The disastrous election period in Zimbabwe has thrust that country back into the media spotlight over the last few months, with the latest big news being the veto in the UN Security Council of a package of sanctions being sponsored by the United States. Reports of voter intimidation have been added to the ongoing hostile media reports of land occupations by Mugabe cronies, financial mismanagement and economic collapse.

The story of Zimbabwe’s slide into poverty is, of course, more complex than the picture we tend to receive in the media, as is the perceived solution of Western-led international sanctions.

There can be no doubt that the election process in Zimbabwe was rigged by the ZANU-PF (Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front) party led by independence war hero Robert Mugabe. The lead-up to the 29 March 2008 harmonised local government, parliamentary, senatorial and presidential elections saw widespread reports of intimidation, while the vote-counting was inexplicably delayed. Finally a narrow win to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) was announced in the parliamentary poll, but in the presidential election it was declared that a runoff election would be required – a result that was immediately challenged by the MDC.

The new poll was set for 27 June but in the intervening period the MDC claimed that over a hundred of their activists had been killed and many more subjected to various forms of intimidation. MDC Presidential candidate Morgan Tsvangirai, who had himself been beaten and arrested several times during the campaign, withdrew from the contest and took refuge in the Dutch Embassy for nine days.

Redistribution of land key issue

The history of Zimbabwe’s decline goes back nearly thirty years. When it became obvious that Ian Smith’s white-supremacist Rhodesian government was doomed to fall to the guerrillas of the Patriotic Front, Smith attempted to retain a degree of white rule through a “power sharing” arrangement with conservative black leaders. When this proved untenable, the British stepped in to negotiate a peaceful transfer of power.

The Lancaster House Agreement was signed on 21 December 1979, and a primary British objective was to prevent the confiscation of white-owned farms. At the time, the tiny white minority owned 80% of the best land in what was then, briefly, known as Zimbabwe Rhodesia. Despite resistance from Robert Mugabe, the British won from the Patriotic Front a commitment that all land transfers would be on a “willing buyer, willing seller” basis. The British government promised £40 million to fund the buyouts.

It immediately became obvious that the farmers would not sell and only a trickle of the poorest white-owned farmland was made available under the scheme. This made it impossible from the outset for the PF government to carry out one of the key objectives of its armed struggle, the redistribution of land. Not surprisingly in a condition of scarcity, what little land there was went to people close to Robert Mugabe, and the British seized on this as a reason to cease funding the land redistribution.

When Mugabe condemns Britain for its role in the undermining of Zimbabwean sovereignty, this is what he is discussing. The newly independent state had been hamstrung from the beginning by its inability to address the most pressing issue facing the great mass of Zimbabwe’s poor – land.

ZANU-PF incapable of delivering

The ZANU-PF government became more and more authoritarian as it was increasingly incapable of delivering anything to its constituency. It moved against its Patriotic Front partner, the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) of Joshua Nkomo. However, it tried to maintain a working relationship with the white farmers, as they were essential to the survival of the economy, and the country came under the strictures of an Iinternational Munitary Fund (IMF) Structural Adjustment programme.

The IMF rated their Zimbabwean measures as “highly satisfactory” – the highest category, while many within Zimbabwe consider it a key element in the economic collapse of the country.

Poverty remained the norm for the mass of the black population. Despite the removal of the “willing buyer, willing seller” clause in 1992, white farmers still continued to resist land sale. But it was only when the emergence of a significant electoral threat, in the form of the MDC, arose that ZANU-PF sanctioned large-scale land occupations.

While ZANU-PF have largely toed the line laid out for them by the IMF, they have not been as reliable as the West would like. Lingering “debts” to the liberation war fighters, many of whom expected much more radical policies around land reform and social and economic equality, make ZANU-PF a less than perfect option for imperialist domination of Zimbabwe.

Mugabe’s “walk right, talk left” policy has not worked. It has not satisfied the left, who naturally want more than just periodic anti-imperialist rhetoric, but at the same time it unnerves the capitalist farmers and other interests within Zimbabwe and in the West. The MDC has emerged as a much more palatable alternative and the “humanitarian” card is now being aggressively played by the Western powers.

MDC courting Western imperialism

The MDC emerged as an alliance of various “civil society” organisations and the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions. Despite being headed by Morgan Tsvangirai, a veteran trade union leader, the new movement adopted a neo-liberal economic agenda. Leading up to the recent elections, the MDC was in negotiations with the World Bank, despite the consequences of the IMF’s last prescription.

