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Response
to the Mamdani debate
Brian
Raftopoulos, Concerned Africa Scholars
March 16, 2009
http://concernedafricascholars.org/response-to-the-mamdani-debate/
Most of the
responses to Mahmood Mamdani-s article in this issue have
challenged his interpretations of several areas in the political
debate on the Zimbabwe crisis, including: the land question and
the role of the war veterans; the benign position on state violence
and underestimation of the enormous levels of displacement that
have taken place under Mugabe-s rule; the misreading of the
history of the labour movement; the dismissive characterization
of the MDC and the civic movement; the mistaken assessment of the
contribution of sanctions to the crisis; the brutal closure of democratic
spaces; and perhaps most astonishingly the evasion of the enormous
loss of legitimacy of Zanu PF and its increasing recourse to coercion,
particularly as evidenced in the 2008 elections, to remain in power.
Together these responses should, at the very least, cause readers
to pause for further thought in reading Mamdani-s analysis
of the situation in Zimbabwe, based as it is largely on the work
of Sam Moyo and Paris Yeros. In addition to many others I have,
in several interventions,[1] offered alternative readings of these
events and will this year attempt to consolidate those positions
within the context of a new History of Zimbabwe[2] currently being
completed by a group of Zimbabwean historians.
It is clear
that debate on these issues, particularly the form and outcomes
of the land reform processes, will continue for a long time to come.
However in the short and medium terms the livelihoods of both the
peasantry and what remains of the urban workforce have been subjected
to devastating attacks from the state, within the context of an
economy that is now characterized by rapid informalization, enormous
displacements of livelihoods, a rapid diasporization and loss of
skills, hyperinflation, and a rentier state that has shown little
evidence that it has anything resembling a coherent strategy to
move beyond the current morass. Moreover, notwithstanding the anti-imperialist
rhetoric of the Mugabe regime, the polices that have been pursued
by Zanu PF have so weakened the economy and social forces in Zimbabwe
as to make the country more vulnerable than ever to the imperatives
of the international financial institutions, as well as forms of
investment from countries like China that have yet to show their
benefits for Zimbabwe-s national interests.
Equally important
has been the gross violations of the democratic political rights
of Zimbabwean citizens, of which there is abundant evidence in the
literature. This issue continues to be a central problem in the
Moyo/Yeros work, and it is most startlingly understated in the Mamdani
piece. For Moyo and Yeros the problem of the violence of the state
is dwarfed by the broader structural violence that the 'radicalized
state- in Zimbabwe is confronted with, and the criticisms
of those who have highlighted these violations are dismissed for
their "resort to 'human rights- moralism".[3]
For these two authors a 'deeper form of democracy- can
'only be set on a more meaningful and stable footing by structural
changes.-[4] Related to this, for Mamdani the 'support-
of large numbers of the peasantry because of the land interventions,
has allowed the nationalist to 'withstand civil society based
opposition, reinforced by Western sanctions-.
The major problem
with these propositions is that the authoritarian state that has
emerged over the last decade in Zimbabwe has become a major hindrance
not only to longer term structural economic changes, but to the
development of a more democratic dispensation. The kind of 'anti-imperialism-
that has been espoused by the Mugabe regime has been built on a
systematic undermining of those democratic spaces that would have
been essential to build a democratic base for the land project.
It is therefore an 'anti-imperialism- built on widespread
coercion and diminishing electoral support despite the state violence
that has become central to the Zanu PF project. Therefore the 'sobering
fact- that needs to be kept in mind about the period not just
from 2000-3 but from the late 1990-s to 2008, is not just
the massive changes on the land, but the widespread state attack
on the citizenry of the country that has been the modality of the
politics of land. It is doubtful that the manner in which the Zimbabwean
ruling party has behaved over the last decade will induce a memory
of, in Mamdani-s words, the 'end of the setter colonial
era- for the majority of Zimbabweans. Rather Zanu PFs selective
rendition of who 'belongs to the nation- and the violent
exclusions and dispersals of large sections of Zimbabwean society
over this period, have produced a more problematic conflation of
colonial and post-colonial styles of politics, and a deep distrust
of the revived nationalism of the state.
