[Marxism] Re: Gowans fires back on Zimbabwe

[Greg McDonald <sabocat59@xxxxxxx>]

Patrick Bond wrote, in the Monthly Review:

"Over the post-1991 period the ZCTU has oscillated between, on the  
one hand, opposition to neoliberalism and, on the other, anti-Mugabe  
electoral pacts with petit-bourgeois sectors that openly called for  
increased neoliberal measures. A crucial period lies ahead, during  
which corporatist bait may once again be dangled in front of the  
ZCTU. The prospect of personality-pacting within the petit-bourgeois  
political elite, combining “moderates” from the ruling party and the  
badly-split opposition Movement for Democratic Change, will arise  
when eighty-one-year-old Robert Mugabe is finally—before a scheduled  
2008 presidential election—eased out from his now quarter-century- 
long rule, in part by South African president Thabo Mbeki. (The  
opposition is divided over whether to participate in the November  
election of a new Senate, with the labor-oriented bloc advocating a  
boycott due to the Senate’s illegitimacy and Mugabe’s vote-rigging  
tactics.) Mbeki must also be worried about the potentially parallel  
role of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), which  
last year embarked on a ZCTU solidarity offensive, putting it in  
direct conflict with Mbeki’s African National Congress (ANC). The  
danger in Zimbabwe is that both the established and the new political  
elites seek a transition to a post-Mugabe government that will entail  
marginalizing the popular sector....

“IMF Riots” occurred in Harare periodically during the 1990s, as in  
so many other Third World settings. Finally, Zimbabwe’s creative  
worker, NGO, social movement, women’s, youth, student, church, and  
media activists unified in search of programmatic action, through the  
February 1999 “National Working People’s Agenda for Change”  
convention. This seminal meeting issued a progressive platform, which  
inspired its leading participants to form a new party, soon known as  
the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). But within months of its  
September 1999 launch, the MDC revealed ambiguities. On the one hand,  
Tsvangirai worked hard to build local structures. On the other, the  
MDC attracted funding and support from the black petit-bourgeoisie  
and white elites, and found dubious international allies."



Dubious international allies indeed. The problem with the ZCTU is  
their lack of solid leadership.  They need to be a bit more  
discriminating about who they pick as allies, and especially not the  
first CIA or State Dept. clone with a suitcase full of money  
operating out of the US embassy.

Patrick Bond continues:

"Indeed, the more likely outcome of the current political trajectory  
is a
deal which leaves out labor. Other forces in civil society, lacking
accountability to (and representation of) an identifiable popular
constituency, will more readily entertain an elite transition acceptable
to the dominant faction of the ruling-party leadership,
recently-empowered security apparatuses, black business circles, and
regional power brokers like Mbeki. Therein lies a critical role for
regional and international trade union organizations: shoring up both
the institutional integrity and political-economic agenda of the ZCTU.
Can the Johannesburg-based COSATU begin a meaningful program of
solidarity, given the federation’s formal Alliance partnership with
Mbeki’s ANC? ..."

This is the primary problem in Southern Africa, is it not? The ANC's  
continuation of a neoliberal regime marks a failed vision and a sell- 
out of progressive politics. Given the circumstances, how could one  
reasonably expect the ZCTU and their friends in the MDC not to  
oscillate? They're just mimicking their big brother Mbeki.

More from Bond:

"The goal of the imperial powers is the creation of a “corporatist”
coalition between the MDC and “reasonable” ZANU-PF figures based on an
“elite-transition” program that reintegrates Zimbabwe into the U.S.-UK
world order. Mbeki prefers to let ZANU-PF retain power, with a
post-Mugabe regime guided by the business bloc around the neoliberal
central banker Gono and potentially led by former finance minister Simba
Makoni.

In late October 2005, the ZCTU held a workshop of its leadership. The
ZCTU leadership resolved that “[m]arket-based economic strategies, which
have caused untold problems for the working people of Zimbabwe and
elsewhere, especially women and children, should be discontinued...,”
that “[t]he current pro-globalisation regional integration should be
replaced by a solidarity-based regional integration which promotes
industrial development and protects national economies from the adverse
impacts of globalisation”, and that “[e]fforts to liberalise economies
through negotiations on Economic Partnership Agreements, World Trade
Organisation and especially the Doha Development Round of negotiations
and the forthcoming 6th WTO Ministerial scheduled for Hong Kong in
December 2005 should be resisted.”

(IMHO, this would only have worked if South Africa had taken the lead  
many years back.)

Bond sums up:

This stand is the basis for renewed social leadership by the ZCTU. The
union structures will have to transcend their current ability to call
periodic but generally containable mass stay-aways, and target more
surgical parts of the regime’s capacity without risking decapitation by
ZANU-PF and its paramilitaries. And while increasing its technical
inputs into programmatic work by civil society, the ZCTU will need to
avoid the temptation of potential corporatist deals associated with an
Mbeki-style elite transition.

Still ahead on the immediate horizon are major socio-political
upheavals, ranging from renewed fights for control over both the ruling
party and opposition, to intensified austerity once the inflationary era
subsides, in the context of potentially voracious South African
subimperial accumulation.

International solidarity, of the sort COSATU has begun, will enhance the
survival capacity of Zimbabwean labor (and its left civil-society
allies) in the face of legal and extralegal repression. The eventual
success of a mass-based and labor-led movement at one and the same time
for democracy and against neoliberalism and imperialism would have the
most significant consequences for all of Southern Africa."

Obviously, the "leadership workshop" did not succeed. What evidence  
do we have that COSATU has been able to wean the ZCTU off the  
imperialist teat? None whatsoever. In fact, just the opposite  
evidence has surfaced. I agree that a"mass-based and labor-led  
movement for democracy and against neoliberalism" would be grand.  
It's obviously not in the cards at the moment in Zimbabwe.  Perhaps  
if such a movement were to succeed in South Africa, Zimbabwe might  
stand a chance.

OBU,
Greg



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