Rudo Mudiwa | On the morning of 13 July 2016, I took a cab ride to Rotten Row Magistrate’s Court, the courthouse where Evan Mawarire, the young pastor who has become the figurehead of an emergent protest movement in Zimbabwe, was being arraigned on charges of ‘inciting public violence’. This was a transparently spurious charge meant to contain the influence of a charismatic figure who had captured public attention.
In videos that circulated on WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter, Mawarire catalogued the grievances of many Zimbabweans against their government, among them corruption, reckless fiscal policies and the suppression of dissent. In a few months, his campaign’s hashtag, #ThisFlag, had come to serve as a rallying cry for the mostly urban citizens and diasporans frustrated with the problems wrought by Robert Mugabe’s 36-year rule.
The scene at Mawarire’s hearing had all the trappings of a media event. People had come draped in Zimbabwean flags. Photographers mingled with the crowd, small circles forming around those selected for on-camera interviews. The continuous production of selfies, tweets and Snapchat videos, an act marked by the smartphone being held at an angle above the documenter’s head, contributed to the feeling of being there for a historical event. In a country whose public sphere has been under consistent attack for the past few decades, protest was momentarily cool.
Vendors flitted through the crowd, selling drinks, naartjies, meat pies and the crucial accessory of the day: Zimbabwean flags. These cost $5 and came folded in a neat square, wrapped in clear plastic. Later that night, as the crowd dispersed, these wrappers could be seen strewn all over the courthouse grounds, sparkling in the light. Remarking on the overwhelmingly social vibe of the event, a male friend turned to me and said, “There are so many beautiful girls here, unotokanganwa kuti wawuyirei (you forget why you came).”
An arrest foretold
News of Mawarire’s arrest, which had taken place the day before, had reached his followers through the release of an eerie pre-recorded video urging Zimbabweans to continue with the struggle should anything unfortunate, like an abduction or arrest, happen to him.
This was not an instance of dramatic flair. In March 2015, Itai Dzamara, an activist under the banner of the Occupy Africa Unity Square movement, was abducted after a visit to the barber near his home. (Africa Unity Square, a public park right in the middle of Harare’s CBD, is opposite the buildings of parliament.) He hadn’t been heard from since. In contrast to the relatively subdued protests that followed Dzamara’s abduction, Mawarire’s arrest (and his considerably greater social capital) had moved people to gather at the court that morning. Protestors would occupy the courthouse grounds for nearly 12 hours, singing, dancing and praying.
After a series of blunders by the prosecution, the magistrate dismissed the charges against Mawarire. At around 8pm, he emerged to a sea of people, marked in the dark by candles and smartphone lights. As the crowd chanted, “Pastor! Pastor!” someone reached up and draped a flag around his neck.
In April 2016, Trevor Ncube, a newspaper publisher with business interests in Zimbabwe and South Africa, argued that a ‘third way’ was the only solution to Zimbabwe’s problems. It was a repeat of an argument he had made a decade or so before. As he put it in the most recent iteration:
This is what Zimbabwe needs: a political collective with clean hands; people who subscribe to the principles of an inclusive society that serves the majority. On the sidelines of the universities, state institutions, the diaspora, and even within Zanu-PF, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) factions, the military, police and intelligence services, there are such people – decent people who want to work hard, educate their children, take care of their families and contribute to a vibrant society.
Although the political genealogy of the term goes unacknowledged in his piece, Ncube’s ‘third way’ is a reference to the centrist politics of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair in the 1990s, which attempted to straddle the divide between the right and the left. In Zimbabwe — where the categories ‘right’ and ‘left’ aren’t useful for analysing mainstream politics, at least for now — the ‘third way’ would function as an alternative to the two main political parties, ZANU-PF and MDC-T. (Former vice president Joyce Mujuru, who has left to form her own party, was once seen as the face of this coalition. Before her, Simba Makoni, a business-friendly bureaucrat, also played this role.)
A decent person steps up
In the first #ThisFlag video, released the same month as Ncube’s article, Mawarire appeared to be exactly the kind of ‘decent’ person who could take up Ncube’s call. Hunched over a desk, the Zimbabwean flag wrapped around his shoulders, Mawarire engaged in a critical re-reading of the symbolism of the flag.