Writing
in 2006 about Uganda after the Amin experience, Mamdani made an
acute observation:
If we can draw
one lesson from the Amin period, it is this: how the Asian question
is defined and resolved will affect not only the Asian minority,
but all Ugandans. The Asian questions can be defined in a racist
and exclusive way, as it was by Amin, so that the fact of colour
blurs that of citizenship and commitment. Or it can be defined in
a non-racial and inclusive way so that we make a distinction between
different types of Asian residents in today-s Uganda, legally
between citizens and non-citizens; and socially between those for
whom Uganda is no more than transit facility, and those for whom
Uganda has been a home for generations.[5]
This statement
could quite easily be transposed to the white settler legacy in
Zimbabwe, where the Mugabe state has legally excluded, not only
whites from citizenry but large numbers of farm workers. Moreover
it has placed political exclusions on urbanites and their organizations
that have a long history of a critical relationship to the violent
exclusivism of nationalist party politics.[6] The MDC and the civic
movement in Zimbabwe have many problems, not the least of which
is their lack of attention to the legacies of structural inequality
in the country, and their slow realization of the need to understand
the global frame of the Zimbabwe crisis. However, more than Zanu-PF,
the forces of the opposition have opened up the discussion on the
need for a more democratic citizenship and state that will be essential
to dealing with the longer term structural challenges of the country.
Looking
to the future
The September
2008 political agreement
signed between the two MDCs and Zanu PF and the Government of National
Unity that was established in January 2009 were the result of pressure
at various levels. For South Africa and SADC the policy of quiet
diplomacy was premised on three issues: firstly South Africa-s
need to avoid diplomatic isolation in the region and on the continent;
secondly the determination of the region to maintain diplomatic
control over the Zimbabwe question in the face of pressure from
the West; thirdly the assumption that any agreement on Zimbabwe
had to have the support of the Zimbabwe military in order to avoid
instability in the event of the defeat of Zanu PF at the polls.
Thus from very early on Mbeki had as his goal the establishment
of a Government of National Unity with the MDC as the junior partner
irrespective of the electoral result. The politics of regional solidarity
and stabilization, even under an undemocratic regime like Mugabe-s,
always took precedence in regional strategy over the democratic
wishes of the Zimbabwean people. This version of 'anti-imperialist-
politics once again has at its core profoundly anti-democratic propositions
that have been challenged by civil society groups in the region.
While I have argued for the necessity of accepting the outcome of
the SADC mediation in Zimbabwe because of the balance of forces
nationally and in the region, I have no illusions about the enormous
obstacles that an authoritarian state will pose for the opening
up of democratic spaces in the country. The centrality of regional
politics in dealing with the Zimbabwe question has highlighted both
the importance of such organizations in the current global configuration
and the severe limits they place on democratic struggles within
states. The irony of course is that SADC will now preside over a
new regime of economic liberalization in Zimbabwe, led by South
African capital.
In conclusion
we are told by Moyo/Yeros that there is 'good reason-
to surmise that the major reason for the late intervention of Mamdani
and other African scholars into the Zimbabwe debate has been the
recent 'Western sabre-rattling- and plans to remilitarize
southern Africa.[7] Apart from the fact that western military intervention
in Zimbabwe was the least likely response to the Zimbabwe crisis,
the position of African scholars who denounced such unlikely threats
would have been much more credible if their criticisms of the violence
of the Zimbabwean state over the last ten years had been equally
audible. In the event the voice of African scholarship on this issue,
with notable exceptions,[8] has been all but inaudible. It appears
that it still seems safer for many African scholars to gather behind
Mugabe-s impoverished version of 'anti-imperialist-
politics than against the glaring abuses of a former liberation
movement. There is an urgent need for an anti-imperialist politics
that places both political and redistributive/economic questions
at the centre of its agenda. Until then there will be the temptation
to keep holding on to the lesser nightmare.
About
the author
*Brian Raftopoulos
is a former associate professor of the Institute for Development
at the University
of Zimbabwe and now Director of Research and Policy at the Solidarity
Peace Trust in South Africa.
Notes
- Eg: Brian
Raftopoulos,-The Zimbabwe Crisis and the Challenges for
the Left-, Journal of Southern African Studies, 32,2,2006;
Amanda Hammar, Brian Raftopoulos and Stig Jensen (Eds), Zimbabwe-s
Unfinished Business: Rethinking Land, State and Nation in the
Context of Crisis, Weaver Press, Harare, 2003.
- Brian Raftopoulos
and Alois Mlambo (Eds), Becoming Zimbabwe: A History of Zimbabwe
from the pre-colonial period to 2008, Weaver Press, Harare, 2009.
- Sam Moyo
and Paris Yeros, The Radicalised State: Zimbabwe-s Interrupted
Revolution, Review of African Political Economy, 111, 2007.
- Sam Moyo
and Paris Yeros, Zimbabwe Ten Years on: Results and Prospects
- Mahmood Mamdani,
The Asian Question Again: A Reflection, www.pambazuka.org
- Timothy Scarnecchia,
Urban Roots of Democracy and Political Violence in Zimbabwe: Harare
and Highfield 1940-1964, University of Rochester Press, Rochester,
New York, 2008.
- Moyo/Yeros,
Zimbabwe ten years on.
- Horace Campbell,
Reclaiming Zimbabwe: The Exhaustion of the Patriarchal Model of
Liberalism, David Philip, South Africa, 2003.
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