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'Intellectuals'
and Progress in Zimbabwe - 'Progress' in Zimbabwe Conference
Amanda
Atwood, Kubatana.net
November 08, 2010
'Progress' in
Zimbabwe Conference index
page
View audio file details
Roundtable
Participants: Ibbo Mandaza, Brian Raftopoulos, Prof. Maphathu-Ncube,
Luise White
Ibbo Mandaza
opened this discussion and noted that in the 1980s intellectuals
in Zimbabwe played an impressive role. There was a deliberate attempt
to put Harare on the map of African scholarship, against the hegemony
of European and North American scholarship. This led to the creation
of Zimbabwean research and scholarly centres. There was an element
of nationalism in these developments, but this, he argued, was not
necessarily a bad thing.
However, he
noted, radical scholars were systematically exorcised from positions
of influence over the state. He stated that Mugabe's Zanu
PF is right wing, despite its anti imperialist rhetoric.
Listen
Mandaza also
noted that a major product of the Zimbabwe era has been the production
of a comprador bourgeoisie - and an engagement with this class
by international capital. He observed that the international community
is less concerned about democracy and human rights than they are
about stability. Thus, if it is accepted that there is a level of
stability now as compared with 2008, this is accepted as "progress."
Listen
Brian Raftopoulos
discussed the different kind of intellectual formations that developed
in post colonial Zimbabwe, across four periods. During the 1980s,
he said, there were intellectuals very much within the radical tradition.
These intellectuals took a critically supportive view of the state
- but they were not in any sense anti-state. This was the important
first attempt to begin to critically assess what was going on within
the state.
The second formation
was a crude, reductionist Marxism coming out of the University of
Zimbabwe. Many of those students who were trained in that department
then moved from that reductionist Marxism to human rights.
In the 1990s,
Raftopoulos observed, the human rights debate emerged and intellectuals
engaged with it, playing a key role in putting human rights and
constitutional questions on the Zimbabwe agenda. They coalesced
around the National Constitutional Assembly and one began to see
a polarisation of intellectual debate. It took an emerging crisis
around the state for intellectuals to begin to ask new questions
about the post-colonial state and nationalism. They also began to
interrogate the nature of nationalism, and the costs and contradictions
of it.
In the post-2000
period, Raftopoulos noted, there was a real polarisation of intellectuals,
around issues of the authoritarian nature of the emerging state,
the unfolding land question, and constitutionalism and democratisation.
The debate diverged, with clear human rights, law and legal questions
on one side, and redistributive questions on the other. There were
political divisions amongst intellectuals in Zimbabwe.
Raftopoulos
called for a deconstruction of the language of anti-colonialism
and anit-imperialism. He asked what it really means. For whilst
there was truth in the critique of empire that was coming out of
that, in Zimbabwe it was based on a very anti-democratic notion
and a repressive definition of citizenship. There were both progressive
and regressive elements to this discourse, which threw off many
African scholars in the region and on the continent. This was most
apparent, he noted, in the Mamdani
debate in 2008 and in Sam
Moyo and Paris Yeros' articulation of the land question,
in which violence and citizenship are not discussed.
Listen
Rafopolous also
commented that one of the things about Zimbabwe is that it is a
situation where you see a hugely impoverished anti-imperialist discourse
being used to mobilise a region and a continent. It's impoverished
because it's not based on a national legitimacy. It doesn't
empower. It's based on exclusions and a very serious mode
of repression. As Elinor Sisulu commented, we don't know yet
how to articulate a different kind of anti-imperialist discourse
which is both a critique of empire and a critique of authoritarian
nationalist states.
Listen
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