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We must take responsibility - Interview with Fay Chung
Upenyu Makoni-Muchemwa, Kubatana.net
September 28, 2009

Read Inside/Out with Fay Chung

Please tell me about the initiative called Envision?
I started thinking about it about two years ago, thinking how come we don-t really have a vision of the future? How come we are fighting each other, and disagreeing. What things are best for Zimbabwe, and on what issues can we agree? And can we get all women, from whatever political party or religious grouping to agree on certain things. I got together a few of my friends, doing research into it, and discussing it. This year we registered as a welfare trust so we are now a formal organization, and we have two staff. We have moved from being a think tank to a formal organization.

Our first idea was that all women agree on the need for a clean water supply. We started working on that. We took a look at the policy and engineering issues. We also said, what are the issues that we as the ordinary women, lets say women in Mbare, need to do to get a clean water supply. In addition we started looking at why is there so much conflict? Why is there rape? What is happening to women and so on? We started a Conflict Resolution Peace Building Program. In doing our work we realized that we are all victims. This includes the army, the police, the security forces, CIO and so on. They are also victims. Perpetrators can also be victims, and victims can also put themselves in a weak position. So, that-s become one of our biggest programs. We are looking at all groups, churches as well, because I think churches and religious organizations are very important. We also think people who are working in the armed forces are very important, and we also think that women-s groups and NGOs are important. We need to think what is leading us into this violence. Who is starting it and for what reason? And who is agreeing to it. What you see is that if the community is clear and we organized, with the water situation as an example, the only city in Zimbabwe without Cholera is Bulawayo. The reason is that Bulawayo was very clear that they should not give up control of their power to clean the water. So they refused, and as a result, every other place is full of cholera, but not Bulawayo. I think this idea of the community-s strength, if the community is very clear, that we are responsible for ensuring our own water is clean, we are responsible for ensuring there-s peace and harmony in our community, we are responsible for ensuring that we don-t abuse anybody-s human rights, property rights and so on, if we are very clear, it won-t happen. It has to do with the strength of the community.

At the moment also we are involved in building a curriculum for school youths. About 196 000 youths leave school without going to secondary school. They do not get the opportunity to train for a job, to go to high school. In fact their opportunities in life are curtailed, when they are very young. I think we need to look at this group and see what we can do for them in terms of education, vocational technical training, job opportunities and so on.

Incidences of political violence have been well documented. To what would you attribute that break down in communities taking responsibility, and saying we will not tolerate violence in our community?
I think it comes from centralization of power. So that we end up saying nobody has power except maybe the Cabinet. But then the Cabinet also has no power, they say 'Oh well, if the President says so, then it-s so-. People have given power to a centralized authority. Let-s say the water-s dirty, and we say the president is responsible. Actually to ensure that water is clean, Bulawayo did the right thing. It has to be local. Somebody has to check on the water. It cannot be President Mugabe. He-s too busy and too far way. These are very important decisions, which have to be checked on a regular basis. If you centralize it, so that people at the community level do not have any power, and do not have any responsibility or ensuring that their water is clean then you-ve got a crisis. I think that goes down to everything. If I-m going to make a decision about anything I have to do it properly. I have to take the time; I have to acquire the knowledge about what makes the water clean, how to protect it, lets say from animals. I have to know about it, I have to have the power to ensure that the water that my community drinks is good enough. I think the big problem is how we, we as a community, we as a family, started to become irresponsible. And started saying everything is the responsibility of President Mugabe. Which then leads us to the tragedy we are in. Every mistake that we make by neglect, by lack of technical know-how, ends up being blamed on President Mugabe, when in fact, we should be responsible. Our big problem, is really a conceptual one, it-s really a question of principles that we must take responsibility, rather than pushing it upwards to the point that it-s impossible, totally impossible for President Mugabe to check on the water in at least 10 000 communities.

