It is difficult to believe in Kick It Out

For the ‘Kick It Out’ Campaign to be effective black players have to believe in it...

Most football managers in the English Premier League have criticised Reading’s Jason Roberts for refusing to wear the Kick It Out warm up T-shirts. The thinking seems to be that all players and managers should support the campaign even though it has clearly failed. Black players are the victims of racism in football. To force them to support a campaign that has clearly failed in its mandate is to misunderstand the reason why the campaign was set up in the first place. Listening to Sir Alex Ferguson talk about how he was embarrassed by Rio Ferdinand’s refusal to wear the T-shirt you would think that he is the one whose family has been subjected to twelve months of abuse. As I watched Alex Ferguson’s interview in which he promised to punish Rio Ferdinand for daring to stand up for his personal beliefs I realised how it has escaped our largely white male football managers that black players are the victims. Alex Ferguson does not seem to care that, despite denials Rio Ferdinand’s England career was effectively ended in order to prolong John Terry’s. Very few commentators believed Roy Hodgson when he said that Rio had been left out for ‘football reasons’. It seems to have escaped him that Chelsea FC chose the first weekend of the Kick It Out campaign week to announce that John Terry would remain their captain. What message does this send to black players in the game? What message is it sending to our children? What does it say about the commitment to eradicate racism in our football?

Premier League managers need to come down from their high horses to realise that this campaign has become a joke. Even those black players who wore the warm up T-shirts have no faith in the campaign. Most did it for fear of being subjected to disciplinary action by their clubs. At Manchester United they probably feared the famed hair dryer treatment from Sir Alex. If his reaction to Rio Ferdinand’s snub is anything to go by then God help any player who chooses to go against Ferguson’s wishes. As a black person, if I was a footballer, I would not wear the disgraced T-shirts.

There is a feeling among football fans in some sections of society that the FA kicked John Terry’s disciplinary case into the long grass for almost a year because they wanted him to play at the European Championships. The revelations this week that the police and the Crown Prosecution Service did not tell the FA to delay their disciplinary proceedings against Terry lend credence to this conspiracy theory. The four match ban also reinforces the view that the FA treated Terry with kid gloves. The way the John Terry case has been dealt by both the FA and Chelsea FC leaves a lot to be desired.

The Kick It Out campaign has shown that it has neither the power nor the influence to bring about change in the plight of players suffering racist abuse. When the campaign’s name changed from ‘Kick Out Racism from Football’ to just ‘Kick It Out’ it may have lost its focus on racism. Kick It Out helps those in positions of authority at different clubs in England and Wales to feel good about themselves because they are doing something about racism in football. The fact that the organisation is a toothless bull dog does not matter because clubs can point to the campaign as leading the fight against racism in football. Fighting racism is not about T-shirts or about campaigns. It is about attitudes; about actions. Clubs should not force players to do what is against their conscience just so that they feel good about themselves. This is too serious an issue to be trivialised like that!

This madness must stop

Robert Mugabe’s God complex is beyond ridiculous. We all know that he believes that he was divinely ordained to rule over Zimbabweans; that his supporters and cronies believe that he is the messiah but this law that forbids us from calling him whatever names we choose is manifestly stupid. A Stalinist law that stops Zimbabweans in a free and independent Zimbabwe from candidly criticising the Head of State of their country has no place in a democratic society. Even the messiah was called names.

In the past year many Zimbabweans from all walks of life have been arrested and charged for insulting Robert Mugabe. Many have languished in police cells for weeks or even months just for sharing their honest opinion of Robert Mugabe. Many opposition activists, MPs and political leaders have been picked up by the police for calling Mugabe names. And yet ZANU PF wonders why Zimbabweans have deserted their party in droves! The people of Zimbabwe have no interest in a leader who has ‘an unshakable belief characterized by consistently inflated feelings of personal ability, privilege, or infallibility’. They do not want a leader who refuses to admit the possibility of error or failure, or who regards their personal opinions as unquestionably correct (Adapted from Wikipedia). They want a human being who accepts that he can fail and that people have right to criticise him.

