[Marxism] Zimbabwe socialist: Zimbabwe’s two dictatorships

[glparramatta <glparramatta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.greenleft.org.au/2007/705/36628


ZIMBABWE
Zimbabwe’s two dictatorships


Munya Gwisai, Harare
30 March 2007


Munya Gwisai, a member of the national coordinating committee of the 
International Socialist Organisation (Zimbabwe) as well as the deputy 
chairperson of the Zimbabwe Social Forum considers issues facing the 
democratic movement. He writes in a personal capacity.

The people of Zimbabwe are suffering from both the political 
dictatorship of President Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National 
Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) as well as the economic dictatorship of 
employers, businesspeople and the rich. While Mugabe unleashes 
repression, businesspeople unleash vicious price increases on the basic 
necessities of life.

Monthly wages are less than Z$200,000 despite the official Poverty Datum 
Line being over $600,000. Transport alone costs over $220,000 a month. 
Prices of food, clothing and the anti-retroviral drugs necessary to 
fight HIV, have gone through the roof and thousands die each week as a 
result. The Zim dollar has again collapsed and inflation is over 2000%.

Despite this, not everyone is suffering. The architect of government 
neoliberal policy himself, Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono, was 
exposed earlier this year as having splashed billions on posh cars and 
mansions. The bosses and many of the “Lords of Poverty” who run the 
foreign-funded non-government organisations are “earning” huge, often 
forex (foreign exchange) denominated, salaries and benefits. 
Capitalists’ profits have been such that the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange was 
voted among Africa’s top three performing in 2006!

The very same Western diplomats who now laud Zimbabwe’s bourgeois 
opposition were the same ones who applauded Gono as he rolled out 
increasingly harsh neoliberal economic policies, slashed subsidies that 
provided some relief for the poor and paid money to the International 
Monetary Fund these past three years.

However, the economy has now become the weakness of the elites — both 
dictatorships fear the entry of workers, the urban poor and the rural 
masses into the political equation.

The virtual state of emergency imposed in the towns and the killing by 
police of Movement for Democratic Change activist Gift Tandare have 
failed to quell anger and struggle.

The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) has called for a national 
mass action in the form of a stay-away on April 3-4. The economic, 
social and political demands now being raised link the various political 
and economic demands of the poor and oppressed in a manner that goes 
beyond the limited demands of the bourgeois opposition parties and civic 
societies.

The elites realise this and want to pre-empt the current struggles and 
prevent them from radicalising further. Such a mobilisation could 
challenge not only the corrupt and brutal Mugabe regime but also the 
neoliberal free-market capitalist foundations on which it is now 
embedded. They want to prevent a movement similar to the 
anti-neoliberal, anti-capitalist, anti-dictatorship and anti-imperialist 
movements seen in Latin America.

This is now the common objective of local and international elites in 
regards to the Zimbabwe crisis, as shown in the March 5 International 
Crisis Group review of Zimbabwe. The elites in government and in 
opposition would like to reach a settlement or “social contract” between 
themselves that would see an end to Mugabe but not to Gono’s policies. 
This is what lies behind the manoeuvring of the various factions within 
ZANU–PF.

Such a project would, at least at the beginning, incorporate compliant 
sections of the opposition, organised labour and “civic society” to be 
used as a safety valve to contain mounting anger from below as the new 
government embraces a total and naked neoliberal agenda.

However, workers, residents, traders, women, HIV/AIDS activists, 
students, disability rights activists, debt cancellation activists, and 
the rural poor have their own interests that need to be linked with both 
political and economic democracy in the public and private spheres of life.

This means a fight for a new people-driven democratic constitution that 
not only guarantees free and fair elections but also guarantees the 
right to free and quality education; access to health, anti-retroviral 
drugs, water, housing, electricity, and facilities for the disabled; an 
end to patriarchal and capitalist oppression of women; and support for 
poor farmers; as well as a living wage, pension and state support for 
workers, the elderly, pensioners, vendors and traders, war veterans and 
the disabled. Such a constitution must subordinate both public and 
private wealth to fulfil such demands. By definition that movement can 
only be anti-neoliberal, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist.

The Zimbabwe Social Forum has committed to mobilise the different 
segments and clusters of the social forum process in Zimbabwe and 
regionally for this action as we did for the 2005 ZCTU-led anti-poverty 
demonstrations. It is heartening to see the solidarity actions already 
being planned in South Africa, Botswana and Britain.

The challenge is to develop this kind of action into a sustainable 
programme of full-scale democratic united actions from below in the next 
couple of months. Without this, there remains the real danger that the 
courageous fight, sacrifices, including that of blood that we have seen 
in the last few months, might be channelled into a dead-end elite 
settlement for the benefit of the few rather than the many.

From: International News, Green Left Weekly issue #705 
<http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2007/705> 4 April 2007.




________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism