22.03.2007

Cross-class alliances endanger the struggle against Mugabe

The past week has seen a stepping up of imperialist propaganda against the regime of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, especially in the US and UK. But what is the situation on the ground? Peter Manson spoke to Mike Sambo, national coordinator of the International Socialist Organisation Zimbabwe

The media here are full of the repression directed against Morgan Tsvangirai and the Movement for Democratic Change. But what is the situation for the ISO?

We are really operating under a very tight situation. Not only economically, but the regime has just started a new exercise of cracking down on every progressive opposition group, including ourselves.

Our security is very compromised. Plain clothes police are everywhere - sometimes right outside our office. The regime has implemented new measures where people cannot move, especially after 8pm. That means we are forced to operate almost as an underground - anything can happen at any time.

The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions has called for a stayaway on April 3 and 4. We are massively engaged in the mobilisation for that - production of posters, leaflets and so on. But the security forces are going around all the offices of opposition groups looking for such material.

The ZCTU is still very much aligned with the Movement for Democratic Change, isn't it?

Right now it's not a matter of choosing to align with an opposition party. It has gone beyond that - the ordinary Zimbabwean is suffering so much. To give you an example, the US dollar is now being exchanged for about 19,000 Zimbabwean dollars. It is very difficult for an ordinary person to survive. So, whether by choice or not, everyone is now driven to participate in opposition politics, and to participate in whatever opposition action is planned. The economic situation is helping this mobilisation. Daily we hear of incidents whereby ordinary people are having running battles with the police.

All this means that the support base for the MDC has been revitalised. I would say that 80% of the ordinary people of Zimbabwe are now against the regime, simply because it has failed them. It is implementing neoliberal policies. Everything we used to be able to buy - fuel, food, even bread - is often beyond our reach, making it very difficult for an ordinary person to survive.

I can tell you that a loaf of bread is going for something like $5,000 and an ordinary worker is earning in the range of $80,000-$120,000 a month. Transport alone, to come to town in order to work, costs $10,000 a day. It's unrealistic, what we are witnessing right now - your wages can't even take you to work until the end of the month, so how can you pay for food?

So all this is helping to mobilise MDC support. Previously there seemed to be no way forward for the opposition, but over the past year there has been a regroupment of the rank and file, who are really prepared to take action against the regime.

Two months ago the regime banned any political gatherings, but people are defying that. Opposition groups are going ahead with their rallies. The police come and try to crush them, but that only gives strength to the ordinary people. The police themselves dare not move in ones and twos for fear of being beaten up. And there is a regroupment of the militant support base of the MDC.

There is now a re-engagement between the two rival factions of that party. This is a reaction to the pressure from the people - for unity rather than loyalty to one group.

But it's a unity between working class and bourgeois forces, isn't it?

Exactly.

Shouldn't we be trying to give that movement a working class trajectory? Over here the rightwing press says it is right behind the Zimbabwe opposition. It is banking on a combination of Zanu-PF factions and the MDC easing aside Mugabe and installing a more amenable regime. Oughtn't we to differentiate between components of the opposition?

There is the issue of succession within Zanu-PF - Mugabe has made it clear he won't remain for another term. So within his party they are fighting for position. But also within the opposition itself you can see a regroupment of the people beyond party lines. They are coming together in the realisation that this is a struggle of the poor, of the working class.

But we have witnessed the hijacking of the working class struggle by the MDC before. It was formed as a workers' party, but then was taken over by the bourgeoisie. It soon became a mixed bag - workers, rich white farmers, bankers and black businessmen - a cross-class alliance that put aside the needs of workers and the poor.

So it is one of our primary tasks right now to safeguard the needs of the poor, the needs of the workers, so that they are not hijacked again. These are really unorganised people fighting against the police, fighting against the state. But there is every likelihood that, sooner or later, someone will come along with money in order to divert what has been initiated by the poor and workers.

