{"id":4795,"date":"2023-10-19T11:45:52","date_gmt":"2023-10-19T09:45:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.org.za\/?p=4795"},"modified":"2023-10-19T11:47:38","modified_gmt":"2023-10-19T09:47:38","slug":"zimbabwean-elections-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/?p=4795","title":{"rendered":"Zimbabwean Elections 2023<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Weizmann Hamilton<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zanu-PF\u2019s blood-stained regime retains power<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the 23rd and 24th August 2023 elections for the president, legislators and councilors, Zimbabwean African National Union \u2013 Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) retained power continuing its 43- year-old reign since independence in 1980. The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) declared Zanu-PF\u2019s Mnangagwa, 80, the winner of the presidential poll with 52% of the vote. Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) leader Nelson Chamisa contesting for a 2nd time, secured 44%. Zanu-PF won 176 National Assembly seats (63%) against the CCC\u2019s 103 (37%).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The CCC\u2019s 44% is a 1% decline compared to that of the now effectively defunct MDC Alliance from which it split in January 2022. The opposition\u2019s total number of seats increased by 15 compared to the MDC Alliance\u2019s 88 in 2018. Despite his narrowed majority, Mnangagwa\u2019s dictatorship which began with Mugabe\u2019s 2017 ousting, remains in power. It is a thinly disguised military dictatorship masquerading as \u201cdemocratically elected\u201d – a \u201cgigantic fraud\u201d as Chamisa described them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Compared to previous elections, this year\u2019s was relatively peaceful. 107 lost their lives in 2002, 200 in 2008, and 6 during 2018. That \u201conly\u201d one person died in this election, is one too many. But the manner of CCC activist Tinashe Chitsunge\u2019s stoning to death,\u2019 by a Zanu-PF mob he was fleeing from, is indicative of the climate of terror Zanu-PF had sown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Opposition criminalized in pre-election crackdown<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The post-2018 election crackdown has targeted all forms of opposition, against political parties, trade unions and civil society activists, opposition leaders, journalists and activists for exposing allegations of corruption or organizing protests. The 2023 elections were prepared for by 5 years of brazen contempt for human rights, freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association. Health workers protesting poor working conditions and salaries have been criminalized. The state charged 22 people involved in the protests for attempting to \u201csubvert a constitutional government.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those targeted for arbitrary repeated arrest, abduction, torture and detention without trial include the Acting president of the Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors Association (ZHDA), Peter Magombey, Hopewell Chin\u2019ono, a prominent journalist, political activist Jacob Ngarivhume and Job Sikhala, MP and vice-chairperson of the CCC, who is approaching 500 days in prison after accusing Zanu-PF of killing CCC activist, Moreblessing. His doctor reported that he is seriously ill due to conditions in Africa\u2019s worst prison, Chikurubi. Others are political activist Jacob Ngarivhume, and Evans Mawarire, a well-known local cleric and trade union leader Peter Mutasa, facing treason charges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amnesty International documented 15 police killings in state violence against nationwide protests against fuel price hikes on 14 January. Mass arrests totaled nearly 400 by the end of April, with the court convicting most of them through hastily conducted trials. Police conducted house-to-house raids, and used lethal force including tear gas, batons, water cannons and live ammunition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Manipulation of elections<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rushed presidential inauguration was merely the final act in the blatant manipulation of the entire electoral process to ensure the \u201cright\u201d result. To start with the courts arbitrarily denied 15 CCC candidates registration. They also disqualified ex-cabinet minister, SA-based Saviour Kasukuwere from contesting for president for allegedly being out of Zimbabwe for over 18 months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of the official census counted 15m population, only 6.5m were registered to vote. Since 2018 1.5 million young people have reached voting age. But by April 2022, not even 63,000 had registered to vote. The Zimbabwean diaspora is estimated to number up to 6 million. No provision was made for voting abroad, effectively disenfranchising them. For the hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans in neighbouring countries, the vast majority in SA, this meant a costly journey and the risk of the loss of precarious jobs to go home to vote. Even then they were not