adminSharon Hofisi Legal Letters
We often hear that “interest is the mother of attention and attention is the mother of memory”. I have this extraordinary tendency of paying attention to new things. I love to institutionalise memory. I am privileged to be one of those who enjoy the worlds of politics, philosophy and law.
I have chosen Mahatma Gandhi because he was a great philosopher, politician and lawyer. I am writing about the impact of his seven deadly social sins on the law and politics. Of course some argue that Gandhi simply developed the sermon of Lewis Donaldson which was preached around 1925. At least Gandhi was not like those who treat other faiths as fantasy and reduce religion to meaningless rituals practised mindlessly.
Mohandas Gandhi’s admonition, or borrowed warning if you want, was written to the world in the form of seven social sins. Chief among them is “politics without principle”. We have seen the Mnangagwa administration through the new principle that no one is above the political party. The primary elections have done away with the Orwellian democratic principle of “some animals are more equal than others”.
Politicians in any political party or those who want to participate under the tag of independent candidates must always demonstrate their principles which unite them to the local and national electorate. One such principle is the need to show that they won’t be violent before and when elected.
We have recently learnt through social media that Jessie Majome is pulling out of her party’s primary elections because of certain personal principles. If that is true, we wait to see how long-serving politicians across the political divide can continue to transform the face of politics in this country and beyond. Alternatively, did she read into the results of the ZANU-PF primaries where long-serving members were elbowed out?
Elsewhere, we have witnessed factions and factional wars within political parties. We have witnessed resignations by politicians only for them to resurface under new political leadership. We have witnessed governments of national unity; splits of political parties; marriages of inconvenience between or among political parties; and so forth. In all this, we demand ”politics with principle”.
Gandhi also warned us of the existence of “wealth without work”. We have heard of lifestyle audits that never were. We have established corruption courts, one, two or three, and that’s fine. We have at least shown that we are committed to ending impunity in political and administrative corruption. I once asked whether these courts are some kind of new wine. How are they different from our ordinary courts? We still wait to evaluate the efficacy of these courts but strongly hope that they will not be politicised. Those who man them must not be at dressing training.
Gandhi also warns against”‘commerce without morality”. The problems associated with cash shortages are biting the common man: everywhere it’s about 20 percent additional rate for those paying through swipe or EcoCash, Telecash or Nettcash. Those who saved their salaries in United States dollars before the cash crisis cannot access their cash in that currency.
Where is Gandhi’s warning about “pleasure without conscience” or “education without character”. We read and hear that congregants are being fleeced of their hard-earned monies. Pastor, priest, prophet, teacher, evangelist, bishop and so forth are maligned. Who gives heed to Gandhi’s “worship without sacrifice”?
But Gandhi’s warning against “science without humanity” must be taken seriously. When I was growing up, I would just see medical personnel and school authorities harming us under the guise of compulsory immunisation. In this country where we haven’t entrenched a right to health, the Ministry of Heath must warn parents and advise them and own up when children die or are hospitalised during mass immunisation programmes.
It must work with faculties of law in Zimbabwe to teach medical law. Medical personnel, school authorities, parents, church institutions and schoolchildren must be warned beforehand on immunisation programmes.
We have recently heard about cultivation of cannabis for medicinal purposes. Zimbabwe is writhing in agony because of parental and juvenile delinquency related to the use of dagga (also known as weed, Nigerian grass, hem, mbanje, dhobho, muzii, mashizha, and so forth depending on the community using it).
The statutory instrument on the legalisation of a special species of cannabis must be revisited in line with the national laws on health. It is regrettable that this instrument was passed before the completion of the reform of laws on public health. The minister and parliamentarians may have debated and provided explanations through radio platforms but they must do more as contemplated by the Constitution.
Our Constitution ends on the right to basic health care and not right to health. Basic health care doesn’t need an explanation – it’s basic. What will be the economic and health implications of those who grow and smoke it simultaneously? What does it mean to say “medicinal purposes”?
Who is qualified to administer such medicine; the farmer or the medical personnel? Well, the licensing authority perhaps canvassed this in its licences for growers and researchers. We wait to scrutinise the licences. What we know at the moment is that the recent statutory instrument speaks highly to growers and researchers but does not do so highly on why smokers, religious groups like Rastafarians, and traditionalists can be protected.
We must not forget that each instrument must not be ultra vires the enabling legislation and the Constitution. We hope to see researches and expert presentations on how the new science on dagga, for instance, will improve humanity in Zimbabwe and beyond our borders. We also wait to see writings on the extent to which the cannabis instrument fits into national health laws and the Constitution.
Those who want to understand Gandhi’s philosophy in detail can also read the explanations by Gandhi’s grandson, Arun. I have learnt that Arun was given the notes on the seven sins about three months before his grandfather was shot by a Hindu extremist, Nathuram Godse. This is how the world lost a non-violent politician and Indian nationalist.
Essentially, the philosophical work of Gandhi basically enables social groups to see the relationship between disciplines such as law and politics in a grand way. Free choices and methods of understanding or standing under different ways of doing politics or the law are made in marathon or some other ways. The philosophy of a government, incumbent president, individual minister, parliamentary portfolio committee, lecturer, parliamentarian or great personality like Gandhi can produce a significant impact on how a nation’s knowledge base and governance milieu are organised.
