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Tuesday April 02, 2002
leolz@hotmail.com
p.dwyer@uea.ac.uk
After the election Zimbabwe is an odd mixture of depression, disorientation and muted anger. The question for socialists is which one of these ‘moods’ will prevail. There is a contradictory desire for action, with the hope that someone else will start it. The presence of the army in many areas after the election ‘secured’ an uneasy peace. Immediately after the election results were announced a few hundred activists gathered at the MDC HQ in Harare. As one said, "People were asking what we should do next, not sure if we should riot. We were not sure what to do, but we were so angry. I was arguing that we must riot." Within minutes the police arrived causing a large number in the crowd to start running, instantly others shouted, "Don’t run, we are not thieves!" The fear of repression and violence is coupled with the more muted desire to stay and fight. This ambiguity will probably determine the pattern of events. Such vacillation will inevitably play into the hands of Mugabe, who in the face of little or no protest has taken the initiative. This situation can only add to the reserved mood.
The Zimbabweans economy is tottering on the edge of total collapse.
In the last two years hundreds of companies have closed. In 2000 more than 400
were forced to close. The calls for a ‘return’ to the market are almost
deafening amongst the business community, the economist Eric Bloch stated in
The Financial Gazette "In the south of the country the Matebeleland Chamber
of Industry claimed that as much as half of their members will close down by
May unless the economy improves. This is the equivalent of 200 hundred enterprise
and more than 10,000 jobs. Until and unless such time the country starts implementing
realistic economic policies such as devaluation of the dollar, the removal of
price controls, keeping inflation in check and restoring the rule of law, all
the boom and gloom will continue."
There is a massive shortage of foreign exchange, ‘forex’, the Zimbabwe dollar now exchanges at $55 for one US$ on the official market and more than $300 on the parallel one. On top of this catastrophe sits another. The country is confronted with a huge foreign debt burden. That is currently US$700 million with arrears of more than US$1 billion.
Mugabe introduced price controls six months in an attempt to stem increases on a number of vital consumer staples. It was sold as a popular measure, but in reality it was an attempt by the regime to offset a major food crisis before the elections. At the time the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries warned that these measure would result in food shortages. The crowds of people waiting hours, and in many cases days, to vote have been replaced by huge food queues, as Zimbabweans try to purchase mealie-meal, the country's staple food.
Often the staple is only available on the black or parallel market at three or four times official prices. According to the United Nations Development Programme Zimbabwe needs at least $US83 million to prevent the starvation of over 600,000 people. The UNDP claim "There are 600,000 people in dire need. These are the lowest segment and need immediate assistance." There is a further political dimension to the crisis. According to The Daily News Zanu-PF supporters have "hijacked the exercise to distribute maize from the Grain Marketing Board (GMB) to the rural areas." In practice this means that truckloads of maize are being requisitioned by Zanu-PF supporters from the GMB, who then police distribution through village heads and chiefs. The crisis has been exacerbated by the failure of the government to prepare for it. The widely despised Minster of Lands, Agriculture and Rural Resettlement, Joseph Made, refused to acknowledge the shortage despite warnings to the contrary.
Mugabe reassured business that he would return to ‘fiscal stability’ in his inauguration address (something ignored or downplayed by the Western media and even by the left who persist in supporting Mugabe’s anti-imperialism). He also stated that the country would return to the Millennium Economic Recovery Programme (MERP), that is a domestic version of the structural adjustment advocated by the World Bank and IMF. Following these remarks there was an expectation that he would restore business confidence by lifting some of the price controls. This has huge political risks.
The business world has been among the first to answer Mugabe’s call for ‘unity and reconciliation’ to the surprise of the MDC, who regarded this community’ as their constituency. Businesses have failed to back protests or political action. Rather than following Tsvangerai’s call for the de-recognition of the government, economists have appealed for the repeal of price control and implementation of the ‘fiscal discipline’ promised by Mugabe. The failure of business to support the stayaway called by the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) testifies to these trends. The Employers Confederation of Zimbabwe, the Business Leaders Forums and the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries and the Commercial Farmers Union have all pledged to "improve communication with the government."
There is, of course, a regional element to the crisis. Zimbabwe’s plunge has seriously damaged Southern Africa. The weekly newspaper The Financial Gazette writes that foreign investors have fled the region; helping to cause the South African rand to lose 18 percent of its value since 2000. In April 2000 alone, the South African bond market witnessed an outflow of R1.8billion (US$263 million)." For the South African government Zimbabwe is major obstacle, and so we begin to see the rationale behind Mbeki’s despicable support for Mugabe’s stolen elections.
