In Zimbabwe when factionalism and power-mongering become the order of the day in the ruling party, the opposition and civil society it does make one wonder ‘What Are We Fighting For’? Because if we are fighting to have the same form of politics but just another political party then we should stop now. If all we are doing is trying to replace one chef with another then we should pause. Because we need new politics. Not new politicians.
In Zimbabwe we have become entrenched in ‘chef’ politics with the adulation of our bosses in politics, business, religion and civil society. We throw ourselves at the feet of the powerful. And, by doing so, we give up our own power. We internalize the ‘povo’. We give ‘them’ the power.
Our society these days seems to revolve around elections but its been proved to us how little they change things. 2002, 2008 & 2013 are numbers that bring chills and bad memories to ordinary Zimbabweans. Our only interaction with power can’t be at the ballot box. After all there’s the famous saying: ‘If voting changed anything they would have made it illegal’. In Zimbabwe they haven’t made voting illegal they’ve just made it seem futile.
What we have in Zimbabwe is a relic of colonialism – a centralized police state made to serve the interests of a minority – from a white minority to an elite of Zanu PF chefs. This House of Hunger - as Dambudzo Marechera called it - was built to control and to oppress not to empower and liberate. And its still the same structure. Just different paint.
So how do we break power down and make it from the bottom-up? How can we re-imagine life beyond parliamentary politics where chefs take people’s power to a so-called august house and sleep on it? How do we build a society where power resides in residents assemblies, workers’ councils, vendors’ associations and student councils so that people take part in decision-making over the actual decisions that affect them: council budgets, social service provision and so forth. It starts with believing that tomorrow doesn’t have to be like today. That destiny is not set in stone, it’s fought for.
When a new political dispensation comes and the economy is ‘opened up’ we have the chance to re-create and start afresh. We need to make sure it is a Zimbabwe without the neo-liberal policies of the past that saw IMF and World Bank-backed Economic Structural Adjustment Programmes transfer wealth and resources from public realm to private. We need it to be a future free of this power-drunk pyramid-style politics enforced on us from Smith to Mugabe. We need to build a new participatory democracy and participatory economics. Because we need control of our own resources but not how Zanu PF has done it. We need communities in control of their resources. Zanu PF policies sound good on paper: from land reform to indigenization. In reality it’s a different story. We need resources to truly benefit local communities and not just parasitic ministers, generals and their families.
To create this new path we need to just look at experiments in democracy across the global south. From the radical democracy of the Zapatistas in Mexico to the participatory budgeting of Porto Allegre, Brazil. We can look at how the Senegalese hip hop movement Y’en a Marre has creatively started engaging citizens and power. And then we can take a step forward and create our own future.