A few weeks ago the Minister of Youth said he wanted to propose to Cabinet that they reopen youth training camps. Those youth training camps are very controversial because those youth are the same youth who are in militias marauding in the countryside. What is your opinion of that?
My problem is how come we have 30 000 youths trained to spy and beat people? Why don-t we have youths, being paid their USD100 a month, which comes to 36 million US actually, building prosperity for themselves? If they were trained to farm, lets say five hectares of land, if they were given five hectares of land, and they were trained to do it well. These 30 000 youths could feed the whole country. The problem is not that youth training centres are wrong, it-s that they are being trained to beat up people. This whole thing is 'You must obey, if you don-t obey I will beat you up.- That is very colonial. That-s what the colonialists used to do to us. That-s what we are still doing to people. We tend to imitate the colonialist. So we are going backwards.

Would you say that we-ve evolved, from pre-independence, in terms of governing ourselves, and the way the government governs?
I think it-s a mixed picture. I think we were relatively successful, for example in water supply, education, health, road building. We were pretty successful for at least 15 years. However in other ways, we were failing, even from the beginning. We know that from Gukurahundi and Murambatsvina, that if there-s a problem, the only way we know how to solve it is to beat people up, even kill them. That is something from the past. If somebody doesn-t agree with me politically, I beat him or her up. If they organize against the ruling party, ZANU PF, then I kill them. I think that is from the past. That is the repetition of colonialism. Those principles and those laws were there from the colonial days. Whenever we have a governance problem, we go into saying sellout, and then we beat up. But calling people names, and beating them up, fails to investigate the real problem.

The Mau-Mau, from Kenya, in trying to address the scars of their colonial past has pressed a lawsuit against the British Government. They want reparations and they want a formal apology from the British Government. Do you think that that works, in addressing the psychological ramifications of colonialism. As far I see it, we haven-t really addressed that, and that-s probably why we continue to govern so badly.

I think we do need to address what we inherited from colonialism, which are some very bad things. This violence that we are talking about is very colonial. There are some good aspects, which we should also look at. I think the idea of examining the colonial past is very important. And also, what about examining ourselves? Because when you want to improve your life, you should start by examining yourself, and say my good points are a, b, c, d and the mistakes I-ve made are x, y, z. I think we should also examine ourselves. It should be in an honest, truthful and non-vituperative way. We don-t want to say well, I-m going to punish you because you-ve been so bad. It will get us nowhere really. We have to examine it seriously, we can-t just say all our problems are due to colonialism. Yes, our thinking is very much influenced by colonialism. Our institutions, our systems, are all problematic. We must also examine what we have done. We-ve been independent for almost 30 years, so we can-t keep blaming other people. We also have to take responsibility, and we have to examine how some we-ve started repeating some of the bad aspects of colonialism.

In a recent address, to educators current Minister of Education David Coltart, said that our education curriculum needs to be revised. Do you think this is so, and what changes do you think need to be made?
I think revision is very much needed. The curriculum we have was established in the early 1980s, so it-s 30 years out of date. Of course some aspects remain the same, but some aspects change. The application of the knowledge and skills will have changed in the last 30 years. The very fact that in 1980, we only had 30 000 people who had 3 years of secondary education, and now we have something like 250 000 people writing O Levels each year. It means the population has changed. The problems we face have changed. 30 years ago when you were unemployed you were probably also illiterate. Now you are unemployed and you have a degree. The problems we face have changed. Knowledge has changed. 30 years ago we didn-t know anything about computers, nor did we know anything about genetic engineering. But now those are two every important areas. Our agriculture is thoroughly polluted by genetically modified seeds. And we don-t know anything about it. In fact the communal farmers were given GM maize as food aid. I understand our crops are 75% GM. An education system needs to be revisited every seven or ten years, and we haven-t done that.

