Oppression in Zimbabwe: We need change and not reforms

By Sheunesu Hove

It’s almost a tenable argument that in the first decade of independence most of us assumed, quite wrongly, that political, economic and social problems bedevilling the young nation called Zimbabwe were discrete challenges which would eventually fade away with the passage of time as our “democracy” matures.

What with the proliferation of political parties (multi-partyism) and civil society organisations (especially NGOs), there was no reason to suspect that the interlocking nature of these developments would coalesce a new system of oppression up the sleave of the new government to produce a classic intermesh.

How these developments continuously work together to produce domination, discrimination, marginalisation and lines of patronage in the country is amazing, something beyond our imagination at independence.

Apparently as many commentators would agree, all of Zimbabwe’s hyped “success and advancement” have been founded on the pyramids of oppression and dominance by the ruling elite and their cronies. Various forms of oppression overlap rather than run parallel in the lives of many ordinary Zimbabweans.

Embedded in colonial legacies and exacerbated by policy discord and fundamentally flawed national ideologies, the oppressive system in Zimbabwe, imbued in pseudo-collectivism, has advanced further doom and gloom to an already polarised populace and disenfranchised groups.

On one hand, if you sample any group that is not connected to the centre of power, you can easily identify multiple factors in relation to survival strategies, organised change initiatives, motives to resist oppression, courage to fight impunity and non-violent strategies for liberation and to end structural discrimination – these have become the everyday struggles of the ordinary Zimbo.

On other hand, if you sample any group that is connected to the centre of power, you can easily find a different scenario – you will find very effective assertions of patriotism, praise-singing, a lot of traction and resources to “create” wealth, and a new order for a better life. A country divided between the poor (the proletariat) and the rich (the bourgeoisie) – never mind the absence of the middle class.

However, the unanswered question is whether these efforts based on divide and rule address or exacerbate the structural bases of the multitude of problems facing the ordinary person? The answer to this question lies in our ability to critically analyse models that have attempted to resolve our problems in Zimbabwe.

In the first decade of independence, the government adopted a “development” approach (never mind it being premised on a Marxist ideology) and every year we would hear an announcement that this year is for this and that.

While development approaches in themselves are not problematic, however, the ones fronted to resolve the social challenges by the government only served to strengthen bureaucratic hierarchies especially within the central government, resulting in the bloated civil service whose maintenance is now gobbling 80% of a paltry national budget.

Consequently, the approach systematically disempowered the ordinary person because it was based on a totalising discourse that strengthened elitist diagnosis of social issues, thereby propagating other forms of oppression in a more effective way than what it sought to eradicate. For instance, the long-term economic and social effects of ESAP, which was introduced in the early 1990s, will affect more generations to come.

In order to understand the oppression I am talking about, one has to remove the blinkers or the tint that has been put on our faces by the ZANU PF government.

This will make us see the myriad of problems and challenges bevelling our country because of oppression, including but not limited to the ill-fated land redistribution, partial application of the law, police brutality, human rights abuses, destruction of the productive sectors of the economy in the name of indigenisation.

To begin with, colonialism was never completely taken off the governance system, hence the presence of draconian laws in our legal regime, the presidential procession when opening parliament is entirely colonial in form and design, you name it.

The legacy of colonialism also underlies the different strategies of the struggle to resist oppression. In fact, these discourses mutate like tuberculosis. For instance, colonialism (while many thought it ended with independence) mutated into oppression of the majority by the elite minority -0 never mind the colour issue.

Our own government espouses racial policies, nurtured patronage systems, thrives on impunity and corruption, categorised people as either “politically correct” or “in the right basket”, the list goes on. This has created a huge gap in the population based on inequality, poverty, marginalisation, discrimination, exclusion, patriarchal mechanisations and the mantra of liberation politics.

Let’s remember that oppression is not always explicit because in many cases it is implicit in the espoused policies and practices. For instance, systematic and patriarchal structure of society may deny a particular group of people equal opportunities to realise their potential. President Mugabe is on record dismissing the notion of male-female equality.

In other words, his leadership condemns women to the private space (housewives bent on making babies) and this is reminiscent of a patriarchal system that thrives on oppression but carefully packaged as empathy for the other gender.

Moreover, women, especially those living in the economically disenfranchised communities, have continuously born multiple burdens of oppression starting from control and exploitation of their bodies through to attempts to conform their dressing style to what are assumed to be culturally acceptable standards.

In addition, the most affected in reproduction oppression are women, as family planning focuses mainly on women and is removed from other social justice issues that affect women and their communities such as economic justice, environmental degradation, disability and discrimination based on sex and exclusion of women from decision making.

The reaction of civil society to the oppression system in Zimbabwe can be described as appalling because they have driven initiatives that only served to narrow down and sensitise their advocacy for equality without going further to confront the structures that produce the oppression – a limiting approach that ignores the intersection of the struggles by the people of Zimbabwe.

Resettled farmers, especially those in the A1 botched land redistribution scheme have had to shoulder the burden of poverty and exploitation in the name of patriotism. Most of them have borne the brunt of intra-party politics whereby they have to make way for the political elite without any guarantee of their own future.

At the beginning they (the people used to invade farms) didn’t see it as being condemned into poverty because they did it under mob psychology camouflaged as political demonstrations to right past wrongs.

Now as poverty forces them to remove the tint or blinkers put on their faces by ZANU PF, they realise that they have to live through the psychological debris of an oppressive system, and latches on to whatever they encounter in order to earn a living.

Consequently, these “farmers” are now at the mercy of the oppressive system to the extent that they cannot even determine the prices of their own crops, especially tobacco. This leads to massive economic exploitation in low produce prices and loss of farming autonomy embraced in the Hondo Yeminda jingles.

As if this is not enough, the uneven structure of global trade processes has not spared the poor “farmer” who now has to grapple with market liberalism that has led to cheap prices and for which the oppressive government is concerned less.

For the doubting Thomases in ZANU PF who still think that sanctions are the cause of this, the oppressive system will condemn them into poverty for generations.

After having said all this, the truth of the matter is that oppression must be dismantled and it is not as easy as it sounds here. I get a lot of inspiration from Paulo Frere’s beliefs in the Pedagogy of the Oppressed – that is love and dialogue.

Organising to dismantle oppressive structures and frameworks has to be grounded in revolutionary love during our struggle and not competition for power like we are witnessing not only in ZANU PF, but also in the opposition stable.

Equally, civil society organisations purporting to represent communities must be by guided by a transformative spirit that is driven by love to transform the oppressive structures rather competing for donor funds at the expense of the oppressed.

Critical dialogues on the historical, political, economic and social contradictions, which form the impetus of oppression and status quo must be entertained in earnest at all levels. Only Zimbabweans can wean themselves from the yoke of oppression by their own government and it is not an event but a process.

It is a life-long process of emancipatory war that questions and seeks to dismantle the assumptions underlying the rules and systems that propagate oppression of the people by their own government.

In doing so, we ought to be aware that an oppressive system has its own beneficiaries within our communities – it privileges some people (minority) while oppressing others (majority). We need to change the system and not to reform the system.

Sheunesu Hove can be reached on [email protected]