Whilst socialism's adherents do themselves no favours by continuing to have a blind spot over human rights abuses, it has to be said that human rights are a luxury that we in the West can afford, as well as the food on our plate. A proper appreciation of the situation in Zimbabwe needs to take account of the fact that the country is in a war state; practically every news report on Zimbabwe is woefully imbalanced, and the MDC are the rallying call for western financial capital to reassert themselves in Zimbabwe as the article outlines. Despite this, I denounce the fact that Mugabe has enforced his mandate with brutality at times, withheld food aid on occassions and that his party have presided over illegimate election practices in the past, and is not 100% innocent of charges against him, though I would say that it is the West's dealings with Zimbabwe which are mostly responsible for the plight of the country, most thoroughly through the structural adjustment of the IMF, conditionality which indirectly undermined the basis of renegotiation of the financial assistance package from the UK and other donors leading to its subsequent cancellation in 1996, precipitated by Mugabe's intransigence - and which led to the dramatic reduction in export receipts and food producing capability as a result of a rushed land redistribution process. The IMF's SAP wrought untold havoc on economic and social conditions in Zimbabwe. It struck at the very heart of the political and economic programme followed by Mugabe's government since independence. This was to expand social and public services while leaving the white settler community's share of the
country's land, wealth and income intact. By cutting social provision, structural adjustment removed the very limited safety net for the nation's people at the same time as increasing the overall level of poverty.The final nail in the coffin for the Zimbabwe economy has been the sanctions of recent years.

It must be said also, that Mugabe's anti-imperialist credentials only came to the fore after it became politically necessary for him to do so. If Mugabe was such an anti-colonist before, why did he so gracefully accept a knighthood from the Queen in 1994? The fact is that Mugabe was the favoured bully whose installment into power in the country was brokered by Henry Kissinger in the infamous Lancaster house agreement signed in 1980. The comparison between Mugabe and Saddam Hussain is striking (in their time, the west accepted both were the biggest playground bullies in their respective ponds, but they were both "our" bullies til they bit the hand that fed them). The comparison is striking not least in the western media's penchant for an intepretation predicated upon an imperialist propaganda standpoint, which has accepted a deliberate misreading of historical events (such as viewing the conflict in Matebeland in the mid 80s as a massacre, when it was infact a civil war, and the extent to which land redistribution may have been disproportionately taken by Zanu supporters, which though true, maybe an exaggerated occurance for the purpose of discrediting Mugabe).

It would appear, however, that by virtue of the war-state the country had already been in for several years, first beginning with IMF austerity and then the military intervention in the Congo, land was a bargaining chip which Mugabe was forced to give out to his main fighting force (including the war veterans). The plain fact is, however noble it was for Zimbabwe to engage in wider political struggle in the Congo, to reject the revised stipulations of poverty alleviation and a mandate of transparancy in the disposal of grant money in relation the distribution of funds for the land redistribution programme was a needless folly, stipulations which UK government started to exert after re-evaluating the terms of the financial assistance package from themselves & other donors at the Land Conference in 1998 - in which Zimbabwe had originally agreed to the measures. (The Lancaster House Agreement insisted on a "willing buyer, willing seller" policy, designed to ensure white farmers received adequate compensation for land sales). It would appear Mugabe rejected this arrangement, and so vital funds to compensate white farmers which would have eased the transition to the widespread change in farming being organised across the country were cut off, primarily because the direct implementation of the principles which the British government were exerting had in actual fact been completely undermined by the austerity measures of the IMF. (Note: the IMF's Economic Structural Adjustment Programme concentrated upon reduction of government involvement in the production, distribution and marketing of agricultural inputs and commodities, which included the liberalisation of the Grain Marketing Board and grain prices in 1995. Liberalisation measures involved the dramatic reduction in the number of GMB collection points which rural smallholders and farmers traditionally sold to GMB depots, from where it had been distributed to retail outlets, with a reserve held as the country's Strategic Grain Reserve. The GMB reduced the number of depots in rural areas to zero by 1996, which coincided with the setting up of a regional trading team in Harare by global Transnational Grain Corporation Cargill in the same year). (source: SAPRI). However, Mugabe's rejection of this mandate from it's former colonial masters had the positive byproduct of exploiting the political capital out of resisting this arrangement as his own domestic mandate was under threat from the western-backed MDC, as Mugabe became seduced into being the anti-colonialist.

