Zimbabwe: Understanding
citizen perspectives on change
Introduction
Following the change of leadership in Zimbabwe in November
2017, it may be useful to understand the implications of those changes; and to establish and analyse the
context in which ordinary citizens exercise their agency[1] to navigate the various
social, economic and political challenges that they faced on a day-to-day
basis.
It seems clear that in the current climate Zimbabwean
citizens have something that the new leadership wants and needs quite badly:
political legitimacy for the changes which have taken place. Work – now – to support the voices of
ordinary people in the decision-making processes that affect them might help to
guide the new government towards a more inclusive, responsive and accountable
future. Zimbabwean civil society has the
potential to harness citizen agency both to support more inclusive governance; and
to work around any government actors which appear to be stuck in the past.
Zimbabweans have nearly all the tools they need to advocate
for and secure positive change at a local level. What they need now, is the opportunity
to employ them; and to re-discover the necessary solidarity to do so. Zimbabweans
need to exercise their own voice to articulate their ambitions and needs; and
to advocate for contextually appropriate solutions. This will take place in numerous local level
fora centred on issues of common concern but populated by constituencies of
divergent views; and will be a valuable contribution to negotiating and
securing local level positive change.
The challenge here is most likely to be overcoming fear driven by years
of experience which has taught people the risks of speaking out in public. Helping to ensure that these fora are safe
spaces will be key. Development actors will need to understand the local context better before
they attempt to change it; and will be able to use the ensuing learning in
their political and technical dialogues with government.
The resilience which grows from an increasing number of
positive, problem-solving encounters will be a considerable advantage to
ordinary people in the face of change, good or bad. And it will be a contribution towards a new political culture, which sees citizen-state
engagement not as an adversarial activity, but as a positive and constructive
engagement in which both problem and solution are shared. This, in turn, will contribute towards long
term stability, where people and government are able to develop, and can manage
change (and potential conflict) peacefully.
The nature of change
Recent changes in Zimbabwe appear seismic. The previously unassailable and unquestioned
power of Robert Mugabe has been replaced by a set of actors who may equally be
unaccountable and extractive, but who have had to make public commitments to
change which were previously unthinkable.
These commitments, necessary and essential as they may have been, do not
alone amount to a deep and enduring change in the culture of governance in
Zimbabwe. The ruling elite are very
broadly all the same people who served the former President, with a matching history
of self-interest and self-enrichment.
But there is probably an element of pragmatism too. Some form of more inclusive governance, with
tangible and timely benefits for ordinary citizens, is probably understood
amongst the new elite to be essential to their own survival.
Many of the changes
going on in Zimbabwe now are the result of a desire for survival on the part of
what remains a centralised autocracy.
Alongside this desire for survival, the government recognises that it
also needs to develop a new legitimacy with both citizens and the international
community. But the range of conceivable
“modes” for governance – now and in the future - is currently limited, with the
tensions being between a form of nationalist authoritarianism and a
securocracy.
Securing these changes for ordinary people will not be
straightforward; and will be dependent on a wide range of other actors and
actions. Understanding the extent to which citizens can navigate change – good
or bad – on an individual and/or collective basis will be key to influencing
Zimbabwe’s culture of governance into the future.
Citizen assets
Ordinary people in Zimbabwe feel that they are essentially
powerless in the face of “grand” politics in their country. Although the citizen-state relationship is
often described in terms of what a government will (or won’t) offer to
citizens, in the current climate Zimbabwean citizens have something that the
new leadership wants and needs quite badly: political legitimacy for the
changes which have taken place. In
conventional terms, an election would confer the legitimacy that the new ruling
elite wants. But the necessary conducive
environment for sufficiently free and fair elections cannot currently be taken for
granted. The key challenge, therefore, for the government is to deliver enough
positive change between the transition (November 2017) and the next election
(thought likely to be between June and August 2018) for citizens to believe
that their interests and those of the government are aligned. Helping citizens to lever their power during
this time will be key to the nature of governance in the future in Zimbabwe;
and to the extent to which the new regime is able to earn credibility.
Citizens also have other assets that they may not appreciate
or fully understand. They have been
coping with the stresses and strains of life in Zimbabwe for some time
now. The mechanisms that have served
them adequately to date are still required.
Understanding how people have coped, and ensuring that near term change
does not undermine this capacity, will be essential to the navigation of change
in Zimbabwe for the foreseeable future.
Livelihoods
The agricultural main stay of Zimbabwe’s economy has been
failing for some time. Land reform, which
has brought real benefits to some people, remains unfinished business. Chief amongst the outstanding issues is the
question of security of tenure. Land has been re-distributed to a significant
population which had not previously had access to it. However, the failure to
address the exchange value of land has driven difficulties accessing credit
across the sector. This has trapped farmers, farmworkers and
peasants in a patronage network governed by the ruling party.
Zimbabwe’s economy and industry are intrinsically linked to
agriculture. Agriculture produced inputs for industry; and industry produced
inputs and equipment for the agricultural sector. This means that reviving the
formal economy will in large part be contingent on re-starting the agricultural
economy whilst at the same time exploring new avenues for development. National policy in this area appears to lag
far behind the potential and realities for broader based economic development
in Zimbabwe.
