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Why Zimbabweans won't rebel: Part 1
*Eldred Masunungure
September 22, 2006

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http://www.zimonline.co.za/Article.aspx?ArticleId=192

HARARE - The state-oriented media celebrated the failure of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU)-organised mid-day protests on Wednesday 13 September 2006 describing it as a "damp squib".

More sympathetic media were more restrained in their reactions. The alleged reasons for the "damp squib" varied widely and wildly. This is neither the first nor the last time such "damp squibs" will be witnessed in crisis-riddled Zimbabwe.

The paradox is that as the overall situation of the multi-faceted crisis worsens, the people directly affected become more and more impotent and demobilised.

Some analysts and commentators may want to explain this anomalous situation in terms of embedded fear among the Zimbabwean population.

The "fear thesis" indeed has its merits but accounts for only part of the paradox, and probably only a small part of it.

In short, the fear hypothesis is overstated. More critically, even if the fear variable is a valid assertion, it itself needs to be explained rather than it being an adequate explanatory variable.

In any case, where does the fear reside: in the elite or the masses? My contention is that repression in any polity projects fear, not fear directed at the state elites by the demos but of the state elites towards the demos.

The more repressive the polity is, the more it is an admission of the fright and fear of the governing elite towards the masses, not the other way round. In short, repression is the weapon of the fearful.

The problematique that seizes my attention is not unlike that posed by Maggie Makanza in early August when she presented a paper entitled: "The Anatomy of the Zimbabwean Problem." She lamented:

Why has the pro-democracy movements not been able to capitalise on the so many reported failures by the ZANU PF government? Operation Murambatsvina, failed Land Reform Programme, the economy characterised by high inflation, high prices of basic food commodities, unemployment, the list is endless. Some people say all the necessary conditions needed for combustion to happen exist in Zimbabwe. All that is needed is a spark. Why then has there been no spark despite numerous opportunities that if presented elsewhere in the world would have brought about a change of the ruling government? Why has there been no eruption in Zimbabwe?

Why did Zimbabwean workers, in their admittedly dwindling thousands, not heed the call to participate actively in the protest action in the various 34 urban centres? Fear of the coercive instruments of the state? Maybe.

I however offer two probable explanations, one of which is not an original formulation.

The first arises from a basic asymmetry in the risk orientations of the ruling elite and the ruled masses. If anything, the last ten years have demonstrated that the governing elite in Zimbabwe is a risk-taking elite. Some may even say it's a reckless elite.

Whatever characterisation one uses, the reality is that President Robert Mugabe and who ever advises him, are willing and prepared to take bold decisions irrespective of the consequences.

This explains the risk-ridden decision to award the war veterans an unbudgeted bonanza, a decision that many blame for the genesis of our present unhappy situation. This was in 1997.

A year later the same risk-taking leadership took the bold decision to send thousands of our valued troops to prop up the regime of a "buffoon" according to the late Masipula Sithole’s description of the late DRC's Laurent Kabila.

Two years later, the regime took a series of bold decisions that cascaded to the comprehensive and multi-pronged crises that have buffeted the country since then.

This syndrome of crises was dubbed "Third Chimurenga," a Hobbesian equivalent of a war of ZANU PF against all. President Mugabe himself is the supreme risk-taker and he is proud of it.

While the state elites are a risk-taking elite, the masses in Zimbabwe are predominantly a risk-averse demos. Further, the risk-averseness is a rational calculation. In any case, fearful people are rarely rational.

Most commentators and those who wish to organise mass action and other forms of popular protest seem to miss this vital point.

To reiterate, being risk-averse does not mean being fearful; it simply means being rational, i.e. to engage in an analysis of the costs and benefits of any course of action and taking the line of least risk.

The risk-averseness is now an integral part of Zimbabwe's political culture. This is now a fundamental reality, unpalatable though it might be to activists. Scholars describe this kind of political orientation as a subject political culture.

In Zimbabwe, this subject political culture is a historical product of three layers of political authoritarianism: the traditional variant of political authoritarianism, settler colonial repression and the commandist liberation war discourses and practices.

