AN OPEN LETTER TO JOSHUA MAPONGA: AFTER WE KILL THE REPUBLIC, WHAT EXACTLY ARE WE BUILDING?
Dear Joshua Maponga,
I have been listening.
And rather than laughing at your proposition, I want to entertain it seriously.
You have argued that Zimbabwe is caught between competing systems: the democratic republic written into its institutions, forms of concentrated political power, and an older African political memory rooted in kingship, clans and indigenous governance. You have described the republic itself as a colonial inheritance and called for Zimbabwe to rediscover an indigenous political architecture.
Fair enough.
Let us put Westminster aside for a moment.
Let us put Washington aside.
Let us even put the Constitution aside temporarily and enter the philosophical village with you.
Democracy does not work for Africans, you say.
Okay.
Then what works?
Because this is where I think your argument becomes much more interesting — and much more difficult.
Reports have attributed to you a call for CAB4, replacing Zimbabwe’s present republican model with what you describe as an “Indigenous Consultative Royal Democracy,” including the extraordinary proposition of President Emmerson Mnangagwa becoming its first king.
So now I have questions.
Not hostile questions.
Not ZANU PF questions.
Not opposition questions.
African questions.
If tomorrow morning we finally “kill the Republic,” as you have written, what happens on Monday?
Do we abolish the presidency?
Do we abolish presidential elections?
Does Parliament remain?
Do political parties remain?
And perhaps most importantly:
Who becomes King?
Because surely we cannot simply walk to Great Zimbabwe, beat the ngoma, blow the ceremonial horn and announce:
“Ladies and gentlemen, democracy has officially closed. Please welcome back King Munhumutapa.”
There is a historical problem here.
If we are returning to indigenous legitimacy, then surely indigenous legitimacy itself must determine who is entitled to the throne.
So which royal house?
Which genealogy?
Which traditional authority authenticates it?
Who chooses the monarch?
And why would the sitting President automatically become the founding king of a restored indigenous political order?
That question becomes particularly important because critics of your proposal argue that the historical Mutapa succession belonged to particular royal lineages and therefore cannot simply be transferred to a contemporary politician by constitutional amendment. That is a contested historical discussion worth having openly rather than assuming the answer.
Then there is another Zimbabwean elephant sitting quietly in the royal room.
What about Mzilikazi and the Ndebele monarchy?
What about the other pre-colonial political traditions contained within the borders of modern Zimbabwe?
If decolonisation means restoring political systems displaced by history, who decides which history gets restored?
Does Matabeleland get its King?
Do different peoples retain their traditional authorities underneath a federal arrangement?
Or does one reconstructed Munhumutapa become sovereign over everybody because the modern colonial boundaries called Zimbabwe happen to contain us all?
That requires an answer.
But there is an even bigger question.
WHAT PROBLEM DOES THE KING ACTUALLY SOLVE?
Suppose I grant your entire diagnosis for purposes of debate.
Democracy is foreign.
The republic is colonial.
Roman-Dutch law is inherited.
Political parties divide Africans.
Elections have become expensive rituals.
Winner-takes-all politics creates conflict.
Fine.
But how does a king cure corruption?
How does monarchy put water in Bulawayo’s taps?
How does it create employment?
How does it prevent abuse of public office?
How does it stop patronage?
How does it make institutions accountable?
And if the King himself becomes corrupt, how do we remove him?
That, Joshua, is where I want CAB4 explained beyond philosophy.
Give us the architecture.
Who appoints the King?
Who removes the King?
How long does he rule?
Who succeeds him?
Can his son inherit Zimbabwe?
Can Parliament overrule him?
Can the courts declare his actions unlawful?
Can citizens demonstrate against him?
Can journalists investigate him?
Can citizens peacefully say:
“Your Majesty, thank you very much, but we don’t want you anymore”?
Because if they cannot, then we have not necessarily decolonised power.
We may simply have renamed it.
And perhaps there is another possibility worth entertaining.
Maybe the problem is not that democracy cannot work for Africans.
Maybe the question is whether Africans have consistently been given functioning democratic institutions strong enough to restrain those who acquire power.
Those are two completely different diagnoses.
Still, I think you have raised an important philosophical question.
Why should Africa assume that the only legitimate political imagination available to us was designed somewhere else?
We should interrogate that.
We should study the dare.
The clan council.
Kingship.
Chiefdom.
Consensus.
Ubuntu.
Traditional checks upon rulers.
Indigenous jurisprudence.
African concepts of communal responsibility.
Perhaps there are things modern constitutionalism can learn from them.
But decolonisation must also allow us to interrogate African tradition itself.
Everything African is not automatically democratic.
Everything Western is not automatically oppressive.
And everything ancient is not automatically suitable for the twenty-first century.
So, Joshua, I am genuinely prepared to entertain CAB4.
Bring it to the table.
But don’t just tell us:
KILL THE REPUBLIC.
Tell us what happens the morning after the funeral.
And please answer the simplest question of all:
Are we restoring African democracy…
or are we reinstalling King Munhumutapa?
Yours in intellectual curiosity,
Brill Pongo
Maponga Mara-Rah III ChangaMbire – “Farmers of Thought”