Re: [A-List] Zimbabwe: US to initiate "rescue"?

["Patrick Bond" <bond.p@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I love all you folks too (irrelevant as that is), but here's a quick set of arguments on this issue...

a) the yankees have been talking tough on Zim for some time but as far as I can tell, do absolutely nothing about it aside from the easy smart sanctions against 79 ZanuPF leaders;

b) many many people are starving to death and it would be nice if there illegal airplane food drops--certainly not by the US, but by respected forces like local social movements/networks (e.g., Crisis in Zimbabwe, Zim Coalition on Debt and Development, Civic Alliance for Social and Economic Progress, even National Constitutional Assembly)--to help them out, though given logistical difficulties that isn't likely;

c) the head of political administration for the ruling party has said, he wouldn't mind it if there were only 6 million--not current 12 million--Zimbabweans, and it's only ZanuPF supporters who are getting the food aid as it is, so this food problem is already extremely politicised;

d) the land reform trends are very worrisome, as impoverished rural folk are not even able to afford seed for planting, and the most venal and corrupt ruling party hacks have grabbed farms;

e) consistent with the last point, the main mode of accumulating capital in Zim at the moment is through the most parasitical financial and commercial circuits of capital, allowing those with access to the negative 120% interest-rate credit (no typo) and the 95% officially-undervalued currency (with forex available to insiders as well as those mainly white capitalists with export contracts who can transfer-price their proceeds to foreign accounts (I spent last weekend in Zim with the main lawyers association and saw the bifurcations that this has generated very closely);

f) the grip of the ruling party on all aspects of life tightens, and the strength of the security apparatus is formidable;

g) regional elites - especially Thabo Mbeki - are doing all they can to sweep Zim's crisis under the rug rather than deal with it in a manner consistent with progressive, internationalist traditions (from which they had earlier, within the last decade, benefited enormously); and so,

h) while despondency reigns in society as a whole, one gets the sense that a beleagued democratic progressive opposition will soon restart the mass actions plus int'l *people's* solidarity that are the only way out of the cul-de-sac...

Stay tuned and don't be distracted by the regime's word play, comrades...

Cheers,
Patrick


>>> cburford@xxxxxxxxxx 11/08/02 11:16AM >>>
Oh dear. I was just waiting for this. I did not expect it would come so 
soon. They must be getting more confident about handling Iraq.

Yes I admire Patrick Bond too. Yes, there are serious violations of 
bourgeois legality in Zimbabwe. Yes redistributed colonial farms may not be 
run in a competitive economic fashion, though neither side tells us much 
about any plans for democratic collectives. Yes the agricultural 
proletariat on these colonial farms are getting disposessed in the process.

BUT the land was seized by British colonists a century ago on arbitrary 
legal grounds, and as a Brit I must defend the right of another people to 
expropriate their own land back again. Yes land redistribution has been a 
common feature of bourgeois democratic revolutions and this is not 
socialism but compared to some bourgeois democratic revolutions in history 
the level of violence could have been much worse.

I dislike the racism implicit in the assumption that white people would do 
better.

How can we impede this aspect of the onward march of Bush's global governance?

Chris Burford

London


At 07/11/02 13:16 -0800, you wrote:

>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>
>
> > US may intervene to save Zimbabweans
> >
> > The US government warned yesterday that it might take "intrusive,
> > interventionist measures"
>
>*snip*
>
> >
> > Washington is considering measures that would challenge Zimbabwe's
> > sovereignty, the Guardian was told by Mark Bellamy, the principal deputy
> > assistant secretary of state for Africa.
>
>*Snip*
>
> > Mr Bellamy, who develops US policy on Africa,
>
>*snip*
>
> > He said Mr Mugabe was "holding his people hostage the way Saddam Hussein is
> > holding his people hostage".
> >
>Beautiful example of imperialism at work: first, explain how Mugabe is 
>starving
>the people, then invade the country to "feed" them.
>
>When will we state the obvious truth? This is, and remains about the land
>seizures. Badly done land reforms are far better than well-managed, properly
>"democratic" "commercial" farmers. Imperialism knows this, and we know why 
>they
>are attacking Zimbabwe.
>
>Everyone said "Mugabe is only saying he'll carry out a land reform" as an
>election tactic. When ZANU start to carry out the land reform, they are 
>doing it
>wrong, or at the very least not for the right people...
>
>I hate that kind of arm chair revolutionary. Yet, I love Pat Bond so go
>figure...
>
>Macdonald
>
>Macdonald
>
>Macdonald