guaranteed the right to vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Zanu-PF regime captured state institutions including the courts. State television provided biased coverage. The High Court rejected the CCC\u2019s application for the release of the updated voter\u2019s roll on the basis that it was not urgent. The government manipulated the constituency boundary delimitation process. The Zimbabwean Electoral Commission (ZEC) failed to deliver ballot papers to some polling stations. Some voters arrived to find their names absent from the constituency voters’ roll \u2013 the result of redrawn boundaries. Many whose names were on it, had been allocated to constituencies tens or hundreds of kilometres away from those they had registered to vote in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before the elections, the Criminal Law Codification and Reform Amendment Bill was passed. Referred to as the Patriotic Bill, it provides for punishment for \u201cwilfully injuring the sovereignty and national interest of Zimbabwe.\u201d Flavia Mangovya, Amnesty International\u2019s deputy regional director for East and southern Africa, said this law \u201cwould allow for the death penalty against those perceived as critical of the government.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before the elections, Zimbabwean authorities denied several foreign media houses clearance to cover the elections, including Voice of America, ARD of Germany and South Africa\u2019s Daily Maverick. As vote counting started, the government halted independent observation by local civil society organisations. Police raided the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) and Election Resource Centre data centres, arrested staff and accredited local observers, and confiscated laptops and cell phones. The government shut down the independent Parallel Vote Tabulation the ZESN had established which the ZEC and government had themselves used to corroborate the 2018 elections. Its intelligence agency claimed it had uncovered plans to \u201cillegally announce results.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several videos emerged of the FAZ (Forever Associates Zimbabwe) \u2014 a shadowy group linked to Zimbabwe\u2019s Central Intelligence Organisation – waiting outside polling stations conducting \u201cexit polls\u201d to know who voters had voted for. The FAZ coerced some people in rural constituencies into claiming they were illiterate and needed \u201cassistance\u201d to mark their ballots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Disaggregated results are not available. The ZEC claims it is not obliged to make them public despite this being international best practice. Ignoring calls to publish raw data on a polling station-by-polling station basis, the ZEC instead removed even the aggregated results from its website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In sharp contrast to the dancing in the streets that followed Mugabe\u2019s toppling in the coup that installed him as president in 2018, the outcome of these elections has been greeted with sullen resignation and a funereal silence in the streets. The liberation struggle veteran, Ibbo Mandaza, described these elections as the worst since independence. Zanu-PF has no mandate to govern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zanu-PF\u2019s blood stained history<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zanu-PF\u2019s blood-stained authoritarian reign thus continues. The crushing of the Joshua Nkomo-led Zimbabwe African Peoples Union (ZAPU) in the 1983-87 Gukurahundi genocide firmly cemented its rule. Mnangagwa\u2019s reign is built on the bones of an estimated 20 000 Ndebele people from Matebeleland in the south according to the International Association of Genocide Scholars. The barbaric extermination entailed the bayonetting of pregnant women, the dumping of bodies into empty wells and the incarceration, torture and murder of thousands in concentration camps. Disappearances have added many thousands more victims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mnangagwa was Minister of State Security under which the Central Intelligence Organisation fell. In preparation for the massacre, the CIO raided Zapu head office obtaining details of all key Zapu structures and personnel. The 5-year long genocide was carried out by the North Korean-trained 5th Brigade of the post-liberation Zimbabwe National Army.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOn March 5, 1983, at a rally in Victoria Falls, Mnangagwa delivered a threat, using language that would be echoed 11 years later by the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide. As The Chronicle reported at the time: \u201cLikening the dissidents to cockroaches and bugs, the minister said the bandit menace had reached such epidemic proportions that the government had to bring \u2018DDT\u2019 [pesticide] to get rid of the bandits.\u201d The \u201ccockroaches and bugs\u201d were ZAPU supporters and, \u201cmore generally, members of the Ndebele ethnic group.\u201d (Mail & Guardian 24 Nov 2017)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To mark the end of the genocide, Zanu and Zapu signed a Unity Accord. Zanu absorbed the political remains of the mainly Matabeleland based Zapu mocking Nkomo, his party and the Ndebele people by absorption and emasculation portrayed as a unity government named Zanu-PF (Patriotic Front).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ANC has maintained a cowardly silence over Zanu-PF\u2019s brutal attempt to eliminate its actual ally, ZAPU, in the Gukurahundi massacre. This ethnic cleansing has created a new national question today as bitter Ndebele resentment has sparked secessionist sentiments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

