Animal Farm

• Albanese had partly won the election by pledging to bring Australians together to build a better, more equal Australia.
• However, the Voice outcome has revealed Labor’s strategy for sidestepping right-wing populism to be in disarray.
• You have the same rights and opportunities – the same democratic voice – as every other Australian.
• You have the same rights and opportunities – the same democratic voice – as every other Australian.

A misguided sense of ‘equality’

• It was also a conception of equality that has long been used by the Coalition when dealing with Indigenous affairs.
• Peter Dutton may have been somewhat Trumpian in his suggestions that the Australian electoral commission couldn’t be trusted to be impartial.
• Read more:
  What are 'Advance' and 'Fair Australia', and why are they spearheading the 'no' campaign on the Voice?
• Given these comparable strategies, it may not be surprising that the Voice referendum results show similarities with the 1999 republic referendum results.

Albanese’s ‘new politics’ is in fact very old

• Albanese may have believed his election victory represented a “new politics”, but in fact his government, and the broader “yes” case, have been fighting a very old politics over the Voice.
• The Voice referendum lost for diverse reasons, including the lack of bipartisan support and a successful fear campaign that sometimes mobilised quite horrible racism.
• The fact that the official “no” campaign was headed by two Indigenous Australians, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Warren Mundine, was particularly important in this context.
• Perhaps Labor was lulled into a false sense of security by the marriage equality plebiscite outcome.

• President Emmerson Mnangagwa signed the new act, officially called the Criminal Law Codification and Reform Amendment Act, 2023, into law on 14 July.
• His government said the law was indispensable to holding accountable those who jeopardised national interests.
• There is no crueller tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.

‘National interest’

• Some people see the act as a response to the sanctions the United States imposed on the Zimbabwean government in 2001 for human rights abuses.
• The state-owned The Herald newspaper said the law was a response to Zimbabweans who advocated for the enforcement of sanctions on Zimbabwe.
• The government has exploited the sanctions as a pretext to suppress dissent and shift the blame for the country’s problems.
• Using this law, individuals who express concerns about human rights abuses and corruption could be targeted for unpatriotic behaviour.

What can be done?

• This fundamental right is meant to foster an environment conducive to peaceful demonstrations and the presentation of petitions.
• Zimbabwe is also bound by international and regional instruments that protect freedom of expression.
• They include the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
• The Southern African Development Community principles and guidelines governing democratic elections also emphasise the importance of freedom of expression.

• In Zimbabwe, the revolution was against colonialism and its practices of extraction and exploitation.
• The lead characters in Animal Farm have the propensity for evil and the greed for power found in despots throughout history, including former Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe.
• And visual artist Admire Kamudzengerere founded Animal Farm Artist Residency in Chitungwiza as a space for creative experimentation.
• It’s within this context that a group of Zimbabwean writers, led by novelist and lawyer Petina Gappah and poet Tinashe Muchuri, have translated Animal Farm into Shona, the country’s most widely spoken language.

The translation project

• Gappah kickstarted the translation project in a private post on Facebook in 2015:
  A group of friends and I thought it would be fun to bring the novel to new readers in all the languages spoken in Zimbabwe.
• This is important to us because Zimbabwe has been isolated so much in recent years, and translation is one way to bring other cultures and peoples closer to your own.
• This is important to us because Zimbabwe has been isolated so much in recent years, and translation is one way to bring other cultures and peoples closer to your own.

Chimurenga Chemhuka

• Though Chimurenga Chemhuka is mainly in standard Shona, its characters speak a medley of different Shona dialects – such as chiKaranga, chiZezuru, chiManyika – plus a smattering of contemporary slang.
• The title, Chimurenga Chemhuka, is poignant and a direct reference to Zimbabwe’s liberation war.
• Chemhuka (animal) Chimurenga (revolution) is not a literal translation of Animal Farm, but here the writers take liberties to connect the book to the country’s larger struggles for independence, commonly known as Chimurenga.

Why this matters

• It’s done by an eclectic group of writers who are passionate about language and literature.
• They use Orwell’s book and its satiric commentary as a way to creatively express themselves collectively.
• If this was a choir, the choristers Gappah and Muchuri do a good job of leading a harmonious ensemble.

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