adminThe changes that we are seeing in public attitudes about homosexuality, identity creations, dressing cosmo-nationalistic politics are just the tip of the political iceberg.
As Bob Dylan once sang, performing to the Baby Boom generation when it was challenging the prevailing political orthodoxies in America, “something is happening here. But you don’t know what it is. Do you, Mr Jones?” Zimbabwe’s political parties would do well to listen to Dylan’s song. There are two new generations of Zimbabweans who have entered into their adulthood, now in their late 20s, 30s and 40s, who are starting to become more influential in the electorate, and as I wrote before, our politics “ayinayo that thing”.
I can’t help but comment on the impeccable display of talent and neatly woven fusion of generation art by Nobuntu and Black Umfolosi. Many high culture revellers would testify to the packed Robert Sibson auditorium something which only happens if it’s “whites’ performing, it’s only then that the space is sold out. A new culture is emerging in Bulawayo, we have to admit.
Bulawayo is beginning to appreciate fine art, as long as it’s worth your dollar. Undoubtedly Nobuntu an all-female acapella group will leave you begging for more with its harmonious kasi-gospel-high culture rhythm which encapsulates all enthusiasts who want a touch of the Almighty, a shebeen experience, an imbube feel and a 60s marabi reminiscence. Much can be said of the legendary Black Umfolosi, an all-male group made up of our grandfathers and fathers.
A group as old as this country with its monumental Unity song which became the emblem of unison in 1987, to me that song not only remarks the beginning of a new Zimbabwe but the end of PF- Zapu and a birth of a new Zimbabwe with Zanu-PF.
Their show was a blend of two generations, different sexes, distinct rhythms but one philosophy; music as a tool of joy, peace and happiness. These were two generations blending to give a formidable feel to the arts industry and complementing each other with experience and skill fused with dynamism and a new harmonious appeal. Such is what our politics is still lacking; the fusion of generations to propel Zimbabwe. Ours is always a contest of how the experienced should be discarded and the new are inexperienced. We fail to acknowledge that a fusion of generations is central to protecting our gains. I am reminded of a character, Kiguunda in Ngugi’s I will Marry When I Want who said “a man brags about his manhood, however, small”.
When we begin to realise that our difference from the rest makes us the best from them and whatever we have should make us proud.
Mind the gap
A new generation is coming of age in Zimbabwe and politicians ignore it at their peril. Generation Y or the Born free, as it’s been called, is expected to be as large as the Baby Boom Generation, and when the full group is of voting age, it could have as much political significance. It is a generation that has thus far shown itself to be disdainful of politics, cynical about political parties and more likely than any other age group to support third-party candidates. At the same time, these young people are engaged in the life of the community and expect to improve it. To write them off politically is to risk someone else mobilising a sleeping giant.
But reaching Generation Y voters will take some doing. They have little interest in retirement security or reforming policies, the dominant political issues of the last few election cycles. They are an ethnically diverse and, in many ways, a politically progressive group; as a result, more of them call themselves liberals than do their predecessors in Generation X and even the Baby Boom Generation. But their political worldview contains a complicated mix of liberal and conservative perspectives.
Either Democrats or Republicans could plausibly win broad favour with this generation, but only if they can find the right message and deliver it with authenticity in a medium that young people are tuned to.
Political professionals usually dismiss Generation Y because it votes at a much lower rate than older Zimbabweans. Yet even at this depressed rate, voters under 25 years old will constitute a possible majority of the electorate in 2018. They will rival in size other coveted swing groups such as “soccer moms” and “office-park dads.” More important, they are the future electorate.
The Long Goodbye
The young voters of Generation Y in many ways represent the culmination of years of disaffection with politics and traditional political institutions. Their grandparents or great-grandparents are the Silent generation, the electorate’s strongest partisans whose enduring ties to the Ruling Party were forged during the Second Chimurenga years and the formation of the modern welfare state. These seniors grew up at the height of civic engagement and collective community in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, banned in some streets, walking into Mozambique, the oldest of them helping the freedom fighters with food and clothes. And as study after study has demonstrated, they continue to participate in politics at much higher rates than their progeny.
Because generations are rough categories, defined with different cut-off dates by different researchers – and because voting and polling results are often reported not by generation at all but by other age groupings the data are not tidy. Nonetheless the overall picture is unmistakable.
The revolutionary Surge
The children of the liberation heroes, Generation X, were thus born into a world of increasing cynicism about government, and they grew up during the Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara taste of power, when government was under systematic assault coerced into a GNU and social ills were blamed on a failed welfare state.
Their depressed outlook was further fuelled by a multitude of grief from rising divorce rates to the economic recession to the crack epidemic to the early 2000s HIV explosion that made Zimbabwe a dangerous place. In 2008, as Generation X came of voting age, only a handful percentage of people under 25 voted in that harmonised election.
And this generation remains the most disgruntled and disenfranchised feeling electorate. It is a staple of political science that people’s political identities are largely formed in their youths and are influenced not just by their families, schools and religious institutions but also by the political times in which they come of age. Moreover, studies show that these influences endure. As Warren E Miller and J Merrill Shanks demonstrate in the percentage of any electorate changes over time largely because one generation dies out and another enters, not because contemporary events alter party identifications across generations.
The view from the 20s
The nation’s youngest voters are by far its most socially liberal voters. More than half of adults under 30 think that gays and lesbians should have a legal right to get married. Younger voters are also more supportive of affirmative action than the rest of the electorate and hold a more positive view of immigrants. But this liberalism is not necessarily tied to other social issues. It does not translate into more support for abortion rights, feminism or relaxed sexual morals. People under 30 are no more pro-choice than their predecessors who fought for abortion rights in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Unlike the X Generation, which linked many issues such as civil rights, abortion choice, women’s rights and sexual freedom into a coherent agenda, Gen Y is untroubled by simultaneous expressions of open-mindedness and traditionalism.
While everyone bemoans the fact that young people do not participate in politics, neither major party has done much to reach out to them.
In the last three election cycles, the Revolutionary party has focused on youth through the empowerment programmes and the widely revered National youth service. It is remarkable that the party has maintained an edge with young voters given this utter disconnection from them.
The party has largely chosen to communicate the same, older-oriented message to all voters. But young voters have a different set of concerns than their elders. For instance, everyone is worried about the economy, but older people feel the recession in the declining value of their 401(k)s and the rising cost of health services; the young, meanwhile, worry about job security and wages. Young voters’ concerns about education consistently one of their top interests is also distinct.
They support more funding as they also are having a difficult time paying for college, whether that means a four-year bachelor’s degree from a prestigious university or a diploma from a teachers’ college.
The need to work while in school and the later burden of being bonded if ever you were on cadetship programme puts an enormous financial strain on the many young people whose parents await to reap the fruits of their investment in their child.
Today’s rising tuitions, the less opportunities for jobs post college has exacerbated this situation and this is the message of assurance needed by Generation Y from the revolutionary party.
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Online Reporter