Education of the Peasantry in Zimbabwe as Internal Colonialism

Introduction

The persistence of poverty, the high rate of educational failure, and the absence of meaningful “development” among peasants/peasantry in post-independence Zimbabwe necessitate an imperative search for an explanation. Considering that peasants constitute more than three quarters of the country’s population (Moyo & Yeros, 2011; Sadomba, 2011), one discerns the exploitation of these generally simple and law-abiding citizens by the state and its corporate allies. Given the apparent absence of a theory to explain the under-class predicament of peasantry children in higher education, the article uses internal colonial insights and analytics to address the crisis in higher education (unaffordable fees, high dropout, concentration in disciplines that lead to low pay, poor living conditions, etc.; see Students Solidarity Trust, 2009) of children from peasant background. The article will demonstrate how the political, economic, and social conditions of peasant children since the year 2000 are essentially colonial. The use of the internal colonial perspective, despite its vagueness and lack of clear universally agreed definition (Wolpe, 1975) is deliberately meant to initiate and stir a debate on perennial educational inequalities and underachievement of students of peasant upbringing.

Contemporary educational policies in sub-Saharan African countries, such as Zimbabwe, have been perceived as geared toward the promotion of Western values and not local cultures. Summative national examinations at Grade 7, Form 4 (equivalent to Grade 11) and Form 6 (which could be the equivalent of Grade 13/university entrance level) consistently indicate that students from rural schools struggle and underperform (Mbanje, 2012) and consequently affecting those who get access into university education and what degree programs one enrolls into. The objective of this article is to utilize the thesis of internal colonialism to analyze the educational underachievement of students of peasantry background in Zimbabwe. The article uses anti-colonial perspectives and critics that unmask modern hegemonic forces and refuses the notion that colonialism ended with the attainment of national independence (Escobar, 2004; Fanon, 1963; Mignolo, 2000; Quijano, 2000) to

Different forms of domination and exploitation have continued to be manufactured by those with political and economic capital, and alliances of the elite are continuously formed that are intended to maintain hegemonic political economies at the expense of the vulnerable groups such as peasants. The analysis in this article is therefore in the context of research sensibilities that critique the structures of elite nationalist capitalism and neo-colonial Western racial and class hegemony (Apple, 2009; Denzin & Lincoln, 2008) with the explicit objective of contributing toward what Quijano (2007) terms “epistemological decolonization or decoloniality” (p. 177) or “decolonization/deconstruction as a critic of Western hegemonic constructions” (Mignolo, 2000, p. 323). The scholarly analysis aims to expose the internal colonial nature of the peasant situation by addressing the immizerating conditions of their children in universities.

It is widely shared that “internal colonialism” (Blauner, 1969, p. 394; Calvert, 2001, p. 52; Casanova, 1965, p. 27; Epstein, 1971, p. 188; Wolpe, 1975, p. 229) entails that “components of the normal imperial-colonial relations are to be found within the borders of a single state” (Wolpe, 1975, p. 229) and is characterized by “the use of state power by one section of society (the Control Centre) to impose unfavourable rates of exchange on another part of society (the subordinate remotes)” (Gouldner, 1978, p. 13). A structured relationship of domination and subordination is established or maintained to serve the interests of all or part of the dominant group (Gouldner, 1978; Gutiérrez, 2004; Hind, 1984; Hughes, 1995; Love, 1989; Welch, 1988). “In internal colonisation, the analogue of the colonial power is an elite and not a country” (Calvert, 2001, p. 54) and this elite or “core is seen to dominate the periphery politically and to exploit it materially” (Hechter, 1975, p. 9). These internal or domestic colonial relationships have been observed and analyzed along race/ethnic perspectives in the New World, with Gutiérrez (2004) labeling it an American theory of race, widely employed by many to explain and understand the perennial under-class status of Afro-Americans in the United States of America (Blauner, 1969;Calderon-Zaks, 2006; Hind, 1984). A similar framework has been utilized to expose the continued existence of underdevelopment among indigenous groups in settler nations such as Australia, Canada, and New Zealand (Hughes, 1995; Welch, 1988) and as a critique of the racist separate development of apartheid South Africa (Wolpe, 1975).

Review of Literature: The Peasantry as an Internal Colony

Any definition of peasants generally should be according to their form of production. Peasants are traditionally defined as people involved in agriculture and have direct access to the production of their means of subsistence (Araghi, 1995). This may or may not involve direct ownership, although for Marx it was ownership that fundamentally separated peasants from the proletariat (Archetti & Aass, 1978). What is definitive about the peasant form of production is that, regardless of ownership, the logic of production is subsistence. Henry Bernstein (1979/2008) argues that peasant production is distinguished from capitalism because there is no appropriation and realization of surplus value or accumulation of capital. The object is the satisfaction of family needs, not profit (Araghi, 1995). It is different from proletariat production because the individual retains some control. Therefore, the notion of subsistence and the maintenance of some control over the means of production are the two central components marking peasantry production. In Zimbabwe, the land distribution program since the year 2000 has created different classes of rural dwellers. Some have become capital producers and are therefore not the focus of the discussions in this article.

Memmi’s (1967) portrait of the colonized vividly reveals a human being denied human dignity and subdued by force and violence. Following Calderon-Zaks’s (2006) analysis, colonialism is not narrowly defined as a relationship between “nations,” or at least the colonizing power being a “nation” . . . but is concerned with a colonized people rather than a colonized nation (pp. 39-40). According to Pinderhughes (2011), internal colonialism is identifiable by the presence of features of “subordination and oppression, not on majority/minority numbers ratios, geographic distance, capital export, foreignness, and legal distinctions” (p. 236) and by analogy the current socio-economic and political conditions of peasants in Zimbabwe are colonial. They are characterized by massive educational inequalities between urban and rural areas (Hwami, 2011; Share, 2009; Shizha, 2006; Students Solidarity Trust, 2009; Zeilig, 2008; Zimbabwe National Students Union [ZINASU], 2010), state and ruling party suppression, intimidation and violence (Blair, 2002; Hager, 2007; Hammar, 2008; Hammar, McGregor, & Landau, 2010; Hwami, 2010; Krigger, 2008; Mamdani, 2008; Ranger, 2004; Sadomba, 2011), systematic economic subjugation and infrastructural underdevelopment (Bond & Manyanya, 2003; Gono, 2008; Moore, 2008), and profound health disparities (Ministry of Health and Child Welfare, 2009; Tren & Bate, 2005; World Health Organization, 2010; United Nations Development Program(UNDP), 2000;Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency & ICF International, 2012). Access to paved roads, electrified schools, and hospitals, and consumer goods vary directly with proximity to a town. Rural schools are poorly equipped compared with urban schools and summative Grade 7, Ordinary and Advanced levels results are consistently better in urban schools than in rural areas (Gregson, Terceira, Mushati, Nyamukapa, & Campbelle, 2004; Mbanje, 2012), and there is a restriction in terms of disciplines rural students can study as most schools do not have necessary facilities especially access to power/electricity.

These processes have witnessed with policy consistency elite nationalists of predominantly urban domicile and party leaders fortifying themselves in the towns and cities against rural poverty and diseases. One observes since the demise of British colonial administration a heightened differentiation of town and country, urban-centered power elite that has firmly set out to dominate a largely rural society to which they relate as an alien power. Sadomba (2011) posits that since the year 2000 “the elite grabbed the opportunity for heightened primitive accumulation” (p. 215) by hijacking the Black empowerment and indigenization programs, particularly land reforms that were spearheaded by war veterans with the mass support of the peasants. Traditional leaders, such as chiefs, have been given administrative authority to discipline their people and in the process paving way for unopposed state/corporate penetrations into their traditional lands for mining and dam construction (Hawkins, 2009; Madebwe, Madebwe, & Mavusa, 2011; Manyanhaire, Svotwa, Sango, & Munasirei, 2007; Mwonzora, 2011; Rusinga, Murwendo, & Zinhiva, 2012; Zimbabwe Environmental Lawyers Association, 2012), programs that have led to displacement of the peasants to give way for irrigation and mining adventures whose benefits have not been observed by the affected people.

It is in this sense that the term internal colonization is used here to designate the processes by which large parts and sections of Zimbabwe are being colonized by their own ruling elite (across the political divide) for both political and economic reasons. Internal colonialism is associated with the manner in which certain sections of society exercise their hegemony (Hind, 1984). In the eyes of the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU PF) and other elite groups in the country, including opposition parties, they are simply making use of the power the international market affords to consolidate their own position as an urbanized elite. The indigenization and Black empowerment programs, driven by the elite and accompanied by economic and political exploitation of the peasants, and gradually transforming the whole peasantry into a legally feudal (controlled by traditional leaders most of them with no knowledge of a fair justice system especially in relation to gender rights and other facets of modern minority inequalities) and factually discriminated class, the lowest in the social ladder, is precisely what this article terms internal colonialism.