International Observer Missions Divided<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The election may have secured Zanu-PF another 5-years in office. However, this regime is seen as illegitimate, and is propped up by securocrats, leaving the international legitimacy it craves in doubt. So blatant was the manipulation of the elections that even institutions of imperialism which ordinarily lend legitimacy to outright dictatorships, were divided. Whilst the Commonwealth Observer Mission concluded that \u201cthe voting process was well conducted and peaceful,\u201d the EU and the US\u2019s Carter Centre, were much more forthright in declaring that they were not free and fair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The African Union observer mission, though compelled to note the problems, refrained from either endorsing or rejecting the outcome. Far more potentially diplomatically troubling for Zanu-PF is the divisions the election outcome has laid bare amongst the 16-member states of the Southern African Development Community (SADC).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Daily Maverick (25\/08\/23) reported: \u201cEven the historically cautious SADC Electoral Observation Mission (SEOM) couldn\u2019t ignore the flouting of regulations and SADC principles.\u201d Its preliminary report found that the FAZ compromised the rural vote by alleged intimidation. The SEOM found a lack of transparency around the voters\u2019 roll, the contentious delimitation report, skewed access to state media, manipulation of the judiciary and problematic legislation. \u201cThe SEOM\u2019s unprecedented report was scathing.\u201d It identified violations of the Zimbabwean constitution, Electoral Act and SADC\u2019s Principles and Guidelines for Democratic Elections.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zanu-PF and the government, confident that nothing would come of these public criticisms, pushed back defiantly, attacking the SEOM report and its team leader, former Zambian vice president Dr Nevers Mumba. Mumba reported being followed by shadowy figures even in Zambia. Others received similar treatment, including a personal attack on the EU observer mission head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania and South Africa congratulated Mnangagwa. Out of the 16 SADC heads of state, only 3 attended the presidential inauguration: SA\u2019s Ramaphosa, the Democratic Republic of Congo\u2019s Felix Tshisekedi, and Mozambique\u2019s Filipe Nyusi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ANC\u2019s Zimbabwe foreign policy \u2013 a sordid record of betrayal, hypocrisy and falsification of history<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whatever doubt capitalist government election observer missions may have cast in 2023\u2019s elections, the SADC with regional powerhouse SA in the forefront, has tacitly and actively colluded in enabling Zanu-PF to remain in power by fraud and violence since at least the 2000 presidential elections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The CCC parliamentary candidate for the Chipinge South constituency, Clifford Hlatshwayo, accused a Frelimo member identified as Magarabota of leading a gang terrorising his party\u2019s members. The Daily Maverick (23\/07\/2023) reported that a video went viral on social media showing Magarabota threatening that Mozambique would cut fuel supplies to Zimbabwe if inhabitants of that constituency, located near the Mozambican border, voted for the opposition. Frelimo said that businesspeople should strongly support Zanu-PF, or they will die.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SA\u2019s President Ramaphosa\u2019s defence of the outcome, in a cynical remark that there was \u201cnothing like a perfect election anywhere in the world,\u201d was unsurprising. Whereas many monitors including from SA were barred from the country, Mnangagwa, invited his \u201cbrother\u201d Ramaphosa\u2019s security adviser, Sydney Mufamadi, chair of SA-owned mine, Zimplats, to endorse the fraud in advance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like all foreign policy, SA\u2019s towards Zimbabwe is determined by calculations about the potential political ramifications at home. Constructed on the lie that the ANC\/Zanu-PF\u2019s alliance had been forged in the \u201ctrenches of the liberation struggle,\u201d the ANC has slandered any challenge to Zanu-PF as a Western imperialist \u201cregime change\u201d conspiracy. ANC secretary general Fikile Mbalula denounced the CCC as the West\u2019s puppets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ANC\u2019s betrayals led to the re-writing of history. It was not the Chinese supported Zanu the ANC allied with