Can IMC UK save Zimbabwe?

ftp | 18.06.2005 16:25 | Globalisation

"I still hate the World Bank and the IMF, but you don't have to love your doctor."

Morgan Tsvangirai – MDC Leader (6)

Zimbabwean children scavenge for pieces of wood from the rubble of a destroyed h

Recently, supporters of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) have begun posting profusely on this newswire, in what appears to be a drive to step up awareness of the human rights abuses that have become endemic under the presidency of Robert Mugabe.

Some of the posts have focussed on “Operation Murambatsvina” (1) (the word means “throw out the rubbish”), whereby traders in the informal economy, and residents of squatter towns have seen their homes and businesses demolished, in an operation that seems designed to punish opposition to the regime, and to drive some of the urban poor into the countryside. The UN estimates that 200 000 have been made made homeless as a result.

Also reported are claims that street children(2) are to be “rehabilitated” through being drafted in Zimbabwe’s national youth service training programme, whose militias are accused of “hunting down government opponents (and) raping, torturing or murdering them”

Also raised is the case of Roy Bennett (3), a white farmer and former MDC MP, who is currently incarcerated under a extraordinary parliamentary procedure following an incident in which he pushed the Zimbabwean Justice Minister, Chinamasa to the ground on the floor of the house, after Chinamasa said his grandfather and father were murderers and thieves.."

Prior to 2000, Bennett was closely associated with Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF, and was a coffee farmer on the 3000 hectare Charleswood Estate, which was seized by pro-Mugabe forces in 2002. The Zimbabwean Daily Mirror reported that Chinamasa referred to Bennett as an"inheritor of looted wealth,.land and cattle.and one who owns the whole of Chimanimani”, and his case has been widely reported in the western media, with questions asked in both houses in the UK parliament.

What is unclear, is what it is that this sudden flurry of activity on IMC UK is intended to do. Some of the suggestions made so far include writing to members of the Mugabe regime to express outrage, contacting UK MPs and MEPs, and calls for military action and regime change. Military action has already been ruled out in parliament, where the strategy appears to be to work closely with regional leaders, including Thabo Mbeki – who has defended Mugabe. It was also a South African team of observers who declared the last 2 elections “legitimate”, despite evidence to the contrary.

Britain, as the former colonial power, has played a major role in bringing Zimbabwe to where it is today. Mugabe’s rise to power owes more to his involvement in the liberation struggle, than it does to the British State, which in the seventies sought to put into place an agreement with the racist Smith government which would see black majority rule blocked until at least 2035.

In 1971, British Foreign Secretary Douglas-Hume arrived in Salisbury (now Harare) with proposals to cement white rule in Rhodesia for the foreseeable future. He met with imprisoned leaders including Mugabe. At the meeting Mugabe said that Africans would fight for their rights.

“Apparently you have not been successful in that” was Douglas-Hume’s response.

Mugabe who was initially sentenced to 21 months for “subversion” following a speech in which accused the “gangster” government” of “planning murder”, ended up serving 11 years. On his release he once again took up the armed struggle, until he was forced, somewhat against his will, into the Lancaster House talks(5) in the late 1970s. In part he was pushed by British pressure on neighbouring countries, who declared that they would no longer allow bases for liberation fighters if Mugabe did not attend the talks. At the talks land was one of the stumbling blocks, as about 6000 white farmers owned half the land in Zimbabwe, including two thirds of the most productive land. Mugabe’s instinct was that the liberation struggle needed to won by military means, rather than by this agreement.

Once elected, Mugabe made attempts to affect reconciliation with the whites in Zimbabwe, and two white ministers were included in his first cabinet. Despite the fact that Zimbabwe’s whites continued to live privileged lives, with their economic interests and economic domination of the economy left intact, many joined in with a campaign by apartheid South Africa to destabilise the economy and ensure that Mugabe’s communist government was seen as a failure. A number of acts of sabotage were perpetrated against the state by South Africa, which had recruited Zimbabwean whites inside and outside of the country for the purpose. Growing distrust followed, and a number of whites were detained and tortured.

In 1981, Wally Stuttaford a white MP was detained and accused of plotting to overthrow the government, and when former Rhodesian PM Ian Smith complained about this in Parliament, government minister Eddie Zvongo responded:

“When you jailed us you took your time. We were inside for ten years, and you are complaining because Stuttaford has been inside for thirty days”.

23 years later, IMC UK finds itself being used as a platform to speak out against the injustice done to a former MP and coffee grower, whose detention has been the subject of criticism by liberal organisations such as Amnesty, and by conservative elements such as Michael Ancram.

