24.07.2002
From the heart of struggle
Munyaradzi Gwisai is a leader of the International Socialist Organisation Zimbabwe and the MP for Highfield, Harare. In Britain for the Socialist Workers Party's Marxism event, comrade Gwisai spoke to John Bridge and Peter Manson of the CPGB
How would you assess the current situation in Zimbabwe? The last two years have been hard for revolutionaries and the left generally, because of the drive towards the elections and the very strong influence of the Movement for Democratic Change, the opposition party formed in 1998. On the one hand, Mugabe has tightened the repression - you can't meet, you can't organise - and the MDC is in disarray as a party in terms of its ability to move forward. On the other hand, there is a grave economic crisis and new possibilities emerging. We see it as a period in which there are openings. There is an economic meltdown, but there is also the possibility of remaking the struggles of 1997-98. I do not know whether this will happen, but I do know that the Mugabe regime will become more and more squeezed. Mugabe has no solution to the crisis and, with the local and international capitalist pressure on him, the screws are being tightened. There is so much externalisation of foreign currency right now. Companies are downsizing in a big way and beginning to close down. In the last month or so prices have just sky-rocketed in a way we last saw in 1997-98. Any attempts to resolve the Zimbabwe crisis within the confines of the borders will clearly result in a dead end. If the stand-off continues with the MDC, the economy is likely to become much, much worse very quickly and that will also bring tensions within the ruling Zanu-PF itself. This is in the context of massive food shortages, where the working people are desperately trying to survive. And the middle classes are leaving. I have been here just two weeks, but in that time I have heard of three lecturers from the University of Zimbabwe who have resigned and come here purely in the hope of getting a job. So to maintain the current situation and hope to continue just by coercion and oppression is not an option. It is more likely that we will see a rapprochement between Zanu-PF and the MDC, with the aim of stemming the growing crisis, and we suspect that they will move towards a kind of national government. If they don't go that way, then they will need a much more crudely repressive kind of regime. So the pressure is on the MDC to help form some kind of neoliberal, rightwing government of national unity. The more so because the MDC has for now more or less shelved the idea of mass action. You were elected as an MDC MP. But what is your position regarding MDC membership now that the party has moved so far to the right? Officially the ISO is out. When the MDC took up the position of engaging in dialogue to pursue the possibility of a national government, we thought very hard and threatened to resign. They said, 'You don't need to resign - you're not our members.' Which was ironic, because, if you look at the pamphlets, the campaign posters we had, we had made clear that the ISO was an affiliate of the MDC. But they had enough confidence to openly express the massive rightwing shift in the party. Effectively they said, if I didn't resign they would expel me. We didn't challenge the de facto expulsion and decided to leave it to them to proceed with their moves. However, there is a major movement outside the MDC around the constitutional reform question in the shape of the National Constitutional Assembly. Also, recently we have seen the launch of the Anti-Privatisation Forum, which groups together trade unionists in industries that have been privatised, students, ourselves and elements of the petty bourgeoisie So we are proceeding with our work and leaving it to the MDC to make their decision regarding our membership, including my own. They are having problems because of the support I have in the constituency, and this is making them hesitate to act immediately. It is not really our key concern. What is your view of the peasant question? What strategy does the ISO have for bringing the peasantry into an alliance with the working class? There is no doubt that, unless the working class is able to draw in the peasantry, we will not be able to achieve much in a peripheral capitalist country like Zimbabwe, where the peasantry makes up over 50% of the population. The reason Mugabe has been able to survive is that he has been able to divide working people, critically over the land question, and appear as the champion of the peasantry. In 1997 there were rural revolts, led by war veterans, and at the same time workers rising up in strikes. By the end of that year there was the possibility of the two movements beginning to get together. There were open, direct, anti-neoliberal struggles in the urban areas led by the trade unions and peasant revolts led by the rank and file war veterans - the former guerrillas. But then there was a combination of Mugabe's shift leftwards, outmanoeuvring the MDC, and the MDC's own massive movement to the right. However, it now appears that tensions are emerging within Zanu-PF involving the war veterans. Basically Zanu-PF remains a neoliberal party, run by the black bourgeoisie, who have a contradictory relationship with neoliberalism. They relate to aspects of it, like privatisation - sections of them would not mind becoming a comprador bourgeoisie - but others oppose it. The biggest challenge of a small group like ourselves, who at present are too tiny to lead the workers in an alliance with the peasantry, is to consolidate our organisation and start to grow. If there is a lesson we have learned from our entryism, it is that size is critical. You might have the right politics, but it is of great importance to have adequate forces if you are going to make an effective intervention in any united front - and more so of the nature we are dealing with in the shape of the MDC. I suppose you have the same problem in trying to bring in more people to the Socialist Alliance. So we can articulate the issue of the peasantry - we have been in the forefront over the question of land, both in our literature and in my capacity as an MP, to the extent that Zanu-PF acknowledges that my position is more radical than their