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By Chris Talbot 12 April 2000 Use this version to print

Five people have been killed and several seriously injured in clashes, as supporters of the ruling ZANU-PF party stepped up their occupations of white-owned farms in Zimbabwe. Violence has escalated in the past two weeks, since ZANU-PF supporters wielding clubs and iron bars attacked a march through the capital Harare organised by the oppositionNational Constitutional Assembly (NCA). The NCA—a coalition ofpoliticians, church groups, academics and others opposed to theZANU-PF regime—is dominated by the Movement for DemocraticChange (MDC).

Much of the recent violence has centred on white-owned farms belongingto leading MDC members. The attack on last weekend's march alsosingled out whites. ZANU-PF has pushed the land issue to the fore in therun-up to parliamentary elections scheduled for next month, and regardsthe promise of land reform as a means of winning back lost supportamongst Zimbabwe's rural masses. The farm occupations began at theend of February, after the defeat of ZANU-PF in a referendum on a newconstitution, which sought to strengthen Robert Mugabe's grip on thepresidency by allowing him to stand for another two terms. AlthoughMugabe had added a clause empowering the government to seize landheld by white farmers and demanding that the British government paycompensation, this failed to convince voters to support the referendum.

Over half the land in Zimbabwe, more than 45 million acres, is owned bya mere 3 percent of the population, predominantly whites. About 4,000white-owned farms take up 70 percent of the prime farming land, whilethe majority black population are left with areas of low fertility. This grossinequality is a legacy of the colonial period, when white settlers underCecil Rhodes seized the country and took the best land for themselves.Further dispossessions took place after the Second World War whendemobilised British officers were encouraged to settle in what was thencalled Rhodesia.

Mugabe could not convince the rural masses that he was serious aboutland reform because he has lived with this situation for 20 years. Havingfought an armed struggle against British-backed white minoritygovernments since the 1960s, Mugabe came to power in 1980, claimingto be a Marxist. His ZANU-PF government immediately ended allpretensions to socialism, declaring that it would "accept the capitalistbase of the Rhodesian economy with 'modifications in a gradual way'without seizure of private property or blanket nationalisation."

The Lancaster House agreement, the deal with Britain establishingZimbabwe as an independent country, allowed for the Hararegovernment to acquire land from white farmers only on the "willingseller/willing buyer" principle for the first 10 years after independence.This provision was little used because Mugabe did not want to threatenthe profitability of the white-owned tobacco farms that are one ofZimbabwe's main export earners.

Recently, the state redistributed about 270 farms formerly owned bywhites, but these did not go to the rural poor. They were given to just400 people, all leading ZANU-PF figures, who include the attorneygeneral, the mines and tourism minister, the speaker of parliament, twohigh court judges and a retired general. When poor black farmersattempted to occupy three farms over a year ago, Mugabe's governmentsent riot police to drive them out.

Mugabe has raised the issue of land redistribution too late to winspontaneous approval and so has resorted to strong-arm tactics.Although it is claimed that veterans of the war against the white regimehave carried out the farm occupations, only an estimated 15 percent areactual veterans. Most of the occupiers are unemployed youth whomZANU-PF pays Z$50 (83p) a day. Mugabe recently gave the warveterans' £330,000 to finance their campaign.

Economic and social crisis

ZANU-PF ministers have blamed their referendum defeat on the MDCand claim that white farmers forced their workers to vote against the newconstitution. But the widespread nature of the opposition to Mugabe canhardly be explained by the existence of wealthy white farmers, who untilthe last two or three years enjoyed the support of Mugabe's rule andprofited from it. The real causes lie in the economic crisis that is engulfingZimbabwe, driving the mass of the population into poverty, as well as thesocial changes that have taken place since independence, underminingZANU-PF's rural base of support. Scratching a pittance on a small farmholds few attractions for youth that have flocked to the towns looking forwork, where they have tended to lose their tribal allegiances and begunto identify with other workers.

In 1991 Mugabe called in the IMF, and the Zimbabwean governmentaccepted a structural adjustment programme to deal with their debt.Although the country had a budget deficit, it did not have anunsustainable foreign debt like many other sub-Saharan Africancountries. The private sector economy grew in the first half of the 90s,particularly in manufacturing, reaching a peak GDP growth of 7.3 percentin 1996. However, government earnings fell and government debtactually increased as the result of cutting taxes and giving tax breaks tobusiness, as the IMF prescribed.

From 1997 onwards loss of export earnings from agriculture and miningplunged the economy into a sharp decline. In just over a year, the valueof the Zimbabwean dollar fell against the American dollar from Z$11 tojust over Z$38. Inflation increased from 19 percent in 1997 to over 60percent in 1999.

Forced to go to the IMF again in order to pay their foreign creditors, theZimbabwean government was faced with impossible terms. The IMFdemanded that 14,000 public sector jobs must go, that there should befurther reductions in health and education spending following the alreadysavage cuts of the early 1990s, and that the army should pull out of theCongo war, which was costing an estimated one million US dollars aday.

If Mugabe cut off the lucrative earnings that the generals were makingfrom their incursion into the Congo, he risked destroying his own politicalbase and a military coup.