but fellow Soviet-supported Zapu and their military wings \u2013 the Zimbabwe Peoples Revolutionary Army (Zipra) and Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK). MK and Zipra declared a formal alliance on 18 August 1967, fought together and lost combatants in the Wankie campaign that year. In response to apartheid SA\u2019s threats over MK\u2019s presence in the Zipra base near the Beit Bridge border, Mugabe ordered MK\u2019s evacuation. Zipra provided MK with protection, spirting some cadres to Zambia and keeping others underground in Bulawayo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ANC hostility towards Movement for Democratic Change<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The MDC\u2019s birth was sparked by the opposition to the disastrous impact on working-class living standards, collapsing social services, high inflation and interest rates, mass unemployment, deepening poverty and corruption, that Zanu-PF\u2019s adoption of the neo-liberal economic, structural adjustment programme (ESAP) led to in 1991. Between 1995 and 1999, the biggest strike wave in the country\u2019s pre- and post-independence history, including a national general strike in 1997, saw workers draw in students and moved rapidly onto the political plane. It birthed the MDC in 1999, led by former Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions secretary general, Morgan Tsvangirai.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In February 2000, the MDC inflicted on Zanu-PF its first-ever defeat in a constitutional referendum. Zanu-PF\u2019s \u201cland reform\u201d proposals to allow government to confiscate white farmers\u2019 land without compensation was a cynical attempt to compensate for the erosion of its urban base with radical posturing towards the rural population. Whilst nearly 250 000 small black farmers received land, Zanu-PF cronies, the military top brass and judges, benefitted from corrupt acquisitions. An estimated 300 000 farm workers and 2-300,000 casual labourers destitute without income or food. Within the framework of Zanu-PF\u2019s neo-liberal macro-economic policies, the benefits to the small black farmers were only temporary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today\u2019s economic disaster vindicated the voters\u2019 distrust. Court papers from Mugabe\u2019s daughter\u2019s recent divorce from her millionaire husband revealed the Mugabes are the country\u2019s biggest landowners. Mugabe\u2019s radical land reform pretensions concealed Zanu-PF\u2019s real aims \u2013 self-enrichment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having imposed SA\u2019s own ESAP, the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy in 1996, Mbeki feared the Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) could emulate the workers\u2019 revolt in Zimbabwe and break from its Tripartite Alliance with the SA Communist Party. For this reason, the ANC was hostile towards the MDC from the onset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most infamous cover-up was that of the 2002 presidential elections Mbeki had been pressured into inquiring into. They took place after Zanu-PF had secured a narrow majority over the 16-month old MDC in the June 2000 elections in a campaign marked by violence that claimed the lives of 30 and over 6 000 were injured. With the additional insurance of presidential powers to appoint 30 MPs, the MDC was never going to be allowed to turn the referendum victory into electoral success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The High Court Judges Sisi Khampempe and Dikgang Moseneke found that the elections had been fraudulent. Mbeki, interim president Kgalema Motlanthe, and Jacob Zuma suppressed their report. It became public 12 years later by a Constitutional Court order following a legal challenge by the Mail & Guardian in 2014. Mbeki was to also ignore a report presented to the ANC NEC by SA National Defence Force generals over the violence around the 2008 presidential elections. Just as Ramaphosa did for Mnangagwa, Mbeki rushed to Mugabe\u2019s midnight inauguration, accompanying him on a flight to an African Union meeting in Cairo immediately afterwards. After the 2000 elections cover-up, the ANC government maintained its so-called \u201csilent diplomacy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Economic Crisis<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zimbabwe\u2019s economy is in free fall. Inflation was at 77% in August, interest rates more than 150% and the currency rapidly devaluing with foreign exchange shortages. The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions puts unemployment north of 70%, far higher than the state agency ZimStat\u2019s 46.7% on the expanded definition \u2013 ie including those who have given up looking for work. ZimStats, like other state institutions have been re-purposed to portray a Zimbabwe completely at odds with reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Between 2009 and 2019, Zimbabwe\u2019s economy was dollarised after hyperinflation led the government to print trillion-Zimbabwe-dollar notes before abandoning its currency. Several attempts to change monetary policy, through switching the official currency from the Zim dollar to the Rand, to the US dollar, a special currency, bond notes declared to have parity with the US$ and multiple currencies, have failed to stem hyper-inflation and prevent the currency\u2019s collapse to the pitiful levels it has plunged. Once second only to SA in economic development and the region\u2019s breadbasket, with health and education the subcontinent\u2019s envy, Zimbabwe is now deindustrialising.