Reflecting Zimbabwe's 21st socio economic demands in policy formulation

There is an understanding that as population footages escalate in a nation-state, socio economic contemplations need to be aggressively mindful to the ever-evolving anxieties that mutilate the occupation of a government to its inhabitants. Population growth fluctuations do not only warrant the redistribution of available capital but it licenses the unearthing of an innovative methodology that incentivizes the accessible fortune into expanding the national resources. Zimbabwe in 1980 overpowered the racial system of operational disparities through the revalidation of passage, which lead to an all-encompassing civilian economic benefaction. Surrounded by the glitches acknowledged, was the polarization of state wealth to limited entities, which expedited state structured privilege through legislation.
 
For Its DE facilitation to be an accomplishment there is demand for a legislative intervention to redistribute national fortunes and re allocate national social statuses, which were institutionally dismembered during colonization and soon after the collapse of that unsocial system. The 1980 accomplishments partitioned state wealth into binary divisions, the first being the de racialisation of access to government owned properties to engineer a systematic empowerment of citizens. Secondly, it was the identification of a private sector, which sought to unsystematically decimate all colonially plotted economic ills that still appear in the social fabric of the new nation. Such ills include the gap between the rich and the poor reflected by the outward appearance of the fragmented collective social behaviours. These include popular discourses of inequalities in pre-colonial African states.

A moment of digression for the purpose of clear thinking may be essential here…it being an epiphany that I got from contesting ideas in my mind, some of which I have shared above. My drive from work to home was graced by the melodious provocations of the discourse of our daily lives by the known Zimbabwean artist - Winky D. At that particular moment, he qualified as a prophet in my being. His song, Daddy maitei, thoroughly interrogates the dilemma of inequality at intra- and inter-state level. It still continuously yearns in my mind:
"Daddy maiitei?
Vamwe vachitenga dzimba nemakambani?
Vamwe vachimhanya kubasa mangwanani?
Zvondopfeka hembe isina mabutton
Yoyoyoyoyo…maiitei?

To persons who are not knowledgeable to the context of the melody, a youngster castigates the societal rank of his predecessor that has frolicked a dire role in modelling the lad's life. He castigates the breach between his father's worth and other men's worth in society.

This epiphanic encounter with WINKY D itched my understanding into discharging the social wealth disparities that determine who becomes what when and how. It relived theoretical groundings of Harold Lasswell's classification of politics, defining political affairs as a system that determines who gets what when and how. This reflects the social question that Winky D posits, its relevance and to who. I gathered that boy‘s father is acquitted in all this, but rather the national politics was shamefaced as Judas Iscariot in Wink D's set condition. Stagnant in that moment of intellectual ecstasy, the paranormal suggested that I go profound into Lasswell's conception of political economy. To Lasswell, the study of changes in the distribution of value patterns (distribution depends on power dynamics) in society is in itself a means of understanding class disparities. He defines values as desired goals and power as the ability to participate in decisions, and he conceived political power as the ability to produce intended effects on other people. In Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (1936) he views the elite as the primary holders of power, but in Power and Society.

Winky D's hypothesis prompted my interrogation of the factors that constitute how citizens end up in different classes. My realisation is that the rising inequalities are linked to the wealth of Africa at large. The economic and psychological forces that perpetuate inequality continue to be studied, and in this theoretical review, I scrutinized the role of daily experiences of economic inequality, the communication of social class signals between interaction partners in this procedure. I unpacked that social class signals activate social comparison processes that strengthen group boundaries between the haves and have-nots in society. In particular, these processes are what we sometimes call POLITICS especially in Zimbabwe were diverse groups of identical interests cluster to advance their peculiar class challenges, and not those of the nation. As I began to conceptualise the ideology, WINKY D and Lasswell's mind became the hinge of my endeavor with Zimbabwe's post 1980 class struggles. The analytical historiography of Zimbabwe's economic predispositions became crucial in elucidating this problem hence it suited astutely to query it. Let us adjust machineries and translate Wink D's expression of grief into that of a national landscape, supposing Wink D represents the lottery of citizenship in a state and the father replicates the government that owes the citizen a mandate. The piece of music platforms a direct inquiry into Zimbabwe's achievements after attaining economic justice from colonisation. The classist distribution of state wealth has relegated some citizens into economic spheres instituted on distress and disgruntlement.

