Zimbabwe: a nation subsumed in politics

Zimbabwe: a nation subsumed in politics

MTUKUDZI

• New Zimbabwe.com victory as Mtukudzi apologises

• YOUR SHOUTS (Part 3): Outrage as Tuku backs Mugabe

• Mtukudzi: 'I am not a Zanu PF supporter'

• YOUR SHOUTS (Part 2): Outrage as Tuku backs Mugabe

• YOUR SHOUTS (Part 1): Outrage as Tuku backs Mugabe

• The bungling lunatic from Dande

• Oliver Mtukudzi sings for Zanu PF

• Decibel: the early years

• Mtukudzi to launch new album on UK tour

• Mtukudzi, Ringo wind-up UK tour

• Mtukudzi, Ringo expected for UK concerts

• Mtukudzi records movie soundtrack in NZ

• Mtukudzi, Chaka Chaka conquer Namibia

• Ishmael out of tune with UK fans

• Mataz jets in for Tuku, Ishmael UK tour

• Tuku takes his subtle, discreet protest music to UK audiences

• Zimbabwe keeps protest music muffled

• Tuku brings Somerville crowd to its feet

By Innocent Chofamba Sithole

OLIVER Mtukudzi’s response to the outcry in the media by some of his fans makes sense when viewed in a business context.

The Standard merely pulled the trigger, and New Zimbabwe.com proved to be the volley of bullets that so riddled Tuku's prospects of mounting a long-term international career that he had to break his peace and appease the aggrieved lot with his plaintive article published on this website.

He acted as any rational man would. This rationality rests on the fact that the majority of those who buy his music and attend his live shows are urban-based, while Zimbabweans in the Diaspora account for virtually all of his international music sales plus a growing series of live shows too.

Even in the absence of a formal survey, it goes without saying that the majority among all these groups are not only opposed to the Zanu PF government, but are also active or passive supporters and sympathisers of the opposition MDC.

And because Zimbabwe is so politically polarised that the majority on either side of the political divide have become fundamentalist and only make themselves amenable to views and perspectives that reinforce or correspond to their own, those who wish to sustain interaction or relations with them at a level other than political, have sometimes been forced to pander to the same overriding political impulse as well.

In short, politics subsumes everything and in Zimbabwe, you are who you support. Depending on where you stand, one is either a devil or an angel, a good guy or a bad guy. It does not help matters that both sides think they constitute the exclusive truth; both seize democracy and popular national aspiration by the scruff of the neck and run away with them.

This reflects a deep-seated malaise at the heart of our national soul and no amount of self-righteous pontification by anyone would exorcise this ghost. The aspect of live and let live - crucial to the idea of toleration, that hallmark of democracy - has long been sacrificed at the alter of political expediency by Zanu PF, and it is sad that those who see themselves as fighting for democracy are actively suppressing its resurrection, for the same reasons.

"I shudder to imagine the kind of atrocious commissions against individual freedom that my fellow Zimbabweans are willing to visit upon themselves in the name of democracy"

INNOCENT CHOFAMBA SITHOLE

This latest episode helps complete the caricature of a psychotically intolerant society whose members are desperately trying to out-compete each other in selling their mutually exclusive versions of political righteousness: on the one hand you've got the Herald and ZBH giving vent to establishment and broadly Zanu paranoia by banning and vilifying Zimbabwe's one true-to-the-bone Gandanga, Thomas Mapfumo for criticising the system; and on the other you've got New Zimbabwe.com, The Standard and some of its followers championing a crusade to hang the nation's leading social commentator-in-song, Oliver Mtukudzi, for singing at a political party rally!

I shudder to imagine the kind of atrocious commissions against individual freedom that my fellow Zimbabweans are willing to visit upon themselves in the name of democracy. If I had access to U2's Bono, I'd ask him how many of his old Tory fans he's lost ever since appearing with Tony Blair at the Labour national convention last year! All those Hollywood stars who come out in support of George W Bush last November, have any pro-Democrat radio stations banned their music, or have any of their movies been boycotted? Newspapers do have agenda-setting powers, but I only hope they could be less petty than this.
Chofamba Sithole is a Zimbabwean journalist. He writes from Leicester, England
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shapiro@newzimbabwe.com