The Sunday Mail
In times of crises, human beings can be ticking time bombs — anything can set them off.
This is because crises help incubate anxieties, grievances and psychological shocks, which often have the potential to later explode into unfortunate episodes of civil unrest or gratuitous violence.
At some point, due to the complex mash-up of pent-up emotions, people are bound to reach a breaking point, especially in an environment where they feel they are under siege.
And it is difficult to imagine how one cannot possibly feel under siege when they are continuously inundated by news of death, disease and grief, while their livelihoods are being profoundly disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.
Ultimately, this creates a complex and volatile multi-layered crisis that threatens the status quo.
All that it takes is a simple spark to create mayhem.
You might have seen the protests and riots that plagued the United States of America after the cold-blooded murder of an unarmed black man, Gorge Floyd, by a police officer on May 25, 2020.
The protests later morphed into an inquiry into the inhumane treatment of blacks in the West and the deep-seated inequalities that continue to exist in the so-called free world.
The same protests and inquiry crossed the Atlantic into the UK, which unsurprisingly continues to face the same problems 214 years after the end of the slave trade.
You might have seen the conflict in Ethiopia, which started when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed declared war on Tigray on November 4, 2020 after protracted disagreements over elections that were delayed by the pandemic.
This year, we have so far seen unrest in Lebanon, Swaziland and recently South Africa.
It cannot be purely coincidental that societal tensions are rising at a time when the world is facing a bruising and unnerving existential fight against the coronavirus.
Scholars have long established the correlation between pandemics and conflict.
In a recent research paper, Professor Massimo Morelli from Bocconi University (Italy) and Roberto Censolo, an Associate Professor in the department of Economics and Management at Italy’s University of Ferrara, concluded that “historical evidence shows that the epidemics display a potential disarranging effect on civil society along three dimensions”.
“First, the policy measures tend to conflict with the interest of people, determining a dangerous attrition between society and institutions. Second, to the extent that an epidemic impacts differently on society in terms of mortality and economic welfare, it may exacerbate inequality.
“Third, the psychological shock may induce irrational narratives on the causes and the spread of the disease, which may result in social, racial discrimination and even xenophobia,” they observed.
Poverty
But, most often than not, those who take part in these upheavals do not have shared interests or a common rallying point, except sharing the same totem — poverty!
It is not so much about democracy and such other lofty ideals as it is about survival and material well-being.
Guinea Bissau and Cabo Verde revolutionary Amilcar Cabral couldn’t have captured it all too well when he told his followers: “Always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone’s head. They are fighting to win material benefits, to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children.”
Essentially, in addition to accentuating social and economic inequalities, the coronavirus pandemic has lifted the veil on intergenerational structural weaknesses that have been condemning millions of people across the world, especially in Africa, to vicious circles of begrimming poverty, disease, death and hopelessness.
And this usually drives change.
Remember what Bishop Lazi said at the beginning of the pandemic: We might wake up to a different world order after the current global health crisis.
However, it is the conflict in South Africa that has been felt most keenly in Zimbabwe by virtue of geographical proximity and the shared history and culture between Harare and Pretoria.
We all saw the unrest in KwaZulu Natal and Gauteng provinces, as it was played out before rolling cameras on TV and social media.
Looters stripped shops, supermarkets, warehouses and depots before setting them on fire.
They even raided blood banks and stole sex toys.
It was chaotic; it was as if the gates of hell had been flung open.
Unfortunately, the tragedy of packaging such images and footage together with running commentary on TV and social media is that it dilutes and commodifies key historical epochs into seemingly entertaining fictional and passing events.
It also trivialises events and prevents a deeper inquiry into the underlying conditions causing crises.
While it is tempting to conclude that the recent imbroglio in South Africa can be directly linked to former SA president Jacob Zuma’s alleged attempts to corruptly capture the state, and the consequences thereof, this cannot possibly be the only case, if at all.
The Bishop would like you to reflect on the fact that there hasn’t been a president in post-apartheid SA who has served two full terms.
Despite Nelson Mandela, who opted to serve one five-year term (1994-1999), Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma all fell short because of the internecine challenges within the ANC, which continue to dog the liberation movement until this day.
Why? One might ask.
Well, the answer can be found in the battle for economic hegemony between “white monopoly capital”, which has taken root for the past 369 years, and new contenders epitomised by the Gupta brothers, who challenge the status quo.
It is almost always about the fight for resources and control of the means of production.
A simple question to ask is: Why does a country as rich in mineral wealth and productive land, and also considered the most industrialised on the continent, have an unemployment rate as high as 33 percent, most of whom are indigenous blacks?
Who controls the means of production?
Therein lies the challenge not only for South Africa, but for the continent as a whole.
Turmoil
But reclaiming the means of production and wresting the levers of economic power, which are firmly in the hands of erstwhile colonisers, is both unconscionably painful and tumultuous, particularly for South Africa, which continues to be the citadel of white monopoly capital.
We all saw last week how vigilante groups from white communities took the law into their own hands and started attacking blacks suspected of looting.
You might also have seen what happened in October last year in Senekal, Free State province, where a gang of white farmers literally besieged a court — itself a symbol of state power — before damaging public property and torching police vehicles — symbols of state authority — as they tried to seize two black men accused to killing a white farmer in order to mete extrajudicial instant justice.
This is why Bishop Lazi thinks the land reform programme would be a thoroughly difficult exercise in SA.
Thankfully, Zimbabwe is way past that painful chapter and is starting to sculpture a new economy around an empowered class of indigenous farmers.
Clearly, the desperate condition of the ordinary African, especially the youth, which has been laid bare by the fallout from the coronavirus, shows that the current status quo, where wealth has not yet been transferred into the hands the indigenous and majority blacks, is no longer tenable.
But such a transfer would necessarily involve painful, but unavoidable, upheaval, for those who control wealth will not give it up without a fight.
This is the final battle we all have to fight so that we “will not depend on anybody”.
1 Thessalonians 4: 10-12 advices: “Yet we urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so more and more, and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.”
The Bishop has previously shared with you reports that show how pervasive neo-colonialism is on the continent.
Investigations by War on Want, a UK-based organisation, showed how 101 companies listed on the London Stock Exchange — most of them British — have mining operations in 37 Sub-Saharan African countries and collectively control over US$1 trillion worth of Africa’s valuable resources.
This is just a tip of the iceberg.
Do not be fooled: In this part of the world, a simple black man or black woman cannot grow so rich and powerful as to capture the economy of any State, let alone the State itself, which is a sprawling and monolithic structure.
They can never hold a candle to those who still control our wealth and continue to insidiously destabilise our countries to maintain a status quo that is favourable to them.
Fortunately, a woke Zimbabwe, which has gone through some of the most difficult battles in its young life, is leading the way.
Not only is it now consolidating the land reform programme through increasing production and productivity for food self-sufficiency and thriving commerce, but there has been a deliberate bias towards contracting local companies with a view to promoting a new class of industrialists ready to take on the world.
If in doubt, you have to look at how local contractors roped in the multimillion-dollar Harare-Beitbridge road have progressively grown in capacity and expertise.
This is how you incubate future billionaires and multinational companies.
And this is why the Second Republic is obsessed with growing the economy and ensuring that the wealth trickles down to even the remotest parts of the country.
As the Chinese have long figured, the only way you control the politics is through controlling the economics.
Although the decolonisation project might have won African countries political independence, economic freedom remains outstanding.
Bishop out!