Why shouldn’t we be able to say ‘Mugabe is old and senile’ or ‘Mugabe must go’ or ‘Mugabe chibva; Mugabe chifa; Mugabe chienda’? Why shouldn’t we wish him dead to avenge our relatives, friends or colleagues who were killed by his supporters for refusing to support him? Is there any justification for a law that protects an individual from criticism when they occupy the highest political office in our land? Mugabe’s hubristic view of himself has created the mess that Zimbabwe faces today and we should be free to call him ‘stupid, deranged, or old’. If we want to pray for his death then so be it. If we want to engender feelings of hostility towards or cause hatred, contempt or ridicule of the person of Robert Mugabe or make abusive, indecent or obscene statements about or concerning him then it is a free country. That is what we fought for. That is why we supported the liberation struggle. We did not participate in the liberation struggle to engender the supremacy of an individual or group of individuals; we participated to create an egalitarian society in which all men (women) are equal.

We have allowed Mugabe to get away with so many things. It is now time to tell him that he is not a god or a messiah; that we will call him whatever we please because Zimbabwe will never be a colony again.         

Now they are on top!

Much has been written about the recent Freedom House/ Mass Public Opinion Institute opinion poll survey which has shown that ZANU PF (ZPF) is now, arguably, the most popular party in Zimbabwe; that Robert Mugabe will easily win the next election against Morgan Tsvangirai. The survey shows that Mugabe has a 12 point lead on Tsvangirai. The caveat is that 40% of the respondents to the survey refused to reveal their voting intentions. It is not clear whether those polled are registered voters or what impact the fear of political violence has had on the results. There are people on both sides of the debate who have dissected and analysed the results of this survey as well as the implications of this survey on the Zimbabwean body politic so I will not go down this well trodden path. I want to focus on the impact these results could have on the philosophy, policies and actions of ZPF. I present here a very hypothetical scenario!

ZPF has used coercion and violence since the 1985 elections. On the explicit instructions of the then Prime Minister Robert Mugabe people were ‘evicted’ from their homes in Glen View, Glen Norah, Highfields and other high density suburbs because they were suspected of being supporters of Nkomo and Muzorewa. Violence and intimidation have been ZPF’s modus operandi and have progressively become worse as their fortunes waned. Those who have had the misfortune of being the target of ZPF thugs will know that they were prepared to do anything to shore up their party’s fortune. Many civil servants in rural areas were forced to buy ZPF cards, attend ZPF rallies and to contribute financially to the upkeep of the party in order to be safe. Refusing to do so was a death wish. At one point the MDC even encouraged its members to buy ZPF cards as an insurance policy against violence. Now that they have a double digit lead in the opinion polls the time has come for ZPF to renounce violence; to disown Chipangano, rogue war veterans and other merchants of death. ZPF has used the intelligence, defence and security personnel from the CIO, the ZRP and the ZDF to terrorise people in cities and villages into voting for them.

Now they are on top! They are, arguably, the most popular party in Zimbabwe so we expect them to build on this momentum without resorting to violence. If ZPF believes the results of this survey and if they believe that their ‘star’ is rising once again then they will stop intimidating people into supporting them. If Mugabe is sure to win then there is no need for violence. We can now look forward to the party not trying to stay in power through manipulating the Constitution making process or deploying violent thugs to beat people into submission. We can now look forward to elections where soldiers stay in the barracks; where the police are defenders of people rights rather than violators of human rights. This survey gives ZPF an opportunity to redeem itself by fighting elections on the basis of ideas rather than fists, knobkerries and machetes. As the most popular party in the country they know that the majority of the people support them so they just need to consolidate this support without burning people’s homes.

The silver lining to these results may be that Zimbabwe can be healed from the violence that has blighted our nation for more than ten years. The results of this survey give us a chance to have a peaceful general election. When the MDC was the top party in Zimbabwe they didn’t need to force people to attend their rallies. People attended even at great personal risk because they supported the party. ZPF, having made a spectacular rise to the top of the rankings, will no longer need to round up people to attend their rallies; they will no longer need to force teachers and school children to attend their rallies. People will come because they genuinely support the party. But it all depends on ZPF. Their actions will tell us whether the results of this survey are to be believed. If violence and intimidation of political opponents continues then Zimbabweans will make their minds up as to whether to believe the results of Freedom House/ Mass Public Opinion Institute opinion poll. We live in hope.   

Constitutions do matter

An article on the ZBC website posted on the 27^th of March 2012 suggests that ordinary people in Zimbabwe do not think that a new constitution is a priority. They posit that the people are more interested in ‘bread and butter’ issues than in a new constitution. While it is true that a new constitution on its own is not a panacea to our political and socio-economic problems, it is also true that the supreme law governs how we are governed by those we elect to power. In that sense I would argue that a new constitution is a prerequisite if we are to deal with the plethora of problems affecting our motherland.