In revising the school curriculum you inherited from the Rhodesian Government, why did you not choose a curriculum that encouraged critical thinking?
I-m not sure that is true. If you look at the problems today, a lot of the criticism of government is coming from young people. We-ve already said that they were educated but with no jobs. They had no future so they had very good reason to be dissatisfied. Yes I think we can say the education was not in-depth enough, because although the young and educated are very critical of the post independence government, their analysis is very superficial. They will say it-s all because of a lack of democracy, but I-m not sure they-ve really interrogated what democracy means. I think to some extent our education system was weak, but more on the tertiary side, not primary and secondary. We inherited a system that if you went to university you were privileged. You got into good jobs; you could go outside the country. Whereas if you were semiliterate you couldn-t do those things. I think our intelligentsia escaped. They didn-t suffer. They also didn-t analyze the situation critically and they also didn-t want to dirty their hands by being in politics. I think they didn-t address or solve the problems. The epitome of the intelligentsia is of course Jonathan Moyo. The kind of critique given out by the intelligentsia lacks depth and is aimed at getting more income for themselves.

I think part of the problem is that we don-t have civic education in this country. The reason I believe ZANU PF is so entrenched is because when they were fighting, they politicized the people, they gave people civic education. Do you think that in not giving people post independence civic education, we have caused ourselves to arrive at this crisis?
Yes, I think you-re absolutely right. I think civic education is of critical importance. There is a big weakness in our secondary school system. The problem is that we were responding to the felt needs of the communities at the time. What you found is that whether you were rich or you were poor, whether you were black or you were white, everybody was absolutely convinced that what he or she need in education was a repetition of the white education system. This was an absolute consensus. If you questioned it, people would say 'I can see you are trying to bring us something inferior.- People wanted what whites had. We had a population that was fighting to have whatever the whites had, and we were very uncritical of the new government. We became too complacent, we felt we were very successful, we knew how to govern and that was it. We didn-t realize that the problems change with every decade. By the second decade we were failing to address the problems, and by the third decade we had totally failed. The issue is that there is a changing set of challenges.

Have you found over time as a member of government, and also a player in politics, that political freedom does not necessarily mean economic freedom?
Definitely. The very fact that there is now a big gap between the rich and poor. There was gap before, but that was recognized as a racial gap. In the early days race was dominant, and we were fighting against racism. But now we see the gap between the rich and the poor, and it-s even wider than before. Before, civil servants and teachers were quite well off, but now they-re poorer than the communal farmer. So, once you have a huge economic gap like that, there is much less equality.

You mentioned earlier those youths who graduate from primary school, secondary school, and university even . . . How do you think we can give them back economic freedom?
I think we have to build a consensus about where we are going, because I think we-ve lost direction. In the first decade, everybody was united, they all wanted education for all, water for all, etc. In the second decade we deserted that and said that that was wasteful of money -giving a free education. And what we need is enrichment. The philosophy of the country changed. It became structural adjustment. That was the new philosophy of ZANU PF in the 1990s. I think it was a tragic philosophy, because structural adjustment, which is also called the Washington Consensus, is not a very in-depth kind of philosophy. It says you have to weaken government. So if you look at any arm of government other than the security forces, they-re all weakened. And we did it ourselves. The fact that we now complain that we-re militarized - we did it ourselves, because the military was the only thing that was not weakened under structural adjustment. Our religious approach to the economy was also problematic. I think the economy, by its nature, has to be very pragmatic and very practical. You can-t just say now I-ve changed my philosophy to laissez faire, and then the economy will start blooming by itself. It doesn-t quite happen like that.

In an interview with the Standard published in March 2008, you expressed your disappointment with your comrades in ZANU PF. How were you disappointed?
Land resettlement stopped around 1983, and I think land resettlement was one of the most important policies after Independence and we should not have stopped. From more or less 1983 to 2000 we didn-t do Land Resettlement.

Why was it stopped?
We had some excuses. We said we wanted to improve on the way we did it in the first three years. I don-t necessarily believe those excuses. I think it would have been better if we had done say half a million hectares of land every year and done it in a more practical way. And looked at the actual farmers. What problems did they face? Did they lack knowledge and skills? Did they lack seeds and so forth? Rather than neglecting it for 17 years and then suddenly start this violence stuff. You were asking me why it was stopped. I think it was stopped because of a very serious problem of principle. Does land go to the rich; does land go to the poor? I think people wanted the land for the rich, because as the ruling class became richer, they wanted the land for themselves. They wanted to be the white farmers of [then], which is what they-ve become.