For two years Zimbabweans have been subjected to extensive intimidation, designed to stuff the presidential election from the start. But even this intimidation was not sufficient. To ensure a Zanu-PF victory the vote had to be rigged. The Zimbabwe Election Support Network – an NGO monitoring human rights abuses – note several major examples of 'rigging': the control of voter education through the Electoral Supervisory Commission; not allowing postal votes; holding the mayoral, council and presidential elections at the same time; restricting polling station in urban areas and the total monopolization of the mass media by the ruling party.
However violence is a common feature of Zimbabwe's election process. In 1985, for example, an Amnesty International report noted that pre and post election violence affected many areas of the country. The report highlighted that, "Thousands were left homeless and injured, and … government incited rampages that left "several dozen" dead, including two pregnant women." Every election that followed was marked by the intimidation of opposition candidates and the persecution of 'oppositionists'. Even in 1995 the election was marked by violence even though there was no serious opposition party.
Brutality is the chief characteristic of Mugabe’s rule since independence. For twenty years Zanu-PF have ruthlessly suppressed opposition. In the 1980s, using Rhodesian laws and practices, the regime crushed the opposition party Zapu, resulting in the death of thousands. It is the continuity not the break with colonial rule that marks Mugabe’s work.
The idea that elections were 'free and fair’ is met with derision by most people. However more needs to be said. State repression that picked up momentum after the referendum on constitutional change in February 2000 has continued to dominate the political scene in Zimbabwe. The opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), failed to counter these trends. Many argued that they should have built Labour Brigades or grassroots groups that could have confronted Mugabe's mobalisation of the 'youth militias'. Nor did the party respond to the demands made by workers who argued repeatedly at Labour Forums, "We want to do work in our rural areas."
Fundamentally the MDC failed to address the question of land, leading to the absurd situation where the party was fighting an election with a policy of land redistribution that was to the right of the ruling party. To the question: What was the MDC offering the peasantry? Many Zimbabweans responded: nothing. The warnings had been loud and clear. After the defeat of the MDC in the rural Bikita West by-election in early 2001, the outspoken leftwing MP Munyaradzi Gwisai warned, "It is not only imperative that the party moves much more left-ward than it has been in order to relink to its base, in order to win the presidential elections." On the question of land he went on to argue "Rural areas and the Peasant vote are central to Mugabe's campaign, and if he distributes the 5 million hectors of land using chiefs and headman, with the war vets as their police officers, he could actually get the majority of peasants on his side, who are the majority of voters – and just scrap through in 2002 … this strategy will involve bribes to the peasants in fertilizer, seed, drought relief etc…" He argued that to avoid this the MDC must "adopt a more radical land position than Mugabe" and organize "teams of workers, youths, housewives and others in urban areas according to their rural homes." The MDC did the reverse and relied instead, on the complacent belief, that ‘people are changing’. This gave Mugabe the ability to do what he had planned: divide the urban and rural poor.
We do not have to reply on the words of a leftist. The 'respectable' academic and chairman of the umbrella group of civic groups, Crisis in Zimbabwe, Brian Raftapolous made a similar warning in 2000, arguing, "one of the biggest problems that would confront the MDC was an ideological one, namely who are we, given that we are such a mixed bag of classes and people." He went on to say " .. the MDC must face the prospect of a violent presidential election … the mural areas would be closed off to the MDC by the Zanu-PF youth who are being trained under the national service scheme and will be supervised by Hunzvi's [Chenjerai Hunzvi was the leader of the war veterans until he died in 2000] war vets." This is exactly what happened.
This complacency extended into the election period. When Tsvangerai was asked why he didn’t hold more rallies he replied, "rallies don’t vote."
Even given widespread intimidation, two years of violence and the deployment of militias in rural areas the results were a catastrophe for the MDC. They illustrate a failure to fight Zanu on their own territory, principally on the question of land. Land is the key issue in rural Zimbabwe – it has been a major feature of national politics since independence. After the victory of Zanu-PF after the 1980 elections there was a wave of industrial struggle, with hundreds of strike, but there was an even more widespread and less reported series of land seizures.
The government had come to power after the compromises of the Lancaster House agreement, brokered by the Thatcher government in London. It insisted that there would be no compulsory redistribution of land rather a programme of gradual and ‘voluntary’ land reform. This was going to be facilitated British money that never materialized. However Zanu-PF still committed themselves to the resettlement of about 300,000 families in the first three years, they succeeded to resettle 70,000. The great part of these were the result of popular seizures.
