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Zimbabwean
socialist: 'A new movement is emerging'
Chris Atkinson,
Greenleft Weekly
April 21, 2007
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2007/707/36721
Around 100 people
filled Newtown Neighbourhood Centre on April 18 to hear visiting
Zimbabwean socialist Munyaradzi Gwisai explain the background to
the Zimbabwean people’s struggle for democracy.
"A new
movement from below is begging to emerge", Gwisai said. "The
people are beginning to shake off fear and exhaustion" and
are advancing their own strategy to fight President Robert Mugabe’s
brutal rule and the economic dictates of the International Monetary
Fund and the business elite (the "twin dictatorships").
Gwisai spoke
27 years to the day since Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) won independence
from British white minority rule and installed Mugabe as president.
Gwisai explained that despite Mugabe’s radical rhetoric and encouragement
of black farmers to seize large farms, often owned by rich whites,
"Mugabe is a ruthless, self-serving tyrant who celebrates brutality".
Gwisai explained
how the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions formed the main opposition
organisation, the Movement for Democratic Change, in the aftermath
of huge strikes in the late 1990s with the support of rich-country
governments. Gwisai was elected to parliament for the MDC in 2000
until he and his group, the International Socialist Organisation,
were expelled from the MDC in April 2002 after openly supporting
poor farmers’ land seizures.
Gwisai warned
the democracy movement not to rely on the "dangerous and naive"
hope that the 2008 presidential elections will be fair or that Mugabe
will recognise the result, even if South African president Thabo
Mbeki negotiates a settlement. For Gwisai, it is in "mass revolts
from below" that the hope of solving Zimbabwe’s terminal crisis
lays.
Gwisai also
addressed a public meeting in Melbourne on April 20.
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