What it means to be Zimbabwean: A search for identity

I have stayed in foreign lands for some time now. I have seen Zimbabweans being killed, I have seen them being segregated and I have seen them living worse than dogs. Back home I have seen my people degenerating into thieves, fraudsters and murderers; our once righteous women turning into nocturnal body-sellers. Out of pain, I decided to undertake a dialectical journey to the core of our existence; to explore what it means to be Zimbabwean, what it should mean and why it means what it means right now to be a Zimbabwean. This could be the works of a troubled mind but my hope is that someone would find sense out of it.

Sometimes I sit wondering why some people behave the way they do. I wonder why Robert Mugabe is that arrogant, why General Zvinavashe agreed to pronounce that infamous statement on the eve of the 2002 Presidential elections, why Jonathan Moyo keeps vacillating like a pendulum and why Morgan Tsvangirai overruled a democratic consensus that later led to the split of MDC. Most of the times, I end up indifferently concluding that maybe that’s how human beings behave. This time I decided to interrogate the source of these behaviors even deeper without giving myself a chance to resign.
The first question that I asked myself was; “what makes a man a man?” Apart from the physical how can we differentiate between a man and a dog? This question came about because of some things that we have seen happening in Zimbabwe that we would normally say; they are not fit to be done by human beings but by dogs or savages. So what is it that makes a man a man and a dog a dog?
There are certain characteristics that are common between a man and a dog which compel us to conclude that a man is primarily an animal. They both desire food, water, shelter and other basic needs. They both have the five scientific senses. They are both calculative- a baboon may bury wild fruits in sand to facilitate ripening just like a human being. Most importantly, they both act instinctively in the face of danger to avoid death. But still a baboon is a baboon and a man is a man- why?
Somebody argued that a man is a man because he can differentiate between good and bad. Again we ask; is good universal to all men? Why is polygamy good in some societies but bad in some? Who defines good? If we can follow the dictates of society on good and bad can’t that be said of a dog that is conditioned to know what is acceptable and what is not acceptable to its master?
However, even if good or bad is not universal to all men the concept of goodness and badness is common across all people. But even this concept derives from a deeper intrinsic awareness in man which is I prefer to call the consciousness of value. It is therefore arguable that apart from the physical and the genetic make-up, human beings also share a common characteristic- attaching value to nature.
Notwithstanding the fact that animals also attach value to things out of instinct, it is only man who has the ability to attach value and defend it on worthless material and on non-material things. For example, man fight to defend religion, they fight to defend their rights because they place value unto these things and they are willing to risk death for things that are intangible.

Man in as much as he places value on other things also places value upon himself. He believes that he is worth a certain value. This is what is called self-worth. The product of this self-evaluation is called dignity. Because man is naturally a social being, that is he desires to be desired by other man. He expects other man to evaluate his worth by other man, he expects other man to evaluate his worth to its real value. When they undervalue him, he gets angry and when the evaluate him to his real worth he feels pride. This desire to be recognized by other man, is the one that drives man to behave in ways that defy natural animal instinct.
Let us look at Zimbabwe. On one hand we have a ruling class that is unwilling to recognize other ordinary Zimbabweans as people amongst other people, on the other we have a people that is yearning for such recognition. This ruling class which is mainly ZANU PF , behaves in a manner that seeks to undo history.
I say ZANU PF is seeking to undo history because it is taking the human philosophical function back to the primitive state when man , although social beings, interacted with each other violently. A period in history when man’s worth was evaluated on how much one was willing to risk death for pure prestige. Remember Alexander or Chaka .
Unfortunately, other Zimbabweans are unwilling to engage ZANU PF in such a primitive manner which to some may appear as cowardice. In circumstances, where one part is willing to engage in violence and another is unwilling there is greater possibility that their relationship terminates in lordship and bondage in which as is in Zimbabwe, ZANU PF gains the recognition of being the master and everybody else looses the dignity of being a man and becomes a slave.
But is the unwillingness of Zimbabweans to engage in violence a symbol of cowardice? The answer could be both YES and NO.
YES in that, cowardice itself begins when a man fails to overcome the fear of death and let his animal instinct of self-preservation override the human characteristic of seeking recognition. So out of cowardice, Zimbabweans decided to forfeit their worth for a chance to live.
NO in that, a human being is also calculative and can temporarily forgo his human desires for a particular reason. For example a man may choose not to eat even if he is hungry because he is on hunger-strike. So there could be a reason why Zimbabweans chose to forfeit their worth. One of which could be that they know that most of the primitive members of ZANU PF are close to death due to aging. From their calculations, they can do without dignity for a few years until this generation is wiped out. They can derive hope from the fact that a number of younger ZANU PF members have been attracted to the idea of change like Simba Makoni, Daniel Shumba, Walter Mzembi and others.
What is certain in Zimbabwe however is that the ZANU PF regime is not evaluating its people’s worth justly. Zimbabweans are conscious of this, unfortunately; as in all dictatorships, two groups of slaves arise. One that feels unjustly evaluated and is willing to regain its dignity and another that knows and feels theindignation but is content to live like that as long as they are alive.