The results in the recent election, even taking into account the waves of repression, represents a failure of the MDC to engage with the land issue and also a host of other factors including there right-wing economic policies. The ruling party identified the right constituency to both terrorize, through massive state violence and privilege through state patronage. Repression and ‘privilege’ were different sides of the same coin in the rural areas.
What does the vote reveal? Naturally these figures need to be regarded skeptically but they cannot be discounted all together. The share of the vote from the 2000 parliamentary elections rose by 7.9% for Zanu-PF while falling by 5% for the MDC. One of the most remarkable features of the election was the success of Zanu-PF in rural areas associated strongly with the opposition. In Matabeleland, the region that experienced the massacre of ‘oppositionists’ and ‘terrorists’ throughout the 1980s, the MDC saw their percentage of the vote plunge. In Matabeleland North the Zanu-PF vote rose by13.9% and the MDC’s vote fell by 11%. Still these figures must be taken with a large pinch of salt. The levels of intimidation were high, this included the careful manipulation of these communities. Many voters in Matabeleland were told that Zanu-PF supporter should vote on the weekend while supporters of the MDC could vote in the week when the poll had ended.
More incredibly, even in urban areas the MDC suffered. Although the party won decisively in Harare (despite depleted polling stations) their share of the vote fell 1% while Zanu-PF saw theirs rise by 2.9%. Only in constituencies where there were more outspoken MPs was this pattern reversed. In the working class constituency of Highfield in Harare, Munyaradzi Gwisai's vote rose significantly.
Whereas in the wealthy constutency of Harare East, the maverick Tendai Beti – who liked to boast of having the highest concentration of golf courses in Zimbabwe – his vote fell from 2000 by 6.2% while Zanu-PF's rose by 6.3%, perhaps illustrating the nervousness amongst the black middle class at the prominence of white interests in the MDC. In the southern city of Bulawayo the same picture emerges. The ruling party saw their vote increase by 5.2 % and the MDC’s fell by 2.2%.
None of these figures should obscure the fact that the election had been determined long before any Zimbabweans had voted. Votes were not simply ‘stolen’ or ‘forced’ but also decisively won. The MDC failed to organize in the rural areas, assuming rather than contesting Zanu-PF's predominance. When these policies were questioned the MDC replied again that ‘the people are changing’.
After the elections the ZCTU refused to call for action claiming that they had to 'consult their structures'. A meeting of the General Council of the ZCTU was broken up on Thursday after the election. They then convened a press conference were they stated that they supported the idea of action but refused to fix a date.
For almost a week after the vote the trade union congress gave out a sense of total confusion. They were perplexed and knocked by the results: scared of action and scared of inactivity. They were left emanding 'action' but calling none. The government used this failure; repeatedly the state media claimed that the ZCTU had called for mass mobalisation, a headline in The Chronicle, the government newspaper in Bulawayo, proclaimed on Friday after the elctions 'Mass Stayaway Planned'.
When a general strike was finally called the following week many people thought it was another scare story, while most did not even 'hear' the call. The depth of incompetence is hard to fathom: Miriam Makutuma, the deputy president of the ZCTU, was not even aware of the stayaway until she heard it announced on the news. The responsibility for announcing the stayaway was left to 'civic society', with Brian Raftapolous announcing it on South African radio.
Predictably the stayaway failed, claims by the ZCTU that 55% of workers had 'stayed away' were face-saving exaggerations. The momentum of the failure grew so by Friday the government was confidence enough to arrest and beat up activists, trade union leaders – including ZCTU Secretary General Wellington Chibebe – and student leaders. The government daily The Herald could gloat on Saturday after the stayaway that, " The stayaway was also a godsend in that it provided a barometer to test the mood of the people. The result was a resounding approval of President Mugabe's embracing approach for unity and nation building." Hence giving the regime more confidence to go on the attack, a typical tactic of the ruling class when the forces of the opposition do not act decisively.
Confusion and panic also infects the MDC. They too are clearly disorientated by the result, having expected a 'landslide' that would have paralyzed even Mugabe's rigging. They are being pulled in many directions with some members arguing for mass strikes, while others in the leadership fixated on 'international maneuvering' and legal appeals to steer them clear of the crisis.
The question that now stalks the corridors of the MDC HQ in Harare revolves around one theme: Should the party enter negotiations or participate in a government of 'national unity? When the much-reviled minister for Information, Jonathan Moyo, was asked about the idea of 'national unity' with the MDC he replied that Zimbabwe had already achieved 'national unity' in 1987. He was referring the Unity Accord signed by Joshua Nkomo - the leader of the opposition nationalist force Zapu - and the ruling party. The agreement ended the killings by government forces in Matabeleland, Nkomo's home province. Moyo, of course, was wrong and within days Mugabe urged the 'nation to come together.' Government led 'national unity' was again on the cards.