Amongst the nation's difficulties, one of the biggest problems that has continuously challenged the stability of the republic is the classist concentration of national fortunes. Whilst those who were woke in the 20th century appreciate their non-discriminatory share of the economic chunk, all seems to be well until the population increase and demand in production multiplies leading to the scarcity of resources that manifests in the excluded collections.

The scramble for the available resources receives widespread partisan reduction with the use of the Chimurenga culture as a means of blackmail is deeply embedded in national consciousness thoughts. As such, that approach lessens the prospects of addressing the root cause of Zimbabwe's fiscal conflict. The initial separation of the Zimbabwean economy partitioned social constituencies into two economic hubs. The two centres include the private and the public sector; these are the two binding centres of economic power in any functional society.

The citizens who directly contribute and depend on government are remunerated through government's collected revenue or even outputs from parastatals. Whilst the civil servants and state agents rely on government, the entire working class survives on the private sector that subsidizes the gap that government owes to its citizens. The collapse of the private sector means those who rely on it, are left desperate, hence a turbulence in labour demand that is sometimes signalled by a heavy fee in migration in search for trade and industrial greener pastures. What complicates the scenario further is an increase in population statistics, population intensification injects a fresh crop of working class citizens that then warrant government to explore further options that deal with harms associated with inadequacy in national resource allocation. As a young person, I will narrate how this process affects the youth.

The youth being a new crop in the socio economic class struggle, it identifies itself as the born frees. However, it succumbs to a great deal of political hypocrisy that miseducates it into either political neo patrimonial structures or relying on the toyi toyi culture as the panacea to the problem facing the nation. Toyi toying, as a culture, does not address the deeply embedded economic questions facing any society.

Toy toying needs a redefinition that understands its aberration from the culture from the lens of Josiah Tongogara's school of thought. Theirs was advanced from the notions of unseating a colonial government, while today's should aim for economic development.

Prof Mutambara in his search for an elusive Zimbabwean dream presents foot soldiering as a major default in contemporary Zimbabwean activism. He denotes that the political economic behaviour of citizens has to be balanced. The theory he suggests is one that adds academic par Excellency + economic proficiency + the revolutionary zeal = into producing the citizen that Zimbabwe needs. Without such an approach, Zimbabwe is doomed into an unyielding political activism, that when even met with its demands it will not address the central national challenges.

Toitei?
Since the collapse of the private sector and the rampant increase in population, the ongoing perception is that those who receive from government are conscious oppressors of those wrestling the national economic misfortunes. This perception is twofold, being false and truistic. It is obvious that those who are still directly dependent on government are secure from the wrath of unemployment and last to experience the deprivation of owning property.

Secondly, the suggestion is untrue because it is unreasoned thought to suppose that those who are still benefiting from the struggling economy should join the rest in the fractured economic spheres; it defies the logic that explains the nature of human beings. It is also naïve to stage that change will happen without affecting the classes which are not currently facing severe economic trials. Since the partitioning of the economy was legislatively instituted, government should be cognisant of the dynamics that have marred the demographics of Zimbabwe.

The reconsideration of those who had their share of the economy savaged by the global market through sanctions and deliberate attempts to pressure the Zimbabwean economy into caricaturing political turmoil. The consideration of the emerged working class that has never been allocated an economy of its own corresponding with the need to adjust the nation's policy framework. This crop has built its own unstable economy which some dub the informal sector encompassing activities like vending.  The increasing labour glitches in these informal setups has probed a militant breed of political crusading

In its unceasing nature especially from the youth, it does not emanate from a vacuum; it challenges the seeming monopolisation of the scarce national resources by those who were fortunate to be present during the partitioning of the national economy. Therefore, the imminent threat to national firmness is hinged on the class struggle, a coalition of persons who were disposed from their given economy and the new crop of a working class which was never allocated an economy of its own. These are more likely to fabricate a sense of animosity between themselves and those in government. The answer to this question would be a denationalisation of the national economy for renationalisation to advance the purpose of an inclusive sense of national economic belonging and construct a sense of economic ownership to every citizen. To avoid Winky D's question to us, is the answer embedded on denationalisation for renationalisation or economic dependency for economic expansion.

Tedious Ncube is a political science and public management researcher with Leaders for Africa Network (LAN). Feedback can be sent to;  tedious@abakhokheli.org