Politics and violence

Thursday, 26 January 2012 00:00

In a December 13, 2006 feature article on Politics and Violence, Elizabeth Frazer of Oxford University and Kimberly Hutchings of the London School of Economics compared and contrasted the political theory and philosophy of political violence as propounded by legendary Frantz Fanon and prolific author and commentator Hannah Arendt.

We have an amazing number of African politicians who subscribe to the doctrine of flagellating political opponents into submission. Campaigns are characterised by sloganeering, song and dance, as well as street and stadium chants that reflect everything on euphoria and hysterics, and absolutely nothing on policy.
Whipping up emotions and conspiring to demonise political opponents has sadly become synonymous with African politicking, and it is this primitive culture that breeds political violence.

Frantz Fanon generally views violence as a means necessary to political action, an organic force or energy that is inevitable among the oppressed. He attacks vehemently the doctrine of realism as expressed by the politics of violent domination, something so natural about imperial expansionism, especially as conceptualised by the West.

Fanon argues for the justification of violent resistance, for liberationist forms of violence. He argues that trying to imitate Western style liberal parliamentary forms of party politics cannot and will not stop political violence on the African continent, not least because it is a meaningless window dressing over an environment of economically unfree and marginalised peoples.

Fanon does not see political violence as a discreet instrument to be used by unscrupulous politicians for individual or collective good. But the question many thinkers keep asking is whether or not violence is a necessary aspect of politics or is in itself destructive to the idea of politics.

Hannah Arendt argues that violence is unpredictable, and as such end-reasoning in favour of violence is anti-political. According to her it is a profound error to naturalise violence or to describe it as an "organic force or energy." What Frantz Fanon argues for is revolutionary violence - the inevitable uprising of oppressed people which comes as people reach a point where they cannot take repression any longer. This is what largely brought down colonial empires across the world, especially in places like Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa.

There is what this writer will call repressive violence, or violence targeted at silencing the voice of the majority or the weak, something colonialists tried in vain when they jailed, persecuted and killed freedom fighters across the world. Repressive violence has been used by post-colonial dictatorships like the British-sponsored Idi Amin of Uganda, the US-backed Joseph Mobutu of Congo and many of the ruthless US-backed Latin American dictatorships; like those of leaders like Somoza or Pinochet.

Then there is reactive violence, or retaliatory violence, something Zimbabwean senator Obert Gutu says is the case with political violence attributable to his party, the MDC-T. The revolutionary perspective is based on the political theory and philosophy that says politics and violence are inextricably intertwined. When Abel Muzorewa and his like-minded advocated for a violence-free road to freedom after Ian Smith's 1965 Unilateral Declaration of Independence, the majority of Zimbabweans were of the revolutionary conviction that an independent Zimbabwe was only going to come via the barrel of the gun; and that way it came.

The neo-liberal perspective of democracy is based on the political theory and philosophy that advocates in concept and theory that politics must by definition be antithetical to violence. This is the perspective that made the MDC-T believe that they could march to Zimbabwe's State House to do an unchallenged "final push" on President Mugabe, with all security institutions watching admiringly at these "peaceful protesters," as the Western funders of the MDC-T called them then, just like they said about the armed rebels that rose against Gaddafi in Libya. But violence begets violence.

The idea that politics and violence are intertwined assumes that power is a tool to dominate. Imperialists, tyrants and dictators all work from the premise that power is about domination and control, be that domination territorial or people-targeted.

Elizabeth Frazer and Kimberly Hutchings looked at a few theories on political violence, and we may want to pursue some of these in the context of this piece. There is the Machiavellian argument that says a successful prince must be an admirer of the use of violence, or "willing to use violence judiciously".

So it makes sense for a nuclear-armed US to preach of its intentions to violently stop Iran from pursuing nuclear programs. In support of this theory is Thomas Hobbes who argues that the power of a dominating body only succeeds if it is centred on the sword. Marx Weber concurs when he asserts that political action is the domination of a territory by means of violence. These thinkers lived during the times of the politics of conquest, and not much has changed ever since.

Political actors like NATO, the UN, nation states, or so-called world leaders;all openly share noble goals of justice, prosperity, freedom and peace; values mutually shared with economic and religious actors. The pursuit of these goals becomes so distinct for political actors because they are able to legitimise and monopolise the use of force. The West does it religiously in pursuit of imperialist goals, dictators do it to retain power, and super powers do it to trash on weaker but resourced nations.

When Gaddafi decided to use force against the Western-backed Benghazi rebels, his argument was that Libya had every right to thwart armed rebellion; itself an expression of political violence, and his legitimate expectation was that the UN and other nation states would condemn armed rebellion against his internationally recognised government. It was his intended use of force that was vehemently condemned by Western countries, legitimising their own stronger intention to use more lethal force than Gaddafi could ever be capable of doing.

