Fractured peace: Resistance and transformation in Zimbabwe

For years now the air in Zimbabwe has been heavy with dissatisfaction, anger, exhaustion and frustration. Clouds of visceral anger come and go. Sometimes, like this year, it rains heavy drops of pain and desperation, culminating in floods of protests, marches and petitions in this ‘peaceful’ nation.

The government prides itself on a police force that ensures that our country avoids these kinds of upheaval. But peace is more than the absence of war, as in the cliché; it has to be the active presence of systems and structures that enable its citizens to live free, healthy and fulfilling lives.

“Our state is militarised and sustained by violence.”

Our peace, however, is fractured – it is maintained by a system firmly rooted in various forms of state violence. In search of real peace, citizen movements like #Tajamuka and #ThisFlag, as well as coalitions like the National Electoral Reform Agenda (NERA), have taken to the streets and to social media to demand true transformation.

Citizen riots over new restrictive import regulations at the Zimbabwe-South Africa border town of Beitbridge spread to high-density areas in Harare by commuter omnibus drivers refusing to operate amidst police corruption at roadblocks. Stay-aways, organised by #ThisFlag, marches by women against hunger and the lack of solutions to the drought, and protests against the introduction of bond notes, are all signs of our fractured peace. Hundreds have been beaten up and then arrested on trumped-up charges.

“Peace is not simply the absence of war; it is the presence of systems that protect and uplift the marginalised in our society.”

All of these movements have similar goals: an end to rampant corruption and police brutality, solutions to the economic crisis, and leadership that respects the rule of law. The state still claims that it is those who want ‘regime change’ who are disturbing our ‘peaceful’ Zimbabwe. Those who created the conditions for resistance in the first place are apparently not to blame.

Zimbabwean Pastor Evan Mawarire addresses students during a lecture at Wits University in Johannesburg, on July 28, 2016. Photo: ANP/ AFP Mujahid Safodien

The constitutive violence of the state

Our state is militarised and sustained by violence, and it permeates through different sections of society, burning holes through the liberation struggle promises of democracy, equality and emancipation. The Ndebele genocide, Gukurahundi, which has been reduced to what President Mugabe refers to as a “moment of madness”, resulted in the death of up to 20 000 people. Then there is the consistent election violence and the cracking down on opposition party members from 2000 onwards; and the demolition of informal housing and businesses of the urban poor in 2005’s Operation Murambatsvina. These are all examples of the state’s violent stance towards its citizens. In fact, the violence against Zimbabweans comes in three formats:

1. Political Violence

While ZANU-PF members (particularly young members) have been implicated in most of this violence, which they perpetrate through farm invasions, the disruption of opposition meetings and being exempt from obtaining police clearance for their protests, opposition parties and the new citizen movements have been accused of being just as guilty. In Cape Town, for example, Zimbabwean women students accused #Tajamuka activists of intimidating protestors for not explicitly saying ‘Mugabe must go’ during their #ThisFlag protest in July. The binaries of ‘us and them’ in our politics make for palpable violence. Political violence also includes issues like distribution of food aid by the state based on political affiliations. In looking to invent a new, more inclusive and equal Zimbabwe, political violence has to be rooted out and replaced with tolerance and governance that does not rely on violence.

Our state is militarised and sustained by violence, and it permeates through different sections of society. Photo: Arthur Chatora

2. The violence of economic inequality and patronage

Zimbabwe has alarming levels of economic inequality: It is a society that ranges from the shockingly rich to the painfully poor and hungry. The country is broke, as evidenced by its constant efforts to re-engage the international community. But our leaders have been reckless in their spending – $15 billion has ‘disappeared’ from diamond revenues, for example – unwavering in policies that discourage foreign investment, totally ineffective in dealing with corrupt leaders, and relentless in their blaming of sanctions and their own people for the economic crisis we are in. Unemployment has been estimated at over 85%, which has resulted in a large and growing informal sector.

Recently, vendors in Harare, who have been an integral part of citizen protests against an oppressive government, again clashed with police officers. Combine this with a cash crisis and 3 million people facing hunger and we have ourselves a state that is in free fall. We live in a state where your political affiliations will more often than not guarantee you some level of financial security, protection or just relief from spells of general poverty (for example, young people who are poor but are paid in various ways for harassing opposition followers). So, following on from political violence, you are guaranteed financial security by the party that commits physical violence on those who challenge it lawfully – and peacefully.

3. Violence affecting marginalised voices

Zimbabwean society is painfully patriarchal and has been marginalising the issues facing women, minority languages, people with disabilities and queer identities for decades. As early as 1983, unaccompanied women walking the streets in urban areas were rounded up under Operation Chinyavada, supposedly in an attempt to stamp out sex work. The queer community has been vilified for years, evidenced by the unlawful police raids of LGBTQ organisations such as GALZ. If Zimbabweans are resisting against systems that oppress and exclude ordinary citizens, there must be a concerted effort to listen to the voices of those who have been ignored for decades. We must, as Thomas Sankara once said, dare to ‘invent a new future’ that places inclusivity at the heart of our society. We must actively dismantle the systems that enact violence on our people daily.

Peace is not simply the absence of war; it is the presence of systems that protect and uplift the marginalised in our society. It is knowing that every Zimbabwean deserves the right to live free, healthy and happy lives in a country that supports them. Are we truly peaceful if there are people among us living in strife? My hope is that we remember why our people are fighting so hard for a better Zimbabwe. Only real peace can allow for true transformation and a society that takes seriously its dismantling of oppressive systems.