Clearly what has happened to Roy Bennet is abhorrent, but is really the worst case of injustice that the MDC lobbyists can locate in the whole of Zimbabwe? Is there an equally high profile campaign for a leading black Zimbabwean detainee? We should be told. It seems that even the liberal Amnesty is only committed to campaigning for individuals if they are part of the MDC, having campaigned on behalf of MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, when he was subjected to a trial for treason, and subsequently acquitted.

The MDC came into being in 1999, at a time when there was heightened opposition to the Mugabe regime, as the effects of WB/IMF Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP or “Eat Shit And Perish” as they are known by some locally) measures that Mugabe had been forced into were beginning to bite. Morgan Tsvangirai, a trade unionist, long time opponent of the ruling Zanu-PF, emerged as its leader.

In 2000, Eddy Cross, MDC economic spokesman and former vice-chair of the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries laid out the movements economic vision (9):

"We are going to fast track privatisation. All fifty government parastatals will be privatised within a two-year time frame, but we are going far beyond that. We are going to privatise many of the functions of government. We are going to privatise the Central Statistical Office. We are going to privatise virtually the entire school delivery system. And you know, we have looked at the numbers and we think we can get government employment down from about 300,000 at the present time to about 75,000 in five years."

A South African anarchist (7) notes:

“At the heart of the problem is the absolutely pitiful politics of the MDC. While it grew from the hard-fought struggles of the popular classes, the new party never offered much. Built by unions and students and township fighters, the MDC soon became a moderate party. Direct action, which had turned the tide against Mugabe, was now on the backburner: all efforts were to be concentrated on elections. Despite the obvious fact that ZANU-PF has manipulated the electoral process since first coming into office, elections are the be-all and end-all of the MDC leaders. Strikes and demonstrations in Zimbabwe have been replaced by international fund-raising, providing obvious ammunition for ZANU-PF's "big lie" that the MDC is the tool of Tony Blair.”

He goes on to suggest the road forward:

“It is time for reflection and reassessment, a period that must give rise to a new direction, or accept another 20 years of misery. Our opinion is that elections must be abandoned. It is necessary to go back to the streets in protest, both against repression and against poverty. The precise form of protests cannot be decided in advance, but the use of the general strike must be seriously considered. The protest movement must reject the political party model of organising, and centre, instead, on self-organisation, mandates and delegates, and self-activity and self-education. Only such a movement will have the resilience to tackle ZANU-PF, survive its inevitable retaliation, and create new and better relations between the people.

It is necessary, also, to have a programme that can inspire the masses. It must offer something more than an exchange of Mugabe's iron fist for Tsvangirai's bumbling hands. It must champion important demands - abolition of the chieftaincy, job security, social welfare, political freedoms, reindustrialisation - and foster a project of creating a post-capitalist, self-managed society, based on horizontal control of the communities and workplaces by those who live and work in them in place of just changing the faces at the top. It must link the fight against neo-liberalism and tyranny in Zimbabwe to similar fights in neighbouring countries. That is the basis for a united front of the oppressed classes, the water of struggle that will nourish the tree of freedom.”

Now that’s something I find a lot easier to support than a man who thinks that the IMF/WB will provide the cure to Zimbabwe’s ills, no matter how bitter the medicine, or how harsh the treatment. Neither can one have much trust in a man who declares (8) under the present political climate:

“Zimbabwe must be seen as a test case for Africa, for the resolve of leaders and peoples to deal with a rogue and illegitimate regime.”

Imploring our politicians to use means fair, or foul, to bring Tsvangirai into power is an idea which stinks – we can be sure that they will only do so if it is good for business in the West, and that concern for the working classes of Zimbabwe will be at the very bottom of their agenda. Besides which, Burundi has for more serious failings, which we never hear about – mainly because Burundi doesn’t have white farmers with close links with UK media barons. How may countries and deaths lie down that road?

The issue that I think many who follow the IMC ethos could get involved in, is the issue of deportations – which restarted in the same week that where was such an outcry about England playing cricket in Zimbabwe. That asylum seekers who have fled Mugabe’s tyranny should be deported back to face more persecution, is a clear injustice.

But we should not assume that we know what is best for a country that has already been profoundly damaged by past British interventions, and we should be cautious about jumping into bed with neo-liberals, reformists and liberals.

Ultimately Zimbabweans will have to sort out the mess and enact their own liberation.
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