The Sunday News
By Teddy Ncube and Brian Maregedze
Dr. Obert Mpofu has ignited a vigorous debate on the definition of democracy in Zimbabwe. In his autobiography titled “On the Shoulders of Struggle, Memoirs of a Political Insider”, he argues that the template of democracy needs to be decolonised. In this call to decolonise the template of democracy, Dr. Mpofu distinguishes himself from the conventional decolonial scholars who write from a position of agitation and disempowerment. As an insider of a successful revolutionary movement, Dr. Mpofu rationally argues that, decolonizing democracy should not be mistaken for the refusal of democracy, instead it should be viewed as a humanising exercise which seeks to locate the role of the African in the historical, contemporary and future discourses of democracy.
As well, unlike the first generation of post-colonial thinkers who mistook decolonisation for the re-location of the African to some aboriginal past and leaving him/her there; Dr. Mpofu suggests that the best way to re-invent an African is to firstly disrupt the West’s privilege over the discourse of democracy, he alludes that what generally forced him to pen his autobiography is the need for someone to take up a stand and challenge Western hegemonic narratives that have abused the discourse of democracy to fence neo-colonial interests. Dr. Mpofu’s autobiography therefore offers a refreshing submission which locates the African in all the historical dimensions of democracy and human rights.
Let us decolonise democracy
The humanistic prose of Western democracy reflects the social struggles of the Western citizen. But given the domination of the West over the rest of the world through such repressive historical moments as the slave trade and slavery, colonialism and currently neo-colonialism, this very same literature tends to opt for silence or ambivalence or downright collaboration when talking about struggles of previously disenfranchised communities.
Despite the few liberal Western writers who show great sensitivity to the social evils perpetrated against other peoples, if taken as a whole Western literature still cannot avoid being affected by the Eurocentric basis of its world view or global vision, and most of it even when sympathetic, cannot altogether escape from the racism inherent in Western epistemologies. Against such a background, the framing of democracy has been a cocktail of struggles affecting citizens of the Global North and deliberate speculations about the struggles affecting the Global-South citizen. To this end, the African struggle has been interpreted using a very western body and mind. It is this western body and mind that has imposed itself on the actual identity of the African giving birth to a whole range of bastardised identities in Africa. It is on this context that “On the Shoulders of Struggle, Memoirs of a Political Insider” asserts the missing African struggles whose bric-a-brac can be used to construct the real African identity.
Dr. Mpofu’s autobiography ignites a debate on the form and content of democracy in contemporary Zimbabwe. In chapter 11 of his book, Dr. Mpofu outlines the pitfalls of adopting a model of democracy which is governed by specific western historical conditions and then later exported to the Global South as a ‘handed down robe to fit all’
Dr. Mpofu further argues that, if the African is to rethink the idea of democracy, he/she reaches the conclusion that democracy is currently about what the Euro-North American designs expects the Global-South to do than the other way round. The African realises that he has been reduced into being a perennial student of what the Global-North perceives to be good for Africa. For it has been the pattern throughout history that whosoever brings the new order knows it best and is therefore the perpetual teacher of those to whom the new order is being brought to. If the west is to be right about democracy in Africa, then the African people can only accept whatever these know-all tutors have to say about the African.
Dr. Mpofu’s autobiography further interrelates with what Professor Ngwabi Bhebhe sites as the major challenge to democracy in Africa. In his book titled “Historical Dimensions of democracy and Human rights in Zimbabwe”, Prof Bhebhe castigates the African for not manufacturing historical references for democracy particularly how the African story has not been framed to emphasise that democracy has always been there in Africa.
It is against this background that Dr. Mpofu’s autobiography asserts why and how a modern political system should be calculated on the basis of genuine historical pluralities rather than this universally-plural western perspective. Dr. Mpofu’ self-allocation further depicts the African nationalist as a democratic being who has always cherished the idea of an open political space as espoused by the cardinal values of the liberation struggle. Dr. Mpofu’s autobiography points to the existence of democracy way before the birth of these rehearsed neo-liberal postures about Zimbabwe’s political welfare. He lays a foundation for public policy scholars to navigate the prospects and challenges of democracy in Zimbabwe beyond and across the Euro-North-American framework.
Reconfiguring the nexus between democracy and development
There is a symbiotic relationship between democracy and development, in the absence of development it is justified to site the absence of democracy as a causal factor. Whilst it is true that a democratic state is not necessarily a developmental state, a case exists that such a state has the necessary ingredients for development.
Dr Mpofu’s contribution is indeed refreshing and joins other luminaries within nationalist memory to self-introspect the pitfalls bedeviling the post colony of Zimbabwe. Mpofu’s contribution is not full of celebratory tone nor all condemnation in narrating Zimbabwe’s past. Rather, unsettling experiences under the leadership of ZANU PF in the past are also explored. Auto/biographies in the recent past on the liberation struggle have previously faced vehement criticism for pointing out ZANU PF’s pitfalls. Fay Chang (2006) wrote an autobiography which had some unsettling accounts, memories to official narratives of the time. More importantly, Dr Mpofu’s “On the Shoulders of Struggle, Memoirs of a Political Insider” falls within such narratives that challenges a monolithic self-celebratory discourse on the successes of the revolutionary party ZANU PF.
Dialoguing Zimbabwe’s post independent narratives can only be progressive if Dr Mpofu’s memoir is shared among all and sundry in Zimbabwe’s body-politic. Using the inconsistencies Lancaster House Conference of 1979, the failure by party cadres to adhere to the leadership code of the 1980s and the Economic Structural Adjustment Programmes (ESAPs) of the early 1990s, the memoir exposes the still birth independence of Zimbabwe. Economic policy dependency on the former colonisers did not end with the attainment of political independence. Mpofu acknowledges that:
“The adoption of ESAP saw a rise in unemployment and hyper-inflation. As a public administrator at the time, I experienced the first-hand impoverishing effects of ESAP because my work entailed direct interaction with the people in the grassroots. Contemporaneously, there were no more subsidies for local governance operations. To even make matters worse, Umguza District had not yet recovered from the effects of colonial marginalisation. Ten years after independence, the people of Umguza and the rest of other Zimbabweans faced the severity of ESAP’s austerity measures.”
As such, Zimbabwe is emerging from snares of colonial matrices of power. From a decolonial stand point, the concept of coloniality of power speaks directly to the entanglement and entrapment of Africa and other ex-colonised parts of the world in the ever-present colonial matrix of power on the modern/colonial world (Mignolo 2007: 158). Mpofu is historical in tracing the various challenges facing independent Zimbabwe. Hence, a unitary approach to the survival of Zimbabwe is necessary.
Tedious Teddy Ncube- Political Scientist and Public Policy Analyst. Brian Maregedze- Historian, Author and Columnist.
