Zimbabwe socialists: `No to a government of national unity! Only united mass action will defeat Mugabe!
By the International Socialist Organisation of Zimbabwe
* * *
June 23, 2008 -- After the publication of the original article (see below), Movement for Democratic Change presidential candidate Morgan Tsvangirai held a press conference at which he issued a statement to the effect that the MDC is pulling out of the presidential run-off election because conditions for a free and fair election do not exist, [due to the] the massive violence against his party and civic society. The press conference followed the disruption of his final rally in Harare by ZANU-PF vigilantes on June 22. Tsvangirai stated that the MDC was to carry out further consultations and would announce the details of the way forward.
We welcome
the position taken by the MDC, and initial reports indicate that this position
has been accepted by MDC and civic society activists and supporters.
However,
this decision needs to be followed by quick and concrete steps on the way
forward, based on a united-front and mass-action strategy, as indicated [in the
earlier article below]. We are [aware] that sections of the bourgeoisie, the
Rhodesian right wing and the imperialist West will not be happy with this
decision, seeing it as a premature surrender and may even put pressure on the
MDC to rescind the decision.
Taking
advantage of the
This has
put the regime in a quagmire but it is likely to continue with its sham
election to gain legitimacy. Legally, it may invoke provisions of the electoral
laws which stipulate that withdrawal can be no later than 21 days before the
election and that in any case standing in the run-off is by law for the top two
contesting candidates. The key therefore is to launch an immediate political
program of delegitimisation of the run-off election, locally, regionally and
internationally.
Regroupment
of civic groups and the establishment of the united front of resistance of the
opposition and civic society has therefore now assumed paramount importance.
This is more so because of the massive likely pressure on the MDC to now enter negotiations
for a government of national unity from South African president Thabo Mbeki, the
Southern African Development Community (SADC), the UN and the capitalist and
imperialist forces. This is no solution for working people and must be
resolutely rejected.
But given the
MDC’s history of prevarication and the strong influence of capitalist elites
within its leadership, it may not surprise if it ends up capitulating again.
The lessons from
* * *
Precarious security
situation – reign of terror
Since May 1 there have been arbitrary arrests of civic
leaders, starting with the two-week detention of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade
Union’s president and secretary general. Fourteen WOZA [Women of Zimbabwe
Arise] leaders were detained for nearly a month for protesting the delay in
releasing the election results. Two of their leaders, Jenni Williams and
Magodonga Mahlangu, remain detained in Chikurubi Prison. Also arrested and
harassed are church, student and NGO leaders and teachers.
NGOs and social movements have effectively been closed down
by the regime, despite assertions to the contrary. Over the past week, state
agents have moved door to door at NGO offices, forcing them to close or
confiscating computers and files. [There have been raids] on the offices of
ZimRights, the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), Zimbabwe national
Students’ Union (ZINASU), Padare/Enkundleni/Men’s
Forum on Gender (Padare), Bulawayo Agenda, the Crisis Coalition, the Combined
Harare Residents’ Association (CHRA) and the International Socialist
Organisation (ISO). Humanitarian NGOs providing food relief, medicines and
support to HIV-AIDS patients have been particularly hit.
ZANU-PF bases have been set up in townships where MDC and
civic groups activists are being forced to attend night vigils and/or
assaulted. Several of our ISO members from Mbare, Sunningdale, Epworth and
Chitungwiza have had their houses raided, forcing them to flee while others
have been brutally assaulted. Tec Bara, the ISO Harare gender coordinator and
Zimbabwe Social Forum national deputy convenor for gender, is currently
hospitalised after being brutally assaulted at her home. Three of our Mutare
comrades were also assaulted and brutalised. A Women Coalition’s hostel in
Kambuzuma housing fleeing women and their children was raided and people forced
to flee. In Budiriro, the national deputy leader of the ``war veterans’’, Joseph
Chinotimba has turned an HIV-AIDS clinic into a war chamber.
The MDC is receiving the brunt of the attacks. Tsvangirai
has been repeatedly arrested, his rallies banned and campaign buses and
vehicles impounded. The MDC is totally blacked-out from the state-controlled
daily newspapers, radio stations and TV, while under Operation Dzikisai Madhishi, people are being
forced to remove satellite dishes from their homes. Detained MDC secretary
general Tendai Biti faces treason charges, carrying the death penalty. This
past week in
Operation
MakaVhoterapi
ZANU-PF has virtually closed off the rural areas from the
opposition under Operation MakaVhoterapi
(`Operation Where Did You Vote’). As presidential spokesperson, G. Charamba put
it:
``Fundamentally, MDC
cannot win the runoff; will not win it… Unlike in March, rural
There are three basic objectives behind the regime’s crackdown.
