Residents of Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, sometimes recount a familiar postcolonial experience of being “independent but not free”. After a brutal liberation struggle, Zimbabwe’s national independence was secured in 1980, ending both British colonial occupation and then white minority rule. This moment of achieving independence marked not only a vital break in terms of everyday practical realities, but also signaled an important ideological shift, evident in the way that those who only knew life after independence are identified by the term “mabornfree” or “the born frees.” In this moniker, national independence becomes coincident with a vision of freedom. But the contemporary claim to be “independent but not free” proves a critique of this view, embedding a range of assertions about what freedom is and is not.
Within this context, a group of Baptist Christians living in Harare are engaged in their own debates about the nature of freedom as a spiritual and ethical reality. Zimbabwean Baptists build on an Augustinian vision of spiritual freedom as relational and normative, while invoking and critiquing ubuntu – a Zimbabwean ethic of human belonging. A regnant liberal and Eurocentric view of freedom in some scholarship presumes that freedom is primarily about the capacity to choose between alternatives. The Zimbabwean Baptist definition diverges from accounts of freedom as independence, and indeed, of many classically liberal definitions. For this group, the road into freedom comes through their views on relations of responsibility; it is the relation itself that makes freedom. This Baptist challenge exposes that which is presumed to be absent in claims that national independence has been achieved without true freedom. Their spiritual account of freedom foregrounds an alternative definition, long espoused in Black theology, that I suggest aids in understanding broader postcolonial critiques of freedom.
Drawing on 15 months of fieldwork with a network of middle-class Baptist Christians, I show how these ideas come to the fore in engagement with a tumultuous economy, evidencing how they develop their view of freedom through the urgency of their daily moral deliberations as religious practitioners, with important outcomes for their political and economic lives. Indeed, experiences of freedom and unfreedom in Zimbabwe have often crystalized around money. Famous for reaching astronomical rates of hyperinflation, by early 2009 the nation had adopted a multicurrency economy that appeared to loosen people from the grip of the spiraling Zimbabwe dollar. The multicurrency economy was touted as an offer of greater “choice” for everyday residents who could opt to pay in US dollars, South African rand or Botswana pula. Yet growing discord and public protest showed that this very choice proved entirely inadequate to achieve the freedoms that many Zimbabweans sought. If greater choice did not mean freedom, what then was being sought in demands for greater freedom?
Zimbabwean Baptist accounts of a relational, normative freedom clarify the kind of political and economic freedom that is taken to be absent when people assert “independence without freedom”. Harare’s Baptists, along with many who shared similar experiences of the struggles faced by Zimbabweans in the middle and late 2010s, view those in authority as having failed to fulfil the kind of responsibilities that would enable citizens to pursue the aspirations and general well-being for their families and communities that would make them truly free. Their critique is not a recommendation for less government intervention in favour of the invisible hand of the free market. Nor is it a claim that real operational capitalism will ensure their capacity to make decisions as consumers. Theirs is a claim about a normative freedom embedded in a relation of responsibility.
My two central claims in this paper are first, that people may adhere to a vision of freedom that is not at all based on choice or self-direction. I refer to this alternative vision as “normative” freedom because it is a freedom based on a rightly oriented relation, rather than on unfettered choice or self-mastery. I suggest, second, that this normative outlook shows how claims to the absence of freedom in postcolonial societies may thus not be so much a statement about choice or its lack, as about the need for those with whom one has a relation to fulfil their responsibilities. This is not to say that choice is not valued. It is, instead, to claim that choice is not adequate for freedom. Freedom in this vein demands the right moral relation of citizens to leaders, economies, and political and judicial institutions.
In describing normative freedom I present the alternative vision of freedom that my interlocutors assert, which downplays human choice and individual agency. A vision of normative freedom dependent not on choice but on ideas about responsible relationality suggests a particular alternative to that which is envisioned in many classic liberal accounts. These latter accounts often suggest that democracy, absence of hindrances to personal choice, and individual autonomy are the keys to freedom. But Zimbabwean Baptist critiques point out that it is not enough that a subject (whether individual or collective) can pursue self-realisation and so is free. Freedom here is about an assertion of culturally determined responsible relation and suggests an alternative vision of freedom, and the attendant political consequences, with which to grapple.
Anthropologists have sought ways to think about freedom that do not rely exclusively on Berlin’s negative liberty, and the matter of freedom has also featured in social anthropology in relation to a focus on ethical life. Works in this area have struggled, however, to clearly outline an account of freedom beyond a focus on the individual self so central to Euro-American philosophy. By contrast, the vision outlined by my interlocutors is always oriented through relation. Bringing anthropological studies of ethics into conversation with Black theology and with emerging reflections on freedom in African Studies, I show how religious visions of freedom intersect with current questions about postcoloniality. I propose that attending to this Zimbabwean Baptist account of spiritual freedom provides a key avenue for theorizing diverse conceptions of human freedoms, beyond hegemonic moral philosophies, and for considering the politico-economic implications.
Residents of Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, sometimes recount a familiar postcolonial experience of being “independent but not free”. Within this context, a group of Baptist Christians in the city are engaged in their own debates about the nature of freedom as a spiritual and ethical reality. Their religious account challenges a reigning liberal and Eurocentric view of freedom in some scholarship and public discourse, which presumes that freedom is the capacity to choose between alternatives.
Drawing on 15 months of fieldwork with a network of middle-class Baptist Christians, I show how Zimbabwean Baptists develop alternative visions of freedom through the urgency of their daily moral deliberations as religious practitioners. Adhering to a normative, relational freedom, their accounts enliven critiques of freedom as individual choice. By invoking both Augustinian theology and an ethic of ubuntu, their religious visions of freedom shed critical light on current discourses about the nature of postcolonial freedoms.