When Africa Wins, White Gaze Demands An Explanation - Simbarashe Kundizeza, Professor Jason Arday and the Coloniality of Knowledge

THE controversy surrounding Zimbabwean writer Simbarashe Steyn Kundizeza exposes a persistent pathology in the global politics of knowledge. African intellectual achievement is too often subjected to tests of legitimacy that obscure the achievement itself. 

When an African writer wins international recognition, the question should be the literary merit of the work. Yet Kundizeza's victory has become entangled in allegations that his award-winning short story, The Blue Fighter, was generated by artificial intelligence (AI).

The allegation originated in The Atlantic, which relied substantially on an AI-detection tool called Pangram and stylistic interpretation. The BBC subsequently reported the controversy. 

Kundizeza has denied using generative AI, and the Caine Prize has faced pressure to examine the allegations. The existence of an allegation, however, is not proof of misconduct.

My concern extends beyond the reliability of an algorithm. It is about the racial politics of credibility - why does an African writer's achievement so readily become a question of authenticity, and whose intellectual authority is presumed legitimate until proven otherwise?

This is a question of coloniality, not merely technology. Colonialism sought control over African territory, labour and resources, but it also established hierarchies of knowledge. Europe positioned itself as the arbiter of civilisation and intellectual authority, while Africa was cast as an object to be studied, interpreted and validated. Formal independence did not automatically dismantle these arrangements.

Anibal Quijano's concept of the coloniality of power helps explain how racial hierarchies survive beyond colonial administration. In knowledge production, coloniality persists when institutions inherit the authority to determine whose ideas are credible, whose creativity is original and whose achievements require external certification.

Kundizeza's predicament illustrates the problem. An African writer wins a prestigious literary prize, but the conversation shifts from the achievement to whether he genuinely produced the work. His authorship becomes a public controversy before the allegation has been conclusively established.

This is not evidence, by itself, of the private racial motives of every participant. It is, however, a legitimate basis for examining how credibility is distributed within global literary institutions.

The coloniality of knowledge operates not only through the exclusion of African intellectuals, but also through the unequal terms on which their achievements are recognised.

The African writer is entitled to the same scrutiny as any other writer. What must be rejected is a system in which scrutiny becomes disproportionate, suspicion acquires the status of evidence, and technological classifications carry greater authority than the procedures required to verify them.

A genuine question, may be posed - Would a White Author Face the Same Treatment? This is the racial question at the heart of the controversy, and it should not be neutralised by an insistence that racism can be discussed only after discriminatory intent has been conclusively demonstrated.

Would a white writer who won the same award face an equivalent public campaign questioning the authenticity of the work? Would the same evidentiary threshold apply? Would the media give comparable weight to the writer's account, and would the allegation receive the same prominence before an investigation was completed?

These are questions of institutional consistency. Answering them requires comparative evidence, but asking them is neither irresponsible nor intellectually excessive.

Racism does not operate exclusively through explicit declarations of racial superiority. It can also be reproduced through institutional practices that distribute credibility unevenly. A racialised credibility deficit emerges when some people are presumed intellectually competent while others must repeatedly demonstrate that they deserve the recognition already accorded to them.

The Kundizeza controversy must therefore be examined against the historical background in which African intellectual production has often been treated as derivative, belated or dependent on external validation.

The issue is not whether every criticism of an African writer is racist. The issue is whether the institutions exercising the power to judge African creativity are willing to examine their own assumptions and demonstrate that their standards are applied consistently.

Until that examination occurs, appeals to neutrality cannot settle the question. Institutions do not become impartial simply by describing their procedures as objective.

The experience of Professor Jason Arday makes the stakes of this debate particularly serious. Arday, a distinguished Black sociologist and Cambridge professor, died on 14 August 2026 following a period of intense public scrutiny and controversy surrounding allegations about his academic work. 

His death prompted renewed questions about media conduct, institutional responsibility and the treatment of Black scholars. Nature subsequently called for reflection on the events and the responsibilities of universities and media organisations.

The circumstances of Arday's death should not be reduced to a single cause without adequate evidence. Nor should his experience be invoked to establish that the Kundizeza case is identical. 

The cases differ, but both demand attention to how allegations against Black intellectuals are handled, amplified and allowed to shape public perceptions of their legitimacy.

Public accountability is necessary in academia and literature. Yet accountability loses its integrity when reputational punishment precedes the establishment of facts. Media organisations and institutions must consider the consequences of their methods, particularly when allegations can overwhelm the achievements and identities of the people concerned.

Arday's experience should have strengthened the resolve of universities and media organisations to scrutinise their own practices. The Kundizeza controversy provides another reason to do so.

The right to investigate misconduct does not confer the right to treat an allegation as a verdict.

The use of AI detection in the Kundizeza controversy introduces a further problem, the transfer of epistemic authority to technological systems whose outputs are neither infallible nor equivalent to direct evidence. An AI detector analyses textual patterns and generates a classification. It does not witness the writing process. Its result may warrant further inquiry, but it cannot independently establish who authored a text.

A 2023 study published in Patterns found that several AI-text detectors disproportionately misclassified essays written by non-native English speakers as AI-generated. 

This does not establish that Pangram misclassified The Blue Fighter. It demonstrates why detector outputs require independent verification before being used to support consequential allegations.

