| Mugabe: The Lone True Afrikan Nationalist Left
March 30, 2007
Zimbabwe's Lonely Fight for Justice
By Stephen Gowans
http://gowans.wordpress.com/2007/03/30/zimbabwe%e2%80%99s-lonely-fight-for-justice/
Ever since veterans of the guerrilla war against apartheid Rhodesia
violently seized white-owned farms in Zimbabwe, the country's president,
Robert Mugabe, has been demonized by politicians, human rights
organizations and the media in the West. His crimes, according to
right-wing sources, are numerous: human rights abuses, election rigging,
repression of political opponents, corruption, and mismanagement of the
economy. Leftist detractors say Mugabe talks left and walks right, and
that his anti-imperialist rhetoric is pure demagogy.
I'm going to argue that the basis for Mugabe's demonization is the desire
of Western powers to change the economic and land redistribution policies
Mugabe's government has pursued; that his lapses from liberal democratic
rectitude are, in themselves, of little moment to decision makers in
Washington and London; and that the ultimate aim of regime change is to
replace Mugabe with someone who can be counted on to reliably look after
Western interests, and particularly British investments, in Zimbabwe.
I am also going to argue that the Zanu-PF government's abridgment of
formal liberties (including freedom of assembly and freedom to travel
outside the country) are warranted restraints, justified by the need to
protect the political program of the elected government from hostile
outside
interference. In making this argument I am challenging a widely held, and
often unexamined, view that civil and political liberties are senior to
all other liberties, including rights related to economic sovereignty and
freedom from oppression and exploitation.
Before 1980 Zimbabwe was a white-supremacist British colony named after
the British financier Cecil Rhodes, whose company, the British South
Africa Company, stole the land from the indigenous Matabele and Mashona
people in the 1890s. British soldiers, who laid claim to the land by force
of arms on behalf of Rhodes, were each rewarded with nine square miles of
territory. The Matabele and Mashona -- those who weren't killed in the
British land grab -- were rewarded with dispossession, grinding poverty,
misery and subjugation. By the turn of this century, in a country of 13
million, almost 70 percent of the country's arable agricultural land was
owned by some 4,500 mostly white farmers, many descendant from the
original British settlers.
After a long campaign for national liberation, independence talks were
held in 1979. Talks almost broke down over the land question, but
Washington and London, eager for a settlement, agreed to ante up and
provide financial support for a comprehensive land reform program. This,
however, was to be short-lived. Britain found a way to wriggle out of its
commitment, blocking the march toward the national liberation struggle's
principal goal.
George Shire's grandfather Mhepo Mavakire used to farm land in Zimbabwe,
before it was handed to a white man after the Second World War. Shire
argues that "The unequal distribution of land in Zimbabwe was one of the
major factors that inspired the rural-based liberation war against white
rule and has been a source of continual popular agitation ever since." (1)
"The government," says Shire, "struggled to find a consensual way to
transfer land," but with inadequate funds and insufficient assistance from
London, land reform made little headway. (2) Frustrated, and under
pressure from war veterans who had grown tired of waiting for the land
reform they'd fought for, Mugabe embarked on a course that would lead him
headlong into collision with Western governments. He passed legislation
enabling the government to seize nearly 1,500 farms owned by white
Zimbabweans, without compensation. As Zimbabwe's Foreign Affairs Minister
from 1995 to 2005, Stan Mudenge put it, at that point "all hell broke
loose." (3) Having held free and fair elections on time, and having won
them, Mugabe now became an international pariah. Overnight, he was
transformed into a dictator, a stealer of elections and a thug.
Displeased with Mugabe's fast track land reform program and irritated by
other economic policies the Mugabe government was pursuing, the EU
concluded that Mugabe would have to go, and that he would have to be
forced out by civil society, the union movement or NGO's, uprisings in the
street, or a military coup. On 24 January, 1999, a meeting was convened
at the Royal Institute of International Affairs to discuss the EU's
conclusion. The theme of the meeting, led by Richard Dowden, now the
executive director of the pro-imperialist Royal African Society, was
"Zimbabwe - Time for Mugabe to Go?" Mugabe's "confiscating" of white-held
land compelled an unequivocal yes to the conference's rhetorical question.
Dowden presented four options:
1) a military coup;
2) buying the opposition;
3) insurrection;
4) subverting Mugabe's ZANU-PF party.
A few months later, Washington weighed in. The US State Department held a
seminar to discuss a strategy for dealing with the "Zimbabwe crisis."
Civil society and the opposition would be strengthened to foment
discontent and dissent. The opposition would be brought together under a
single banner to enhance its chances of success at the polls and funding
would be funnelled to the opposition through Western backed NGO's.
Dissident groups could be strengthened and encouraged to take to the
streets. (4)
The Milosevic Treatment
The program the US State Department prescribed to rid Zimbabwe of Mugabe
and his land reform politics had been used successfully to oust
Yugoslavia's president Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. The basis of the
program is to pressure the civilian population through a program of
bombing, sanctions or military threat, in order to galvanize the
population to rise up against its government, the proximal cause of its
discomfort. (In Zimbabwe, the hoped for response is: If only Mugabe hadn't
antagonized the West, we wouldn't be under this pressure.) This was
illustrated by US Air Force General, Michael Short, who explained the
purpose of the NATO's 1999 bombing campaign against Yugoslavia was to
create disaffection with Milosevic. "If you wake up in the morning,"
explained Short, "and you have no power to your house and no gas to your
stove and the bridge you take to work is down and will be lying in the
Danube for the next 20 years, I think you begin to ask, 'Hey, Slobo,
what's this all about? How much more of this do we have to withstand?'"
(5)
Paired with outside pressure is the enlistment of a political opposition
and grassroots movement to discipline and organize the population's
disaffection so that it's channelled in the direction of forcing the
government to step down. Western powers create the pain, and inject a
fifth column of "democracy" activists and a "democratic" opposition to
offer the removal of the current government as the cure. In the end, the
people administer the cure themselves. Because the Milosevic treatment is
typically deployed against the leaders of revolutionary societies (though
the revolution may have happened some time ago), the opposition can be
thought of as a counter-revolutionary vanguard. The vanguard has two
components: a formal political opposition, whose job it is to contest
elections and cry foul when it doesn't win, and an underground grassroots
movement, mandated to carry out extra-parliamentary agitation and to take
to the streets in planned "spontaneous" uprisings, using allegations of
electoral fraud as a pretext for pursuing insurrectionary politics.
In Yugoslavia, the underground movement, known as Otpor, was established,
funded, trained and organized by the US State Department, USAID, the US
Congress-funded National Endowment for Democracy (which is said to do
overtly what the CIA used to do covertly) and through various NGO's like
Freedom House, whose board of directors has included a rogues' gallery of
US ruling class activists: Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Otto Reich,
Jeane Kirkpatrick, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Steve Forbes.
Otpor has been the inspiration for similar groups elsewhere: Zubr in
Belarus, Khmara in Georgia, Pora in the Ukraine. Otpor's Zimbabwean
progeny include Zvakwana, "an underground movement that aims to ..
undermine" the Mugabe government and Sokwanele, whose "members specialize
in anonymous acts of civil disobedience." (6) Both groups receive generous
financing from Western sources. (7) While the original, Otpor, was largely
a youth-oriented anarchist-leaning movement, at least one member of
Sokwanele is "A conservative white businessman expressing a passion for
freedom, tradition, polite manners and the British Royals." (8)
Members of Zvakwana say their movement is homegrown and free of foreign
control. (9) It may be homegrown, and its operatives may sincerely believe
they chart their own course, but the group is almost certainly not free of
foreign funding. The US Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act,
signed into law by US President George W. Bush in December 2001, empowers
the president under the US Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 to "support
democratic institutions, the free press and independent media" in
Zimbabwe. It's doubtful Zvakwana has not been showered with Washington's
largesse.
Zvakwana's denial that it's under foreign control doesn't amount to a
denial of foreign funding. Movements, political parties and media
elsewhere have knowingly accepted funding from Western governments, their
agencies and pro-imperialist foundations, while proclaiming their complete
independence. (10) Members of these groups may genuinely believe they
remain aloof from their backer's aims (and in the West it is often the
very groups that claim not to take sides that are the favored recipients
of this lucre), but self-deception is an insidious thing - and the promise
of oodles of cash is hard to resist.
There's no doubt Zvakwana is well-financed. It distributes flashy
stickers, condoms bearing the movement's Z logo, phone cards, audiotapes
and packages of seeds bearing anti-Mugabe messages, en masse. These things
don't come cheap. What's more, its operatives study "videotapes on
resistance movements in Poland, Chile, India and Serbia, as well as
studying civil rights tactics used in Nashville." (11) This betrays a
level of funding and organization that goes well beyond what the meager
self-financing of true grassroots movements -- even in the far more
affluent West - are able to scrape together.
If Zvakwana denies its links to the US, other elements of the
Western-backed anti-Mugabe apparatus are less secretive. Studio 7, an
anti-ZANU-PF radio program carries programming by the Voice of America, an
agency whose existence can hardly be said to be independent of promoting
the aims of US capital around the world. The radio station SW Radio
Africa, the self-styled "independent voice of Zimbabwe," broadcasts from
the UK by short-wave radio. It may call itself independent, but the
broadcaster is as independent as the British Foreign Office is, which, one
suspects, is one of the principal backers of the "international
pro-democracy groups" that fill the station's coffers with the cash that
allow it to operate. (12) The radio station's website evinces a fondness
for British Prime Minister Tony Blair's take on Zimbabwe, which happens to
be more or less equivalent to that of the formal political opposition in
Zimbabwe, which also happens to be more or less equivalent to that of
foreign investors, banks, and shareholders. That the station operates out
of studios in London -- and it seems, if it had its druthers, would not
only put an end to Harare's crackdown on foreign meddling in Zimbabwe's
internal affairs, but see to it that policies friendly to the rent,
profits and interest of foreign owners and investors were allowed to
flourish -- should leave little doubt as to who's behind the
"international pro-democracy groups" that have put SW Radio Africa on the
air.
In late March 2007, Robert from SW Radio Africa contacted me by e-mail to
find out if I had been hired by the Mugabe government to write an article
that appeared on the Counterpunch website, titled What's Really Going On
in Zimbabwe? (13)
Stephen,
Do you promise (cross your heart) that you received no money from
Zimbabwe's Ministry of Information (or any group acting on their behalf)
to write this piece?
The rhetoric does sound awfully familiar.
Richard
Richard,
From your e-mail address I take it you work for UK-based SW Radio Africa,
which broadcasts Studio 7, the Zimbabwe program of the Voice of America,
funded by the US government.
I don't receive money, support, assistance -- not even foot massages --
from anyone in Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwean government or any of its agents or
representatives.
Now, do you promise (cross your heart) that you receive no money from the
US or British governments or from the US Ministry of Truth, viz., the
Voice of America, (or any group acting on their behalf)?
Your rhetoric sounds awfully familiar.
Steve
Robert replied with assurances that "We are, in truth, totally
independent, sponsored by a variety of groups that support democracy and
freedom of expression," but didn't explain how Radio SW Africa could be
"totally independent" and at the same time dependent on its sponsors. When
I asked who the station's sponsors were, he declined to tell me.
An equally important component of the counter-revolutionary vanguard is
the formal political opposition. This to be comprised of a single party
which unites all the opposition parties under a single banner, to maximize
the strength of the formal political forces arrayed against the
government, and therefore to increase the probability of the
anti-government forces making a respectable showing at the polls. The
united opposition is to have one goal: deposing the government. In order
that it is invested with moral gravitas, its name must emphasize the word
"democracy." In Serbia, the anti-Milosevic opposition united under the
banner, the Democratic Opposition of Serbia. In Zimbabwe, the opposition
calls itself the Movement for Democratic Change. This serves the
additional function of calling the government's commitment to democracy
into question. If the opposition is "the democratic opposition" then what
must the government be? The answer, of course, is undemocratic.
Integral to the Milosevic treatment is accusing the government of
electoral fraud to justify a transition from electoral to insurrectionary
politics. The accusations build and build as the day of the vote
approaches, until, by sheer repetition, they are accepted as a matter of
indisputable truth. This has a heads I win, tails you lose character. If
the opposition loses the election, the vote is confirmed to be
illegitimate, as all the pre-election warnings predicted it would be,
unleashing a torrent of people onto the streets to demand the government
step down. If the opposition wins the election, the accusations are
forgotten.
The US, the European Union and international human rights organizations
denounced the last election in Zimbabwe as tilted in favour of the
governing party. The evidence for this was that the state controls the
state-owned media, the military, the police and the electoral mechanisms.
Since the state of every country controls the military, the police and the
electoral mechanisms, and the state-owned media if it has one, this
implies elections in all countries are titled in favour of the governing
party, a manifestly absurd point of view.
So far the Milosevic treatment has failed to achieve its desired end in
Zimbabwe. One of the reasons why is that the formal political opposition
has failed to execute the plan to a tee. The lapse centers around what is
know as Plan B. The Los Angeles Times describes Plan B this way: "Insiders
are asking what happened to the opposition's 'Plan B' that they had
designed to put into operation the day after the March (2005) elections.
The plan called for (the MDC leader, Morgan) Tsvangirai to claim a
confident victory, with masses of his jubilant supporters flooding the
streets for a spontaneous victory party -- banking on the idea that with
observers from neighbouring African countries and the international media
present, Mugabe's security forces would hesitate to unleash violence."
(14) (Note the reference to the planned "spontaneous" victory party.) That
Plan B wasn't executed may be the reason Tsvangirai is no longer in
control of a unified MDC, and is vying with Arthur Mutambara, an Oxford
educated robotics engineer who worked as a management consultant, to lead
the opposition.
Countering the Milosevic Treatment
The problem, from the perspective of the US State Department planners who
formulated the Milosevic treatment, is that if you do it too often, the
next victim becomes wise to what you're up to, and can manoeuvre to stop
it. With successes in Yugoslavia, Georgia and Ukraine, but failure so far
in Belarus, the element of surprise is lost, and the blatancy of what the
US government is up to becomes counter-productive. So obvious has the
Milosevic treatment become, US government officials now express surprise
when the leaders they've targeted for regime change put up with it. (15)
Mugabe, however, hasn't put up with it, and has imposed a number of
restrictions on civil liberties to thwart destabilization efforts. One
measure is to ban NGOs that act as instruments of US or British foreign
policy. NGOs that want to operate in Zimbabwe cannot receive foreign
funding and must disclose their sources of financial support. This stops
Washington and Britain from working within the country, through proxy, to
meddle in the country's internal affairs. For the same reason, legislation
was put forward in Russia in 2005 to require the 450,000 NGOs operating
there to re-register with the state, to prevent foreign-funded political
activity. The
legislation's sponsors characterized "internationally financed NGOs as a
'fifth column' doing the bidding of foreigners." (16)
In a similar vein, foreign journalists whose reporting appears to be
motivated by the goal of promoting the foreign policy objectives of
hostile nations, like the US and UK, are banned. CNN reporters are
prohibited from reporting from Zimbabwe because the government regards
them, with
justification, as a tool of US foreign policy. What reasonable person of
an unprejudiced mind would dispute CNN's chauvinism? Given that one of the
objects of US foreign policy is to intervene in Zimbabwe's affairs to
change the government, the ban is a warranted restraint on press freedom.
Limitations on press freedom are not unique to Zimbabwe, although those
imposed by Mugabe are a good deal more justifiable than those imposed by
the West. In the wake of the March 2006 re-election of Belarus president
Aleksandr Lukashenko, the US planned to sanction 14 Belarus journalists it
labelled "key figures in the propaganda, distortion of facts and attacks
on the democracies (i.e., the US and Britain) and their representatives in
Belarus." (17) In 1999, NATO bombed the Serb Radio-TV building, because it
said Serb Radio-TV was broadcasting propaganda.