It should be acknowledged that critics have pointed out that there is no attempt in the theory of internal colonialism to identify the specific mode of exploitation and domination that differentiates it from class or race exploitation and domination (Wolpe, 1975). They have seized on the idea that certain individuals in identified under-classes have made it to success; for example, the rich Afro-American, the successful from indigenous First-Nations and from peasant backgrounds. However, by viewing colonial as wider and encompassing “anything imposed and dominating” (Dei & Asgharzadeh, 2001, p. 300), including race/ethnicity, culture of poverty, geographical underdevelopment, political and economic domination, gender inequalities among many others, one can appreciate the utility of the concept or theory of internal colonialism in gaining an understanding of the subordinate status of some groups in modern societies.

Method

This was a critical interpretive case study of a public university in Zimbabwe. Critical interpretivism involves critiquing power. In education it considers the politics of education and when used together with postcolonial perspectives as was done in this study, it develops an activist prong on behalf of historically colonized people, who continue to be neo-colonized and oppressed (Apple, 2009). Issues to do with neo-colonized peasants should be approached utilizing critical inquiry methods that challenge neoliberalism and nationalism, simultaneously. Consequently, the goal of this case study was to develop a holistic picture of the educational experiences of selected students from rural peasantry background (Creswell, 2007; Yin, 2009). The exploratory nature of a case study allows the researcher to investigate and report on complex, dynamic, and unfolding interactions of events, human relationships, and other factors in a unique instance (Creswell, 2007). The researcher had the opportunity to identify living conditions, learning conditions, and academic experiences and pursued opportunities for in-depth analysis of the phenomenon as they unfolded. Yin (2009) describes a case study “as an examination of specific phenomenon such as a program, an event, a person, an institution or a social group” (p. 25). Case study is particularly useful in studies that seek to uncover observable patterns in organizations, institutions, and countries. Case studies are also heuristic in the sense that they “illustrate the readers’ understanding of the phenomenon under study . . . they can bring about discovery of new meaning, extend the reader’s experience or confirm what is known” (Creswell, 2007, p. 18).There are however, several limitations to case study design, a major one being lack of generalization and time-consuming nature of the analysis. Patton (2002) argues, however, that generalizations can take several forums, from the features of a single case to many others with similar features or from part of a case to the whole of that case is possible. Therefore, the emerging findings can be applied to other students of similar peasantry background throughout the country.

Emerging Themes (Findings)

The underdeveloped and difficult living conditions of the peasants in rural areas were inherited from British colonial administration and are continuing in post-independent Zimbabwe. Two strong hegemonic forces, namely, elite nationalism and neoliberalism, appear to be the dominant policy frameworks. The victims of the consequent system are the peasant communities that are integrated and subjected to the logic of imperialist expansion (Amin, 2011b). The ineffective and backward nature of social services is clearly manifested in the education system. Statistics from the national examination board, the Zimbabwe School Examination Council (ZIMSEC) consistently show that better results come from urban and boarding schools compared with rural day schools (Mbanje, 2012). This is mainly explained by the poor resources found in most rural schools that have resulted in experienced and qualified teachers shunning serving in such schools. Most rural areas do not have access to electricity and students attending rural secondary schools do not study disciplines such as physics, chemistry, and biology, and consequently cannot take up university courses/programs that require a natural science background. Rural students are therefore found restricted in the humanities and in a way leading them to low-paying careers.

It has also been observed that in internal colonialism, “the underdeveloped condition is reproduced and maintained by the same mechanisms of cultural domination, political oppression and economic exploitation” (Wolpe, 1975, p. 229). One approach of cultural domination has been the continued use of English as the language of instruction and the associated requirement of a pass in English at Ordinary level if one is to proceed to post-secondary education. The urban are generally better in understanding the English language compared with the rural people and this gives them a clear advantage. Furthermore, under internal colonialism the nature of education is governed by authorities outside the “colonies” (Epstein, 1971, p. 192). Currently in Zimbabwe, there is a blatant bias toward a mono-narrative of nation building that reifies nationalist historiography under what is termed patriotic history (Ranger, 2004; Tendi, 2008). Patriotic history is compulsory throughout the education system in various forms. It stresses political history and does not tolerate “disloyal” issues raised by historians of nationalism (Ranger, 2004). Not only does it destroy critical thinking among students; it also constructs a picture of sovereignty and independence that is largely partisan and not national.