The danger lies in treating technological authority as self-validating. If an algorithm's classification is privileged over manuscript drafts, editorial correspondence, writing history and the author's account, a fallible instrument becomes the principal arbiter of human creativity.

For African writers, this problem intersects with longstanding inequalities in global knowledge production. African literary traditions encompass multilingual expression, oral influences, indigenous metaphors and culturally specific narrative forms. 

Such characteristics should be examined through informed literary criticism, not forced into narrow assumptions about what authentic authorship must look like. The answer is not to exempt African writing from technological scrutiny. It is to refuse the uncritical delegation of judgement to systems that can make consequential errors.

Algorithmic coloniality emerges when technological classifications acquire the authority to judge African creativity without being subjected to equivalent scrutiny themselves.

The machine must remain an instrument of investigation, not an unquestionable authority over the people it evaluates. Epistemic justice demands more than recognition of African intellectual achievement. It requires fair conditions under which African knowledge and creativity are produced, evaluated and recognised.

In Kundizeza's case, this means that the allegation must be examined through transparent procedures, multiple sources of evidence and a meaningful opportunity for the author to respond. 

AI-detection scores should not be treated as conclusive proof of authorship or misconduct. Media organisations must distinguish clearly between allegations and established findings.

It also requires African universities, publishers, literary organisations and researchers to strengthen their capacity to shape the standards governing literary integrity and AI use. 

Africa cannot remain a passive participant in debates whose outcomes affect its writers while the institutions setting the terms of evaluation remain beyond meaningful scrutiny.

These measures are not demands for preferential treatment. They are demands for equal treatment, institutional accountability and epistemic sovereignty.

The deeper challenge is to dismantle the assumption that African intellectual achievement becomes credible only when certified by external authorities. International recognition is valuable, but it must not become a mechanism through which African writers surrender control over the interpretation of their own achievements.

The Kundizeza controversy is not simply a dispute about AI. It exposes the struggle over who possesses the authority to define originality, whose testimony commands credibility and how institutional power shapes the recognition of African creativity.

The allegation against Kundizeza must be assessed on evidence. But the racial politics surrounding the credibility of African intellectuals cannot be dismissed merely because individual discriminatory motives have not been established. 

The history of colonial knowledge production makes the question of unequal scrutiny legitimate and necessary.

Professor Arday's experience reinforces the urgency of examining how media organisations and institutions handle allegations against Black intellectuals. His death should not be reduced to a simplistic causal narrative, but neither should the public scrutiny he endured be separated from the serious questions it raises about institutional responsibility.

The global literary establishment must demonstrate that its standards are consistent, its investigations proportionate and its procedures fair. African writers must not be presumed less capable of originality, nor should their achievements be placed under disproportionate suspicion.

Africa is not an intellectual understudy waiting for Western institutions to certify its competence. It is a producer of literature, philosophy, science and knowledge with the agency to participate in determining the standards by which human creativity is evaluated.

Kundizeza deserves a fair assessment of his work, not a presumption of technological guilt. Africa deserves a global knowledge order in which intellectual excellence is evaluated through evidence rather than inherited racial expectations.

Epistemic justice begins when African creativity is no longer treated as an exception requiring explanation, but as an integral part of humanity's intellectual inheritance.

Africa will not apologise for its genius, and it will not surrender its intellectual sovereignty to the gatekeepers of global recognition.

 

 

KING CHARLES MUST RELAX: AFRIKA IS NOT BEGGING FOR AN APOLOGY; IT IS DEMANDING SLAVERY JUSTICE!

The headline that King Charles III will NOT apologise for Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade as he embarks on a Caribbean tour amid renewed demands for reparations is a revealing reminder of how imperial arrogance survives long after the formal abolition of slavery. 

Apparently, the Crown can tour the Caribbean, enjoy the ceremonial privileges of monarchy and hope that the uncomfortable question of reparations will remain politely outside the palace gates. But history has other plans. 

The descendants of the enslaved are no longer prepared to participate in the diplomatic theatre of imperial amnesia.

Let us get one thing absolutely clear – AFRIKA IS NOT BEGGING FOR AN APOLOGY. AFRIKA IS DEMANDING JUSTICE!

A royal apology, however elegantly worded and ceremonially delivered, cannot resurrect the millions whose lives were stolen, repair the civilisations disrupted, replenish the wealth extracted or erase the intergenerational consequences of a crime against humanity. 

No carefully choreographed expression of regret can reverse centuries of dehumanisation. An apology cannot refund stolen labour, reconstruct dismantled societies or return the futures denied to generations of Africans. 

Neither can it magically cleanse the historical foundations upon which considerable portions of European wealth, commercial power and imperial modernity were accumulated.

The problem, therefore, is not merely whether King Charles will apologise. The more fundamental question is why Britain continues to treat the demand for reparative justice as though it were an unreasonable interruption to its royal itinerary. 

Why should the descendants of those who were enslaved be expected to settle for words while the structural consequences of enslavement remain embedded in the global economic and political order?

Afrika does not require an apology to feel human again. Afrika demands the restoration of the humanity that slavery sought to deny it.

This is the essence of what must be understood as Afrika’s rehumanisation project. Slavery was not simply the physical transportation of Africans across the Atlantic in chains. 

