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PROTESTERS ON THE MOVE . . . One day it is about somebody whose whereabouts are unknown. The next, it is about bond notes

Nick Mangwana View From the Diaspora—

The rights of citizens to protest, demonstrate and politically express themselves is well established in our Constitution. But just like the freedom of worship created a massive industry of gospreneurs, the enshrining of this right has also created a new type of entrepreneur, the “professional protester”.There is now a new industry from which some are earning a living. Livelihoods have always been earned through NGOs and other civic society activities in Zimbabwe, but this is different. It is about a living that is earned from protesting week in week out.

These social activists protest about anything even though they have very little chance of success. When one looks at this dispassionately, whilst some feed their families on this new occupation, the country suffers from a negative publicity it can surely do without.

The State must not curtail the rights of these citizens. At the same time fellow citizens who detest the damage being visited upon their country are not colluding with repression when they point out to the selfish and perfidious nature of these pseudo-human rights champions who have converted sedition into an industry.

These “fellow citizens” pursue an ever fluid agenda. Now that the bond notes are out there, a new agenda has to be found. At this point we again concede that the liberty of individuals must be pre-eminent.

But there is nothing constitutional about the freedoms of the few trumping the freedoms of the majority. So those who earn their living from protesting have no right to intrusively interfere with the rights of the others who would rather get on with their business.

For strange reasons, there seems to be a notion that protesters and demonstrators occupy a privileged position in society where 12 people’s right to demonstrate has pre-eminence over the rights of the others not to protest. Equal rights should mean that their rights are not supreme to the silent majority’s rights.

The tragedy of it is that it’s all about the money. As the competition for funding heats up, the theatrics also escalate. Antics that caught the attention of donors yesterday might not work today so in clear obedience to the law of diminishing returns, the scales of histrionics have to be upped in order to provoke more public outrage and galvanise donor appetite. The more sensational the reports of abuse, the more the donors pay.

One just needs to look at the foreign trips that are being undertaken by the same people that pretend to be indigent. Their midriffs are now bulging like the same overfed politicians they are protesting against.

These professional protesters have now created a lucrative industry that has taken them to places far afield. Some are now getting visits from ambassadors of very powerful countries. They post these images.

This raises their own stock and unlocks more donor funds. You could easily script this one. For as long as the narrative panders to that of the home country of the ambassadors they will be there. What is not very clear is whether this is connivance or just naivety. The answer probably lies in-between.

We are now constantly fed emotionally charged pictures, social media blogs and narratives which are peddled to whip up public emotion. The timing is carefully crafted. The appeals are no longer based on any substance but on fibs calculated to invoke public outrage. If surely the public is getting conned, then can we not say that we are dealing with con artists here?

It is just a mixed bag in this industry. Some are just anarchists. Some are opposition activists masquerading as human rights activists. How can a human rights activist be demanding for the resignation of a whole Government and call that a human rights issue?

These are 20 people that are demanding the removal of a Government elected by millions. Whose rights are they representing? Human rights activists would focus on key issues that are central to their theme and press on those. Not the resignation of a whole Government that was overwhelmingly elected by their compatriots and which continues to be elected from one by-election to another.

But that is just one group and yet there is another group that moves from one issue to another. Today they are protesting against this issue, tomorrow it’s another. One day it is about somebody whose whereabouts are unknown. The next, it is about bond notes.

So you end up with serial demonstrators or professional demonstrators. Their everyday meal ticket is from demonstration. Every piece of fabric covering their loins and every thread on their back is from demonstrating.

Are these just disaffected citizens? Disaffected by which issue, really? Because if they are disaffected by everything around them then the simple answer would be that these are individuals disaffected by their own lives and are looking for someone to blame for their lack of progress. One would be right to call them malcontents. But this is just another section of the industry.

The other section comprises the attention seekers and relevance chasers. These court publicity, have the radar attuned to pick where something is happening and their cameras are always in position.

If somebody is allegedly knocked down by the police for one reason or another, these are there ready for that Kodak moment to feed the social media frenzy. How they are always in the right place at the right time is beyond many.

But then those who have insight don’t believe these right place, right time coincidences. They realise that both the consumers of these images and the police are victims of a highly organised professional con.

As for the police and establishment, one wonders how long they they continue to fall for such traps? How long will they walk a pathway scripted for them by people seeking to feed their families out of the bad name created for them?

Isn’t it clear that to them that to some protesting is now a job, a strategic resource and an occupation? There is nothing novel about this strategy. President Mugabe called it the “Madhuku strategy” nearly a decade ago. And yet the establishment still obliges when they are invited to come and unlock donor funds!

And, of course, to some protesting is all politics. This is one of the reasons why there is now some bickering among their groups. This is internal protest politics. There is a struggle for the limelight and to be the beacon that unlocks donor funds.

There is now a permanent “protest community” on our landscape. Whenever these people are protesting or demonstrating some politicians and analysts have been asking them about solutions to the problem they would be protesting against.

That question misses the point of the reason for existence of these organisations or community. Their raison d’etre is to protest. And not to proffer solutions. If that issue is resolved, they would find another issue to protest about.

That’s their job. It has nothing to do with solutions, it has nothing to do with a coherent cause. It is about protesting. This is why some in the establishment are not keen to engage with them. They have noticed that they will use any engagement to grandstand and claim they are having an impact as a way of unlocking more donor funds.

Let’s not make a mistake, there is a role for civic society in modern day democracy and governance. There are proper organisations that have an impact that has helped shape democracy and made a difference in people’s lives. These should not be lumped together with these histrionic misfits.

The approach of the genuine civic society is not always adversarial but more collaborative and synergistic. This is not to say they don’t challenge the establishment. That, of course, comes with the territory.

Where necessary there is always civilised expression of discontent and that is taken on board. But those perennial protesters don’t do that. How can you even start to constructively engage with a Government you are calling to resign?

How can you build bridges with people when you self-mutilate and turn around and blame the establishment for your own acts of self-harm? Let us at this point again establish the rights of citizens to express their feelings of frustration peacefully.

Let us also assert the rights of citizens not happy with either policies or political processes’ rights to channel those sentiments through some political participation on the street if established institutions are not doing what they were established to do.

But we cannot be so gullible as to ignore a clear commercial enterprise that has hijacked genuine citizenry disaffection. These are the ones who are all over any issue or cause like a bad smell. They pull off all stunts that would make many in Hollywood stop and notice. The problem is these are getting more and more daring and dangerous. As they say, somebody is going to get hurt one of these days.

Real civic society activity has been contaminated by con-artists who have now hijacked protesting for genuine causes into some innate disruption of others’ lives. Let us make the distinction.