ZIMBABWE -AN INTERNATIONAL PARIAH! WHAT ARE THE REVOLUTIONARY TASKS OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT?

Eddy Maloka and Ben Magubane
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Today, Zimbabwe sits in the eye of the storm!

The sustained national and international campaign on Zimbabwe of many years has seized the March 29, 2008 Municipal, House of Assembly, Senate and Presidential elections as a focal point around which to wage a most intense offensive against ZANU PF and President Mugabe.

The delay in the announcement especially of the results of the Presidential election has helped those who have campaigned against ZANU PF and President Mugabe with ammunition to escalate their campaign to its highest pitch, so far.

This delay has been used to argue that, true to character, ZANU PF and President Mugabe are working to subvert the will of the people by fraudulently altering the election results, to award President Mugabe a victory that properly belongs to Morgan Tsvangirai! No question is posed to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission about why it has delayed the release of the Presidential election results!

In this context, the argument has been advanced that President Mugabe should concede defeat, allowing Morgan Tsvangirai to succeed to the Presidency, with no need to hold a second round Presidential election, in the event that the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission announces that no Presidential candidate won the required 50%+1 majority vote.

Members of our country’s democratic movement have joined this offensive, rushing to issue statements which seek to question the credibility and independence of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, and support the view that the people of Zimbabwe voted on March 29 to support the MDC, especially the Tsvangirai faction, rejecting ZANU PF.

In this regard, some of our comrades have adopted exactly the same positions propagated by the Western political forces and the Western mass media.

Exposed to all this over a protracted period, like all other comrades in our broad democratic movement, we came to realise that we have come to base our judgement on many issues, including Zimbabwe, on the daily news conveyed by the domestic and international media, which predominantly communicate the views of the Western media and countries.

This reminded us of what we knew as a matter of course during the years of struggle against the apartheid regime, that there was no such thing as the objective conveyance of news, free of any political agenda or value system.

As a consequence of this it became clear to us that, unconsciously, we had turned our backs on a critically important element of our revolutionary upbringing – the habit and practice of analysing all events from an unequivocally partisan anti-imperialist perspective!

This led us to engage in a serious discussion about the Zimbabwe affair, to enable us the better to understand the media hysteria about Zimbabwe within the context of our revolutionary upbringing.

Below we indicate what we consider to be important outcomes of this intense reflection, which, without any apology, is inspired by our view that we have an abiding responsibility to wage a revolutionary struggle to achieve the goals of the African Revolution.

INTRODUCTION

For 10 years, Zimbabwe - especially President Mugabe, the Zimbabwe Government and ZANU PF - has attracted the sustained attention of the South African and international media. Among other things, this happened because of the conflict in that country centred on the issue of the resolution of the land question.

At the same time, from about 2000 onwards, 20 years after independence, the Zimbabwe liberation movement, united in ZANU PF, began to experience political opposition which it had not had to deal with before. Unfortunately and wrongly, it responded to this opposition in part by resorting to repressive measures.

The domestic and international media and the political forces they represent have therefore sustained a hostile political offensive centred especially against President Mugabe based on:

opposition to the radical programme of the return of the land to the people; and,
denunciation of the President as an anti-democratic dictator who does not respect the political and human rights of the people of Zimbabwe.

Objectively, whatever the means that would be used, the resolution of the land question in Zimbabwe had to involve the transfer of land from the white minority to the black majority.

Inevitably, given a world order that continues to be informed by racism, it was inevitable that the white European and North American countries and the white minority in South Africa would adopt an unfriendly posture towards this land dispossession of their “kith and kin” in Zimbabwe.

Accordingly they used all means and methods to defeat the radical land reform process in Zimbabwe, including the use of their mass media to convince all and sundry that this process was indefensible from all points of view, including the health of the Zimbabwe economy and the sustenance of democracy in Zimbabwe.

Quite early on, some international commentators pointed to the true nature of the conflict between independent Zimbabwe and the West.

ROB GOWLAND COMMENTS

One example of this is an article published in The (British) Guardian on April 19, 2000, written by Rob Gowland, entitled “Zimbabwe: Demonising Mugabe to protect white farmers”. The article read in part:

“Apartheid has been overthrown in South Africa, Namibia has won and
consolidated its independence, the imperialist backed UNITA forces have
been defeated in Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is breaking free from its long colonial status, Libya has retained its independence.

“These and other developments are not acceptable to the former European colonial powers and to the US.

“While the Mugabe Government has not fulfilled the aspirations of the
Zimbabwean people, his Government sent troops to help maintain the
independence of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and provided
assistance to the ANC during its struggle against apartheid.

“The one-time guerrilla leader against British colonialism is being
demonised as a megalomaniac whose time has passed and who needs to hand over leadership to people more acceptable to the former colonial masters.

“The leader of the country or the country as a whole is vilified in the
media, with the political leaders of the Western powers playing a prominent part.

“The process is familiar. It has been used against Panama's Noriega, Libya's Gaddafi, and most recently Yugoslavia's Milosevic. It was used against the Soviet Union, Cuba, Iraq, Iran and now against China.

“When President Mugabe warned white farmers in Zimbabwe not to use force against the landless African peasants who were squatting on the whites' farms — saying it would only cause greater violence "and none of us want that" — the media asserted that Mugabe had started encouraging Africans to launch violent attacks on white farmers.

“Murdoch's Sydney tabloid The Daily Telegraph on April 11 regaled
readers with a succession of horror stories of white farmers and their
wives being terrorised by "drunken mobs of squatters howling war cries and brandishing axes".