It was a calculated assault on African personhood, agency, knowledge systems, productive capacity and the right to determine the continent’s historical destiny. Africans were commodified, their labour appropriated, their cultures ridiculed and their humanity subjected to a racial hierarchy designed to rationalise exploitation. 

The consequences did not conveniently disappear when the slave ships stopped sailing. Colonialism followed, consolidating systems of extraction, territorial domination and political subordination. In many instances, the same imperial logic survived under new institutional arrangements, economic dependencies and international hierarchies. 

The point is not to collapse every historical period into one undifferentiated crime, but to recognise that the consequences of slavery cannot be adequately addressed while the wider architecture of historical injustice remains beyond scrutiny.

AFRIKA SEEKS SLAVERY JUSTICE, NOT IMPERIAL CHARITY.

Reparations must never be misconstrued as a royal donation to supposedly unfortunate Africans. They are not a benevolent gift from a generous former enslaver to a grateful former slave. That framing reproduces precisely the master–slave relationship that reparative justice seeks to dismantle. 

Reparations are about acknowledging responsibility, repairing demonstrable historical harm and transforming the conditions through which the consequences of that harm continue to be reproduced.

They must therefore extend beyond the politics of apology to substantive questions of historical accounting, restitution where possible, institutional responsibility, educational redress, cultural heritage recovery, economic justice and the rebuilding of capacities systematically undermined by enslavement and subsequent imperial domination. 

The precise mechanisms must emerge through serious, inclusive negotiations informed by historical evidence, international law, affected communities and the legitimate claims of descendants.

Britain cannot simply invoke the passage of time as a magical solvent of historical responsibility. Time does not convert stolen wealth into innocent wealth merely because generations have passed. Nor does the death of the perpetrators extinguish every question of institutional responsibility for the legacies of their actions.

The uncomfortable historical reality is that the transatlantic slave trade was not an incidental blemish on European expansion. It was sustained by commercial interests, imperial institutions, racial ideologies and systems of political authority. 

Its proceeds and associated economic activity contributed to the accumulation of wealth and the development of commercial and industrial power in parts of Europe. To discuss modernity without interrogating these historical entanglements is to narrate the triumphs of European civilisation while conveniently editing out the African bodies, labour and resources that helped sustain them.

This is why Afrika’s demand is not simply for Britain to feel sorry. The demand is for Britain and other relevant institutions and states to confront the material, institutional and ideological consequences of the historical order from which they benefited.

And beyond reparations lies an even more transformative ambition - the reworlding of international relations.

Afrika seeks a pluriversal universe in which its relations with Britain and the rest of the world are no longer mediated by the historical grammar of master and slave, civiliser and civilised, donor and dependent, knower and known. 

It seeks international relations founded on mutual recognition, reciprocal obligation, historical accountability and the sovereign agency of peoples who refuse to remain imprisoned in somebody else’s account of world history.

Reworlding is not a demand that Afrika exchange places with Europe and become the new master. That would merely reproduce the very hierarchy it seeks to overcome. It is a demand to reconstruct the terms upon which humanity encounters itself, without racial superiority, without historical denial and without economic arrangements that normalise the consequences of past domination.

The descendants of enslaved Africans do not need the Crown’s permission to remember. They do not need royal validation to establish that their ancestors were human beings rather than commodities. 

And they certainly do not need to be lectured on the supposed impropriety of demanding justice for a history they did not choose but whose consequences they continue to confront.

King Charles must therefore understand that this debate is bigger than the monarchy, bigger than a Caribbean tour and bigger than the diplomatic convenience of issuing or withholding an apology. 

The Crown is an institution with a history, and that history cannot be insulated from legitimate public scrutiny simply because its present occupant inherited the throne rather than personally commanding a slave ship.

Nobody is asking the King to travel backwards in time and personally undo the past. The demand is that contemporary institutions confront historical wrongs with the seriousness they deserve and participate in meaningful efforts to repair their enduring consequences.

So, Your Majesty, with all due respect to the ceremonial grandeur of the Crown, relax! Afrika is not waiting for a royal apology to recover its dignity. 

That dignity survived the slave ship, the plantation, the auction block, the colonial administrator and the imperial archive. What Afrika is demanding is justice commensurate with the magnitude of the historical injury.

An apology without accountability is an exercise in public relations. Remorse without repair is a performance. And reconciliation without justice is simply an invitation for the injured to make peace with the benefits others continue to enjoy from their historical dispossession.

Let Britain apologise if it has the moral courage to do so. But let nobody mistake an apology for the destination of this struggle.

Afrika wants justice, not pity, Reparations, not royal charity, Recognition, not condescension and a Reworlded universe, not an imperial order with a new public relations strategy.

The age in which Afrika was expected to bow before the Crown while its historical grievances were politely dismissed must give way to an age of reciprocal accountability. The King may choose his words. Afrika will continue to insist on justice.

And history, unlike the palace press office, cannot be permanently managed through carefully selected headlines.

 

 

Unity Day – ZANU PF fantasies and historical fallacies!

Alexander Rusero

EXACTLY 33 years ago, the main political protagonists of this land in form of Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo entered into an agreement that resulted in the dissolving of the Patriotic Front Zimbabwe African People’s Union (PF ZAPU) and the formation of Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU PF).