own - but that is probably as far as we as an organisation can go now. Objectively, how do the movements link up? As the crisis gets worse and the tensions both in the MDC and Zanu-PF increase, it is quite possible, because the war veterans really are the leadership of the peasantry. They are the ones who have been able to mobilise them on the ground. So it is possible that the working class movement will be able to link up with radical sections of the war veterans. There is certainly the possibility of 'going back to 1997'. One of the effects of the privatisation of state agricultural companies is that peasants are getting really screwed in terms of their produce - state subsidies have been cut, prices have risen, etc. It is a fundamental question for us that the two movements should be able to link up, and objectively that must come about. How important is the small peasant sector in terms of overall production? While the big white commercial farmers continue to dominate tobacco, the peasants now account for around 70% of production. That includes 60%-70% of maize and about 50% of cotton. There is stratification amongst the peasantry. Some studies have shown that the bulk of the peasant surplus is produced by only 20%. There were very few beneficiaries from the reforms of the early 80s. For the rest, whether there is drought or not, food shortages have now become almost a perennial thing. They work areas with very bad soil and very poor rainfall. Neoliberalism has hammered the peasants, especially the poor and middle peasants. Now the small kulak farmer in some ways is beginning to feel it as well, and that is why a number of the richer peasant farmers now support the MDC. But the poor and medium farmers are the majority. Which is why the MDC policy of giving out title deeds for land will mean that after probably four or five years that land will have been sold. The state previously aided the small subsistence farmer in terms of guaranteed prices, subsidies and help with development. All that was removed as part of 'structural readjustment'. So there are conditions of constant hunger among the people in the rural areas. But Mugabe has now promised them land and has been providing some fertiliser, etc, which is why the poor peasants still support Zanu-PF. However, while a good number back Mugabe, what you have seen from the voting patterns of the last two elections is that almost half have moved out of the active political arena, in spite of what Mugabe has done. There are at most 50%-55% of people voting. Some on the left in Britain say that because Mugabe is opposing Blair he is an anti-imperialist who must be supported. We have seen that from your paper and also I have heard the same thing from the African community here. It raises the question of the character of a regime such as Mugabe's. Because of the mass movement from below against neoliberalism and for democracy in 1997-98, Mugabe was forced to make a partial retreat from his neoliberal agenda in order to survive. Similarly with the land question, where it is easier for Mugabe to pose as anti-imperialist, given its nature in Zimbabwe. It is a white-black thing, and many of the whites are British or of British descent. But the best farms, the best plantations, have not been taken over. The ones that have been targeted are those of the small white commercial farmers. The big investors that came in after the introduction of the structural adjustment programme still remain on their farms. Zanu-PF declare that the land reform programme is now finished, although the real prime land has not been touched. Meanwhile Mugabe is proceeding with the privatisation of all the key state institutions and companies. So there is a partiality and cynical aspect to Mugabe's anti-imperialism that we have to be very careful about. The MDC, on the other hand, has risen up on the back of the radicalised working class. In its early days it represented the rising working class movement. But its form was neoliberal - it was rightwing. It is true there are contradictions between the Mugabe government and key sections of the western world. But our movement must go beyond challenging the neo-colonial relationship between Zimbabwe and the world. It must be a working people's movement that challenges property and capital in a much more profound way, which Mugabe has not done and will not do. What influence is the ISO able to exert? The MDC was such a huge party in the working class, but we are a very small organisation of less than 200 members. The past two years have not been easy for us and I suppose on could say that the achievement has been one of survival. Our ambitions that went beyond that have not been realised. Because of the hegemony that the MDC exercised in the class, it was not easy for us to exert influence. Also the illusion that the impending elections could produce solutions were very powerful. The message that we have been articulating for the past two years was that the MDC must take up an anti-imperialist, anti-neoliberal, pro-working class position. It did not do so, but we have created the foundations for what we see now as emerging possibilities - the support I have been able to win as an MP has helped. There are growing numbers of workers and students who are now beginning to say, given the massive rightwing shift in the MDC, the elections and so forth, 'You comrades have a point.' Through their own experience they have seen the lack of decisiveness, the lack of resoluteness of the middle class and trade union leaders who have been leading them up to now. So there is a minority, but a growing one, that I think we can relate to. How has the latest raft of repressive legislation affected you? For example, will you be able to continue production of your paper? Before 1996-97 the authorities didn't care about our paper or ourselves in many ways. But then, in terms of the National Archives Act, they insisted that we send every copy to the national archives office. We ignored this for a couple of months, but then felt forced to comply. The new legislation will be used - publications are required to have accredited, qualified journalists, for instance - so we will have to take it as it comes. We have to be ready for the worst. For now we are continuing to publish. But our printers have