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COSATU and Zimbabwe: Signalling left, turning right
Fikile Mbalula, President of the ANC Youth League
November 04

http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/anctoday/2004/at45.htm#art4

For some years now, Zimbabwe has occupied a prominent place in the international discourse. President Mugabe and the political situation in Zimbabwe have served as a central focus of this discourse. Certainly in the Western countries it is taken as given that President Mugabe is an evil and demonic dictator, and the political order in Zimbabwe the very epitome of a vile anti-democratic dictatorship.

The most extraordinary statements have been made in this regard. For example, the well known conservative scholar on African affairs, Professor Robert Rotberg, Director of the Harvard Programme on Intrastate Conflict and President of the World Peace Foundation, has written that "Africa has its very own Pol Pot. Everything that President Robert Mugabe has done to Zimbabwe since the stolen March (2002) elections qualifies him for that despicable allusion".

In 2001, the British 'Telegraph' newspaper carried an article entitled "Murderous Mugabe should be treated like bin Laden". After mentioning the Taliban, the author, Alice Thompson, said "America and Britain are looking for their next target in the war against terrorism. Zimbabwe hasn't even been mentioned. Yet it is full of terror. Imposing sanctions or sending in troops could tip the country over the edge".

What made it possible for these outrageous statements to be made, that Robert Mugabe stood in the same league as Pol Pot and Osama bin Laden, was the fact that a very powerful global propaganda machine had succeeded to paint an entirely negative image of the President and the government of Zimbabwe, as well as the political situation in that country.

Hard realism dictates that we accept that in this situation it is most unlikely that, as of now, the truth about the situation in Zimbabwe is likely to see the light of day. Lies and half truths will continue to prevail because some in our country and elsewhere in the world have a vested interest in the prevalence of a particular perspective about Zimbabwe, regardless of the real situation in that country.

What accounts for this, and why should we, a liberation movement, surrender to such fatalism!

In the aftermath of the 2002 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Australia, 'The (British) Guardian' correspondent, Seamus Milne, wrote: "Since Blair's ministers began openly to champion the cause of the white farmers who made up the backbone of the former Rhodesian regime - while denouncing the black leadership which defeated it as 'uncivilised' - British interference in Zimbabwe has been ceaseless.

"There are only two possible explanations for Britain's role. One is a racist concern for the privileged white minority. The other is that, unlike Zambia and Kenya, Mugabe is no longer playing ball with the west's neo-liberal agenda and talking, credibly or not, of taking over private businesses and a return to socialism. That cannot be tolerated and, in the new world order, the US now appears to have subcontracted supervision of Africa largely to the former colonial powers, Britain and France."

This had been preceded by another report in the same newspaper, 'The Guardian', written by one of its veteran correspondents, Jonathan Steele. He said: "It was a disgraceful election which European Union observers and local monitors severely censured. The media were controlled. Criticising the president risked criminal charges. The police regularly moved in to prevent opposition candidates campaigning and the vote-count was marked by irregularities. This sorry spectacle happened three weeks ago in a former British colony in southern Africa.

"Statements of indignation from Jack Straw? Not a murmur. Furious coverage in Fleet Street? A few column inches on inside pages. Talk of "smart" sanctions to punish the men who stole the election? You must be joking.

"So what is it that keeps Zambia, where this travesty of a poll was conducted, safe from the west's outrage-stirrers, unlike Zimbabwe?"

Jonathan Steele answered this question as follows: "The issue is racism. Zimbabwe's best land is still in white hands, and this provokes inordinate interest in Britain. Mugabe's approach to land reform has been inconsistent and volatile. His methods have often been violent and unlawful. But for largely racist reasons he had very little support from successive British governments. They put a 10-year block on changes in the land tenure system in the constitution drawn up at independence, and have failed to provide much cash for the international fund which they promised to set up to buy the settlers out. Racism pervades other aspects of Whitehall's (the British government's) approach."

Another commentator, Decca Aitkenhead, writing in the same newspaper in August 2001 about the experience of white farmers in Zimbabwe, as reported in the British press, said: "Reporters who cover Africa will be more familiar with the spectacle of atrocity, of course, but less accustomed to the swell of foreign horror. Not known for our sympathy for African misfortune, all of a sudden we are appalled.

