Groundswell of opposition to corruption in Mugabe disillusionment with the government's lack of progress toward
"socialist transformation". That is to say, with progress toward the solution of the material class interests of the workers and counter-revolutionary. Until a strategy emerges to cope with sufficient confidence in itself to become capable of a serious class challenge to the petty-bourgeois nationalist regime that non-working class government - brought to power through a negotiated settlement that leaves capitalist class rule intact -
ZIMBABWE
ZAMBIA regime
HARARE
ZIMBABWE
THE RECENT OUTBREAK of
Bulawayo
MOZAMBIQUE urban (student) and rural
BOTSWANA demonstrations, along with the public outpouring of criticism that
AFRICA accompanied their repression,
ZIMBABWE
SQỰTH represents the sharpest political
AFRICA expression to date of mass poorer peasants.
It also reflects the limitations of this growing movement, which still lacks an alternative form, ideology and coherent leadership. Every attempt at the construction of such a movement is met with the charge of being this, there is little way this nascent movement can gain
President Robert Mugabe has come to represent.
The episode is also instructive, not least for the South
African liberation movement, of the way in which a comes to serve the interests of the bourgeois nation-state.
JOHN WEBSTER
O
N OCTOBER 23, 1988, students the occasion of Samora Machel's death, as blockaded Harare university and
"wild, destructive rampages through the erected street barricades against a rumoured attack by the Youth
The public expressed its opinion on all
League of Zanu(PF)', the ruling party. This this in a virtual boycott of the Samora unprecedented action followed a month of
Machel memorial meetings called by the unrest that began with the arrest of 478 party on October 19. State repression of restudents who had been locked in violent cent demonstrations had sparked off one of clashes with the police.
the fiercest debates about democracy to
Under emergency regulations police had rage publicly in Zimbabwe since indepenattempted to confine the student demonstrations, ostensibly against corruption in
The immediate cause of the student demparty and government, to the campus. The onstrations was the seemingly insignificant arrests led to solidarity demonstrations that acquittal, on a charge of arson, of a deputy were also violently dispersed, as was a minister of political affairs (an elected MP demonstration a fortnight later by 200 stufor Gutu, appointed to this high office by dent teachers who were commemorating
Mugabe. She had been charged with orthe death of Samora Machel. As justificadering two party members, both already in tion, the pro-Mugabe daily newspaper de-
16 jail, to burn down the home of another cried last year's student demonstration, on woman with whom she shared a lover. One
International Viewpoint #154 • December 26, 1988 of the students' demands was that the MP be removed from high office. The background to this was a growing disgruntlement with what people increasingly saw as a top-heavy bureaucracy that opened the way to corruption in government and party.
This view had been forcefully expressed by Tekere (MP for Mutare), an outspoken critic of government who had been dropped from high office. He recently called for the ministry of political affairs to be disbanded on the grounds that it was unconstitutional and "worked for the ruling party". He also attacked the government team of 51 ministers and deputies as "far too large" (parliament has 100 seats), and insisted that members of the politburo "should be elected and not appointed". This, along with his criticism of "the trend to appoint handpicked people", could not have endeared him to either party or government "bosses" Consequences were quick to follow, as we shall see.
### Series of political rural demonstrations
What compounded the urban protests, giving them an explosive edge, was a series of overtly political rural demonstrations and counter-demonstrations that also called for the removal of the "arson MP". These were conducted by members of both Zanu and Zapu in the Masvingo province, an extremely militant and well-organized area since the liberation war. Local feeling ran so high that it threatened to split the local party machinery. Overtones of this struggle reach back to the earlier, unpopular, removal from high office of Zvobgo (a senior participant in the Lancaster House talks, whose party base is Masvingo) for having challenged Mugabe.
Coming as all this did in the midst of the Zanu/Zapu unification process (a precursor to the one-party state), it caused the national party officials to ban all meetings and demonstrations in the province. This drastic action followed a call by local party officials for a referendum to "constitutionally" decide the fate of the MP. The recalcitrant local party had also suspended members of a delegation who had travelled to Harare to express their support for the MP (acquitted 1. Zanu(PF) — Zimbabwe African National Union (Patriotic Front). In December 1987, Joshua Nkomo's Zapu (Zimbabwe African People's Union) signed a unity agreement with Zanu that was ratified by both parties earlier this year.