“In another story, a white farmer was "beaten and whipped in front of his
wife and children" until he agreed to sign over half his farm to the
squatters. Significantly, this article is datelined from London, not
Zimbabwe.

“When Mugabe was elected President in a landslide victory over the white
settlers in 1980, it was (in the words of The Washington Post) "celebrated by Zimbabwe's black majority and greeted with aid and goodwill from Western governments".

“But two decades of the West's "aid and goodwill" has inevitably left
Zimbabwe in a mess.

Landless peasants

“The country is faced with the impossibility of reconciling the demands of
the World Bank and IMF (representing transnational corporations and Western "investors") on the one hand, and the aspirations of the landless peasants, who fought the independence struggle against British colonialism, on the other.

“The Washington Post in an editorial on February 1 complains that
Mugabe "balks at reforming his unproductive state-dominated economy".

“Mugabe and ZANU, on the other hand, have apparently decided that the
ravages caused by globalisation and the World Bank's structural adjustment programs demand the implementation of another sort of reform, one that is long overdue in Zimbabwe: land reform.

“The white planters are using their wealth and position to fight the
Government every inch of the way, using the courts (another hangover from British colonialism) to block land reform.

“Destabilisation, economic disruption, "pro-democracy" demonstrations, the fostering of black against black and ethnic separatist strife are all part
of the campaign.

“Guerrilla campaigns and terrorism can all follow, until a government
acceptable to the US and British replaces ZANU and Mugabe.

“At the Congress of the Socialist Party of Serbia in Belgrade in March, the
ZANU delegation told me that their border patrols had only recently stopped a "very large" truck that was attempting to enter the country with a full load of "the most sophisticated weapons — enough for a small war".

West's formula

“The Washington Post has spelt out a formula for outside interference: "Now Western governments must keep pressing for economic reforms, help Zimbabwe's growing democratic opposition maintain its new-found unity and do whatever is possible to prevent Mr Mugabe from manipulating the parliamentary vote in April. If all goes well, Mr Mugabe will have a chance to graciously concede after that election." (Our emphasis.)

“Already committees of support for "democracy" in Zimbabwe are springing up which will echo the media campaign of the western powers. Such a committee is being formed in Australia.

“While the white planters are resolutely opposing land reform, determined to hold onto the plundered African land that they now "own" by right of
British conquest, rumours are circulated (and then reported as fact) that
land compulsorily acquired from white farmers last year for distribution to
landless Africans had been given to "members of ZANU and government
officials".

“Many landless Zimbabweans are members of ZANU, but such assertions are part of the deceptions and aim to soften up public opinion to lay the groundwork for overt or covert intervention in Zimbabwe.

“Britain's Tories are calling for "strong action" from their government to
stop what they are predictably calling Mugabe's "ethnic cleansing".

“Britain's Labour Government, an ardent supporter of colonialism and
aggression against smaller states, has urged the Government of Zimbabwe to "send a delegation to London to open negotiations".

“Zimbabwe is now an independent country but the British Foreign Office still thinks Zimbabwe is a colony.

“Foreign Office Minister Peter Hain offered spurious financial support for
"a program of genuine land reform" but was careful to stipulate that "we
wouldn't give the money to the Government [of Zimbabwe]".

“The British Government's "land reform" would leave the white settlers in
control — it would be no reform at all.

“A serious, dangerous situation is developing in southern Africa which could destabilise the region and provide an opportunity for Western meddling, not only in Zimbabwe but in southern Africa as a whole.” (Our emphasis.)

GREGORY ELICH COMMENTS

On August 26, 2002, the “Swans” website carried an article by Gregory Elich entitled “Zimbabwe Under Siege”. Among other things, Elich said:

“As Zimbabwe descends into anarchy and chaos, land is irrationally seized from productive farmers, we are told. President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe is portrayed as a dictator bent on driving his nation into starvation and economic disaster while benevolent U.S. and British leaders call for democracy and human rights. These are the images presented by Western news reports, intended to persuade the public to support an interventionist policy.

“As always when the West targets a foreign leader for removal, news reports ignore complexity and context, while the real motivations for intervention remain hidden. Concern for democracy and human rights is selective and it is always the nation that displays too much independence that evokes concern, even in cases of a functioning multiparty system and wide ranging media.

“On the other hand, no one calls for democracy and human rights in oppressive nations as long as the political environment is conducive to Western investment. Saudi Arabia, for example, holds no elections and imposes an abusive oppression on the lives of its women. The pattern is consistent.

“Any nation that embarks on a path diverging from Western corporate interests and places the needs of its people over the demands of Western capital finds itself the target of destabilization, sanctions and intervention. History and context are essential for understanding political events, and it is precisely these aspects that are lacking in Western news reports…

“Sylvestre Maunganidze, head of political affairs at the Zimbabwe Embassy in Georgia, says, "We realized that unless we maximized production we would not be able to survive the onslaught of the West. We are not a perfect people but we know that there is a group of people outside of Zimbabwe who would only be waiting to pounce on our mistakes but the only response we have for them is to ask them to come back in two years and they would see a transformed Zimbabwe.

“We thought we had good partners abroad and did not know that we were killing ourselves with this dependency. Now we are weaning ourselves from dependency and we want to be independent both politically and economically." No longer would Zimbabwe be "an appendage of the industrial capitalist system," he affirmed.

“It is precisely this independence that has made Zimbabwe a target. The Western campaign against Zimbabwe will continue to escalate until it achieves its goal of reversing that independence, regardless of the cost to the people of Zimbabwe.

