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In the last month or so, three interesting visitors came to see me, the third coming soon after the grand failure of the MDC�s "final push". The first visitor was an envoy from a neighbouring country who wanted to know what Zimbabwe�s neighbours could do to achieve meaningful dialogue between the ruling Zanu-PF and the MDC. The second visitor was a Zimbabwean working for a major foreign media service. He was worried that the elites in Sadc countries saw Zimbabwe through the eyes and lenses of Western media while the common citizens, as happened at Orlando Stadium in Soweto when President Mugabe visited South Africa, seemed to enjoy a more realistic reading of events in Zimbabwe. This Zimbabwean was interested in changing the foreign media portrayal of Zimbabwe because he believed that would benefit the reputation of the foreign media services and also benefit Zimbabwe. He saw the danger for foreign media arising from the fact that they would report and even predict outcomes of certain actions and events in Zimbabwe, which would always be proven false and wrong after being circulated around the globe. His fears were proven correct during and after the MDC�s grand flop called "the final push" in the first week of June 2003. The third visitor was again an envoy from a neighbouring country who wanted to assist the media back in his own country to read both the media texts they were receiving from the global conveyor belt of lies and the actual situation and events on the ground in Zimbabwe. The media in his country tended to be overwhelmed by foreign media texts and the expense of the real situation. The media in this Sadc country had been made to believe that the arrest of MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai after the total flop of the so-called "final push" was a fatal mistake on the part of Government and perhaps a final blow to any hopes for dialogue. The media in this neighbouring country had also been confused by their sources about the prevailing conditions in Zimbabwe. Was there a total breakdown of the rule of law, was there insecurity all over the country? Although two of my visitors came before the MDC�s so-called "final push" and one came soon after, my answers to all of them were similar because changes in slogans and labels do not constitute a change in reality. That is why a proper public education must always integrate learning about the world, from what others have observed, said and written about it on the one hand; and learning from the world itself, which learning is based on our own reading of events, our own reading of situations and relationships of power, conflict, co-operation and solidarity, on the other hand. So my first answer was that the MDC�s over-reliance on foreign media narcissism to define the Zimbabwean situation had, in fact, killed politics. Sociologist Richard Sennett wrote a book called The Fall of Public Man: On the Social Psychology of Capitalism. The book describes the death of politics and public information, their replacement with fixations upon and infatuations with personalities and narcissistic media whose main message is that real politics is too boring and too slow to be worthy of pursuit. "We want our final push now." And democracy and good governance means me arriving at State House and evicting the current tenant in the glare of foreign cameras! The media have a great role to play in killing real politics and replacing it with pseudo dramas, narcissistic infatuations and personal fixations. According to Sennett: "But the reality of politics is boring . . . committees, hassles with bureaucrats, and the like. To understand these hassles would make active interpretative demands [readings] on the [media�s] audience. This real life you tune out; you want to know �what kind of person� makes things happen. That picture TV can give you while making no demands on your own responsive powers if it concentrates on what the [narcissistic] politician feels" rather than what is actually happening and what it means. In this case certain media serve as the pools of water or the mirrors where the boy Narcissus indulges in his own self-reflection: "Do or die"; "Battle lines drawn"; "We have no choice but to confront the regime head-on"; "Mass action is the only option for the voiceless"; "In the eyes of the storm", when what is meant is the eye of the BBC camera or even the amateur video camera faking events in Zimbabwe. Our readers must be wondering what then is real politics as opposed to the political narcissism we have been subjected to by the local corporate media and their foreign mentors and sponsors? I keep referring to the definition of a good public education as that which integrates learning about the world with learning from and through the world itself. Politics should be the education and moulding of the citizen as "public man" and "public woman". In their book Schooling in Capitalist America, Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis tried to describe the subject of politics which political narcissists have killed. They wrote that: "The US economy [capitalism] is a formally totalitarian system in which the actions of the vast majority (workers) are controlled by a small minority (owners and managers). Yet this totalitarian system is embedded in a formally democratic political system which promotes the norms . . . if not the practice . . . of equality, justice, and reciprocity." This is important because for the opposition in Zimbabwe, "democracy" has meant the importation of neoliberal slogans and jargon from the United States and Britain without recognising the paradox of US or British "democracy." One result of this failure was the opposition�s campaign in support of the illegal US sanctions Bill against Zimbabwe which is now part of US law and called "The Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act". Bowles and Gintis go on to reveal the paradoxes or contradictions of capitalism which should be the heart of real conscious politics: "For the political system, the central problems of democracy are [presented as]: insuring the maximal participation of the majority in decision-making; protecting minorities against the prejudices of the majority; and protecting the majority from any undue influence on the part of an unrepresentative [and often wealthy] minority." This so-called "political" arena is presented in neoliberal media as if it covers the whole substance of politics. It does not. The authors go on: "For the [capitalist] economic system, these central problems [of so-called democracy] are nearly exactly reversed. Making . . . capitalism work involves insuring the minimal [or even zero] participation by the majority [the workers and peasants]; protecting a single minority (capitalists and managers) against the wills of the majority; and subjecting the majority to the maximal influence of this single unrepresentative minority. A more dramatic contrast one would be hard pressed to discover. High school textbooks [and mass media] do not dwell on the discrepancy [between the rhetoric of democracy and realities of capitalism]." Now, what we