December 26, 1988 • #154 International Viewpoint of arson) to Mugabe.
This overall situation, which officials of Zanu(PF) felt was getting out of control, forced the central committee, under Mugabe, to decide on further drastic action. This included the expulsion from the party of Tekere, a former general secretary and charismatic leader of the province of Manicaland. At a mass rally in Manicaland, Tekere had supported the demonstrators and opposed their repression. He had charged that "democracy in Zimbabwe is
', that "the leadership has decayed" and that "the policy of a one-party state would lead towards the creation of a dictatorship". The central committee also threatened action by the "intelligence ministries" against those who "promoted" the demonstrations.
Demonstrators attacked as "counter-revolutionary"
These "reprisals" by the central committee were accompanied by the most objectionable attacks from government ministers, including Mugabe, which depicted the demonstrators as counter-revolutionaries in the service of the enemies of the state. At best these demonstrations reflected a degree of alienation felt by the public against "corruption" in the government and party. The public protests, then, have their limits which should not be overstated and which should be seen in
Undoubtedly, a new element has crystallized in Zimbabwean politics, that of a sizeable young intelligentsia disenchanted with the lack of progress towards socialist transformation. This comes at a time when the government itself has admitted to a growing problem of "the educated unemployed". By 1990, a further 250,000 students will enter the labour market with little prospect of employment, while educational institutions are approaching the limits of their capacity.
The education curricula have increasingly included elements of political economy. This, along with a widening realization that eight years after having "entered the political kingdom" the basic character of the economy remains unchanged, has raised the level of political consciousness among the intelligentsia considerably. But not yet sufficiently to cause a radical questioning of the basic character of the state, nor the class politics of the government. Little wonder then that the Students' Representative Council issued a statement saying that they were not anti-government nor antiZanu(PF): "we are members of Zanu who are demonstrating against corruption".
At the mass level of the peasantry, a similar deepening of class consciousness has accompanied their realizations that the land reform programme has been timid, insufficient to satisfy their land hunger, and has left the large-scale commercial farms and estates of the multinationals largely untouched — except for the state purchase of unused farmland on a "willing buyer, willing seller" basis.? Against the targeted 162,000 peasant families it had been planned to resettle in the first five years after independence, only about 35,000 families or about 250,000 people were actually resettled — and this not without a myriad of problems. At the same time, population in the mostly over-crowded communal areas has been growing at about 180,000 a
All this is accompanied by a deepening class differentiation among the peasantry. It also led to the landless seizing land, the so-called "squatter movement", which has been met with forced removals. This fed the urban drift, giving rise to the inevitable shanty-towns and mushrooming of the informal sector around all the major cities.
The primary goals of the armed liberation struggle were land and liberty, and the frustration of these aims is increasingly felt. Earlier, this gave rise to the "armed dissidents", who were ex-guerrilla fighters dissatisfied with the "reconciliation" policies of Zanu(PF) and, later, with the exclusion from power of Zapu. Lacking in class politics, this movement degenerated into banditry, a situation that was effectively ended when Mugabe/Zanu struck the recent unification-amnesty deal with Nkomo/
Although the deepening social contradictions continue unabated, the rise in class consciousness is uneven, given that the populace experience real benefits of post-independence in the form of much improved health, education and social facilities. Today this programme is running up against the limits of its expansion, as the logic of capitalist control of the economy increasingly forces the government into
At the mass level of the working class the same fundamental contradictions are apparent. The early waves of strikes in the post-independence era were met with a combination of mass arrests of strikers, the cooption of the trade-union movement, the establishment of workers' committees, the introduction of minimum wages, the curtailment of collective bargaining and the introduction of a Labour Act which virtually removes the right to strike.
Impact of South African workers' militancy
However, workers' struggles continue, either with strikes - although these are hardly ever reported - and/or in many muted forms of worker protest, including sit-ins and the occasional occupation. In recent times, the militancy of the South African workers (with whom contact is steadily increasing through international union federations) has had its influence. This began to mesh with the improved organization of the Zimbabwean unions, giving rise to a heightened consciousness.
