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Mamdani, Moyo and 'deep thinkers' on Zimbabwe
David Johnson,
Pambazuka News
February 12, 2009
http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/54039
Following his
intervention in the stultifying 'debate- on Zimbabwe
(Mahmood Mamdani, Lessons
of Zimbabwe), a squad of 33 scholars, mainly from the US and
Europe, placed Mamdani and his main accomplice on the land question,
Sam Moyo, in the firing line (Timothy Scarnecchia and Jocelyn Alexander
et al, 'Lessons of Zimbabwe-, London Review of Books,
2009-01-01). However, the executioners showed up with little but
blanks and hubris, leaving this reader to ask more questions about
their methods than their targets.
Scarnecchia and Alexander
et al begin their response by chiding Mamdani for a simplistic take
on Zimbabwe, leading one to anticipate the long awaited complexity
of analysis on the Zimbabwe crisis. But their misrepresentation
of Mamdani-s argument on ethnicity as a portrayal of 'stark
ethnic dichotomies- in the opening paragraph gave early indication
of more polarised polemics on Zimbabwe and an inability to deliver.
By the second paragraph promises to enrich the debate had been abandoned
for hand wringing over their difficulty in persuading non-Zimbabwe
specialists like Mamdani to think as 'deeply- on the
crisis as they do. One major obstacle they have encountered in this
quest to produce deep thinkers on Zimbabwe like themselves, is the
virus of anti-imperialist rhetoric unleashed by the cunning Mugabe,
who has 'fooled- Mamdani, but, thankfully, not our alert
experts. As a humanitarian gesture, our scholars, most of whom don-t
see contemporary imperialism as a category for analysis in their
scholarship, offer to help inoculate Mamdani from the dangerous
anti-imperialist virus, noting that he is already showing symptoms
of 'fantasy- from contact with it.
Relying on personal insults
(Mamdani is 'dishonest-) and attempts to link Mamdani-s
arguments to Mugabe and ZANU-PF narratives (what better or simpler
way to dismiss an idea on Zimbabwe than associating it with the
demonised Mugabe), the Africanists implore Mamdani to abandon the
scholarship of Sam Moyo and company for that of their 'more
informed scholarship- if he wants to be healed. No explanation
is offered as to why Moyo, who has spent the past 25 years in Zimbabwe
researching and writing on the land question - publishing
four books and over twenty-five articles on the subject -
is a less informed source of information and analysis than Scarnecchia
and Alexander et al and contributors to the special bulletin on
Zimbabwe by the Association of Concerned Africa Scholars (ACAS).
The reader, one assumes, must simply trust in the wisdom of our
self-declared deep thinkers, who, after all, are from the US and
Europe, where true expertise on Africa resides. A reading of the
literature recommended by the learned doctors as an antidote to
the dangerous anti-imperialist virus and Moyo-s scholarship
revealed more documentation on the repressive state acknowledged
by Mamdani, and a complete avoidance of the issues raised in the
scholarship of Moyo and company.
These more informed deep
thinking Africanists are not alone in urging Mamdani to detach himself
from Moyo-s work and see the light in their recommended sources.
Emerging some distance to their left, Horace Campbell, a committed
pan-Africanist and activist-scholar, also avoids an engagement with
Moyo-s work as employed by Mamdani, while dismissing its relevance,
in the most curious manner. He faults Mamdani for 'merely
recycling- the work of Moyo, even though he himself depended
on Moyo-s scholarship for his analysis of the land question
in his book, Reclaiming Zimbabwe. It seems Moyo-s data and
analysis can no longer serve Campbell-s polemics on the Zimbabwe
crisis, but he offers no explanations of its shortcomings. He resorts
instead to the diversionary tactics that have become stock in trade
for many factions in the 'debate- on Zimbabwe, from
the diaspora nationalists who can see no wrong in Mugabe and ZANU-PF
to the human rights activists who must see all wrong.
He protests
that the African
Institute of Agrarian Studies (AIAS), which Moyo founded and
directs in Harare, 'claim[s] that [the] horrors of Operation
Murambatsvina (the operation to round up hundreds of thousands
of citizens) were exaggerated by the western media-, which
Campbell seemingly presents as an abomination disqualifying their
scholarship from critical engagement. How bizarre! I haven-t
seen the claim from the AIAS authors as there was no reference for
the source, but since when did Campbell begin to see criticism of
the Western media as a disqualification for being taken seriously
on Zimbabwe? Of course they exaggerated the horrors of Operation
Murambatsvina, as they did and do on so much else relating to Zimbabwe.
Recently I heard folks on the BBC equating the current violence
in Zimbabwe to the genocide in Rwanda. Is Campbell in agreement
with them on this? Does he, like other scholars, think of admitting
to the Western media-s exaggeration while exposing the horrors
of the repressive state in Zimbabwe as mutually exclusive projects?
There might be a tension in these simultaneous pursuits of human
rights and opposition activists, whose raison d-être
in so many Zimbabwe instances centres on magnifying the horrors
of the regime, but aren-t scholars and intellectuals supposed
to subscribe to another mode of analysis, another relationship with
difficult truths?
A scholar who
has expended as much energy and intellect as Sam Moyo in attempting
to understand the land question in Zimbabwe deserves better treatment
from his detractors. At the minimum, they could engage his scholarship
and identify the fault lines. Relying on breast-beating about being
more informed scholars or attempting to represent him as a Mugabe
crony is a retreat from 'deep thinking-. Among other
things, the scholarship of Moyo and the AIAS disrupts the dominant
narrative around the war veterans as nothing but instruments of
a violent state hell bent on maintaining power. It allows intellectuals
like Mamdani to argue that outcomes in Zimbabwe cannot be seen only
and simply as the 'machinations of those in power.-
It also challenges those who insist that land reform resulted in
all the land seized from settlers being transferred to the ruling
elite by documenting a much wider distribution in the aftermath
of land reform. Moyo and the AISA may be wrong on all counts, but
it would take more than noisy polemics to prove it.
* David
Johnson teaches history at The City College, City University of
New York
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