GLW: Zimbabwe -- Australian Democrats back white privilege, IMF austerity

[Green Left Parramatta <glparramatta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The following article appeared in the latest
issue of Green Left Weekly (http://www.greenleft.org.au),
Australia's radical newspaper.

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Australian Democrats back white privilege, IMF austerity in
Zimbabwe

On April 4, Australian Democrat senator for Western Australia
Andrew Murray successfully moved a notice of motion asking the
Senate to ?support the British government's strongly expressed
concerns? about the ?serious economic difficulties? in Zimbabwe
and the occupation of predominantly white-owned, large commercial
plantations by supporters of President Robert Mugabe.

On April 10, Murray again pressed the Australian government to
support criticisms of the Zimbabwean regime by the governments of
Britain, the European Union and the United States and asked
whether it ?will assist in the preservation of the commercial
agricultural sector, restoration of the rule of law and fair
elections? in Zimbabwe.

The Democrats' foreign affairs spokesperson Vikki Bourne also
stated: ?I concur with [Coalition leader in the Senate Robert]
Hill's statement that, whilst the issue of land ownership is
sensitive, we don't believe in any way that it justifies the
illegal occupation of farms, or confiscation without
compensation. In this matter I urge the Zimbabwean government to
enforce and obey the rule of law.?

With these statements, the Australian Democrats -- a party that
likes to paint itself as ?progressive?, anti-racist and
left-leaning -- firmly placed itself on the side of white
privilege and Western neo-colonialism in Zimbabwe.

Like the British government, the Australian Democrats kept mum as
Zimbabwe's labour, pro-democracy, student and war veteran
movements fought Mugabe's semi-dictatorial rule and austerity
policies over the past several years. Only when the interests of
the tiny minority of wealthy white owners of large plantations
and agribusiness corporations -- and indirectly British and South
African banks -- who dominate the Zimbabwean economy, appeared to
be at risk did the Democrats react.

British `concerns'

What exactly are ?the British government's strongly expressed
concerns? about Zimbabwe? Writing in the February 17 South
African Business Day, Britain's minister of state responsible for
Africa Peter Hain explained: ?It has been especially painful to
see the same people who led the freedom struggle allow their
beautiful country to descend into economic chaos, its great
natural potential squandered ... For years, dreadful economic
mismanagement has been propelling the country into crisis ...

?The UK, other donors and the international financial
institutions stand ready to help ... turn the economy around and
help Zimbabwe. Its government must, however, understand that we
will do so only if there is a real commitment to sound economic
policies of modernisation and privatisation of bloated,
inefficient state-owned enterprises.

?Zimbabwe needs to work with the international community in a
spirit of political cooperation rather than against us in a
paranoic isolation ... The new constitution the president
recommended was equally flawed. Instead of being a new start, it
rested on a spurious obligation on the UK to pay compensation for
land confiscated from white farmers ...

?The message to Mugabe is clear: abandon the policies that have
led to crisis. Embrace the practices and principles that are
bringing success to much of Africa.?

Mugabe and the Zimbabwe government certainly deserve to
criticised -- but for reasons opposite to those outlined by Hain
and the Australian Democrats.

Land redistribution

Rather than being condemned for initiating what the Western media
labels a ?land grab?, Mugabe's ruling Zimbabwe African National
Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party merits a pasting for its
20-year failure to initiate a radical land redistribution and to
mobilise landless Zimbabweans to carry it out.

The land question is the most explosive issue in Zimbabwe. In
1890, the British imperialist conquistador Cecil Rhodes invaded
what is now Zimbabwe with a gang of white mercenaries. The best
land was stolen from the African people and divided among the
invaders.

Land continued to be taken when Rhodesia was set up as a British
settler-colony; the brutal white minority regime of Ian Smith
fought to the end to maintain this. Throughout the 1970s,
Zimbabweans fought a fierce war of liberation to regain their
land and their right to rule their own country.

In negotiations prior to Britain's recognition of Zimbabwe's
independence in 1980, London insisted that it would fund land
redistribution only if the new government promised to obtain the
rich white farmers' land on a ?willing seller-willing buyer?
basis.

Mugabe agreed and a clause was inserted into Zimbabwe's
constitution to prevent the seizure of land without compensation.
This made radical land redistribution impossible. In 1982, Mugabe
promised to resettle 162,000 black families within three years.
The promise was not kept.

Since 1990, virtually no land has be redistributed to the
landless -- that is, unless the ?landless? happen to be ZANU-PF
bureaucrats or MPs, cabinet ministers, army officers, Mugabe
relatives or business cronies.

`Rule of law'

Contrary to the bleatings of the Australian Democrats, until a
Zimbabwean government is prepared to disregard the ?rule of law?
in relation to land ownership, and restore the land to those from
whom it was forcibly seized by white settlers, even if that
requires confiscation without compensation, there will never be
social and economic justice in Zimbabwe.

And it is not Mugabe's recent reticence to abide by International
Monetary Fund (IMF) austerity directives that should attract
opprobrium, but his regime's long willingness to impose the harsh
economic dictates of imperialism on the Zimbabwean people.