mean by saying that the opposition has killed politics can be explained in stages. It is related to what we referred to as the false disappearance of apartheid and Rhodesian interests from open forums and law statutes into strategic sectors of the economy. Neoliberal imperialism has also assisted in this disguise of apartheid, using new opposition stooges, NGOs and our too Westernised school systems. The killing of real politics has progressed as follows: l First we were told that the entrenchment of the white racist interests of apartheid at "independence" was compatible with and should co-exist with our "independence" and "democracy". That was the message of the Lancaster House Constitution when it turned those who had stolen our land into "willing sellers" and the African majority dispossessed of their land into "willing buyers". Lancaster also entrenched 20 white racist seats in our Parliament of Zimbabwe for 10 years. In South Africa both Nelson Mandela and F. W. de Klerk were awarded Nobel Peace Prizes on the same platform. l The second stage came when the Lancaster provisions had come to an end after 10 years. This was the stage of neoliberal Esap (the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme). The message had now changed. Governments, liberation movements and political parties were supposed to accept donors and Ngos as their tutors in "democracy" and the first lesson was that the economy should be depoliticised: Take politics out of the economy by leaving economic issues and problems to global corporations, to the "donors", to the International Monetary Fund, to the World Bank, to the World Trade Organisation and to the armies of consultants and experts which these agencies were mobilising for our benefit. We were supposed to restrict ourselves to rhetorical, desktop "democracy" based purely on conferences, workshops, seminars and the media. In other words, economic matters were too sophisticated for us. They should be left to globalising forces and agencies who would help to build our capacity to survive in a confusing world. This has been the message of the MDC and the media supporting it. l The third stage completed the internalisation of narcissistic politics and it is most clearly demonstrated in the mobilisation of British, European and North American sponsors of neo-Rhodesian and neo-apartheid interests in our region against the African land reclamation movement. The message of this third stage of political regression and decadence is this: "Apartheid in economic life is not just compatible with democracy; it should not just co-exist with democracy and human rights; it is actually necessary for democracy to flourish! In other words, Africans who fought a war against apartheid interests for a whole generation to liberate their land and economy must now assist in the rebirth, the recovery and growth of the very same apartheid interests as a prerequisite for "democracy". The US law called the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, which the MDC and the Daily News campaigned for, is an excellent example of this political decadence. Economic recovery here means the recovery and restoration of white Rhodesian economic power and economic interests as often presented in the Daily News by Norman Reynolds and Eddie Cross. When Eddie Cross sees the MDC as a new Pioneer Column just about to reclaim Zimbabwe from Zanu-PF and President Mugabe (Daily News, March 21 2003), he is referring to this idea that the apartheid interests of the white man must be restored and re-entrenched before Zimbabwe can be called a "democratic" country. So, when a white racist demands the sort of treatment in Zimbabwe which would be expected in a "democratic country", he means which would be expected in an apartheid economic set-up. My second reply was that the MDC was incapable of engaging in meaningful national dialogue because it lacked the language, manners and experience of dialogue and negotiation. Its leaders were mostly used to begging for funds in foreign capitals, which required them to develop a language of self-hatred against African leaders and African institutions. They started by insulting President Mugabe and seeking to impeach him. This failed; but they continued to attack and insult President Mbeki, President Obasanjo, President Muluzi, and the whole of Sadc and the African Union for not accepting the restoration of apartheid as democracy. This is why, when an opportunity opened for negotiations and dialogue, we suddenly saw Mr Ian Makone and Professor Mukonoweshuro being brought in to do the talking. It was realised perhaps that the frontline leaders of the MDC had neither he language nor the patience to engage in serious dialogue. Any party which allows one of its key white advisors to view and use it as a born-again Pioneer Column has got to have difficulties talking to real Africans about national interest. So far the MDC has been very good talking with traitors in Renamo, the former apartheid elements of the Afrikaner National Party, Tony Leon�s party and donors in the North, but not with African leaders. Playing to the global media gallery. Finally, I said national dialogue required not just an appropriate national language but also some discipline and patience. But, like its British and North American sponsors, the MDC has over-relied on media orchestration and media hype, to the extent of timing all its demonstrations to coincide with European Union and G7 conferences which would then make negative and racist comments on Zimbabwe as a result of the media events organised to coincide with foreign meetings. This whole strategy is based on the narcissistic failure to differentiate what is in one�s head from what is happening in the world. There is no distinction between a real street mobilisation involving the masses and a fantasy of "mass action" which is stuck in one�s head. Playing to the foreign gallery automatically leads to the narcissistic belief that Harare and Bulawayo constitute Zimbabwe and that President Mugabe�s "power" is kept locked up at State House, like Samson�s magical power which was locked up in his long hair-locks and could be destroyed by shaving the hair. This is the ultimate political narcissism because it fails to allow for the fact that power is a relationship. President Mugabe has governed Zimbabwe even while on foreign visits because of his relationship with the people of Zimbabwe and the national institutions in Zimbabwe. The MDC has thrived either on spitting on the very same relationships and institutions or on boycotting them. So a demonstration that ended in the State House gardens or bedrooms would not suddenly enable the MDC to enjoy those relationships and earn the respect of those same institutions it has been spitting on or boycotting. So "mass action" means simply a narcissistic fantasy both of words as action and of one�s isolation and individual excitement as a massive mobilisation. That is killing real politics. Zimbabwe is not about personal egos. The
Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy" Groupe de communication Mulindwas "avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans l'anarchie" |
