Re: Re: Zimbabwe post election

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 00:25 30/06/00 +0000, Patrick Bond wrote:

> It's been a strange few days duelling with the bourgeois media,
> trying to make difficult arguments in soundbites. Too hard for me.
> The NYT even requested the following piece from me, but then just
> decided not to run it.
>
> Post-Election Zimbabwe Showcases
> Power of World Bank/IMF
>
> HARARE--Now comes financial crunch time for
> Robert Mugabe.


Yes, the piece looks too good for the NYT. Presumably what the bourgeois
media want is to hear that Mugabe is still on the wrack. Which he is and in
some ways deserves to be. However maybe the best hope is in some sort of
coalition politics. Much may depend on the fine detail of attitudes and
overtures within the two main parties.

Some elements in the MDC seem to have been tactically skilled in avoiding
meeting confrontation with confrontation. But if the MDC just remains
opposed to Mugabe I find it hard to imagine it can work out a strategy for
economic independence. I note that Mugabe has reaffirmed the land programme
but made conciliatory noises about respecting the results of the election.

It was nauseating to hear Peter Hain, who has some past anti-apartheid
credentials to his name, promoting gross economic interference in
Zimbabwe's internal affairs on behalf of the UK government. The best chance
for Mugabe and those opposing global finance capital, would be to bow to
international pressures to respect human rights, and control the violence,
but to pursue national consensus about struggling for economic
autonomy.  That will mean drawing a fine line between upholding the rights
of majority of Zimbabweans but not the bourgeois right of a number of
colonial farmers to own the land.

Perhaps some international coalition can be made with global campaigners
against tobacco. I was struck by talking to one Zimbabwean at the Africa
Centre at the launch of your new book, "Elite Transition". He said that
white landownership only began to bite in the last couple of decades when
the white farmers started using more intensive capitalist methods, and
forced the population who had remained long after the colonial land grab,
off their land finally.

Perhaps there needs to be a more sophisticated analysis by ZANU-PF about
whether it is really fighting the relics of Victorian colonianism for
populist advantage, or whether it is in fact fighting a new twist in the
economics of global finance capital. Hopefully some of them have been
shocked enough by the election result to think again, and perhaps the
younger ones will at least keep in dialogue with the counterparts in the MDC.

Chris Burford

London