The Sunday News
Micheal Mhlanga
After a sterling delivery of his maiden speech in New York last Wednesday, His Excellency, President ED Mnangagwa triggered a horde of discussions both locally and internationally.
He had a huge task of positioning Zimbabwe as a presently latent space for capital, which by the way cannot be as liberal as its philosophy entails, but guided by a strict scientific socialist ethos in Zimbabwe.
Between the Big Apple and Harare, of interest to me is how the President seems to be guided by “why” he has to make bold decisions, responses and actions in the hostile country infamous of its Zidera. After the speech, USA’s position on sanctions was defeated.
Articulating such a position of attracting capitalism to a dominant socialist state is an uphill task, ask any economist, they can testify. Be that as it may, the President of Zimbabwe, effortlessly, remarkably declared Zimbabwe’s positionality on contentious issues such as land, electoral reforms, change of a political culture and enticingly, our integrational approach.
I think the Friday Herald article by Tichaona Zindoga and Richard Mahomva did justice to analysing the contents of that Wednesday speech and I would not want to diffuse the impression of the duteous junction of media and political science. Of interest to me is the philosophy of ED’s presence in New York.
In New York, multilateral institutions agreed to work with Zanu-PF, consequently wrecking opposition’s only Trump card of “illegitimacy”. On September 25, the Secretary General of UN met with ED and congratulated him on his electoral victory, further discussing about SDGs in Zimbabwe — that alone is confirmation of working with a Zanu-PF led government.
Again, the CNN interview became a precursor to numerous questions about outstanding conflictual issues within the nation, to which the President clearly signalled a path to reconciliation and redress. A response to a question so contentious about an owing conflict resolution is a positive sign of national healing, building, surety of a reformed political institution and an influence to economic revival.
What was augmented by ED’s actions in New York is that he was affirming that Zimbabwe is now democratically stable, one key factor that charms financial interaction between the developing and developed. Political stability is by no means the norm in human history. Irrespective of political regimes, if a country does not need to worry about conflicts and radical changes of regimes, the people can concentrate on working, saving, and investing, that seemed to flesh the majority of ED’s presence in New York.
Among the factors found to reduce corruption are decades-long tradition of pseudo-democracy and political instability, thus a memory of ED in New York will be a reference of how much potential of change Zimbabwe has.
I argue this, because I am of the school of thought that our past political culture was a strong deterrent of economic growth. It was petrifying to capital to say the least, hence when capital is interested in us, we celebrate.
One revered journalist, Admire Kudita always advises me that “follow the money”, and I think what the President was doing in New York was exactly that — following the money — that is what the majority want, is it not so?
Talking about following the money, I draw your attention to another reason why ED’s New York trip was beyond what he said and how he said it, but why he said it. I am convinced that what matters to him is “why” — whose answer is hinged on how he perceives the importance of individual-national well-being. Well-being is understood as arising from the common life, the shared enterprise of living in community, in whatever sense, with others.
This approach resonates strongly with my own scholarly tradition, which spans development studies, social anthropology, sociology and human geography, and identifies people as subjects formed within a specific social and cultural context. I want to explain why ED’s approach in New York shapes a new social paradigm which ensures well-being for Zimbabweans. I shall refer to social orders of the “self” being common trends that we had been used to, but have always needed change.
It is clear that the current debate of whether the Second Republic will ensure well-being forms part of the complex identified in the First Republic. In most forms, Zimbabwe was strongly individualist, centred on the self and its entitlements, and easily amenable to forming part of a disciplinary “regime of the self”, especially with respect to an ideology of self-improvement.
We were sticklers of disengagement, what developmentalists refer to as a religious ascription to the dependency theory which assumes that the periphery (us) will never mature unless it detaches itself from the centre (the colonial developed).
Nevertheless, it is important to recognise that there are several different approaches to well-being which intersect with this complex in rather different ways.
I introduce three main types of approaches that I believe informed ED’s “why” approach in New York. These are not chronological developments of the concept of well-being but all exist together and to some extent borrow from and flow into one another.
The first, “comprehensive” approach which directs attention to a broad range of “quality of life” factors, questioning the primacy often given to income or economic growth. The second, subjective well-being which uses measures of individual happiness or satisfaction to evaluate a policy or political project.
The third, “personal well-being” which aims to get individuals to take action to promote their own health and happiness.
The man understands that well-being takes the emphasis on happiness and satisfaction of subjective well-being and expands it in more substantive terms: what matters is not just feeling good, but also doing well. Listening to the undertones of his CNN interview, discussion at the Investors Forum, Bloomberg and his UNGA speech, you can pick that he is emphatic at motivating individuals and the nation with a positive and proactive approach to take more responsibility for their own health or state of mind.
I once wrote that Zimbabwe is an “angry” nation, in which I argued that people have suffered for a long time to a point that there is what I call the “national frustration”.
Desolation of individual dreams and minimal opportunities have infected people with reeking psychological problems. The remedy is a President whose actions and policies point towards Psychological well-being. This is a core dimension of personal well-being. This comprises not just feeling happy, but optimal psychological functioning or the ability to meet core psychological needs such as reduced or absence of stress, a feeling of security and generally being hopeful of the future prospects.
Well-being “cannot exist just in your own head” but brings in objective as well as subjective dimensions. Interestingly, through New York successes, the promotion of personal well-being is cast as a social, not simply individual project.
While it is true that some African states who have been able to achieve high growth rates are stable, a number of relatively low performing African states also have remarkably stable political systems.
I stress this in the strongest terms, because some scribes assume that the speech at UN is enough, but I retort that between New York and the President, when we talk about political stability, we mean a specific kind of stability: the rule of law, strong institutions rather than powerful individuals, an efficient bureaucracy, low corruption and an investment enabling business climate. Indeed, what we really mean is that stable governance is crucial for growth. This admittedly academic distinction is an important one to recognise. Governance goes well beyond just politics.
Phambili ngeZimbabwe.