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zimbabwe boasts resources of 40 precious minerals. But the economy has been pillaged through illicit financial flows and corporate tax incentives. According to Home Affairs Minister, Kazembe, Zimbabwe is losing $100-million dollars monthly through gold smuggling as revealed in an Al Jazeera expose. Annually, this adds up to $1.2bn, roughly equal to Zimbabwe\u2019s total gold export earnings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today Zimbabwean graduates are working as car guards in neighbouring SA, exploited as cheap labour especially in the hospitality sector. As the Zimbabwe health system collapses, pregnant mothers crossing the Limpopo River for treatment in SA are insulted with accusations of draining social services with demands for upfront payment at public health facilities. To add further insult to injury, the ANC government\u2019s officially sanctioned xenophobia has resulted in pressure for the repudiation of the Zimbabwe Exemptions Permit that provided refuge to 180 000 citizens of its claimed \u201ccomrades-in-arms\u201d as the economy collapsed under Mugabe. The ANC government is now more or less openly planning mass deportations. Ramaphosa met his \u201celder\u201d at the Limpopo River to \u201clearn from him\u201d as SA\u2019s new Border Management Authority began operations to curb migration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The SEOM and EU refusal to endorse the election outcome is unprecedented. But in the final analysis, these amount to no more than a public rebuke, a rap over the knuckles with a feather duster by the European capitalist class and their SADC counterparts. The purpose of SADC institutions like the so-called Troika Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation, is to defend all the corrupt, dictatorial regimes across southern Africa from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Frontline States against colonialism and white minority rule have become a frontline of corrupt capitalist regimes coordinating an offensive against the working class and on democracy itself. All of them are wracked by economic, social and political crises that have completely drained away the political capital of the liberation struggle. So alienated have the masses become that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. The reactionary US, China and apartheid SA \u2013 sponsored UNITA is threatening the MPLA\u2019s
    grip on power In Angola.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. The apartheid sponsored counter revolutionary Renamo has been resuscitated in
    Mozambique. Frelimo\u2019s collusion with French imperialism\u2019s Total in plundering the
    country\u2019s Indian Ocean gas reserves has sparked an Islamic insurgency.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. SWAPO is rocking under the so-called Fish Rot scandal as minister and senior officials face
    charges over kickbacks from Icelandic Company, Samherj, plundering the fishing industry
    which earns 20% of Namibia\u2019s export earnings. President Geingob also assisted Ramaphosa
    to cover up his own Phala Phala corruption scandal.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    The Daily Maverick (07\/02\/2023) revealed eye-watering details of the extent to which Mnangagwa\u2019s regime has consolidated ties with oligarchs from across the world since the 2018 coup. It lists the top 15, from Belarus, Nigeria, South Africa and white Zimbabweans. Chinese oligarchs are exploiting \u201cliberation struggle\u201d historical relations to collude with the army in plundering the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Doubts over the legitimacy of the elections will be on the agenda at the Extraordinary Organ Troika Summit of Heads of State and Government in Namibia on 31 January, 2024. Having done nothing about the recent sham eSwatini elections where King Mswati has not even put up democratic pretences, maintained a ban on opposition parties, nothing can be expected. Ibbo Mandaza suggests impeccable sources claim Mnangagwa sent envoys to Chamisa proposing a postponement of the elections and creation of a two-year transitional government of national unity (GNU). Confident of victory, Chamisa rejected it. The wealthy Mandaza is circulating a petition calling for a transitional authority. He suggests that Mnangagwa, mindful of Mugabe\u2019s 2018 fate, is concerned the army, has not returned to barracks after ousting Mugabe and is still de facto in power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    After the elections, what way forward for the working class?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The Zimbabwean masses can place no reliance on any force other than their own to free them from the tyranny of a regime remaining in power through an electoral coup. A \u201cGNU\u201d is a capitalist coalition that was tried and failed before. In 2009 the MDC\u2019s Morgan Tsivangirai was installed as Prime Minister. Far from \u201csharing power\u201d it was a forced marriage aimed to absorb an already split MDC into a supersized Zanu-PF. It was a 2nd edition of the Patriotic Front in 1988 used to turn Zapu into Zanu\u2019s political accomplices in the oppression and exploitation of the working class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The CCC is completely and utterly incapable of providing a way forward. The most important lesson