The soul of a nation’s politics doesn’t necessarily end on the ubiquity of politics. It needs citizens to have a basic understanding of legal philosophies that are applicable to their society. These philosophies were espoused by positivists (who define law as it is, whether just or unjust); realists (who focus on the practical side of political and legal developments); utilitarians (who focus on the law as it ought to be) and normative thinkers (who focus on ethical values in the law) enable us to articulate or demonstrate the weaknesses or strength of a political or legal development. The argument above makes sense simply because any serious critic must first strive to understand the philosophy which undergirds the discipline which he purports to analyze.
Failure to do so leads to one obvious end result: Not being taken seriously.
It is argued here that the critical link between law and politics must be understood from the perspective of the ordinary and constitutional politician. Even those despised as pedestrian thinkers or laypersons have something to offer to the professed expert in law or politics. Those who deny the reality of inclusivity or participatory governance or development do so at their own peril. They may need to read the animated video on rules for rulers.
The video speaks to politicians through rules of law. The politician uses the mindset of his subjects to create his data set on how to consolidate or lose his power. Predictably, any national government which fails to deal with the importance of public perception will easily move towards ephemeral breakdown. It will be voted out of power in countries that have electoral systems. As such, any ordinary politician who uses experience in government to ignore constitutional politicians (every citizen is a constitutional politician in that he tries to govern using the constitution as a measure) may not last beyond one electoral cycle in a nation where elections are part of the national politics.
Ideologies, policies, constitutional ethos, human factor content, personality appeals, political philosophies, societal contributions, religious inclinations, have to be periodically sold to the public for consumption. The current political philosophy “‘vox populi vox Dei” was understood by philosophers of old. The world has been struggling to find the author of the Latin phrase. I would have loved to acknowledge the person’s copyright.
For ZANU-PF to use the term, the following comes out clearly: the phrase speaks to the need to prevent one person from having sovereign administration of affairs. By nature, all people are equal, have the same rank, use the same common faculties, and are at liberty to choose whatever form of government they like best.
Doubtlessly, this catchy phrase, which was first used around 1327 as true maxim on the governance of whole kingdoms and nations, fits into the events related to Operation Restore Legacy or the military-assisted transition which ushered in the current political dispensation. Don’t ask me to go into the specifics of the event because the facts are now common cause.
The advantages of including the people are plenty: there is a measure of democracy; inclusivity, and recognition by rulers that legitimacy comes from the people. The people are given as the absolute sources of power; a ruler can even woo people by minimising his key players. He can listen to what they say on social media, classrooms, churches and some other rendezvous. He can benefit from his or her key players who associate with different religious.
A leader must strive to show connections between the law and politics. Law enables him to see that social institutions and relationships are destroyed by various politics: “politics of the stomach”, “imposition of candidates”, “immaturity”, “sexist”, “repression”, “egoism”, “tribal cards”, ”Machiavellian”, “Hobbesian”, “isolation” and so forth.
Zimbabwe is currently experiencing a “new” kind of politics under President Emmerson Mnangagwa. Both domestically and globally, he has presented his political administration as one that is built upon “economy over politics”. Some Zimbabweans criticise the approach. Others want to give the incumbent President time to address economic problems even beyond the election whereas others move to replace him. Whatever the course of action, Zimbabwe’s current administration must not appear to be losing the ethics derived from economic disciplines such as development economics. The gains of development economics are barely doubted now in any part of the world.
In quick note form therefore, development economics teaches us that economic development is about building bridges for prosperity. Its obvious advantage is the need for inclusive development. Added to this are gains such as minimum government; creation of jobs and wealth; improvement of quality of life; restructuring of our economy; inflation control; infrastructure development; improved health care facilities for the disadvantaged and vulnerable citizens; creation of a fair weather for business; high revenues through a wide tax base; and so forth.
I admit that I am no fundi in economics but at a basic level, economies can be transformed from stagnation to growth and from low income to higher income status. Zimbabwe has become a nation of people who change their professions overnight: everyone appears to be a vendor, an economist, legal expert or some political analyst and so forth.
But development economics enables a State and its citizens to overcome the problem of poverty. For people like me, it’s important to focus on models or theorists on how national structures can be changed through economic development. Any informed citizen who has heard about less developed (poor countries) and more developed (rich countries) economies or the asinine distinction between “developing” and “developed” nations understands the urgent need for real “economy over politics”.
Besides an economics-politics governance trajectory, I can also explain law during the Mnangagwa administration through monitoring media developments on issues such as: relaxation of laws and policies on certain minerals save platinum and diamonds; movement towards opening Zimbabwe for business; promulgation of laws relating to the Land Commission, laws relating to the operationalisation of the National Peace and Reconciliation Commission; the laws on the cultivation of a certain species of cannabis, and so forth.
Beyond the Mnangagwa administration, we have also generally noticed through social media that Zimbabweans are divided along the lines of rhetoric; real politicking; economic tangibles; horizontal and vertical accountability, ethnicity, and political affiliation. I may not go into the minute details for reasons of space but the divisions tell us that we urgently need more than politics or law to keep our social fabric together.
In all this, we clearly see that the attractiveness of an economic-cum-political model of governance requires both a human factor (based on the importance of the governed and co-governors) and normative orientation (based on the Constitution as the Grundnorm). Further, political will must be shown at all levels of Government: national, provincial or local authority. This demands, for Zimbabwe, that we stop focusing on the “new” political dispensation alone but must move towards a new kind of politics – a politics with normative and interdisciplinary values.
Sharon Hofisi is a lecturer of law and public administration. He can be contacted at [email protected]
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