In 1990s, Mugabe adopted a structural adjustment program authored
by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Zimbabwe
became disastrously dependent upon World Bank and IMF loans and
policy advice. From 1991, living standards plummeted and
Zimbabwe's once-strong manufacturing sector rapidly decayed,
causing huge job losses. Zimbabwe's impressive primary health
care and educational achievements of the previous decade were
reversed.

Mugabe, ever the astute populist, has cynically manipulated the
desperate land hunger of Zimbabwe's 70% rural population to
bolster rural support and head off potential opposition from the
left.

Typically -- and usually immediately before elections and
important ZANU-PF gatherings or when trade union or student
unrest in the cities looms -- Mugabe promises sweeping
confiscations of white-owned plantations, and rails against the
privileges of the white minority and its links with the former
colonial-settler regime.

Western governments and, more recently, the IMF and World Bank
also feature heavily in Mugabe's demagogic ?anti-imperialism?.

But once the threat to his power has passed, Mugabe has always
privately made peace with his white capitalist partners, the
Western powers and their financial institutions.

Discontent

However, the effectiveness of these antics began to wane by the
late 1990s. Zimbabweans, increasingly impatient for the fruits of
liberation promised in 1980, had begun to get wise to Mugabe's
ritual breast-beating. They resented the fact that the main
beneficiaries of ?liberation? were a tight circle of elites,
wealthy commercial farmers and capitalists -- mostly white, but
with a growing number of black ?entrepreneurs? who have benefited
from Mugabe's and ZANU-PF's patronage.

In August 1997, veterans of the liberation war, led by the
Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans' Association, launched
a militant campaign to demand long-promised pensions and to
protest the looting of their pension fund by high-ranking
government and party officials. Veterans targeted Mugabe
directly, disrupting the president's speech at the usually solemn
Heroes' Day ceremony on August 11.

Fearing the liberation fighters' movement might galvanise the
dissatisfaction of the Zimbabwean people, Mugabe agreed to pay
each a pension of about US$170 a month and a one-off payment of
$4000. The total pay-out amounted to Z$4 billion (US$215
million).

Mugabe also announced that 5 million hectares of land would be
nationalised and redistributed to war veterans and black
families. He declared that no compensation would be paid to the
mainly white farmers affected, in defiance of the constitution.
(The plan was quietly dropped three months later after Western
governments, the IMF and Zimbabwean big business objected.)

The IMF let it be known that US$200-250 million in pending loans
would be withheld if the veterans' pay-out led to an increase in
the budget deficit.

Mugabe's attempts to shift the cost to the workers and poor in
the cities provoked a general strike on December 9, 1997, called
by the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), that was the
largest in the country's history.

On January 19, 1998, a massive spontaneous three-day rebellion
erupted in the poor suburbs of the capital, Harare, after the
price of corn flour was increased. Shocked at the response of the
poor, the government quickly cancelled the increase. On March 3
and 4, Zimbabwe was again brought to standstill by a ZCTU-called
general strike.

Movement for Democratic Change

Out of these mass urban struggles, as well as that of democracy
activists to curb Mugabe's sweeping powers, the opposition
Movement for Democratic Change emerged in late 1999.

The potential of this new party, backed by the ZCTU and led by
ZCTU leaders Morgan Tsvangirai and Gibson Sibanda, was
demonstrated in February when -- despite government intimidation,
poll irregularities and a black-out of their campaign by the
state-owned media -- the MDC was able to defeat a constitutional
referendum that would have entrenched Mugabe's repressive powers.

An amendment to allow confiscation of land without compensation
was a crude last-minute addition by Mugabe to attempt to win the
support of rural Zimbabweans and to paint the MDC as puppets of
the white farmers and the British government. It fooled few --
urban Zimbabweans voted no in large numbers and very few rural
Zimbabweans bothered to vote.

It is Mugabe's fear of the MDC's potential to defeat ZANU-PF at
parliamentary elections in May or June that explains the wave of
government-sanctioned invasions of up to 1000 commercial farms,
Mugabe's race-baiting and his ?anti-imperialist? confrontation
with Britain. Frightened by the failure of ZANU-PF to mobilise
its traditional rural support base during the February, it has
been forced to take desperate measures to convince rural
Zimbabweans that it has not abandoned the goals of the liberation
struggle.

The Western capitalist powers have never been comfortable with
the Mugabe regime's origins in the victory of a mass liberation
struggle and with its penchant for anti-imperialist rhetorical
threats to maintain power. Despite abiding by the West's
dictates, Mugabe's efforts to create an indigenous Zimbabwean
capitalist class has sometimes brought him into conflict with
imperialism.

There is also a real fear in Britain -- echoed by the Australian
Democrats -- that Mugabe's latest attempt to manipulate the land
question may go further than he intends, unleashing a genuine
land reform movement that could threaten Western economic
interests, not only in Zimbabwe, but throughout southern Africa.

But until now, there has not been a viable political force that
could oust ZANU-PF. It seems that the West believes that the
MDC's pragmatic ?social democratic? leadership will not pose any
greater risk to its interests than Mugabe.

BY NORM DIXON
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