You said that 80% are against Mugabe. What about in the countryside, where Zanu-PF has always retained a majority? Are they perhaps less affected by the devastation of living standards experienced in the towns?

Things are similarly tough in the rural areas, where people rely by and large on their sons and daughters in the towns. But that social fabric that binds us with our parents back in the countryside has broken down. Right now I can't afford anything beyond my own immediate needs. I can't afford to take care of my father or mother. There is horrendous poverty in the rural areas too. So Mugabe is gradually losing support there.

Some sections of the left say that Mugabe is an anti-imperialist and we should not be too critical of him. What do you think of this notion?

Of course, Mugabe tells anti-imperialist stories, but everyone knows it's not true. He needs to talk left for his own political survival, but he's not left in any real sense. He's a friend of imperialism. He's anti-imperialist by word, of course, but he has made it clear that in order to regain control of the economy he needs to engage with the west, with the international community. He is going back to the west, to his international friends. He is actually a friend of imperialism. How can he be anti-imperialist, while at the same time implementing neoliberal economic policies that are causing such poverty in the country?

It is true that the Zanu-PF factions are turning against Mugabe. There are underground groups within the party mobilising against him. Recently a book written by one of Mugabe's long-time friends, the former cabinet minister Edgar Tekere, was published, entitled A lifetime of struggle. Tekere was general secretary of Zanu-PF during the colonial era, but in the late 1980s he was expelled from the party for being too outspoken. He formed the short-lived party known as the Zimbabwe Unity Movement.

Now he has revealed so many Zanu-PF secrets and Mugabe has banned his book, which everyone is trying to get. It says a lot about the current factions operating in the party. Right now Joyce Mujuru, the vice-president, is not on good terms with the president and there are rumours that she will form her own political party. There is also talk of cabinet ministers who are thinking of doing the same or switching to the opposition.

So within Zanu-PF itself there is a fragmentation - it is several parties within one party. Some of this is to do with the fight to succeed Mugabe - those people who realise their chances are very slim are thinking of going their own way. If the opposition tackles the situation correctly, it can take advantage of the cracks that have appeared within Zanu-PF.

There is massive corruption in the party, including in the cabinet itself. Some are acquiring diamonds from the nationalised industry and dealing in them in South Africa. It is even reported in the official media. Not everything comes across clearly, but censorship is looser right now - the arrest of ministers for corruption and attempted smuggling has been on TV.

How does the current mass unrest tie in with the social forum movement, which the ISO has been involved in? Do you think you have made any gains from your work within it?

I think we have made very significant gains from our work in the Zimbabwe Social Forum. At a certain stage there were big fights between us revolutionaries and the NGOs. They wanted an annual event, whereby people meet and talk and then break up until the next year. We, on the other hand, were saying we should try and make the ZSF a living thing, capable of responding to the current harsh economic conditions, capable of responding to police brutality, to the general crackdown. The movement should organise against poverty, against any attack on ordinary people. For example, the ZSF should be massively involved in the ZCTU stayaway in April.

The social forum is the only coalition right now where the ordinary people, where the poor, where the workers are gathering on a clear perspective against neoliberal capitalism.

At the planning strategy meeting two weeks ago we won our motion that the ZSF should be turned into a living thing. Also our comrade, Munyaradzi Gwisai, is the new chairperson despite resistance from the NGOs, which really didn't want a socialist at the helm.

There are many middle class forces involved - more than three-quarters of those who attended the World Social Forum in Nairobi in January were middle class. Ordinary people simply had no access to funding, unlike the NGOs, which can always rely on their donors.

But we can say that we have recently made progress in the Zimbabwe Social Forum. There are many weaknesses - for example, the NGOs and middle class people still control the finance, so they can sabotage our work: they could refuse to release money for particular struggles.

In December there was a Southern Africa Social Forum in Malawi. We revolutionaries don't yet have the capacity to raise money to go to neighbouring countries - that's the problem. And what is needed is the coordination of the forces of the working people on an African and international level.