Prior to this development, PF ZAPU had existed as a bonafide political party and its military wing of the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) was for most of the time the most authentic liberation movement army in Southern Rhodesia with a status recognised at the level of Organisation of African Unity (OAU).

ZAPU was checkmated by Mugabe’s ZANU, on the eve of the 1980 general elections. Despite that at Lancaster House Agreement negotiations ZANU and ZAPU had jointly participated together as the Patriotic Front, ZANU made a last minute summersault by announcing that it would participate the 1980 general elections as a stand-alone party.

The electoral outcome which tilted in favour of ZANU which won 57 seats and ZAPU only garnering 20 seats was the genesis of political polarisation in Zimbabwe which hardly after two years of independence manifested into a crisis amounting to a genocide commonly referred to as Gukurahundi. More than it being an ethnicity cleansing project, Gukurahundi was actually an extension of ZANU’s logics of power matrix, aimed at conquering all political space in Zimbabwe. Although Gukurahundi had ethnic undertones it was not necessarily an ethnic project. Gukurahundi is really at the core operations of ZANU’s logics – the logic of Chimurenga and Gukurahundi is not ethnic, it is a power matrix of power.

People who grew up in Mashonaland where ZANU’s military outfit the Zimbabwe National Liberation Army (ZANLA) forces operated attest that Comrades were in some instances a danger to the citizenry. ZANLA introduced night vigils in communal areas, known as Pungwes aimed at orienting masses on the objectives of the liberation struggle. Some researchers allege that at every Pungwe, two or three people were killed. 

More than just being a morale boosting exercise the Pungwe was a grotesque element of killing.  ZANLA’s thrust outside waging a protracted struggle for independence was thus to conquer society on behalf of ZANU. Besides engaging the enemy whom we know where the Rhodesian Forces, ZANLA also engaged in another process of conquering societies on behalf of the party.

As a matter of principle, ZANLA always destroyed ZAPU structures which were there and if one did not convert quickly he would be killed. So the party became supreme and when elections came, the party would obviously sweep through. ZANLA successfully captured the peasants and by 1980 they had successfully conquered the peasants in all provinces apart from the Midlands and Matabeleland. It became clear and as a matter of strategy that these provinces required to be subjected to the same process of conquering.

During Gukurahundi, ZANU introduced Pungwes; ZAPU supporters were publicly made to surrender their cards and given new ones of ZANU. That was the completion of the conquest of the peasants. Mugabe always said it every time, when he always made it a threat that “if you do not vote for ZANU we go back to the bush.” What made people afraid instead of being happy to go to the ‘nice time’ of the bush?

They obviously knew the horrors associated with the bush and would rather secure ZANU victory than that route. Far from being docile or politically unconscious, majority of rural masses who vote for ZANU PF up to this day largely do so due to this violent conquering culture imposed on them during the liberation struggle.

What has become known as the Unity Day as we know it today was thus a compromise made by Joshua Nkomo – by far the greatest liberation luminary in Zimbabwe and thus having the befitted title of Father Zimbabwe. Infuriated by this characterisation and being a revered figure in Zimbabwe and beyond, Mugabe cowardly attempted to reconfigure and rewrite history by calling Nkomo Father of Dissidents at the height of the Gukurahundi massacres. 

The Unity Day thus came courtesy of the agreement between ZAPU and ZANU which was dubbed the Unity Accord. Unity Accord was supposed to be the anecdote of national building in Zimbabwe, following first the ravages on the nation brought about by the liberation struggle as well as immediately after the Gukurahundi crisis. Far from being a nation building project, Mugabe and ZANU had their own ulterior motives, they were fantasising on the feasibility of a one party state, they were fantasising on the extent at which opposition to the ruling elite could be crushed and silenced in eternity and this was all morphed into an agreement that masqueraded as a unity agreement. 

Provisions of the Unity Accord are evident of its objectives – in ZANU’s logic it was never about unity, it was about annihilating ZAPU, cow it into submission and swallow it altogether. For Nkomo, it too was never about unity, it was a gun-point negotiation, bend to the whims and caprices of ZANU in exchange of the indefinite stopping of the extrajudicial killings of people of Matabeleland and Midlands which by any standards where largely strong holds for ZAPU. The agreement thus spelt:

1. That Zanu PF and PF Zapu have irrevocably committed themselves to unite under one political Party;

2. That the unity of the two political Parties shall be achieved under the name Zimbabwe African National Union (Patriotic Front) in short Zanu PF;

3. That Comrade Robert Gabriel Mugabe shall be the First Secretary and President of Zanu PF;

4. That Zanu PF shall have two Second Secretaries and Vice Presidents who shall be appointed by the First Secretary and President of the Party;

5. That Zanu PF shall seek to establish a socialist society in Zimbabwe on the guidance of Marxist-Leninist principles;

6. That Zanu PF shall seek to establish a ONE-PARTY STATE in Zimbabwe;

7. That the leadership of Zanu PF shall abide by the Leadership Code;

8. That the existing structures of Zanu PF and PF Zapu shall be merged in accordance with the letter and spirit of this Agreement;

9. That both parties shall, in the interim, take immediate vigorous steps to eliminate and end the insecurity and violence prevalent in Matabeleland.

