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Constitutional referendum, presidential elections to be held in Zimbabwe
Constitutional referendum, presidential elections to be held in Zimbabwe
By Staff
Zimbabwe's two major political parties agreed to a new draft constitution Jan. 17. After nearly two years of deliberation, the Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), reached an agreement that may replace the country's current constitution and pave the way for a presidential election later this year. This draft proposal will go before the Zimbabwean people for approval in a nationwide referendum later this year.
Following the agreement, President Robert Mugabe, of ZANU-PF, called for peaceful presidential elections as early as March 2013. Fearing defeat, the unpopular MDC immediately came out against holding elections.
Most analysts believe that Mugabe and his party, ZANU-PF, will handily defeat Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC at the polls. An August 2012 survey by Freedom House, a pro-imperialist Western think-tank, found that more than 31% of people support ZANU-PF compared to the 20% who support MDC in the upcoming elections. The study found that the MDC had lost 18% support since 2010 while ZANU-PF had gained 17% support in the same period. Even Zimbabwe Vigil, a pro-MDC firm based in Britain, predicted in September 2012 that ZANU-PF would win the upcoming elections because of corruption in the MDC.
The draft constitution comes amid the profound revolutionary changes taking place in Zimbabwe. White colonists, never more than 4.3% of the population, ruled Zimbabwe for many decades. Then Zimbabweans waged a 15-year liberation war against white minority rule that led to negotiations and ended Ian Smith’s racist regime in 1980. This victory established African majority rule and most whites left the country. Still, wealthy whites continued controlling most of Zimbabwe's good farmland and resources. Former colonial power Britain claimed to support land reform and resettlement, but failed to fund it. Britain ignored their agreements with Zimbabwe’s government and stirred up trouble.
After a series of austerity measures forced upon Zimbabwe by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the people of Zimbabwe began occupying large farms and taking control of their own resources in 2000. President Mugabe and ZANU-PF supported these farm occupations through the Fast Track Land Reform Program. The reform redistributed 7 million hectares of Zimbabwe's land to more than a million small farmers. Many large landowners were dispossessed and their land given to the rightful owners.
The land reform drastically changed ownership and power relations in Zimbabwe. The U.S. and Britain responded with economic sanctions, sending Zimbabwe down a destructive path of hyperinflation and economic turmoil. In the 2008 presidential election, Britain and the U.S. tried to use Zimbabwe's economic crisis to violently destabilize the country and oust Mugabe, trying to replace him with the puppets of the MDC.
Although the MDC won a plurality of the votes in the first round of the 2008 presidential election, they withdrew from the runoff in an attempt to delegitimize the democratic process. In the runoff, Mugabe defeated the MDC candidate Tsvangirai in a landslide. Mugabe nearly doubled his absolute vote total from the first round of elections - 1.1 million in the first round to 2.2 million in the runoff. Shortly after the election, Mugabe and ZANU-PF formed a power-sharing government with the MDC that included Tsvangirai as prime minister.
Land reform is not the only area of Zimbabwe's economy experiencing serious progressive change. In 2012, the Zimbabwean government began enforcing the Indigenization and Economic Empowerment Bill, which requires at least 50% black local ownership of all businesses and companies. This policy is extremely popular among the Zimbabwean people, who see it as means of exercising their right to control over their own resources. By November 2012, Zimbabwe had indigenized 120 major mining companies and created 400 Employee Share Ownership Trusts to better redistribute the nation's wealth to the people.
In spite of the continued sanctions and economic warfare from the U.S. and Britain, Zimbabwe's economy continues to recover and has grown at a remarkable rate since 2009. According to Zimbabwean Finance Minister Tendai Biti, the country saw 8.1% growth in 2010 and 9.3% growth in 2011. Agricultural production experienced growth from the land reform as well, with tobacco production expanding from 2008's record low of 105 million pounds to 330 million pounds in 2012. As Zimbabwe recovers, more black Zimbabweans will share in their nation's wealth than in the 33 years since the end of white minority rule, leading to a more balanced, collective economy.
As Zimbabwe approaches its 2013 elections, the danger of imperialist meddling in southern Africa runs high. Wikileaks revealed in August last year that Tsvangirai, of the MDC, had used his 2009 visit to U.S. President Barack Obama to lobby for greater sanctions on Zimbabwe in order to bring down Mugabe and ZANU-PF. Banks and corporations in the U.S. and Britain have a vested commercial interest in seeing an end to ZANU-PF's progressive, national democratic policies and anti-imperialism. True to form, the MDC showed their loyalty to their foreign masters by unveiling the Jobs, Upliftment, Investment, Capital and Environment Plan on Nov. 29 of 2012. This scheme proposes to reverse ZANU-PF's indigenization policy, facilitating U.S. and British corporate domination.
