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Zimbabwe has a history of violence, in both the public and the private sphere. Pre-colonial narratives disclose on-going conflict within clans over succession, and between clans over the process of state-building. The nineteenth century brought invasions by Zulu off-shoots and the occupation of the western part of the country by Mzilikazi’s Ndebele, followed by European invasion and conquest. Violence became the instrument again to dislodge coercive settler rule and achieve independence with majority rule in 1980. By 1980, Zimbabweans could hope for a peaceful development, but too many had learned a fearful lesson – power is gained and retained by the use of force. The use of state perpetrated violence as a political weapon has marred our post-independence history and deprived us of the opportunity to establish a democracy based on the will of the people.
The private sphere is less transparent, but few would dispute that violence is also prevalent in our personal relationships and in our institutions, whether it take the form of domestic disputes, disciplining of children, or sexual assaults on young girls and women.
The effects of violence and torture on human beings, whether it occurs in the public sphere, perpetrated by political enemies or state institutions, or whether it occurs within families, has been well documented by research in many countries. While some personalities are less affected, many bear deep scars which cripple their ability to form normal relationships throughout their lives. Unable to trust other people, the victims, traumatized and often emotionally disabled, live with suppressed anxieties and fears, while the perpetrators’ guilt and their memories of what they have done to others leads all too often to mental disturbance.
We are talking here not just of the effect on the victims; perpetrators of violence, too, are affected. Violence takes two, just like the tango. But violence in Zimbabwe does not conform to the classic dance routine. The normal, right-side-up and justice-based version of violence in fairy tales and mythology presents us with the evil, ugly (often male) perpetrator, who ravishes the innocent, beautiful (usually female) victim. The perpetrator is punished, the victim is rescued by prince charming, and equilibrium is restored.
That is the fairy tale. The Zimbabwean reality is quite different – in fact the very opposite. In Zimbabwe, the perpetrator is excused, if not glorified. It is the victim who is blamed for not avoiding the violence. Whether it is a girl who is raped (she should not have been there, or have tempted the perpetrator), a child who is beaten (he was disobedient), a wife who is thrown out of the house (she was a witch, or she did not serve her husband well enough), a white farmer beaten to a pulp (his ancestors stole the land and he didn’t give it back), or the tortured opposition member (he was working against a legitimate government) – the perpetrator is blameless. It is the victim who is seen to have caused the violence. In the public sphere, we have had amnesty after amnesty excusing perpetrators of unspeakable brutality and cruelty performed in the name of the state or of a political party. Domestic violence is routinely dismissed or ignored not only by the police who receive reports, but also by family members who try to persuade a woman that to be a victim is her destiny.
How did violence become so deeply ingrained in our culture, our relations with each other and our relations with the state? And how can the victims be held responsible? Is there no obligation on the perpetrator to stay his hand, to contain his emotions, and to find peaceful ways to resolve disputes?
Apparently we approve of physical force to achieve, not tranquility, but submission. And this lesson is learned, not first in the political or public sphere; it is learned initially in the home. Most children experience violence first in the home, then in the school. At home many – not all of course – witness violence between adults, most frequently perpetrated by their fathers against their mothers. They learn that it is acceptable; it is the privilege of the perpetrator and must be suffered and tolerated by the victims. Not because the perpetrator is right, but because he has the power. A substantial number of girl children experience sexual assault from early ages; they learn to suffer and to keep silent. And almost all children are “disciplined” by physical beating. By the time they reach school they are well socialized to accept beating, pinching, and slapping by teachers, which not infrequently becomes unacceptably abusive, intended to humiliate and rob a child of his dignity rather than to punish. Children learn to become victims of superior force backed up by the authority of a revered institution.
The next step in their socialization for violence is even more frightening – they are taught to become perpetrators of violence. This occurs in the training of police, where the young people are told that they must have the civilian beaten out of them. But it also takes place in some of the “best” of our secondary schools, particularly boys schools. The “prefect system”, passed down from the English “public school”, the molder of colonial officials, requires senior pupils, rather than teachers, to become responsible for the discipline of younger boys. Their duty is not to be leaders by example, by creativity and by sensitivity; their duty is to punish. They are permitted to exert considerable brutality, humiliating younger children by forcing them into uncomfortable positions, crawling on gravel on hands and knees, carrying heavy bricks. School administrations with little understanding of the means of developing leadership and morality support the prefects in the name of school discipline. There is little protection for the victimized. In one prominent religious boys secondary school a headmaster recently told his pupils that they must not report to their parents if they are punished by prefects; those who do have been further victimized. Where are the checks which would prevent the system from becoming abusive? What are these boys learning, both prefects and their victims? They are learning that there is no justice, that brutality and sadism rule. They are learning that when it is your turn to be victim, take the medicine and be quiet, and wait until it’s your turn to perpetrate violence yourself. You will get back at those who tortured you by torturing other innocents. Boys at this particular school in the junior forms will complain about their treatment, but those in the senior forms will tell you it’s all right “because we were treated like that”. Do as was done to you, not as you would like others to do to you.