Discussion of Emerging Themes

The challenges peasants’ children are experiencing should be understood within the wider context of crises emerging from attempts by governments in the periphery to catch up with the modern or developed (north) capitalist world. Modernity is viewed by many as Westernization. It is “exclusively a European product and experiences” (Quijano, 2000, p. 542). (Un)fortunately, it is also equated to development. The drive toward modernity is seen going against the cultural and traditional living styles of the peasant and government policies are seen as largely informed by the functionalist sociology of modernization-culture affects the character and logic of economic operation. According to Amin (2011a),

The second intuition is that economics or more precisely economic (and social) changes, induces the phenomena of acculturation and deculturation, namely changes the culture. The relationship between culture and economics is dialectic rather than functionalist or structural. (p. 144)

The level of opposition the government has encountered since the introduction of modernity inspired policies from university students has increased (Hwami & Kapoor, 2012) and the consequent heavy-handed reaction from the government constitute an important aspect of the political crisis in Zimbabwe (Danzereau, 2005; Hwami, 2010). Global economic policy frameworks such as privatization and commodification of education as they are being implemented in higher education since 1991 and more violently from 2000 should be understood as government’s role in spreading capitalism and attempts to change the cultures of the peasants in line with modernity demands. This further implies that the internal colonial system developing in Zimbabwe and its attended devastation of the education prospects of peasantry children should be analyzed within the context of contemporary global coloniality. This implies the reproduction of coloniality (relations of subordination and exploitation) at a global scale under neoliberal values and principles of education (Mignolo, 2003, p. 99) that are being driven by local elites. The emergence and rise of the “black bourgeoisie” (Moyo & Yeros, 2011, p. 94) in Zimbabwe and the rabid adoption and implementation of market reforms in all sectors of the country including social services shows that they are in collaboration with global capital. Across societies bourgeois thought is viewed as modern thought (Amin, 1997, p. 134). He further observed that

Governing classes generally formulate the visions and aspirations within the perspective of really existing capitalism; willingly or not, they subject their strategies to the constraints of global capitalist expansion. The state is the unilateral mouthpiece of the interests of transnational capital, or its subaltern comprador allies. (Amin, 2011b, p. 327)

As student narratives have illustrated, the implementation of modernity principles have had deleterious consequences on their university careers and their responses have included demonstrations and joining political activity with opposition political groupings (Chikwanha, 2009; Hwami, 2012). In response, the government has been ruthless as seen by student arrests and beatings, and hence widespread accusations that it has become dictatorial (Raftopoulos & Mlambo; 2009; Tendi, 2010). The authorities in Zimbabwe are aiding the spread of market values by use of force, further giving credence to the internal colonial explanation of contemporary Zimbabwe.

By enforcing neoliberal policies in universities, as was illustrated above, the biggest losers have been students from rural (peasant) areas who find adapting to life in the urban areas very difficult. Besides their concentration in disciplines that will make it very difficult for them to be gainfully employed, access and completion rates continue to drop (Students Solidarity Trust, 2009). Such cases then join the unemployed in cities and rural areas or the popular trend of exiting to neighboring countries. This system of peasant education and the general living conditions of the peasantry can sufficiently be conceptualized by utilizing internal colonial analytics. It is colonial as its achievement to date is the consistent subordination of the peasantry as they are demanded to provide cheap labor and political support.

Concluding Remarks

Colonialism imposed its control of the social production of wealth through military conquest and subsequent political dictatorship. But its most important area of domination was the mental universe of the colonised, the control through culture, of how people perceived themselves and their relationship to the world. Economic and political control can never be complete or effective without mental control. To control a people’s culture is to control their tools of self-definition in relationship to others. (wa Thiong’o, 1981, p. 16)