The basic structure of his argument was as follows: They tell us that the flag means one thing, but their actions betray us and the people who died to liberate this country from colonial rule. As he later stated, he was inspired to record the video after he sat at his desk late at night, wondering how he would pay his children’s school fees.
This anecdote became one of the key components of the subsequent media coverage of Mawarire, in keeping with Ncube’s prediction that the ‘third way’ would comprise ‘decent people who want to work hard, educate their children, take care of their families and contribute to a vibrant society’. Mawarire’s was a political message that disavowed the toxic partisanship that has dominated Zimbabwean politics for the past two decades. Coming from a man of the cloth, a young father, it seemed to shrewdly inoculate itself from many of the attacks that could come from either side. The ‘third way’ indeed.
In later videos, Mawarire’s delivery became sharper and more polished. The first video had been shot in a poorly lit room and weighed down by the insertion of melodramatic background music, while later instalments where shot in good natural light. Mawarire would record them while walking or in his car, which conveyed his energy and youthfulness. While the first video showed a man overwrought with emotion, subsequent videos depicted an angry but focused orator who pulled no punches. He dextrously switched between English and Shona, repeating each statement in both languages.
Mawarire also tested the political reach of his message. He initially called for Zimbabweans at home and abroad to carry the flag with them for seven days as a visible sign of protest. This call was later extended. Finally, Mawarire called for a stay-away — a labour strategy long used by the MDC and its progenitor, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU)—on 6 July. This coincided with a planned stay-away by civil servants (over unpaid salaries) and demonstrations by commuter omnibus operators (protesting harassment by bribe-demanding traffic cops) in the country. Most of the major cities ground to a halt. In all, it was a victory for Mawarire and an embarrassment to the government. That night, someone said to me, “Well, he has tasted power. Now we’ll see what he’ll do with it.”
Mawarire’s basic profile — a charismatic young pastor battling state repression through non-violent means — has inevitably drawn comparisons to Martin Luther King Jr. This comparison, simplistic as it might be, points to the nature of movement building in a globalised media landscape. The ability to point to a singular visible leader, and to reproduce his/her image, distils into a simple narrative the complexities of social or political movements that are made up of contesting parties. Consequently, emergent movements are now often asked to produce their own Martin Luther King Jr, a figure whose voice and image can represent the cause.
In this case, this push to identify a discernable leader has been intensified by the Christian ideology driving Mawarire and his followers. Hours after his arrest, many of his followers circulated the Bible verse “Touch not my anointed ones, do my prophets no harm!” (Psalm 105:15) on social media platforms. The verse functioned to reassure people that as The Chosen One, divine protection encircled Mawarire. Of course, that the designated prophetic voice was a man’s is a continuity of a number of now intertwined histories: Christianity’s, patriarchy’s, and Zimbabwe’s.
Under pressure to lead
Despite this anointing, Mawarire consistently rejected the notion that he was the primary actor in this saga. On the night he was released, he appeared before the excited crowd, visibly tired and overwhelmed by the day’s events, with a short message emphasising that the victory was not his alone. Instead, he insisted that “Zimbabwe yamurikuvaka ndeye vana venyu!” (The Zimbabwe you are building is for your children!) Still, this did not quell calls for him to assume a more visible, and even institutional, leadership. In the following weeks, some of his more fervent followers called on him to establish a political party that would contest the 2018 elections.
The pressure to anoint Mawarire as the leader of the protest movement in Zimbabwe plays into the regime’s successful strategy of containing and scapegoating a sole figure as the enemy of the people. This much was evident when Mugabe recently issued his verdict on Mawarire: “Those who believe in that way of living in our country are not part of us in thinking as we try to live together”. For questioning the government, Mawarire was declared ‘unZimbabwean’, an enemy of the people. Mugabe added: “If they don’t like to live with us, fine, let them go to those who are sponsoring them.” Mawarire had travelled to South Africa on 15 July, where he had been giving television interviews and public appearances. After Mugabe’s speech, he extended his stay indefinitely.