So in the name of saving armed rebels (or innocent unarmed civilians, as Western media called them); France moved a motion for what it called "a no fly zone" against Libya. Nigeria and South Africa voted for this resolution alongside eight other members of the United Nations Security Council, and that way Resolution 1973 was passed.

So Gaddafi was stopped from cracking down on rebels that were advancing to topple him, and the West joined the rag-tag rebels by providing aerial cover all the way from Benghazi to Sirte, via Tripoli.
Instead of Gaddafi's aeroplanes spraying bombs over Benghazi we saw NATO's high-tech warplanes and US drones devastatingly destroying just about every town and city in Libya, mercilessly killing 50 000 people in the process. Everything bombed was simply labelled a "legitimate target," including babies.

Many human rights activists view political violence from the viewpoint of the political dominator who routinely oppresses weaker peoples. For these and most of the leftists, politics must be viewed from the viewpoint of the oppressed. Of course this viewpoint leads to revolutionary violence - a resolve to resist and defeat oppression.

To keep in line with the revolutionary dimension, the MDC-T has play-acted and exaggerated its position of a victim to alleged Zanu-PF brutality and violence. This position has been well-supported by Western media and it is the same position being touted in the run up to the 2012 election. It is important for the MDC-T to play the victim so that their own violence can be viewed as revolutionary, not the imperialist reactionary project it really is.

Revolutionary violence is what Karl Marx predicted when he said the working class would eventually overthrow the elite capitalist repressive state. There has to be a distinction between violence of reactionaries and that of revolutionaries, just like there is a distinction between violence of the state, of government, of political parties, of trade unions and that of the proletariat.

Fanon dwelt a lot on progressive violence for freedom (revolutionary violence), and he attacked repressive violence for domination, especially by imperialist powers. When you have a conflict between a liberation movement like Zanu-PF and a neo-liberal puppet political party like the MDC-T, the question to ask is whether you are talking about violence for freedom or violence for domination. Is Zanu-PF determined to protect the hard-won freedom of Zimbabweans, or the party is simply trying to dominate over its political opponents?
Is the MDC-T a victim of violence for domination or they are a legitimate target in the fight for total independence and freedom of the country? In its own undisputed acts of political violence, is the MDC-T engaging in violence for freedom, or simply doing the bidding of Western imperial dominators that are after Zimbabwe's natural resources?

Morgan Tsvangirai is viewed from a Weberian viewpoint of a "tragic figure" who is courageous enough to take on the violence of politics, and also courageous enough to face the possible fatal consequences of its effects.
This is the image portrayed in his book "At the Deep End," written on his behalf by his political handlers. The tragedy in Tsvangirai is less in what his political opponents may want to do to him, and more in his willingness to sacrifice the sovereignty of his own country at the altar of the politics of puppetry, the altar of evil lucre of treachery.

Perhaps John Locke was right when he said political power by its very nature is "the power of life and death."
The ignominious brutality of imperialist aggression in the Middle East can only be understood when one imagines the US losing its global political power to smaller countries with globally strategic resources like oil. It may be the same context and view for individual politicians and political parties that treat elections as matters of life and death.

Constitutions are made on the assumption that humans are rational in their pursuit of power, but that is not always the case; otherwise Morgan Tsvangirai could have left the leadership of the MDC in 2009, when his term constitutionally expired, and Lovemore Madhuku would be doing other things right now, instead of overstaying his leadership at the National Constitutional Assembly.

Political violence occurs at many levels. It is difficult to successfully uphold the theory of politics without violence, much as it would desirable. From a rule of law perspective, violence should be held only in reserve for purposes of legitimate punishment and for defence.

But even in this context it is still contentious to distinguish between justifiable and unjustifiable violence, legitimate and illegitimate violence, or good and bad forms and uses of violence or force.

The world advocated for by Hannah Arendt is the world of politics free of violence and this is what all human rights defenders would want to stand for. But the very countries calling themselves "civilised" are the Mafia dons who have killed millions and millions of defenceless civilians in weaker countries like Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Grenada, Chile, Vietnam, to name just but a few.

It is this writer's wish to remind every reader that violence, whether bad or good, is destructive and tragic. It is in this context that even an evil as bad as Western meddling in the internal affairs of Zimbabwe is not, and cannot be good enough a reason for political actors to engage in acts of violence. The best is to make people aware of the evil before them so they can reject it through the ballot box. When alerted in good faith, people will take note.

Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!

l Reason Wafawarova is a political writer based in SYDNEY, Australia.