"Bad things should obviously not happen to white people. How else to explain the indignation? The knowledge of unspeakable horrors inflicted on black Africans is seldom allowed to interfere with our peace of mind, as if they were in the natural order of things. Over there it is hot, zebras live in the wild, and bad things happen to blacks. But when white families are dispossessed, it is another matter altogether."

This explains why we accept that cold realism dictates that we understand that we will not succeed in the near future to have the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth told about the situation in Zimbabwe. Where racism pervades the approach on a (British) Labour Government, who else in the West will be immune to the cancerous disease of racism!

Our movement and Government have disagreed with ZANU PF and the Government of Zimbabwe about a number of issues relating to the situation in Zimbabwe. We have not hesitated to discuss any and all these matters with both ZANU PF and the Government, as well as intervene practically where this was necessary.

We did this, and will continue to do, not because somebody else demands that we do so. We will continue to engage the broad spectrum of the Zimbabwe leadership because it is in our country's direct and immediate interest that our neighbour, Zimbabwe, should overcome its political, economic and social problems.

We fully understand the challenges facing Zimbabwe. At the same time we understand other things about Zimbabwe, which self interested and ideologically driven propaganda against the Government of Zimbabwe is determined to deny and hide from the public eye.

Zimbabwe has an elected parliament, in which the MDC is a formidable elected opposition. Because of its electoral strength, the MDC is the predominant representative of the urban population of Zimbabwe. The main urban municipalities of Zimbabwe are controlled by elected MDC councils. In some instances where the MDC has challenged specific constituency election results, the courts have upheld the petitions of the MDC, resulting in the removal of ZANU PF members of parliament. Accepting the bona fides of the judiciary in this regard, the MDC has asked the courts of the land to rule on the legality of the 2002 election of Robert Mugabe as President of the Republic.

In 2000, the Government and ZANU PF were defeated in a referendum to approve a draft Constitution which, among other things, sought to establish a new constitutional framework to address the land question. ZANU PF and the Government accepted this outcome.

At the suggestion of COSATU, South Africa deployed a civil society Observer Mission to observe the 2002 Presidential Elections. The Mission included trade union, business, religious, NGO and other representatives.

Properly to discharge its responsibilities not only to observe the elections, but also to ensure that they were free and fair, the Observer Mission intervened promptly in all instances where it felt that the integrity of the elections could be compromised. To facilitate its access to the Zimbabwe Government, our Government deployed two Ministers in Harare who helped to ensure that the Zimbabwe Government addressed the concerns of the Observer Mission expeditiously.

In its Report, and having expressed itself on the negative factors relating to these elections, this Observer Mission said:

"It appears that the will of the people was demonstrated to a degree reflected by the number of people who came out to vote and who did get an opportunity to vote. The turnout at the polls and the number of people who voted was second only to the first election following the liberation of Zimbabwe. This view must be seen in the context of the obstacles and problems that characterised the pre-election period that is described boldly and frankly in the body of this report. The Mission is, therefore, of the view that the outcome of the elections represents the legitimate voice of the people of Zimbabwe."

Being certain about the integrity of the eminent South Africans who constituted the SAOM and the thoroughness with which they did their work, we accepted this determination that President Mugabe is President by virtue of the legitimate voice of the people of Zimbabwe. In this context, we have repeatedly made the statement that we respect the right of the people of Zimbabwe to determine their own destiny and that Zimbabwe is not a province of South Africa.

The last fact about Zimbabwe we would like to mention is that the pervasive impression created that Zimbabwe has no privately owned and so-called "independent" media is completely false. The story that has gained currency as the absolute truth, that only the "Daily News" was such an "independent" paper is an outright falsification of reality. In this regard we must also say that, in time, the real truth will also be told about the circumstances that led to the "Daily News" ceasing to publish.

Concerning the foregoing, it is clear that Zimbabwe is a "dictatorship" of a special type. It has regular multi-party elections in keeping with the prescripts contained in the National Constitution. It has elected national and local legislatures in which the opposition has a strong presence.