“Already New Zealand's Prime Minister Helen Clark has advocated "tougher economic sanctions" against Zimbabwe and its "full expulsion" from the Commonwealth, while British Prime Minister Tony Blair is discussing possible further actions with leaders of African countries.

“U.S. State Department spokesman Philip Reeker implied that the U.S. is considering further punitive action against Zimbabwe when he warned that "it is time to tell President Mugabe that he needs to reexamine these policies in terms of land seizures and go back to the road of democratic norms that Zimbabwe should be on."

“Sanctions continue to take their toll, and Zimbabwe's economy continues to plummet. According to Ken Jerrard, Bulawayo regional president of the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries, the foreign currency shortage has prevented most firms from importing essential capital goods and raw materials necessary to maintain production. He noted that over 100 companies closed down in his province in the previous few months, while others are making drastic cuts in staff to avoid closing.

“In order to raise foreign currency to meet its budget commitments, the government has been forced to engage in limited and targeted privatization, a painful but unavoidable compromise under the circumstances. A ship carrying fuel intended for Zimbabwe was unable to offload its cargo at the port of Beira in Mozambique. British Petroleum, which owns the fuel storage facilities at the port, refused to accept the fuel because Zimbabwe owed the firm $3 million. Approximately 70 percent of Zimbabwe's fuel is shipped from Libya through the port of Beira, where it is transferred to pipelines. The lack of foreign currency has prevented Zimbabwe from meeting its payments to British Petroleum, and unless a resolution to the dispute can be reached, it could mean a near-total cutoff of fuel, bringing down production in virtually all sectors of Zimbabwe's economy.

“Despite Western hostility and belligerence, Zimbabwe remains resolute in its pursuit of land reform and rejection of the neoliberal economic model. "We have not sought to quarrel with any nation. We have no other ambition than to remain sovereign as we cooperate and respect the sovereignty of others," President Mugabe pointed out. "It cannot be the rule of law that is the matter, for here they massacred thousands as they colonized our country and pillaged our resources. We cannot be a nation worth its name if we succumb to and acquiesce in the sheer erosion of our sovereignty."

LANCASTER HOUSE & THE LAND QUESTION

With regard to land, British imperialism had succeeded to impose a 10-year Constitutional obligation on independent Zimbabwe to address the land question on a willing-seller, willing-buyer basis. This was enshrined in the Lancaster House Constitution adopted in London in 1979 as the fundamental law which ushered in Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980.

During the Constitutional negotiations, the UK and US Governments had promised the Zimbabwe liberation movement large sums of money to enable independent Zimbabwe to purchase land from the white land owners, to give effect to the willing-seller, willing-buyer principle and practice.

The British Government did provide some funds for this purpose. However, the amounts that were made available could not make any significant impact with regard to the central issue of the Zimbabwe liberation struggle, namely, the reversal of the massive land dispossession that had taken place as an integral part of the colonisation of Zimbabwe.

As the Constitutional land provision was about to expire in 1990, the Commonwealth Secretariat convinced the Zimbabwe Government to continue respecting its letter and spirit, and thus avoid any radical measures to redistribute the land.

The Commonwealth Secretariat argued that it was of paramount importance that the South African negotiations which began in 1990 should be allowed to succeed. The Secretariat feared that any radical land reform in Zimbabwe would frighten the whites in South Africa, pushing them to fear and therefore frustrate a negotiated end to the apartheid system.

For this reason, for some years after 1990, the Zimbabwe Government continued to address the land question through the willing-buyer, willing-seller principle and practice, with none of the funds promised by the UK and US Governments.

However, towards the end of the 1990s, Zimbabwe began to experience forcible land occupations. This indicated that the masses of the people were beginning to lose patience with the long-delayed process of returning the land to the people, the majority of whom continued to live in the rural rather than the urban areas.

Ultimately, with the British Government refusing to provide the funds to buy out the white land owners as it had promised in 1979, ZANU PF decided to support the popular seizure of land as the principal method of ending the colonial legacy of land dispossession.

The resort to this strategy – the expropriation of the expropriators – recalled the similar revolutionary way of resolving the land question as had happened early in the 20th century, as in Mexico during the Zapata Uprising and the Russian Revolution.

However, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and socialism in Europe, for some time anyway the “age of revolution” had ended. ZANU PF therefore found itself globally isolated as no forces existed in the world that would wage a successful struggle to give Zimbabwe the space to carry out a revolutionary programme of land reform.

ZIMBABWE, HUMAN RIGHTS, etc

At the same time, deriving directly from the victory of imperialism against especially the Soviet Union, democracy and human rights as defined by world imperialism, had become an established instrument in defining the legitimacy and acceptability of states and governments.

The combination of these factors meant that it was inevitable that imperialism would treat President Mugabe and ZANU PF as enemies, especially as they were seen to be an outdated remnant of the anti-imperialist forces which imperialism had driven into an historic retreat in the aftermath and as a consequence of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

There is no gainsaying the fact that in essence ZANU PF was part of the world anti-imperialist movement, as were the other authentic liberation movements on our continent, including the ANC, SWAPO, Frelimo, the MPLA, PAIGC, and the Algerian FLN.

It is also true that during its years as the ruling party, ZANU PF has made a number of serious mistakes, as did the Communist Parties of the Soviet Union and China, the African liberation movements, and other anti-imperialist formations in other parts of the world, such as the Indian Congress, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and the great revolutionary, Che Guevara, when he went into Bolivia.

Over the decades, our democratic movement came to understand this reality, deepening our appreciation of the fact that no revolution amounts to an easy walk down Cape Town’s Adderley Street.