First, so ZANU-PF can win the crucial presidential elections by any means
necessary. As we previously argued in September 2007: ``the chances of an opposition victory are slim… as in 2002 and 2005, the
opposition is deluding itself. The playing field is so stacked against them and
they have very little counter measures to these, as ZANU-PF itself for instance
had in 1980. The entire state machinery, including the media, is being mobilised
to ensure a ZANU-PF victory by hook or crook… war veterans and chiefs are being
mobilised to make the rural areas a no-go area for the opposition.’’
Will ZANU-PF’s
strategy work?
Increasingly, over the last few weeks, an election that MDC
was clearly poised to win has turned and a Mugabe ``victory’’ is now the most
likely result as the MDC structures are decimated and the rural population
bludgeoned and starved into submission. Peasants are correctly aware that the
ward-based system of voting will make it easy for ZANU-PF to identify villages
that vote against them and exert revenge.
Various reports indicate the game plan. Known MDC activists
will be forced to plead illiteracy and be accompanied by senior ZANU-PF village
leaders, who will ``assist’’ them in voting. The day after elections, all
villagers [will be] ordered to assemble near counting stations and await
results so that it can be confirmed that they have truly repented. This is
exactly what Charamba means, when he says the structures of war have now been
resuscitated in the countryside. The crackdown is also designed to neutralise
any potential centres of resistance to a Mugabe ``victory’’, which this time
will be quickly announced.
The MDC and civic society are paying a heavy price for
failing to heed warnings not to take the election route as their principal
strategy for achieving change rather than a central strategy of mass action
centred around a fighting united front of the opposition, civic society and the
labour movement demanding a new democratic constitution before any elections.
The ZAPU [Zimbabwe African People’s
At best, elections should only have been used as a secondary
tactic to mobilise people for the central strategy of mass action. Capitalist
elites who have used their money to commodify our struggles and worm their way
into leadership positions in the opposition and civic society stopped this and
built false illusions around the elections and marginalised the activists who
built the party and are today sorely needed.
Even if ZANU-PF loses, Mugabe has declared that he will not
hand over power to the MDC but rather go to war -- Hatingaregi nyika yakauya neropa ichitorwa ne penzura, tinoda kuona
kuti chakasimba chii gidi kana penzura (``We cannot let go a country that
we won through the barrel of a gun by a simple vote – we will see which is
stronger – the gun or a pencil.’’) A radio report on Power FM quoted Mugabe
declaring at a rally -- ``If you thought Hitler is gone, then you are mistaken,
because Hitler is not only back but back here in Zimbabwe.’’
The second objective is to recapture the parliamentary
majority for ZANU-PF by convicting MDC-elect MPs or forcing them to flee. As
Charamba says: ``They are on the run, but will not run much longer. That may
mean several by-elections which (Tsvangirai) knows he will not win.’’
Indeed it is likely that by the time parliament convenes,
enough opposition MPs will either be in detention or have fled to give ZANU-PF
the majority to elect both the speaker of the House of Assembly and president
of Senate despite being the minority party.
The third objective is preparation for a ZANU-PF-dominated
but neoliberal and pro-business government of national unity with the MDC after
the elections. In our September 2007 perspective we stated that because of the
imploding economic crisis and ``despite his rhetoric, Mugabe is now ready to
capitulate and enter into an elitist compromise deal with the MDC, the West and
business. But only after the 2008 elections, which he hopes to use to legitimise
his party’s claim to being the senior player in such alliance, deal with his
party’s succession problem as well as protect his legacy, person and family
besides his little burial plot at Heroes Acre.’’
Many of his top officials have indeed been quoted suggesting
the GNU is an indispensable option to deal with the Zimbabwean crisis. The crackdown
is designed to force the MDC into such a GNU and preempt any potential
resistance from its radicals or civic society. This is worsened by power
struggles in the opposition ahead of its congress next year. Today many of the
cowardly elites who have wormed their way to the top in the opposition will, as
we have been warning for over two years, gladly accept the GNU, with the
support of business, Mbeki, SADC and most of the West, fearful of the further
radicalisation of the Zimbabwean crisis.
ZANU-PF tactics are thus working. Already the MDC is now
totally silent, even in its urban township strongholds, as ZANU-PF holds sway.
As one comrade said, “ve MDC tapeta miswe”
(the MDC has put its tail behind its legs). Even civic groups that have not
been raided are now stampeding to close down their offices. Fear stalks the
nation one week before the election.
Way forward : Mobilise
for united front for democracy and mass action
The first and most important thing is to confront the veil
of fear that threatens to suffocate us. The defiance of the closure of offices
by several NGOs is correct. Even if the regime closes our offices, we must not
allow it to close down our movements -- underground alternatives must be
urgently built. But no one group can withstand this pressure alone. We need a
united collective response. This is why for the last three years and at the
People’s Convention we were calling for the need to build a radical united front
of civic groups, the labour movement and the anti-capitalist movement,
autonomous of the MDC, even if working with it. One capable of initiating
united front-based mass actions without necessarily being subordinated to the
MDC. And one based on a pro-working people and anti-neoliberal/capitalist
ideology.