Regularly the courts rule in favour of the opposition. It has many "independent" publications that are registered according to the law, appear regularly, and are highly critical of the Government.

The reality is that in the Zimbabwe case, we are dealing with a very peculiar kind of "dictatorship". However, powerful forces in the contemporary world have decreed that none of the foregoing exists. Instead, they argue that we have a dictatorship that should be treated as an equivalent of the Cambodian Pol Pot and Afghan Taliban and bin Laden dictatorships. It therefore follows that like these, the Mugabe Government must be overthrown, destroyed, and replaced by another acceptable to those who are ready to tell lies about the real Zimbabwe.

COSATU has now intervened forcefully to make its own statement about Zimbabwe. This was preceded by a strange demonstration it held in Cape Town to oppose the re-election of President Bush and urge the US electorate to elect the Democratic Party candidate, Senator John Kerry!

But interestingly, as reported by a determined Zimbabwe opponent of the Mugabe administration, the Zimbabwe journalist Basildon Peta, President Bush 's Ambassador in South Africa, Jendayi Frazer, had expressed the same views about Zimbabwe upheld by the COSATU that is seemingly opposed to the re-election of President Bush.

Reporting in August this year for the London newspaper 'The Independent', Peta said that, at "a meeting with journalists in Johannesburg", Ambassador Frazer had indicated that: "The United States has called for the building of a "coalition of the willing" to push for regime change to end the crisis in Zimbabwe. The new American ambassador to South Africa, Jendayi Frazer, said quiet diplomacy pursued by South Africa and other African countries in its dealings with the Zimbabwe president needed a review because there was no evidence it was working. She said her country would be willing to be part of a coalition if invited."

The Peta report went on: "She noted that repression in Zimbabwe had worsened and was making it impossible for the opposition to operate ahead of elections next year." 'So we have got to re-look at the approach, that South Africa is taking in terms of quiet diplomacy ... It's not evident that it's working at this point."

'We have always talked about building coalitions of the willing and I, for one, believe that the coalitions of the willing are going to be the newforce in global affairs ... "Instead of quiet diplomacy, Ms Frazer suggested an open admission by regional countries that there is a crisis in Zimbabwe. That was an important first step followed by pressure to force Mr Mugabe to return the country to democracy."

On November 6, COSATU stated this position more delicately when it said: "Diplomacy has its role and place, but we cannot afford to place all our eggs in the basket of diplomacy. Mass mobilisation and solidarity have an equally important role. The challenge is to co-ordinate these efforts to reinforce one another and not use one to the exclusion of the other."

The day before COSATU made this statement, the Zimbabwe 'Daily News Online' reported on a conversation it had held with one Roger Bate, whom it described as a "Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute". This is one of the neo-conservative institutions of the US that have helped to define that country's right wing agenda. 'The Daily News Online' said "A fellow at the Institute, Roger Bate, the powerful think-tank, the American Enterprise says there is need to step up pressure on the government of Zimbabwe by increasing sanctions on President Robert Mugabe and his cronies. Bate said there was need for the international community to put more pressure on President Mbeki to help facilitate the restoration of democracy in Zimbabwe."

Obviously, like Ambassador Frazer and COSATU, Mr Bate thinks that our "quiet diplomacy" needs to be "coordinated" with some other kind of action, such as the sanctions proposed by COSATU. All this had been foreseen by the conservative newspaper, "The Washington Times" which, in January this year opined: "Despite all of South Africa's misplaced support, the government of Zimbabwe has no qualms about publicly embarrassing Mr. Mbeki. What will it take for South Africa to finally change its approach?"

In the immediate aftermath of the deportation of the COSATU "fact finding mission" from Zimbabwe, this same newspaper, one of those COSATU thanked for their expression of solidarity, said: "South Africa's self-deprecating silence in the face of Zimbabwe's escalating contempt is defining the Mbeki government's Africa policy. As despotic leader Robert Mugabe continues his catastrophic dictatorship in Zimbabwe and puts the South African government in increasingly difficult positions, Pretoria continues to respond with its ineffectual "quiet diplomacy." That policy is becoming a national embarrassment for South Africa."

