IAN BEDDOWES, Editor of ZimCom Publishers will be speaking about ZIMBABWE
On Wed 14 July At Bolivar Hall, 54 Grafton Way London W1T 5DL, Near Warren Street Tube
7pm start
Originally from Britain , Ian Beddowes was recruited by the military wing of South Africa’s ANC in 1985. He later moved to Zimbabwe where he lived for the next 23 years.
Sponsored by the Morning Star & 21stcenturysocialism.com
The fatal car wreck on Friday that injured Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, and killed his wife Susan, is now believed to have been a tragic accident. It was, however, just as plausible that this had been carried out by operatives of the supposedly recently disbanded Zimbabwean pro-Mugabe secret police. And it was perhaps just as plausible that an attempted assasination of Morgan Tsvangirai could have been carried out by a foreign government seeking to advance a pretext for “regime change”, accelerating the complete removal of Robert Mugabe and ZANU-PF.
Given the historical change in Zimbabwe, with a power sharing government inaugurated that includes both President Robert Mugabe of ZANU-PF, and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai of the former opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) there has been remarkably little serious discussion of Zimbabwe in the British press.
Partly this is because the formation of the coalition confounds the popular narrative in the West of Robert Mugabe being without domestic support and hanging on to power only due to repression. Now of course this narrative is not without substance, there has been appalling levels of violence in Zimbabwe, reminiscent of the Idi Amin era in Uganda. The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), has judged that political violence in the country has reached alarming if not catastrophic proportions.
But in truth, ZANU-PF and the MDF both have substantial support from parts of the population, with ZANU-PF having greater support in the rural areas, among state employees, and the armed forces. The economic isolation of Zimbabwe has led to a highly interventionist state whose main policy has also been to promote an indiginous Zimbabwean capitalist class, whose survival depends upon the ZANU-PF protectionist policies; and there has been reversal of the privatisations that were caused by the structural adjustent programmes a decade or so ago, and a growing state sector has been created to cope with what is effectively a war economy. Many Zimbabweans see their economic and social interests tied to the survival of ZANU-PF, particularly the tens of thousands of small farmers who have benefited from the seizure of white owned farms.
MDC has more urban support, including from the trade unions, from international capital, global companies operating in Zimbabwe, from Western governments, as well as from the South African trade unions, and from progressive, democratic figures in the region such as Graca Machel, and Desmond Tutu. But MDC is an unstable coalition united around contradictory programmatic platforms. On the one hand it is pro-democracy, and opposed to the political violence of the Mugabe government, but on the other hand it is committed to opening Zimbabwe’s economy to liberalisation and privatisation. Given that the greatest social gain in Zimbabwe has been land nationalisation, and the creation of thousands of new, small farms, the MDC represents a significant threat. The fanatical privatiser, Eddie Cross, who even advocates privatising the health and education systems remains their primary economics spokesperson; and they have nominated white colonialist farmer, Roy Bennett, to be agricultural minister. Indeed, the composition of the ZANU-PF / MDC government already shows the betrayal of the working class constituency of MDC, with trade union and left figures from the MDC, like Makuyana, Gwiyo and Mativenga left out of the cabinet.
The deadlock preventing the removal of Mugabe is not that Zimbabwean society lacks the courage or vision to do remove a dictator, but that the land seizures represented a social revolution in the countryside, and Mugabe still has mass support resting on that process. In contrast, the most organized and decisive forces within the MDC are those allied with Western business interests and neo-liberalism, despite its trade union and working class mass support. The MDC could not gain government power without compromising with ZANU-PF, because to confront Mugabe would have put too great a strain on the fragile alliances within the MDC. Mugabe could not be dislodged by mass popular protests because the MDC leadership fears such a democratic mobilization as much as Mugabe does.
The evolution of the MDC was quite neatly summarised by Ken Olende in Socialist Worker last year. (more…)
Appeal for Zimbabwe
Ten years of economic sanctions, that’s enough!