The debate is deeply polarised. Many MDC supporters are hostile to even the idea of 'cooperation'. Letters fill the pages of the independent newspaper The Daily News warning the MDC: "To the MDC, I say: Please do not look back, just keep fighting for the needy people … I urge the MDC to refuse the 'unity' that Mugabe is talking about now because that will mark the end of the party that is trying to put the Zimbabwe crisis to an end." Another letter argued in more strident terms "If ever Morgan Tsvangerai agrees to a government of national unity we will consider him a traitor, sell-out and power hungry individual." Morgan is caught between a rock and a hard place.
The arrest of Tsvangerai two weeks ago returns us to Moyo's historical point. Before Nkomo signed up for 'unity' with Zanu he was arrested and harassed by the regime, his supporter murdered and herded into concentration camps. Eventually he conceded. Today Nkomo has been canonized by the regime, and used by Zanu-PF during the election as representing the 'father of the nation'. Does the same fate await Tsvangerai? On the one hand he wants to the violence against his supporters to stop, which has escalated since the elections, and on the other hand he has attempted to de-legitmise the regime, encouraged by the intransigence of the 'international community.'
Students have a tradition of radical protest in Zimbabwe; they spearheaded the fight for democratic rights in the late 1980s. Former student leaders like Munyaradzi Gwisai at the University of Zimbabwe (UZ) organized anti-corruption demonstrations that were supported by many more than just students. The president of the ZCTU at the time, Morgan Tsvangerai, spent several weeks in prison for his support of the students.
Today students are organized in several bodies. The principle one is the national student body Zimbabwe National Association of Student Unions (ZINASU). Although it had a radical a reputation for sometime ZINASU was regarded, in the words of one activist, as a ‘leadership of couch-philosophers." In the last two years many students argued that it has been severely weaken by funding from NGOs (and donor-funded organizations) that they argue have corrupted members of the leadership. As a result the student programme is subordinated to the MDC and civic organizations like the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA). As the student leader John Bomba puts it, "We need a leadership engaged with the ground. The current one has disarmed the students. They are totally deprived of an ideology. Our task is to establish a linkage between ordinary students and that leadership.
But most importantly of all we have to equip students with 'ideas' and move away from the concept of the 'empty' militant."
The union no longer embarks on radical programmes. This led to the failure of the class-boycott - that was intended to run concurrently with the ZCTU stayaway. However there are two recently formed organizations that have radical potential: The National Union of University Students (NUUS) and Students Against Privatization (SAP).
These organization have both the politics and membership to act, particularly in their ‘home’ base of Bulawayo. But the center of student activity, the University of Zimbabwe, is a stronghold of MDC and activists share the same uncertainty about the way forward as the national organization.
The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) is an enigma. Since it was founded 1999 it has shifted to the right. At its founding rally held in Harare on September 11, 1999 (where 20,000 took part), the MDC announced that the party is "a focused continuation of the ages-old struggle of the working people. The MDC is coming together, through a united front of the working people, to pursue common goals and principles that advance the interests of all people across Zimbabwe - workers, peasants, the unemployed, women, students, youths and the disabled people..." Within a very short time the MDC adopted many policies antipathetic to their original goals. The party courted whites and international big business, as the South African based academic Patrick Bond wrote at the time "...is it not the case, as of February, that the MDC began to receive generous funding by (white) domestic and foreign capitalists, including white farmers? At that stage, didn't Zimbabwe's skewed land relations and abominable property rights simply drop off the MDC's campaign agenda? Wasn't a representative of big business put in charge of its economics desk, and wasn't his first major speech a firm endorsement of the International Monetary Fund and wholesale privatization for post-election Zimbabwe?" Today the parties Bridge Strategy represents a rehash of ESAP – it advocates mass privatization and a return to the 'market'.
In Zambia in 1991 there was a mass movement that lead to the formation of the Movement for Multi-party Democracy. It came from the trade union movement and was led by Frederick Chiluba, president of the Zambia Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU). There were fierce arguments in April 1990 with Chiluba representing the centrist-wing of the party and socialists who argued that the MMD must be a workers party – promoting the poor and working class. As Azwell Banda, one of those who argued with Chiluba, said, "In April 1990 I spent days with Chiluba at his home trying to persuade him to participate in creating a workers’ organization capable of taking over from Kaunda, but he had other ideas." Within a very brief period the party came to power in elections that were held in 1991.
