Introduction

This Campaign is aimed at linking all movements and organisations’ idea on working for the freedom of all people. Although this campaign concentrates on Zimbabwe it appreciates the international nature of the struggle for the peoples’ freedoms. People across the global, from the north to the south and from the east to west, are living under conditions of domination and abuse. People have been reduced into mere machines that recognise codes and instructions and act or think accordingly, reducing their creativity to mere mediocrity.

The Philosophy

The contemporary world survives on the bases of the legitimation of representative democracy and free market systems as though they were the only way through which humans could both live together and develop. The rationale is based on the principles of the social contract which was born out of Hobbes’ essentialism.

Hobbes assumed that human essence is both evil and selfish, that humans could not share the world unless they were dominated and controlled by an external source. As a result of this the social contract was drawn up and legitimated upon this assumption of human nature. Thus the current state and free market system is based on these principles, that the state is an independent arbitrator between greedy and violent humans being. Thus to say while acting in a ‘free’ market people may exhibit their selfish nature and then be violent, it is for this reason that the state comes in to stop the violence and ensure free and fair play. Based on the human nature given in this case there is no possibility to question the state, (although some states may be considered democratic and others not but the idea of the state is regarded as self proving) for it is viewed as the most rational and reasonable thing to do, given our nature. Thus the state and free markets are seen as a natural phenomenon of our existence, which were predetermined by nature (God).

Those in opposition to these ideas contend that humans are essentially communal and altruistic. They claim that any violence exhibited by humans is produced and enforced on them by society based on the state and the inequalities produced by free markets. Thus they argue that the conditions of the state and free markets actually force people to become selfish and violent. They see violence and selfishness as a condition, not of human nature but a capitalist democracy. On the contrary they see the abolishment of the state and free markets as the only way to get people back to their peaceful nature. They argue that humans lived together for a long time before the creation of the state and before the advent of free market economic systems. So this way a challenge to the state is legitimated.

Then there is the view that essentialism as an approach to the philosophy of life and human existence is violence, it is domination because it is based on a position which should not be challenged and a position which is regarded as self evident. Thus the opposition between the right and the left predetermines a conflict because either side can only be win by the subjugating and silencing the other. The right wing says humans are violent and thus need regulation by power and the left says they are altruistic and can self regulate. Thus this view rejects essence and essentialism and claims that humans made essentialism. Humans create either of this positions and that any of them is essentially true or essentially wrong depending on the dominant idea at one particular moment. Thus if humans have created essentialism the only thing that is essential about humans is that there is nothing that is predetermined. People make the world everyday people are what they make themselves. Human essence is in the human and not based in some external condition that humans have no control of.

This school of thought then argues that our domination is not a natural condition it is made by us. It further argues that the suffering of the people is based on what humans do and not a condition of nature. Thus Foucault, then argues that the challenge with changing our world is based on us understanding power, and where is resides. That our contemporary oppressors have justified their actions by giving us knowledge and reason (rationality) that sees the truth in terms of what their systems can allows us to see. The contemporary system treats humans in such as way that they think and act as though domination was the right thing and that it is necessary. Thus people of our era are no longer physically and violently oppressed as the people under the historic rulers and kings used to be. People are now effectively in agreement with the ‘nature’ of things, as given by history or the wise. The power of the state and free markets is no longer in its armies and its police but people have become their own police! Making sure that they and everyone acted according to norms, every day we wake up to see people being excluded and violated for acting differently or having clothes that are not regarded as fashionable, yet fashionable is business for some people not those who force others to be fashionable. Behaving differently is treated as being in a state of madness. Yet these norms are ruling class norms, norms that force people to see themselves through the eyes of those oppressing them.

The None-Position

This Campaign Programme is informed by the third thought. The thought that people have no essence, that we create the world we live in, that our knowledge of the world is created by those with the power to create knowledge. That their rational and truth is forced on us as the only truth. The campaign is meant to challenge and negate all the norms and knowledges that legitimate oppression. It is to provide an incitement into thinking differently and being proud of difference. It is to reject the wholesale and mass produced knowledge and identities. It is to talk about the rejection of identities. The embracement of the mobility of both knowledge and identity! The rejection of all forms of enclosures be they enclosures of the mind, of knowledge or of space. The creations of new places, new knowledges, local knowledges and identities. Identities that cannot be permanent or naturally given.

The Resistance

To achieve a resemblance of what this project wants to do, the campaign will engage in often confusing but well thought through activities. Each of them may sound mind boggling, but that will be regarded as one of the essential ways of forcing a new way of thought. Making people think in any way other than the ordinary. Getting out of the box where thinking is limited by language and given knowledge. Get to the outside of the system, and trying to operate from there.

This campaign notices that this can only be done by individuals, only momentarily but also noting that doing so negates the contemporary rationale. A rationale that is only as intelligent as its providers.  

.