The Party’s manifesto for the recent elections was based on a radical programme of privatisation: “The MDC does not believe that government should be involved in running businesses and it will restore title in full to all companies… Private enterprise in general, and industry in particular, will be the engine of economic growth in a new Zimbabwe… The major role of government will be to aid and encourage the private sector by providing incentives and the required supporting infrastructural facilities… The establishment of a vibrant enterprise economy will be underpinned by an unwavering commitment to… the safety and security of individual and corporate property rights.”

While the Mugabe government has lost all legitimacy and most Zimbabweans would love to see it gone, the MDC alternative does not bode well for Zimbabwe’s future, especially as it is likely that it will come to power courtesy of Western Imperialism.

Sanctions vetoed

The most recent Western initiative against Zimbabwe was the attempt to pass a Security Council resolution implementing sanctions against the country, specifically an arms embargo and sanctions against the country’s top leaders. Along with the United States, which sponsored the move, the sanctions proposal was supported by Belgium, Britain, France and Italy, and Western-aligned Burkina Faso, Costa Rica, Croatia and Panama. The resolution was opposed by China, Libya, Russia, South Africa and Vietnam. Indonesia abstained. Russia and China vetoed the resolution, ensuring that it would not be passed.

The news of the veto was greeted with outrage and horror in the West, with the headline in The Times online edition (12 July 2008) reading “West suffers historic defeat as China and Russia veto Zimbabwe sanctions”. The report declared that “Britain’s diplomatic strategy in Zimbabwe collapsed last night in an historic defeat for the West in the UN Security Council that will have repercussions across Africa and beyond”.

What concerns the self-righteous journalists at The Times is that there has been a precedent set here for Russia and China to defy the US and Britain in their efforts to use the UN against other countries, such as Burma/Myanmar.

Hypocritical humanitarianism

The West’s anti-Mugabe campaign is couched in the terms of humanitarianism. “Humanitarian intervention” has, since the end of the Cold War, been the preferred choice of the West in justifying its domination of the world. It was for “humanitarian” reasons that the West intervened in Iraq. Earlier, it was for “humanitarian” reasons that they dismembered Yugoslavia and intervened in Somalia.

While Mugabe is clearly a dictator, Western talk of humanitarianism is completely hypocritical. When their record is examined – over one million dead in Iraq through Western sanctions and war, or the continued bombing of civilian targets in Afghanistan – Western moralising over humanitarianism in Zimbabwe is exposed for the lie that it is.

Imperialist interventions in the underdeveloped world are driven by the interests of Western corporations, not by the interests of poor Southern African workers and farmers. The Zimbabwean people will eventually win true independence but it will not be at the whim of the US or other Western imperialists.

In the past month or so, elections took place in three very different countries, far away from one another, with distinctly different languages, cultures and histories. These countries did have some things in common. All were all poor, third-world countries, whose people live in poverty and oppression, and they all voted against the regimes and systems they currently live under.

Tonga votes against monarchy, for democracy

In the leadup to the Tongan elections, mainstream New Zealand media talked a great deal about how the people of Tonga did not want radical change and did not really want the monarchy to go, and how the pro-democracy candidates were going to get an awful result.

Just as with their predictions in Nepal, they were proved to be completely wrong. In the Tongan elections, pro-democracy candidates won all nine elected seats.

Of the 34 seats in the Tongan parliament, candidates are democratically elected to only nine, with 16 members being appointed directly by the king, and another nine representing “the noble families of the realm”. This is essentially a semi-feudalistic system, with a small minority of nobles and the capitalists linked to them monopolising all power and wealth in the country.

Democratic reforms are due to be implemented in 2010, with the balance of seats being changed to 17 MPs elected by the people, nine MPs to represent the “nobility” and 4 MPs to be appointed by the King.

While this would certainly be a positive move and a step in the right direction, ultimately the King and his nobles have no right to exist. The people of Tonga deserve to live in a nation where everyone is treated equally and nobody lives in great privilege simply due to being born lucky.

Such a society can only come about through completely eradicating not only feudalism but capitalism as well, and moving towards a socialist system.

Zimbabwe votes against Mugabe’s dictatorship, but is the MDC any better?

In Zimbabwe’s parliamentary elections, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) won 99 seats in the House of Assembly, with Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party winning 97 and the minority MDC faction winning 10.