Laws "sharply curbing freedoms of the press and public assembly, citing
national security" were enacted during the 2002 elections. (18) Mugabe
justified the restrictions as necessary to counter Western plans to
re-impose domination of Zimbabwe. "They want our gold, our platinum, our
land," he argues. "These are ours forever. I will stand and fight for our
rights of sovereignty. We fought for our country to be free. These
resources will remain ours forever. Let this be understood to those in
London." (19)
Mugabe's warning about the danger of re-colonization "underpins the
crackdown on the nation's most formidable independent forces,
pro-democracy groups and the Movement for Democratic Change, both of which
have broad Western support, and, often, financing," as the New York Times
put it. (20) (Note the reference to the opposition being independent even
though it's dependent on broad Western support and financing.)
This "fortress-Zimbabwe strategy has been strikingly effective. According
to a poll of 1,200 Zimbabweans published in August (2004) by South African
and American researchers, the level of public trust in Mr. Mugabe's
leadership has more than doubled since 1999, to 46 percent - even as the
economy has fallen into ruin.and anger over economic and living conditions
is
pervasive." (21)
Mugabe, his detractors allege, secures his support by focusing the
public's anger on outside forces to keep the public from focusing its
anger on him (the same argument the US government and anti-Castro forces
have been making about Castro for years.) If this is true, the groundswell
of opposition to Mugabe's government that we're led to believe threatens
to topple Mugabe from power any moment, doesn't exist; it's directed at
outside forces. Consistent with this is the reality that the US-based Save
Zimbabwe Campaign "does not.have widespread grassroots support." (22)
Implicit in the argument that Mugabe uses anti-imperialist rhetoric to
stay in power is the view that (a) outside forces aren't responsible for
the country's deep economic crisis and that (b) Mugabe is. This is the
view of US ambassador to Zimbabwe Christopher Dell, and many of Mugabe's
leftist detractors. "Neither drought nor sanctions are at the root of
Zimbabwe's decline. The Zimbabwe government's own gross mismanagement of
the economy and corrupt rule has brought on the crisis." (23)
Yet, in a country whose economy is mainly based on agriculture, the idea
that drought hasn't caused serious economic trouble, is absurd. Drought is
a regional phenomenon, whittling away at populations in Mali, Ethiopia,
Malawi, Mauritania, Eritrea, southern Sudan and Zimbabwe. Land
redistribution hasn't destroyed agriculture in Zimbabwe; it has destroyed
white commercial, cash-crop farming, which is centred on the production of
tobacco for export.
Equally absurd is the notion that sanctions are economically neutral.
Sanctions imposed by the US, EU and other countries deny Zimbabwe
international economic and humanitarian assistance and disrupt trade and
investment flows. Surgical or targeted sanctions are like surgical or
targeted bombing: not as surgical as their champions allege and the cause
of a good deal of collateral damage and suffering.
Left critics of Mugabe ape the argument of the US ambassador, adding that
Mugabe's anti-imperialist and leftist rhetoric is, in truth, insincere. He
is actually right-wing and reactionary -- a master at talking left while
walking right. (24) But if Mugabe is really the crypto-reactionary, secret
pro-imperialist some people say he is, why are the openly reactionary,
pro-imperialists in Washington and London so agitated?
Finally, if Mugabe uses outside interference as an excuse to keep tight
control, why not stop interfering and deny him the excuse?
Mugabe's government also denies passports to any person believed to be
travelling abroad to campaign for sanctions against Zimbabwe, or military
intervention in Zimbabwe. The justification for this is the opposition's
fondness for inviting its backers in Washington and London to ratchet up
punitive measures against the country.
No country has ever provided unqualified public advocacy rights, rights of
association, and freedom of travel, for all people, at all times. Always
there has been the idea of warranted restraint. And the conditions under
which warranted restraint have been imposed are conditions in which the
state is threatened. There's no question the ZANU-PF government, and the
movement for national liberation it champions, is under threat.