Obviously Ambassador Frazer, COSATU, the Zimbabwe Daily News and the American Enterprise Institute are not alone in challenging the approach we have taken towards the resolution of Zimbabwe's problems!

Denigration of the reasons for Zimbabwe's land redistribution programme and charges of gross economic mismanagement have been part of the armoury that has been used to justify the right wing demand for regime change in Zimbabwe.

As long ago as 2001, communicating through its General Secretary, COSATU spoke in the same terms about these two matters. Speaking at a conference in 2001, the General Secretary said:

"However, we could not associate ourselves with the chaotic and anarchic fast track land resettlement programme unleashed by the Zimbabwean government in 2000. This programme was in flagrant disregard of the law and unleashed a wave of violence that threatened the very stability of the society. What is even more disgusting was that the violence by party hooligans was also directed at farm workers.

"We are not convinced that this was a genuine programme since government has failed for 20 years to address the central question at the centre of the revolution in Zimbabwe - the land question. In order to mask its failures and faced by prospects of a credible opposition government opportunistically used the land question to deflect attention from its failures. The fast track land resettlement programme was nothing less than an election gimmick."

With regard to the economy, the General Secretary said: "What we have witnessed in Zimbabwe is a study in irony. Government for a long time failed to address critical issues facing the masses but in a rather Orwellian fashion turn up revolutionary rhetoric to try to whip up support.

Additionally, government embraces neo-liberalism only to discard it towards election and immediately after the elections adopt IMF-World Bank-type adjustment programmes."

The reality however is that the economic problems of Zimbabwe emanated from the implementation from independence in 1980 onwards, of precisely the same policies that COSATU demanded of our government, as part of its opposition to GEAR.

These included high budget deficits to fund social spending on health and education as well as rural development. Borrowed money was also used to pay an expanded public service required to implement these programmes. At the same time the budget was used to sustain a whole range of food, transport and other subsidies on items of direct benefit to the masses that the COSATU General Secretary falsely claims the Zimbabwe Government failed. These distinctly pro-poor policies were financially unsustainable. A large domestic and international debt became a fetter on further development. The domestic capital market dried up. These and other developments and the responses of the Government to the then growing crisis led directly to macro-economic imbalances of high interest and inflation rates, a rapid decline in the growth rate, and so on.

In these circumstances, Zimbabwe had to turn to the IMF and the World Bank for support. Not unexpectedly, these imposed a structural adjustment programme on Zimbabwe, which necessarily required cuts in public expenditure and therefore a roll back of the social programmes that had been put in place to ensure the upliftment of the formerly colonised millions.

Had our movement and government succumbed to the pressures from COSATU to abandon GEAR, sooner or later we would have ended up in the same situation as Zimbabwe, having to appeal to the IMF and the World Bank to bail us out.

We have said this many times that we will never allow ourselves to be forced into this situation.

The "study in irony" consists in the way that COSATU attacks the Government of Zimbabwe for the consequences of economic policies that it sought to impose on our movement and government, even through resort to the instrument of general strikes.

But even more of an irony is the very strange coincidence of the positions of COSATU on Zimbabwe with those of the domestic and international right wing forces.

COSATU considers and describes itself as belonging to "the left". Others who also consider and describe themselves as "left" hold somewhat different views about the situation in and the contest about the future of Zimbabwe.

For example, the US "Workers World" wrote in 2001: "The art of public relations goes back a long way, as the old expression "a wolf in sheep's clothing" shows us. Disguise something bad or give it a cuddly name and by the time people find out it has fangs, it may be too late.

"A bill called the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act (ZDERA) now making its way through Congress is a case in point. Democracy, economic recovery--who could argue with that? But this bill is an open attack on Zimbabwe's economic and political independence. It was passed by the Senate on Aug. 1 and is now before the House.

"President Robert Mugabe and the Patriotic Front government are the targets of ZDERA. In the name of democracy, the bill would allow the U.S. Congress to spend $6 million to influence the upcoming national election, in the name of "voter education," and would put sanctions on the country's leaders."

Reflecting an understanding of the land question different from that expressed by the General Secretary of COSATU, The "Workers World" said: It is obvious that the whites are into farming as a lucrative business, not for survival. The Black people, however, are desperately poor and need the land just to live. The land question has become the focus of a giant political battle."