It's no surprise that the people of Zimbabwe have turned against the MDC, given the party's allegiance to Britain and the U.S., at the expense of the people. However, the US, Britain, France and other Western European powers are waging a campaign to re-colonize Africa, most recently seen in the U.S.-backed French military intervention in Mali.
Military interventions by imperialist powers in Somalia, Ivory Coast, Libya, Uganda, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and now Mali demonstrate the willingness of the U.S. and Western Europe to use military force against governments or people that resist their dominance.
Progressive activists, organizers and revolutionaries in the U.S. must resolutely oppose any attempt by Western powers to intervene in Zimbabwe, especially with elections on the horizon. People in the U.S. should support the right of the Zimbabwean people to determine their own destiny, as expressed through the policies of ZANU-PF, and they should fight moves for the re-colonization of Africa.
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Ah, what a balanced article.
Clearly, the sign of every healthy democracy is one that appoints the same party over and over through famine, domestic unrest, with the same head of the party nearly 90 years old and in poor health.
Not being funny, but sometimes I do think articles like that above are written with the blinkers on. It's an affront to common sense, really.
Ah, what a balanced article.
Clearly, the sign of every healthy democracy is one that appoints the same party over and over through famine, domestic unrest, with the same head of the party nearly 90 years old and in poor health.
Not being funny, but sometimes I do think articles like that above are written with the blinkers on. It's an affront to common sense, really.
Oh, great, *this* again -- shades of Syria, Iran, etc....
I swear -- if comrades have a weak point at all, it's in distinguishing *external* from *internal* politics....
So, from page 1 of the textbook (so to speak) -- no, we don't call for an automatic backing of whatever petty strongman happens to rule over a country, Obama included, but we *do* call for a defense of that country as a whole against overshadowing international imperialist predation.
Boss last uk election saw a 68percent turn out of voters with no clear majority - do you really think that is an example of "democracy"?
the petty strongman here being david cameron and his cronies
R.I.P Juan Almeida Bosque
"The true focus of revolutionary change is never merely
the oppressive situations which we seek to escape,
but that piece of the oppressor which is
planted deep within each of us." Audre Lorde
Thanks for the article, it's good to hear some perspective. Though let's be honest with ourselves, he is little more than a social democrat with a weird black nationalist tint. His attempts at land reform are admirable and the fact that land reform is the primary motivation for the sanctions just shows that the U.N is little more than an institution to maintain European imperialism. But other than that, he is nothing more than a bourgeois nationalist with a horrible human rights record, nothing worth defending except against external imperialism
Am I supporting david cameron, or advocating bourgeois democracy?
But that's a cop out, because defending that country effectively means supporting the continued existence of that petty strongman in power, does it not?
It's indirect, but wilful, support of the petty strongman, as opposed to direct support. A wolf in sheep's clothing. An ugly sheep.
The very *definition* of 'destabilization' is 'get them to fight among themselves [so that they are divided internally and can be more easily conquered from without]'.
As with anything else in life, it's a matter of priorities -- any colonizer would be delighted to simply swoop down and "take sides" with one internal faction over another, eventually displacing home rule altogether.
I'm sorry if this offends the finer sensibilities of some, but the reality is that there's no revolutionary-superhero option here, where a secret signal lights up the night sky and everyone rises up simultaneously to repel both domestic and imperialist political criminals.
More to the point, as a *priority*, is whether the local ruler is willing to marshall forces to resist outside imperialist incursions, because there are always those -- like Tsvangirai here -- who will actually roll out the red carpet for the neocolonialists and invite them to just *take* what they please.
I'll add that, in terms of political dynamics, we on the revolutionary left should use incidents / situations like these to 'call out' nationalists (libertarians) on their line -- would die-hard country-defenders actually put their muscle where their mouth is and go to the front lines to resist imperialist invaders, or not -- ??
If so, great -- they should be defending the country's borders anyway. If not, then that would *prove* that they're thoroughly useless -- both domestically corrupt *and* geopolitically ineffectual. It would confer immense credibility onto internationalist revolutionaries who would fight based on a *class* line, far surpassing the merely national-liberation one.
Two points
1) Zimbabwe is rapidly becoming poorer and poorer under the Mugabe regime. Ever since economic liberalization in the 1990s, the quality of life, access to food and healthcare has deteriorated substantially. Mugabe isn't a revolutionary strongman. He's been known to make huge concessions to his cause, and switch sides when it benefits him.
On one hand, he'll initiate a bold land reform program to help the poorest of citizens, but he'll also bow down to international pressure when put in the spotlight.
2) His strong handed attitude isn't doing anything for his country. The guy is something like 88 years old. What's going to happen when he dies? It could easily become a giant power vacuum. I wouldn't be surprised if it leads to major unrest, or even civil war. A further weakening of stability would be disastrous for Zimbabwe. Given the precarious situation it's in now, I think this is a major problem.