In the last issue of The Spark we reported that the results of the presidential elections had not yet been released, and fears were growing that the results would be rigged in Mugabe’s favour. The MDC declared that it had won an outright victory.

The results of the recount were released on May 2, with Morgan Tsvangirai of the MDC winning 47.9% of the vote to Mugabe’s 43.2%. As neither of the two main candidates won a majority, a run-off will be held on June 27.

Since the initial elections, ZANU-PF has unleashed a wave of violence against MDC members, with several being killed. Interestingly, government-approved farm occupations have begun again in some areas. This also happened after the 2000 elections, and clearly shows that the farm occupations are not part of any attempt by Mugabe to radically transform Zimbabwe’s economy and transfer land and wealth to the poor, but is rather just an attempt to distract people from his election defeats.

Disturbing reports have also emerged about the actions of the MDC (which advocates neo-liberal, right-wing economic policies). ZANU-PF accuses them of being funded by American and British imperialism, and it would not be at all surprising if this were the case – the US and British have a long history of meddling in Third World politics, and have openly declared their intentions to effect regime change in Zimbabwe¹. There are also unverified reports of foreign NGOs telling voters that if they do not vote for the MDC, food distribution will stop.

Nepal votes for Maoist revolutionaries

In the recent Constituent Assembly elections, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) won 220 out of 575 seats, making them by far the largest party in the Assembly. (The two next biggest, the Nepali Congress and the revisionist (ie claiming to be Marxist, but acting counter-revolutionary) Communist Party of Nepal (UML), won 110 and 103 respectively, making them smaller than the Maoists even when put together!)

The vote for the revolutionary Maoists represents the mass support they enjoy amongst the Nepalese masses, on whose side they fought during the decade-long People’s War. In the course of this struggle the Maoists liberated 80% of the countryside, before changing their tactics in order to move the revolutionary struggle into the urban areas.

The four next-biggest parties agreed on May 24 to back a Maoist-led government. However, there is still a great deal of conflict between the Maoists and the non-revolutionary parties. The Maoists are demanding that, as the largest party, they receive the two biggest portfolios in the government, the posts of Prime Minister and President. They have compromised to agree that the Chairman of the Constituent Assembly could be a non-Maoist.

The Nepal Congress in particular is calling for the Maoists to disband the People’s Liberation Army and the Young Communist League, but the Maoists have rejected this.

After a huge step forward, tensions remain in the new Nepal.

¹ http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss/2006/

Leader of the Zimbabwean opposition Movement for Democratic Change, Morgan Tsvangirai

On 29 March 2008, the people of Zimbabwe went to the polls to vote in the parliamentary and presidential elections, and on the future of their impoverished country.

There was world-wide interest in the elections and a great deal of media coverage. These elections were seen as crucial in determining whether President Robert Mugabe and his ruling ZANU-PF party would maintain their 28-year hold on power, or whether the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) would take their place.

The elections were marred by violent clashes between the supporters of various parties and factions, and were carried out in an atmosphere of extreme tension.

Official results began to trickle in on March 31. By April 2 all the results for the lower House of Assembly had been declared, with the majority faction of the MDC, led by Morgan Tsvangirai, winning 99 seats, Mugabe’s ZANU-PF winning 97, the minority MDC faction led by Arthur Mutambara winning 10 seats, and one independent.

This was the first time since the end of white minority rule that Mugabe’s party had not held a majority, and it showed the level of dissatisfaction with him that exists in Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe is currently suffering an extreme economic crisis, and has been since the early 2000s, with chronic shortages in imported fuel and consumer goods. The inflation rate was 100,580% in January 2008, and continues to rise. Eighty percent of people lack jobs.

The reasons for this situation are a combination of economic mismanagement on Mugabe’s part, and Western imperialist isolation of Zimbabwe. For example, under the “Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act” passed by the US Congress in 2001, Zimbabwe is unable to apply for loans and credit from institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank, and they refuse to cancel any of its debts.

Whatever the exact reasons for Zimbabwe’s disastrous economy, it is clear that neither Mugabe nor the Western imperialist powers have the interests of the people of Zimbabwe at heart.

After the unexpected success of the MDC in the 2000 elections, where they won 47% of the vote compared to 48.6% for ZANU-PF (which won 92.7% in 1996), Mugabe began a series of land seizures, kicking wealthy white farmers off the land and redistributing it amongst poor blacks. This was carried out badly, with little or no support being given to the new farmers, and as a result in many cases the new black owners simply went back to the cities and left the land to lie idle.

