The Sunday News
Micheal Mhlanga
The Reserve Bank Governor and the Minister of Finance and Economic Development announced austerity measures this past week. It did not go down well with the urban dweller, many who understood less of the purposes of economic austerity measures and how hard it was for the two men to make such announcements.
Again, the rural dweller was blamed by some who still linger on electoral outcomes as the reason of their misfortunes even if they are not as innovative as the circumstances demand. Immediately, I indulged my cabal, to unpack what the Monetary Policy and Fiscal measures have triggered in national dialogue, and what emerged is the ongoing debacle of class struggles and the question of policy continuity in this, our land. With my cabal we concluded: The working class in Zimbabwe is increasingly turning into a threat to the fibre of Zimbabwe’s democracy.
The bulk of Zimbabwe’s class conflict is shared between two, the working class and the “others”. The dualisation of this bulk is not a result of Zimbabwe being fragmented into two, but rather the hegemonic conceptions of the working class that only sees itself but fails to listen to anything outside the working class bracket.
To understand the debate on class in Zimbabwe, it should be understood that one factor that weighs heavily in this debate is the distinction between those who reside in urban areas and those that reside in rural areas. While the working class occupies the urban space, its sole conviction is to earn a living through wages and salaries, sustain itself through structural means that guarantee social security.
It calculates the debate of national development along modernist stances that usually strives to transform the Global South into being another Global North. All this in the name of democracy and development.
Through its aspirations and struggles, it is increasingly reducing the prospects of non-middle class citizens, to make independent judgments when calculating the variables of democracy and development. Zimbabwe in its diversity, the ascendancy of the working class has complicated the chances of attaining a complete democracy that is founded on meeting genuine categorical imperatives.
In our discussions of politics and democracy, we have been focusing on different versions of working class struggles; we have neglected the possibility of having a significant other direction that does not subscribe to working class aspirations. The structure for these civil exclusions is similar in Africa, in Zimbabwe they have been re-emerging along the same framework.
Alleged “civilised” citizens who are predominantly in urban areas, are swift to declare, nationalistically, that the “masses” (us the unemployed and rural brigades) emanate to delay and derail the path to democracy and development.
The difference in resource ownership, beliefs and definitions to freedom has complicated the notion even beyond the lens of political economy. Nevertheless, when evaluating this debate in decolonial lens, it is worth going beyond this simplistic mantra.
While it is a fact that the working class is the vanguard of the postcolonial state in Zimbabwe, little logical effort has been presented to investigate the correctness or the incorrectness of this phenomenon. It has been abstractly neglected that although the working class is in control of mainstream national discourse, does it reflect the acute wholesome exigencies of Zimbabwe’s diverse constituencies.
Does your “town” opinion matter?
I mean constituencies in class terms, not in factors like age, sex and ethnicity which seem to be at the power point of the working class’s fake national carpet. One question that re-emerges in this debate is the inquiry; if there is an absolute homogeneous template of national development, one that cuts across all the national fragmentations.
Another question that should appear is, are we really fighting a national battle against economic recovery, or Zimbabwe is fighting for the working class economic re-establishment?
Does everyone in Zimbabwe really aspire to be caught in the urbanite class intricacies or the working class has just monopolised discretion and captured the means of knowledge distribution for national consumption? One factor that remains is slowly being positioned in the working class corner, where even democratic participation can only be valid if it resonates around working class interests, aspirations of being western like in terms of governance, an aspiration that is only functional in working class civilisations.
The working class in its ill conceived ascendancy of power has failed to account for the existence of other social classes aspirations, continuously this has created a fragmented approach to national interests and national aspirations. While it is just for the working class to advance its unique aspirations, failure to account for the existence of other social classes has frequently amounted in conflict.
In crucial times like national development and conversations, the working class being at the centres of discourse formulation, has frequently misled itself into believing that its national aspirations are absolute, as such it has criminalised other aspirations from non-working class groups into echoes of backwardness and has often labelled it savagery to the fibre of Zimbabwe’s democracy.
The working class in its arrogance usually calculates political variables from an urbanite perspective, scheduling political innuendos prevalent in urban spaces as being the absolute direction to be adopted by the nation.
Although the working class has monopolised the definition of national virtue, it does not mean it has erased the existence of other categorical national expectations. In 2018, which is a crucial year for Zimbabwe, a year that gives the diverse Zimbabweans a chance to express their dedication to reform and best practices of governance. It is worth forecasting the quality of decision making by evaluating the manner in which everyone appreciates the question of class distinction in Zimbabwe.
The structure of any public institution by now should reflect if they are aware of class conflict in Zimbabwe, and that same public office’s mission statement should be used as a determent of reflecting if they are willing to be inclusive in capturing the aspirations of Zimbabwe, or if that public office is just following the patterns of hegemonic working class tendencies, only servicing the aspirations of those in town.
Being Zimbabwean starts and ends with POVO
In a tête-à-tête with Tedious Ncube, a political sage, he presented that this group; unlike the working class, does not respond to modernist popular rhetoric such as bullet trains, it responds to feasible polices like command agriculture that eclipse the gap between macro-economic management and the common man.
Therefore, in the past election, the masses have always freely expressed their aspirations by voting Zanu-PF so as to defend their hard earned state independence.
Nhlansi’s (Tedious’ totem) submission reflects the long term implications of working class hegemony over national opinion; he replicates that usually the working class goes to elections with the sole intention to punish the government which it accuses of being the breadbasket of its problems. Unfortunately, iParty Yabantu being a party that identifies with majority aspirations including part of the working class, is usually immune from the hegemonic pitfalls of the working class. Kwame Nkrumah advises in his book Class Struggles in Africa when he retorts that: “The rural proletariat are workers in the Marxist sense of the word.
They are part of the working class and the most revolutionary of the African rural strata”.
Since the masses obviously voted in defence of revolutionary benefits and its democratic approach to national development, Nhlansi and I concluded with an interesting remark that development itself, no matter how critical it is, ranks below the value of democracy and it should deliberately target the peasants — it is them who are the cog of our economy in the farms and livestock rearing.
Therefore the realisation class upgrade, should be the core of any public office’s interest if 2030 is to be achieved. As such the “Povo” being the majority, should determine the speed of national development, although some may accuse it of being backward, we maintain that backwardness is a synonym for disempowerment, therefore part of empowering the masses is availing them the opportunity to reflect the urgency of their situation in national conversations, by having a dominant voice that represents their aspirations.
Till next week.
Phambili ngeZimbabwe!
