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Arabica Robusta

Pan-Africanists: Our collective duty to Zimbabwe - 0 views

www.pambazuka.org/...48919

zimbabwe Mugabe government transition oppression progressive panafrican pambazuka international development horacecampbell kwayana

shared by Arabica Robusta on 21 Feb 11 - Cached
  • ZIMBABWE AND THE QUESTION OF IMPERIALISM First, there should be an attempt to clear the landscape of certain obstacles. Zimbabwe was in growing trouble before the sanctions imposed by the governments of Britain and the United States. Still, the attempt to bully a small country’s ruler who was in turn bullying his compatriots draped Robert Mugabe in the role of a hero against imperialism. The attempt encouraged a blundering ruler to stay on course. The ZANU-PF forces and sympathizers have blamed the disastrous economic situation on the sanctions. Yet, the political leaders have accumulated wealth in such a conspicuous manner that their consumption of luxury goods stands out in a country where more than 80 per cent of the eligible workers are unemployed. Millions more Zimbabweans have been rendered as economic refugees in Africa and beyond.
  • Zimbabwe‘s situation has some striking parallels with that of the recent history of Guyana in the Caribbean, where rivalry between anti-colonial forces started long before independence and was only draped in flags at the moment of Uhuru, without serious attempts at a deep resolution of the difficulties. Once in power the Burnham regime did nothing to resolve the ethnic conflict but superimposed on it a parliamentary dictatorship.
  • In 1987 the fusion of ZANU with the Patriotic Front led by Joshua Nkomo was done in such a way that the post-colonial world knew little about it, except that it led to the virtual silencing of the section of the liberation front that had been led by Joshua Nkomo.
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  • Of late the western media and certain forces within the United Nations have been reporting the possibility of talks of power sharing, and the arrangement of some form of a transitional authority. While the spirit of these discussions may be guided by the search for social peace, it is urgent that these discussions between the various elements are not carried out behind the backs of the people and do nothing to undermine the political will of the people. But above all there must be an engagement by all to ensure that the elections and its aftermath does not deteriorate into the kind of violence and destruction that was witnessed in Kenya after the elections of December 27, 2007. At all costs, war must be avoided. The present leadership cannot expect to be supported when it terrorizes its own people and unleashes the very same Rhodesian military apparatus (the Joint Operation Command) against the opposition and unarmed civilians.
  • President Robert Mugabe has been a heroic figure in the continent of Africa, the Diaspora, among African observers and well-wishers. And he would have remained so, if the Pan African world had assisted Zimbabweans with friendly criticism of the government when the flaws began to show. Instead, the whole movement and the international left, including us, remained silent, some longer than others, hoping that such a well-resourced government would correct its own shortcomings. Earlier we had special cause to be partisan to Robert Mugabe, who had extended solidarity to our colleague Walter Rodney when he was being persecuted by the Guyana government.
  • We want to go on record in saying that neither the government of Britain nor the government of the United States has the moral authority to oppose the present government of Zimbabwe. Imperialists and neo- conservatives have their own agenda when imposing sanctions and we are against sanctions in Zimbabwe. Progressive Pan Africanists must remain vigilant so that brutal oppression of the Zimbabwean peoples is not countenanced in the name of anti-imperialism.
  • Robert Mugabe and the ZANU-PF may be against imperialism but this group is not against capitalism or the looting of the assets of the society.
  • Those who support the working peoples of Zimbabwe must insist on transparency in dealing with transnational corporations and the integrity of the ruling personnel in their day-to-day activities. This call for accountability is especially important in so far as though we are opposed to the threat of war coming from ZANU PF we are not encouraged by the policies and posture of the leadership of the MDC. These elements have displayed an amazing level of intellectual subservience to the West and to the ideas of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Zimbabwe needs leaders who place the interest of the working people first. It is proper that all progressives support the Stolen Assets Recovery Initiative of the United Nations so that corrupt leaders cannot stash away funds when the people suffer.
  • Experiences in Guyana, in Kenya and in Zimbabwe have taught us that it is a mistake to adopt western standards of victory as our own. Victory for us must mean reconciliation of divided populations. This in each case may best be approached through widespread national conversation spelling out its purpose. Reconciliation will fail utterly if it is imposed; or allows free rein to corruption, militarism or if it ignores the choices of the people in valid elections.
  • Arabica Robusta on 21 Feb 11
     