As this issue of The Spark goes to press, the results of the presidential election have still not been released, although the MDC’s Morgan Tsvangirai has declared victory. The government has also ordered a recount of the parliamentary results, stirring fears that the results will be rigged in ZANU-PF’S favour.

Robert Mugabe is a brutal and corrupt dictator, and has fulfilled few of the promises that brought him into power following the liberation war. But the MDC, which was founded by the trade union movement, has increasingly adopted neo-liberal economic policies in order to try and secure Western support, and has called on the US and the UK to “intervene” in order to “break Mugabe’s white-knuckle grip on power”. It is obvious that an MDC government would be no more friendly towards the workers and peasants of Zimbabwe than the current regime.

The working masses of Zimbabwe need a genuine revolutionary socialist party to overthrow the neo-colonial capitalist system that is the ultimate source of their country’s troubles.

After the Mugabe era

James Turley asks what MDC rule would mean for Zimbabwe’s workers.

On April 2 the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, which had been claiming victory since the polls closed, was finally confirmed as the largest party in Zimbabwe’s March 29 general election.

In a desperate attempt to delay the inevitable, the Zimbabwe election commission – no doubt under orders from president Robert Mugabe – is still refusing at the time of writing to release results for the presidential election, where MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai has certainly won most votes. Even if he has not passed the 50% mark, necessitating a run-off, it is clear that the era of the Mugabe regime is over.

Hebson Makuvise, the MDC spokesman in London, claimed that Mugabe will “unleash violence”. The claim is not simply rhetorical – Mugabe has used his control of the security services as a rough instrument in such situations before. However, all the signs are that Mugabe and his cohorts are preparing to exit the scene of their crimes, taking as much booty with them as they can manage.

The MDC

So would life improve for the masses under a new administration?

The MDC is an organisation with a curious history, and a contradictory character. It is indisputable, for one, that it is the primary political tool of imperialism in the country, and has received ringing endorsements from most of the political establishments of the west. Tsvangirai’s labour roots did not prevent him from visiting the extremely rightwing John Howard, then prime minister of Australia, last August.

It is no less obvious, however, that the social basis for the MDC pre-existed, and is largely independent of, that link. The initiative was launched by the Zimbabwe Confederation of Trade Unions, which by the end of the 1990s constituted the primary locus of opposition to Mugabe’s regime. The 1990s had seen Zanu-PF attempt neoliberal ‘reforms’ in what had previously been a strictly nationalist-corporatist regime; wage and price control were transferred to the market, and an attempt was made to reduce the spiralling budget deficit.

The result was not dissimilar to the ‘shock therapy’ privatisations in the ex-Stalinist countries. Short-term exposure to international market pressures caused a large number of enterprises to simply pack up. Unemployment shot up, as did poverty levels. But the budget deficit, the MacGuffin for the whole operation, remained stubbornly high.

The attacks on the working class that these measures necessitated forced the ZCTU, led by Tsvangirai, into an increasingly oppositional stance. In 1999, the MDC was formed, with the unions as by far the largest and most influential constituency, and a largely social democratic programme. Though elements of the local bourgeoisie were involved from the beginning, the evolution of the MDC has seen – particularly after the farm seizures of 2000-01, where wealthy white farmers were expelled in a chaotic land reform programme – a steady increase in the involvement of capitalist elements.

The white farmers, by and large, stayed in the country even after losing their land, turning their resources to other businesses (one, in an ironic development, turned to construction and lent his bulldozers to the government in the infamous slum clearances of 20051), and provided a new (and still relatively wealthy) base for the MDC. It was an unmistakable popular front.

These contradictions came to a head in 2005, with a significant minority splitting over the question of participating in the Senate elections. The introduction of the Senate had been opposed by the MDC; it was part of the 17th amendment to the constitution, which also included undemocratic measures such as restrictions on international travel (which were plainly targeted at Tsvangirai) and on free expression. Tsvangirai called for a boycott of the Senate elections; a breakaway MDC faction led by businessman Arthur Mutambara contested them anyway, gaining five seats out of 50 (a further 16 were appointed, six by Mugabe personally).

