[Marxism] Can Zimbabwe Become Africa?s Cuba? by Mukoma Ngugi

["Calvin Broadbent" <calvinbroadbent@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=2&ItemID=9055
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=2&ItemID=9056

When the main opposition party in Zimbabwe, not as popular as the
government, is calling for US-imposed santions, whcih will starve the people
and destroy any semblance of independence, I believe a more nuanced view
ought to be taken of those in power. Here are some selected passages from
the above essays which give such a nuanced view of political developments in
Zimbabwe:

Introduction:  The Three Zimbabwes

On stage, there are two young men discussing the merits and de-merits of
Zimbabwe?s Look East Policy.  ?These Chinese products, it is all in the
packaging otherwise they are the same things we have always had? one says.
And the discussion goes on to Chinese beauty products, wigs and cosmetics
petrol queues, inflation, foreign currency etc.  The two comedians in a
downtown club in Harare were satirizing the influx of Chinese goods in
Zimbabwean stores since ZANU-PF?s Look East Policy, an attempt to minimize
dependence on the West, took effect.  This was in July of 2005, when I was
in Zimbabwe for the Zimbabwe International Book Fair where I had been
invited to present a paper on Pan-Africanism and Nationalism.

A few weeks after I returned from Zimbabwe, I was invited by Allen Ruff of
Madison?s WORT for a radio interview on my first book, an Africa Awareness
Rally that I was helping organize, and my trip to Zimbabwe.  In spite of it
being made abundantly clear several times by Ruff that I am a Kenyan, one
caller hoped ?that it was safe for me to speak?.  She was under the
impression that Mugabe has secret agents in Madison, Wisconsin who are
willing to assassinate a Kenyan national for speaking about Zimbabwe or at
the very least monitoring the radio waves and would face the music if I was
ever back in Zimbabwe.  She was worried for my ability to speak freely
thousands of miles from Zimbabwe.  Most of the other callers asked questions
that were along this vein and the other things that I had talked about such
as the need for thinking about Africa not as a humanitarian case but as a
continent whose resources are plundered were overshadowed by Zimbabwe.

______________________________________________________________

In Zimbabwe, during the land seizures ten white farmers were killed [1].  By
contrast in South Africa, where even after the fall of apartheid whites
still own 80% of arable lands [2], over 1,500 white farmers have been killed
since 1994 according to the BBC [3].   The South African government blames
criminal elements but given this high number, it is hard not to imagine that
the murders are tied to the history of apartheid.  While the acts are
certainly criminal, the numbers are too high not to suggest that a history
of apartheid and a lack of redress have colluded.  In Zimbabwe government
policy created the conditions in which ten white farmers were killed. In
South Africa lack of government policy has led to the conditions in which
1,500 whites farmers have been killed.  It is in a sense part of the same
movement.

But in Zimbabwe, the infinitely much smaller number of white farmer deaths
has created uproar whereas the South African murders are not common
knowledge; international media does not report them and Western politicians
have turned their gaze elsewhere.  A petition aptly titled ?Help Save South
African Farmers? gathered 495 signatures [4].  It is safe to speculate that
had the petition been for the Zimbabwean farmer, the signatures gathered
would have been in the thousands if not millions.  While acknowledging that
there is no evidence that suggests the A.N.C government has sanctioned white
farmer murders, it is still worthwhile to look at the reason why there is
such a discrepancy in how the two situations have been received in the West.

The reason why the West has latched on 10 white murders in Zimbabwe and has
skated over South African 1,500 murders is complex ? there is an
intersection of racial mythology, natural rights and entitlement, colonial
history and legacies, politics of reparation and redistribution and ideology
of private property.  In South Africa, the contradiction of a country with a
black leadership that protects a large body of white interests (who became
apartheid?s upper-class because they are white) and a growing black elite
(whose role in the words of Kwame Ture is to give individual success the
illusion of collective success) have yet to come home to roost.  True there
are murmurs to be found in the COSATU led strikes and the growing
radicalization of those calling for land reform [6] in South Africa but they
have as yet to rise to an extent where they force the A.N.C. into taking
radical measures that end neo-apartheid.

Therefore in South Africa, the myth of white skin, of a naturalized racial
hierarchy, where class and power find expression through race has not been
violated.  And even though the murders are atrociously high, because the
A.N.C. government has not made it a matter of conscious policy to violate
this socio-economic order, the murders can be ignored.   It is a paradox of
sorts. To put it badly and perhaps crudely, in South Africa, white lives are
being taken, but white property is not.  The ideology of private property,
inheritance, an unspoken but understood natural order of things and the
ideologies of capitalism remain intact in spite of the murders.

Zimbabwe on the other hand has violated the myth that naturalizes racial
hierarchy.  Blacks are not supposed to kick out whites from their farms and
their homes.  They are a mass of faceless laborers who each morning file to
the factories and the farms looking for work.  This black mass is not
supposed to do tribal chants at the same gates wielding machetes, making fun
of whites and showing such audacity by ?forgetting their place?.  They are
not supposed to raise their hand and strike the white man in his home and
essentially treat him and his family the same way he has for years treated
the black man and his family. (As always, women remain a conversation
between men.  In the rapes and counter-rapes ? the actors are men in a
masculine affair).  It seems to me therefore that Zimbabwe?s original sin is
indicating to a world full of blacks and whites that there is nothing
inviolable in the myth.  More than threaten the whites in their very own
homes, in Zimbabwe white natural right to vast land and property is being
threatened as a matter of governmental policy.