Why in 2008 did you decide to support Simba Makoni as a presidential candidate?
The way I see it, ZANU PF and MDC have become giant parties, but they don-t address the problems. Instead ZANU PF says, MDC is a bunch of sellouts, and MDC say the problem is Mugabe, he-s a Dictator. They-re actually not addressing real things. I think it was important to say no; there are real problems here. They are not necessarily caused by Mugabe, whether Mugabe was there or not the problems would have been there. The issue is, did we tackle the problem? I mentioned earlier that land resettlement was always a problem and we neglected it for 17 years. The issue of unemployment was always there; it-s not a new story. The new story is, in 1980, the unemployed were illiterate, now the unemployed have degrees or a secondary education.

How would you have tackled unemployment, had you been given the opportunity?
I was. I was actually Minister of Employment for a year, but I failed. I think the problem is that the ZANU PF government from the beginning thought its responsibility was education, health, and water supply. They never accepted that their responsibility was employment creation. Nor did they accept that they were responsible for economic growth. If you look at other examples, this problem is not unique to Zimbabwe, every country that you can think of faced the same problem. So there are a lot of answers. But we-ve always been populist, we want to do what will be popular, rather than what will give people power. I think the solution lies in Public Works, looking at increasing agricultural productivity and even industrialization.

Coming back to Mavambo, in the run up to the Presidential Elections last year, Mr. Makoni gave his public assurance to Mr. Mugabe that he would not be running against him, weeks before announcing his candidacy. Do you believe these events influenced the tally of votes for Mr. Makoni?
I think there was some confusion in that people were polarized. They said either you were for ZANU PF or for Morgan Tsvangirai. It was personalized as well. I think Simba was very much identified with ZANU PF. He-d been in ZANU PF for thirty-five years; he-d been a Minister for quite a few years of that time. He didn-t critique or condemn Mugabe, which is what people wanted him to do. I think that fact that he did not side with Morgan was one of the reasons why people were not sure if they should vote for him. I think they saw him as a spoiler.

In light of the controversy over funds raised for Mavambo and the allegations by members of that party about Mr. Makoni-s misappropriations of party resources, do you still support Mr. Makoni in his quest to become President?
The party as such was only formed on the 31st of July 2009. What was there before then was a conglomeration of people who supported an individual; raised funds, under the name of that individual. It was not actually a party with proper structure and proper responsibilities. It-s difficult to say, well Simba you raised money and I want to know how you spent it. I think that question is important, for those who gave him money; he has to account for it to them. Financial transparency is very critical. But I think we have to be measured from what happened after the party was formally established.

Do you think we will get to a stage where our politics and our political landscape are not about the personality at the head of the political party? Do you think we will get to a stage where it is about policies, where it is about what that party is going to deliver to the people . . .
. . . and what it can do, and what it does do. I think we need proper political analysis and political education. And that-s civic education, which says, we-ve got to look at the roots of the problem, and try and identify why those problems arose; and why we are victims to some extent of an archaic system. We should be mature enough not to blame each other and we should be cool enough to say [as an example] 'why do we not have jobs, and how can we solve this problem?-

Are you still fighting for change in Zimbabwe?
I think it-s a lifetime agenda. Change must be towards something better. Not just change.

What do you believe is the way forward?
I think we need to have a consensus about the way forward, which we don-t have at the moment. I think ZANU PF and MDC have a consensus about having to get money from outside. But I don-t believe that anybody outside can solve the problems of the family inside. The family has to solve its problems. We can get advice and support from outside. But we need to reconcile ourselves to each other, and reconcile ourselves to ourselves, in that we have to stop being irresponsible by saying that the problem is the imperialists who are funding MDC. That is really avoiding any responsibility for what we did.

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