Polarities and contradictions about conflict, security and identity in Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe, according to Chris Alden, faces multiple crises - legitimacy as the postcolonial consensus crumbles, expectations stemming from the failure of the economy and polity, and confidence in the impartiality of the institutions of the state. All of these aspects can be seen as a crisis of security. The state is increasingly repressive as it is centralised but undermined to defend the elite and its clients/ supporters simultaneously. Many see this as illogical, but it marks the ultimate if narrow realpolitik form of security where the state re-defines itself as the only element of society that needs security. It parallels the transition of the state from settler forms to the immediate (and popular) post colonial nationalist path to the incorporation of neo-patrimonial elements as an emerging economic and power bloc uses naked power as its only form of survival.
Traditionally the idea of ‘security’ has been associated with the national state, agreements between different militaries and different politicians - and it has been a male arena. What are the implications for security and identity when weak nation states are increasingly unable to make policy as power shifts to global social formations and policy is formulated through global networks and markets led by transnational corporations, multilateral financial and trading institutions, and (to some extent the ‘Aid’ and NGO community) rather than territorially-based states?
Whilst there have been sometimes successful resistance and democratisation struggles within southern Africa, this has been halting and liable to reversal. Often it has been formalistic with little empowerment of the population. Recent resistance has arisen to stabilisation programmes in which Southern regimes under pressure from Northern financial institutions and growing balance of payments constraints introduced policies abandoning service provider functions that led to breakdown of social services. Priorities moved from fulfilling popular demands to the removal of market barriers. The upshot of states losing their distributive capacity means state-society relations become highly confrontational. ‘Good governance’ breaks down under the effects of neo-liberalism leading to the disappearance of consensus, political centralisation, peripheralisation of certain groups and generalised repression.
One form of resistance is regionalisation. It is however, contradictory, as both part of and a reaction to globalisation. As the Cold War world system of two antagonistic blocs ended, security has certainly become regionalised. Economically this is reflected by TNCs dominating regional economies as the new basis of international relations.
The President of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Committee (linking 480 NGOs), Brian Raftopoulos, sees the fight for democracy as part of the struggle for an alternative political dispensation in Africa between two uninviting positions. ‘On the one hand there is a global superpower, espousing liberal democratic values, but policing an economic agenda producing widespread global impoverishment; on the other hand this system of global inequalities is breeding an authoritarian nationalism in countries like Zimbabwe, that demands uncritical solidarity, and in which there is no place for national state accountability. Solidarity seems to mean little more than a defensive reaction to broader geo-political concerns. While it may provide some short- term solace to regimes facing a national crisis of legitimacy, it is a grossly inadequate basis for imagining alternative futures. The real need to build up co-ordinated African positions on global inequalities has also to be based on the democratic accountability of African nation states themselves’.
There are other relevant polarities. There is a gap in perception between how Northerners/Westerners perceive their own models and practice of development, human rights etc and how others in the world perceive it - one might call this a subset of perceptions of globalisation. Western oil and strategic interests find greater stability in backing corrupt and oligarchic regimes, than in pursuing human rights. This gap is probably most advanced in the Muslim/ Arab world and has ready-made foci in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute - and now the Iraq post-conflict impacts on Iran, Syria and Lebanon. But it provides anywhere a breeding ground for the authoritarian nationalism alluded to by Raftopoulos.
Other polarities include: a polarity of 'recent history versus recent amnesia'. For many Zimbabweans alive today, the colonial and settler periods are very much part of their life experience and the forcible conquest of their lands is only three generations back - very recent in most understandings of history. By contrast, most British and other European peoples have only a sketchy idea of what went on under colonial rule and its implications today in terms of 'failed' or collapsing states, skewed and inappropriate economies and state structures, manipulation of ethnic identities and authoritarian nationalism.
Within the structures of colonialism there is/was a specific intensity amongst regions/ areas/ countries that involuntarily received large numbers of settlers, especially when combined with systems of land expropriation, racial domination and imposed division - apartheid being the supreme example. But as happened in South Africa and Zimbabwe there were also the creation of diversified economies geared to settler needs, but capable of being operated by newly- decolonising (black) elites. Such elites inherited powerful centralised state apparatuses, although little political or economic power. The parallels between the way Smith and Mugabe have used this kind of state – similar to the apartheid ‘national security state’ - are oft remarked on.