_______________________________________________________________________

Operation Clean Up

With the above in mind, we can now turn our attention to the Zimbabwe on the
ground.  Without a doubt, even amongst ZANU-PF supporters that I spoke to,
there was a general agreement that Operation Clean-Up was problematic at
best and tragic at worst.  I heard numerous justifications for the project
from different people.  The first was that the Central Information
Organization (CIO) got wind of British attempts to create a mass
Ukraine-type uprising.  Britain I was informed was giving money to the
lumpen-proletariat around the cities of Harare and Bulawayo with the hope
that they would begin mass protests which in turn would grow to such a level
that ZANU-PF could only stay in power by committing mass murders.  But some
of the people in Zimbabwe I spoke to asked, ?Why disperse whole communities?
 Why not identify those who are guilty and bring them to justice??  Also,
even if we take it to be true and given all sorts of machinations that have
taken place in Africa it is possible,  the predictable international out-cry
should have given the government enough pause to find another solution.
Internationally, the image of homelessness being created further eroded
already low support amongst natural allies in Africa and Diaspora and for
others only confirmed the worst and recommitted them to the defeat of
Mugabe.

Another theory was that there was a rift in ZANU-PF.  On one side, there was
a group that wanted to discredit Mugabe and hasten his downfall and on the
other a group that wanted to keep him at the helm.  This argument suggested
that Operation Clean Up was instigated by the Mugabe detractors and done
without his approval.  However it seems to me that an anti-Mugabe arm would
have had to be powerful enough to instigate a government policy that
undermines the President and his supporters and at the same time make it
impossible for him to retaliate.  In any case, Mugabe did come out in full
favor of the operation.   And more to the point, this argument takes the
responsibility away from the hands of the government.

Then there was the argument that the clean-up targeted MDC supporters.  Most
MDC supporters are in the urban areas but a good number of those whose homes
were demolished were ZANU-PF supporters from what I gathered.  If this was
the case, I think the government would have been more careful and disperse
the MDC supporters while at the same preserving its own power pockets.  The
elections in which ZANU-PF was declared the winner had just taken place and
therefore, given the national and international fall-out from the clean-up,
the gains were outweighed by the losses.  It seems to me more logical to
argue that in terms of illegal structures, the middle class suburbs were
spared while those most vulnerable were targeted.  This position of
targeting MDC supporters also struck me as flawed.

The official government line was in its election, it had pledged to clean up
the city and that it while it targeted illegal structures it also targeted
the black market.  But if this is the case it would have been more prudent
and first build the required number of houses as a way of protecting
innocent citizens.   No matter the reasons for the clean-up one thing is
clear: it was a costly move in terms of legitimacy and I think history will
eventually judge it as heavy handed if not all together without
justification.

Outside the possible reasons that either wanted to exonerate or blame the
government, what was alarming to me was the ease with which the government
destroyed places people called home.  In an Africa where our collective
memory includes constantly being up-rooted and forced into Bantustans such
careless action recalls this painful history.  It recalls forced colonial
migration and dispersal.  By forcefully moving an African people, collective
memory and the legacies of colonialism make it such that only an injustice
can come out of it.

______________________________________________________________________

Operation Stay Well

In my two weeks in Zimbabwe I went to several of the sites where houses had
been demolished and to some of the by-then empty holding camps where people
were herded together before being shipped to other destinations.  Luckily
they were moved from the holding camps before the unsanitary conditions bred
diseases like cholera and my understanding of it was that it was purely a
matter of luck that no such outbreaks occurred.

The government has embarked on an ambitious project dubbed Operation Stay
Well for those it rendered homeless.  Construction had begun at multiple
sites I visited around Harare and Bulawayo and some units were close to
completion by Mid-August.  But there has been very little international
media coverage of the reconstruction.  In fact, had I not been an eyewitness
to the houses being built, spoken with architects and workers in about five
of the sites that I visited, living outside of Zimbabwe I would not be aware
of such efforts. It seems to me that there is such a concerted effort by the
international media to completely vilify Zimbabwe, that even an acceptable
journalistic standard like weighing the reconstruction on its merits and
demerits are not being met.

However, as some government officials conceded the progress was being
hampered by a lack of petrol and building materials whose prices were
steadily climbing as the demand increased.   Lack of petrol of course
touches all sectors but this is only a symptom of the larger problem - lack
of foreign currency.  Without foreign currency the government cannot trade
in the international market and therefore cannot buy petrol and cannot
import goods from the international market.  U.S. led sanctions have had the
consequence of scaring off potential investors and lenders.  And by all but
declaring Zimbabwe a death-trap, tourism, formerly a major foreign exchange
earner is now down to a trickle.   In addition to a four year drought, land
redistribution can only be one of the factors adversely affecting Zimbabwe?s
economy.  The world?s reaction to the redistribution itself is as much of a
factor.  It still remains to be seen whether the declared and undeclared
sanctions will cripple the rebuilding effort.

