Mutumwa Mawere

When the existence of Zimbabwe was penned in 1980, expectations were legitimately high that a new civilization was in the making and finally that citizens may storm the statehouse and tear down the leaders not with bullets but with ballots.

The birth of Zimbabwe as a post colonial nation state was a defining and historic moment that represented a noblest idea that a nation blinded by a racial past could rise above the prejudices that characterised it.

The existence of President Mugabe and his colleagues at independence painted a conversation on the purpose of human development and the connection between economic and political freedoms that the whole nation is trying to resolve and make meaning of after 28 years of the birth of a person called Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe was and should have remained a people's project and yet the founding fathers now stand accused of seizing the torrential freedom river and diverting it to a new direction of tyranny where the majority of the citizens have learned to swim on their own and many more to jump ship.

If Zimbabwe was privileged to have a voice what would it say about the absurd political developments of 2008? What would be the message to the political actors? What kind of government would it want? Who should be the speaker of Parliament? Who should be the President? What kind of constitutional order should be put in place to reflect the will of the people of Zimbabwe for whom it should serve?

The Parliament of Zimbabwe will finally open this week after the failure of the SADC-mediated initiative to resolve the political stalemate. On the face of it, it appears that the stalemate revolves around the distribution of power between Mugabe and Tsvangirai but deep down it is evident that what the country may want at this defining moment may be something more fundamental than who is who in the political zoo.

The framing of the dispute even after the outcome of the 29 March election suggests that Zimbabwe may be the ultimate loser. SADC leaders have already spoken by endorsing an approach that has left Zimbabweans more confused about the way forward than they were before the 29 March election.

One has to go back to the founding of the Republic to try to better understand why the colonial state had to be replaced. Has Zimbabwe lived up to its promise? Who is to blame?

On this day, Sunday, 24 August 2008, Zimbabwe finds itself at the crossroads with fading prospects of any agreement being reached on a mutually acceptable political settlement. Societies all over the world have struggled for centuries to build consensus through systems of deliberations and negotiations but unusual and uniquely complex circumstances exist in the Zimbabwean crisis to allow for easy solutions.

To President Mugabe, the crisis is exogenously determined and, therefore, he believes that he bears no responsibility for the current state of the economy. To the extent that the futile SADC talks have left him at the helm, Zimbabwe will have to accept that it has no choice but to have five more difficult years.

Is Zimbabwe excited as President Mugabe may surely be about the prospect of a new administration that is not forward looking? The world now knows that ZANU-PF's interpretation of the will of the people as expressed in the 29 March election is that the change that is needed is merely to assimilate the opposition and in so doing converting them into President Mugabe's worldview.

Democracy has never been perfect but it cannot be said that Zimbabwe is freer today than it was during the colonial era. Even President Mugabe would agree that the purpose of human development is to increase people's range of choices. However, the experience of 2008 has exposed that Zimbabweans are not free to make choices making the independence project nothing but a mockery.

Democracy and freedom must surely rely on much more than the ballot box.
The framing of the post election negotiations as an attempt at crafting a power sharing arrangements was fundamentally flawed in that they were not accompanied by an acknowledgment that Zimbabwe was broken prior to the emergence of the MDC as a political force.

It has been universally accepted that political freedom is an essential element of human development. It is a necessary condition to liberate the creative energies of the people and the passion of liberty transcends culture and faith. The most fertile soil for the seeds of innovation and prosperity consists of free markets and not the kind of environment that has characterised the post colonial state under President Mugabe's watch.

In markets, freedom and informed discipline normally reinforce each other in ways that allow business failure to be tolerated through a process of restraint and knowledge creation that converts them into engines of economic progress. As Zimbabweans look forward to five more years of an overly politicised environment, economic progress will unfortunately be the ultimate victim.

Although it is true that an autocratic government can sometimes engineer fundamental reforms and promote social and economic progress, it is difficult to establish a durable connection between authoritarian rule and economic and social development. The link between freedom and development is seldom in doubt what is often disputed is the causality of the direction of the arrow.

President Mugabe may wish to argue that Zimbabwe is free and all he has been trying to do by seeking to assert executive powers is to protect the republic from economic and political mercenaries. However, it cannot be argued that the millions of black Zimbabweans, who have and continue to vote with their feet, believe that more freedom leads to more development and more development leads to more freedom.

In as much as it can be argued that a transfer of power away from President Mugabe will expose the country to economic manipulation by the West, it is clear that the economically better-off countries today (as measured by GDP or the HDI) have a large measure of freedom than Zimbabwe.

One would like to believe that the people who voted on 29 March voted for economic development first and greater political freedom second. There seems a genuine desire in Zimbabwe for both economic and political freedom.

After 28 years of independence, the civil and political rights that informed the struggle represented values common to all cultures, all religions and all stages of development and these include: personal security, rule of law, freedom of expression, political participation, and equality of opportunity.

It must be accepted that Zimbabweans today feel less secure about their future than at independence. The agenda for change must be reclaimed and the conversation about the kind of Zimbabwe that people want to see must be raised to a new level. A break from the past is what Zimbabwe urgently needs if the future is to mean anything to its citizens.

A danger exists that the forces of change in the face of forces determined to look back may easily be divided by small issues.  President Mugabe represents what is wrong with Zimbabwe and his policies have left the country in a ditch.