Little has been written about political change in unjust political systems such as Zimbabwe.
Attention should fall on those at the sharp end of oppression — a country’s people. It is their support, or compliance, that enables oppressive minorities to sustain their power.
Two conceptual approaches help to explain the relationship between people and oppressive regimes.
In the first, the authority is maintained by force or coercion — the threat of force. Its operation is as simple as it is brutal. When any individual, or group, acts against power they are met with costly sanctions. Given this, only a minority are prepared to suffer the costs involved in challenging a repressive regime.
The second approach argues that coercive rule is insufficient to maintain a regime because even a powerful minority can never contain subversion by the majority. What maintains a regime, in these circumstances, is that the oppressed believe that rule over them is, in some sense, justified.
So, for instance, the ruling elites deserve to rule because they come from noble stock — Swaziland is a case in point. Or, they are divinely sanctioned to rule as in the case of theocracies such as Iran.
In modern times elite rule is more often justified by the argument that holds that inequalities are essential to uphold the living standards of the majority. Without wealth differentiation things would be infinitely worse because there would be no inducements to create wealth.
Other variations of the same idea abound — for instance, the superiority of racially based fitness to rule was used to justify apartheid.
So, how is rule in Zimbabwe maintained — by coercion or by ideology?
Take the first. Even though it is in the interest of the majority to revolt against Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, it is not rational for any particular individual to do so without an assurance that equally oppressed fellow citizens would do likewise.
In the face of a well-organised security apparatus, the risk to an individual is not worth it unless the vast majority of Zimbabweans also act. On this interpretation, the Zimbabwean case seems to be a classic case of a coordinated minority facing an uncoordinated majority.
But there is more to the argument. Consider this: Zimbabwean repression — brutal though it undoubtedly is — is not the worst case of repression in history. In more brutal regimes there has often been strong resistance. While the South American dictatorships stand out, there is much evidence of resistance in Cold War Eastern Europe and even earlier, during the Nazi period.
Given the awful everyday treatment of the Zimbabwean state to its citizens and their decline in living standards, not to mention the absence of social welfare, should one not expect more resistance?
One possibility for this lack of resistance is the so-called ”whining mentality” — a tendency to blame all the ills of Africa on colonialism, imperialism and the like. This results in a passive acceptance of immediate circumstances because contemporary social conditions are held hostage to an awful past.
The problem with this account is that it fails to explain the capability of Africans to wage wars of liberation against their colonial and apartheid oppressors. In fact, nation-building, political struggles in Africa are said to be synonymous with overcoming colonial oppression.
So why, then, have Zimbabweans acquiesced to their oppression? The answer lies in the power of political ideas.
Liberation is an effective weapon in the hands of post-liberation governments. This is powerfully shown in Zimbabwe where the ruling Zanu-PF, and Zanu-PF alone, carries the mantle of liberation. The ruling party’s interests and those of the masses are claimed to be identical, even when there is patently a gulf between them.
As the gap widens even further, ideological appeal takes on a negative tone. So, as Zimbabwe’s president emphatically claims with each speech, his country faces a threat from its old enemy, the British colonisers. In this characterisation of their destiny, embattled citizens are presented with only two political options — the return of colonial domination or the status quo.
And here, the power of memory is central. Oppressive rule is constantly buttressed by simple contrasts between secure insiders and hostile outsiders. The final years of apartheid South Africa present a powerful example of this phenomenon.
Given the power of this discourse, if liberation is to be successful and, most importantly, sustainable, then Africans need to develop a new alternative progressive ideology, one that can create a third alternative to which the oppressed can give their allegiance. What exactly the content of this is is for the oppressed and their leaders to determine.
The above ideas indicate that the management of political change in a country like Zimbabwe, as often suggested by pundits — who habitually resort to stylised answers informed by a narrow understanding of democracy — is problematic because it fails to deal with the more fundamental processes at work in the society. These need deeper understanding and critical inquiry.
Tony Fluxman a is senior lecturer in the politics department of Rhodes University and Peter Vale holds the Nelson Mandela chair in that department