However, despite all this, why wasn't Zimbabwe more in a position to take advantage of it's economic strength and instead wither to a mere vestige of it's former past after taking a pair of shears to the economic structure that was in place by cutting out it's main basis of it's most productive sector - the 4000 white farmers, even though the main basis if the country's economic wealth was cash-crop farming, ensuring the country was a neocolony for the west, which has been further entrenched by IMF structural adjustment. However, the fact remains that Mugabe hadn't done enough to develop and prepare the country's agricultural development and expertise in the 18 years he'dd been in power before ending the financial assistance programme from the UK. The fact is Mugabe was ill-prepared to drag his country further into the war state because of his convictions of some anti-imperialist stance, because he'dd neglected to nurture the domestic economy and domestic food producing capability of his own country (he could have sought to find ways round stringent IMF rules, but instead had to always primarily materially appease members of his patronage neworks such as the war veterans). Whilst the IMF is cheifly responsible for the shrinkage in the state's capability to invest for the future, the fact is that Mugabe government's expenditure on agricultural development, having increased at independence, declined during the second half of the 1980s. - well before the IMF measures came into play in 1990. The slow progress of comprehensive land reform for the first 20 years of independence is explained by the constraints of the 1979 Lancaster House Agreement which brokered Zimbabwe's independence, with land which was brought forward for redistribution being invaribly of marginal productivity. The post-colonial policy of the UK bears chief responsibility for this. Britain was anxious that large-scale land reform did not take place at independence, and the constitution of Zimbabwe, inaugurated at the Lancaster House agreements in 1979, stipulated that deep-seated land reform should be delayed for 10 years. It is critical to note that the liberation forces were encouraged to accept this agreement by fellow liberation forces in the other Front Line states. The constraints in this agreement were not the choice of Mugabe or ZANU.

The plain truth is that Mugabe's socialist and anti-colonialist rhetoric does partially stand up to what upon close examination does look like the protection of patronage networks predominantly within the ruling Zanu PF party, the war veterans and disproportionately concentrated within amongst his support base (mainly Shona). Mugabe's government abolished the ESAP, something done nowhere else in Africa, and paid off the IMF debt in 2006 - finally enabling it to introduce the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Bill, legislation which stipulates that every
company operating in the country must have at least 51% of its shares owned by indigenous Zimbabweans.

However, Mugabe's is primarily a political opportunist. Whereas before, in the same fashion as most fellow leaders of african post-independence nation states, the evolution of ZANU-PF demonstrates the incapacity of the bourgeois national liberation movements to exert the slightest independence. Operating in a world capitalist economy characterised by global integration and transnational production, these movements have been transformed into the direct instruments of finance capital (Shaoul, 08/1999). However, as Zimbabwe found itself economically stranded in 1998 with a fai accomplie to accept further reaching conditionality or else, Mugabe and ZANU-PF instead ruthlessly manipulated the central issue of land reform in order to entrench and maintain their own power. Pressure into making this change came from the war veterans who were increasingly getting impatient with Mugabe and Zanu PF to deliver land redistribution for their largely Shona ethnic constituency.

A socialist revolution which doesn't extend it's force for progressive change immediately beyond it's own support base is one destined to fail, which is why the only socilaist revolution which has genuiely succeeded in recent history is that of Cuba, not least because it has done so in the face of such overwhelming odds.

Sources:
1). ZIMBABWE LIBERALISATION OF AGRICULTURAL MARKETS, by SAPRI
Ref:  http://www.saprin.org/zimbabwe/research/zim_agriculture.pdf

2).IMF tightens the screws on Zimbabwe
By Jean Shaoul, 18th August 1999
www.wsws.org/articles/1999/aug1999/zimb-a18.shtml

Maybe the Hon. Dr Mugabe is getting confused with minority rule Rhodesia in his dotage.

"To outsiders, perhaps, Zimbabwe is just a name signifying some random geographical boundaries... But for me it is different. Rhodesia was a forbidden country for me, a white man's playland.. I was always outside looking in... And I did not know until years of bloodshed and turmoil later just how sweet life could be here... I had inhabited Rhodesia, but in Zimbabwe I lived."

-Nozipo Maraire, from Zenzele

J. Nozipo Maraire (born 1966) the author of Zenzele: "A Letter for My Daughter", "Tales out of Africa", is a neurosurgeon and campaigner on HIV/AIDS who won prominence at Yale for work on "intercranial cavernous malformations that lead to many neurological disabilities, hemorrhages, and seizures" had that to say about the name of the land where she had grown up which was adopted upon the formal independence granted by the Lancaster Agreement on 18 April 1980. Zimbabwe thus replaced the interim state of "Rhodesia Zimbabwe" which had existed from June 1 to December 12, 1979.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nozipa_Maraire

In 1986 a UNESCO world heritage site which was built under the Mutapa Empire was registered as "the Great Zimbabwe national monument". That empire was also known as Mwene Mutapa, Monomotapa or sometimes the "Empire of Great Zimbabwe" it stretched from the Zambezi to the Limpopo, an area of land approximating to modern Zimbabwe and Mozambique.
 http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/364

So if we get silly and call the previous statehoods of Rhodesia etc. colonised Zimbabwe, we'd be even sillier to avoid the question of Zimbabwean imperialism from the 11th to 15th century.