I am not a legal scholar so I will avoid making legal arguments. However, my understanding of a constitution is that it allows us to increase or reduce the power that we give to the arms of government – the executive, the judiciary and the legislature. A good constitution allows people to put safeguards as well as checks and balances on the people we elect to power. The current constitution allows the President to have unlimited executive powers that mean that he can make judicial appointments after ‘consulting’ the Judicial Services Commission, which he also appoints. Under the current constitution the President appoints the Defence Forces Chiefs, the Commissioner General of Police, the CIO Director, etc without oversight from anyone. Therefore, the people appointed to these posts are answerable to the President rather than the people of Zimbabwe. This is what has created the problems that are bedevilling our country. A new constitution allows us, if we choose, to take these powers from one person and give them to Parliament. It allows us, if we choose, to give parliament oversight over all Presidential appointments. Any Presidential appointments would need to be confirmed by parliament before taking effect. This would mean an extra layer of checks to ensure that the President does not use the resources of the state to reward his cronies.

It would help illuminate this discussion if we knew what question or questions were asked the participants in this survey. It would also help to know how many people were asked the question to establish whether this is a representative sample. More importantly it would be important to establish the gender, education, religion, political views of the participants. However, this will make the discussion complicated. Let us stick to the simple argument put forward by the writer of the ZBC article. Let us examine the premise of the writer’s argument which is that, “Ordinary Zimbabweans say the current constitution making exercise, which has gobbled millions of dollars, is not a priority in a country where the majority of people are concerned with bread and butter issues.” This suggests that the writer/researcher is concerned about the cost of writing a new constitution at a time when that money could be directed to other ‘worthy causes’. If the survey question(s) were framed based on this premise then you would expect anyone living on the fringes of the Zimbabwean economy to say a constitution is not a priority when asked whether the money could be directed to other causes such as the failing water and sanitation in the capital city. But this argument is flawed because it assumes that because writing a new constitution costs a lot of money then we should not invest in it. The same argument could be made about elections. Elections cost millions which could be directed at improving the generation of electricity or to give loans to the new farmers. Following this logic, then elections would not be a priority for ordinary Zimbabweans. That indeed is absurd. There is a case to be made against the process and the end product of this process but that does not make rewriting our constitution a worthless exercise.

An unnamed person is quoted on the ZBC website: “I don’t even know how this constitution is going to benefit me, what I want at the moment is survival and I think government should prioritise hunger alleviation and improving our welfare,” said one Harare resident. The reason we have been reduced to ‘survival’ and ‘welfare’ is because those we entrusted with the levers of power made decisions on our behalf. In our name they made decisions without having to consult us that led to the economy haemorrhaging to death. The powers given to individuals and entities by the Zimbabwean constitution determine how they exercise power over us. It is, therefore, true that our current political and socio-economic situation is a direct result of our constitutional dispensation. The laws that we have in Zimbabwe have been shaped by the interaction between our politics and our constitution. I know some will argue that the constitution has been subverted as well as serially amended by the Zanu PF government but that is exactly the reason why we need to rewrite the constitution. The constitutional amendment that created the overarching Executive Presidency which is now part of our current constitution has allowed the President to wield more power than that of both houses of parliament. An individual can legislate and overrule all our elected representatives because our constitution allows him/her to. This is not about Robert Mugabe but about both the present and the future. If Robert Mugabe loses the next election his successor will still have the absolute monarchist powers that have been largely responsible for the crisis that we are currently going through. So I would want to say to Harare resident and others – Constitutions do matter. If we are going to shape the society that we want then the best way to articulate our values, beliefs, norms, etc is to have a new constitution.

I know that there are a lot of problems facing ordinary people in our country but we need to put the constitutional debate in context. Costs are not everything. We need to look at the Cost-Benefit analysis to get a clearer picture. I think that whatever money we spend on Constitution making or elections is money well spent if this helps to shape the political direction that we want our nation to take. We should not let those who want the preserve the status quo in the constitutional dispensation scare us by quoting the costs out of context. Once we go down this road we will have others arguing that because elections cost money then holding elections regularly is not a priority. I hope that it is only a minority of our people who hold similar views to those of residents quoted in the ZBC report because Constitutions do matter.