According to the thesis of this article, the existence of colonialism (internal) explains the unfavorable educational circumstances students from the peasantry are experiencing. Against such an observation, there is need for education that challenges the hegemonizing systems. In line with Ngugi wa Thiong’o intelligent analysis captured above, the university or the academic community must realize the existence of colonial relations in “independent” Zimbabwe. This has proved to be a daunting task for elite and mostly Western educated academic members. Contemporary education curriculum in Zimbabwe largely espouse a Euro-American culture, and the more educated (formal schooling) one is, the more one is associated with European style of living and distances oneself from Zimbabwean way of living (largely peasantry). It is therefore an established fact that higher education institutions are more European than African/Zimbabwean in cultural outlook (language, official norms, for example, office manners, classroom behaviors, etc.). This has largely been analyzed as neo-colonial or colonial hangover that was expected to end. Along this observation, A. Mishra Tarc (2009) notes that

Postcolonial studies are slow to come to education, in part because postcolonial studies threaten to undo education, to unravel the passionately held-onto thought and knowledge of the modern Western-educated student and scholar. (p. 195)

It is disturbing to ignore the plight of the poor, that is the peasants, and to view the education of this group as normal, is equally pathetic. There is need for the academe to identify with struggling peoples and hence focus research and scholarship toward ameliorating the suffering of ordinary citizens. There should be a realization that “that the iniquitous phenomenon of exploitation can assume a black face” (Fanon, 1963, p. 94). Student arrests and beatings exemplify exploitation and as Fanon further noted, “people must learn to give up their simplistic perception of the oppressor” (p. 94).

Fanon (1963) argues that there can be no authentic liberation without decolonization, whereas Dei (2010) suggests that “decolonization must be complete and must overcome exploitation, alienation and oppression, and dehumanization” (p. xvii). This is the call the academic community is being called on to confront and further highlights the need for decolonizing education, that is one that

Brings to the fore questions of power relations among actors and different players in the school system while at the same time upholding the agency, resistance and local cultural resource knowledge of all learners . . . is about change, it is about a particular way of knowing that emerged through bodies of difference, it is about embodied knowledge, it is a particular process that encounters the foreign and the local of imposition. It is about resistance and the fight for social justice. (Dei, 2010, p. 6)

Progressive scholars throughout the world have been advocating the use of homegrown indigenous solutions to modern challenges. This article corroborates the search for solutions to the crisis students from poor rural backgrounds are facing. The concept of unhu is a traditional Zimbabwean philosophy of living in harmony with other people (Battle, 2009; Ramose, 2003; Swanson, 2007; Venter, 2004) and embodies the spirit of sharing (Shizha, 2009). It is the same as what Scott (1976) calls the moral economy that is based on reciprocal relationships and the right to subsistence. The values in this traditional philosophy clearly stand in opposition to the hegemonic tenets inherent in local and global corporatism as being practiced in higher education. Thinking and advocating from unhu would be in line with what Mignolo (2000) describes as “intellectual decolonization” (p. 64). The higher education community, including students from peasantry background, are failing to think beyond capitalism and intellectually, they are not thinking outside Western modernity. Their reluctance to expound ideas from indigenous perspectives illustrated the continued existence of “colonized intellectuals” (Fanon, 1963, p. 158), which led Said (1994) to offer a suggestion that

Academics/intellectuals are expected to speak truth to power; insiders promote special interests, but intellectuals should be the ones to question patriotic nationalism, corporate thinking, and a sense of class, racial or gender privilege. (p. xiii)

The article acknowledges the difficulties of achieving this in the current politically volatile Zimbabwean climate but provoking a discussion is a significant step toward this progressive objective. By calling for the decolonization of the academe, the article is encouraging conceptualization outside the framework of the oppressive forces of global capitalism and local government political and economic dictatorship. It is “border thinking” and “double critique” of the two colonial forces that ultimately lead to “an another thinking, a thinking that is located at the border of coloniality of power” (Mignolo, 2000, p. 67). It is liberative epistemology aimed at ending global and internal coloniality as currently played out in Zimbabwe’s higher education leaving peasant students at the mercy of social evils and political opportunists. In another sense, a double critique as advocated in this study is “the criticism of the imperial discourses as well as national discourses asserting identity and differences articulated in and by imperial discourses” (Khatibi, 1983, p. 39). This critical border thinking is the epistemic response of the colonized (Grosfoguel, 2005), that is “contributing to academic efforts to defend the public sphere from its further integration into the neoliberal and imperialist practices of the state and of global capitalism” (McLaren & Jaramillo, 2005, p. 131). Thus, in a way this article is corroborating efforts of many other scholars to give back value to local liberative epistemology in the fight against colonizing forces.