There is another "left" NGO, the Independent Media Centre (IMC), with branches in various countries, including Zimbabwe. It describes itself as "a volunteer non-corporate effort to provide news coverage and media resources to the disempowered". Commenting about the situation in Zimbabwe, a contributor to its "chat room" has written:

"The point that we are all aware of should perhaps be reiterated, ie. that not all "civil society" actors are engaged in a struggle against neoliberalsm, not all trade-unions are progressive, and not all NGOs are "grassroots". In fact it is precisely on the issue of what a "grassroots" organization is that I have the most trouble.

"The National Constitutional Assembly in Zimbabwe for instance receives funding from the US congressionally funded National Endowment for Democracy, (which has been used to finance the attempt to overthrow President Chavez in Venezuela), and most NGOs with a web-presence receive some assistance from major donor governments. In fact 85% of recognized professionalised NGOs receive assistance from Northern governments.

"Professionalised NGOs need to be distinguished from truly grass-roots movements in that they lack a mass-base, are usually urban based, staffed by middle-class individuals, and have widespread access to international networks. Many of these groups already have sufficient space on the Internet and a strong voice in it as well.

"What I am concerned about is the marginalisation of rural voices, of those poor Zimbabweans who support the land-reform program (including youth, women, etc.), the views of black workers on white farms (who often face terrible conditions and are also victims of intimidation and biased/narrow news sources (i.e. exposed to corporate media instead of government media)), etc.

"These are all important questions that should be addressed, instead of only airing the views of the Western funded MDC and its supporters. I am not against critical debate and input from any party or faction in the country, but I think it is important to consider what IMC's role should be in this process.

"There are plenty of good reasons to criticise Mugabe and his inner-circle -and I'm not suggesting that their positions that should be placed front and centre - but there are millions of Zimbabweans who support ZANU, its sectoral organisations and its democratic-mass-base that are also disillusioned with Mugabe in a way very different from most of the MDC.

"It is difficult to find such voices online, especially since ZANU supporters are overwhelmingly concentrated in rural areas with low access to computers.

"It is interesting to note that there is very little on land reform on the Zimbabwe IMC site even though this is a major issue in the country. Anyway, I trust your judgement overall, but just wanted to prod you guys a bit to consider some of these issues and to throw a little more critical eye on that broad term "civil society".

"I really have nothing against the ISO and especially not the Zimbabwean students struggle in the face of repression, but I also think the other side of the story should be told - i.e. the repressive acts carried out by white-farmers, the land-question, and the grass-roots activists within the ZANU-PF, which hold critical views of the government as well but are also far more critical of Western interference in the country and collusion between the racist white-settler elite, corporate interests in the country and the whole discourse of "economic emancipation" and the "Third Chimurenga (liberation war)" that is the core of ZANU's beliefs (including even industrial action to seize ownership of factories and indigenise these).

"Anyway no point in continuously repeating the same points...Of course the difficulty is finding out why/how these voices are marginalised, and how they can be brought into the mainstream."

Opposed to these left groups are others such as COSATU, the US parastastal NED and the US International Republican Institute, which is funded by the NED, the ICFTU, the AFL-CIO and others, standard bearers of anti-left policies throughout the years of the Cold War.

With regard to Zimbabwe, the NED itself said: "The American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS) used NED support to provide vital assistance to the trade unions during the (2002) elections in Zambia and Zimbabwe, and both NDI and IRI helped democrats in Zimbabwe's sadly unsuccessful process."

The International Republican Institute, one of the four principal channels for NED funds has said: "We're very active in Zimbabwe, which does have an extremely authoritarian government. And that is one country in Africa where we're not working with the majority party; we're working with democratic reform activists in that country, both with the opposition political party and with civil society there because we believe that our work can help them achieve results."

These "democratic reform activists" promoted as part of the US right wing agenda in Africa and the world, are the same "civil society organisations" COSATU and US Ambassador Frazer want to join in a "willing coalition" to bring about regime change in Zimbabwe.

The positions of the US Ambassador in this regard do not surprise us. What is of the greatest interest is where COSATU will end with its policy of indicating left and turning right.

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