ZIMBABWE
A myriad of problems have been the cause of an increasingly sharp and critical conflict between government ministers and the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions. These include: the failure of the minimum wage to keep pace with rising inflation (which is hitting particularly hard at the urban low-paid and unemployed) - today $1 is buying what 40 cents did in 1983; the growing unemployment problem (1 million of the workforce are unemployed out of a total population of 8 million); the falling standards of living in the overcrowded urban townships (worsened by the forced removal of urban shanty towns); and the critical transport problem.
This is a reflection of the union movement struggling to assert its class independence and express the material interests of its membership, thus extending beyond the government's plea for reconciliation and productivity "in the interest of national unity and development". Furthermore, new layers of young workers are entering onto the scene, bringing with them a critical view that has slowly matured in the eight years of independence.
Mugabe promises to end corruption at the top
Since independence there has also emerged a sizeable new class of the black petty-bourgeoisie, in the form of the burgeoning civil service with their higher standards of living (40 per cent of the national budget is channelled towards salaries, with debt service repayments taking a further large chunk). This is in addition to the small-scale commercial farmer and the "emergent businessman" that the govern-
Meagre as the incomes of ministers, top civil servants and party officials are when compared to those of the captains of commerce and industry, they are infinitely higher than the incomes of the workers and peasants. It is from their new found "wealth" that this new class is buying property and employing labour. Their salaries are bolstered by the loans and largesse so readily available from the private sector who purchase the political leverage they need to ensure that "politics" does not con flict with their "economic" interests).
The country is rife with rumour about top officials who have bought farms and businesses and who treat their labour "worse than the white man". In August 1988, Mugabe, talking to the British BBC 4 radio, roundly condemned "the creatures at the top" who are amassing wealth, and promised to implement the "leadership code". This code is a very popular party instrument designed to curb the amassing of wealth by those entrusted to lead the nation 2. This legal barrier, expressly forbidding the seizure of lands, was a central part of the 1980 Lancaster House agreement, whose specific intention was to keep the newly independent Zimbabwe firmly in imperialism's 17 orbit.
International Viewpoint #154 • December 26, 1988
ZIMBABWE
"Father, when I grow up I want to be a Minister of Housing." in socialist transformation.
Since the last party congress the country has been waiting for the implementation of this code. If properly implemented, it is popularly believed, the code would rid government and party of those "reactionary" elements whom it is believed have gained control over the "progressives", which Mugabe still represents in the popular mind. The recent student demonstrations have not been the first public demand for the code's
This time the student demonstrations coincided with rural protests, with an upturn in union militancy, with the two-party unification process, with a sharp fall in living standards, and with a sharper political climate determined by the events unfolding in Angola, Mozambique and South Africa. In addition, the demonstrations coincided with a general change in class consciousness. All of this combined to cause the government to over-react and let loose a wave of critical discussion.
We said before that the limits of this criticism, which can be seen from the content of each incident, should not be overstated. Nor should we forget that the students are the sons and daughters of the workers and peasants, who constitute the bulk of the party membership, which explains its national impact.
"Kenyan-style" referendum on MP
The rural demonstrations were organized largely by the local party functionaries and hangers-on involved in a power struggle. Their popular support came from rank-and-file party members who were genuinely peeved over the MP's unjust acquittal for arson — seen as corruption going even to the level of the courts; otherwise, why jail her accomplices who testified against her?
When eight out of 23 district representatives visited Mugabe to express support tor
OO
"Peel Lod his appointee, they blamed the meetings and demonstrations on a "clique of powerhungry and jealous government and party officials...civil servants, police officers, some members of the Integration Task Force [uniting Zanu and Zapu], and some party provincial leaders...". The countercharge was that the eight had no mandate and were thus suspended for "misleading the president".
Yet when these "party democrats" wanted to show that democracy was being served they called a referendum to decide the fate of the MP. However, voting was to be "Kenyan-style", where the populace would publicly line-up "for or against" the MP. This would immediately identify friend and foe in a situation where many issues of survival depend on patronage. Again, when Zanu's national officials simply declared the local decisions null and void, they did so in the name of the "constitution". After all, what was at stake was not only the authority of Mugabe, who is president of both Zanu and the nation, but also the authority of the central committee. (When Mugabe met the delegation and explained his choice of the women MP for high office, he described her as a dedicated woman, saying: "that one is a man"!)