    from the MDC experience is that it had no clear socialist programme. Though born out of the workers struggle and led by both the president and general secretaries of the ZCTU, they had no policy of class independence, and fell into the trap of class collaboration with factions of the ruling capitalist class from the onset.<\/strong> Indistinguishable from Zanu-PF on the fundamental question of capitalism and enjoying Western support, it did not oppose Zanu-PF from the left. The MDC was thus incapable defending itself against the pro-capitalist Zanu-PF\u2019s hypocritical accusation that it was a puppet of imperialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The CCC is a caricature of the MDC. It is merely the more successful of the power mongers amongst the MDC split-offs fighting over its political carcass. Apart from being pro-capitalist, the CCC is deeply undemocratic, has no elective structures and is run by Chamisa\u2019s inner circle. It is facing an implosion since the election. Having arbitrarily disqualified 15 candidates before the elections, the general secretary withdrew 15 CCC MPs from parliament after the election for allegedly challenging Chamisa\u2019s leadership. Accusing him of colluding with Zanu-PF, they protested against their own party leadership in parliament. The Zanu-PF speaker had previously suspended CCC MPs for boycotting the presidential inauguration. This time she called in riot police, suspended them again and docked them 2 weeks\u2019 pay and benefit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The CCC has now followed its withdrawal of its planned Constitutional Court challenge by \u201cdisengaging\u201d from parliament for two weeks in protest against the speaker\u2019s actions, threatening to withdraw permanently. It now is appealing to the SADC. The ANC\u2019s Mbalula has already made it abundantly clear that fresh elections are ruled out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The CCC vote was not so much a vote for it, as it was, in the absence of an alternative, against Zanu-PF. Another 9 parties contested. All except one, the National Peoples Congress with 1.2%, received less than 1%. The Zimbabwean Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) announced it would contest in November 2022. In June 2023 it announced support for Mnangagwa. Rather than demanding Zimbabweans be allowed to vote in SA, the EFF\u2019s Julius Malema fuelled xenophobic flames, offering busses go and vote for their oppressors as the EFF there advised instead of \u201cloitering in SA\u2019s streets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In a valiant effort to oust Zanu-PF the working class united electorally behind the CCC. Despite the economic catastrophe and repression, the working class\u2019 willingness to struggle remain unextinguished as the fuel price hike protests, teachers, health workers and doctors\u2019 strikes show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The repression and the economic catastrophe may have weakened the Zimbabwean working class, but it retains its potential power. Moreover, it has a magnificent tradition of struggle as shown by the mid-1990s strike wave that moved rapidly onto the political plane and birthed the MDC out of the trade unions. The MDC leadership\u2019s political bankruptcy led to it adopting a pro-capitalist policy. The MDC was sunk by corruption in municipalities it controlled and subsequently split into several fragments. The CCC, led by former presidential candidate, pastor and lawyer Chamisa, was formed after a court battle that split the MDC Alliance further from the original MDC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The Zimbabwean working class must learn the lesson that the common thread running through the experience of Zanu-PF, the MDC, its splinters and the CCC is that they are all pro-capitalist. Zanu-PF\u2019s adoption of the neo-liberal ESAP in 1990 did not spring from a clear blue sky. Despite the fiery socialist and anti-imperialist post-independence rhetoric, ZANU jettisoned socialism in practice. It suppressed strikes by e.g Wankie colliery workers believing their \u201cliberators\u201d would welcome and support. ESAP is a more brutal continuation of the failed post-independence capitalist policies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    As Patrick Bond points out in \u201cUneven Zimbabwe,\u201d after independence \u201cUS AID (1982), soon expressed satisfaction that \u201cThe Government of Zimbabwe\u2019s \u2026 generally pragmatic, free-market approach\u2026 has the full support of the US AID.