The articulation of these three sources of authoritarianism has produced the variant of post-colonial authoritarianism we witness today whose binary features are a risk-taking elite and a risk-averse demos.

It is my considered view that the risk-taking orientation displayed by Zimbabwean demos during the liberation war, that is, the taking of arms and engaging in other forms of struggle politics against a well-armed and repressive state, was in fact a transitory aberration.

This explains why it took Zimbabweans more than sixty years to organise armed resistance against a recalcitrant and equally risk-taking settler regime best exemplified by Ian Smith’s Rhodesia Front and its ruinous Unilateral Declaration of Independence in November 1965.

And this brings me to my key point which is that any strategy to engage the state will have to take this reality of Zimbabwe's political culture into account.

If Zimbabweans are risk-averse, this means they will only take such action as is consistent with the line of least resistance; this is the line of least activism.

Given this reality, any calls for active demonstration against the government will receive little to no response.

The most feasible strategy arising from this diagnosis is one that involves least risk i.e. least active involvement. Mass action and street demonstrations represent a high form of activism and a high level of risk.

What this means is that the strategy has to be calibrated to correspond to the level of Zimbabweans' activism. Mass protests are at variance with the level of investment that Zimbabweans are willing and able to make.

A strategy that harnesses the energies of a risk-averse population ruled by a risk-taking elite would need to be along the lines of passive resistance. Passive resistance may not be as visible as the mass protests but may be more effective in the long run.

Passive resistance involves not physically confronting the state, but eroding the state. Confrontation is the Zimbabwe state's favourite game and any organisation that takes this confrontational strategy will in all likelihood emerge second best.

What the state under the risk-taking elite is not used to is a strategy that entails inactive resistance that is meant to erode rather than confronting the state.

This will clearly demand a strategic rethink on the part of whoever wants to engage the state. It demands a paradigm shift in the strategy of democratic resistance.

It is up to the strategic thinkers in the various civic organisations to craft the specific means of operationalising this. This is why of all the various forms of public protest so far put in motion, stayaways have been the most successful and street protests have been the least effective.

Stayaways involve people refraining from going to work; people stay at home rather than venturing out with all the risks of colliding head on with the state. They are an unobtrusive form of protest. So are rent boycotts.

Imagine Harare surviving even for a month without the sustenance coming from rent payers. Rent boycotts erode the capacity of the local authority from functioning without confronting it.

Making the state and its agencies dysfunctional in this way demands a lot of hard, patient, and even frustrating work of persuasion at the popular grassroots level. And this is not glamorous and media-catching work. It is painstaking work.

What this suggests is that mass protests may well be a visible but foolhardy if not reckless way of registering public anger.

More importantly, it is an ineffective strategy when used against a risk-taking elite in charge of a state that is still relatively robust in as far as the deployment of the instruments of coercion is concerned.

The Zimbabwe state has typically responded to mass demonstrations (or more accurately attempted mass demonstrations) by deploying the tools of state coercion not as the last resort but as a reaction of first resort.

Any conceptualisation or characterisation of the Zimbabwe state as a failed state is in this particular respect misguided if not dangerous.

The state may indeed be failing with respect to the delivery of other valued public goods and services but is far from failing with regard to the delivery of coercion. This is a fundamental point that organisers of mass street protests have to bear in mind.

Erosion of the state rather than its confrontation appears to me to be the best strategy that is consistent with a risk-averse populace governed by a risk-taking elite.

The only other viable alternative strategy is the arduous and painstaking one that yields a harvest only in the long run and this entails the mobilisation process that seeks to convert risk-averse Zimbabweans into either risk-neutrals or risk-takers.

In the final analysis, what is needed is a critical mass of risk-takers led by a skilful, risk-taking (but not foolhardy) leadership. Only then will mass street protests and demonstrations attract popular response from the demos.

And of course, a risk-taking demos confronting a risk-taking governing class can only produce a violent and bloody contestation. In the next instalment, I will seek to diagnose why this state of affairs (of a risk-averse demo) arose and some of its manifestations.

*Eldred Masunungure is the Chairman of the Department of Political & Administrative Studies at the University of Zimbabwe

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