More than 3000 deaths and nearly 70 000 people affected by cholera in Zimbabwe, with risks of epidemic spreading to neighbouring countries, have not been enough to end the economic sanctions Great Britain and its allies have imposed on this country since the end of the 90’s. That’s how the European Council, during its session on 26th January 2009, decided “to extend for another year the Common Position on restrictive measures against Zimbabwe”. Of extreme gravity, such a decision can only exacerbate a situation which is already characterised by the highest unemployment (94%) and inflation rates in the world, by food shortage which 7 million people suffer from, by a lack of schooling for children as well as brain drain and labour outflow among which many teachers and medical staff members.
The sole wrongdoing of the Zimbabwean people consequently deprived of jobs, income, drinkable water, healthcare and of food - all in all condemned to a veritable descent into hell - is to be led by Robert Mugabe whose ousting and overthrow have been demanded during long weeks of destabilisation and demonization. The former colonial power, political opponents of the Zimbabwean president as well as NGOs and mainstream media accuse him of having ruined the country, of violating the rights of his fellow citizens and of remaining in power by the repression of his opponents and electoral fraud and ballot rigging. For lack of his resignation, the power sharing deal with his main rival Morgan Tsvangirai has just been concluded after four months of talks during which the President of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) claimed, on top of the Prime Minister position, the control of key ministries.
It’s a good thing that the Southern African Development Community (SADC) member countries’ meeting held on 30th January 2009 led to this peaceful outcome which has just translated into the setting up of a government of national unity. Let’s hope that President Robert Mugabe and the Zanu-PF will live up to the expectations and this crisis will only be a bad memory!
But this important step is only the start of a normalisation process. To end the agony of the Zimbabwean people, what’s required is the immediate and unconditional lifting of the economic sanctions that have widely contributed to throw former Southern Rhodesia into such a calamitous situation.
Such a reading of the Zimbabwean tragedy from the point of view of punitive measures that kill, starve and impoverish innocent people does not exempt or exonerate at all the Zimbabwean President and his party for the mistakes they may have made. It is a matter of giving a chance to peace by highlighting fundamental facts which have deliberately been overshadowed and concealed.
Let’s go back to the Lancaster House Agreement which, in 1979, ended fourteen years of a fierce struggle for the liberation of former Southern Rhodesia from the claws of racist Ian Smith. It was signed in a context in which 6000 white farmers owned more than 15.5 million of the country’s most fertile hectares. Meanwhile, with difficulty, nearly 4.5 million blacks lived on community land, often arid, where settlers had confined them during one century. The willing buyer, willing seller principle is one of the main aspects of the plan of action which was supposed to remedy that situation. Ten years later, it had not evolved in a tangible way because white farmers increased prices and were only giving up the less fertile land.
In 1997, Tony Blair’s government made it known to Harare that it could not longer financially contribute, as agreed, to the transfer of farmland to blacks by compensating British farmers who were supposed to be expropriated. The Zimbabwean President decided then to confiscate their land without compensation. Economic sanctions are the financial, economic, social and political war machine that has been deployed by way of punishment meted out by Great Britain and its allies, particularly the United States. Let’s judge for ourselves:
- In December 2001, the United States Congress passed the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act. It comprises, among other things, the US opposition to any loan to Zimbabwe and to the cancellation of the debt by international financial institutions. This act has widely contributed to throw Zimbabwe into economic recession and turmoil and visit upon it a more and more vertiginous and astronomical inflation rate.
- In 2002, the Bush administration also implemented a programme entitled Governance & Democracy with a budget of 6 million dollars to support opponents (MDC, trade unions, religious groups, “independent” media, etc…).
Let’s add to these sanctions the usual and disastrous consequences of the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (liberalisation, privatisations, low wages, worsening living conditions…) as well as the more frequent cycle of droughts to understand the deep underlying causes of Zimbabwe’s sorry plight. Other African countries escape this fate only because they live with cash injections from external funding of which this country is deprived.
Sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe are even more unjustifiable when they proceed from States or institutions that are non-transparent and non-democratic in their dealings with Africa if we study the rules of global trade, the terms of economic partnership (EPA) or African migrants’ readmission agreements. They are illegitimate because unrepresentative of African people whose rights they deny and trample under foot but to which they callously pay lip service to in the defence of their own interests.
Such undemocratic and murderous economic sanctions also stem from political and financial corruption insofar as by punishing leaders they consider undesirable, world powers dissuade other leaders who would otherwise be tempted to stray from the straight and narrow.
Democracy, human rights and good governance are debased, instrumentalised and discredited when powers who claim to be their representatives, ridicule them if not convert them into dreadful weapons of pressure, domination and blackmail to withdraw their financing.
It’s high time to prioritize in the discussion on the present and the future of the postcolonial State in Africa, the key question, which is often overshadowed and concealed, of the control of resources as well as the initiative of change, including agrarian reform. Beyond the extreme personalisation of the political debate, Robert Mugabe’s country is, in this regard, a textbook case to meditate on at a time when you see multinationals from all over the world rushing to grab the fertile land of the continent and everything being sold off in the name of growth and the prevailing whims and supremacy of the market.
While the diagnosis is biased and the economic sanctions are deadly for entire populations, voices exhort President Obama to pursue the same course in his turn His “Yes we can” does require a radical change in perspective, discourse and practices in terms of US foreign policy in Africa. It is of the utmost importance that he plays on the black continent like in the Middle East the listening and out-stretched hand card instead of carrying on with sanctions that are one way or the other nothing but a violent onslaught against destitute, helpless and disinformed people.
More practically, it means discarding and jettisoning George W. Bush’s Axis of Evil theory which has inflicted on the world the aggression against and occupation of Saddam Hussain’s Iraq, the barbaric and repeated attacks of Israel against the Palestinian people, illustrated with the latest deluge of fire power unleashed on the Gaza Strip. In Africa, this theory applies to a certain extent to Zimbabwe too. The clarification of global economic, social, financial and environmental issues, in order for Zimbabweans and, more generally, Africans to be committed to the democratic process on other grounds than mere alternation of power for its own sake and the jockeying for key positions, is the real challenge which should preoccupy and be uppermost in the minds and thinking of African leaders, sub-regional institutions as well as the African Union and the genuine allies of the continent.
It is perilous for Africa to follow the advice of the masters of this world who have sunk into the mire of a deep crisis, an indictment of failure of their model of society that the moralisation of the financial sphere will not rehabilitate and manage to restore faith in. As for the legitimacy of political power in Africa, it is necessary to underscore that, beyond the requisite elections, it lies above all in the willingness and ability of elected leaders to trade and manage the resources of the continent in the best interests of those men and women who have elected them and mandated them to do so.
Also, the temporary lull and respite that has been attained by the SADC needs to be used to set up a lasting peace for Zimbabweans and be grasped as an opportunity for the whole of Africa to shed a different light on crises since its customarily battered image has been considerably tarnished by the hypocrisy of lies which prevail in the analysis of the predicament of this country.
Intellectuals and other actors of critical civil society, along with African and non-African leaders who firmly believe that the black continent is not an isolated planet but well and truly the cradle and birthplace of humankind and an innocent victim of a wild, rampaging and destructive capitalism, need to analyse, reveal and dismantle the cogs of its oppressive machinery.
To give a chance to authentic and lasting peace in Zimbabwe, we join our voices to the chorus of Zimbabweans, of the SADC and the African Union. We remind Great Britain, the US and the EU of the exorbitant social and human cost of the punitive measures imposed and foisted upon this country.
Yes, we can! What is required is to stop mixing up British, US and European interests with the legitimate rights and entitlement of the Zimbabwean and African populations to land, food, drinkable water, healthcare, education, employment and income. WE ARE ALL ZIMBABWEANS!