On October 30, the referendum was eventually held under the watchful eye of the politburo. The populace returned a massive "no" vote, with only a handful supporting the MP. This was a real slap in the face for Mugabe and the party bosses, who now have to decide what to do. Members of the Zanu(PF) Women's League had travelled down to rally to her support, but to no avail. Little wonder that tempers flared and police control was necessary. In the 1985 election, this MP had collected
35,000 votes (although she claims that she got 100,000), and now she could only win 1,000. She charged that the referendum was rigged and that people were threatened with death if they supported her.
On the same day in Harare the first national convention of the united Zanu/Zapu Youth League was held. This gave some comfort to the top leadership, in that 1,000 young people staged a solidarity march in support of President Mugabe's leadership, and lauded the unity accord that called for a one- party state. However, this convention had been used as a rally to whip the youth into line. The major speeches from party bosses
(there is no report of the voice of the youth themselves) repeated attacks that the university lecturers and students were counterrevolutionary, as had been charged by the Zanu(PF) central committee earlier.
On October 22, the central committee had met with Mugabe in the chair. They let off a torrent of abuse against those they saw as enemies. Mugabe spoke of "political dissidents and malcontents" who somehow had been allowed to emerge in the party's ranks. He described the students as "antiparty and anti-government". He had used similar language against the armed dissidents when he sent his select Fifth Brigade to "pacify" Matabeleland in 1983-84.3
Ominous threat to political activists
The central committee, it is reported,
"felt unanimously disgusted" by the attitude, behaviour and unfounded criticism of the government by the students, and threatened that "action would be taken by the intelligence ministries" against the initiators of the illegal demonstrations. This is a particularly ominous threat to political activists.
Earlier, four lecturers and six students were charged with contravening the Law and Order Maintenance Act by allegedly holding an off-campus meeting to plan the demonstrations. One law lecturer, Shadrack
Gutto, a well-known Marxist-Leninist, was served with a 48-hour deportation order.
However, when the court threw out the charges against the ten men the Herald, a pro-government newspaper, wailed that the bungling at court allowed the "ten to walk
3. Matabeleland, in the west of the country, is the province of the minority Ndebele-speaking people and historically the political base of Joshua Nkomo. This province has been the focal point of armed conflicts between "oppositionists" (some of whom in the past were sponsored by the South African regime), local white settlers and govemment forces.
December 26, 1988 • #154 International Viewpoint out free men, even heroes", leaving the impression that the government was harassing them, while (in its opinion) it was "sheer ineptitude that cost the government its reputation... giving it a bad name". Congress of Trade Unions condemns persecution
When the MP Tekere was expelled from Zanu(PF) it was first said that "he could form his own party", but if he continued with his "unfounded allegations against Zanu(PF)" he would face charges of defamation, as would other senior party members who were expressing opposition. It appears that decisions were not as unanimous as was claimed. Tekere was defiant: he said that efforts to have the leadership code complied with were dead, and that he would "not sit back and see the country go to the dogs".
Following the central committee meeting it was left to the Zanu secretary for youth, a minister of state for political affairs, to spell out the government's reply to the students. At the demonstration, the students had issued a document detailing instances of corruption, and calling on Mugabe to enforce the leadership code. What some have described as "an act of loyalty" was now seen by the central committee as an "attack on the integrity of Zanu, its policy, its leadership and the general members of the party", the "counter-revolutionary intention of which was to render Zanu incapable of implementing its socialist policies".
Muzenda, Mugabe's deputy, warned that students were being used by the country's enemies (meaning South Africa) "as a tool to weaken the economic independence of Zimbabwe". Little wonder that the students barricaded the university against rumoured attacks from the Youth League. When Mugabe addressed the Youth League rally he called on them not to assault the students. There is real concern among radicals over what will happen to the students when they return home after the exams. They will have no safety in numbers then.
When Mugabe addressed the Youth League rally he charged that some lecturers "who had lived in luxury during the liberation war, now wanted to hijack the revolution". Holding up an ammunition belt, Mugabe said: "This is the revolution. Revolution did not come from books". Compare this to the sober voice of the academic staff when protesting against their colleague's deportation: in terms of academic freedom they defended the right and duty of staff and students to debate, examine and speak out on any just cause, "including criticism of corruption".