The first group knows that an honest reason for its situation is simply that they are cowards but because they deem themselves to be of certain worth they can’t accept that they are after all mere animals whose fear drives them into submission. So, instead of confronting their fears, this group devices methods by which it can fool itself that it is still capable of functioning as human beings. They feel the anger because firstly they lost dignity in the eyes of the master and secondly because they have been reduced to ordinary amongst the ordinary. They begin to seek to be recognized again as extra-ordinary by their fellow ordinary peers.
They know that they can never be recognized as extraordinary by acts of bravery because already their peers know that they are mere cowards. They are left with no option but to be industrious. They now relate their value to the value of their ability and what they own. Their motive becomes to amass as much as they can so as to attract attention and recognition from primarily their peers and eventually the ruling class. This is what happened in America after independence where those who had not participated in the revolution ended up also part of the ruling class because the ruling class was rational enough to recognize these people’s dignity through their ability and what they owned.

The driving force behind this kind of man is the will to be free- to be a dignified human being capable of unrestricted moral choice. But this kind of man is also caught up in the conflict of desire to be recognized and the desire for self-preservation. It is this man who becomes capable of defining what is good and what is bad because he has consciousness of slavery and a will to be a master. He is capable of defining good because he feels that all things that lead to perpetuation of life (self-preservation) represent morality and good whilst those that lead to violence, war, animosity and death (out of the need to be recognized) are bad. It is this group that is dangerous to TYRANY and ZANU PF knows it.

ZANU PF knows that a man who is unwilling to fight may become even more dangerous if he becomes prosperous because prosperity without freedom is not satisfying to man. They know that man derive satisfaction from owning property not because of necessity but because other man recognize it as theirs and they have made sure that nobody owns property beyond necessity. To them a slave should not be capable of being industrious and if by chance he does so; they are more than happy to grab and expropriate.


Under these circumstances it becomes totally impossible for the ordinary to be extraordinary. Two realities now exist for this group; they are no longer a people amongst people and there is no chance to redeem their dignity through work. Only two options remain: to leave the country altogether or to revert into the lower group that survive as if they do not exist.
When the desire to live supersedes the desire to be human, men begin to drift towards primitiveness. He loses his dignity; he also loses the consciousness of being human. Survival becomes the primary object of his existence. He loses the basis of morality and ultimately the basis of humanness.

When the whole society loses the basis of morality it becomes hard to differentiate or dictate what is good and what is bad. Corruption for survival becomes good, so becomes prostitution, theft, fraud and murder. The feeling of guilty is gone because we are no longer able to evaluate ourselves to our real worth; rather we become worthless and therefore incapable of understanding justice or even to judge ourselves.
This is what happened in Zimbabwe. We had a people that earned less than one dollar a day but survived on five dollars every day. It did not matter where the money was coming from because EVERYBODY was doing it. We celebrated thieves and fraudsters because they were the symbol of survival.

Now, let us turn our sight to those who decided to leave Zimbabwe. These people had lost dignity but not the ability to evaluate themselves. They hoped to transfer their perceived value in Zimbabwe to other societies. They hoped that those societies would assess their worth justly.

What most did not realize was that dignity is built through interaction. They hoped to be given back their dignity in foreign lands through work since these foreigners respected and recognized each other’s property. But what happens when those in the foreign lands realize that you are mere animals running away from death. You lose the basis for just evaluation and revert to being less than the ordinary of that society.
Eventually it becomes hard to get dignified work. It becomes a matter of survival. One needs to eat, drink and shelter. So even in foreign lands we then sacrifice our dignity for survival. Teachers become housemaids, Nurses become child-minders and accountants become gardeners. Those who had hope become prostitutes. This becomes the basis of xenophobia. We become animals, as worthless as a wild dog which can be axed to death in the townships of Alexandria.

Logically, it becomes easier to define who a Zimbabwean is and what it means to be a Zimbabwean today. A Zimbabwean is an animal which is nothing, owns nothing and is ever loitering in search of survival! This is what ZANU PF has reduced us to.
So when I evaluate the so-called Government of National Unity, I have to base my assessment on whether this government has restored dignity to its people. Are Zimbabweans now man amongst man? Do they own something or are they free to own something? Have they gone beyond scavenging for survival?
A friend called me and said “man the shops are full, everything is there”. The first question to strike my mind was- if everything is there, is everything there for everybody?

If a slave master opens a shop at his farm to sell sugar which was not locally available at the farm, if he sells unto them at wild prices so as to confiscate their meager savings and orders them not to buy anywhere else; should we call that freedom? Should we call that prosperity? Is it a change in history? No, the slave is still a slave and the master still the master only that the slave is able to point at the grocer and say, “ A long time ago we had to scavenge as far as South Africa but we now have our own dumpsite here!”
If the slave was able to build the shop, sell his sugar and multiply his wealth without restriction from the master then that would be significant because the slave would have regained his dignity firstly by having the master recognize his rights to private property and freedom to be industrious and secondly because he would have re-ignited and re-calibrated his consciousness of value to that which reflects the progress in history.

So abundance in Zimbabwean shops does not necessarily reflect a gain in dignity rather it only assures Zimbabweans that if they commit their labor to their slave-master they will be able to buy food and survive. Other than that they would die.

The challenge we have s to differentiate between the appearance of freedom and the reality of freedom. For how else can we explain the phenomenon in Zimbabwe: you are only free as long as you are willing to live like an animal but that freedom ends when you decide to be a human being- when you begin to interrogate the truth and seek your worth? So yes Zimbabweans are free today as is a dog that is only free when it is willing to track behind its owner who would not hesitate to shoot it if it decides to challenge him.

Having sacrificed a lot of time on what is and has been happening in Zimbabwe; we have an obligation also to enquire on ways that may help us be human again. That, I hope will become the object of my next article but as it is let us think clearly about whom we are , what we want to be and build ourselves for the future battles to regain our dignity!