What to demand and expect should Mnangagwa be removed from power

Zimbabweans, particularly those in the opposition, are discussing what to demand and expect should President Emmerson Mnangagwa be removed from power.

The demands and expectations have focused on the establishment of a National Transitional Authority or a Government of National Unity with the primary mandate to implement electoral reforms and create a way for the conduct of free and fair elections.

I believe that whether we demand an NTA or GNU, our focus should be on the need to introduce a new governance culture that is built on inviolate values, with either an NTA or GNU as a vehicle to take us to that culture.

The search for a new Zimbabwe should be premised on a national pledge to converge on the following inviolate values despite our political and other differences:

The values and aspirations of the liberation struggle are our collective conscience and compass; they are inviolate.

Zimbabwe’s valiant fight against colonialism was about Gutsaruzhinji. It was about transferring Zimbabwe’s natural resources from the white minority to the black majority. It was not about individuals, groups, or political parties.

It was about the pursuit of collective as opposed to individualistic arrival. The liberation struggle was about establishing a Zimbabwe where human rights and democratic freedoms are protected and respected. 

Some of the signature liberation war songs, Tondosangana KuZimbabwe and Nzira Dzemasoja remind us about the values and expectations of the liberation struggle.

However, close to 50 years into independence, Zimbabwe is in ruins because of corruption, nepotism, tribalism, individualism, incompetence, state capture, and abuse of human rights and fundamental freedoms.

Land was at the centre of the liberation struggle because it is the most important natural resource in Africa. However, close to 50 years into independence, most of the land is still in the hands of a corrupt few who are incapable of utilising it.

In rural areas, our people do not have title deeds. Land is being used as a political tool to harass and intimidate villagers and commercial land owners.

Our natural resources are being auctioned to imperialistic vultures. The Chinese and other foreign interests are exploiting our resources, desecrating our environment, harassing our people, and evicting them from their ancestral land, the very land which was fought for.

It is unutterably painful to imagine that it is never possible, either in this age or in the age to come, for Zimbabwean companies operating in China, if at all they can, to evict the Chinese from their land and exploit China’s natural resources; but it is a norm for Chinese companies operating in Zimbabwe to evict Zimbabweans from their ancestral land and carry out a state-sanctioned heist.

Our infrastructure, particularly roads, health and education delivery systems are in a state of derelict. When I look at the state of Zimbabwe today, I shudder to imagine that it was liberated through a vicious armed struggle, with many of the comrades still lying restlessly in mass and shallow graves that are far from home and many others struggling with life threatening injuries which they incurred during the war. 

The villagers immensely contributed to the liberation struggle. They lost their loved ones, their sons and daughters abandoned educational opportunities and joined the struggle, they cooked for the comrades, they gave their livestock to the struggle, they supplied intelligence to the comrades, and they endured all forms of harassment and abuse.  They were indeed the water of the struggle.

The liberation struggle was a collective project, but only a few people are harvesting its fruits. This is why the young people are saying that the war of liberation was fought in vain because the very people who claim the accolades of fighting the liberation struggle are at the forefront of desecrating the values and aspirations of the liberation struggle.

It is therefore important for us to always ensure that the values and aspirations of the liberation struggle are eternally engraved in our hearts and deeds.

They must be our collective conscience and compass whose role is to show us where we are coming from and where we should go as a nation.

Corruption is severely punishable, including by life imprisonment and if need be, by death sentence.

The genocidal corruption in Zimbabwe is beyond unacceptable. It has killed the capacity of the state to deliver public goods, especially health, sanitation, education, and infrastructural development.

It has killed thousands of citizens due to the derelict economy, particularly the health delivery system. If corruption has caused such a genocidal damage to our nation, then those who commit egregious forms of corruption must be punished through either life imprisonment and if need be, by death sentence.

We shall always respect the rule of law and the sanctity and supremacy of our constitution.

Our constitution is our collective conscience and compass. It is the supreme law of the land. It must be respected as such. No individual, group, or political party is above the constitution. Our constitution should never be violated to pursue narrow political interests.

Any constitutional amendments must be made in the best interests of Zimbabwe, not of an individual, group, or political party.

We shall always hold elections that are free, fair, and credible.    

The conduct of brazenly rigged elections is at the centre of the problems that Zimbabwe is facing. The people of Zimbabwe have the constitutional right to choose leaders of their choice. This is one of the fundamental rights for which the liberation war was fought. There is no individual, group, or political party which has the divine right to govern Zimbabwe. We must therefore always conduct elections that are free, fair, and credible.

Never again shall we see each other as enemies on account of political differences.

One of the tragic developments in Zimbabwe is that we use our political differences to regard each other as sworn enemies.  As Zimbabweans, we must understand that we will always have political differences. It is impossible for us to hold a singular political view or support one political party.