Mugabe sounds quite like cameron
R.I.P Juan Almeida Bosque
"The true focus of revolutionary change is never merely
the oppressive situations which we seek to escape,
but that piece of the oppressor which is
planted deep within each of us." Audre Lorde
You have yet to prove that imperialism is qualitatively different, from the perspective of the working class, than domestic plunder and exploitation.
Honestly, why does it matter to you whether dictatorship, violence are meted out, and surplus extracted, by Robert Mugabe or Barack Obama?
They're both equally terrible options and we should be pointing that out, not taking sides which, for all your political gymnastics, is what you are doing.
I do appreciate this point, and I don't disagree with what you're saying -- any difference would be due to actual circumstances on the ground, and what should be *prioritized*.
Of course I'd rather see world revolution, no later than tomorrow, but if sincerely anti-imperialist forces exist somewhere to repulse NATO and the like -- as they seemingly did in Libya for that brief moment -- then they should be allowed to do their thing and keep the invaders out.
Nothing in what I'm saying is a simplistic 'either-or' -- I'm not saying to drop mass revolution in favor of *only* national liberation. It's just that local struggles against outside predation may have to come first, depending, which can also serve to build class consciousness and mass struggle for genuine workers control throughout the world.
The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. What matter where, if I be still the same, And what I should be, all but less than he Whom thunder hath made greater?
Here at least We shall be free
Ironically this argument regarding Zimbabwe (and its hyperinflation) often comes from libertarians who hypocritically denounce the real-world manifestation of their own ideology, retreating to a strictly race-based treatment -- now that libertarian-type reforms have been implemented somewhere, turning farms over to individualist ownership, the libertarians have no way to comment further except to blame the black farmers themselves, ignoring all overall context and dynamics.
As Marxists we need to point out that libertarian reforms are not an answer *anywhere* because they're just a misguided, *economic* divide-and-conquer, creating granular separatism and economic dissolution.
We also know that real productivity comes from factories, yielding mass production and the potential for mass worker control -- agriculture is 'non-productive' in material-economic terms since its yield is *socially necessary* for the mere upkeep of the (industrial) proletariat.
Anyone who gives an inch to this Mugabe regime is an enemy of the struggle for LGBT rights the world over. He has tried to have all homosexual relations banned and made illegal and has called gay and lesbian people worse than dogs and pigs.
Fuck anyone willing to give support to this piece of human filth.
This is nonsense.
Do you think factories just sprout up from the ground? I mean, there may be a better chance of that with the potential for technology transfer today, but tbh the most likely manifestation of this would be technology transfer by a multinational corporation; an economic form of the imperialism you say you so oppose!
Seriously though, i'm wondering how you think a society like Zimbabwe can just skip the agricultural phase of development and move to some sort of 1930s Russia copycat society in terms of mass industrial production? It's not possible without imperial exploitation, and i'm not sure that it's desirable at all.
All societies must become agriculturally productive, otherwise there is no way (other than by force!) to get people to move from 'village life' to the towns/cities, because without enough food to feed towns and cities, said towns and cities simply won't exist!
This is really the main and most-important point -- more-backward countries can actually benefit from technological 'leapfrogging' where their lack of development allows them to be more nimble in adopting newer and better technologies.
It's really a double-edged sword here -- no, I don't think corporatist imperialism should be *welcomed*, but if it does happen / is happening, it can confer developmental benefits, as with state-led infrastructure projects.
Well, industrialization can't be dismissed wholesale, either, since strict traditionalism in all spheres should *certainly* not be recommended.
Technological improvements are not bound to historical blueprints, as you're suggesting -- newer techniques are available today and should be a part of what's under consideration.
Your perspective is a very historically oriented one -- contemporary realities give developed (Western) societies tremendous economies of scale to where factory-like techniques are applied to farming / agriculture to realize enormous productivity with a minimum of human labor.
Many non-Western societies are lacking this agricultural productivity and so too much of their labor is caught up in mere food production at the expense of potentially less-burdened and more-self-directed life possibilities.
Mugabe's land reform wasn't really well thought out or particularly revolutionary. The land was not given to the farm workers or members of the local community but groups who were supportive of the government. That of course meant that the new farmers didn't know the land or often even how to farm the crops appropriate for the soil. Nor were there any loans or training to help fix that. This of course led to a huge economic crisis, which was exacerbated by sanctions but was also caused in part by the way land reform was done. Some of the most fertile land too was taken by the wealthiest and most influential members of the Mugabe government. That, and it seems people within it are plundering the wealth generated from resource extraction (largely diamonds)
The "anti-imperialist" critique of regimes like that in Zimbabwe, aside from their general failure as revolutionaries, is that they are so ineffective that they make a poor challenge to Imperialist countries from abroad.
Socialist Party of Outer Space
Patronage / Stalinism.