Not being that silly we might thus see that the Rt Hon Mugabe as a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

"Cecil John Rhodes, PC (July 5, 1853 – March 26, 1902[1]) was a British-born South African businessman, mining magnate, and politician. He was the founder of the diamond company De Beers, which today markets 60% of the world's rough diamonds and at one time marketed 90%. He was an ardent believer in colonialism and was the founder of the state of Rhodesia, which was named after him. Rhodesia, later Northern and Southern Rhodesia, eventually became Zambia and Zimbabwe respectively."

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Rhodes

Are u really? Do you think by opposing Mugabes ZANU that you can create a real socialist state from the safety and comfort of your bedroom?

You wrote this:
'A socialist revolution which doesn't extend it's force for progressive change immediately beyond it's own support base is one destined to fail, which is why the only socilaist revolution which has genuiely succeeded in recent history is that of Cuba, not least because it has done so in the face of such overwhelming odds. '

It might interest you to know that Fidel Castro has said this:

'“’There is no country weak enough to be crushed. That is why I am confident in Zimbabwe’s victory despite the obstacles’, said President Castro, whose country has for 43 years resisted a United States-led isolation.
African support
“African ambassadors accredited to Cuba met President Mugabe and reiterated their countries’ support for Zimbabwe in its fight against imperialist forces.
“Cuba has helped Zimbabwe since the days of the liberation struggle. After independence it continued to assist in developmental programs such as training of science teachers and of late has been providing Zimbabwe with doctors.”'
 http://www.cpa.org.au/booklets/zimbabwe.pdf

Castro knows a genuine liberation struggle when he sees it. You dont.

The plain truth is unpalatable but true.

Under Smith there was work for all who wanted it, there was food on the table, crime was dealt with by arresting and imprisoning people (whatever colour), It was not ideal as the majority was not in charge, but only the most rabid and blinkered could say that it is better now.

They have a real live Despot in charge, the real deal. The mines are full with those who have "been reeducated" normally in the back of the head.
The land is so fertile that you can put a fencepost in and it starts to sprout shoots! The whole country sits on water and mineral stocks that should make it the richest country in the southern half of Africa.

This is not really a struggle of black/white or of imperialism this is all a smoke screen to hide the nasty truth, that for once the world has a real Despot in charge of a country, hes killing people, running others of their land that they have worked for generations and no one is doing anything about it.

A collectivist farm setup is one of the most foolish methods of producing food for a large number of people, putting people on the land does not produce food. Farmers produce food. The whole of that region suffers from drout but only Zimbo does nothing about it.

Zimbo' needs food not words, it needs skills not Das Kapital. We can get all political about it and say that Mugabe is a hero and 'putting it to the west' but hes doing it at the cost of people. He is corrupt and has put the only food sources that Zimbo has got in the hands of the incompetent, all for political gain.

And yet, when I pass by the Zimbo embassy in the Strand, how many people do I see protesting these actions? 10/12 if that, are all the activists too scared of a REAL monster to have a go, just too problematical to oppose a socialist state. I am not impressed and neither is the rest of the world.

I don't expect that this comment will be allowed to stay as it probably breaches some minor rule

Brian, you're completely & utterly wrong about Mugabe the anti-imperialist. Mugabe is a dictator with dressed-up leftist credentials. Do you not see that the upper echlons of Zanu represent a cowardly bourgeois and petite bourgeois? Yes, Mugabe resisted the IMF/UK onslaught, (he has had no choice but to since his patronage networks - the war veterans and army - became impatient for land, and to retain power, he was forced to capitulate to their demands at the expense of taking a position which had more consideration for the long-term economic management of the economy which would have meant reaching a compromise with the UK however unsavoury that would have been in the short-term) - so it has been politically expediant to dress this up now as a courageous anti-imperialist stance, but at what cost to the people? His despotic regime now makes the IMF's drastic shock therapy look like a tea-party. It was Zanu's brutality which brough on the ouset of
sanctions.

You're reliance on a quote from Fidel Castro speaks volumes of your misunderstanding of what a genuine socialist revolution is comprised of. The Cuba revolution evolved from being more than the hegemonic rule of one-man; as such, one can take with a strong pinch of salt what one man says about what is going on in a country in southern Africa (not taking away from the knowledge that the Cuban revolution progressed the fight against apartheid by engaging against the western-backed Unita rebels in Angola in the late 70s; in spite of that, Fidel may well retract what he says of Mugabe now - this quote from him may well have come some time b4 the actual circumstances of what has been going on in Zimbabwe has become subsequently apparant to him).

