Workers' party formed In one of the largest political opposition gatherings since independence in 1980, 20,000 people rallied at Harare's Mbare Stadium on Saturday 11, to launch the Movement for Democratic Change. Ken Davis The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) is led by Morgan Tsvangirai, a miners' leader and General-Secretary of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions. Also in the party leadership is ZCTU and Commonwealth Trade Unions Council president, Gibson Sibanda, a train driver from Matabeleland. Both are very popular among workers, urban and rural poor people throughout Zimbabwe. 30 International Viewpoint #315 October 1999
Over recent months there has been growing public pressure from workers all over the country for them to declare the party, but until early September they had maintained they would have to vacate their trade union positions before taking roles in the new party.
The popularity of the two union leaders is based on the success of national stay-aways organised by the ZCTU over the last two years to protest food and fuel prices. The weekend of the party launch, members of the Hotel and Catering Industry Workers Union effectively shut down all tourist restaurants and hotels with a nationwide strike for a 50% pay rise.
Based on this sustained anger and militancy workers and small farmers, it is expected that the MDC will be the most broadly based opposition challenge to Mugabe in the elections due in April 2000.
consttution (derived from the Lancaster House agreement with Britain), which concentrates power in the hands of the president.
President Mugabe and his governing party, the Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), have created their own Constitutional Commission, with 400 hand-picked members who began local consultations in Aug 1999. The NCA convened a Peoples Constitutional Convention in June which rejected the government's scheme as closed and undemocratic. Increasingly repressive rule
It is widely expected that ZANUPF as ruling party will retaliate against the MDC and ZCTU with repressive measures, and with covert operations by the secret police of the Central Intelligence Office. From the late 80s to 1991 Zimbabwe was officially moving towards a "Marxist-Leninist" one-party state. Through the 1990's frustration at deepening poverty, corruption, and lack of democratic rights
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has left the regime with an ever weaker base of support. Mugabe won the 1996 presidential elections with 70% of voters abstaining or heeding boycott calls by opposition groups. Of the 120 elected members of the parliament, 117 are ZANU-PF, and 30 additional members are appointed by the
CIO operatives tried to throw Morgan Tsvangirai from the window of his tenth floor ZCTU office in 1997, and two journalists who were arrested by the military and tortured are now on trial for publishing a story about leadership struggles and rebellions in the military. Mugabe has also attacked the independence of the judiciary, and has run a campaign vilifying homosexuals, associated with the prosecution of former President Banana for sodomy. The independent Zimrights group was disrupted after infiltration by pro-government agents, University of Zimbabwe has been closed for more than a year, following protests about fees by student organisations.
The death of Joshua Nkomo on 1 July further dented the credibility of ZANU-PF as uniting both forces of the revolutionary war: Mugabe's Maoistleaning Zimbabwe African National Union, and Nkomo's Zimbabwe Peoples National Union (aligned with the South African ANC and aided by Moscow). 30,000 people came to Nkomo's burial at Heroes' Acre in Harare, singing ZAPU songs in siNdebele in defiance of the Shona chauvinism of Mugabe. Economic and political crisis
Widespread anger at Mugabe is primarily due to increasing poverty among working people. After almost a decade of free market reforms" there is now an inflation rate of 70%, and unemployment is over 50%. Schools and clinics, particularly in the urban and semi-urban areas, have become too costly for workers and the unemployed. The more fertile half of the country's land is still in the hands of 4,000 white commercial farmers, who grow export crops of tobacco, cotton and maize, while the Communal Lands are drier and less able to grow enough food to maintain basic nutrition levels, particularly in the south of the country.
The impact of HIV is exacerbating Zimbabwe's social and political crisis. Over a million people have died from AIDS this decade, and AIDS deaths now run at 1600 per week. In August agriculture officials estimated that loss of labour power because of HIV had caused a drop in output of maize by 61%, of cotton by 41%, and vegetables by 49%. HIV is destroying babwe's leadership capacities at all levels, with losses of skilled workers, government and party cadre, cultural figures, and the officers of civil society organisations. War
The Mugabe regime has become even more unpopular due to its commitment of 15,000 soldiers to defend the Kabila regime in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The war effort has been costing Zimbabwe more than SUS1 million per day. Opponents of Mugabe have warned that 60,000 Hutu refugees remain in Zimbabwe, and the military and CIO are training Interahamwe fighters, possibly for use against sectors of Zimbabwe disloyal to ZANU-PF.
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Mugabe has been increasingly voicing anti-Tutsi rhetoric, "internationalising" the Rwanda catastrophe of 1994. He portrays his enemies in the minority Ndebele southern provinces, the governments of South Africa, Rwanda and Burundi, as well as the Congo rebels, as a vast Tutsi conspiracy for domination of southern and central Africa. This ethnic chauvinism is provoking fears in Matabeleland of a repeat of the massacres in which 6000 alleged ZAPU supporters were killed by North Korean-trained Zimbabwean military units between 1983-87.
Tensions were raised even higher with the outbreak of fighting in July in the Caprivi Strip (bordering Botswana, Angola, Zambia and Zimbabwe), by forces wanting to separate from Namibia, backed by the Barotse Liberation movement in Zambia and UNITA from Angola. * of the Fourth Internationa
Transformation and regroupment
Regroupments of forces determined to learn the lessons of the historical abomination that was Stalinism and to continue, against the winds and the tides, to fight against capitalism are being realised in a number of countries
In all the countries where such possibilities exist, the organisations of the Fourth
International are ready to be part of the re-groupment process. We consider this as an important step towards the recomposition of the anti-capitalist left on a world scale.
At the international level, the Fourth International is an active participant in re-
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The Gulf War and the New World Order
Andre Gunder Frank and Salah Jaber [72 pages A4)
groupment, bringing with it the advantages of a long tradition of combat against capitalism and Stalinism. » Price: ES/S10. International Viewpoint, PO Box 27410, London SW9 9WQ, Britain.
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