Politics of sympathetic pregnancies

Politics of mimesis
Opposition in Zimbabwe - not the Zimbabwean opposition - is in a deep mess. It is vainly looking for causes, models and examples. Our politics, it would appear, has entered a phase which the Greeks would call mimesis.

This is a phase of the imitative, to borrow from Aristotle.

Part of opposition mess starts from misnaming and arrogating ownership on itself, thus denying the fact of imitation. And imitation arises in situations in which are inorganic.

 Inorganic politics at play

Today we look in vain for a home-grown opposition, only to be met by externally generated imitative spurts, only bedecked and beguiled by local colour and faces.

There is never any prologue to politics which are not home grown. Namatai Kwekweza - is that her name? - does not need a national profile. Or her peers in ZINASU or ARTUZ.

They only need a SADC Summit to be launched and catapulted into sudden, national visibility. Such is the nature of inorganic politics.

We have Zimbabweans who traffic with and serve foreign interests; that does not make their cause, mission and pursuits Zimbabwean.

When such lost souls inevitably find themselves colliding with the powers-that-be, they trigger the elevated empathy, sympathy, and even supportive agitation from faraway lands beyond our continent.

For the majority of Zimbabweans, it is business as usual.

Only barely read slim newspaper headlines scream that Zimbabweans are misgoverned, at risk, while the same Zimbabweans go about their business unconcerned, in abiding peace. They even look forward to the thrill of the Summit, including opportunities to hustle.

 Opposition crisis of legitimacy

The armed Liberation Struggle was launched and fought on National Grievances.

These spoke to the felt needs of the oppressed.

The land, basic freedoms, the right to vote, forced de-stocking, forced labour, you name it.

No one invented these, which is why the struggle resonated with the broad masses.

Today we face a very strange situation.

When men and women from afar create grievances, organizations and institutions for another society so far away from their own, a crisis of legitimacy hits the opposition created to execute such an agenda.

Concrete social conditions breed tendencies, causes, politics and organizations.

Social conditions cannot be borrowed from other societies or even from earlier times in same societies.

Romantic movements in history arise from the urge to push the clock back, against the forward march of social conditions.

This is how utopias are formed, and die; they contradict concrete situations obtaining at the material time.

Models from afar

Borrowed models fail the same way.

They cannot dock into milieux different from the ones in which they were conceived and bred. Gentle reader, I hope you now get my drift: the discrepancy between opposition in Zimbabwe and the Zimbabwean opposition.

Our politics have entered a phase where grievances against current governors arise not from deeply felt need, but from imitations of templates of unrest raging elsewhere.

The models are designed abroad and gifted to locals as part of broader imperial tutelage, particularly in this time to global rivalry.

 Localising General Z

In the weeks which have gone by, we heard of bald attempts at imitating Kenyan-style uprisings.

The first letter to the name of our mighty Nation has made the importation of Kenyan unrest seem natural and necessary.

The focal point in Kenya's unrest was some mythic digital figure called General Z, the first letter on the name of our country, which makes everything a natural paste!

There was a real expectation here to grow a Kenya-like movement without Kenyans; a Kenya-like movement without Kenyan temperament, Kenyan grievances, Kenyan social structure or Kenyan conditions.

The only factor missing was Zimbabwean courage, so we were told and even excoriated.

All this amounted to a repudiation of the organic connection between milieux and movements, place and politics, terrain and tactics, cause and course.

Expectedly, the excitement died on social media with execrations thrown against all Zimbabweans as cowards. Except no one paused to ask: what is the fight for which courage is needed?

Not Kenyan fight, surely?

Not mindless emulation of Kenyan conflict, surely?

 Copying and pasting

Yet that thinking comes from somewhere. Names such as Brenthurst and USAID were repeatedly uttered.

I am not worried about the accuracy of the alleged agency; that is a matter for another day.

What concerns me here is an open admission and acknowledgment of external agency: that events in Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Venezuela and even Bangladesh, find cause, unity and method from forces outside of those affected polities.

Which is to say, that the upheavals are inorganic, which is why they can be exported to anywhere, and take root.

This breeds copycat politics such as we hear Malema echoing for Zimbabwe, copycat politics he does not himself think needful in his South Africa where the sexed ballot has rebutted decolonisation.

Julius Malema

You do not need politics bred by your own social conditions or your own organic needs. You need copy-and-paste revolutions, which is why the social media is the prime tool for agitation.

Facing up to oddities

Until the same social media spews an oddity in the scheme of things. Instead of the social media directing you to some riotous mass action against a tinpot Third World dictator, the search engine takes you to Great Britain, a global model and, for us the so-called mother country!

What do you do when the cast lots convict your very mother? Then and only then do you realise you have been a victim of mimetic politics, politics of mindless imitation. Good methodology, bad country! Your god has become the Lucifer!

Politics of abracadabra

Beyond the imitative, you run into another problem, an even bigger one in my view. It is that of agency. I read two pieces on the opposition and its ever sagging fortunes. One dwelt on new efforts deployed to reunite the splintered opposition. The overriding assumption in the article is that splits are deleterious to opposition political activity. I wonder if those behind the piece have grasped histories of liberation movements in our Region, to the number. Anyway, let's assume unity, however mindless, helps. The name of some Zimbabwean-born "academic" was thrown in, one Dr Phillan Zamchiya.

He is visualised, nay prettified in the article as non-partisan enough to competently broker peace within ranks of the divided opposition.

I laughed raucously. Why would this young man, himself a well-known Chamisa boy, get mischaracterised and proffered as neutral and transcendental vis-a-vis current politics of a divided opposition?

