Steven Friedman
WORM’S EYE VIEW
We can learn from events across our borders: but do we? An aspect of Zimbabwe’s trauma which has received less notice than it should is what it tells us about our own hang-ups.
If citizens’ responses in radio phone- ins or letters to the press are a guide, that of many whites has been predictable. Their reaction follows a time-honoured route which began with the Congo conflict of 1960 – every upheaval to our north is a sign of black political primitivism.
In this view, it is only a matter of time before we experience the same fate: if all black politicians are power- crazed, why distinguish between ours and Zimbabwe’s?
We do not know how widespread this view is. But, judging by the current fate of the currency, it is partly shared by those who shape world financial markets.
There may be good reasons why fears about Zimbabwe could dent market confidence in us – worries about disrupted regional trade or the spillover effect of an implosion.
But the reaction seems out of proportion to those dangers. Some of the rand’s problems may be caused by an investor failure to distinguish between us and our neighbour: a British fund manager last year told an interviewer that the rand dropped after a Nairobi bomb blast because he and his colleagues saw no difference between this country and Kenya.
And there is some evidence that prejudices in London or New York are fuelled by those of local business people whom foreigners consult on this country.
But is this reaction simply a prejudice? Could Zimbabwe’s events not unfold here? While “never” is a dangerous word in politics, logic would suggest not.
Land is a far less pressing issue here – our economy is less reliant on agriculture and most of the country is poor farming land. Research has shown repeatedly that, for both reasons, most black rural dwellers do not see land ownership as a priority. For those who do want land, there is probably enough state-owned ground to satisfy the demand.
Also, because we have a more sophisticated market economy than our neighbours, black-run government and (largely) white-run business are far more dependent on each other and, prejudices notwithstanding, more aware of the need to contain conflict.
Finally, if much of the Zimbabwe turmoil is orchestrated by Robert Mugabe to stay in power, our governing party’s support – and so its hold on office – remains strong and it has no need to orchestrate anything to win elections.
So there is only one reason to believe that Zimbabwe’s events will play themselves out here soon: the assumption that black people cannot run democracies, despite evidence to the contrary in Botswana or the Caribbean.
But, if some part of the racial minority clings to the prejudices of the past, so does some black response.
One reaction dismisses criticism of Mugabe and his “war veterans” as Western prejudice, heaped on the great man despite all he has done for his country. This ignores the fact that, at the last time of asking, around 55% of Zimbabweans expressed a different view of their government at the polls.
The strain of black opinion which dismisses antipathy to Mugabe by black Zimbabweans as the result of white brain- washing or the workings of global capitalism is profoundly patronising, since it assumes that they are unable to think. It is this tendency to dismiss black citizens’ judgments on African leaders which has made possible the one- party state and its ravages.
The second dismisses the Zimbabwean violence by pointing out that whites – in Ireland, Bosnia or Kosovo – also commit atrocities against each other.
This is true, but prevents serious discussion of the roots of the violence, a point illustrated when talk-show host Tim Modise asked recently why black people on the continent seemed to reserve the worst violence for other blacks. He invited officials of the Pan Africanist Congress and the Azanian People’s Organisation to discuss the problem.
The choice was obvious. Beginning with Frantz Fanon’s analysis of the Algerian war of the 1960s, black consciousness and similar movements have been concerned at the way in which many black people’s negative self-image, the result of centuries of racism, causes much violence to turn inward on other blacks.
To summarise a complicated argument, the idea is that, given racism’s ravages, black people may be more inclined to vent their worst anger on others who are black because whites are considered too powerful a target.
This is an important view, advanced by those who argue for black people to rediscover their sense of dignity and worth.
For some members of our new elite, however, the argument is threatening – because it challenges their image of themselves as modern sophisticates. Their reaction, amid barely concealed sneers, was to accuse Modise of aping white values. So an attempt to encourage black people to take pride in their traditions and values became distorted into an inclination to endorse the white view of the world.
A section of our elite believes, therefore, that the only appropriate response to the white prejudices noted here is to wish away real problems by insisting that any discussion of the continent’s political failures is a concession to racism.
The irony of this view is that it is totally out of kilter with the thinking of most African intellectuals today. The need to challenge the despotism which has worsened the continent’s woes is accepted without question by most African thinkers. If anything, African intellectuals could be accused of being too harsh on its political leadership, not too soft.
What they realise – and what part of our elite are too threatened to understand – is that only a thorough rejection of the style of leadership in much of Africa over the past few decades can ensure progress.
They know that when Africans reject presidents who mobilise conflict to keep themselves in power rather than finding excuses for them, the continent is beginning to recover values which will prove those who condemn it to perpetual penury and violence wrong. It is the critics who will ultimately confound the racists, not the praise singers.
Fortunately, neither the white nor the black attitudes described here are universal. Some whites recognise the need for redistribution, many blacks, while endorsing the need for land to be shared, have joined the fierce condemnation of Mugabe. We are making progress.
On both sides, the key to moving forward is not the extent to which people react to events by confirming their prejudices, but the degree to which they see them as a warning to rethink old ideas and to recognise that, among African whites and blacks, the problems are as much on our side of the divide as that of the other.