10. That Zanu PF and PF Zapu shall convene their respective Congresses to give effect to this Agreement within the shortest possible time;

11. That, in the interim, Comrade Robert Gabriel Mugabe is vested with full powers to prepare for the implementation of this Agreement and to act in the name and authority of Zanu PF.

This was never about unity as ZANU PF would want us to believe, neither was it a nation building exercise. It was a power consolidation agreement in favour of ZANU and a compromise agreement for ZAPU. It remains a historical fantasy to celebrate Unity Day in Zimbabwe at the backdrop of a Gukurahundi crisis which 33 years after has not found closure. It is a historical mischief to claim Unity against the scourges of political polarity, division and strife that Zimbabwean citizens on one hand are stifled in and on the other political players are experiencing at national level.

A morphed unity project by ZANU PF in the absence of truth and reconciliation of what transpired during Gukurahundi remains hollow. Characterising Gukurahundi as a “closed chapter” as has been the attempt by ZANU PF simply because an agreement with 11 clauses where upon unity is peripheral in the agreement is unacceptable tomfoolery. Every national trajectory has its own good and bad history. History does not and must not stop because it taints a negative image on a certain powerful clique. 

Forty years after independence and 33 years after the Unity Accord, what remains apparent is that history and ZANU PF are two opposite ends. Whenever ZANU PF is captured on the wrong side of history as was the case with Gukurahundi years – that history is rubbished or eradicated from the national memory altogether.

The burden of the 21^st century Zimbabwean historians or at least those passionate about the country’s history is to unlearn and deconstruct the ZANUfied history which has been in our midst since 1980.  Perhaps time is now ripe to rejuvenate historical contributions of the voices and deflated presences of those excluded and marginalised by ZANUfied historiography. As one Zimbabwean history professor observed, ‘it is as if anyone who participated in the anti-colonial struggles and failed to enter the halls of power in 1980 failed to enter history’. 

That Nkomo was the architecture of Unity and not necessarily ZANU or Mugabe is out of question. History is saturated with documentary evidence showing Nkomo’s unity-centred leadership. Unlearning, disrupting and disbanding ZANUfied history will be an insurmountable task but it shall be done.

The biggest mistake of ZANU PF celebration of unity has been its narrow depiction of unity as the silencing of the gun. To have unity whilst people are starving is a historical contradiction in need to be unmasked. When we talk of human security, Zimbabwe has had a long war without guns. There is an ongoing social war in Zimbabwe whereby people are fighting everyday to be alive. 

Zimbabwe has had bottled anger which has been contained for far too long but with risks of explosion. Paradoxically, the state in Zimbabwe is unfortunately the greatest threat to unity. The internal contradictions in ZANU PF have explicitly made the party itself an anachronism to the entire unity project as well as the nation building project.

In 2008 the SADC brokered peace deal – the Global Political Agreement was a low hanging fruit for unity, but for the Command element in ZANU PF it was portrayed as power slipping away. Whereas people are still nostalgic of the GNU between ZANU PF and the two MDC formations, which brought a modicum of economic stability and peace, heavy resistance of unity was self-evident. In the bureaucracy it was quite shocking for civil servants serving under MDC allocated ministries to be warned “chenjerai kubiwa” beware of ‘being stolen’ – itself evident that the expectation was that civil servants belonged or at least owed allegiance to ZANU PF. That thinking is still prevalent to this day.

Like an octopus, ZANU PF’s legs dip in every corner. They have gone to the extent of disrupting and decimating the opposition after President Mnangagwa’s Political Actors Dialogue (POLAD) initiative has since proved to be a dismal failure. 

With an opposition that they have ruptured, with a nation that it has failed to unite and with the social, political and economic infrastructure that the ruling party has failed to mend – in Zimbabwe talks of unity are just a delicate balance of fallacy and fantasy by the ruling ZANU PF elite.

 

Decaying attractiveness of the Zimbabwean State

Decaying attractiveness of the Zimbabwean State

Alexander Rusero

Past weeks have once again witnessed Zimbabwe being put on global spotlight for all the wrong reasons.

Three MDC youth activists, including a Member of Parliament for Harare West Joana Mamombe were abducted by suspected state agencies, brutally tortured and sexually harassed only to be found dumped in the mining town of Bindura after two days.

The state has since denied any responsibility, whilst diplomatic missions from the UK and EU have issued strong messages charged at the Zimbabwean government.

The developments come as a smack on President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government, where it is now clear his re-engagement initiative is not only a farce but a smokescreen. Contrary to world expectations that Mnangagwa’s government would morph a complete departure from the late former president Robert Mugabe’s modus operandi in dealing with perceived opponents, the difference has since proved to be the same.

Mnangagwa’s government has actually renewed and perfected the erstwhile ZANU PF way of doing things – strangely with less sophistication and botched approach as compared to Mugabe’s era.

Amid choking fumes of the barbaric political culture of violence and horror, the Mnangagwa government in more predictable ways has issued an unashamed statement, devoid of substance, devoid of polished propaganda in its vehement unforgivable denial of responsibility and involvement in the recent abductions.

The statement was issued by Foreign Affairs and International Trade Minister, Dr Sibusiso Moyo who noted that “While the relevant agencies of the State are fully seized with the matter and are already investigating all aspects of the allegations made by the three ladies in question — including the circumstances surrounding the unauthorised staging of a demonstration during the national lockdown, in deliberate violation of the SI 77 of 2020 it is most disconcerting to note some sections of the media and some within the diplomatic community appear to have already concluded that the Zimbabwean Government was responsible for the alleged abuse.”