Every Zimbabwean has the right to form or belong to a political party of his or her choice. There is no Zimbabwean or political party that has a monopoly of patriotism. We must always remember that our political identities are divisible, superficial, alienable, and dispensable; but our collective identity as Zimbabweans is ingrained, indivisible, inalienable, and indispensable. 

We must always understand that toxic polarisation is one of the greatest enablers of imperialism in Africa and that the more polarised we are, the more we create the room for imperialism to devour our natural resources.

We must understand that one of the core reasons why we regard each other as enemies is that we fight political battles that are not ideologically grounded. Instead, they are rooted in populism and the search for insatiable individual arrival.

We must never again regard each other as enemies because of our political differences. We must cultivate the culture of seeing Zimbabwe through the eyes of another. The ordinary people must refuse to be divided by politicians.

Never again shall any Zimbabwean be killed for holding or expressing a different political opinion.

Never again should any Zimbabwean be killed or victimised for holding a particular political view or supporting a particular political party. No Zimbabwean should be violently persuaded into holding a particular political view or supporting a particular political party.

The curse of violence must be permanently exorcised from our beloved nation. We must move away from the culture of using fear, intimidatory, polarizing, and hateful language against each other to a culture of listening to each other despite our political differences.

Never again shall our security and justice systems be used to achieve partisan political interests.

State institutions, particularly our security and justice institutions, are our national emblems. They must promote and protect the rights, freedoms, security, interests, and wellbeing of all Zimbabweans regardless of their political affiliation. Never again shall they be used and abused to achieve political interests at the expense of justice and national interests.

We shall always believe in big ideas and national interests, not in individuals, groups, or political parties.

As a nation, we must always understand that Zimbabwe is permanent, but individuals, groups, and political parties are temporary and that Zimbabwe belongs to all Zimbabweans, not to an individual, group, or political party. There is no individual, group, or political party that owns Zimbabwe’s title deeds.

For this reason, Zimbabwe is bigger than any individual, group, or political party, whether ruling or opposition. The collective interests of Zimbabwe should never again be subjected to the parochial interests of a particular individual, group, or political party.

We shall converge on big ideas and national interests and not on individuals or groups.

We shall always acknowledge that it takes all Zimbabweans to build Zimbabwe, not an individual, group, or political party.

Zimbabwe has lost brilliant ideas which could have hugely contributed to nation-building because of the toxic belief that a particular political party, political leader, or ethnic group is exclusively endowed with the right and capacity to build Zimbabwe.

Zimbabweans with brilliant ideas have been excluded from state building processes and institutions simply because they support the opposition or they are not members of ZANU-PF. We need all capable hands on the nation building table.

While we all have the right to belong to political parties of our choice, we must rise above ethnicity, tribalism, and partisan politics and make nation-building a collective responsibility, not a partisan one.

We shall always have an education that is connected to our natural resources.

We have a useless education system that produces people who are perpetually disconnected from their natural resources. The colonial education system sought to produce employment-oriented learners, learners who are educated but illiterate as far as the world works.

This is why people from other continents go to Zimbabwe to exploit its natural resources while Zimbabweans go to other continents to seek jobs. We should reform our education system and link it to our natural resources so that we can produce people who are capable of adding value to our natural resources.

We shall always seek to retain our talent for the benefit of our nation

Great nations are not built by natural resources alone. This explains why Africa is rich in natural resources but remains a wretched continent. Human beings are the first and greatest resource that any country can be endowed with.

It is a historical fact that from the time of slave trade until today, African labourers contributed immensely to the building of Europe and America. It is disheartening that there are many talented Zimbabweans who are building other nations while Zimbabwe is in a derelict state.

We shall always put people of ideas and integrity in positions of power.

If one cares to look at the quality of many of the people who occupy leadership positions in the government of Zimbabwe, it is difficult to understand how we got here.

Why are we having delusional, illiterate, criminal, and incompetent characters in positions of power and influence when we have so many talented Zimbabweans? For us to prosper, we must always put the right people in positions of power.

We shall comprehensively address all historical wrongs and walk towards national healing, reconciliation, and unity.

One of my PhDs is in the field of Political Science. My research focused on opposition party politics in Zimbabwe.

This research gave me insights into the forms of violence that were committed against the opposition; from Gukurahundi to politically motivated violence, especially during and after elections. Zimbabwe is a deeply wounded nation.

However, no meaningful healing and reconciliation processes have been undertaken to address this violent past. We cannot continue to use sporadic, insincere, and tokenistic healing and reconciliation processes.

Never again shall we allow imperialists, neo-colonialists, and supremacists to divide us and plunder our natural resources.