As a result, more and more Zimbabweans have turned to the
informal economy as the means by which they can survive. Micro scale businesses, informal traders,
hawking and – more significantly than at first apparent – trading in mobile
phone credit have allowed people to step out of the formal sector and to eke
out a precarious living. In so doing,
they have – inadvertently – become an identifiable social class with interests and
a political force which cannot be ignored. But the informal economy is not all positive. Many vulnerable people – women; young people;
the elderly; the disabled – have suffered the adverse effects of an informal
economy characterised by both corruption and violence.
The political economy, previously defined by formal industry
and labour movement structures, is now very informal. It has
been replaced by a “vendor economy” in the urban areas and a “new farmer”
economy in the farming areas. Harnessing and regulating this new, large
informal economy without damaging either it or the livelihoods that it sustains
will be a significant technical and political challenge for the new government.
Social organisation
Although the challenges of day-to-day survival in Zimbabwe
have often led people to fall back on their own or their immediate family’s
resources, it has recently led to a resurgence of community level organisation
– albeit sometimes mobilised through social media more than in geographically
defined locations. As the former regime
became more concerned with its own internal politicking, they left the
community space largely uncontrolled.
This has allowed new alliances to form which seek to lever the power of
citizen voice. From 2016, Zimbabwe has witnessed
the emergence of a vibrant community of citizens and activists who mobilise
their constituencies and air their discontent with the authorities, including increasingly
on a variety of social media platforms.
The challenge now is to harness this– offline and online – capacity
for the promotion of mutually beneficial positive change, rather than merely as
a focus for opposition.
State (self-) capture
The generally corrupt nature of government decision-making
in the recent past has begun to show some signs of turning inwards on
itself. The corrosive effect of
corruption has been to hollow out state capacity, leaving institutions unable
even to seek rent from citizens. Populist
gestures towards solving this problem – such as the writing off of utility
debts – have often served to compound them, leaving local councils either unable
or unwilling to deliver services.
Re-starting state service delivery will not, therefore, be a question of
simply turning on the money taps again, but of re-introducing and embedding a
culture of mutual transparency and accountability.
In the meantime, creating fora within which both citizens
and state can work together to identify and re-start essential services will serve
both to prioritise local government action and to keep it accountable.
Strengthening citizen voice, agency and demands for transparency and
accountability in a collaborative manner will therefore contribute towards more
effective governance at the local level. A key element of this will be
separating the functions of the state from the structures of the ruling
political party. This would help to ensure that social service delivery is
equitable and not based on patronage politics.
Traditional leadership
A well-known aspect of Zimbabwe’s local governance structure
is the role of traditional leadership.
Even more conservative than central government, it has unfortunately
drifted away from the interests of ordinary people – often in response to political
pressures. But it still retains
sufficient insight into how communities function to be a useful means to
convene and address community interests.
Traditional leadership embodies a set of accepted norms and approaches with
which interventions can combine to understand and ‘work with the grain’ of
locally driven governance reform. But
traditional leadership is at risk of being tainted by enduring perceptions of
political capture and patronage. For example, the recent acquisition of
expensive utility vehicles for Chiefs by the state risks entrenching a sense
amongst the population that traditional leaders owe their allegiance to the
national government and not to ordinary people.
This hampers their ability to be perceived as neutral local level mediators
and advocates.
Access to justice and
security
Whether through the formal legal and judicial systems, or
through traditional leadership, Zimbabweans enjoy a basic level of dispute resolution,
which – despite flaws – is generally accepted.
The system has fallen prey over recent years to corruption and
malpractice; and the costs of accessing the formal systems have become prohibitive
for many. But there is probably
sufficient credibility left in the local systems to be of value to attempts to
promote stability during a transitional period. However, as citizen access to formal legal
protection has fallen away, there is a reduced knowledge about rights and
protections.
Restoring the credibility of, and popular confidence in, the
formal systems of justice (including ensuring that legislation serves the
interests of citizens and is seen to do so) whilst at the same time making sure
that traditional justice is dispensed fairly will be essential to a successful
transition in Zimbabwe.
Since November 2017, the discourse about Zimbabwe’s future
has understandably focussed on the grand politics of change in the country.
This has created a situation where the search for solutions in Zimbabwe has
remained at a high level and risks losing sight of the views and aspirations of
ordinary people. But the mortar that
will hold together the building blocks of long term stability in Zimbabwe will
be the extent to which any new settlement reflects the views and aspirations of
citizens.
There is now a unique, time-limited window of opportunity
for aligning political leadership and citizen aspirations for a better
Zimbabwe. To do so will involve harnessing and enabling citizen voice and
agency to help them navigate the changes now underway. Whilst high level
politics focusses on a new political dispensation and the wider economy,
citizen interest centres on:
- · Reliable livelihoods
- · Fair and equitable service delivery
- · Security and justice in their communities
- · Reasonable and responsive relations with local administration
Sustainable change in Zimbabwe will likely rest on numerous examples
of positive citizen-state engagement at the local level as the country negotiates
its future. Giving ordinary people the opportunity and the means to exercise
their voice and agency in a collaborative effort to promote accountable,
adequate, affordable and appropriate services would be a significant
contribution towards a new Zimbabwe.
[1]
“Agency” – the capacity for individuals to act independently and to make their
own free choices.