OUR ANTI-IMPERIALIST TASKS

For this reason, while being critical of the errors of the world revolutionary movement, our democratic movement understood its obligation to work at all times to defend and strengthen the global anti-imperialist movement, doing everything it could to help correct what had gone wrong.

Despite the strategic imperialist victory represented by the collapse of the Soviet Union, this movement understood that the struggle between imperialism and the anti-imperialist forces had not come to an end.

Its own tasks – the defeat of the apartheid regime and the reconstruction of South Africa as a democratic country – confirmed that it was still faced with the same revolutionary imperatives it had espoused even before the disappearance of the Soviet Union. This found expression, for instance, in the anti-imperialist RDP, which remains the fundamental programme of the broad democratic movement.

In the context of everything we have said so far, the question arises – what, then, should the democratic movement do about Zimbabwe, including our historic ally, ZANU PF?

In this regard, we will have to answer the question – do we consider ZANU PF to be an anti-imperialist movement, despite the mistakes it has made?

Accordingly, do we have an obligation to support ZANU PF, while doing everything in our power to help a fellow anti-imperialist movement to correct the mistakes it has made?

Our movement will have to address these questions even as the domestic and the international media, and the political forces it represents, sustain a very intense campaign which seeks to convince every single person on the globe that President Mugabe and ZANU PF are true pariahs who unquestionably belong to the dustbin of history!

In this regard, the movement will have to contend with the hard reality that those who play the most decisive role in the formation of global public opinion, the Western news agencies, the TV networks such as the BBC, CNN, France24 and others, have all made the determination that Zimbabwe is a fit target for “regime change”, in the same way that more than 30 years ago, the US decided that Chile, under the leadership of Salvador Allende, was a fit target for regime change!

Below we cite two articles written by a British journalist, Seamas Milne, who writes for the British newspaper, The Guardian.

We cite these articles both for their content and for the challenge they pose to us to revert back to the practice that helped to define us as a revolutionary movement – the practice of striving hard to understand social development from an anti-imperialist perspective.

SEAMAS MILNE COMMENTS (I)

The first of these articles was entitled “Colonialism and the new world order”. It appeared in The Guardian on March 7, 2002, with the subtitle, “British interference will only make Zimbabwe's crisis worse”.
Seamas Milne wrote:

“Tony Blair is not a man renowned for his humility. But after failing to get his way over Zimbabwe at the Commonwealth summit last weekend, his arrogance could hardly be contained. Fulminating at African heads of government for refusing to back Britain's demand for Zimbabwe's immediate suspension, the prime minister declared that "there can be no question of Mugabe being allowed to stay in power" unless this weekend's watershed presidential election was free and fair.

“Since he had already made clear he regarded it as rigged, his meaning could not be plainer: the British government is determined to see Robert Mugabe ousted.

“It must be galling for a man who last autumn offered himself as Africa's saviour to be so publicly rebuffed by Africa's leaders. Isolated with Australia and New Zealand in a gang of three mainly white states, the prime minister insisted: "This type of behaviour has got to stop." What entitles Zimbabwe's former colonial master to insist on a change of government in Harare was not explained.

“But since Blair's ministers began openly to champion the cause of the white farmers who made up the backbone of the former Rhodesian regime - while denouncing the black leadership which defeated it as "uncivilised" - British interference in Zimbabwe has been ceaseless.

“Perhaps taking its cue from the government, most mainstream British media coverage of the Zimbabwean crisis has now abandoned even a veneer of even-handedness, as reporters and presenters have become cheerleaders for the opposition MDC. In a BBC television interview on Sunday with foreign office minister Baroness Amos, David Frost talked blithely of "100,000 people being killed by Mugabe supporters over the last two years".

“In fact, human rights groups estimate the total number killed on both sides during that period at around 160. Frost and the shadow foreign secretary, Michael Ancram, went on to denounce Mugabe as a "fascist dictator" and "black racist", both urging more decisive British action. The same day an unrelentingly hostile BBC Correspondent programme passed without a single balancing interview.

“There is little sense in any of this of Britain's responsibility for the rapacious colonisation of Zimbabwe and the continuing grotesque inequality of land ownership two decades after independence, which has left 6,000 white farmers in control of half the country's 81 million acres of arable land, while around 850,000 black farmers are crammed into the rest.

“It was after all a British Labour government which refused to put down Ian Smith's white racist rebellion in 1965 because of fears that the army would balk at acting against their "kith and kin", provoking a war which cost 40,000 lives. It was a British Tory government which imposed white parliamentary quotas and a 10-year moratorium on land reform at independence.

“Now the British government (through the Westminster Foundation for Democracy) and the Tories (through the Zimbabwe Democracy Trust) - along with white farmers and corporations - are all funding the MDC, committed as it is to free-market policies and the restoration of white farms to their owners.

“It is impossible to sustain the case that Zimbabwe has been singled out by for international denunciation by the British government because of political violence, intimidation or restrictions on democratic freedoms, alarming as they are. Such factors are common to other African states supported by Britain, such as Kenya and Zambia (where an election was rigged earlier this year).

“And Blair is bosom buddies with dictators such as General Musharraf of Pakistan and the Saudi royal family. In Zimbabwe, the liberation war leader Mugabe is at least holding an election of sorts, there are anti-government newspapers and a parliamentary opposition.

