Freedom Socialist • Vol. 28, No. 3 • June-July 2007

Zimbabwe: former colonial powers still casting a villainous shadow

by Megan Cornish

After more than a decade of crisis, Zimbabwe is in horrific economic collapse. The people suffer from inflation of 1,700 percent, poverty and unemployment of 80 percent, widespread hunger, a healthcare system and infrastructure in ruins, climbing infant and maternal mortality, and one of the highest rates of HIV/AIDS infection in the world. Life expectancy is down to 34 years for women and 37 years for men.

A region-wide drought has not helped, but the problem is mostly man made. The U.S. and Britain blame President Robert Mugabe, conveniently ignoring the effects of their own history of pillage and current economic sanctions.

Mugabe, on the other hand, has never gone beyond a program of pro-capitalist nationalism, and only remains in power by corruption and force.

Unfortunately, the major groups opposing Mugabe offer no better alternative. Backed by the U.S. and Britain, they endorse the same free-trade policies that have ruined the country. Real answers to the impasse must come from fundamental social changes aided by international workingclass solidarity.

Colonial misery. In the late 1800s, Britain was the colonial power behind the invasion of Zimbabwe by British/South African money-man Cecil Rhodes, after whom the country was renamed. Rhodesia was an abhorrent apartheid state which left the Black majority destitute and landless. Eighty percent of the arable land was expropriated from the indigenous people and given to white settlers. Mining and industrial interests were British-owned.

In 1965, with anti-colonial movements sweeping the globe, Rhodesia's white ruling-class settler state declared a formal independence from Britain in a bid to stave off Black majority control.

But 15 years of liberation struggle followed, during which Mugabe adopted Marxist rhetoric while actually representing the interests of aspiring Black capitalists. The 1979 agreement that ended white rule included a pledge that Zimbabwe would hold off land redistribution for 10 years and follow a "willing seller" policy enforcing the status quo. The new constitution also enshrined private property rights.

Britain promised to come up with the money to compensate the white agribusinesses who "owned" the stolen land, if they wanted to sell. Naturally, it reneged on this promise after a few years and a small number of land transfers.

Nationalist bankruptcy. Although Mugabe initially did make some improvements in education, medical services and infrastructure, Zimbabwe has never been the "socialist" state that some have claimed it to be.

Notably, a 1980s military campaign against the Zimbabwe African People's Union, a former Mugabe ally in the independence struggle, killed thousands of the minority Ndebele people.

Mugabe also did nothing about land reform for 20 years. In the 1990s, economic problems forced the country to go to the International Monetary Fund for loans. The government accepted increasingly brutal "structural adjustments" that required cutting and privatizing public services.

In the late '90s, occupations of settler farms began. Apparently initiated by veterans of the independence war, it is unclear whether these were organized by Mugabe or endorsed by him after the fact. In any case, his aim in supporting them was clearly to consolidate his hold on power in the face of rising unpopularity. He also took the opportunity to give land to his own cronies.

While Britain, the European Union and the U.S. cared nothing about earlier human rights violations, they took the takeovers of these land holdings very seriously. They responded with sanctions that cut off access to international loans the country depended upon. They also fought back by masterminding cutoffs of international food and medical aid.

In the long slide to ruin, another infamous Mugabe initiative was the 2005 "Operation Murambatsvina" (meaning "get rid of trash"), which demolished shantytowns throughout Zimbabwe and evicted their residents to the countryside. This was a futile effort to stop the rampant currency devaluation by shutting down the informal economy crucial to many Zimbabweans' survival.

A pro-imperialist opposition. Unfortunately for workers hit hard by the deepening economic crisis, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) is bureaucratically controlled by pro-capitalist advocates of "industrial peace" with management and of imperialist "free trade." They want to oust Mugabe only in order to coax the imperialists back to their usual exploitative ways.

These misleaders made common cause with the white farmers to set up the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which the U.S. has supported lavishly.

This follows a U.S. pattern of instituting "regime change" through funding pro-capitalist reform movements in countries like Yugoslavia, Belarus, Georgia and the Ukraine.

The ZCTU called a general strike in April that was widely observed. But the MDC, the union federation's political partner, has no program to improve people's lives, and has therefore not as yet gained ground electorally. But Mugabe recently gave a popular boost to the opposition with repression against mass demonstrations and MDC leaders.

The anti-capitalist solution. With neither of the main contenders having any interest in fundamentally changing society to benefit the impoverished Zimbabwean majority, the only workable solution is a socialist reconstruction that makes the land, mines and industrial plants public property, run by the people who do the work. There are radical groups, especially among young people, who are raising such a program.

However, the imperialist powers have shown their willingness to intervene militarily to enforce their will if their other efforts at control fail.

The people of Zimbabwe badly need solidarity from working people in the imperialist countries, expressed through demands on their governments like these:

• End the crippling sanctions that starve the people.

• Repayment by Britain for Zimbabwe's compensation to white settlers and foreign-owned agribusiness.

• No reprisals against Zimbabwe for appropriation of lands stolen under colonialism.

• Provide generic drugs to combat AIDS and other diseases.

• In reparation for the theft of Zimbabwe's resources, provide development aid with no strings attached.

• For real self-determination for Zimbabwe!