The party then proceeded to introduce structural adjustment. The trade union movement that gave birth to the party was ravaged. The main federation split, there was the hemorrhaging of hundreds of thousands of member, the trade unions was deeply divided, many regarding cooperation with the government a safer bet. Opponents of the regime were persecuted as ruthlessly as the regime that they had replaced. Some socialists went into exile, one argued, "Our fundamental mistake, on the left in the MMD, was not to unite as a solid group and to rally labour to our side."
There are similarities and the differences with the Zimbabwean experience. There was no period of ‘cohabitation’ in government, the MMD was formed and within a relatively short period it removed the party that had held power since independence. In Zimbabwe the MDC grew out a similar struggle and expressed the same contradictions.
After the 2000 parliamentary election 57 MPs were elected.
This has undoubtedly resulted has in a level of disillusionment. A layer of trade union activists are openly critical of the MDC and students have voiced their criticism – notably on the question of education policy. In November 2000 Tsvangirai retreated from his threat to remove Mugabe by force and recently during the February demonstration socialist were arrested and beaten as the ZCTU convened their Peace and Stakeholders Conference, and the MDC refused to back the action.
For millions of Zimbabweans the 9-11 March election was going to change this picture by removing Mugabe. This desire is encapsulated by one Harare resident, "I am not so much for Morgan as against Mugabe."
Mugabe declared his 'love' of all Zimbabweans at independence in 1980. In front of an international audience, that included Prince Charles, he declared, "If yesterday we looked on each other with hatred today you can not deny the love that binds us." For fifteen years Mugabe was held up as a model of 'reconciliation' and 'international respectability.' Zanu-PF loyally upheld the Lancaster House agreement, and maintained the 10-year freeze on large-scale land acquisitions. If the regimes relationship with white Zimbabweans could not be characterized as warm and close, there existed a stable, and mutually beneficial, relationship. Again this all but ignored by the Western media and the ‘left’ who continue to give Mugabe uncritical support.
The huge disparities of income and ownership in Rhodesia - that left most farmland in white hands and foreign control of industry – persisted after independence. This 'achievement' secured for Mugabe important credibility in Washington and London. In 1991 the regime agreed to implement the Economic and Structural Adjustment Programme, designed to 'stream-line' the economy by reducing public expenditure, the privatization of important state companies and to rid the country of 'price controls' and other measure that were claimed to be having a deleterious effect on the operation of the market. The economy continued to collapse; by 1993 unemployment had reached a record 1.3 million, with a total population nudging ten million. Twenty five thousand civil service jobs were lost by 1995 while inflation rose and exports declined.
Although the economy failed the government was still regarded as compliant. Mugabe and his wife Grace would frequently jet to London on shopping sprees, calling in to see government friends and associates.
An additional, and for the regime unfortunate, effect of ESAP were stormy industrial relations from 1996. Between 1996 and 1997 strikes increased by thirty fold. These strike were often lead by rank and file workers with trade union bureaucrats attempting to control events. As Tafadza Choto, an executive member of the National Constitutional Assembly, explains, "This was the closest Zimbabweans have come to booting out Mugabe." The MDC emerged out this ferment.
The regime was fighting for its political survival. By using the issue of land Mugabe won support in rural areas and amongst the disgruntled war veterans. The result: clumsy but often-popular land siezures, with the government at once enthusiastic and hesitant.
Sometimes calling in police to remove squatters while arguing for the occupation of more land. The regime rapidly fell from the status of international 'figure-head' – to be emulated by others the third world – to pariah in danger of destabilizing the region.
Mugabe's hesitancy and indecision from 1997 to 2000 was a symptom of his reluctance to break with the west. Gradually the western media moved from criticism of the regime to denunciation. Stories abounded of white farmers cruelly persecuted and forced off their land by veterans urged on by a 'demonic' regime. In 1999 the IMF cut its ties with the government.
The suspension of Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth represents an extension of the country's isolation. This was Blair's plan at the Commonwealth summit in Australia at the beginning of March. If the Commonwealth Observers Report ruled that the elections had not been 'free and fair' then the 'troika', Australia, Nigeria and South Africa, would have the authority to suspend Zimbabwe.
In the current crisis Zimbabwe has emerged as a 'test' case for Africa. In Tony Blair's 2001 conference speech he stated that the condition of "Africa was a scar on the consciousness of the world", he proposed a partnership for Africa that would include on the west’s side aid and on Africa's a commitment to good governance and democracy. The New Economic Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) devised by Mbeki, is the consummation of these ideas. NEPAD has been promoted by regional African powers, Nigeria and South Africa, and the promise of western money for African 'development'.
