Mutumwa Mawere

In his inaugural speech, President Barack Obama, the first person of color to be elected as President of the USA, extended a hand of friendship to adversaries willing to "unclench their fists".

In making the gesture he was acutely aware of the historical significance of his election after 232 years of American democracy.

He knew as we all know that had he chosen to assume the citizenship of his natural father in Kenya, he may never have been given a chance to offer his name for election as a President.

Even in the post-colonial era, the road to statehouse is full of landmines and stop signs.

Those who make it to the Promised Land often clench their fists to prevent other people from even dreaming of serving their countries.

Any society that invests in barriers that limit the mobility of people horizontally and vertically has no one to blame than itself.

Africa's political and economic landscape is infested with barriers, distortions, parasites, chameleons, and more importantly dangerous people.

Any society that invests in freedom is destined to capture human imagination and inspire confidence.

Political discourses invariably create hierarchies characterized by dominant and repressed objects.

Those with state power often become dominant displaying monopolistic and paternalistic tendencies.

Africa's post-colonial experiences are not unique. Human civilization has produced numerous non-African tyrannical political and economic characters.

We have often blamed leaders for the lack of progress in Africa forgetting that no leader, however evil, has any capacity to do more harm than any other human being.

Leaders are human after all and the more you trust any individual to do what you can do for yourself the more you set yourself for failure.

The use of clenched fists is inevitable in any society that fails to invest in the necessary building blocks required for an open and progressive society.

Many of us grew up in closed societies where the opportunity ladder was restricted to certain targeted groups and yet when "uhuru" came we thought that it would be easier to build a better and brighter future.

We naturally expected a lot more from our leaders than they could deliver.

Is the use of clenched fists accidental?

Although free, many Africans are afraid of their governments. The longer one stays in power the more one believes in indispensability.

Is it not ironic that anyone who stays in power for too long ceases to be useful to the very people that they purport to serve?

Leaders come from families and can never be located outside the circle of friends and family that we all have and generate in life.

Access to leaders can come from friendship, family and political convenience.

The clenched fist is normally used for people that fall outside the normal circle of influence.

The longer one stays in power the less accessible one becomes to the extent that the circle of influence reduces to the family and close confidantes.

We can create a better Africa if we understood how to relate to one another and more importantly how to manage those we trust with the power to administer our affairs in the state.

It is dangerous for any society to have leaders who stay too long in office.

In open and free societies there is nothing that is inevitable.

We have seen Africa lose its brain trust to other nations without pausing to understand why this phenomenon occurs.

No amount of nationalist and patriotic rhetoric can make people choose to live in societies where their skills and contribution are not appreciated.

Human assets are complex and it is difficult to know what lies between two ears of human beings.

It is difficult to know what makes people behave in a certain manner but what is critical for us in Africa is to appreciate that societies that are progressive have understood what is necessary to capture human imagination and ingenuity.

Zimbabwe, a critical player in the African story, for example, is at the crossroads. President Mugabe at 85 years old is still standing after 29 years in office.

He has been accused of all that has gone wrong in Zimbabwe.

Given the number of times his name is connected with what is wrong in the country one can safely conclude that he must be a superhuman being.

However, he is just another human being who has to deal with the daily challenges of life.

He has two eyes and two ears and, therefore, faces the same challenges that we all face that we can only absorb so much information and can only see where our eyes take us.

Why then would the world come to believe that his fists are the most toxic of all fists?

To what extent is the crisis in Zimbabwe exacerbated by our limited understanding of what it takes to build a prosperous and progressive nation?

President Mugabe like many of his colleagues in Africa, for example, has taken a centre stage because often we are not willing to take responsibility for our own future believing that another human being in the form of a President will see what we see and know what we know, for example.

In resolving the Zimbabwean problem, it has been agreed that sanctions must be lifted. It is the position of ZANU-PF that sanctions are real and effective.

There has been no better advocate of this school of thought than Governor of the Central Bank, Dr. Gono.

A case has been made that one of the outstanding condition militating against the smooth implementation of the Global Political Agreement is the resolution of the disputed re-appointment of the Governor after the signing of the GPA whose effect according to the MDC formations was to limit the power of the President in terms of making strategic appointments of state actors.

Dr. Gono makes the argument that his critics fail to acknowledge that he was forced by the sanctions regime to administer a parallel government in which state resources were allocated without parliamentary oversight.

He makes the case that in such situations the end justifies the means.

There have been many financial casualties and their wounds are open yet no attempt has been made to include them in the discourse that has arrested and continues to occupy the minds of SADC leaders.

Should sanctions be lifted when fists remain clenched? This is the question. While many would argue that MDC was responsible for the imposition of targeted sanctions, the evidence on the ground may suggest otherwise.

Even after the formation of the inclusive government, Zimbabweans in the thousands continue to vote with their feet and interestingly no significant movement of Zimbabwe's prodigal sons and daughters has taken place in the opposite direction.

If the values, principles and beliefs that inform the inclusive government offend the nations that have imposed sanctions, what message would this send?
The people whose accounts were raided by the Reserve Bank remain exposed with no cash in their banks.

The laws that threaten and inhibit investment remain on the statute books.

The treatment of Roy Bennett exposes a new danger in Zimbabwe and has set a new precedent whose constitutional implications are devastating that one needs to prove his innocence before being entitled to a state job. Does this mean that the presumption of innocence is no longer applicable?

Even if sanctions were lifted today, it is debatable if farmers who were dislocated will have the confidence to come back to Zimbabwe. What is even more debatable is whether the will to change is there.

To what extent were sanctions imposed at the behest of MDC will remain a question for historians. What is critical is that a critical examination is made to identify the real impediments to progress and whether such obstacles are externally or internally generated.

As long as the clenched fist remains intact, it will be futile to ask others what Zimbabwe can do for itself with no external help.

As we build our own knowledge bank on what works and what doesn't, we have no choice but to study how other nations have progressed without compromising their values and principles and more significantly without expecting their purported adversaries to be benevolent.