Moyo’s statement came on the backdrop of the trading of accusations by ZANU PF enthusiasts and functionaries, with some going to proportional levels of bizarre by claiming the trio engaged into a stage-managed act, even as the state was claiming to be seized with the matter.

From the state position as insinuated in Moyo’s statement – the government is more worried of  COVID19 violations and “illegal” demonstration, more than they are worried about the fate that befell the three, including serious crimes against humanity perpetrated upon them in form of rape, torture and forced disappearances, despite the authoritative minister’s claims that “These allegations are particularly grave in that they involve alleged abuse of the rights of the girl child, a vulnerable group of our society which this Government is on record as resolutely promoting and protecting.”

It is not clear which record the minister was making reference to as much as ZANU PF-led government is resolute in promoting rights of the girl child. Such kind of posture, lack of seriousness and brinkmanship has no place in a state that wants to be taken seriously as a ‘new dispensation’, as ‘open for business’ and as ‘ready to re-engage the international community of nations’.

This bold and rather hardliner stance made by the state should be taken within the context of Zimbabwe’s history of violence and political culture. The state should be reminded that three activists are not hallucinating when they claim they have been abducted, neither are they fabrications aimed at tarnishing the so called new dispensation led by Mnangagwa.

The state has proceeded by pressing charges against the trio and dragged them before the courts, even in the trio’s visibly shaken and traumatised state. The Mnangagwa-led government has in all its wisdom found that it is importantly more urgent to prosecute these helpless young women for violating lockdown rules than it is to investigate their sexual abuse, torture and the heinous abductions.

In such circumstances, there is absolutely nothing left for the Mnangagwa’s image and reputation let alone legacy. From hiring United States of America public relations firms to the constituting of the Motlanthe Commission, the level of state impunity and state-sanctioned extra-judicial killings have consistently and perennially been laid bare.

The current context of the three MDC activists abductions should be located within a broader understanding of a party and government having a feeling of siege from the entire citizenry they purport to lead and represent.

Zimbabweans under ZANU PF now understand that political violence has not been a means to an end, but is actually the end itself. Abductions were the state is brazenly involved and or implicated is not strange. Accusations that victims engaged in self-act of staging their own abductions are also not new even in circumstances were the state is later implicated. This is very unhealthy for Mnangagwa’s diplomatic posture and his desperate desire to engineer an attractive state.

One of the dominating power approaches of contemporary diplomacy is a state’s ability to get what it wants, not through the traditional military coercive approach but through persuasion and attractiveness – a phenomenon called soft power.

Soft power is something that a political outfit serious about remodelling itself to the dictates of the 21^st century approach should grapple itself with. For the umpteenth time, I will continue arguing that ZANU PF is an epitome of failure, in as much as transforming itself from a liberation movement into a political party is concerned.

It is through this legacy rather manifesting itself as perennial fate to this potential great nation that informs the political culture of violence, intolerance, strife, enmity and barbarism.

Transformation from being a liberation movement into a fully-fledged political party could have smoothly taken place had Mugabe voluntarily relinquished the reins of power way back in the 1990s. It is for such refusal for a political party to reform that led Zimbabwe to crash-land following the November 2017 military coup.

It is for this reason that Zimbabwe will crash-land again as whispers of Mnangagwa to be the sole candidate of ZANU PF in 2023 has already gathered momentum. Nothing wrong with the party’s choice – but Mnangagwa will turn 81 in 2023; he cannot certainly at that age re-present the future, never!

So Zimbabwe under ZANU PF is still pursuing the retrogressive politics of hard power, more guns and more artillery as opposed to the politics of attraction – the pursuance of soft power.

A state can simply be able to attain soft power through its tactful ability to get what it wants through attraction rather than coercion or payments. It arises from the attractiveness of a country's culture, political ideals, values and policies. When a state’s policies are seen as legitimate by others, then its soft power is enhanced.

A balanced foreign policy combines government and domestic satisfaction with regards to the adaptation of external demands and resource allocation. In addition a balanced foreign policy should have clarity of purpose amidst complex, demanding and confusing foreign policy dynamics and it should be consistent with broader foreign policy of an actor and it should be compatible with domestic and international conditions as well as expectations.

Resources that produce soft power are culture, values and policies. When the culture is attractive to others this will obviously enhance the country’s attractiveness, but an increasingly dangerous and potent threat to the preservation of Zimbabwean culture and thus its soft power has been the violent nature of its society and more importantly the increasingly growing intolerance of political leadership under the watch of the ruling ZANU PF.

There is a slowly creeping trend by the government to vilify and delegitimize any one perceived as an opponent. Trade Unionists, students unions, nurses and doctors associations, teachers’ associations, the opposition MDC, activists, NGOs, activists, civil society organisations and lawyers among several categories that do not agree with ZANU PF have all been brandished in one category – enemies of the state.

The event provides adequate indication that Zimbabwe under Mnangagwa’s government is degenerating into privatization of the state and creation of a medieval fiefdom, something standing at the opposite of a country’s attractiveness.

