by Astrow, ‘Zimbabwe: A revolution that Lost its Way’ published in the mid-1980s in which Zimbabwe’s ‘petty bourgeoisie’ were attacked for hijacking and stalling the struggle towards socialism in Zimbabwe.

Does any one us of remember the ‘Growth with Equity’ philosophy or the “Five Year Development Plans’ and the ‘National Democratic Revolution’ framework? These were supposed to be the guiding framework for a Gramscian struggle for socialism and hopefully achieving a classless society in which material (economic questions) would be answered by central planning and abolishing private property. Does any one us remember the “Leadership Code’ in the mid-eighties that attempted to combat growing bourgeoisie accumulation tendencies by government bureaucrats and state functionaries? Possibly a lot of us have forgotten this because by the end of the eighties communism and with it all Marxist related tendencies had been almost buried and liberal democracy ‘triumphed’.

Even more so the government was now in a marriage with settler capital, as to what had happened to the povo, no one knew and no one cared. The question that Grace raises is that, ‘how can the struggle in Zimbabwe be understood and possibly defined as a dynamic struggle that is taking place in a globalizing world in which trade rules, international law and multilateralism are being bludgeoned by the same countries that cry foul when Zimbabwe’s elections are not free and fair?

To me, and I differ with Matshazi, the question is not so much as about whose monies we are receiving as to what do we perceive or understand the struggle in Zimbabwe to be about. Approaching the question of the Zimbabwean struggle from such a narrow conception will lead us into a morass that is parochial and not worth seeking and debating. Thus I will depart from throwing myself into that debate and confront the question, ‘what is the current struggle in Zimbabwe about? I will be a bit historical and argue that the struggle in Zimbabwe is best defined by looking at two processes at the end of the 1990s – the congregation of working people that gathered at the Working People’s Convention in 1999 and secondly the multitude of people who participated in the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) process up to the defeat of the government sponsored constitution in 2000. The former, leading to the formation of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), was a creation and realization of a political platform that would challenge and ideally capture state power in the hope of using state bureaucracy for a social transformation and economic development program. I am not particularly so trustful of governments as vehicles of democratization so I will leave democratization for the moment as a process that would have been realized by a participatory and democratic constitutional reform, as argued by the NCA.

Remember the mandating of the MDC process came not only from years of repeated failure to challenge the hegemony of Zanu PF but importantly was based on the social rebellion that was spurred by the failure of structural adjustment in Zimbabwe. Thus the NCA and MDC, viewed with critical hindsight, are not contradictory projects; the one seeks to establish a bourgeois democracy in which individual rights and property are entrenched and protected by a rule of law while the other seeks to capture state power and hopefully utilize it for social transformation and economic development. The former, that of achieving a bourgeoisie democracy or a liberal democracy, has been with little controversy as it does less of challenging existing property relations while the latter is likely to be more difficult and protracted. But we must be clear from the onset that the Mugabe regime has squandered legitimacy and mandate and that it is no longer capable of achieving both these crucial processes in Zimbabwe. Whatever government takes over in a developing country it is confronted with the reality of a global power balance that is dominated by the rich and powerful and most of them former (current?) colonial empires – more so for a government that butchers its own people.

"This reality can not be confronted and transformed and changed with a nostalgic government like that in Zimbabwe"

TINASHE CHIMEDZA

But this reality can not be confronted and transformed and changed with a nostalgic government like that in Zimbabwe. Across the globe there are transitional movements that are acting collectively and in solidarity to challenge the existing global power balance both politically and in terms of economics. But it is important to note that these social movements and what one can cautiously call a ‘global civil society’ is acting both in contention and in collaboration with the state. The are platforms where countries from the South are supported by this ‘global civil society’ including with NGOs from the North to take certain policy positions like during the collapsed trade talks in Cancun, Mexico . When one joins onto the “cancel the debt campaign’ one immediately asks a question what does this mean in terms of the ruling elites in Zimbabwe where democratic economic policy making does not exist. But one quickly understands that calling for debt cancellation, or the reform of international financial institutions and for fair trade is not inconsistent with calling for democratization at the national level. There has been fierce debate on how powerful institutions like the World Trade Organization, World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have been working in favor of global capital flows that are dominated by multi-national corporations from the rich and powerful in the North. Taking action and participating in collective solidarity to call for reform does not preclude the necessity of engaging in national collective action for democratization and social transformation. A far more democratic Zimbabwe would generate the democratic and possibly social consensus that is needed in generating a democratic economic policy making processes both at the national and international level.

Understanding Zimbabwe as a crisis of an unfinished revolution is a powerful way of analyzing and informing one’s actions on Zimbabwe and this is the clarion call that Grace seems to be calling us to. This means that one understands that there are some issues that pre-date independence and there are issues that are post-independent and that the current struggle must deal with these issues. There has been a book titled ‘Zimbabwe’s Unfinished Business’ which seeks to analyze and inform action on Zimbabwe on how the current crisis also has colonial and some global origins – especially through structural adjustment and the ‘mantra’ of the market as the efficient allocator of scarce resources.

Writing and dwelling on the global and colonial origins of the crisis is a limited approach so also is the approach that seeks only to ‘name the enemy’ as Mugabe’s insatiable hunger for power. The world is still driven by interests and this is very clear, we don’t need rocket science for this – a liberal and more open and lean government will be more welcome to international capital which is seeking investment opportunities to maximize profits not for Zimbabwe but for its shareholders. On the other hand a liberal and more open governance system in Zimbabwe will also open possibilities of the national civil society building transnational solidarity and creating joint platforms of action within an emerging global civil society. This does not even mean that ‘global civil society’ is not itself an arena of contestation it only means that an open governance system will allow Zimbabweans to march against human rights abuses much as others would want to march against the war in Iraq or rigged international trade rules. The nation-state is still thus an area of contestation and for a civil society that wants to enhance its collective action for a ‘better’ world with fairer trade rules for example creating and fighting for a democratic space at the national level becomes an immediate need.

The ‘national’ is still rough terrain to negotiate but as world evolves into a ‘village’ where power and economic relations are unequal the struggle for a better Zimbabwe and Africa will always be a constant struggle. But better we have one struggle off our hands that of democratization and having a liberal democracy as an initial guarantor of individual rights. Solidarity and platforms of actions are going to be across and in between cultures, countries, regions and are going to transcend the localities within which we leave. If global capitalism has transformed the rights of citizens, shifting them from the local to the global where representation is clouded by muscle and power then even those that struggle for a ‘another world’ are going to need a global response. And this, my learned friend Matshazi, does not mean that ‘you are a counter-revolutionary’ who has sold out to the imperialists. It is realistic that change especially economic change for the better is going to take more than contesting with the nation-state or Zanu PF. We must not see inconsistencies between a struggle for democratization in Zimbabwe and a struggle for a better deal for ‘the poor sods’ that are hedged between a local political crisis and an international order dominated by the rich and powerful. In fact the more the global scheme of things look pessimistic the deeper we must dig our trenches at home because they will still be needed even if we were to have the Pope as the head of Government in Zimbabwe.

This is my interpretation of Grace Kwinjeh’s sober and seasoned call to deeper struggle and seeing beyond Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF’s thuggery.
Tinashe Chimedza is a former student leader at the University of Zimbabwe tortured by the CIO in April last year
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