Archbishop Pius Ncube tells a gathering that "we must be ready to stand,
even in front of blazing guns, that "this dictatorship must be brought
down right now, and that "if we can get 30,000 people together Mugabe will
just come down. I am ready to lead it." (25) Arthur Mutambara boasts that
he is "going to remove Robert Mugabe, I promise you, with every tool at my
disposal" and that he's not "going to rule out or in anything - the sky's
the limit." (26) If I declared an intention to remove Tony Blair with
every tool at my disposal, that no tool was ruled out, and I did so with
the backing of hostile foreign powers, it wouldn't be long before the
police paid me a visit.
Why the West wants Mugabe gone
It's not Mugabe per se that Washington and London and white commercial
farmers in Zimbabwe want to overthrow. It's his policies they want to be
rid of, and they want to replace his policies with their own, very
different, policies. There are at least five reasons why Washington and
London want to oust Mugabe, none of which have anything to do with human
rights.
The first reason to chase Mugabe from power is that in the late 90's his
government abandoned IMF-mandated structural adjustment programs -
programs of bleeding people dry to pay interest on international debt.
These are policies of currency devaluation, severe social program cuts -
anything to free up money to pay down debt, no matter what the human
consequences.
The second is that Mugabe sent troops to the Democratic Republic of Congo
to bolster the Kabila government. This interfered with Western designs in
the region.
The third is that many of Mugabe's economic policies are not congenial to
the current neo-liberal orthodoxy. For example, Mugabe recently announced
the nationalization of a diamond mine, which seems to be, in the current
climate, an anachronism. If you nationalize anything these days, you're
called radical and out of date. The MDC - which promotes the neo-liberal
tyranny -- wants to privatize everything. It is for this reason that
Mugabe talks about the opposition wanting to sell off Zimbabwe's
resources. The state continues to operate state-owned enterprises. And the
government imposes performance requirements on foreign investors. For
example, you may be required to invest part of your profits in government
bonds. Or you may be required to take on a local partner. Foreign
investors, or governments that represent them, bristle at these
conditions.
The fourth is that British companies dominate the Zimbabwean economy and
the British government would like to protect the investments of British
banks, investors and corporations. If you read the British press you'll
find a fixation on Zimbabwe, one you won't find elsewhere. Why does
Britain take such a keen interest in the internal affairs of Zimbabwe? The
usual answer is that Britain has an especial interest in Zimbabwe because
it is the country's former colonial master, but why should Britain's
former colonial domination of Zimbabwe heighten its interest in the
country? The answer is that colonization paved the way for an economic
domination of the country by British corporations, investors and banks -
and the domination carries on as a legacy of Britain's former colonial
rule. If you're part of the British ruling class or one of its
representatives, what you want in a country in which you have enormous
investments is a trustworthy local ruler who will look after them.
Mutambara, who was educated in Britain and lived there, and has absorbed
the imperialist point of view, is, from the perspective of the British
ruling class, far more attractive than Mugabe as a steward of its
interests.
Finally, Western powers would like to see Mugabe replaced by a trustworthy
steward who will abandon the fast track land reform program, which apart
from violating sacrosanct principles of the capitalist church, if allowed
to thrive, becomes a model to inspire the indigenous rural populations of
neighbouring countries. Governments in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand
also look askance at Mugabe's land reform policy, and wish to see it
overturned, for fear it will inspire their own aboriginal populations.
Mugabe's government accelerated its land redistribution program in the
late 90s, breaking with the completely unworkable, willing buyer, willing
seller policy that only allowed the government to redistribute the
country's arable land after the descendants of the former colonial
settlers, absentee landlords and some members of the British House of
Lords were done using it, and therefore willing to sell. Britain, which
had pledged financial assistance to its former colony to help buy the
land, reneged, leaving Harare without the means to expropriate with
compensation the vast farms dominated by the tiny minority of white
descendants of British colonists.
