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(ZIMBABWE GUARDIAN) Intellectualism overrated in Zimbabwean politics

Intellectualism overrated in Zimbabwean politics
By: Reason Wafawarova
Posted: Thursday, April 1, 2010 2:13 am

JUST like the media, intellectualism is often overrated as both a source of truth and accurate information — more so in the field of socio-political commentary.

Blatantly partial academic political activists like Professor John Makumbe sometimes find themselves in the luxury of being showered with accolades and cheerleading adulations for "impartiality and objectivity", as the MDC-T supporters would say of Makumbe’s political rants. The deodorising rhetoric behind this facade is often centred in the fabulous glory of intellectualism. We are told we must believe the fallacy because it comes from intellectuals.

Just like what evangelists and sect leaders are to religious fanatics, professors and holders of doctorates cannot err or lie insofar as their fanatical followers are concerned.

In Africa, the sense of entitlement that comes with intellectualism is astonishing. However, this is all but a mirror image of the attainment of academic titles, as opposed to it being an appreciation of achievement in academic work.

In fact, real academic work is frowned upon and shunned by many as the tiresome and thankless business of trying to attain high-ranking titles in academia. What is attractive is the idea of leading an intellectual life without engaging in real intellectual work.

People like John Makumbe carry with them an intellectual life as opposed to intellectual work, and that way he has created a constituency of fanatical cheerleaders whose appreciation for intellectualism is rigidly limited to the knowledge of academic titles and nothing more.

With such an intellectual life as Makumbe leads, one has a sense of entitlement to supremacy of opinion — in reality a baseless entitlement awarded by fanatics and charlatans in the field of the politics of polarity and fanatical activism.

On the other hand, intellectual work requires constant and concrete proof of one’s ability to scientifically prove every assertion they make.

So you have an intellectual like Makumbe traducing his political rivals through schoolyard type of scolding language and there is a ready and appreciative audience driven by cretinism. To them, Makumbe becomes a respected professor because of his hate speech towards a shared enemy, and not because of his intellectual work.

In reality, there is nothing particularly intellectual about being concerned with world affairs or the domestic politics of one’s country. In fact, labour unions, peasants, the working class and student unions are usually concerned with these issues, and they are not intellectuals.

A lot of people wrongly or rightly believe that being intellectual means one who works with their mind. Plenty of people in the crafts, trades, mechanics, and so on probably do more intellectual work than most of the people working in academia or in universities; that is if the idea of working with the mind is considered the right definition of intellectualism.

A lot of the so-called scholarly work in academia is just clerical work, and there is no real logic in believing that clerical work is more challenging mentally than fixing an automobile engine.

This writer for example, can easily do any clerical work, but can never figure out how to fix an automobile engine or even a mobile phone.

So if by "intellectual" the essence is to talk about people who use their minds, then society is awash with intellectuals. However, it would appear that most people, especially from a political perspective, do think that being intellectual means a special class of people, who in the name of academic titles are in the business of imposing thoughts, and framing ideas for people in power or for their political allies, and telling everyone what they should believe.

These people may be called intellectuals, but in reality they are just a kind of secular priesthood, whose task is to uphold doctrinal truths of political groupings they stand as allies to, if not as a central part.

This is why it is very healthy for the population to be anti-intellectual, or at the very least be sceptical of intellectualism.

There is one thing that this writer admires so much about the United States of America. There is very little respect for intellectuals by the mainstream American community, and even by the media in general. They are quite farcical about the propaganda model, about Hollywood and so on, but their intellectual culture is far from being farcical.

During the Vietnam War, people like Noam Chomsky would co-sign protest letters with such intellectuals like the Frenchman Jean-Paul Sartre. In France the letters would hit headlines straight away and in the US there would not be even a word mentioned about them.

The French media even attacked the American media for this because they thought this was all scandalous; and this writer also thinks anyone who ignores Chomsky is scandalous. But the point is that so many people were clearly opposed to the war, regardless of what Noam Chomsky and his respected French colleague were signing.

What difference does it make if two guys who happen to have some name recognition got together and signed a statement? There is no compulsive logic why this should be of any particular interest to anybody, let alone why the media should scramble for this statement.

What happens in Africa is that if you hit the cord as an intellectual or as a political icon; then you find yourself in front of television cameras all the time, you are invited to talk shops and other such gatherings. Then you have got to keep doing something new so they will keep focussing on you, and not on the next fellow.

Well these so-called intellectuals and political icons often do not have excellent ideas, so they have to come up with really crazy stuff, so that they maintain this sense of pomposity and self-importance — the illusion that gives them so much attention.

This is precisely why Desmond Tutu plays the clown. He has to come up with all this crazy stuff to maintain his self-importance. He has to please a constituency that needs his voice to authenticate what their own voices would be ridiculed for, if ever they did the proclamations themselves.

John Makumbe does the same thing. He has to come up with cruciferous hoopla against Zanu-PF if the donors are not going to look for the next fellow. So he becomes an "intellectual" for describing Zanu-PF leadership as having "mucus for brains" — that without even bothering to elaborate or explain his point.

Any Zimbabwean who was brought up the traditional way knows that this kind of scolding is borrowed from the low level misfits at village beer-drinking gatherings — a deplorable habit of wayward villagers, yet it passes for intellectualism when Makumbe has to keep up with the business of maintaining an intellectual life. That level of thinking replaces intellectual work required by conventional academic practices.

About three years ago, John Sentamu had to cut off his dog collar before BBC television cameras because he needed to maintain his position above the rest in the Mugabe-demonisation campaign. You play the fool if you must, that is what it takes when you are trapped in the game of playing the authentic voice for the paymaster.

This is the trap intellectuals often find themselves in.

Intellectual work itself is a matter of privilege, not a reflection of intellectual supremacy. People work at universities, and that way they are privileged. Much as they pretend to, they do not have to work that hard. Often they control their own work, and they choose when to do certain things and so on.

They have resources, they know how to use the library, they have reading lists to guide them, and they have all other sources of information availed for their benefit.

Arguably, some of this intellectual work may not be as mentally challenging as figuring out a problem with a car, something that clearly requires creativity.

But hey, why would an African intellectual involved with the politics of a party like the MDC-T worry about intellectual work in the first place?

The party itself has never believed in the politics of public policy. Policy matters have always been either non-existent or extremely peripheral in MDC-T talk. This is why a scolding professor like Makumbe is a very suitable ally. The MDC-T believes their constituency understands and prefers hate language to policy.

The party was founded on the principle that Zanu-PF could be shouted and scolded out of power, and this explains the hate language we read the other time when Thamsanqa Mahlangu decided to break his controversy-induced silence to say something about the youth and sanctions. Anyone who read what the deputy minister wrote in The Changing Times may agree that the man wrote like a deputy clown.

Zanu-PF youths had outlined their policy position on the illegal Western imposed economic sanctions and they gave an ultimatum for a reaction from Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai. Mahlangu, as MDC-T youth chairman responded by scolding the hell out of everyone that came to his mind, accusing his political rivals of being "rented hoodlums" and a "motley group of hired thugs".

This is the same principle behind the hate language used by pirate radio stations and the pro-MDC-T online tabloids. Research, policy and intellectual work all have no such room in the MDC-T’s "struggle for democracy" and that is well reflected in these mouthpieces. All one reads in these tabloids is primitive name calling targeted at Zanu-PF officials.

In Europe and in Africa, this business of waving intellectual titles ahead of common sense is quite rife. The American public would largely not notice any such gimmicks. You got to act it at Hollywood and you will most likely fool them that way.

But the problem really is that all that is waved as intellectual prowess is often nothing more than an empty intellectual life — a special craft that does not particularly require any thought. In fact one is better off when they don’t think too much. That is the facade we often see as a luminary image of intellectualism.

Society does not necessarily owe intellectuals the respect that most academics expect. Our Zimbabwean background is that of village life, with a lot of people who may not have too much formal education, but in our way of life they are very literate.

They have a traditional court system, they have wide knowledge about their surroundings, they argue about things around them, they find solutions; they discuss problems and fix them. This writer would even call them intellectuals.

They do not need "public awareness" or "outreach campaigns" to teach them how to make political choices. They know very well what is politically relevant to their way of life, and they do not need a bunch of Western sponsored youngsters to tell them what is politically correct for them.

We have seen these people trivialised and dismissed by many, in apparent preference for political loud mouths like Dr John Makumbe, and others who do speak of democracy with a self-anointed sense of authority that would make one to be forgiven for thinking that donors are the custodians of democratic practices.

This writer wishes for a society where people treat intellectuals sceptically the way they should treat the media and any other characters who anoint themselves voices for the people, or sources of accurate information.

That way we avoid a situation where intellectuals become delusional with illusions of grandeur, getting so carried away that they begin to think they can impose their ideas on all others.

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

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Reason Wafawarova is a political writer and can be contacted on: wafawarova@yahoo.co.uk or reason@rwafawarova.com or visit www.rwafawarova.com

Labels: JOHN MAKUMBE, MDC, REASON WAFAWAROVA

posted by MrK @ 3:14 PM