At the Convention we unfortunately allowed our tactical
differences on whether to support or boycott the March elections to divide us
and stop us from the bigger project of building such united front. Today we all
pay a heavy price. But it is not too late to regroup, reorganise and offer
leadership in action along with the MDC. Even under this crackdown we can
regroup, initially on a defensive program of solidarity for those under attack
and in self-defence and counter-attacks where necessary.
Most urgently we call for a summit of leaders of the opposition
and civic society to set up a united front of resistance. We believe that such
united front must be totally rooted in and organise around the bread and butter
concerns of working people, including peasants and the unemployed, as opposed
to the wealthy capitalist elites in business, locally and internationally.
Indeed the very origins of the MDC (and similar movements in
the global South) lie in the massive protests of the late 1990s against poverty
induced by the Mugabe regime’s neoliberal capitalist program of ESAP
(structural adjustment). A new and powerful aspect of the MDC’s campaign in the
March elections was an emphasis on such bread and butter issues of the ordinary
people. Any struggle against the regime that fails to do this will be
outflanked on its left by this crafty regime, which has shown, most powerfully
around the land question, a strong capacity to cynically manipulate the poor’s
concerns to remain in power and demonise the opposition as a stooge of the West
and the business class. Without such a united front and a pro-poor, pro-working
people and anti-capitalist ideology we shall not prevail against this regime.
The Peoples Charter of the People’s Convention offers a powerful starting
point.
One of the first things to do is to convene a massive united
front rally for democracy in the centre of
On the election, our preferred position as the ISO has been
to boycott any fake elections without a new constitution and deny the regime’s
elections any legitimacy. The alternative is for a regrouped united front of
civic society and the opposition to launch a serious and determined program of
civil disobedience and mass action, supported by regional and international
solidarity from working peoples and progressive movements. Indeed over the next
week the MDC leadership has a huge decision to make about whether to continue
participating in a sham election designed to clothe a dictatorship in legitimacy,
or withdraw, regroup and lead a fightback of mass action and civil
disobedience. However, if the MDC still decides to continue running. The ISO,
in view of MDC’s massive performance in the March parliamentary and
presidential elections and the desire of many Zimbabweans to vote, has now
modified its position to call for unconditional but fraternally critical
support to Tsvangirai.
Our criticism is what we perceive as the increasing
domination of the party leadership by capitalist and Western elites and the
marginalisation of workers and radicals. This will lead to its likely pursing a
neoliberal capitalist agenda if it assumes power, to the detriment of working
people. And secondly its disastrous strategy of relying on the electoral route
rather than mass action. But the Mugabe regime is driving us into hell and the
people need some breathing space in order to reorganise and resume our battle
for real democracy and against the capitalist and imperialist bloodsuckers.
We therefore urge all our members, supporters, allies and
working people in general to defy the regime’ intimidation and go out and vote
in the election for Tsvangirai. However voting must only be seen as a tactic to
keep the flames of the movement alive and to use the space to organise and
mobilise for all out people’s mass action before and after June 27, and not as
the central strategy for change. The defeat of ZANU-PF in March shows how much
the masses now want change. Even today in the midst of the onslaught,
opposition activists at the local level have organised themselves and are
fighting back in places like Epworth, Bikita, Zaka and Chimanimani. But these
are isolated actions, easily crushed unless more central leadership is offered.
The spirit to fight in civic society is still there. Indeed, when an ISO
delegation visited the imprisoned WOZA leaders this week, we were impressed by
their high spirits despite the very harsh conditions, including being denied
jerseys [jumpers] in this biting winter. Or the many maimed and displaced MDC
activists who are vowing that despite all they are still going to vote against
the regime come June 27.
At the same time under no circumstances must we agree to the
GNU sell-out idea. There can be no marriage with such a murderous regime -- we
must consign it to its true destiny -- the dustbin of history. The GNU is a
project for the dictatorship to perpetuate itself and for the capitalist and
the imperialist elites to ensure that the poverty that the capitalist ZANU-PF
government started with its ESAP is perpetuated forever, but now buttressed by
a working-people supported MDC. It’s time we allow the ordinary people to take
charge of the struggle that is rightfully theirs and ensure an outcome that
achieves real democracy, economically and politically, for the majority and not
just the political and capitalist elites as we have seen so many times in
recent history in the region and internationally -- in Zambia, Malawi, Kenya,
Nigeria, South Africa and Eastern Europe. As our brothers and sisters in
Finally,
ISO wishes to express our utmost gratitude to all those who have sent
solidarity messages and donations to us and other organisations and still make
a further urgent appeal for assistance. To send solidarity messages, receive
updates or make a donation please email us at iso.zim@gmail.com
Shinga Murombo! Jambanja Ndizvo! Smash the dictatorship! Viva
socialism!