"Zimbabwe finally abandoned the 'willing buyer, willing seller' formula in
1997. The formula was crippled from the start by parsimonious British
funding, and it was a clear that the program's modest goals were more than
Great Britain was willing to countenance. In a letter to the Zimbabwean
Minister of Agriculture in November of that year, British Secretary of
State for International Development Clare Short wrote, 'I should make it
clear that we do not accept that Britain has a special responsibility to
meet the costs of land purchase in Zimbabwe.' Referring to earlier British
assistance funding, Short curtly stated, 'I am told that there were
discussions in 1989 and 1996 to explore the possibility of further
assistance. However that is all in the past.' Short complained of
'unresolved' issues, such as 'the way in which land would be acquired and
compensation paid - clearly it would not help the poor of Zimbabwe if it
was done in a way which undermined investor confidence.' Short was
concerned about the interests of corporate investors, then. In closing,
Short wrote that 'a program of rapid land acquisition as you now seem to
envisage would be impossible for us to support,' as it would damage the
'prospects for attracting investment'" (27)
It was only after Mugabe embarked on this accelerated land reform program
that Washington and London initiated their campaign of regime change,
pressuring Mugabe's government with sanctions, expulsion from the
Commonwealth, assistance to the opposition, and the usual Manichean
demonization of the target government and angelization of the Western
backed opposition.
The MDC, by comparison, favours a return to the unworkable willing seller,
willing buyer regimen. The policy is unworkable because Harare hasn't the
money to buy the farms, Britain is no longer willing to finance the
program, and even if the money were available, the owners have to agree to
sell their farms before the land can be redistributed. Land reform under
this program will necessarily proceed at a snail's pace. The national
liberation movement always balked at the idea of having to buy land that
had been stolen from the indigenous population. It's like someone stealing
your car, and when you demand it back, being told you're going to have to
buy it back, and only when the thief is willing to sell.
Conclusion
One thing opponents and supporters of Mugabe's government agree on is that
the opposition is trying to oust the president (illegally and
unconstitutionally if you acknowledge the plan isn't limited to victory at
the polls.) So which came first? Attempts to overthrow Zimbabwe's ZANU-PF
government, or the government's harsh crackdown on opposition?
According to the Western media spin, the answer is the government's harsh
crackdown on opposition. Mugabe's government is accused of being
inherently authoritarian, greedy for power for power's sake, and willing
do anything - from stealing elections to cracking skulls -- to hang on to
its privileged position. This is the typical slander levelled at the heads
of governments the US and UK have trouble with, from Milosevic in his day,
to Kim Jong Il, to Castro.
Another view is that the government's authoritarianism is an inevitable
reaction to circumstances that are unfavorable to the attainment of its
political (not its leaders' personal) goals. Mugabe's government came to
power at the head of a movement that not only sought political
independence, but aspired to reverse the historical theft of land by white
settlers. That the opposition would be fierce and merciless - has been so
- was inevitable.
Reaction to the opposition, if the government and its anti-colonial agenda
were to survive, would need to be equally fierce and merciless.
At the core of the conflict is a clash of right against right: the right
of white settlers to enjoy whatever benefits stolen land yields in profits
and rent against the right of the original owners to reclaim their land.
Allied to this is a broader struggle for economic independence, which sets
the rights of investors and corporations abroad to profit from
untrammelled access to Zimbabwe's labor, land and resources and the right
of Zimbabweans to restrict access on their own terms to facilitate their
own economic development.
The dichotomy of personal versus political motivation as the basis for the
actions of maligned governments recurs in debates over whether this or
that leader or movement ought to be supported or reviled. The personal
view says that all leaders are corrupt, chase after personal glory, power
and wealth, and dishonestly manipulate the people they profess to
champion. The political view doesn't deny the personal view as a
possibility, but holds that the behavior of leaders is constrained by
political goals.
"Even George Bush who rigs elections and manipulates news in order to stay
in office and who clearly enjoys being 'the War President,' wants the
presidency in order to carry out a particular program with messianic
fervor," points out Richard Levins. "He would never protect the
environment, provide healthcare, guarantee universal free education, or
separate church and state, just to stay in office." (28)
Mugabe is sometimes criticized for being pushed into accelerating land
reform by a restive population impatient with the glacial pace of
redistribution allowed under the Lancaster House agreement. His detractors
allege, implausibly, that he has no real commitment to land reforms. This
intersects with Patrick Bond's view. According to Bond, "Mugabe talks
radical -- especially nationalist and anti-imperialist-(to hang on to
power) but acts reactionary." He only does what's necessary to preserve
his rule.