“There are only two possible explanations for Britain's role. One is a racist concern for the privileged white minority. The other is that, unlike Zambia and Kenya, Mugabe is no longer playing ball with the west's neo-liberal agenda and talking, credibly or not, of taking over private businesses and a return to socialism. That cannot be tolerated and, in the new world order, the US now appears to have subcontracted supervision of Africa largely to the former colonial powers, Britain and France.

“The struggle over power and land has brought Zimbabwe to a virtual state of civil war; unemployment and inflation are rampant; living standards have plunged; while Aids is taking a horrific toll (and Mugabe promotes a grim homophobia).

“Zimbabwe needs to find its own way to a peaceful political evolution and a return to the progressive reforms of Mugabe's early years in power. But these are issues for Zimbabweans to settle. Outside interference can only make that process more difficult – and Britain is the very last country to dictate to its once-captive subjects.”

SEAMAS MILNE COMMENTS (II)

The second article by Seamas Milne was published by The Guardian 6 years later, on April 17, 2008. It appeared under the headline – “How come Zimbabwe and Tibet get all the attention?”

It also carried the subtitle – “If a government wants to abuse human rights and rig elections, it needs to have the support of - or be - the western powers”.

Seumas Milne wrote:

“There is no question that the struggle over land and power in Zimbabwe has brought the country to a grim pass. Nearly a decade after the takeover of white-owned farms and the rupture with the west, economic breakdown, hyperinflation, sanctions and Aids have taken a heavy toll. With the expectation now that a second round of elections, mired in claims of fraud, may after all keep President Mugabe in power, the prospect must be of continued economic punishment and crisis.

“On a different scale, there's also no doubt that in Tibet - the other central international focus of western concern in the past month - deep-seated popular discontent fuelled last month's anti-government protests and attacks on Han Chinese, which were met with a violent crackdown by the Chinese authorities.

“Certainly, given the intensity of the US and European response, from chancellors and foreign ministers to Hollywood stars and blanket media coverage, you'd be left in little doubt that these two confrontations were the most serious facing their continents, if not the world.

“The US ambassador to the UN, Zalmay Khalilzad, said as much this week when he declared Zimbabwe the "most important and urgent issue" in Africa. Gordon Brown and George Bush both denounced the delay in releasing election results, the prime minister declaring that the "international community's patience with the regime is wearing thin".

“The British media have long since largely abandoned any attempt at impartiality in its reporting of Zimbabwe, the common assumption being that Mugabe is a murderous dictator at the head of a uniquely wicked regime.

“China's growing economic muscle means western leaders prefer to tread more carefully around its human rights record, but Angela Merkel and the British foreign secretary, David Miliband, were not shy about steaming in, along with the US presidential candidates and the House of Representatives, which demanded unconditional talks with the exiled Dalai Lama.

“Meanwhile, any official restraint was more than made up for by a string of Dalai Lama-dazzled celebs from Richard Gere to Ab Fab's Joanna Lumley, who proudly recalled that her father had once helped Tibet against China on behalf of the British Raj.

“But, on the basis of the scale of violence, repression and election rigging alone, you would be hard put to explain why these conflicts have been singled out for such special attention. In the violence surrounding Zimbabwe's elections, two people are currently reported to have died; in Tibet, numbers estimated to have been killed by protesters and Chinese forces range from 22 to 140.

“By contrast, in Somalia, where US-backed Ethiopian and Somali troops are fighting forces loyal to the ousted government, several thousand have been killed since the beginning of the year and half the population of the capital, Mogadishu, has been forced to flee the city in what UN officials describe as Africa's worst humanitarian crisis.

“When it comes to rigging elections, countries like Jordan and Egypt have been happy to oblige in recent months - in the Egyptian case, jailing hundreds of opposition activists into the bargain - and almost nobody in the west has batted an eyelid. In Saudi Arabia there are no national elections at all, let alone the opposition MPs and newspapers that exist in Zimbabwe.

“In Africa, Togo has been a more flagrant rigger, while in Cameroon last week the president was given the job for life. And when it comes to separatist and independence movements, the Turkish Kurds have faced far more violence and a tighter cultural clampdown than the Tibetans.

“The crucial difference, of course, and the reason why these conflicts and violations don't get the deluxe media and political treatment offered to the Zimbabwean opposition or Tibetan separatists is that the governments involved are all backed by the west, compounded in the Zimbabwean case by a transparently racist agenda.

“But it's not just an issue of hypocrisy and double standards, egregious though they are. It's also that British and US involvement and interference have been crucial to both the Zimbabwean and Tibetan conflicts.

“That's most obviously true in Zimbabwe, which was not just a British colony, but where Britain refused to act against a white racist coup, triggering a bloody 15-year liberation war, and then imposed racial parliamentary quotas and a 10-year moratorium on land reform at independence. The subsequent failure by Britain and the US to finance land buyouts as expected, along with the impact of IMF programmes, laid the ground for the current impasse.

“As for Tibet, Britain's role in the former serf-based system (helpfully recalled by Lumley) was assumed after the communist takeover by the CIA, which bankrolled the Dalai Lama's operations for many years.

“Such arrangements have in recent years passed to other US agencies and western NGOs, as with the Zimbabwean opposition. And even if there is no prospect of Tibetan independence, for a US administration that has designated China as the main threat to its global dominance, its minorities are still a stick that can be used to poke the dragon.

“What has made human rights edicts by the US and Britain since the launch of the "war on terror" even more preposterous is that not only are they themselves supporting governments with similar or worse records, but they are directly responsible for these outrages themselves: from illegal invasions and occupations to large-scale killing and torture - along with phoney elections - in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“The UN estimates that more than 700 people were killed in the recent US and British-backed attacks on the Mahdi army in Iraq - a central motive for which was to stop them taking part in elections.