    Victory for us must mean reconciliation of divided populations. Reconciliation will fail utterly if it is imposed; or allows free rein to corruption, militarism or if it ignores the choices of the people in valid elections. We have responsibility as progressives and Pan-Africanists to Zimbabwe.
Arabica Robusta

concernedafricascholars.org » Zimbabwe Ten Years On: Results and Prospects - 0 views

concernedafricascholars.org/...moyo-yeros

agriculture international development agribusiness crisis food security foodsecurity pambazuka zimbabwe mugabe patrickbond horacecampbell

shared by Arabica Robusta on 21 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • Western governments and associated think-tanks began to test publicly the idea of intervening militarily in a small peripheral country and ex-colony, this time under the pretext of the “right to protect” Zimbabweans from a crazed tyrant.
  • Mamdani’s article set out from a simple premise: that Zimbabwe’s deeply unequal and racialized agrarian relations were historically unjust and unsustainable. Restating this premise was significant, because during the course of the crisis the foundation of the debate kept shifting to other issues, such as good governance, productivity, or even historiography. Mamdani went on to argue that the radical land reform of recent years has had various casualties, including the rule of law, farmworkers, urban land occupiers, and agricultural production. But even so, he argued, the land reform has been historically progressive and is likely to be remembered as the culmination of the anti-colonial struggle in Zimbabwe.
  • Even scholars on the Left, such as Patrick Bond and Horace Campbell, joined in to dismiss the threat of external intervention as mere Mugabe rhetoric and to dispute really existing imperialism in the country. Despite their evident ideological heterogeneity, they converged instantly around a shared focus on personalities rather than the issues and resorted also to underhanded methods of argumentation (as noted by David Johnson).
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  • when the deep antagonisms of this society escalated, civic organizations and ordinary citizens were faced with a confounding dilemma: either to tolerate the suspension of the rule of law and go for a historic breakthrough; or defend the rule of law and defend perpetual inequalities and backwardness. In our case, we defended the land reform not because we are “undemocratic,” but because we believe in a deeper form of democracy, one that can only be set on a more meaningful and stable footing by structural changes. Despite the casualties identified by Mamdani, the land reform has indeed created the social and economic foundation for a more meaningful democratization.
  • There is need now to address the deficiencies of the land reform process, to rebuild the hard-won democratic institutions, and to lay the seeds for the next phase of the national democratic revolution.
  • land reform was not “hijacked” by “cronies”; although cronyism has indeed operated, it has been marginal to the whole process. The land reform has been broad-based and largely egalitarian. It has benefited directly 140,000 families, mainly among the rural poor, but also among their urban counterparts, who on average have acquired 20 hectares of land, constituting 70% of the land acquired.
  • Moreover, various new dynamics are underway in the countryside in terms of labor mobilization, investment in infrastructure, new small industries, new commodity chains, and the formation of cooperatives. And despite the adverse economic conditions, land utilization levels have already surpassed the 40% mark that prevailed on white farms after a whole century of state subsidies and racial privilege. That the crop yields remain low is largely due to input shortages, not the lack of entrepreneurial spirit or expertise by the new farmers, as is so often claimed. The new agrarian structure in Zimbabwe now holds out the promise of obtaining food sovereignty (which it had never obtained before), creating new domestic inter-sectoral linkages, and formulating a new model of agro-industrial development with organized peasants in the forefront.
  • Needless to say, a number of scholars have never recognized this potential. On the contrary, they continue to speculate about “crony capitalism” (Patrick Bond) and the “destruction of the agriculture sector” (Horace Campbell), without having conducted any concrete research of their own, or properly interrogated the new research that has emerged.
  • The most serious contradiction of the whole process has been the shrinking of political space, especially for progressive social forces. The state apparatus has continued to resort to brute force, long after the land reform.
  • It became very clear to us, as the rural and urban land movements dissipated or succumbed, that neither political party was capable of advancing the national democratic revolution to the next phase: if the opposition was a lost cause from the beginning, the ruling party had suffered a terminal class shift. We suggested that the only way forward was for social movements themselves to take the initiative, but not by contesting the control of the state apparatus.
  • We called for a retreat from dogmatic party politics and a return to grassroots political work, with the objective of building durable and democratic structures in the countryside, especially cooperatives, building alliances with urban workers, and beginning once again to change the correlation of forces (Moyo and Yeros 2007a).
  • Horace Campbell and Patrick Bond, especially, have gone to great lengths to say that there are no sanctions on Zimbabwe and that the economic decline is wholly self-inflicted. Indeed, they have given the impression that imperialism has suddenly been suspended in the case of Zimbabwe. Scarnecchia, et.al. have gone even further to call Mamdani “dishonest” for attributing blame to sanctions. This absurd chorus became complete when supposed ideological adversaries claimed that the West is actually saving Zimbabwe: “USAID was prolific in sending out its food support,” says Bond; “Western food aid has been a lifeline,” say Scarnecchia, et al.
  • the USA tried to re-establish its military presence in the region, initially in Zimbabwe, and partially succeeded by building an air strip in Botswana. It should have been expected, therefore, that relations would heat up in the late 1990s, when Zimbabwe abandoned structural adjustment in 1996, initiated extensive compulsory land acquisition in 1997, mobilized Angola and Namibia in 1998 to intervene against the US-sponsored invasion of the DRC by Rwanda and Uganda, and finally turned on its neo-colonial constitution in 2000. This was a major shift in the correlation of forces. Did the West really turn the other cheek at this point, as Campbell and Bond seem to suggest?
  • However, we must be clear that none of this is a problem of “patrimonialism”, as our detractors claim — a problem which could be eradicated by “regime change.” The insufficiency and incoherence of economic policy is a reflection of the changing balance of class forces in the country and the weakness of urban and rural working-class organizations themselves. Regime change will not change this fact.
  • peasant production should be made the pillar of the economic recovery, through subsidized inputs, fair prices, and secure tenure (which does not mean freehold).
  • food sovereignty
  • resolution of the farmworker question, an underclass of “cheap labor,”
  • trade and industrial policy should be reformulated to secure the recovery of strategic industries and their re-orientation to wage goods and to the technical upgrading of agriculture.
  • mining sector must also be guarded closely
  • Of course, many have argued that the removal of Robert Mugabe and his replacement by Morgan Tsvangirai is the precondition for the re-opening of political space and “effective” economic policy. But Mugabe’s removal would by no means guarantee the re-opening of political space, given that the opposition has been consistently clear about its support for an extroverted recovery program, which in turn could only be implemented on the back of a new round of political repression.
  • “The MDC and most in civil society have formally opposed Western-style sanctions,” declares Bond. But they never put up a fight, and this is because their main electoral strategy has always been to drive the economy into the ground, not to organize the working class on a working-class platform. “Zimbabweans who want transformation must oppose the neo-liberal forces within the MDC,” Campbell tells us. But who are these opposing forces within the MDC? And why should we expect them to bite the hand that feeds them? And if they did so, why should we expect them to be spared of a new round of destabilization? For us, the task remains for social forces, including the trade unions and farmers’ organizations, to step back from their political party alliances and resist a return to an elite pact and IMF tutelage.
    • Arabica Robusta
      Arabica Robusta on 21 Feb 11
       