The ‘national security’ strategy of the ZANU-PF elite has led to economic collapse, severe repression, flight and severe economic consequences for the region, but as yet there has been no concerted regional reaction to this in terms of security. This in turn relates to national elites being unable to formulate a path directed to human security, and largely because of their lack of engagement with and mistrust of new social forces (which of course are not themselves necessarily united or coherent).
The other states in the region, particularly South Africa, hesitate between a closed form of regional security and of opening up to world economic forces for increased and supposedly more effective linkages with the global economy. South Africa pushes a process where integrated manufacturing becomes the basis for a regional industrial strategy - an integral part of supply chains for globally competitive manufacturing processes. South Africa knows that for this to occur outside investment is crucial and highly dependent on improvements in governance which the NEPAD programme (an uneasy mix of pan-African idealism and neo-liberalism) seeks to bring about. However this whole process is marked by contradiction which does nothing to lessen conflict and insecurity in Zimbabwe and the region.
South Africa insists on 'quiet diplomacy' for regional solidarity reasons, not wishing to jump at the behest of former colonial masters. It also points to misconceptions about the extent of its power as the 'regional hegemon' saying it cannot unilaterally reorder the region. Rather it vaunts a united regional approach based on avoiding confrontation and promoting multilateralism.
Historically, divisions inside SADC had to be overcome as well as in Pretoria’s internal foreign policy discussions. Additionally, in Pretoria’s view while South Africa has necessary leverage over Zimbabwe in areas of finance, energy and oil to effect change, the economies are too closely linked to impose sanctions. It at least initially believed that its model of negotiated settlement and compromise was transferable to Zimbabwe. It also knows that it is vulnerable on the land question. Both the ANC and ZANU-PF see themselves as the legitimate inheritors of the anti-colonial struggle with any other parties being seen as tainted by association with the previous regime(s). For this reason it and other southern Africa states have been only too ready to accept ZANU-PF’s policies in some way as a Pan Africanist and anti-imperialist position in the face of global inequalities and British neo-colonialism.
Strangely, and contrary to the support given to the ANC in exile, Pretoria foreign policy has never provided support for human rights groups and other opposition forces within societies whose governments are undemocratic and/or human rights violators. This suggests reliance on notions of the legitimacy of heads of state and of sovereignty, both of which are formalistic concepts even if they are key AU positions. Taken with the support for ‘a just world order’ which means equity amongst nations there is no concern for more far-reaching restructuring of power to embrace human security concerns.
Mugabe’s charge is that the UK is attempting to recolonise Zimbabwe acts to disguise structural rather than conspiratorial processes in the world economy. It does this on behalf of a new power bloc inside Zimbabwe clinging on to power in the face of global inequalities, popular pressure from new and old social movements, but using a Cold War rhetoric that has similar although different resonances with both African and Third World elites and with landless and frustrated African and other third world populations. The contradiction of the policy of this power bloc is that it is unable to create resistance to globalisation precisely because it does not engage with its own population. Some in the Zimbabwe nationalist spectrum might well disagree given that some allege that the ‘war veterans’ are a popular social movement.
How do we shift the monopoly on security from the military, and build a framework of human security addressing the concerns of those without power, the oppressed, and those adversely affected by the current disorder, poverty, environmental degradation and human rights abuse?
How does an alternative perspective able to suggest regional, national and local policies - based on globalisation from below in order to transform the South and overcome the global organisation of inequality - get constructed? Increasingly, world and regional social fora have attempted to come up with answers involving global civil society and non-governmental organisations (not to confuse the two) stressing international humanitarian values and citizenship to counter nationhood, ‘civilisation blocs’ or geo-economic units.
Such values would include peace, promotion of human rights, and concepts of the common good as the building blocks for security, reciprocity and multilateral power centres. It would also demand that domestic security concerns need to pay greater attention to violence against women and children ignored by state agencies. It may not seem obvious when there seem more immediate concerns, but the fight against repression in Zimbabwe illustrates much of this, and involves what values postcolonial states and regions should have, their road to development, democracy and overcoming of colonial and apartheid structures, all of which pose human security dilemmas.
* Steve Kibble is Africa/ Yemen Advocacy Coordinator at the Catholic Institute of International Relations (CIIR)
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