Values are also a critical resource of soft power only when a country lives up to those values. If values are broad, universal and attract others they obviously can produce a positive effect to a country, but a country have to live by them.

Coercion is an unattractive option for simple reasons. Use of force is not only costly, it also fundamentally undermines the prospects for democracy for the simple and straight forward reason that democracy flourishes in environments of peace as opposed to that of violence.

Indeed the incipient and inevitable decline in governance in Zimbabwe, including massive corruption has come as a big blow to all those who supported envisioned Zimbabwe as a jewel of Africa that ought to be jealously safeguarded.

Whatever his legacy shall be, Mnangagwa shall always carry a tainted tag of being a statesman who presided as the undertaker of the Zimbabwean state.

Perhaps it is time we dare to ask: Does Mnangagwa even cares at all?

Obsolescence politics of political parties

Obsolescence politics of political parties

“I have no time (to) waste in party politics. In any event, I think political parties are outdated as instruments of reforms for real change in Zimbabwe. What is now needed is a broad movement of coalitions.” These were Professor Jonathan Moyo’s utterances during a recent interview with Open Parly on 14 May 2020 run on the microblog of twitter under #AskProfMoyo.

I once wrote about the same five years ago, questioning viability of political parties ever since they came into existence. Professor Moyo’s sentiments, which I concur with, have led me rekindle the debate and interrogate through modification on what I once said pertaining the idea of a political parties as viable instruments of change in Zimbabwe.

Although it is a critical defining feature of democracy, political parties, in their current form have largely become archaic and thus in desperate need of revision, remodeling or discarding altogether.

Political parties have for the umpteenth time been enduring organisations under whose labels candidates seek and hold elective office. However, as we have witnessed and continue to witness in Zimbabwe, political parties have largely contributed to political division, instability and violence.

This is in contradiction with their long-held belief of being organisations that seek political power to govern and implement certain policies and programmes. In parts of Africa and elsewhere in the developing world, the competition for power and influence has tended to precipitate the degeneration of politics into strife, violence and warfare.

This is the current predicament that we find ourselves in. The current wrangles within the MDC remind us once again that politics is not always about representing the people. Name-calling, labels, salvo and derogatory language targeted at those who have ‘deviated from the norm’ have become the order of the day.

All that has been happening since the (in)famous Supreme Court ruling has not only been unhelpful but retrogressive in as much as the principle of diversity, agreeing to disagree as well as democratic plurality is concerned.

Some have assumed oracle positions in their parties and establishments, telling us who the sinners and who the saints are, who are God-sent and who are devilish. The battle has fast become one of the good versus the evil. These are shocking indicators of those who assume the role of an alternative – an aspiring government in the post ZANU-PF reign.

Ever since its formation as a splinter liberation movement in 1963, ZANU and later ZANU PF dismally failed to transform itself from a liberation movement into a political party. The undertones of the liberation struggle and the logic of war still inform the party’s ethos in the contemporary.

It explains why the party’s leadership succession and power transfer from long-time leader, the late president Robert Mugabe, to the current President Emmerson Mnangagwa, was militarily embedded. Typical of the Mgagao Declaration of 1975 where the military wing of ZANLA and not ZANU deposed founding president of the party Ndabaningi Sithole, the ghost manifested yet again in 2017 with the military ouster of Mugabe. It was never through an election. The orientation of that political party thus, is one where an election will never resolve leadership dispute as well as the transfer of power at any given stage.

One researcher succinctly put it that apart from fighting the war of liberation and independence, ZANU was also running a parallel project of conquering the masses and all political spaces in Zimbabwe. The researcher notes that at every Pungwe (liberation all-night vigil), more than just the orientation and the mixing and mingling of guerrilla fighters with the masses, three or four people were killed. Yes – at every Pungwe!

This explains why failure to ‘capture’ Midlands and Matabeleland provinces manifested into Gukurahundi were at least 20 000 people were killed, at a time Zimbabwe was still excited with the liberation hangover and euphemisms of reconciliation and independence. Gukurahundi which might not have been an ethnicity cleansing project but a Zimbabwe conquering project was indicative of a political party that absolutely did not tolerate let alone imagine a day it would be out of power.

As such, a political party premised on this logic has neither the capacity nor the features of projecting the aspirations of the future Zimbabwean generations. Forty years after independence, the party has failed to transform and or reform.

Whilst political parties have remained the most popular mechanism for the installation of leadership the world over, they are currently proving to be a retrogressive façade whose continued existence is now a threat to proper governance and modern day progress.

Since their evolution a couple of centuries ago, political parties have fast alienated themselves from the people becoming stumbling blocks to societal progress. As such, debates on the success or failure of a state such as Zimbabwe should not be centred on party capabilities, but the viability of a political party as a credible system for national leadership recruitment.

Political parties have become a modern anachronism and a fetter to the further development of society. When they first emerged, they were indeed a radical development. But now, the party as an idea and a form of political organisation has run its course. It is an exhausted idea.

First, participation in party politics and even voting in the West and the rest of the world is declining. Continued unprecedented low turnout of voters in Africa and Zimbabwe, particularly in urban areas which reduced the polls into a sham, is an indication of an incipient decline of citizens’ confidence in political parties as well as electoral processes. Second, a lot of the advances in political rights — for example, women’s and labor rights — have been achieved not through political parties, but through interest group pressure.