The intensification of Mugabe's demonisation reached almost a hysterical level in Britain before the elections, so when the opposition, Conservative Party, called for military intervention no one seemed to regard the idea as far-fetched. Mugabe's message of reconciliation in his inauguration speech and his promise to "restore fiscal stability" was lost on Washington and London.
The regime has pressed ahead with more land seizers. The government newspaper The Herald has recently listed 388 new farms for seizure.
These include farms owned by the influential Oppenheimer families that have business interest throughout southern Africa and were until quite recently 'close' to Mugabe. These moves will infuriate imperialism. Denmark has already closed its embassy and others threaten to follow.
With breathtaking hypocrisy Charles Snyder, the deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, spoke at a gathering of the right-wing Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. He said, "We have begun a bargain with Africa in general, a new day in Africa in which we are looking for this NEPAD. The rules of the game call on Africans to provide good governance, peer review and, if you want, neighborhood watch. If Africa doesn't step up here it's going to cripple our ability to provide the kind of economic development assistance we want to provide – not humanitarian aid, but serious economic assistance." This is not simply a warning America have already frozen the assets of Zimbabwean leaders and introduce the Zimbabwean Democracy Act. Tony Blair has backed up America with a threat of his own, "If there is any sense in which African countries appear to be ambivalent toward good governance, that it the one thing that will undermine the confidence of the developed world in helping them."
These threats are very significant. It is a warning to South Africa's president Thabo Mbeki and Nigeria's Olusegun Obasanjo, that if they are unsuccessful in bring Zimbabwe to the heel – 'peer review' – then NEPAD will be stillborn. Washington and London want to see the back of Mugabe and the stabilization of capitalism in the region. Imperialism has drawn a line in the sand: Mugabe or NEPAD.
The lesson is intended to be heard across the region: "You cannot outface the 'Washington consensus."
As commentator Tagwirei Bango puts it, ‘Given the widespread food shortages, political instability, the on-going persecution of opponents, insecurity in commercial farms and rural areas, Mugabe is badly positioned to maneuver or even tell the world to ‘go to hell’…" He goes on to predict that "under siege, he will soon become suspicious of everyone especially in Zanu-PF. He will surround himself with a tough team of loyalists and opportunists whose job will be to block reformers and promote a vengeful and dangerous mentality that is inflexible, paranoid and impervious to new ideas."
This scenario might be overstated. Confronting this impasse there is a possibility that ‘reformers’ in the ruling party will be forced to act. As Brain Raftopoulos states, "The reformists may sooner or later begin to see that there is no way they can carry on like this, with Mugabe in charge, and that it is necessary to break the deadlock." Breaking that deadlock would require as a first step removing Mugabe, although it is hard to envisage the old man going quietly into retirement.
The risks for the MDC of accepting ‘unity’ are great; many supporters are angry even at the suggestion of collaboration with the regime, which would be tantamount, they argue, to betrayal. In this situation it is likely that Tsvangirai will continue to press for a 'transitional government' and ‘unity’ only as a provisional measure towards properly monitored fresh elections.
Is Zimbabwe facing what many socialists term the 'failure of parliamentary reformism'. As Socialist Worker (Zimbabwe) writes, after two years of "57 MPs, who have failed to achieve improvements in the lives of those who have voted for them has lead to growing disillusion with parliamentary reformism." Undoubtedly there is a certain amount of disillusionment amongst a layer of workers and student with the MDC. The organisation has repeatedly frustrated workers when they have wanted action, they have called off mass mobilisation under pressure from Europe and they have attempted to weed-out activists and opponents.
The extent of this disillusionment can be seen on a number of fronts. Firstly the support that Munyaradzi Gwisai managed to galvanise when the MDC tried and failed to expel him from the party, there were a number of large and militant demonstrations. But even this conceals the depth of feeling amongst many disenchanted trade unionists; several trade unions have seen a growth of rank and file activism. The most extreme case is the National Engineering Workers Unions (NEWU), lead by the 27 year old Maxwell Chamisa. Chamisa rose with spectacular speed to become the president of the NEWU, his rise was punctuated by bouts of militant strikes. When he was arrested and held he was only released after thousands of engineers went on an unofficial strike. He is representative of a still largely muted militancy amongst the rank and file and the desire to replace the conservative 'old guard'. Reflections is another example, it is a pressure group made up of workers in the Zimbabwe Graphical Workers Union (ZGWU) who are agitating for a new leadership while rejecting the current wage settlements in the printing industry. Many of the Reflection activists and committee members are supporter and members of the International Socialist Organization (ISO), of which Gwisai is a leading member.