to ensure that not a single sheet of paper is left behind in their premises, because the legislation also makes the printer liable for any non-authorised publication. There is such a huge demand, a quest for knowledge, for information about an alternative to the rightwing, neoliberal aspects of the MDC, for what we stand for. This is one of the powers of the anti-capitalist movement in the north. It has created an audience amongst people in our country who previously would have said, 'Oh, socialism is dead'. But the huge demonstrations in Seattle, in Rome, in Prague, raising anti-IMF slogans, make it easier for us. Even in the MDC there is friction over what is happening in the west. The challenge we face is not just to educate our own comrades, but also to reach out to the bigger audience that is prepared to read our material. In a way we were surprised at your paper's lack of technical quality. Given that you are the International Socialist Tendency's first MP, we would have expected more of the IST's expertise being brought to bear. One of the biggest challenges that revolutionaries face in capitalist societies that are nearing total economic crisis such as Zimbabwe is simply to exist as an effective organisation. Many of our members are unemployed or in very low paid jobs, so sustaining our propaganda, continuing to put out our newspaper, become extremely difficult. This is a challenge for the international socialist movement and not just our own tendency. That is why we appreciate the resolution that you pushed through in the Socialist Alliance. The SA did agree to raise money for the ISO, but, in truth, what we were able to collect was pathetic for a country like Britain. I have been talking, for instance, to comrades from the Africa Liberation Support Campaign - a broad left, pan-African group - many of whose people probably came to Britain during the times of the big struggles against the structural adjustment programmes in the 80s and 90s. They see the need to mobilise support over here. This is happening in the context of what is called the commodification of resistance. If you take our situation in the MDC, we are completely marginalised and struggling to survive. The NGOs, the civil societies, have huge amounts of money going to them. The comrades in the north, in the socialist and working class movement, could do more - and that is one of the reasons why I have come: to try and build these kinds of linkages. We also need greater political interaction in order to generalise our experiences. For example, one of the key themes of Marxism was the issue of the united front and the party. The MDC is a centre-right united front and now we are beginning to see the possibility of the emergence of more radical types of united fronts, which we will be able to relate to. So there are common experiences. How will the ISO consolidate and begin to move forward? Through united front work. At the moment, for example, university students are becoming radicalised and we are involved in Students Against Privatisation, which is beginning to grow. The NCA is also becoming more radical, more leftwing than previously - a trend that has been going on for almost two years. The challenge for us is whether we are going to be able to open up to these radicalised elements in the student movement, the NCA, the campaign against privatisation and the emerging anti-capitalist movement. We have to learn to work with those comrades, to help build these movements without wanting to impose our politics on them, to make them mere fronts of the ISO. However, their growth provides the basis for our own growth, so we have to learn to balance the two: building the movement, but also not forgetting that this is not a substitute for the need to build the revolutionary party. What is your long-term strategy - in terms of Africa and the world movement? The struggles of 97-98 that gave birth to the MDC were similar to other struggles across Africa. They were a vindication of Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution, and showed that the class with the most strategic interest in fighting imperialism and autocracy is the working class. There have been massive, inspiring struggles across Africa, even though in many countries the working class role had long been suppressed by the bureaucratic petty bourgeoisie that took over after independence. What we have seen has been the forward movement of the democratic process with the working class in the lead. But it is also very true that most of those movements, if not all of them, have succumbed to ideological forces that are inimical to its interests. The South African working class was the key in smashing apartheid, but it is the ANC that took over. Now, after Seattle, there is the prospect of this movement joining forces with the emerging anti-capitalist movement in the north. The example I gave during Marxism was of 100,000 council workers in Cape Town, but there are the strikes currently taking place in Britain, the municipal workers in Toronto, the two-million-strong march in Rome. There is the possibility of the European and American working class beginning to stir at a time when also in Africa the movement is starting to find its feet. We have no doubt that the movement in Zimbabwe has to link, critically, with the South African working class movement. That is the theory of permanent revolution: the working class is the prime mover, but it has to act alongside other oppressed classes - the peasantry and the urban unemployed in particular. But it can only find strength as part of the global socialist movement of the working class. Do you envisage the possibility of the working class movement in Zimbabwe being able to 'do a Russia' and take power? That is what we work towards. But we are humble enough to acknowledge the fact that Zimbabwe is not Russia. In Africa only three or four strategically important countries could have that role - I am thinking of the South African working class, the Nigerian working class, the Egyptian working class. In many ways we are part of the South African working class - there are up to two million Zimbabwean workers in South Africa. When the South African working class moves, it has one of the most militant traditions on the continent and it can contribute a great deal to the