The role of the lower middle class and the urban poor
What will happen in Mawarire’s absence, which comes just as certain segments of the population were beginning to coalesce around his leadership? One hopes that it will demystify the notion of Mawarire, a middle-class figure, as the trigger and driver of protests. This notion, especially popular in the international press, erases the labour performed by various working-class groups in sustaining pressure against the government.
What will happen in Mawarire’s absence, which comes just as certain segments of the population were beginning to coalesce around his leadership? One hopes that it will demystify the notion of Mawarire, a middle-class figure, as the trigger and driver of protests. This notion, especially popular in the international press, erases the labour performed by various working-class groups in sustaining pressure against the government.
Indeed, the mass showing on the day of Mawarire’s court appearance would have been impossible without the energy, organising capacity and resources of such groups. They include Tajamuka (Shona slang for “We have rebelled”), Occupy Africa Unity Square and the National Vendors Union of Zimbabwe – all groups that engage in radical action that actively seeks confrontation with the state. (For example, Tajamuka activists have made a name for themselves by delivering impromptu speeches, blaming the government for the country’s economic ills in addresses to customers waiting in the now ubiquitous bank queues across Harare.)
Given that Mawarire had been reluctant to embrace demonstrations as a tactic, crediting major protest actions to him was a mistake. Moreover, the focus on Mawarire also obscured the fact that the first stay-away was successful because informally organised segments of the lower middle class and urban poor drove it. In particular, it drew on the energy of an unprecedented and violent protest at the Beitbridge Border Post a week earlier. Traders responding to new import restrictions that threatened their businesses (importing groceries and other wares from South Africa) initiated this protest. In many ways, this protest reflected a key grievance that is constantly being expressed in Zimbabwe: We have an unthinking government that is bent on punishing its citizens’ resourcefulness in the midst of economic decline.
Bearing the brunt of state violence
It is these same uncredited groups that faced the brunt of the violence meted out by police in retaliation for the stay-away. While Mawarire’s middle-class supporters were safely indoors in the northern and western suburbs, taking to social media to express their support, police moved in to attack protesters in poor neighbourhoods in the south and east of the city. Cell-phone images and video showed people being teargassed, beaten and dragged out of their homes on suspicion of supporting the protests. A month later, Linda Musarira, an activist with Occupy Africa Unity Square, remains imprisoned on the very same charge as the one that got Mawarire arrested. After she was denied bail at a hearing held on 26 July, one of her comrades urged the crowd outside to continue the struggle against tyranny “along class lines”. It remains to be seen whether this vital call for class struggle in an economically and spatially segregated Zimbabwe will permeate the public consciousness.
What do we do with this moment?
The biggest question for Zimbabwean progressives and leftists, many of whom have withdrawn from ‘official’ politics is: What do we do with this moment? When the ‘third way’ has been a disaster for the left in the West, could it lead to the emergence of a different kind of politics in this country? Many people I have spoken to are hesitant to align themselves with an explicitly Christian movement, fearful that it will produce superficial neoliberal changes while further entrenching structures that will oppress the same ‘undesirables’ who have been targeted by ZANU-PF: women, gays and lesbians, and the rural and urban poor.
Others who might share these reservations nevertheless want to seize this opening — a timely flowering of protest and dissent — to create the kind of political culture they would like to see. These kinds of negotiations were visible at the courthouse, where socialists, NGO liberals, nominally apolitical citizens, atheists and evangelical Christians protested alongside each other in support of the principle of free expression. At times this produced the kind of awkward moment that is characteristic of such uneasy alliances. In the middle of the day, a group of pastors commanded the crowd to kneel down and pray, “to show that Zimbabweans are a humble people”. An insufficiently cowed group remained standing at the back. Similarly, when the more radical protesters began to sing explicitly political songs castigating the ruling party, those who wished to appear apolitical balked at their defiance.
Even as the notion of the ‘third way’ attempts to skirt political binary thinking, it is inescapably caught in it, imagining that politics operates in terms of clearly defined oppositional camps that must be reconciled. What is happening in Zimbabwe is much more complicated. It is an explosion of disparate protest movements that do not share a common ideology beyond their frustration with the government’s ineptitude. Every week seems to bring new protests and aggrieved constituencies: vendors and cross-border traders, mothers, evangelical Christians, war veterans and students.
Unifying the resistance