By Dr. NOAH MANYIKA|What do the pit latrines and lack of simple but modern water reticulation systems today at the primary schools we attended decades ago and at the rural homes and schools of our “revolutionary leaders” say about us and them and about the “revolutions” we fought?
What should our revolutions, our 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th Chimurenga deliver? What should the expectations of the true majority be of whatever “dispensation” or numerical republic we are living in?
We Zimbabweans and our African brothers from other parts of the continent have experienced how the more things change, the more they remain the same. Not only have revolutions meant to end oppression brought different types of oppression, we have experienced revolutions that change political systems without changing the material lot of the people. They deliver “majority rule” which feels like minority’s rule because it does not free the masses from the slavery of poverty.
We have read in history about the other kinds of revolutions: the ones that dramatically change the way people do life…the “industrial revolution”, the “digital revolution,” or the agricultural revolution that makes countries like Israel that are 65% desert able to feed their own people and export food!
It is those kinds of revolution that we must fight and what we must measure our heroes by. Had we fought those kinds of revolutions in the last 38 years, 72.5% of Zimbabweans would not be living in abject poverty today.
Redirecting revolutions whose goals were never winning the war on poverty or really changing the way we live is a challenge. Going forward we must be clear about what any revolution we take part in must deliver. We must understand that one man one vote does not always mean freedom. We must know that true majority rule can never really happen without leaders committed to people fully exercising their freedoms.
Perhaps we must even go as far as to say about future revolutions and even those gone by that unless they dramatically impact the lives of the majority in a positive way, then they are just power grabs, not revolutions.
Is there not a cause?
Dr. Noah Manyika is founding President of Build Zimbabwe Alliance. He wrote this on Nov. 5, 2018