By Mike Mavura, Thought Leader
There is consensus that safety, security, justice and the
rule of law are core functions of the state as well as basic service delivery,
financial and macro-economic management, inclusive growth and job creation, the
protection of human-rights and so on and so forth. These are state
responsibilities stipulated in the constitution of Zimbabwe and they shape
societies expectations of the state.
The provision of basic services to the populace shapes the
relationship between the state and its subjects and is essential for the state
to retain its legitimacy and relevance as well as to maintain stability. The
state and the services it offers are thus public goods. In situations of
economic and social strife, like what the country has experienced over the past
decade or so, the role of the state as provider of first resort of basic
services, security, employment, justice among other citizens’ needs becomes
even more pronounced and urgent. However, the state is nowhere to be seen.
It seems that this thesis of the relationship between the
Zimbabwean state and its subjects rests on the false assumption that the state
has domestic sovereignty and political authority based on popular legitimacy;
entrenched legitimacy premised beyond elections with predetermined outcomes. If
this assumption was true, how can we make sense of state manoeuvres such as
Operation Murambatsvina (Clean-Out filth), national policies that have led to a
severe economic collapse and grave failure of the health system, the education
sector, service provision (especially water and electricity), infrastructure,
outbreaks of cholera and typhoid, hyperinflation and an unemployment rate of
more than 80%?
To understand this seemingly open-and-shut case of
political hara-kiri, we have to understand the nexus between political power
and the levers of the state. The arrival of a credible challenger to political
power in the theatre of domestic politics precipitated a “road to Damascus”
moment for the incumbents. Assured landslides at the polls since 1980 began to
ebb for the ruling party at the turn of the millennium. The ruling party lost
the constitutional referendum in 2000, lost 57 seats to the opposition in the
2000 House of Assembly polls, lost 42.10% of the electorate in the 2002
presidential election and lost the election altogether in 2008 leading to a
power-sharing agreement. Something had to give.
Whereas before the Zimbabwean state was fairly strong with
political authority based on domestic revenue, popular acceptance, and
commerce, the arrival of credible political opponents changed that. Functioning
state bureaucracies are believed to foster strong candidates (usually men) who
can capitalise and build rival power centres. The change in tactics embraces
hibernating the state, intentionally crippling the arms of the state and
governing through patronage networks. The logic is bizarre but tried and
tested. This contraction of the state actually depicts the flexibility and
capacity of political and economic elites to adapt to changing international
and national circumstances. Popular legitimacy of the state slowly gave way to
relationships of kinship, lineage and patron-client networks which began to
shape, to a considerable extent, the decisions taken by public officials and
political leaders.
This patronage system revolves around an exercise of power
based on patron-client links, a conception of leadership linked to the
distribution of benefits, an expectation by citizens (with the right
credentials) to be rewarded by their patrons, an organisation of citizens
around patrons. Patrons and clients dependent on patronage are a more reliable
power base. As such, the state has ceased to be concerned with developmental
aims and morphed into a platform for accumulation and distribution of wealth
among patrons and clients. Who gets land, government jobs, tenders, shares in
extractive industries (diamonds) and now indigenised companies and asserts is
underpinned by this patron/client relationship. As the state withdraws from its
core functions, essential services seize to become public goods but private
ones regulated by supply-and-demand principles of the black market.
To get a passport in reasonable time, one needs a
“facilitator”, police officers are for hire to enforce “the law”, prosecutors
are available on auction, healthcare needs cash payment upfront, decent
education has to be private! Adequate water and electricity supplies require
private boreholes and generators. The NGO sector fills in the rest of the void
left by a fast receding state. With an unemployment rate of about 80%, the
majority of citizens eke a living out of the vast informal sector where the
state is invisible, where the state collects no tax or regulates. State
withdrawal leaves chaos and disorder in the health, education, services,
economic and other sectors but the point to drive home is that this is not
chaotic chaos but organised chaos albeit with a distinct logic.
Our rulers are trapped in a politics of survival and thus
the nurturing and provision for essential allies replaces the cumbersome
exercise of cultivating popular legitimacy, which is fickle as it is political,
economic and social weather dependant. Patrons and clients are an all-weather
support base. As such, large numbers of state officials who consume resources
but are not essential for regime survival are ejected and essentially left to
their own devices: teachers, healthcare workers, and other civil servants. Our
political elite have thus engaged in simple mathematics and converted political
resources into economic resources.
They must behave with largesse towards allies of propinquity
in dogma in order to survive. This system has been replicated in the public
sphere too by public officials in their tiny spheres of power. As a result
power has become de-institutionalised and highly personalised. One gets nothing
done without a “connection” of some sort, either a kin and keen one or a hired
one. Personalised relationships and patronage networks thus decide who gets
what, when, why and how — far removed from any vain pronouncements about
empowerment and development or “at-your-service” mantras. To be sure, the
illusion of due diligence must always appear, a jik-job of sorts; so a
community somewhere, a clinic here, an individual there will always be paraded
via the state publicity machinery as proof of state-sponsored development. In
reality, however, the benefits that accrue from the state are selective,
private and channelled along established distribution networks vital for regime
sustenance. Thus for the majority of citizens, there is a genuine and deadly
serious question they ask, whither the state?