\u201d \u2026 TA Holdings, Lonrho, and Anglo American, seem to be impressed and satisfied\u2026 The view from inside a large US bank in 1982 was also one of reassurance: I feel it is a political pattern that Mugabe gives radical, anti-business speeches before government makes major pro-business decisions or announcements (cited in Hanlon, 1988).<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u201c\u2026 a ZANU leftist, Lazarus Nzareybani, Member of Parliament from Mutare, agreed: The socialist agenda has been adjourned indefinitely. You don\u2019t talk about socialism in a party that is led by people who own large tracts of land and employ a lot of cheap labour. When the freedom fighters were fighting in the bush, they were fighting not to disturb the system but to dismantle it. And what are we seeing now? Leaders are busy implementing those things which we were fighting against (Sunday Mail, 10\/12\/89).\u201d<\/strong> (emphasis added)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    For all Mugabe\u2019s Marxist pretensions, Zanu-PF\u2019s political policy, like SWAPO\u2019s, Frelimo\u2019s and the ANC\/SACP\u2019s, was based on the bankrupt Stalinist two-stage theory \u2013 the indefinite postponement of the socialist revolution, the preservation of capitalism and the perpetuation of the slavery of the working class under a bourgeois parliamentary democracy. Despite the rivalries of the Soviet and Chinese bureaucracies and the antagonism of both to US imperialism, their foreign policy interests converged on the maintenance of the economic dictatorship of the capitalist class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Across the subcontinent all the former liberation movements went further, adopting the neo-liberal capitalist policies imperialism demanded during their intervention in southern Africa in the 80s and 90s. The ANC in fact used Zimbabwe as a guinea pig for its own future betrayals. It exerted pressure on Mugabe to postpone land reform at Lancaster to reassure imperialism that capitalism would be safe in its hands. Zanu PF took 10 years to go on its neo-liberal ESAP offensive against the working class; the ANC adopted Gear more or less immediately \u2013 2 years after taking power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The Marxist Workers Tendency of the ANC, forerunners of the MWP, foreseeing all these developments, established a section of the CWI in Zimbabwe after independence. It campaigned for the adoption of socialism in the engineering workers union and amongst youth. The full analysis is available in Inqaba Ya Basebenzi Issue 10 Zimbabwe: Perspectives and Reports available on the MWP website. The Mugabe regime arrested the South African exiles in the Zimbabwean CWI, including a child. The CWI\u2019s Militant Tendency, forerunners of the Socialist Party of England and Wales, secured their release after a campaign at a time of illusions in Zanu-PF in the international left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The Zimbabwean working class must unite their struggles in the workplace and the political plane through the establishment of a mass socialist workers party. The links forged during the liberation struggles which had inspired the masses and reinforced the struggle in each country, must be reestablished this time against the former liberation movement now uniting united in keeping the working class under the subjugation of the capitalist classes they serve. It was fear of the potential power of cross-border internationalist working class unity that led the ANC to remain silent over its \u201cliberation struggle\u201d alliance partner, Zanu-PF\u2019s repeated deportations and bannings of its Tripartite Alliance partner, Cosatu\u2019s delegations\u2019 efforts to meet their ZCTU comrades in 2004, 2005 and 2009.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The Southern African working class in each country must consciously revive these traditions, drawing the working class in the diaspora into their own struggles and in turn support struggles in Zimbabwe. To cut across the xenophobia instigated by the political elites and thwart bosses using Zimbabwean workers as cheap labour, unions must organise them. In SA implementation of the SA Federation of Trade Unions-led 2018 Working Class Summit declaration to form a mass socialist workers party must urgently resume below the paralysed Saftu leadership. Internationalist working-class solidarity must be re-forged on a programme to establish mass workers\u2019 parties on a socialist programme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    For a socialist federation of southern African states as a step towards a socialist Africa and a socialist world.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    By Weizmann Hamilton Zanu-PF\u2019s blood-stained regime retains power After the 23rd and 24th August 2023 elections for the president, legislators and councilors, Zimbabwean African National […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4799,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comment"],"aioseo_notices":[],"acf":[],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4795"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4801,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4795\/revisions\/4801"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}