We should not be surprised then that the experience of the family and the school is carried over smoothly into the public sphere. We are a nation of victims and perpetrators of violence. When we are not in power we will be abused and suffer injustices. When we see that we are being exploited and cheated by those holding political power we will shrug our shoulders and say “what can we do?” But when we get our own chance, we will be every bit as brutal as those who tortured us. How else do we explain the ministers who sit happily at the cabinet table with those who tortured them a generation ago? Victims of trumped-up “arms cache” charges preside over the same fabrications against others twenty years later. They seal their lips, keep quiet about their own mistreatment, and allow the torture of others.
As a people our solution to all conflicts is not to seek justice, to instill respect for human dignity and protect the powerless. Our solution is to resort to the coercion which is allowed by unrestricted power, a coercion which robs both victim and perpetrator of their ability to respect each other. We teach our children in our homes and in our schools that the powerful rule, with brutality if they choose; the weak must not offend them or provoke, for there is no justice, no reconciliation, only an endless chain joining one cohort to the next – first we become victims, then violators.
Are we surprised that our political life is plagued by violence and coercion? We shouldn’t be; it is all one seemless garment. Once we accept that human beings can be humiliated and abused we take on the roles, depending on our status in a given situation. Ian Smith taught us that only superior violence could dislodge a recalcitrant undemocratic regime; but once that regime was dislodged, we continued to allow violence to be the ultimate determinant in our political relationships. We simply took over the machinery from our predecessors and turned it on each other.
This is our heritage; will it also become our future? Is it possible to change? How do we build a democratic society, where many voices are heard, where persuasion and enlightenment prevail to create a political consensus, not violence and submission? It is not easy, given such a legacy. Those who are cowed, as are most Zimbabweans today, would rather suffer in silence than raise their voices in their institutions or march in the streets to exercise their rights. Journalists write about street protests as if they were inevitably violent, failing to understand the non-violent nature of civil disobedience. The present political opposition has seen that the violent way has brought disaster, and have vowed this time to dislodge a tyrannical regime through non-violent action. But they cannot resist using violence and intimidation (the threat of violence) themselves; they already seek to use coercion to establish hegemony in what they consider their own territory. Is it the only way they know? Have they not yet understood that the democracy and social justice which they claim to espouse cannot be built through coercion?
Change is always possible, but it takes a great amount of commitment and effort by those who wish to eliminate this culture of intimidation – violence on the one side and fear and submission on the other. It is, however, necessary, unless we are prepared to continue to replace one cycle with another of the same, with new perpetrators and new victims each time around. What can be done?
The most important thing is for political leaders to speak for non-violence, to practice it within their own organizations, to teach their followers the discipline of non-violence and to punish those who depart from its principles. And then they must go further, to teach them democratic and non-violent means of political organization; loyalties need to be built by open policy debate, argument and persuasion, in order to create a new politics that depends not just on tribe or personality and artificial unities, but binds people on the basis of ideas, and commitment to just solutions by leaders who respect others as human beings.
The day has not yet come for a public reckoning in which those who have brought suffering and confusion to our nation will be held to account. But some day it has to happen. We allowed the Rhodesian government and their adherents to go free for the sake of independence; we allowed the perpetrators of gukuhurundi to go free because we were forced to submit to them; we have so far allowed the perpetrators of violence against the MDC to go free. Only those who commit violence against members of ZANU PF are called to account. The impunity must come to an end. If we are ever to end the acceptability of public violence as a political instrument, people who promote it have to be punished, and punished publicly. That is the beginning. It will have to be accompanied by steps to build a political culture based on respect for difference, and the development of skills and commitment to peaceful methods of conflict resolution.
But what about our socialization as young people? What about the violence and abuse in our homes and our schools? It is important that we also deal with these problems, to stop our youth from learning to become victims and perpetrators at a young age. Violence in our institutions can only be effectively dealt with over a period of time, with the lead being taken by a government that itself eschews violence. Government must create the moral leadership which makes abuse in the schools unacceptable socially and legally. There are already strict controls on physical punishment in schools, but they are largely ignored by staff and administration, and parents who complain on behalf of their children find their children further victimized. This attitude can only be stamped out by a Ministry of Education committed to do so and by creating a framework for whistle blowing and complaints that will not punish the complainant. The same applies to violence in the home. It requires a cultural change, which comes slowly, and will only take place if a public mood which condemns violence is created by social and political leaders, who then introduce legislation and enforcement measures to reduce it.
For the moment we continue, entrapped in our various cycles of violence. Those who dream of an early political change to rescue us from this tragedy, need to study carefully how deeply all this abuse and the trauma it causes is embedded in society, and commit themselves to a long-term programme of social change. The peace-builders have a great deal of work to do. They must not only heal the wounds of past violence; they must also show the people that violence of any kind, whether public or private, degrades a human being, whether he is victim or perpetrator. Only when we are prepared to change some of these essential elements of our culture will we be in a position to take meaningful strides towards a peaceful Zimbabwe based on justice, not power.
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