In the current situation many are questioning previously held assumptions about the role of the middle class in the opposition party. For example, Miriam Makutuma, the Deputy President of the ZCTU, met Gwisai during the strikes and demonstrations that gripped Zimbabwe in 1998, he argued, "That political power will be taken by the middle class, unless we radicalise the workers." At the time she disagreed and saw the formation of the MDC and the role of these groups as natural and healthy. But today she regrets the take-over of the party by the 'respectable classes' arguing, "The only way we can create an independent movement in the ZCTU is by removing the leadership and building a strong rank and file."
However the growth of a rank and file movement is not equivalent to criticism of the MDC. Among leading, young trade unionist like Chimisa there is a strong commitment to the ZCTU bureaucracy and the MDC – even if it is tempered by an appreciation of the ‘degeneration of leadership' and the Zambian experience. There is, though, already a sense that workers are learning from the failings of the MDC. As one activist, Kunaka Mudzi , argues, "A new cadre, a new breed of activist must come through the ranks of the ZCTU. I have in mind an activist who values his freedom and independence and therefore will not sell his people for 2 pieces of silver. The new activist must have a clear understanding of the politics of the economy and the implications of globalisation as it affects the Zimbabwean worker.
Never again shall the worker be used as a launching platform by disaffected middle class types who can be easily corrupted because all they really care for are material comforts."
As negotiations loom a warning echoes for the MDC leadership, that the party must not 'betray us'. If negotiations go ahead the MDC will be confronted with substantial disillusionment. As a headline in the weekly newspaper The Independent put it, 'Joining Mugabe would be kiss of death for Tsvangirai'.
In the 1997 election many socialists campaigned for a New Labour vote, under no illusion that Tony Blair would start reading the Communist Manifesto when he was elected. In fact Tony Cliff commented at the time, "Blair is getting his betrayals in before the election." Most socialists knew that he would be as vicious as the Tories. They have not been disappointed. Socialists argued for a Labour vote to get rid of the Tory government because the message fitted the public mood, but we did not leave it at that, we pushed, demanded and protested against Labour councils and policies that we knew would continue and deepen the Tory legacy. They were the ceaseless critics of Labour before the elections and continued to be after them, not as a 'leftwing' of a reformist organisation but as a revolutionary one refusing to run ahead of the working class while putting across our politics to the largest possible audience.
It is important to note that as Blair has continued to push privatization, cuts and the ‘free market’ a new and confidence left has emerged. New trade union leaders have been elected, who are prepared to stand up to New Labour and in one of the most exciting developments in British politics, as electoral pact, the Socialist Alliance, has emerged to challenge New Labour in elections.
The MDC was the sole hope for change during the elections and for millions who have had to suffer Zanu-PF's battering the Party was seen as the only way forward – despite muted misgivings. Workers will only learn the 'failure of reformism' once they have experienced it themselves. The collapse of the MDC into the 'Washington Consensus' is a significant element in helping to widen the arena for socialist politics in Zimbabwe, but it does not constitute a decisive 'victory' over the illusions of reformism.
Senegal is an interesting comparison. The country, like Zimbabwe, was regarded as a 'semi-democracy', ruled since independence in 1960 by the same party, renamed in the 1975. The opposition was dominated from the early 1980s by a charismatic politician, Abdolaye Wade, and his Parti democratique senegalais (PDS). The party experienced periods of illegality, close collaboration with the government - that included ministerial posts for PDS deputies - and also the imprisonment of leading figures.
The 1990s were a period of student unrest and industrial struggle that galvanised support for the opposition. In 2000 the ruling party lost to the opposition movement, which took its slogan from the street demand for 'Sopi' (change). Street celebrations after the victory went on for days, one elderly reveler I spoke to said it was, 'better than independence'.
The PDS went on to win parliamentary elections the following year decimating the former ruling party. Doubt and disillusionment did not take long to take root, with in month's student were boasting to being the new opposition and trade unions sought to break from corrupt trade union federation, the CNTS.
Despite widespread collaboration and compromise, which included the control of important ministries by the opposition, it did no manage to quell the demand for 'sopi' that Wade (a right-wing opportunist) came to symbolize. Did the election mark a step forward for ordinary Senegalese? Unquestionably. Democratic change in Senegal has widened the terrain in which the class struggle can take place. It has also given confidence to a generation to 'kick out our leaders when we want.'
