Once upon a time Zimbabwe was viewed with considerable optimism but that optimism soon vanished and was rapidly replaced with doom and gloom, today when the world pays attention to the country, it is generally because of all sorts of unpleasantries happening there. The independence dream, prosperity and presumed freedom from Western interference has turned into a fatal political crash; so-called liberators curdled into corrupt dictators; a dark cloud covers the political and economic skies; dissenting voices are silenced by any means necessary. The postcolonial state is a predator that draws resources from certain regions and communities to develop the metropolitan areas.
The postcolonial state has failed to integrate society and work for the entire population: the policies are a product of the elite instead of being an amalgamation of the myriad of needs and interests of most of the population. Rural areas may be the power bank for ZANU PF, but rural folk have limited involvement with the state.
Querying what went wrong is just a rhetorical question, by now we all know what went wrong; ZANU, which later became ZANU PF after its decapitation of PF ZAPU, was never suited for multiparty democracy; from the onset the party was a tribalist organisation whose focus was to promote Shona supremacy, gain Shona endorsement, use superior population numbers to gain power and appropriate it for the benefit of its elite. The party had no capacity nor interest to tolerate genuine diversity of thought within its structures, it resented and still hates dissent.
Instead of standing up to the obvious authoritarian tendencies of ZANU PF elite who, at independence, aggressively sort to enforce a one-party state, silence debate, end difference and eliminate political opposition, the majority ethnic Shona supporters wilfully stood by the party to degrade and dehumanise other population groups and whoever opposed the party’s ideology.
Repressive state operations in Matabeleland were legitimised as essential security operations; questionable as they were, they were never interrogated by the Shona dominated partisan media. When the scale of Gukurahundi killings of unarmed Matabeleland nationals under the guise of combing out dissidents surfaced those who should have asked the questions of the credibility of reasons for intervention, proportionality, and its justification self-gagged and/ or looked away.
Joshua Nkomo, the leader of the opposition – PF ZAPU, dared to question the justification of creating an army (5th Brigade) outside of the national army to provide national security, he was rebuffed and threatened by Mugabe who warned that ‘dissidents must watch out’. Nkomo was treated as a pariah, the Shona majority population wilfully embraced the Gukurahundi doctrine as a necessary state security measure just as they viewed Ndebele people as dissidents.
Simmering and spiralling out of this was a dangerous politics of othering; it was either one condoned ZANU’s actions and ideology or they were designated dissident status for seeing things differently – no room for debate. Peace and security in the independent Zimbabwe were defined in demarcation rather than partnership with Ndebele people.
Ascribed the dissident label, Ndebele people were dehumanised, and Shona people systematically desensitised from the brutality and inhumane treatment of Ndebele people by the state of which Mnangagwa was a key figure.
The silence of the media and the West indirectly legitimised the Gukurahundi atrocities, and the ZANU PF regime seized the opportunity and quickly endorsed and turned violence into its signature policy for the control and management of dissent. To this day, violence remains ZANU PF’s preferred intervention; instead of making effort to understand views the party disagrees with, it pulls its muscle to crush and bury the alternate views along with the authors.
Understanding the postcolonial Zimbabwe state requires that we understand the colonial predecessor. The Rhodesia state, like other colonial states in the region, was a military and administrative entity, aimed nearly exclusively at extracting resources for the economic development of the metropolitan area. The state had no concern for the improvement of natives’ living conditions; it did not only have little involvement with natives, but it was also unaccountable to them; it took both the decision-making and implementation roles throwing away the valuable democratic concept of division of powers. Such systems were necessary for the colonisers to effectively exert control over natives without their consent.
When ZANU PF took over office on 18 April 1980, the ground was ripe for a dictatorship; it seized that governing template based on the repression of a certain population group by another. This template made it extremely easy and tempting for ZANU PF leadership elite to resort to repression when political dissent emerged.
Predictably, apart from minor tweaks, ZANU PF adopted the predatory European colonial master’s administrative template in full; where Rhodesian governing structures were thoroughly dictatorial only paying attention to whites’ concerns, ZANU PF replaced ‘whites’ with ‘Shona’ and the elite.
Postcolonial African states have not met a fraction of what the ‘liberators’ promised the general population in the region. In Zimbabwe the only shift from the Rhodesia era is by way of economic destruction, otherwise many structures remain in place, only tightened to protect interests of the elite. Trying to stifle diversity, dissent and political debate has remained ZANU PF’s major political objective during its rule in Zimbabwe. Censorship in the country threatens the very core of what independence and democracy are about; for a progressive political engagement, it is crucial that political leaders understand views they disagree with.
MTHWAKAZI INDEPENDENT 