Tsvangirai’s political strategy is two-pronged. He is engaged in a long process of overtures to politicians and bourgeois civil society in the imperialist countries, and cultivating allies in powerful regional states. It is this process which is the immediate context of the travel restrictions in the 17th amendment. Parallel to this, he cultivates a mass base in the urban centres of Zimbabwe – predictably enough for a man whose core support originated in the trade unions. Quite apart from routine harassment and repression from the state and paramilitary apparatuses of Zanu-PF, the failure to gain any kind of mass base in the countryside has up to now had the effect of hobbling the MDC’s electoral challenges.

Mugabe’s reputation remained strong among the poor agricultural workers and peasantry, and – despite the international outcry – the farm invasions helped reinforce their support. However, with hyperinflation hitting 100,000% in February, food shortages crippling the country, and poverty and unemployment both at around 80%, it is unsurprising that rural support for the regime plummeted.

Prospects

Mugabe’s isolation from almost all major forces, at the regional and global level, was a cast-iron guarantee of economic chaos and political repression.

His regime followed the path of almost all revolutionary nationalist states in the ex-colonial world, albeit a decade or so later than most – an initial period of sympathy to leftwing, primarily Stalinist, policies gives way ultimately to the pressure of isolation, internal imperialist meddling or both, resulting in acquiescence to the neoliberal consensus. Mugabe’s vocal hostility to the big powers did not prevent him enforcing IMF measures, though at present Zimbabwe remains expelled from that organisation.

Mugabe’s third-worldist anti-imperialism was always a dead end, however. It ensured the major powers treated him as a pariah and Zimbabwe as a ‘rogue state’. Hit by imperialist sanctions and effectively cut off from the global system of capital, its economy could only spiral into disintegration.

The MDC, however, apart from at its birth (and even then inconsistently) did not attack Mugabe from an anti-capitalist or working class perspective. Its programme is clearly neoliberal, and it is banking on Tsvangirai’s contacts in the west bringing lucrative foreign investment to the country, stabilising the economy in the short term. That will almost certainly mean some improvement in the food situation and probably some alleviation of unemployment. But it will be on capital’s terms and thus will do no more than remove the worse excesses of current conditions. In reality exploitation of the working class will become more efficient, while rural poverty will remain entrenched.

Still, communists in Zimbabwe are faced with the reality that the MDC remains a site of struggle for proletarian politics at the current time. Their intervention must be directed at splitting this popular front along class lines, making every possible step towards the independent political representation of the working class. The – undeniable – fact that the leadership faction is deeply tied up with imperialism makes no difference. In our view the International Socialist Organisation made a serious tactical error when it decided to give up on MDC work in favour of the ‘social movements’.

However, no set of tactics, no programme will be able to ensure the advancement of Zimbabwe’s working class if they are restricted to that country alone. An effective communist movement must aim to take root internationally, attempting to unite its forces across the whole of southern Africa, and particularly in the regional hegemon state of South Africa. Immediately after the election the South African government attempted to broker deals between the MDC and Zanu-PF, although Mugabe’s survival has relied on at least the tacit support of the African National Congress government.

The South African Communist Party, however, has adopted a pro-MDC position. The SACP’s Young Communist League sent a delegation to observe the elections, and issued a statement complaining of constant monitoring by state security forces, along with numerous “absent conditions for free and fair elections”, including the gerrymandering of constituency boundaries and the presence of senior Zanu-PF leaders on the management of the electoral commission. The YCLSA ended its statement with a call to Mugabe to “accept the will of the people”.2

While its allegations are no doubt broadly accurate, the statement is entirely insufficient from a so-called communist organisation. It is so full of liberal platitudes, it is difficult to see why the YCLSA bothered keeping its delegation separate from the other observation missions. This is in keeping with the record of the SACP, some of whose members have enthusiastically introduced neoliberal measures as part of the ANC government, and whose leadership has constantly striven to dampen down working class struggles in the name of social peace and defending the ‘national democratic revolution’.

An authentic communist approach must expose the deep complicity of the bourgeoisies of Zimbabwe and South Africa and the bankruptcy of their political establishments; it must resist imperialist blackmail and work to break the illusions of workers in the MDC leadership, which has bought into that blackmail. Most of all, it must develop a working class programme for the region and the whole of Africa.

Notes

1. See A Selby Commercial farmers and the state: interest group politics and land reform in Zimbabwe p326 (www.zwnews.com/3-Main Body.pdf).
2. www.ycl.org.za/main.php?include=docs/pr/2008/pr0331a.html