Madagascar shows the great possibilities of revolutionary struggle, and the huge dangers. On December 16 Madagascar was plunged into an electoral crisis. An incumbent regime determined to hold onto power, a popular opposition candidate, who is also a local businessman, and a disputed election. When the result emerged the ruling candidate and president, Didier Ratsiraka, had won by a small margin and the opposition candidate, Marc Ravalomanana, had lost with 46% of the vote.
The disputed result was referred to the High Court who ruled that a second round should be held. The opposition refused and within days Madagascar was paralyzed by a general strike and mass demonstrations. The general strike continued until the middle of March. The 'legitimate' government almost seemed to vanish from the scene. Within a few weeks a cautious and hesitant Ravalomanana was forced by the strikes and demonstrations to declare himself president. The country suddenly had two presidents.
But the opposition were nervous about where to tread, while their supporters urged them to 'seize power' by force if necessary, the leadership prevaricated, sought negotiations, then rejected them and then sought international respectability. This vacillation gave the incumbent president and his supporter's crucial breathing space. He retreated from the capital to his home province where he launched an economic blockade on the capital. Still the opposition hesitated.
Delegations from the former colonial power, France, and the Organization of African Unity, came and went, leaving the country paralyzed.
By the middle of March Ravalomanana insisted that supporters return to work – ending the biggest general strike in the country's history. At the same time Ratsiraka organized counter demonstrations that led to the first casualties of the crisis. As the two leaders continue to outface each other, there are signs that they are bringing into play ethnicity - in an attempt to divide the islanders.
Madagascar answers all of our questions. It shows the possibility for mass action to oust an incumbent president and it reminds us what we are struggling for, as Trotsky wrote, 'the inspired frenzy of history' - the passion and hope of revolutionary change, that was described by one striker as, 'like a holiday every day'. But it also reminds us crucially of the crisis of leadership. That there is no sizable revolutionary current inside the Madagascan working class that can push the movement beyond the timidity and conservativism of the official opposition. This failure has meant that Ravalomanana, himself a product of the strikes and demonstrations, could eventually force Madagascans to retreat from the general strike that had been at the heart of the mobilization and he now espouses the ‘Washington Consensus’.
The confrontation cannot be put off indefinitely, but unless the movement can break from the leaderships 'caution' and 'indecision' then the forces of Ratsiraka and the spectre of 'ethnic' violence will haunt the island.
These are the challenges for us in Zimbabwe.
It is also clear that the ZCTU leadership is split in many directions. Independent rank and file action must be the only recourse now. Workers, students and the unemployed must seek out others and the various civil society groups - whose 'political nerve' will be tested for real - and organise independently, always seeking to involve the widest forces and biggest numbers of people and groups. But we must be careful not to predict how people will react. The leadership’s vacillations are a reflection of their elite politics; lack of any meaningful independent action and their paternalistic relationship with their supporters who they see as fodder, to be wheeled out on special occasions under their command and control.
It is clear they have no real belief in the people they say they claim to represent. Yet, the MDC leadership could be forced, through mass action to move back away from negotiations, but they will only do so under pressure from the masses.
However, let us be wary of the NCA (and others) suddenly calling rallies and protests orchestrated from above, in the coming weeks. For this could, like the ANC in the early 1990s, be 'tap-politcs'. That is they will turn to protests and turn them 'on and off' (like a tap) in order to give themselves more leverage with Mugabe. This will be a means to a negotiated end. If the MDC begin to support any independent initiatives they must do so on the basis of the demands of that action. We must not allow the MDC to wave and cheer from the sidelines, for again they will seek to suck the life out of such actions in order to put pressure on Mugabe.
Finally, let us not mechanically predict how the middle-classes will act, yes they can be conservative, but we are not fortunetellers, we cannot predict the future, only struggle to direct it. Depending on the forms of mass, independent action many people can be won to more progressive politics.
This action is needed now more than ever, but we must guard our independence and be wary of leaderships that only seek to use our creativity, vitality and energy to give themselves more power in the elite negotiating rooms. Our platform should be: No to elite negotiations: No to a government of national unity of neo-liberalism. But: Yes to independent mass action for people's democracy and against neo-liberalism.
An enormous audience is asking: 'Where do we go now?' "What does national unity mean?' 'Why hasn't the MDC speared-headed action?' Socialists must respond to these questions, and as the crisis for the regime deepens and the MDC continues to seek legal solutions and negotiations socialist must seek to spread their influence. The betrayal of the MDC must be turned into a breakthrough for the revolutionary left.
The whole world is watching. Seize the moment. Shinga mushandi shinga! (Workers be resolute fight on!)
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