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Why Zimbabweans won't rebel: Part 2
*Eldred Masunungure
September 27, 2006

Read Part 1

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Harare - In Part 1 of my contribution to the mystery of why Zimbabweans do not rebel, I anchored my argument in the proposition that Zimbabweans do not rebel largely (but not solely) because of a specific existential reality: that the Zimbabwean masses are a risk-averse people ruled by a risk-taking political elite.

I further advanced the idea that unless the Zimbabwean demos are transformed, through an arduous and sustained but long-yielding process of mobilisation, from a risk-evading orientation to one of risk-taking (or at least risk-neutrality), an organised mass action of the type envisaged by the ZCTU, the NCA, ZINASU and other civic movements, will continue to attract disappointing support.

In so arguing, I sought neither to praise nor condemn but to describe the reality as I see it. How this situation arose is the subject of this instalment.

Zimbabweans are not congenitally risk-averse; they were made risk-averse through a process of conditioning over time. The risk-averseness has made them politically passive and inert.

Since Ian Smith captured power from the rather risk-averse Winston Field in 1964, Zimbabwe has been ruled by a risk-taking elite. It was not until a critical mass of a risk-taking Black Nationalist elite emerged to counter the White risk-taking elite and to mobilise the masses that mass action took place in the manner of the liberation struggle in its variegated forms.

The risk-evading masses became either risk-takers or at the very least, risk-neutrals. It is my contention though that the liberation struggle (specifically its most active phase from 1972 to 1979) was not sufficiently long to transform the orientations of the masses on a permanent basis.

The process of transforming a risk-averse people into risk-takers was not completed. The 1979 Lancaster House process culminating in the Lancaster House Agreement short-circuited the transformative process. Therefore, at the psycho-political level, the liberation struggle was an incomplete revolution.

Those who most actively and directly participated in the armed struggle are invariably and understandably the most risk-taking segment of our society. These are of course the war vets and the war collaborators who, unsurprisingly, are the ruling party-s storm troopers.

But this is also a generation that is on its way out, following the laws of nature. Once this political generation is out of the equation, ZANU PF will never be the same again, in character, composition and philosophical outlook.

Perhaps mindful of this inevitability, the ZANU PF leadership agonised over the reproduction of the risk-taking class of war vets, and, in my view, the controversial youth training programme is an instrument to this end.

It is designed towards political regeneration.

After independence, Zimbabweans suffered what the learned people (the lawyers) call recidivism. Zimbabweans recoiled into their shells like tortoises and have by and large remained in this situation since then, only occasionally and hesitatingly popping out their heads in a typical risk-shy fashion.

In short, the risk-taking behaviour displayed by Zimbabweans during the liberation war was a transient phenomenon and this transitory character serves to prove the fundamental and underlying political character of the average Zimbabwean; his/her subject orientation to authority, any authority.

This is amply and daily displayed in virtually every organisational or associational setting: in churches, schools - including institutions of higher learning, firms, homes, political parties, etc. In short, this authority-worshipping tendency is manifest in all organisations, micro and macro.

Moreover, this attitude is deeply embedded in the Zimbabwean psyche and it will take a painfully long time to unwind. And it is a product of more than a century of uninterrupted authoritarianism.

One does not have to be a Marxist to agree with Karl Marx-s acute observation that "the tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living."

The most critical agents in the transmission of this risk-evading behaviour among Zimbabweans and over decades have been the churches, schools and, for adults, the media.

The media has been particularly effective to the point where one recent study explained the political subjecthood among Zimbabweans in terms of the "power of propaganda."

And the power of propaganda - in its various forms - has given birth to a peculiar mindset that my former colleague Professor Jonathan Moyo creatively and brilliantly referred to as "normalising the abnormal."

Briefly stated, the notion of "normalising the abnormal" starts from the premise that there are some things or situations that are manifestly abnormal. For instance, that it is abnormal to queue for food items as a result of shortages of say, sugar, cooking oil, maize meal, bread or for other commodities like fuel, water and for other services like health care.

And yet people have over time been led to believe that it is in fact normal to queue for such basic survival commodities and services. They even joke and heartily laugh about it. This creates and inculcate fatalistic or defeatist values in our society, presently and for future generations.

The agency for transmitting such values is the public media, which, through its propaganda leads otherwise rational people to begin to accept bad things or situations as inherently good just because the government or the ruling party says so.

The notion of "normalising the abnormal" provides a paradigm for analysing our acceptance of the dire conditions in which we find ourselves. It is a framework not only for rationalising our situation, but also for immobilising ourselves.

Before his foray into the turbulent world of politics, Moyo had correctly argued that ZANU PF was conditioning Zimbabweans to expect the abnormal as normal. He had proceeded to warn us against the tendency of accepting this aberration as normal, and that unless we resisted accepting the abnormal as normal, the abnormal would become part of our culture.

In fact, the process did not start with ZANU PF; ZANU PF simply perfected this stratagem. And of course, Moyo later had the rare opportunity to test this thesis in the world of practical politics.

Because we accept aberrations as normal, we see no need to correct them because we may even see them as intrinsically good. Moreover, when and where people accept the abnormal as normal, they have developed creative coping mechanisms rather than seeking to deal with the source of the abnormality.

Maggie Makanza-s lamentation in her "The Anatomy of the Zimbabwean Problem" (see my last instalment) is essentially another way of lamenting the normalisation of the abnormal.

She asks: "Why has there been no eruption in Zimbabwe?"

The simple answer is that people what are supposed to erupt see no basis for such an eruption because they have been so conditioned. Further, "normalising the abnormal" reinforces the risk-averseness among Zimbabweans.

This combination is completely fatal to any strategy of organised mass action for the simple reason that action-oriented masses are not there. To 'mass act- there must be the masses who are so inclined.

Another tendency, flowing from both the risk-averseness of the masses and their tendency to disengage from any confrontation with the state is the atomisation of public reactions to grievances.

People react to a public problem not by organising other citizens in a similar situation to collectively protest an injustice or agitate for redress. Instead, people would rather deal with the problem individually and as best as they can and evading the source of the problem.

I will give live examples we can all easily relate to. ZESA daily abuses us by "load shedding" us causing all sorts of miseries to our lives but what is our reaction? Nothing collective!

Those with the means buy generators and quietly and individually deal with this nuisance. The less endowed quietly and individually buy firewood for cooking and candles for lighting.

The Harare City Council and ZINWA collude to deny us our daily water and what do Harare residents do? Those who are privileged sink boreholes and quietly and individually deal with the problem. The povo go to fetch water from unprotected wells and streams with all the attendant health hazards.

And those who can not afford transport fare to work simply walk to work, even from Chitungwiza! These actions are clearly abnormal but flow from the normalisation of the abnormal.

And risk-averseness keeps the aggrieved masses from questioning the perpetrators of these injustices. We are witnessing the individualisation of action and an aversion or at the very least, indifference to collective action.

Now, can one reasonably expect Zimbabweans to rebel? I have my grave reservations.

My contention is that rebelliousness to authority (any authority!) is not an integral part of the political psyche of the Zimbabwean demos. This is despite the Second Chimurenga. There is really no deep-seated tradition of resistance to authority or speaking truth to power.

Our agents of socialisation reinforce this. This is why Zimbabweans can tolerate abuse more than any other people in southern Africa. Those who cannot tolerate the abuse would rather take the exit option.

It is for this reason that Zimbabweans are the people easiest to govern - in politics and indeed in any other social arena - than any other group of citizens in the region, and probably beyond.

In short, the road to organised mass action is blocked because it has few takers.

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

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