Zimbabwe. Life Below the Headlines

May 15th, 2008 Posted in Ethnicity, Culture

Mr. Mugabe, the aspiring president of Zimbabwe for life, has paid his dues–ten years in prison for his liberation work. The people of the country owe him some slack. But (1) the titanic hyperinflation of the value of the currency, (2) the HIV-Aids epidemic, (3) the mass emigration of upwards of one in five of the people, (4) the catastrophic decline in the productivity of the commercial farms, (5) the police brutality toward political opponents, (6) the official fraud in the election process, (7) the tattered tourist industry, (8) the notorious corruption of government officials–in sum seem a little too much. It has been Mugabe’s watch for over thirty years and he, like Bush in the USA, carries the burden of the errors and short-falls of his administration.

That said, we must wonder at the unusual length of time he has been permitted to serve in office, and how he has allowed and/or encouraged the order of the society to devolve so far toward chaos?

The accelerating task in all of sub-Sahara Africa before, during and following the two World Wars was the replacement of the European colonial order by the local people. This was part of a similar and longer and larger imperial and colonial history covering almost the entire world. Within this process the story of Rhodesia-Zimbabwe finds its part.

This is a very long and detailed tale which in the telling is flawed by the bias of the evolving political, economic and social order itself. The story that one hears and tells depends on one’s current place as well as the active social processes within which one participates. Like religious and ideological conversion require the learning of a new and the forgetting of an old way, so we are involved with a history we remember and a history we forget.

In the early years of the new republic the president received popular support and gained and retained power through alliances and compromises. Later he threw these off and asserted himself as the singular leader. He proved himself an astute competitor for power, but in the doing isolated himself and his country from the sources of aid and assistance among the western democracies. The end of the Cold War and the loss of the alternate support from the eastern socialist regimes contributed to the current crisis.

Now finally his hold on power is reduced to naked force through the police and through gangs of toughs that the police fail to control. He also has some popular support among rural people living close to subsistence who he has aided and who, unlike the urban folk, are more immune to the seductive advantages of democracy. And his support cadre continues with and alongside him.

More covertly there is, I suspect, an unrecognized confusion in culture that supports a confusion in the possibility of unity of purpose and understanding in the society. The contacts with colonial outsiders and new immigrants from Europe, the Middle East and Asia involved more than political and military struggle–there was also a massive technical and cultural infusion. How people dressed, worked, their language and schooling, their religions, their ideologies changed rapidly if unevenly throughout the contact period.

But these new ways were always accepted into a basic continuation of things as they were. People learned English but retained their native languages as well. Many accepted Christianity or Islam but also kept elements of native beliefs. So different and intermixed cultural elements continue into the present. Most critical is what has been called tribalism or ethnicity.

The native economic order at the time of contact was a low tech family and communal agriculture. The military order and the inter-tribal patterns around this basic material fact were complex and evolving. The peoples with their various home grown ways faced, not entirely consciously, the need to adapt to the new technical order coming out of Europe.

We have all been involved in this switch to the new technical era. Each cultural and social group has had to make this transition against the texture of its own received culture and civilization. This process is still continuing.

The cultural jumble sets the context for the dilemmas of decision. Like Pareto suggested, whatever means-end schema one selects can be rationalized by appeal to an extant rule. The tendency for the sovereign to act amorally is magnified by the mix of traditions. The tendencies in the list following are not mutually exclusive.

(1) Collectivism (Durkheim’s altruism) versus egoism. The leading functionaries (the cadre) act for self rather than as agents for the whole society. This is called corruption by critics. The leading lights siphon off wealth for their own luxurious housing and associated material benefits as a matter of right (sanctioned in the older traditions of the monarch and chief).

(2) Policy decisions are based on religious and ethnic identification and the parallel social organization rather than economic ideologies. So economic policy to benefit the whole can be subverted. Disastrous economic decisions are sanctioned by appeals to ethnic and religious loyalty.

(3) The use of the justice system and the police and the military to uphold the interests of specific people rather than the equitably established law can lead to a reign of terror against contending alternate political movements or used to support an unpopular policy. The goal has priority over the means used.

(4) The charming and popular personality, the hero, the charismatic leader attracts support regardless of questions of policy and ideology. Trust is important but it is also the basic requirement of the con-game. The popular but devious leader can have a hidden agenda.

(5) The leader depends on the support of a coterie of militants and bureaucrats. Eventually their interests become as important as his own and his decisions are warped by the need to maintain and enhance his power base.

(6) Decision has more than one face. An external sponsor (the third party) requires a particular action like a democratic election that if carried out would mean loss of power for the cadre in place. So the election is called for show but is subverted in the event.

(7) There is also a difference between acts at the center and the realities in the local communities and among the ordinary people. The legal acts make no connection with the people’s reality. In a communal setting the egoistic entrepreneur can not act directly but must act with discretion and attention to the extant social order. Gifts (bribes) for headman and parties and feasts for the peasants. The good old boy has his place.

I am suggesting that corruption, dictatorship, extra-economic considerations in economic decisions, egoism and self-interest are sometimes socially sanctioned acts. It is possible that Zimbabwe careens toward social chaos while maintaining a moral (sanctioned by tradition) social order. It is like trying to bake a cake with cement instead of flour. You follow the recipe but end with a brick. Or like going to hell with a clear conscience.

I am not trying to excuse but to explain how a sane leadership cadre could self-righteously get itself and its society in a pickle.

But remember the case we are pointing at is real, concrete. It is possible that a psychological quirk of the maximum leader could explain decision and action toward chaos like a confused and dull Lord Cardigan taking the Light Brigade into the mouths of cannon.

Charge!

Note. There are sensible responses for all the socially destructive dead-ends listed in our first paragraph above. But every step out would require a change in the social order which the governing cadre can not abide. The dithering of the third party organized states surrounding Zimbabwe is painful to watch.