In sharp contrast to the government's attacks is the support expressed by those who opposed the repression.
The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions declared that the state was taking advantage of the students' demonstration to persecute and harass progressives. "Socialism would never be established under present circumstances where the leadership of the party and government is galloping along the capitalist road. With which forces will the situation be reversed when the state threatens to smash those opposed to the present right-wing trend?" And then a prophetic warning: "As long as the present trend continued, opposition would increase and government would react with more repressive measures to defend the shift to the right, which it has taken".
One correspondent, typical of others, said that the "overall position of workers in the present socio-economic setting has deteriorated. The colonial capitalist structures we inherited still determine the economic position of workers... the spectre of poverty is evident... wages are whittled away through inflation....The Zimbabwean economy as presently constituted is not in transition to socialism — we must fight for transformation and not mere
"Popular feeling voiced by the voiceless"
Another spoke of the leadership code, saying that "the people who have the ultimate responsibility for its implementation are the very people who are violating it...Implementation is not possible without a change in leadership... the code has made the leadership criminals and dishonest people".
Another recalled that student protests under the Smith regime "were a barometer of evil", and that it was students who swelled the ranks of the liberation movements. The validity of student demonstrations lay in
"an expression of the general popular feeling voiced by the voiceless all over the country". Let there be a vast debate on social transformation, "let the students speak...let the workers wield the power to strike".
Even the Herald editorial had to agree: "Zimbabwe is not a socialist state and the country has few if any socialist policies to boast of yet". Let those who consider a negotiated settlement an essential step along the road to South Africa's liberation ponder all of this.
Perhaps the most poignant warning came from an ex-Zanla combatant who was still "scared I shall look back and say the effort and blood which it took to liberate this country was, sadly, all in vain". He challenged the central committee saying that proof of corruption is an elusive creature, which "became more slippery when those who are capable of providing the evidence... are small-time citizens bullied by politicians wielding the power of high office". Many expressed the view that if nothing is done to get rid of corruption and social injustices then the demonstrations express "the beginning of a new era of more to come", and "if demonstrations are suppressed they will still be started
ZIMBABWE underground".
All of this is a language not publicly heard in Zimbabwe since independence in
These demonstrations clearly reflect a level of mass discontent with the policies and practices of government. The public outcry is significant given the absence of any democratic alternative to Zanu(PF). The problem is that this protest does not yet seriously question the class character of the regime, reflecting an underestimation of the problem it seeks to tackle. Furthermore, all of this shows just how difficult it is, not only to practice democracy in the so-called "national democratic stage of the revolution", but how the state acts to block the development of class forces necessary for the
The major question is: How will this groundswell of discontent gain an organized expression? This is a necessary pregaining confidence in itself to seriously intervene in the political process. What forms of struggle are possible when the state reacts in this way to criticism?
Clearly, the strengthening of the trade-union movement, the student movement and the movements among the peasantry and women in general are the necessary starting points. All this is easier said than done, as there is not tradition of independent political activity. Because no independent class formations existed before the transfer of power, the oppressed classes still await the emergence of a leadership that is capable of articulating an alternative to the rhetoric of "radical" petty-bourgeois politics. The dangers of a one-party state, with its lack of pluralist democracy, is Regime comes up against limits of reform
All of the layers now moving into political action have, to one degree or another, had their birth in fire. They had to deal with a national leadership that retains the kudos of having led a successful armed liberation struggle, and of implementing unquestionable advances in all spheres of social welfare. They face a government that has earned a reputation for steadfast opposition to apartheid and imperialism.
Today, petty-bourgeois nationalism is running out of steam. It has come up against the limits of reform, given the logic of the capitalist economy, which they shied away from attacking. Capital refuses to invest until both government and party convince them that their socialist rhetoric is simply that, and no more. In practice, this means bringing the mass struggles to heel and disciplining the working class. What this episode reveals is one aspect of that process.
The struggle in South Africa still has the opportunity of avoiding the same pit- 19 falls. *
International Viewpoint #154 • December 26, 1988