Signatories :
Aminata D. Traoré (Essayist, Mali) – Jean Ziegler (Sociologist, Switzerland) – Boris Boubacar Diop (Writer, Senegal) - Mireille Frantz Fanon (Frantz Fanon Foundation) – Diadié Y. Dagnoko (Teacher, Mali) -Demba Moussa Dembélé (Economist, Senegal) – Assetou Founé Samaké (Biologist, Mali) - Bruno Rebelle - Souleymane Koly (Choreographer, Côte d’Ivoire)– Hamidou Magassa (Writer, Mali) – Christian Koné (Journalist, Burkina Faso) – Ismaël Diabaté (Painter, Mali) – Bibi Diawara (Demographer, Mali) – Lucette & Christian Morillon (France) – Mamadou Goïta (Socioeconomist, Mali) – Sarah Jane Mellor (Translator France/UK) – Moussa Bolly (Journalist, Mali) – Valerie Ngo Biem (Cameroun) – Jean Michel Naud (Teacher, France) – Clariste Soh Moube (Cameroun) – Moustapha Diaté (Economist, Senegal) – Aziz Coulibaly (Accountant, Côte-d’Ivoire) –Aboubakary Gollock (Economist, Canada) –Amadou Gollock (Consultant, Mali) - – Koulsy Lamko (Ecrivain, activiste culturel, Tchad-Mexique) - Amadou Kane Sy (Kan-si), (Artiste Plasticien, Sénégal) - Juan Montero Gómez –(Las Palmas, Iles Canaries, España.) - Aboubacar Demba Cissokho (Journaliste, Sénégal) - Oumar DEMBELE (Prof. d’Enseignement Secondaire, Mali) - Zohra Bouchentouf-Siagh (Professeur de littérature a l’Université de Vienne (Autriche), Algérie) - Mabrouka Gasmi (Communicateur, Tunisie) - Nathalie M’Dela Mounier (Enseignante, France) - Massamba Mbaye (journaliste, Sénégal) - Diagne Fodé Roland (enseignant, membre de Ferñent / Mouvement des Travailleurs Panafricains – Sénégal) - Amadou Tiéoulé DIARRA (Avocat-MALI) – BAH Djenebou (Bamako, Mali), Samir Amin (Forum du Tiers-Monde, Sénégal) - Abdourahman Waberi, ecrivain (Djibouti-France) - Docteur Brigitte MAITRE (Médecin, France) - Hamédine Racine Guissé, Professeur-Consultant (Sénégal) - Ibro Abdou (économiste, Niger) - Coumba Ndoffène Diouf, Professeur à l’Université Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD) de Dakar - Révérend Louis Anatole NTCHINDA (Pasteur, Cameroun) - Dr Patrick HIRTZ, (Praticien Hospitalier, Spécialiste des Hôpitaux, France) - René de VOS (Sociologue, France) - Seydou Nourou Ndiaye, (écrivain, Directeur des Editions Papyrus a Dakar) – (Pascal Paquin, Militant associatif, Fleury La vallée, France)
ZCTU Alert, 9 May 2008
Police have failed to bring to court ZCTU president, Comrade Lovemore Matombo and his secretary general, Comrade Wellington Chibebe after they were locked up yesterday on allegations of ‘inciting people to rise against the government’.
The two were arrested after they presented themselves to the police yesterday morning. They were initially interrogated for more than six hours before charges were laid against them. They had availed themselves to the police after armed police had visited their residences searching for them.
The allegations arise from speeches which the two made at this year’s May Day celebrations at Dzivaresekwa Stadium.
Aleck Muchademehama, a human rights lawyer who is representing the two said there were no longer any prospects of the police taking the two to court, considering that nothing had been done to prepare the requisite court papers.
He said the two were now set to spend the weekend in police custody as Zimbabwean law stipulates that the police can detain any suspect for a maximum of 48 hours, excluding weekends and public holidays, before he or she is brought to court.
Zimbabwean police are in the habit of detaining political and civil rights activists over the weekend before they are taken to court the next week. The weekend detentions are usually aimed at breaking down the activists, who are usually exposed to extreme inhuman conditions while in police custody.