Third, political parties, especially in Africa, have been divisive, and indeed the most effective instruments of transforming brothers and sisters into enemies. Fourth, political parties stifle critical independent thinking – the political commissar thinks for you while the party spokesperson speaks for you.

All political parties speak of democracy but internal articulation of views and or positions are not on the basis of democracy but what the leadership feels. The current discord within the MDC on the position to disengage and or withdraw from Parliament attests to this. Finally and related, following the party line makes it difficult to judge issues on their merit as ideology substitutes reason.

The moment a system prioritizes idiosyncrasies over merit and credentials there is bound to be massive governance crisis. If one is to assess the calibre of Members of Parliament, Ministers and Senators, then you are rest assured that nothing meaningful is likely to come out. Their appointment in public offices has never been about their capabilities, but simply where they can be fitted at the pleasure of the President.

So if you are a member of a political party the secret is simply to appear less intelligent, less wise or even less reasonable than the party president. The prize of outshining your master is very costly to one’s political career. In other words, if party leadership exhibits some stupidity, the rule of the game is for all the other cadres to jump into the ship and parade more stupidity than that exhibited by leadership. In such a scenario, as a world, a state or a modern society we are unlikely to reap anything meaningful that benefits the entire polity emanating from the political party system.

So what is the option? The desired option is preference of a meritocratic democratic system in which leaders are chosen from the grassroots level to the top on merit and demonstrated capabilities. For instance, in order to choose a minister of education all stakeholders (teachers, parents, students, civil society) at each level of society elect the most qualified. From among those chosen at district/council level, the provincial representative is chosen, and from these the minister.

The modalities to implement this principle could be worked out. Whilst I do not have anything against Education minister Cain Mathema as an example, I do not believe he is the best brains we have in the country to preside over the critical noble Ministry of Education. What about Dr Sekesai Nzenza, will industrial fortunes of this country surely turn around because of her? Covid19 has surely shown us the calibre of the Minister of Health we have in this land.

Tragically the current system is one which promotes those with greatest degrees of loyalty and humbleness to party leadership. They make it to the top not because of their capabilities but their subservience to leadership – their unashamed boot licking. In governance principles this is wrong and costly in the long run.

It explains why a country with a remarkable learned populace like Zimbabwe remains poor. It points out why despite abundant natural resources majority of the country’s citizens live and wallow in abject poverty. Since 1980 the current political party system from across the divide has created a sophisticated paternalism system — a policy or practice on the part of people in authority of restricting the freedom and responsibilities of those subordinate to or otherwise dependent on them in their supposed interest. Rationalism has largely been suppressed and punished.

In the 1990s Edgar Tekere and Margaret Dongo were expelled from ZANU PF because of their “deviant” behaviour. Joice Mujuru, Didymus Mutasa and Rugare Gumbo met almost the similar predicament. At some time it befell Mnangagwa, Chris Mutsvangwa, Victor Matemadanda and several others at the height of succession disputes in ZANU PF whose script ended with a military coup.

Their expulsion was neither based on rationality nor merit but simply that they were not in thinking terms with expectations of the party leadership. The same fate befell MDC’s Welshman Ncube, Tendai Biti and Elton Mangoma. They fell from grace because they were no longer at same thinking wavelength with expectations of the MDC leadership.

One of the constant themes underlying contemporary world politics is voter apathy. Political party systems promotes patronage and reasoning based on gut feeling of the leadership, and such will not take a country forward.

In the United States of America, official government data states that between 1960 and 2008, the percentage of eligible voters who have bothered to cast their ballots during the presidential elections have ranged from about 49% to 63%. This means that as much as half of American voters do not care enough to decide which candidate would make a good chief executive of the great nation.

One of the grievances surrounding vote boycott is the limitation of political parties to indulge in the much needed governance intervention. In Africa elections have turned out to be an exercise of voting without choosing and when people have at their disposal choice-less democracy, they would rather exercise their democratic right of choosing not to vote.

Everything indulged by political parties in this land tends to be cursed. From ambitious and impractical manifestos to delusional conferences and congresses; from dubious housing schemes to desperate empowerment gaffes all what we have witnessed from political parties notably in Zimbabwe is high loud sounding nothing.

All points to simple reasoning that entrusting the whole governance matrix to a political party simply because it is the one that would have begged more votes at an election is costly. This is so because more votes do not necessarily translate to monopoly of competence, talent, merit and credentials.

Is it not absurd that, while in other organisations managers and directors are appointed on merit, in politics it is the most loud-mouthed and violent demagogue who is elected? The Bible in Proverbs teaches: “Without knowledge, zeal is not good.” Zeal and enthusiasm cannot be adequate substitutes for knowledge. Similarly, good intentions alone are not enough. To be effective, they must be backed by technical know-how and well-thought-out strategy.

Political leaders, given the enormities of their responsibilities, and especially that they hold the fate of a nation in their hands, need training in leadership. Training in leadership should be a requirement for political office. Greatest political philosopher of all time Aristotle once retorted that the wise and knowledgeable should rule, but I am not convinced whether it is the scenario in Africa, Zimbabwe included.

In Zimbabwe, evidence is there for all to see that we do not have the wisest of leaders or come even think of it the rulers!

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