Extracts from "Zimbabwe and the strategy of resistance" by Dale T. McKinley*
There has never been any meaningful degree of ideological consonance amongst left forces/individual activists in Zimbabwe. For the first decade or so, the institutional existence and political dominance of a 'socialist' political party in the form of ZANU-PF, engendered a 'civil society' that was effectively confined to the margins of key political/ideological and social debate and contestation. While opposition to the negative effects of SAPS and a subsequent raft of neo-liberal policy prescriptions in the early-mid 1990s fostered union-based, student and other smaller-scale resistance, eventually leading to the formation of the NCA and then the MDC, the dominant strategy of this accumulated resistance was bounded within a dominant constitutional and legal framework - i.e. to seek, through existing societal and state institutions, an expression of growing popular demands for changing the character and content of those institutions. This strategic orientation, and the tactics employed to pursue it (e.g., the formation of a political party to contest representational power through the existing institutional and legal framework) was understandable given the existence of political-social space at the time, the fact that the MDC
was the first, meaningful and mass-based political challenge to the post-independence hegemony of ZANU-PF and the subsequent 'victory' of the nascent opposition forces in the constitutional referendum.

However, the 'spaghetti mix' (as left Zimbabwean activists have called it) of the MDC meant that once Mugabe and ZANU-PF had connived to steal the 2000 parliamentary elections, and in the process begin to close down the institutional and legal space for political dissent and opposition, there was no dominant ideological foundation to act as the basis for strategic and tactical
re-assessment. As a result, the strategic 'line' remained the same - to gear up for contestation of the presidential elections in 2002 and continue the demands for a new Constitution, using the MDC as the main driver/vehicle and allied 'civil society' formations as fellow passengers,. Tactically, the main emphasis was on using the available (but fast-closing) institutional and legal space to
launch strikes and stay-aways (by a diminishing number of employed workers and an increasingly survivalist general population), mobilise international opinion and support and embark on a standard electoral campaign to influence and mobilise support amongst the Zimbabwean population. Under such a strategic rubric though, there was little the oppositional forces could do once Mugabe and
ZANU-PF began to unleash their war veteran-driven 'land reform programme', youth militias and institutional/legal manipulation as a means of consolidating power (especially in the rural areas) and covering the creeping dictatorship in the cloak of an incomplete 'national democratic revolution'.
Ref:  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/anarchy_africa/message/2864

...if their propaganda effort stretches this far!
Brian, you're either staggeringly naive or a ZANU stooge. Mugabe is a dictator who stole the laste election, and is ALREADY wheeling out the thugs for this one> He's about as socialist as Milton Obote

Why is it that white forces and black people who follow white forces are hostile to Mugabe and Zanu-PF whereas black people who don't fall for the propaganda do not.

Below is a view you NEVER hear from the media or the white left. They will no doubt claim that these leaders are capitalist, neo-colonialists.

If so, please supply the evidence that the black majority in their countries also want Mugabe and Zanu-PF out.


2007 EXTRA-ORDINARY SOUTHERN AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITY SUMMIT OF HEADS OF STATE AND GOVERNMENT, 28TH - 29TH MARCH 2007
ON THE POLITICAL SITUATION IN ZIMBABWE
…The Extra-Ordinary Summit recalled that free, fair and democratic Presidential elections were held in 2002 in Zimbabwe.
The Extra-Ordinary Summit reaffirmed its solidarity with the Government and people of Zimbabwe…
…The Extra-Ordinary Summit reiterated the appeal to Britain to honour its compensation obligations with regard to land reform made at the Lancaster House.
The Extra-Ordinary Summit appealed for the lifting of all forms of sanctions against Zimbabwe.
 http://www.sadc.int/news/news_details.php?news_id=927

' ...if their propaganda effort stretches this far!
Brian, you're either staggeringly naive or a ZANU stooge. Mugabe is a dictator who stole the laste election, and is ALREADY wheeling out the thugs for this one> He's about as socialist as Milton Obote

DaanSaaf '
====================

Last election was found to be free and fair:

''Zimbabwe Elections Free And Fair, Says Tonchi
Posted: Wednesday, April 6, 2005

THE head of the Electoral Commission Forum of Southern African Development Countries' observer mission to Zimbabwe, Victor Tonchi, has given his blessing to that country's elections, declaring them free and fair.

Tonchi led an 11-country observer mission to Zimbabwe and said the mission was encouraged by the "peaceful environment" in which the election took place.

"The mission hereby records its satisfaction with the high level of compliance with regulations and election rules which was displayed by the electoral staff at all stations visited," said Tonchi, who is also Chairman of the Electoral Commission of Namibia.

Tonchi's teams observed the opening procedures and voting and counting at 65 polling stations in 28 constituencies.'
 http://www.raceandhistory.com/selfnews/viewnews.cgi?newsid1112843321,97300,.shtml