Contemporary and sophisticated forms of discrimination in Zimbabwe, a thorn in our back

DECEMBER 2010

Contemporary and sophisticated forms of discrimination in Zimbabwe, a thorn in our back.

Non-discrimination and equality in the administration of rights is the often unspoken cornerstone of any discourse around Human Rights and their protection and promotion. As the world focuses its attention on discrimination on International Human Rights Day, 10 December, it is important to introspect and check how this phenomenon is manifesting itself today, and hopefully as encouraged by this year’s theme, “ speak out. Stop discrimination” On the continent, and indeed in Zimbabwe when the subject comes up there is an often too easy resort to see discrimination, racism, racial discrimination and related intolerances as something that is done against us, rather than something that we perpetuate. While the legacies of the abhorrent slave trade, colonialism and apartheid are still bright and luminous in our minds, intolerance and discrimination based on race, origins, decent, ethnicity, gender and other grounds is a subject, that does not belong to the past, but is alive today, albeit in some “ sophisticated and new” ways.

The Political Crisis in the Ivory Coast seems to be taking a decidedly ethnic twist, informed by a warped understanding of who is Ivorian. There are recent pronouncements which have been made and promoted by some sectors in Ivorian society to the effect that, Presidential Candidate Outtara, cannot be President of the Ivory Coast, because he is of Burkinabe origins, in spite of the fact that all objective observers of the recently ended Elections there are unequivocal that he was the choice of the Ivorian people to lead the country. While Ivory Coast presents the latest example, this phenomenon has been seen elsewhere on the continent, with Presidential candidates being de-campaigned or being deemed unfit to serve because of their perceived or actual ethnic background and descent. This practice is as ridiculous as saying Nyerere shouldn’t have been the President of Tanzania because he was of Tutsi ethnicity, or that Kaunda was from Malawi, Mugabe from Mozambique or Obama from Kenya. In Zimbabwe, this dimension takes a slightly different twist in terms of political platforms. Whenever a political platform is set up outside the confines of the Capital and is led by someone from outside the Dominant Zezuru groups, the analysis is quick to use as its first tool of analysis, tribe and region. While the analysis is sometimes correct, it is not correct that all platforms of that nature are tribal at their centre, with a vision that is regional or tribal. This thinking more often than not, betrays some prejudices, which we know are wrong, but have and try to hide behind seemingly cogent analysis, using otherwise noble frames of thought.  The result is often the practice of latent discrimination based on ethnicity, with the less dominant groups being the victims of an unwritten code that dictates that they cannot take leadership positions at the highest levels.

On a global scale, the practice of discrimination can be seen in the religious and racial profiling that seems to be common place in the west, where often, grounds for suspicion of criminality, stem from the way one looks and their skin color rather than any pursuit of evidence based thought. Zimbabweans in the SADC region, sometimes are the victims of similar but nationality based profiling. The real unfortunate thing, for such immigrants from Zimbabwe, is that if one is subjected to such discriminatory and unfair practices, there is hardly any support from ones state or hope for intervention based on arguably the primary responsibility of any state, to protect its citizens at home and abroad. Or indeed the primary focus of any foreign mission to look out for the interests of its citizens away from home. This appears to be a new form of sophisticated discrimination with the state as perpetrator. Citizens whether at home or abroad, still deserve the protection and sanctuary of their state, irrespective of where they are domiciled. Retrogressive thinking perpetuated by the Zimbabwean government seems to suggest that one cedes the rights of citizenship and the states obligation over them, once they cross the boarder. The Diaspora and how the Zimbabwean Government relates with it, has brought out an interesting dynamic around systematic discrimination based on geographic location as well as perceived political sympathies. The Zimbabwean Diaspora is thus found in a hard place, where they are prone to discrimination of a racial nature based on their descent, while at the same time, there is no reasonable action that can be taken by their home state, because it abhors the fact that they left in the first place, in search of economic and political stability. At points of trouble, the state conveniently forgets that for most people in the Diaspora, the choice to leave was a Hobson’s choice, based on the states inability to honor its obligations on the home front, and its perpetuation of a rogue state divorced from political and economic stability.  It also conveniently forgets, that for the greater part of the decade, the economy was not the land, but, to all intents and purposes, the Diaspora. Because of perceptions of the Diaspora as hostile to the state, the Diaspora is then effectively shut out from political processes like the constitution making process and elections, which they should be party to, and other forms of economic activity.

Speaking of political processes, Zimbabwe in 2010, showed us that outside the sophisticated new forms of discrimination that are in our midst, race still plays a huge part in our politics. This was abundantly clear during the Constitutional Reform Process Outreach meetings, where being Zimbabwean was defined by the color of ones skin, as non-black Zimbabweans were sometimes chased away from meetings, and where ZANU PF sponsored a definition of citizenship based on the color of ones skin and having a rural home. While there is nothing wrong with being black, or indeed having a rural home, such narrow notions of citizenship are very discriminatory given the high levels of mobility on the continent, the political and economic history of the country, and the phenomenon that is globalization. Such practices conveniently discriminate colored’s, Black Zimbabweans of foreign descent, whites, Indians and other none-black or indigenous Zimbabweans.

Another disturbing contemporary form of discrimination, which is worth noting in Zimbabwe is that practiced on Zimbabweans of foreign descent. Zimbabwe is home to many people of Zambian, Malawian, Congolese and Mozambican decent. These people, some of them 3^rd generation citizens, some longer, find themselves in today’s Zimbabwe derided, even by the highest political authorities in the land as “ Ma Born location”, MaBhurandaya and other derogatory terms that seek to ostracize and alienate them. The registrar general’s office, often weighs in with a blatant misinterpretation of the Citizenship act, and bars these people from participating in elections until they renounce a citizenship that they never had, with a country that they have never called home. As a consequence, in spite of the right to citizenship through birth that is enshrined in the constitution, a lot of these people loose theirs, and exist in flux, being in Zimbabwe but considered aliens, and being aliens who are considered Zimbabweans by their countries of origins. The discrimination goes beyond the political processes and notions of self, and continues to find expression in systematic discrimination in terms of economic opportunities, social cohesion and benefits. While large groups of these people can be found in High density suburbs, farming and mining areas, you can be certain that the bulk of them did not have access to land ownership and will not benefit from the current notions of indigenization.

As the world marks non-discrimination as this years rallying theme, in Zimbabwe, we need to check our attitudes towards women and how we relate to them. All the dimensions raised above, affect them in some times more abhorrent ways than they do man. Often women are the victims of multiple layers of discrimination, first on the basis of sex, then on all the above basis. Imagine being a woman, of foreign descent, handicapped and lesbian. While it is accepted that there are some practices that political leaders hold as morally repugnant, with respect to their opinions, morality cannot and should not be used as a basis for discrimination. To accept these people, especially LGBTI’s are humans, is not to support what they do, it is to accept, that they are equal, with equal rights as all of us, including the right not to be discriminated against on the basis of their sexual orientation.

The call to stop discrimination is call to accept that equality and non-discrimination are at the centre of human rights and democratization discourse. It is call to constitutional rule and respect of the clear none-discrimination clauses in our constitution and universal declarations that we choose often enough, to apply selectively in a discriminatory manner.