5 March 2010

I FEAR FLYING. I fly a lot. My fear is a very logical one. I am a control freak and I want things in life to be regular and predictable. Sitting in some seat on an aeroplane and being flown by some characters I don’t know is something I can never reconcile myself to. There is just too much trust invested here.

Look, I am trusting the security staff to have done a proper job of keeping lunatics with looney contraptions off my flight. I am trusting the ground crew with my luggage. I am trusting the airline’s executives to be ethical people that ensure their planes are airworthy. I am trusting that the crew will fly on time and I will reach my destination on schedule. I am trusting that the pilots have valid flying licences…

Anyway my point is Zimbabwe is an airborne craft. We have three co-pilots. The Captain is a kamikaze pilot. The other two pilots have just gotten their flying licences and are there sitting with a suicidal Captain hoping against hope that reason may prevail. This is how Wikipedia describes the kamikaze:

“Kamikaze pilots would attempt to intentionally crash their aircraft—often laden with explosives, bombs, torpedoes and full fuel tanks—into Allied ships. The goal of crippling as many Allied capital ships as possible was considered critical enough to warrant the sacrifice of aviators and aircraft.

These attacks, which began in October 1944, followed several critical military defeats for Japan. At that time, Japan experienced a decreasing capacity to wage war, the loss of experienced pilots, and a rapidly declining industrial capacity relative to the United States. The Japanese government expressed its reluctance to surrender. In combination, these factors led to the use of kamikaze tactics as Allied forces advanced towards the Japanese home islands.”

Graphic designer Chaz Maviyane captured the essence of this metaphor in one of his many “graphic commentaries”. In the one that leads this commentary he has an aeroplane marked ZANU PF heading into Great Zimbabwe ala Twin Towers-style.

Debates have sprouted that attempt to understand Zimbabwe today. Whilst I appreciate the comments of eminent scholars like Professor Mahmoud Mamdani, my challenge to people like him is simple. To understand the Khmer Rouge lunatics in Harare you have to be right there – see their looting of land, mineral resources, state funds, water, medicines…anything that is “stealable” those thugs will take.

It will be good for our scholars to be in Harare this year as ZANU is now about to implement  another revolutionary idea – let mwana wevhu (child of the soil) take 51% equity in the foreign-owned firms in Zimbabwe. Sounds good – except the catch is that you have to be on a database in order to benefit from this lotto. Yeah, you know who the top 50 people are on the database.

From 1975 to 1979 the equally looney agrarian revolutionaries in Kampuchea (Cambodia) did the ZANU PF thing before ZANU PF all in the name of an agrarian revolution. And of course the upshot was a magnificent re-distribution of poverty – but in ZANU PF’s case you go further and reward your cronies with 10 farms each and then talk about the “people”.  Having harvested what you found on the farm and reduced farming to a hobby you move on to other economic sectors for “empowerment of the indigenous Zimbabwean.”

But we do not need to read anything beyond Franz Fanon’s excellent study of colonialism and de-colonisation, The Wretched of the Earth, to understand Zimbabwe. Fanon died in 1961 at the age of 36 but the great visionary he was described accurately the nature of the national bourgeoise that bleeds Zimbabwe now:

The national middle class which takes over power at the end of the colonial regime is an underdeveloped middle class. It has practically no economic power, and in any case it is in no way commensurate with the bourgeoisie of the mother country which it hopes to replace. In its narcissism, the national middle class is easily convinced that it can advantageously replace the middle class of the mother country (149).

And then in a classic description of the Captain of Air Zimbabwe, Fanon continues:

Before independence, the leader generally embodies the aspirations of the people for independence, political liberty, and national dignity. But as soon as independence is declared, far from embodying in concrete form the needs of the people in what touches bread, land, and the restoration of the country to the sacred hands of the people, the leader will reveal his inner purpose: to become the general president of that company of profiteers impatient for their returns which constitutes the national bourgeoisie. (166)

Maybe we should open the cockpit, tranquilise the Captain and let the passengers tell the pilots where they wish to go.

Taking a parachute and jumping is not an option. 

This plane will have to land safely at our chosen destination…even with a new set of pilots.

Chris Kabwato

Publisher

Editor's note

For editorial reasons we will publish our book review of Manning the Nation: Father figures in Zimbabwean literature and society next Friday.

We re-publish today our tribute to Amai Susan Tsvangirai who died in car accident on 6 March 2009. Attached is the PDF version of the coverage we gave late Amai Tsvangirai. May her soul rest in eternal peace.

Publisher: Chris Kabwato (chris@digitalartsafrica.org)

Editor & Project Manager: Levi Kabwato (levi@zimbabweinpictures.com)

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