“The current focus on China is of course linked to the Olympics, and Britain must face the likelihood of large-scale protests over its own record in 2012. Meanwhile, the best chance both of settling the Zimbabwean crisis and of meeting Tibetan aspirations is without the interference of western powers, which would do better improving the human rights records of their allies and themselves.

“The days of colonial dictat are over and where attempts are made to revive them, they will be resisted. China is now an emerging global power - and, as the Zimbabwean ambassador to the UN said yesterday, Zimbabwe "is no longer a British colony".

Most unfortunately, the entirety of our revolutionary movement no longer communicates the quality analysis and knowledge reflected in the two articles by Seamas Milne we have reproduced in full, and the earlier extracts from articles by Rob Gowland and Gregory Elich.

WHO WILL SET THE AGENDA?

The tragic truth is that we have come to base our understanding and actions with regard to critically important questions on what is propagated by the very opponents of our own revolution and broad movement, including our bourgeois media with its pliant black and white scribes, reactionary members of the national intelligentsia, including many of the so-called “analysts”, and even openly backward political formations such as the DA.

Part of this truth is that one would have to search very hard to find journalists in our country who so much as approach the level of understanding, intellectual integrity and independence of mind manifested by Seamas Milne, as reflected in the articles we have reproduced.

The greatest tragedy, of course, is that our democratic movement itself has failed disastrously to produce the kind of analytical material prepared by the British journalist, Seamas Milne, and the others we have quoted, even as we know that there is no national institution, aside from the broad democratic movement, which is committed to the defence and promotion of the democratic revolution.

This emphasises the urgent need for our movement to depend on its own resources to formulate its own positions on all domestic, Continental and international issues, at all times refusing to be trapped into adopting opinions propagated by a domestic and international media which has its own agenda.

As Milne said in his 2002 article, “the British government is determined to see Robert Mugabe ousted.”

Again, as he explained in the same article, “Mugabe is no longer playing ball with the west's neo-liberal agenda and talking, credibly or not, of taking over private businesses and a return to socialism. That cannot be tolerated and, in the new world order, the US now appears to have subcontracted supervision of Africa largely to the former colonial powers, Britain and France.”

Further to expose the consequences of the pursuit of these strategic goals, again in his 2002 article, Milne said, “Perhaps taking its cue from the government, most mainstream British media coverage of the Zimbabwean crisis has now abandoned even a veneer of even-handedness, as reporters and presenters have become cheerleaders for the opposition MDC.”

Clearly, having kept his eye on the ‘Zimbabwe dossier’ for many years, Seamas Milne commented in 2008 that, “The British media have long since largely abandoned any attempt at impartiality in its reporting of Zimbabwe, the common assumption being that Mugabe is a murderous dictator at the head of a uniquely wicked regime.”

In the same article he said “British and US involvement and interference have been crucial to both the Zimbabwean and Tibetan conflicts. That's most obviously true in Zimbabwe, which was not just a British colony, but where Britain refused to act against a white racist coup, triggering a bloody 15-year liberation war, and then imposed racial parliamentary quotas and a 10-year moratorium on land reform at independence. The subsequent failure by Britain and the US to finance land buyouts as expected, along with the impact of IMF programmes, laid the ground for the current impasse.”

TIM HAMES COMMENTS

Of course there are others in the UK who hold views that are diametrically opposed to those expressed by Seamas Milne. One of these is Tim Hames. One of his articles, entitled “Mugabe’s joke is no laughing matter” appeared in The Times of London on April 7, 2008. The subtitle read “Is Thabo Mbeki's quiet diplomacy part of the running gag in Zimbabwe?”

In part Tim Hames said:

“Britain has been exercising its own version of “quiet diplomacy” on Mr Mbeki. Mr Brown seems to have stuck with this softly, softly strategy. The theory is that if we keep the volume down in public and persuade in private, Mr Mbeki in turn will convince Comrade Bob to be less beastly to his opponents and his population and take off for a villa somewhere. Yet this low-key approach has yielded almost nothing, and probably never will.

“This is the moment to be ready to adopt the only course of action that might humiliate Mr Mbeki into finally taking decisive measures. Britain should overtly open a direct dialogue about Zimbabwe with Jacob Zuma, the South African President's deputy [sic], the man who recently defeated him for control over the ANC and hence his heir apparent.

“Mr Zuma is not the most appealing of men, with accusations of corruption as well as sexual impropriety surrounding him, but on the Zimbabwe matter he is a comparative pragmatist and does not seem to believe that Mr Mugabe is owed any favours for his stance in the 1970s.

“Mr Zuma would relish the chance to take centre stage and emerge as Zimbabwe's saviour and a regional statesman, 12 months before he prepares to assume the presidency. That this would profoundly embarrass Mr Mbeki, whom he loathes, would be an added bonus. It would also allow him to rebuild personal links with his own business community which has been desperately lobbying for something to be done about the economic damage being done to South Africa by Zimbabwe's collapse.”

Clearly, such is the desperation among some in the UK to achieve regime change in Zimbabwe that they are ready to do anything and everything to accomplish their goal, including turning the President of the ANC into their agent!

The reality we confront daily is that regardless of our wishes, and despite the naked truth exposed by Seamas Milne and others, imperialism has succeeded to position the Zimbabwe crisis as one of the major issues in global politics.

In this context, according to media reports, the UK and US governments even succeeded to inject the Zimbabwe question into the UN Security Council Summit Meeting our country convened to discuss the critically important question of winning the struggle for peace, security and stability in Africa.