By the end of 1999 the IMF cut off all funds to Zimbabwe. Privatelenders followed suit, bringing the economy to the brink of collapse. Forthe majority of the population this has meant even greater levels ofunemployment and poverty, and long queues for petrol and other basiccommodities, boosting illusions in the MDC and their call for "change".

Movement for Democratic Change

Whether Mugabe survives beyond May's elections remains to be seen.But if he does, or the MDC replaces him and brings the country backinto the IMF fold, there will be more savage attacks on workers' livingstandards and deeper cuts in the public sector.

The MDC was set up last year by trade union bureaucrats, previouslyleaders of the NCA, who saw the possibility of creating an electoralalliance to topple Mugabe. It calls for a crash program of privatisation,the slashing of public spending and opening up of the economy tointernational capital investment. This program has the support of acoalition of white and black businessmen, with the trade unionbureaucracy playing a key role in selling it to the masses.

The MDC's slogan "Let's change things" is an attempt to mobilise supporton the basis of discontent with the Mugabe regime. Its leader MorganTsvangirai is the secretary general of the Zimbabwe Congress of TradesUnions. He claims that the economic dislocation caused by the IMFstructural adjustment programme is the result of a "failure ofadministration not policy". In his speeches to rallies, he promises toaddress the poverty and unemployment that daily confront the mass ofthe population. But he makes clear to foreign reporters that he supportsthe IMF programme.

The April 11 Guardian wrote of the MDC, "White support is provingcrucial to the opposition. The party will not say how much money it hasraised, or from where. But the head of its campaign in Mashonal andWest's 10 constituencies, Duke du Coudray, concedes that a significantproportion of campaign funds comes from white-owned businesses."

Noting that three of the top four positions on the party's executive areheld by whites, it cited du Coudray's explanation: "There's only onereason we whites are so visible.... The mass of this party is black but theblack bourgeoisie is afraid to take a public stand."

The MDC's "Stabilisation and Recovery Program" promises to "reduceall non-essential government expenditure and restructure governmentitself", to implement "fast track privatisation of all government-controlledbusiness entities and the contracting out of many government functions tothe private sector", and provide "supply side incentives that will entice theprivate sector to undertake [previously state-run] activities".

Its land policy is based not only on the preservation of white ownershipof the best farming areas, but the break-up of communal land andencouraging the spread of private ownership. MDC's version of"redistribution of land" is to take over "6-7 million ha [hectares] of landfor resettlement through the acquisition of under-utilised, derelict andmultiple owned [i.e. communal] land." To do this it pledges to "relocateand resettle 200,000 households in communal areas", while introducing"freehold title in communal and resettlement areas, to enlarge the land tobe used as security to attract much needed investments". This policywould benefit a thin layer of better-off blacks in the countryside, whileherding hundreds of thousands of the rural poor into undeveloped,substandard state farms.

The trade union leaders boast of their "long record of effectiveadministration and organisation". This is to be utilised in order to curb anyexpressions of political independence or social opposition amongstworking people. The MDC promises to "halt the current passive labourmarket approach, and actively pursue employment-intensive growth andan employment policy co-ordinated by a Tripartite [government,employers and unions] Labour Market Commission".

Imperialist support

It is this program that has won the MDC the political backing ofZimbabwe's former colonial rulers, Britain. There have also beenaccusations made that America's International Republican Institutesponsors the MDC.

Mugabe has demagogically threatened to "go to war" with Britain, inresponse to clear attempts by London to destabilise his regime. Lastautumn at the Commonwealth Conference, Prime Minister Blair publiclycriticised the Zimbabwean government for not controlling the country'sAIDS epidemic, which has resulted in one in four of the population beingHIV positive. Relations between London and Harare deteriorated furtherwhen Zimbabwean customs officials opened a crate labelled as Britishdiplomatic baggage, hoping to find material destined for the oppositionMDC. Foreign Office Minister for Africa Peter Hain stated, "This is notthe act of a civilised country." Hain, who was born in Kenya and broughtup in South Africa, cut his political teeth in the anti-apartheid movement.He knows Africa well and such a remark by him, echoing the language ofthe white racist regime in South Africa and British colonialism, is acalculated insult.

As the land occupations escalated, the British government let it be knownthat it had made arrangements to airlift 20,000 British passport holdersout of Zimbabwe. Hain declared, "This sort of thuggery, licensed from onhigh, is dragging Zimbabwe's already tainted name through the mud."

Britain fears that Mugabe is managing Zimbabwe's economy in theinterests of his own cronies, rather than those of international capital. It isalso concerned at the disintegration of the Congo since the fall ofMobutu, the dictator imposed by America during the Cold War.Zimbabwe has the infrastructure to exploit the Congo's minerals andcould provide a gateway into this rich region where Zimbabwe's army iscurrently propping up Mobutu's embattled successor, Laurent Kabila,and has seized control of the largest diamond-mining complex in Africa atMbuji Mayi, as well as the vast copper and cobalt operations inKatanga. British capitalists have longstanding interests in the Congo,where they covertly backed the breakaway Katanga province in the1960s.

See Also:Zimbabwe: Referendum defeat for Mugabe shakes Zanu-PF government[22 February 2000]

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