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Zimbabwe-s
two dictatorships
Munya Gwisai
Extracted from: International News, Green Left Weekly issue #705
April 04, 2007
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2007/705/36628
Munya Gwisai,
a member of the national coordinating committee of the International
Socialist Organisation (Zimbabwe) as well as the deputy chairperson
of the Zimbabwe Social Forum considers issues facing the democratic
movement. He writes in a personal capacity.
The people of Zimbabwe
are suffering from both the political dictatorship of President
Robert Mugabe-s Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic
Front (ZANU-PF) as well as the economic dictatorship of employers,
businesspeople and the rich. While Mugabe unleashes repression,
businesspeople unleash vicious price increases on the basic necessities
of life.
Monthly wages are less
than Z$200,000 despite the official Poverty Datum Line being over
$600,000. Transport alone costs over $220,000 a month. Prices of
food, clothing and the anti-retroviral drugs necessary to fight
HIV, have gone through the roof and thousands die each week as a
result. The Zim dollar has again collapsed and inflation is over
2000%.
Despite this, not everyone
is suffering. The architect of government neoliberal policy himself,
Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono, was exposed earlier this year
as having splashed billions on posh cars and mansions. The bosses
and many of the "Lords of Poverty" who run the foreign-funded
non-government organisations are "earning" huge, often
forex (foreign exchange) denominated, salaries and benefits. Capitalists-
profits have been such that the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange was voted
among Africa-s top three performing in 2006!
The very same Western
diplomats who now laud Zimbabwe-s bourgeois opposition were
the same ones who applauded Gono as he rolled out increasingly harsh
neoliberal economic policies, slashed subsidies that provided some
relief for the poor and paid money to the International Monetary
Fund these past three years.
However, the economy
has now become the weakness of the elites — both dictatorships
fear the entry of workers, the urban poor and the rural masses into
the political equation.
The virtual state of
emergency imposed in the towns and the killing by police of Movement
for Democratic Change activist Gift Tandare have failed to quell
anger and struggle.
The Zimbabwe
Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) has called for a national mass
action in the form of a stay-away on April 3-4. The economic, social
and political demands now being raised link the various political
and economic demands of the poor and oppressed in a manner that
goes beyond the limited demands of the bourgeois opposition parties
and civic societies.
The elites realise this
and want to pre-empt the current struggles and prevent them from
radicalising further. Such a mobilisation could challenge not only
the corrupt and brutal Mugabe regime but also the neoliberal free-market
capitalist foundations on which it is now embedded. They want to
prevent a movement similar to the anti-neoliberal, anti-capitalist,
anti-dictatorship and anti-imperialist movements seen in Latin America.
This is now
the common objective of local and international elites in regards
to the Zimbabwe crisis, as shown in the March
5 International Crisis Group review of Zimbabwe. The elites
in government and in opposition would like to reach a settlement
or "social contract" between themselves that would see
an end to Mugabe but not to Gono-s policies. This is what
lies behind the manoeuvring of the various factions within ZANU-PF.
Such a project would,
at least at the beginning, incorporate compliant sections of the
opposition, organised labour and "civic society" to
be used as a safety valve to contain mounting anger from below as
the new government embraces a total and naked neoliberal agenda.
However, workers, residents,
traders, women, HIV/AIDS activists, students, disability rights
activists, debt cancellation activists, and the rural poor have
their own interests that need to be linked with both political and
economic democracy in the public and private spheres of life.
This means a fight for
a new people-driven democratic constitution that not only guarantees
free and fair elections but also guarantees the right to free and
quality education; access to health, anti-retroviral drugs, water,
housing, electricity, and facilities for the disabled; an end to
patriarchal and capitalist oppression of women; and support for
poor farmers; as well as a living wage, pension and state support
for workers, the elderly, pensioners, vendors and traders, war veterans
and the disabled. Such a constitution must subordinate both public
and private wealth to fulfil such demands. By definition that movement
can only be anti-neoliberal, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist.
The Zimbabwe Social Forum
has committed to mobilise the different segments and clusters of
the social forum process in Zimbabwe and regionally for this action
as we did for the 2005 ZCTU-led anti-poverty demonstrations. It
is heartening to see the solidarity actions already being planned
in South Africa, Botswana and Britain.
The challenge
is to develop this kind of action into a sustainable programme of
full-scale democratic united actions from below in the next couple
of months. Without this, there remains the real danger that the
courageous fight, sacrifices, including that of blood that we have
seen in the last few months, might be channelled into a dead-end
elite settlement for the benefit of the few rather than the many.
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