They did this with the sole purpose of sustaining media attention on their Zimbabwe offensive, as explained by Seamas Milne and others, knowing very well that the UN Security Council has no legal mandate to discuss the Zimbabwe situation.

Regardless of the views of national broad democratic movement, all this has positioned the Zimbabwe question as a defining issue which unavoidably compels this movement practically to answer the question whether it remains a revolutionary, anti-imperialist movement or it has transformed itself into yet another African political formation happy to exist as a pliant appendage of the world forces of reaction, ready to support the objective of regime change in Zimbabwe.


THE POST-MUGABE DISPENSATION

Jendayi Frazer, Assistant Secretary for African Affairs was very clear in her remarks to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Non-Governmental Organization Forum in Washington, DC on December 3, 2007, on the kind of political economy dispensation they want out of Zimbabwe:

“Given Mugabe's escalated use of violence, the United States will be imposing additional sanctions against the worst perpetrators of the regime's brutality.
“Financial sanctions will be imposed in the coming days against several additional Zimbabweans not yet sanctioned who played a central role in the regime's escalated human rights abuses and two additional companies that are owned or controlled by specially designated individuals.
“The United States also will impose travel sanctions today against 38 additional individuals, including 9 state security officials involved in human rights abuses and anti-democratic activities in recent months.
“The affected individuals will include at least five adult children of Zimbabwe government officials implicated in similar activities, who are currently studying in the United States.
“It is intolerable that those closest to Mugabe are enjoying the privilege of sending their children to the United States for an education, when they have destroyed the once-outstanding educational system in their own country, thereby depriving ordinary Zimbabweans of a decent education.
“We continuously review the need for adding new names to our targeted sanctions. If the violence fails to cease, we will be expanding our sanctions further. We are particularly watching those people, and the firms they control, who are using their position to enrich themselves at the expense of suffering Zimbabweans. If necessary we will take additional measures against those who have been profiting from the current crisis.
“Let me be clear, we can reverse these actions once the politically motivated violence ceases and the government implements the reforms needed to restore Zimbabwe to what it once was – a democratic and prosperous country that was a jewel of the region. These are very high goals that SADC and other international actors seek to achieve, but Zimbabwe and the world can settle for nothing less.
“In the meantime, the United Sates will continue to provide food and other humanitarian assistance, as well as assistance for HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and care. In 2007 we will deliver over $170 million in food aid. This will feed over 1.5 million Zimbabweans until the hunger season ends next March.
“We are prepared to do even more. We stand ready to augment substantively our development assistance to a government that makes credible and significant progress toward genuine economic and political reform, such as:
(1) Full and equal access to humanitarian assistance;
(2) Restoration of the Rule of Law, including enforcement of contracts, an independent judiciary, and respect for property rights;
(3) A commitment to the democratic process and respect for applicable international human rights obligations, including a commitment to freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of association;
(4) A commitment to macroeconomic stabilization in accordance with guidance from relevant international agencies; and
(5) Timely elections held in accordance with international obligations, and in the presence of international election observers. (Our emphasis)
“The Government of Zimbabwe can set a course to meet these principles easily enough; the choice is theirs. It requires that Government concede on one fundamental point: that it serves the people of Zimbabwe, and that the people may freely exercise ultimate authority over those who would govern them.
“The people of Zimbabwe deserve our collective attention and action in support of their brave struggle for a just and prosperous future. We cannot abandon them in this noble quest and time of need.
Indeed, during her recent tour of the region which, according to BBC News, was “to lobby Zimbabwe's neighbours to put pressure on President Robert Mugabe”, Frazer even declared Morgan Tsvangirai the victor while all of us in the region are still waiting for the announcement of the election results by the ZEC! She is cited by BBC News:
"We think in this situation we have a clear victor," said Ms Frazer, the senior US envoy to Africa. "Morgan Tsvangirai won and perhaps outright, at which point you don't need a government of national unity. You have to accept the result."

SOUTHERN AFRICA & THE WORLD

The imperialist agenda being pursuit in Zimbabwe is just a gate-way into our region as a whole. The Southern Africa region, organised in SADC, disposes of enormous deposits of natural resources, all of which are critical to the sustenance of the global economy. These include oil and gas, platinum group metals, gold, diamonds, coal, base metals, water, fish, and agricultural land.

The current high commodity prices confirm the vital importance of these resources, and therefore our region, to the world economy. By definition, therefore, our region is a hugely important global player.

Consequently, it is natural that the major Western powers will pay very close attention to what happens in our region, including its politics, inspired in part by China-phobia.

We must expect that those who are used to dominate, to advance their interests, will do everything they can to ensure that politically, our region is made up of client states.
To the contrary, as an anti-imperialist movement, we are firmly committed to the objective of genuine independence and national self-determination. This means that we must be ready to engage in a determined struggle to ensure that our people and the peoples of our region do everything possible and necessary to give practical expression to their right to determine their own future.

The fact of the matter, however, is that the world forces opposed to the achievement of this goal have been busy for many years already, working to ensure that we fail to realise this objective.

Strategically, this has translated into a determined effort to ensure that either the liberation movements are denied the possibility to govern their countries, or that they are transformed from within, to become client political movements gutted of their anti-imperialist content.

In our region this started with the assassination of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo in 1961, and the subsequent installation of the Mobutu regime. It was followed by the concerted campaign which removed UNIP from power in Zambia in 1991.

It was also manifested by the determined and violent attempt to impose UNITA on the people of Angola and RENAMO in Mozambique.