Why would anyone present him as a brand new political creature, or even a born-again one who competently disavows old, divisive politics which land the opposition in the divided morass in which it now finds itself?

Are opposition players that ignorant of each other, or desperation has driven them into imagining the beautiful ones as born and, what is more, born and recycled from within their cankered ranks?

I asked further: does the media outfit which ran the story being genuine?

Or it was selling a lie, a false hope, selling the promise of a delightful phantom breakthrough?

And to imagine that the opposition collapsed because it did not have a Dr Zamchiya, in which case it would be resurrected by finding and enlisting his abracadabra chanting and wand?

Who is the Zimbabwean scholar in politics?

The call for opposition unity is not new. While local voices have called for that unity, the most strident call has insistently come from outsiders, at times even as a precondition for external funding.

It is a template imported from elsewhere which, miraculously, must find root here. And when the names Zimbabwe Institute of Brian Raftopolous - another academic - or that of Dr Zamchiya are thrown in, you immediately know from which subcontinent the initiative is coming from. The Zimbabwean scholastic community is globally apportioned; this is a sad fact we have to accept.

Follow the doctoral issuing institution and you get the power sponsoring the politics.

A leader from a machine

The second piece spotlighted Abednico Bhebhe: that restless, footloose child of the opposition.

It was a pessimistic piece, but one relieved by Bhebhe's suggested panacea. It deserves to be quoted in full. Bhebhe had this to say: "There are selfish individuals among the opposition…because those individuals are actually on ZANU-PF's payroll. They are there to make sure that there is no true unity within the opposition. Every individual who is a Zimbabwean should align himself or herself to oppose the misrule by ZANU-PF. Once that happens, a leader is going to emerge within the people – not leaders that emerge first and invite people to their projects, or invite people to their own agendas… As the people push [against ZANU-PF rule], a leader is going to emerge." You cannot miss the self-righteousness in the yell: I vociferously denounce ZANU-PF's payroll, so I cannot be one of the names on it! I renounce pre-natal leadership, so why will I not be the leader you have been waiting for from within the faceless multitude moving in agitated uprising against ZANU-PF?

Inventing new histories

Bhebhe spells out a model for all of the above to happen. He says: "We need to get back to the mood that we had during the liberation struggle. During the liberation struggle, every black person was against the white regime because it was mistreating the blacks.

Abednico Bhebhe

Their policies were not favouring the blacks, hence the blacks mobilised themselves against that misrule by the regime. We need to learn from the liberation struggle . . .Let's mobilise ourselves against what ZANU-PF is doing and then a leader is going to emerge among the people." Here is a new history of the Zimbabwean Liberation Struggle, adumbrated by Abednico Bhebhe.

Zimbabwe's Liberation Struggle just happened on its own; the masses mobilised themselves spontaneously, armed themselves from nowhere, before leading themselves to freedom.

It was a nameless movement; a faceless struggle in which the people organised themselves against a regime which misruled them! Often you are inspired to probe where Bhebhe was during the liberation struggle.

Chamisa incognito

But there is continuity of strands in Bhebhe's Utopia.

By repudiating leadership he recreates another digital General Z who is intangible and inorganic, arising to lead spontaneously aroused general anger against ZANU-PF and its alleged misrule.

Some kind of Deus ex Machina or a god-from-the-machine where social causes, processes and human agency give way to some miraculous, mythical figure as the motor of human history.

Some Utopian vision of political change in which individual actions and leadership give way to formless mass action under a synthetic, mythical leader born from a machine.

Yet this is not new; it is something we have met before: it is Chamisa's blueprint where leadership and structure are repudiated in favour of the inchoate. Welcome to opposition politics in Zimbabwe.

We are all Zanu-PF after all

Bhebhe does more to trip himself.

The fight by the opposition is against ZANU-PF misrule; but the inspiration must be summoned from ZANU-PF's past deeds as a Liberation Movement fighting for Independence against Ian Smith's colonial order!

Where are we now?

Back in ZANU-PF's court and on ZANU-PF payroll, at the very least ideological and organisational payroll.

This propounded by a man avowing opposition to ZANU-PF! Such is the cyclical rut in which opposition in Zimbabwe is caught.

The only clarity there is relates to ending ZANU-PF rule; beyond it, nothing subsists! Or more accurately, ZANU-PF actually subsists, but only disguised as General Z!

Again you ask: who really hates ZANU-PF and its so-called misrule?

The answer cannot be the Bhebhes and Chamisas of this land.

They are crying for unity talks; they are crying for a second Government of National Unity, GNU. Which means the goal to hate and depose ZANU-PF comes from elsewhere beyond our borders.

Sympathetic pregnancy in politics

Psychologists have a name for all this: sympathetic pregnancy. Your woman falls pregnant and begins to evince symptoms of that pregnancy.

You, the source of pregnancy contract a rare disease called "elevated feelings of empathy" for your pregnant wife as she goes through the painful motions postpartum depression, weight gain, breast augmentation, back pain, fatigue, morning nausea, cravings, excessive earwax and a lot more other bodily and emotional contortions.

In the end you also become pregnant, even dressing in your pregnant wife's clothing, while simulating birth pangs.

It is called couvade syndrome where you descend into mindless imitative behaviour contradicting your innate, biological capabilities.

All in elevated empathy and sympathy.

The opposition beast is now past heat; its female partner is battling advanced pregnancy.

It is acting in mindless sympathy. Welcome 44th SADC Summit.