To a man
who only has a hammer, every problem that he encounters looks like
a nail, so said Abraham Maslow. Well, it’s unfortunate I find
myself in a similar position because, being a writer, I now happen
to have only a pen in my toolbox, and every problem that crosses
my path now inexplicably resembles a story that needs fixing –
cross out a few lines here and there, add some there, move chunks
of texts about and all is sorted.
Largely because of this sole tool at my disposal, I have also come
to think that, at a certain level, the art of story writing has
a lot in common with the art of politics; both are best practiced
when one has a willingness to let other people into one’s
creative world as critics, so they can make a difference by helping
you rejig your ideas. For both practices you also need a good nose
for the language that suits your story and, above all, a powerful
imagination. With that in mind, a glance at Zimbabwe tells me that
this is a bad story that needs more than thorough editing; it needs
a complete rewrite. Whether we will see a good rewrite depends not
only on the writer of this story, Robert Mugabe, but also on whether
the opposition, his critics, can put on the table new ideas that
will take the story in another direction.
Needless to say, for every well-executed story, there are always
a dozen other horrors of creative endeavour littering the literary
landscape. Similarly, for every successful political project there
are a dozen other wreckages scattered all over our continent.
Whether the story of Zimbabwe will eventually be part of that
lot is not for me to say. No doubt this will be pored over by
scholars for years to come because surrounding it is a bad tempered
row about which genre the Zimbabwean story belongs to. Mugabe
insists this is an epic that is as good as Tolstoy’s War
& Peace, except that the story of Zimbabwe is packed with
more heroic exploits and, significantly, can only end with the
triumph of his will over history. The opposition and others think
it should be shelved under ‘tragedy’. Yet whether
it ends up on this or that shelf is not the biggest problem with
the script. The biggest problem is that there has been a singular
failure of the imagination. The star role should have been given
to the common person, but Mugabe has planted himself right at
the centre of the story. If a mhondoro spirit (the mythic lion
spirits that are the custodians of the Zimbabwe) were to appear
to him now, offering to do anything he desired on the condition
that it shall be twice done to every citizen of Zimbabwe, it would
not be out of character for him to request that one of his eyes
be disgorged. Sadly that is where Mugabe is today happier if the
citizens of Zimbabwe lost their sight, lest they see the ruin
that he has delivered them into. But that is hardly surprising
because an imagination that is pickled in, and sullied by its
own bitterness, is never the greatest tool to write a story with,
as any writer will attest.
There is a cliché that the only thing history teaches
us is that we do not learn anything from it. One recalls Ian Smith’s
vision of a Rhodesia that would last a thousand years. This was
after his government had severed relations with Britain in a unilateral
declaration of independence and sovereignty. Smith had been scripting
the story of a thousand years of Rhodesia when it fell apart simply
because black people, failing to recognize themselves in the role
that he had scripted for them, refused to cooperate. Perhaps from
that, Mugabe figured out that Ian Smith was too squeamish about
realizing his vision. Now, nearly three decades later, in the
midst of economic hardship and arbitrary state violence, Mugabe
has cast the majority of Zimbabweans into the role of cheerleading
him in his heroic exploits against Britain. But they do not recognize
themselves in the role he wants them to play. Of course, where
he can, he has seen to it that such ‘slow-witted’
citizens end up as only one thing: state rejects. They get cleared
away by government initiatives such as Operation Murambatsvina
and are spitefully dispossessed of their selfhood if not their
lives wherever they come into contact with the state. So there
– Rhodesians never die. They simply turn black, rewrite
their script, and implement it with twice as much fury and brutality.
To those at the receiving end of baton sticks, a thousand years
doesn’t seem such an illusory vision after all. Meanwhile
other African leaders stand aside and wring their hands most touchingly.
Mugabe aside, there is also the failure of the opposition to
articulate its vision. The problem seems to be the absence of
a language with which to convey its political project. This was
well illustrated the week after Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai’s
brutal assault by the police. We saw Tsvangirai’s media
team allowing him to be aired on radio and TV around the world
bemoaning his head that was still dizzy and sore – the veritable
language of victimhood. I am not at all suggesting that Tsvangirai
was not in pain, or indeed that he is not a victim. What I seek
to understand is how the general populace, the people that he
is supposed to inspire, is supposed to reconcile this sorry spectacle
with the indomitable leader of a people’s movement, which
is what Tsvangirai has cast himself as in the political theatre
that is Zimbabwe? Mugabe probably suffers sweat-drenched sleepless
nights and cracking headaches as circumstances push him against
the wall, but we have yet to hear about that. In an age where
the average teenager on myspace.com understands the art of image
and myth-making it seems odd that Tsvangirai’s media advisers
are still so backward.
But maybe the problem lies elsewhere: Tsvangirai does not have
just one audience but two – one, outside Zimbabwe, to whom
he must look like a victim, and the other, in Zimbabwe, to whom
he must be the irrepressible opposition leader. Now, look at it
that way and Tsvangirai’s problems with political language
sharply come into focus. If he is confused about whether he is
a victim or a fighter, how can he possibly know what tongue to
speak? The problems may even be deeper. With its roots in the
trade union, one would have expected Tsvangirai’s Movement
for Democratic Change to speak a language that inspires the common
people. From their inception they took their eye off that, flirted
with the neo-liberal policies and allowed Mugabe to snatch the
left-leaning language that was rightfully theirs. Now they do
not know if they are free marketers or a grassroots movement,
and that may explain why Morgan Tsvangirai, given a chance to
write Zimbabwe into the future, still holds his pen mid-air, staring
at a blank sheet of paper in front of him. The story is there
somewhere inside his head, but what language? Or is there a central
problem of characterization with this engaging story of Zimbabwe?
Do we have a hero or victim as the protagonist?