global project of the working class. In many ways we are trying to push our own movement as part of a regional movement. If the MDC had taken on Mugabe from his left, it would have given the South African working class confidence in breaking from the neoliberal leadership of the ANC. Unfortunately though, the MDC has been a bad precedent - it is a very good example of what not to do - just like Zambia. But, with the possibility of new struggles, I foresee a situation where the relationship between our two working classes is going to develop. In South Africa there are anti-privatisation forums, which will probably be very important in how the left grows. Do you see room here for a regional publication? As a product of a dynamic, concrete movement on the ground, yes - it cannot be an abstract thing. In our tendency there are groupings emerging in Botswana and Zambia, as well as the Keep Left grouping in South Africa. There will shortly be a big demonstration in Johannesburg, for example, and the need will continue to increase for coordination. The paper is the organiser of the revolutionary movement. It would probably be easier also in terms of cost. By and large we produce 1,000-2,000 copies of our paper, depending on the issue, most of which are sold by workers in the factories. We used to have street paper sales, but that has become too dangerous. One of our comrades was beaten badly. But luckily the paper had already moved into the class. There is also the challenge of being able to produce a paper at a price working people can afford. So eventually I see that possibility, but for now our movements in both South Africa and Zimbabwe are still finding their way. What assistance is the SWP able to give you? Just to be able to be here, at Marxism, we rely on the International Socialist Tendency. An exciting thing for us as revolutionaries is to be able to share with comrades - and not just from our own tendency - experiences from all around the world. So the SWP has a very big responsibility for that. Leading SWP comrades have played a key part in our experience - in recognising, for example, the impact of the anti-capitalist movement, in arriving at our tactic of entryism, and so on. We are satisfied with the level of solidarity that we get from the comrades, but the challenge is how to broaden our own relationship with other groupings with whom we might not necessarily share the same tradition, but with whom we are prepared to be part of an internationalist movement. But surely an SWP-sponsored speaking tour could raise thousands of pounds for the ISO? I don't think this is really an issue I would want to focus on. You are a group outside our tendency, but working together in the Socialist Alliance. We could talk about our weaknesses and problems - that is one way of doing it. But the other way is to begin to build. There are new possibilities for the left at a global level. But within that, there is fraternal criticism and, as we say in the pamphlet that we have produced, we believe you have done that. The Weekly Worker has raised points about the MDC - the possibility of seeking to split it is one line that has come through your paper - and the land question. You have critiqued us, you have disagreed with us - but in a fraternal way, and we have found some of your criticisms useful in terms of mapping our way forward. That is how it should be. We are learning how to work together. Part of the importance of the SA is that we are able to learn from each other through criticism. There are prospects anyway for radicalising hundreds of thousands - young people coming into the anti-war movement, the anti-capitalist movement. Even with the size of your groups, there is still the need for a coming together in a more integrated manner. As I say, size is very important and we are still very small. The irony is that some SA participants do not seem to grasp the potential of the alliance. What is the CPGB's position? For an SA party? A revolutionary party? Yes. Definitely. We want to work more closely with all of the left, not least the SWP. The SWP is our biggest asset, but also our biggest problem, in that it is blocking moves towards a party. You are in a country in the north where the working class suffered one of the most decisive defeats in the 80s. Margaret Thatcher was really at the cutting edge of neoliberalism at a global level. Sometimes, though, comrades should learn to dream about the new possibilities. Given your history during the last 20 years or so, one can understand the difficulties, but we must try and go beyond that. On the question of whether the SA should be a revolutionary party, I am not sure about that. I am looking at things from a distance, and I can see the advantage of greater integration. However, obviously, as more people come in and the project grows, the pressures of centrism will come into play. It could be a party, a left-of-centre party, in which revolutionaries constitute a powerful pole - that would be useful. So the question is whether or not it would be desirable for the SA to be transformed into a revolutionary party. Revolutionaries should argue for what they believe and go to the working class with the truth. Why should people have a problem with revolutionary conclusions? I have a great deal of sympathy with the desire for closer integration, including that of a party, but at this stage to prioritise the maximum demand - ie, the revolutionary party - before the project has properly taken off might be going too far. There is still a long way to go. At the end of the day it is the challenge of working together - the traditional left must learn to do that more closely and must also learn to relate to the new radicalising layers in society. The danger is you might underestimate the level of consciousness, as greater polarisation occurs. Sometimes revolutionaries can be a bit slow in recognising change. The ISO urgently needs cash, and the Socialist Alliance has agreed to help raise funds - several hundred pounds have been forwarded, but much more is required. Send donations to: First Direct Bank, 40 Wakefield Road, Leeds LS98 1FO. Account name: John Page; sort code: 40-47-78; account number: 1118 5489. Email details of deposits to isozim@hotmail.com
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