It was represented by the attempt to build an opposition to SWAPO, and the regular interventions to reverse the democratic process in Lesotho by provoking military uprisings.

It is now focused on the offensive to defeat ZANU PF, which will lead directly to an offensive to transform our broad democratic movement and democratic South Africa into yet other pliant clients of world imperialism.

With regard to the latter, this has already found expression in the attempt to persuade sections of our movement to repudiate the mediation work in which our Government has been engaged with regard to Zimbabwe, with the full support of our region, Africa and the rest of the non-aligned world.

Accordingly, in its own interest, our movement will have to abandon all illusion and understand that the sustained offensive to defeat ZANU PF is but a curtain-raiser to what will inevitably follow – a sustained offensive to defeat our very own movement!

WHAT IS TO BE DONE!
In this regard, we must seriously take into account the observation that Seamas Milne made about racism and the attachment to “kith and kin” on the part of the Western countries, which condition them to take particular positions relative to us as Africans.

In its own interest, and as its revolutionary obligation, our democratic movement must:

vigorously and unequivocally defend the gains of our Democratic Revolution;
defend our country’s democratically elected Government;
defend ZANU PF in Zimbabwe; and,
work to strengthen the African and global anti-imperialist movement.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and therefore the end of the Cold War, which resulted in the disappearance of many organised formations of the world anti-imperialist movement blunted the struggle for the revolutionary transformation of human society, including progressive but non-socialist forms of social change.

It was not an accident that it was immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union and socialism in Europe that the neo-liberal ideological paradigm characterised as “the Washington Consensus” emerged as the dominant world view.

The fact of the matter is that this “world view” was not new. In essence it constituted an intellectual affirmation and celebration of capitalism as the best possible and most desirable socio-economic formation.

Dependent as it is for its practical implementation on the “right” political circumstances, it was implemented in Chile from the 1970s, once the US-backed Pinochet dictatorial military regime had stabilised its repressive power.

Later, as the most far-sighted representatives of private capital came to understand the dangers to capital posed by the total absence of regulation, as proposed by “the (free market) Washington Consensus”, the alarm was sounded about the dangers of “market fundamentalism”.

The retreat from this “market fundamentalism”, however limited, led by ideological adherents of the capitalist mode of production, who now argue for the need for strong government, underlines the fact that the collapse of the Soviet Union etc, has not solved the contradictions that gave birth to the socialist perspective.

This also means that the objective conditions that gave birth to the African revolutionary national liberation movements, defining these movements as “revolutionary democratic”, have not disappeared.

This also confirms that nothing has happened to make the revolutionary democratic programmes democratic South Africa must implement outdated and irrelevant.

However, the changed balance of forces means that as a mature revolutionary movement, we must conduct our struggle and express our loyalty to principle in a manner that recognises the changed circumstances, avoiding adventurist actions based on ill-informed subjectivism.

Despite all this, the revolutionary movement must also understand that the antagonistic contradiction between the imperialist and the anti-imperialist forces has neither been resolved nor has it disappeared.

While the imperialist ‘world view’ has become the dominant global ideology, the anti-imperialist movement cannot maintain its character by accommodating itself to what has become the global ideology.

Our revolutionary movement must remain a revolutionary movement because, in practice, while changing its tactics, it maintains its anti-imperialist character.

This is essentially the reason why, over the decades, our revolutionary movement has not relied on the bourgeois media to sustain its political and ideological struggle. It has always understood that such support as this media might extend to our movement is intended to use us to promote its own agenda!

Immediately, because of the international profile this matter has assumed, the democratic movement in our country will have to communicate a clear revolutionary message about its position with regard to Zimbabwe, and act in a manner that is consistent with that message.

In this context, it will have to understand the objective and legal reality relating to the Zimbabwe elections. This includes the circumstances that have informed the activities of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC), the only authority legally mandated to conduct elections and announce the election results, independent of the Zimbabwe Government and all political parties.

The ANC communicated one of the relevant messages in Volume 8, No. 15 • 18-24 April 2008 of the journal ANC TODAY, under the title “Zimbabwe Elections: The will of the people must be heard”, in which it said:

“The NWC (ANC National Working Committee) made the point that its position on the elections in Zimbabwe should not be seen as favouring one party over another. The ANC regards ZANU-PF as a fraternal liberation movement, an ally in the effort to improve the lives of the people of Southern Africa. The ANC's position should be understood as part of its principled commitment to the basic tenets of democracy, that the voice of the people of Zimbabwe must be heard and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of all the people.”

In the wider context, the broad democratic movement will have to bear in mind the objective reality explained by Seamas Milne when he said in 2008:

“The days of colonial dictat are over and where attempts are made to revive them, they will be resisted. China is now an emerging global power - and, as the Zimbabwean ambassador to the UN said yesterday, Zimbabwe "is no longer a British colony".

Of even greater significance, our democratic movement will have to pay the greatest possible attention to the statement made by Rob Gowland in 2000 when he said:

“A serious, dangerous situation is developing in southern Africa which could destabilise the region and provide an opportunity for Western meddling, not only in Zimbabwe but in southern Africa as a whole.”

We call on all genuine revolutionaries to respond to this immediate and urgent situation as revolutionaries, understanding that no one but us can defend and save the African revolution, acting together with all other like-minded forces in our country, our region and Continent, and everywhere else in the world!

The revolution will succeed only to the extent that we, the revolutionaries, are ready, able and willing to defend it, informed by our comprehension of objective reality in Zimbabwe and the rest of the world, and our character as an anti-imperialist movement!


April 2008