Clinging to power in Zimbabwe
THOUGH A PRESIDENTIAL election, victory for Morgan
Tsvangirai, the candidate of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), would
effectively mean the defeat of the Zanu-PF government. Defeat for Robert Mugabe
would be the end of an era and a regime hated by the overwhelming majority of
the Zimbabwean population.
The Zimbabwean constitution empowers the president to
nominate at least ten members of parliament, which would enable the MDC to
become the majority party. There is then far more at stake than the fate of
Robert Mugabe, the ageing and increasingly tyrannical former hero of the
national liberation war against white minority rule and colonialism. Mugabe’s
cronies in the political elite, who have benefited from his corrupt patronage,
fear for their future.
This partially explains why Mugabe’s position within his
own party appears to be more secure now than it was before the last elections,
as the ruling elite avoids public displays of division. In the run-up to the May
2000 general elections such had been the level of revolt against the regime that
cracks had begun to appear in Mugabe’s personal authority within Zanu-PF
(Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front). And as recently as the Zanu-PF
congress last year, "the army, police, intelligence organisation and air
force brass urged Mugabe to quit and appoint a successor to enhance Zanu-PF’s
chances in the election". (Sunday Independent, 30 December 2001)
In January, however, army commander, Vitalis Zvinavashe,
issued a thinly-veiled threat of a military coup in the event of a MDC victory:
"Let it be known that the highest office in the land is a straitjacket
whose occupant is expected to observe the objectives of the liberation struggle.
We will, therefore, not accept, let alone support or salute anyone, with a
different agenda that threatens the very existence of our sovereignty, our
country and our people". (Tsvangirai is a former mineworker who became
general secretary of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions in 1988 when the
trade unions severed their political ties with Zanu-PF. He did not participate
in the war for national liberation which ended in 1979.)
A generalised revolt against the Zanu-PF government was
developing prior to the parliamentary elections, involving wide sections of
society – students, the working class and middle class in the cities, and the
rural masses. Mugabe contained a highly embarrassing revolt by ‘war veterans’
by conceding improved pensions, supplemented by a generous ex-gratia payment.
But his decision to fund these concessions by an increase in the general sales
tax triggered the biggest general strike in Zimbabwe’s history. During the
elections, a number of Zanu-PF candidates broke away to stand as independent
candidates. The police commissioner defied a presidential order to rescind
anti-corruption measures and in a referendum on the constitution Mugabe suffered
an unprecedented and humiliating defeat.
Although the MDC failed to oust Zanu-PF, it won 57 of the
120 seats. This was a huge achievement for an opposition party less than two
years old standing in elections for the first time. Mugabe’s support was
reduced to the rural areas as the MDC took virtually all the urban seats.
Remarkable as the MDC’s vote was, however, its failure to
oust Zanu-PF when the regime had its back to the wall enabled Mugabe to survive
and use his presidential powers to enhance his prospects in the presidential
elections.
After this scare, Mugabe is leaving nothing to chance. In
what amounts to a creeping coup d’état, he has systematically manipulated the
law and the electoral process to ensure a return to power. Above all, he has
cynically used the burning injustice of the unresolved land question to conceal
his real programme, which is to hold onto power at all costs.
He has introduced a raft of draconian laws effectively
stripping the opposition of its electoral rights and threatening democratic
rights in general. This has been reinforced with brutal state force. Where MDC
rallies are permitted participants are frequently intimidated, assaulted and
even murdered. Thousands of people have been effectively disenfranchised through
the confiscation of identity documents. More than 100 MDC supporters have been
killed, at least 20,000 displaced and over 8,000 assaulted. Journalists critical
of the government have been harassed, detained and tortured, newspaper offices
petrol bombed and printing presses destroyed. In the name of ridding Zimbabwe of
the last vestiges of colonialism, Mugabe has forced a number of judges to
resign, replacing them with his cronies. Severe restrictions have been imposed
on foreign and local election observers.
Under these circumstances to argue, as South Africa’s ANC
government does, that it is still an open question as to whether the election
will be ‘free and fair’ is disingenuous, to say the least. It cannot be
judged by what transpires on polling day alone. The position of the ANC,
however, led by Thabo Mbeki, is that the election has to be declared ‘sufficiently’
free and fair. Despite the fact that there are no fundamental differences
between the ANC and MDC – both are adherents of neo-liberalism and ingratiate
themselves with imperialism – the fact that the MDC was a product of the
revolt against the party of national liberation explains the ANC’s antagonism
towards it. The ANC does not want to legitimise the development of a mass
opposition in South Africa, especially from Cosatu (the Congress of South
African Trade Unions), or deal with the spillover effects of a potential civil
war.
Mugabe’s draconian measures confirm the authoritarian and
anti-democratic traditions which characterised Zanu-PF as a national liberation
movement. Despite its radical Marxist rhetoric, and notwithstanding the reforms
of the early years, Zanu-PF’s programme in government has been consistently
capitalist. After being elevated into office on a wave of popular support after
the defeat of Ian Smith’s British-backed rule, the Mugabe regime suppressed
strikes by armed force. Opposition to the government by the minority Ndebele
population in the south was bloodily suppressed by the notorious North Korean
trained 5th Brigade at a cost of over 20,000 lives. The socialist transformation
of society through a workers’ led revolution was never on the Zanu-PF agenda.