One of the lethal tools that imperialists always use against Africa is to divide, polarize, and exploit. For example, the violent conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo is big business for imperialists. The struggle for independence can never be complete without the total liberation of Zimbabwe and Africa from all forms and manifestations of imperialism.

It cannot be complete without achieving economic reconciliation and freedom for the sons and daughters of Africa. We cannot continue to accept a situation where our natural resources are at the centre of the world’s economic system but we are at the periphery of that system.

We must always be equipped with the undefeatable consciousness that colonialism is still alive today. In fact, there is a new scramble for Africa that is more vicious than the Berlin Conference of 1884.

While countries such as China and Russia supported Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle, they have become “competitors” in the scramble for Zimbabwe’s natural resources.

Fellow Zimbabweans, we must never again allow imperialists, neo-colonialists, and supremacists to continue to divide us and plunder our natural resources.

We shall always exhaust internal ways of resolving Zimbabwe’s problems.

Zimbabwe continues to be submerged in toxic polarisation because of the sheer lack of statesmanship and courage by the main political actors to talk to each other and find solutions to the problems that are afflicting the nation.

If Zimbabweans are to make any movement as a nation, they must intentionally and resolutely build and fortify the willingness to resolve their problems using internal routes. There are two main internal routes that are mutually reinforcing that Zimbabwe must use.

The first route is the use of meaningful and fruitful dialogue, particularly between all sites of power such as the government, the opposition, the security sector, the labour movement, the student movement, women’s movements, youth movements, civil society, the church, war veterans, traditional leaders, and the business community.

The second route is the midwifery role of key African actors such as SADC, the African Union, sitting and former African heads of state, and African diplomats.

These actors are well-positioned to help Zimbabwe. However, they can only help Zimbabwe if Zimbabweans help themselves first by removing the zero-sum polarisation that has become the signature of our national politics and create a dialogical political environment.

We shall never again use a winner-take-all system of governance.

Zimbabwe uses a winner-take-all electoral system. This system makes electoral competition a matter of life and death because the “winner” walks away with virtually everything while the “losers” walk away with virtually nothing.

There is no room for power sharing and this is what causes toxic polarization because the stakes of losing an election are extremely high. Zimbabwe should therefore transition to a system that inherently distributes power and promotes inclusivity.

The main way of achieving this transition is by reforming the presidential system to allow it to accommodate a President, one or two Deputy Presidents, a Prime Minister with executive powers, and a Deputy Prime Minister. This hybrid system can also accommodate the office of the leader of the opposition.

It is an odd but circumstantially sound system. It has many advantages. First, Zimbabwe will have a constitutionally embedded “GNU”. Such a “GNU” is long-term because it is not negotiated and it does not depend on the magnanimity of the incumbent president.

Second, the hybrid system is a “depolarizing valve” because it deflates political polarization and encourages inter-party cooperation by accommodating declared “losers” who have huge electoral support.

This creates a perpetually dialogical political environment, an environment that naturally promotes dialogue not only between political leaders but also between citizens. It enables Zimbabwe to move from “seasonal” dialogue to systemic dialogue.

Third, it gives the opposition a long-term space from which to meaningfully fight for electoral and political reforms. Fourth, it allows Zimbabwe to take a collective approach to nation-building and benefit from the knowledge and skills of politicians from different political parties. 

We shall always have governance systems that are rooted in our ways of life.

One of the key objectives of colonialism was to violently exterminate indigenous knowledge and governance systems in Africa and replace them with European ones. The purported endgame was to “civilize” Africa. However, the intention was to force Africans to lose faith in their being. 

It is tragic that at independence, we embraced copy and paste governance systems that are alien to our ways of life. The contemporary neoliberal era is characterized by a determined effort to reassert colonialist impulses, processes, and policies in Africa instead of promoting autonomous governance and development processes that are anchored on the culture, values, practices, needs, expectations, and demands of the local context. 

These governance systems are also essentially instruments of imperialism. This explains why the celebrated era of democracy and multi-party elections has brought nothing to the sons and daughters of Africa, except toxic polarization.

We must always understand that only governance systems that are rooted in our ways of life and enriched by some carefully selected aspects of liberal democracy will work for us. We must start thinking about alternative models of governance that will deliver unity, peace, security, and development.

Dr Moses Tofa is a Research Leader, political analyst, and self-critical Pan-Africanist. He holds a PhD in Politics from the University of Johannesburg and a PhD in Conflict Studies from the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal. He is also an Investigator at the University of Andes, Colombia. He is the founder of the Zimbabwe Opposition Monitoring and Support Group (ZOMSG). He writes in his capacity. Reachable at [email protected], Follow him on twitter handle: @DrDrMTofa.