ZIMBABWE AT 43: Hedonophobia, the muted middle and funded voices

Hedonophobia is formally defined as the fear of experiencing pleasure.

It is 43 years of Independence in Zimbabwe.

Today marks the day when the country officially became an independent republic, free from colonial rule.

As with any such young democracy, it has been a topsy turvy ride. There have been good moments and some very dark ones.

Really, really dark ones. Like, super dark.

And yet we are here.

There is a wide rhetoric which claims Independence has not been achieved. This may be because of moral or political persuasion of utterances, but it is a common placement from those who are not fans of the party in government.

And yet, the idea that independence has not happened is strange.

Independence Day was an event, but the liberation struggle is the continual fight for the enhancement of the freedoms and responsibility it comes with.

Independence means building a future with diversified values but a commonly held outcome. Without the existence of independence, this cannot happen.

Zimbabwe’s biggest saving grace is the existence of a vibrant opposition party system. It needs different ideas allowing for dissenting voices.

Yes, there are fears over the civic space and its future following the PVO Bill , but the effect it will have overall is yet to be seen. And just to be clear, those fears are not misplaced. They are real and so far these concerns have been ignored.

But in all of this, many refuse to experience independence, even as all this is representative of a self-determining democracy.

It is the hard yards to stop the gains existing from being destroyed that should be important.

A lot of them will continually call for intervention from elsewhere, when being independent means that like most states in the world, it is up to you to sit and figure it out together.

To be clear, this is not to rally against lobbying. Not at all. One is free to make friends with whom they choose, as is protected by the Constitution of Zimbabwe.

However, when there is no interest in internal resolutions beyond one having everything their way, as a yardstick for independence, then it becomes problematic.

That said, here is also a new growing space, where there is a muted middle. That is people who are accused by both sides of the political extremes of lacking compunction for the ills which are the totem poles for the groups.

There is a less and less space for conscience, with both sides dining from the table of command politics.

And so a significant group either disengages completely, or is removed from the issues.

When that happens, democracy begins to die. You then have people crafting ideas around policy from the position of their extremists and donors.

And with corruption still a stinging issue which has not been sufficiently dealt with, some of these donors will want a return on their investment.

Veritas on its issue on Election Funding said:

This silence on publicly declaring donations and revealing the donors can potentially increase the chances of state capture. If party donors remain unknown outsiders cannot assess whether or to what extent they are influencing the party’s policies and, in the case of donations to the ruling party, outsiders cannot assess whether persons who get public contracts are being rewarded for their donations.

And by this funding, it said:

Since the promulgation of the law over two decades ago, no political party has been prosecuted for breaching it despite frequent claims that political parties receive substantial funding for electioneering from Western countries [in the case of opposition parties] and from China and Russia.

And it is by these thousand cuts that democracy may be at peril. When people are not involved in the periods between elections, where accountability lies, what is left is those who do no care who is elected, as long as they have the right colour.