Despite this, the conditions under which Mugabe has begun to
turn back the tide of opposition were partially prepared by the conduct of the
MDC itself. Although a product of the popular rebellion, the speed with which
the MDC converted to neo-liberalism is little short of astonishing. The fact
that the MDC is backed by big business and white farmers at home and imperialism
and its institutions – the IMF and World Bank – abroad, has undermined its
support amongst the masses in Zimbabwe and throughout southern Africa.
Undoubtedly, the brutality of the ‘war veterans’ was a critical factor in
determining the vote in the countryside. However, the fact that white farmers,
who continue to oppress and exploit farm labourers, supported the MDC, also
contributed to undermining its rural vote.
In a determined bid for bourgeois respectability, the MDC
has refrained from mobilising mass action against the regime. Instead, it has
turned to the ‘international community’ to exert pressure on Mugabe. This
has enabled him to present the political survival of his regime as a struggle
against foreign interference in defence of white minority business and farming
interests, and to denounce the MDC as agents of imperialism.
Mugabe attempted to increase social spending, price controls
and forcible land seizures after the general election, issued condemnations of
privatisation and even made vague mutterings about a ‘return’ to socialism.
He shows no inclination, however, of abandoning the fundamental course of the
economic policy on which the twenty-two years of Zanu-PF rule has been based.
The masses in Zimbabwe are faced with a choice between the rock of the MDC and
the hard place of Zanu-PF.
Since the May 2000 elections the economic situation has
deteriorated even further. Simba Makoni, the technocrat appointed as finance
minister, predicted the economy would contract by ‘only’ 2.8% in 2001. In
fact, it contracted by an estimated 7.3% and is expected to shrink a further
5.3% in 2002. Poverty levels have shot up, with over three-quarters of
Zimbabweans living below the poverty line. Foreign investment has dried up,
exports have fallen, and inflation (now at 117%) reached the point where
Zimbabwe’s economy was considered hyperinflationary. (Star Business Report, 2
November 2001)
Makoni’s privatisation programme failed miserably. Instead
of the projected revenue of Z$22bn (US$367m), the proceeds from privatisation
were a paltry Z$5bn (US$83m). It also placed basic services even further beyond
the reach of the mass of the population as costs escalated astronomically.
Arrears on Zimbabwe’s foreign debt rose to US$682m, with debt servicing
consuming 48% of the budget. Little wonder that Makoni resigned.
The regime’s chaotic land redistribution programme has
aggravated the catastrophic social crisis. There has been a dramatic decline in
agricultural production forcing the government to appeal to foreign donors for
emergency food aid.
The imperialist powers’ approach to the crisis is soaked
in hypocrisy. They were quite happy to do business with Mugabe for as long as he
was able to maintain stability. Once the masses had moved into action, however,
imperialism decided that Mugabe had reached his sell-by date. As the struggle
prepared the way for the development of a political opposition, imperialism
moved in rapidly to steer the MDC in a direction that would guarantee their
interests. Millions of US dollars, overseas trips and audiences with the
representatives of the major capitalist powers ensured that imperialism’s
newly-adopted alternative political management has the ‘right’ policies.
European Union (EU) assurances that it has no quarrel with
the Zimbabwean people, and that so-called ‘smart sanctions’ are directed
exclusively against Mugabe and his inner circle, are cynical ploys to portray EU
action as that of solidarity with the long-suffering masses. Yet the EU’s
quarrel is precisely with the masses and their rejection of the capitalist
policies imposed by the Mugabe regime.
The MDC’s programme proposes to speed up the very policies
which have been such a spectacular failure. It wants to carry out an even more
savage assault on living standards, aiming to put in place within the first 100
days in office plans for handing over education, health and parastatals
(state-owned organisations) to the private sector.
Mbeki has floated the idea of a government coalition between
the MDC and Zanu-PF. Such is the depth of political hostility that such an
outcome is not being considered by either party, at this stage. However, a
stalemate in the elections or a narrow victory for either party and the
possibility of civil conflict may increase the pressure exerted by South Africa
and the EU on Tsvangirai and Mugabe to reach a compromise. Therefore, a
Zimbabwean national unity government cannot be completely ruled out. But in the
unlikely event of this occurring, such a government would be incapable of
solving any of the country’s problems.
Socialists must, of course, defend the right of Zimbabweans
to elect a government of their choice, in an atmosphere free of intimidation and
violence, with the right of self-defence against Zanu-PF militias.
The Zimbabwean working class has no alterative but to start
the process of building a mass workers’ party on a socialist programme from
scratch. Such a party would address the land question through the
nationalisation of the big farms and a massive land redistribution progamme
implemented in consultation with peasants and rural workers. Such a programme
would be based on the expropriation of the capitalist class in the cities and
the introduction of a planned economy under the democratic control and
management of the working class. Only a workers’ government supported by the
peasantry can solve the problems facing Zimbabwe. Such a government would have
to appeal to the working class in South Africa to prevent any possibility of
foreign intervention and to access the resources of the most developed economy
on the African continent.
Weizmann Hamilton,
Democratic Socialist Movement (South Africa)
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