_____________________________________________________________________

But the difference between Zambia and Zimbabwe, (and it is a big difference)
is that in Zimbabwe the questions of inequality, who owns and doesn?t own
land and how historical imbalances and injustices can be redressed are being
asked.  The answers given can be debated but the questions are being asked.
 As a consequence perhaps, tourism on the Zambian side is flourishing.

___________________________________________________________________________

Which Way Out:  ZANU PF, MDC or Moyo?s Third Way?

If ZANU PF has been hurt by the state of the economy and US led sanctions,
so has the MDC.  The sanctions were called for by the MDC.  However
sanctions work when most of the population is against the sitting
government, when the only solution envisaged is complete change, and when
the people under that government have nothing to lose.  However, unlike
apartheid South Africa, these conditions did not exist in Zimbabwe at the
point of the United States passing the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic
Recovery Act in 2001[13].

By calling for the sanctions [14] the MDC at best could only consolidate its
power base and alienate ZANU-PF supporters.  Unless MDC was hoping for a US
intervention, it could not under the circumstances have amassed the critical
mass it needed to make Zimbabwe ungovernable thereby forcing ZANU-PF out
office.  Such a move depended on alienating vast numbers of ZANU-PF
supporters from ZANU-PF but instead it succeeded only in strengthening their
loyalty to ZANU-PF.  In South Africa, the black majority had nothing more to
lose and equally important were supportive of the A.N.C.  Even if some may
have had doubts regarding the call for sanctions, a long history of A.N.C.
agitation and sacrifices of life and limb on their behalf and behest had
built enough trust that when in doubt the maxim would have been to err on
the A.N.C. side.  By contrast, MDC cannot pull ZANU-PF supporters into its
camp and also steel its supporters as they go through the hardships created
by sanctions? not enough trust has been built between the party and the
people.

By MDC calling for sanctions without first assessing where it stands in
relation to Zimbabweans and their history of struggle while at the same time
having only the support of the urban segment of the population who unlike in
Apartheid South Africa have something to lose, the opposite of what it
intended has happened.  The MDC Party is understood as having created the
conditions that are taking food away from the table of the urban worker and
have put the middle class in a precarious situation.  As a result, the MDC
Party position has weakened to such an extent that it has been unable to
take advantage of the government?s tragic follies like Operation Clean-Up ?
an opportunity that any other party would have seized.  The sanctions then
have buoyed ZANU-PF while proving to be divisive for the MDC Party.  In
short calling for sanctions was a mistake.

__________________________________________________________________________

Traditionally sanctions were called upon by the majority voices of the
oppressed; now they have become a weapon of the strong against the weak.
South Africa during the anti-apartheid struggle appealed to the US citizenry
and eventually forced Reagan, who preferred strategic engagement which is to
say to do nothing but continue profitable relationships, to declare
sanctions.  But because the US citizenry views Mugabe through the eyes of
the media and Bush, Zimbabwe through economic pressure can be stopped or
contained from infecting other poor nations with the disease of
redistribution.  In this instance, Zimbabwe sanctions, like the war on Iraq,
are preemptive.  At the moment ZANU-PF forcefully took farms from white
farmers, undermined the basis of private property and naturalized white
property rights, whatever actions it took thereafter were going to be in
opposition to the ideology of Bush.  Redistribute democratically or
redistribute autocratically, Bush and by extension the West was going to
declare Zimbabwe a rogue state.

But instead of realizing the amount of opposition it was going to face and
factor in Western public opinion as part of a necessary defense from Bush
and co., and therefore justify its actions rightly or wrongly, ZANU-PF came
out swinging.  Anyone who raised a concern, legitimate or illegitimate was
dismissed off-hand.  Long before the West had laid its siege, ZANU-PF by
turning its back on international public opinion had began its own siege.
ZANU-PF has lost so much support amongst people in the West that the
sanctions have hardly raised a murmur.

________________________________________________________________

We were later told that when the topic of Human Rights was suggested the
donors congratulated the organizers because they were sure it would provide
a stage on which participants could attack the Zimbabwean government.  And
when that did not happen, and in spite of a debate that spoke to so many
necessary questions pertaining to Africa, the donor response was to threaten
shutting down the festival.  The platform had already closed the debate long
before we got there.  There is something wrong here.   The donors had an
agenda of discrediting the Zimbabwean government through a proxy war in
which we the presenters were to be used as the infantry.  When that failed
through the accident of human rights being an African and not just a
Zimbabwean question, they threatened to burn the whole place down.  This is
horrifying and simply unacceptable.  No matter who does it. It is an
illustration of what happens when we come to the conversation over Africa
with our ideas not as starting points but as the end.  In our dialogue over
Zimbabwe, we have to do better than this and from the start declare an open
invitation and platform.

_________________________________________________________________
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