ZIMBABWE: Socialists confront Mugabe dictatorship
http://www.mail-archive.com/marxism%40lists.panix.com/msg25555.html
Mugabe `talks left, acts right'
Tafadzwa Choto, ISO Zimbabwe's national coordinator, urged activists
protesting at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Brisbane in
October not to be taken in by Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe's
“anti-imperialist” rhetoric. “Mugabe talks left but acts right”, she told
GLW.
“The West is now hostile to Mugabe because he can no longer guarantee the
profits for their capitalists. They were friends until 1996, because Mugabe
loyally implemented the World Bank's Economic Structural Adjustment Program.
In 1996, the workers started to rise up against ZANU-PF's IMF and World Bank
policies. That is when the friendship broke.
“ZANU-PF has grasped the significance of the anti-capitalist demonstrations
that have taken place in the West. So Mugabe is taking an `anti-imperialist'
stand and denouncing the IMF and World Bank. But in Zimbabwe, he doing
completely the opposite. He is privatising university services, his police
shoot striking workers, there are no medicines in the hospitals, he has
outlawed strikes.
“Today, he hammers the IMF and World Bank, but his ministers are attending
their meetings and promising to repay their loans. This anti-imperialist
rhetoric is believed by some people on the left, not only here in Zimbabwe
but also in other parts of the world. They see him as someone who is moving
in the right direction.
“They ask us, `Why are you supporting the Movement for Democratic Change
instead of supporting Mugabe and his government?'. They don't understand the
need to move with the workers. Mugabe doesn't have the support of the
workers anymore. ZANU-PF did not manage to win even one seat in the urban
areas in last year's election.
“We are going to send a statement to be read at the CHOGM demonstration
exposing the hypocrisy of Mugabe and exposing Mugabe for the dictator he is.
His government is a puppet of the IMF and the World Bank, which has caused
untold suffering to the Zimbabweans.”
Gwisai: `The time for toy internationals is over'
Gwisai: `The time for toy internationals is over'
Munyaradzi Gwisai, the Zimbabwe ISO's charismatic young MP, told Green Left
Weekly that new possibilities have opened up for the left internationally.
The collapse of the Stalinist movement, which discredited socialists in the
eyes of the working class, and the rise of the new anti-corporate movement,
symbolised by the Seattle demonstrations, have set the scene for “the
re-emergence of a credible left”.
“It is critical that we intervene in these struggles. The struggles in
Zimbabwe are at the cutting edge of these struggles in peripheral capitalist
societies.
“The challenge for the left in Zimbabwe and South Africa, the two leading
bourgeois states in southern Africa, and also internationally, is the
regroupment of the left.
“The tasks and possibilities — we are on the verge of an international
recession — require the left to provide alternative ideological leadership
for this movement. This means that revolutionary socialists have to begin to
work together. The time for `toy internationals' is over.
“That is why we think the Asia-Pacific International Solidarity Conference
is very important. We see that quite a number of revolutionaries from
different traditions will be coming together in Sydney next Easter. We are
fully behind this kind of thing and, indeed, we are beginning the same
interactions with left groups in the region, in particular South Africa.
“We think the left, regionally and internationally, has a big challenge to
get over the sectarianism of previous years, to link up with the new
movement and build through these sort of united fronts.”
-----Original Message-----
From: Ian Murray <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: Lbo-Talk@Lists. Panix. Com <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Wednesday, August 22, 2001 6:15 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:16213] Re: Zimbabwe
>[From down Rob Schaap's way..Michael Pugliese suggested...]
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>< http://www.greenleft.org.au/ >
>Gwisai: `The time for toy internationals is over'
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