      Authors mis-read Campbell.  My reading is that Campbell is calling for opposition to the neo-liberal forces THAT ARE within MDC, not opposition to the neo-liberal forces FROM WITHIN the MDC.
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - Beyond the privatisation of liberation - 0 views

www.pambazuka.org/...73591

development africa international industry news governance pambazuka world bank privatization horacecampbell

shared by Arabica Robusta on 31 May 11 - No Cached
  • In Zimbabwe, the integration of former freedom fighters into the circuits of the Rhodesian state found a new path. After integrating former freedom fighters into the civil service, into the university, into the army, into the police and into the wider bureaucracy, the freedom fighters wanted the land of the settlers. They turned to the language of third liberation to seize the land of the white farmers. What would have been a righteous act of reversing the theft of land from African workers and peasants became one more vehicle for the liberation fighters to become private capitalists. The conditions of the workers on the land did not change as the state became more repressive and intolerant of the wider society. Repression and the privatisation of liberation went hand in glove in Zimbabwe.
    • Arabica Robusta
      Arabica Robusta on 31 May 11
       
      Mugabe as private capitalist.
  • in Mozambique the structures of the popular organs such as the women, youth, workers and peasants were weakened. International and western non-governmental organisations invaded the rural communities while the working people were denied the basic democratic rights for collective bargaining and industrial democracy.
  • Jonas Savimbi had fought tenaciously to be the standard bearer for Western capitalism in Angola. However, very early on the MPLA (People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola – Labour Party) accepted the IMF (International Monetary Fund) terms and conditions for neoliberal capitalism.
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  • The MPLA leadership built relations with China to widen their bargaining position with international capital. However, this outreach to China and Brazil did not affect the privatisation process. In fact, Chinese private entities such as the Chinese Investment Fund strengthened the capitalist element of the party by importing conditions of labour relations that denied rights to Angolan and Chinese workers.
  • Liberation had become a business and the victories of the people were being distorted for the wealth and power of the ruling families.
  • Jacob Zuma has demeaned the meaning of links to the ancestors by invoking the ancestral spirits on the side of capitalist accumulation.
  • Within the church, the schools, universities, the old media and other intellectual and ideological institutions the struggles intensified but the white capitalists understood that the black capitalists supported the idea of the superiority of the capitalist mode of production. In essence, these blacks supported ideas of racial hierarchy and sent their children to schools that practised overt racial discrimination. So bold had the whites become that at one of the premier universities, the University of Cape Town, it was decided that there was no need to teach African studies.
  • In this political wasteland, Robert Mugabe appeared attractive and earned massive applause when he visited South Africa.
    • Arabica Robusta
      Arabica Robusta on 31 May 11
       
      If Mugabe follows this same neoliberal capitalist course, why is he so scorned by Britain, the U.S., etc.?
  • Throughout Africa it is imperative that education for transformation support the calls for social transformation. Private property cannot be nationalised with the same mindset that supports the crude consumption of the black capitalists in gated communities. These capitalists manipulate the workers of South Africa on the basis of racial and ethnic identification, and more significantly, these capitalists promote xenophobia to discriminate against other African workers who believe in the concept of Africa for the Africans.
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