If we accept this as true, then we're saying that the behavior of the
government is constrained by one of the original goals of the liberation
movement (land reform) and that the personal view is irrelevant. No matter
what the motivations of the government's leaders, the course the
government follows is conditioned by the goals of the larger movement of
national liberation.
There's no question Mugabe reacted harshly to recent provocations by
factions of the MDC, or that his government was deliberately provoked.
But the germane question isn't whether beating Morgan Tsvangirai over the
head was too much, but whether the ban on political rallies in Harare,
which the opposition deliberately violated, is justified. That depends on
whose side you're on, and whether you think Tsvangirai and his associates
are earnest citizens trying to freely express their views or are proxies
for imperialist governments bent on establishing (restoring in Britain's
case) hegemony over Zimbabwe.
There's no question either that Mugabe's government is in a precarious
position. The economy is in a shambles, due in part to drought, to the
disruptions caused by land reform, and to sanctions. White farmers want
Mugabe gone (to slow land redistribution, or to stop it altogether),
London and Washington want him gone (to ensure neo-liberal "reforms" are
implemented), and it's likely that some members of his own party also want
him to step down.
On top of acting to sabotage Zimbabwe economically through sanctions,
London and Washington have been funneling financial, diplomatic and
organizational assistance to groups and individuals who are committed to
bringing about a color revolution (i.e., extra-constitutional regime
change) in Zimbabwe. That includes Tsvangirai and the MDC factions, among
others.
For the Mugabe government, the options are two-fold: Capitulate (and
surrender any chance of maintaining what independence Zimbabwe has managed
to secure at considerable cost) or fight back. Some people might deplore
the methods used, but considering the actions and objectives of the
opposition - and what's at stake - the crackdown has been both measured
and necessary.
1. The Guardian (January 24, 2002)
2. Ibid.
3. Zimbabwe's Land Reform Programme (The Reversal of Colonial Land
Occupation and Domination): Its Impact on the country's regional and
international relations. Paper presented by Dr I.S.G. Mudenge, Zimbabwe
Minister of Foreign Affairs, to the Conference 'The Struggle Continues',
held in Harare, 18-22 April 2004.
4. http://www.zimfa.gov.zw/speeches/minister/min014.htm
5. Globe and Mail (May 26, 1999)
6. "Grass-Roots Effort Aims to Upend Mugabe in Zimbabwe," The New York
Times, (March 28, 2005)
7. Los Angeles Times (July 8, 2005)
8. Ibid.
9. New York Times (March 27, 2005)
10. See Frances Stonor Saunders, "The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the
World of Arts and Letters," New Press, April 2000; and "The Economics and
Politics or the World Social Forum," Aspects of India's Economy, No. 35,
September 2003, http://www.rupe-india.org/35/contents.html
11. New York Times (March 27, 2005)
12. Globe and Mail (March 26, 2005)
13. "What's Really Going on in Zimbabwe? Mugabe Gets the Milosevic
Treatment," Counterpunch.com. March 23, 2007,
http://www.counterpunch.org/gowans03232007.html
14. Los Angeles Times (July 8, 2005)
15. New York Times, (December 4, 2005)
16. Washington Post (November 18, 2005)
17. New York Times (March 29, 2006)
18. New York Times (December 24, 2004)
19. Globe and Mail (March 23, 2007)
20. New York Times (December 24, 2004)
21. Ibid.
22. Globe and Mail (March 22, 2007)
23. The Herald (November 7, 2005)
24. Patrick Bond, "Mugabe: Talks Radical, Acts Like a Reactionary:
Zimbabwe's Descent," Counterpunch.com, March 27, 2007,
http://www.counterpunch.org/bond03272007.html
25. Globe and Mail (March 23, 2007)
26. Times Online (March 5, 2006)
27. Gregory Elich, "Zimbabwe's Fight for Justice," Center for Research on
Globalisation, May 6, 2005, globalresearch.ca/articles/ELI505A.html 28.
"Progressive Cuba Bashing," Socialism and Democracy, Vol. 19, No. 1, March
2005.
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