I have been blogging about a new ecosocialist blog from a green shop steward, missed the march today but planning to mark the ‘catastrophe’ in my own way…compassion for the Palestinians is in short supply in some places.
Any way, Miranda Dunn who is my Green Party Regional Council Friend (an official post!) sent me this…spread the word
Dear Greens,
Forwarding you this info so you can act. Particularly if you have access to
a fax as I will have to send my letter via snail mail.
Miranda Dunn
Barnet Green Party
In the ongoing post-election repression of the democracy movement and
workers and trade unionists in particular, Lovemore Motombo and Wellington Chibebe,
respectively President and General Secretary of the Zimbabwe Congress of
Trade Unions (ZCTU) were arrested on May 8 and charged with “inciting people to
rise against the government and reporting falsehoods about people being killed
’ for speaking out on May Day about the country’s political crisis and the
growing repression of the opposition to Mugabe.
The IUF and unions internationally are calling for messages to the
government of Zimbabwe demanding their immediate and unconditional release. In view of
the extreme violence which has been frequently inflicted on union leaders
and activists, the IUF considers the government responsible for the physical
safety and well being of the arrested ZCTU leaders.
You can fax a message to the government of Zimbabwe at the number indicated
in the sample message below. We also encourage copies to the embassy of
Zimbabwe in your country (a list of embassies is available online at
http://zw.embassyinformation.com/?einfo). Please send copies of any messages you might
send to the IUF secretariat.
Sample Message to President Mugabe
To: Mr. Robert G. Mugabe,
President , Republic of Zimbabwe
Fax: + 263.4.70.38.58
Dear President Mugabe
Concerns: ZCTU leadership arrested
I have been informed of the arrests, on 8 May, of Lovemore Motombo and
Wellington Chibebe, President and General Secretary of the Zimbabwe Congress of
Trade Unions (ZCTU). It is my understanding that the two are charged with
“inciting people to rise against the government and reporting falsehoods about
people being killed’, i.e. exercising the right to freedom of speech which is
guaranteed them under international law and, in their capacity as trade union
officials, the Conventions of the United Nations’ ILO. We therefore call on
your government to immediately and unconditionally release these two detained
trade union leaders. In view of past violence against arrested and detained
trade unionists, we hold your government responsible for their physical
integrity and well being
Yours sincerely
Leader of the International Socialist Organisation of Zimbabwe, Munyaradzi Gwisai, a former MP for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) for the Highfield constituency in Harare, was recently interviewed on New Zealand radio. This is a 30 minute long and in depth interview that provides a brilliant socialist analysis of the current situation in Zimbabwe.
Listen to the interview here on Radio New Zealand
The interview deals with the support of the ISO for the seizures of the land by Mugabe’s government from white farmers, which was one of the major issues for which Gwisai was expelled from the MDC. The ISO correctly argues that addressing poverty in rural areas requires land distribution, and their criticism of ZANU-PF was that the land taken by Mugabe was often given to the rich supporters of ZANU-PF, rather than to the local poor, and also there was not enough support given to those poor farmers who did get land. Gwisai also brilliantly explains why there should be no compensation for the white farmers, as the land was stolen under colonialism, and the rich whites have been already more than adequately compensated by the profits they have made.
Gwisai explains that the danger of the MDC’s opposition to land seizures is that this permits the ZANU-PF to masquerade as the friends of the rural poor, and it runs the danger of allowing ZANU-PF to drive a wedge between workers in the cities and the rural poor.
The interview also makes a critical assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the recent general strike, and there is now a rolling series of general strikes every three months, which the ISO argue are fundamental to overthrowing Mugabe.
He also explains the need to not only get rid of Mugabe, but also to develop a society that addresses poverty, economic independence and opposes neo-liberalism.
Gwisai comes over as a mature socialist leader, and the ISO are clearly an impressive party, that have learned and grown from the experience in the mass movement.
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