Leading Zimbabwean opposition activist and socialist Munyaradzi Gwisai addressed public meetings in Sydney and Melbourne in April. Here we re-print his speech delivered in Sydney on April 18, Zimbabwe’s Independence Day.

TODAY IS Zimbabwe’s Independence Day. It is worth noting that the Australian worker’s movement played a big role in supporting a liberation movement that removed one of the last outposts of colonialism in Africa.

What is the balance sheet 27 years on? You would be surprised to know that many ordinary people in the streets of Harare or Bulawayo will tell you that life was better in the old Rhodesia than in Zimbabwe today.

That is how tragic the situation has become.

This was a political liberation movement, an anti-colonial struggle, which fought to freely elect political representatives. ZANU [the main anti-colonial party led by Robert Mugabe] expressed the right of people to freely express them selves and to have a life in which the resources of society were evenly distributed.

This vision inspired millions to rally behind the movement. It inspired them to make incredible sacrifices. Thousands of students at university left their education to join the liberation struggle. 50,000 people lost their lives for this struggle.

Twenty-seven years down the line, what do we have? A government that celebrates the brutalising of its own people.

A government that has now created much more repressive legislation than we ever saw under Ian Smith’s Rhodesia. It has closed down the press.
Eighty per cent of the population is officially categorised as poor. Thousands of students have been forced to leave school because education has been privatised. People are dying at home because they cannot afford to get to hospital. Even if they could afford it, the hospitals have no drugs.

And even if they had drugs, the nurses and doctors cannot even provide services when the base salary of a doctor is about $Z500,000. The average starting wage is $Z1,000,000.

Zimbabwe has the hungriest millionaires in the world.

Inflation is officially 2200 per cent. Predictions are that it will reach 4-5000 per cent.

That is the Zimbabwe we have today. For the mass of ordinary people, independence as turned into the opposite of everything they fought for.
Only a tiny layer has benefited, making huge amounts in ZANU-PF and among the business elites. You would be amazed in Harare today at the number of posh cars that are available. A layer of the colonial white elites have retained and expanded their wealth.

Two years ago the Zimbabwe reportedly had the best performing stock exchange in Africa—in a society where people cannot even afford a meal a day. Where workers earn salaries that are less than the transport money that they need to get to work. Where thousands are dying of AIDS every week. What kind of society is this?

That is the balance sheet. That is why independance day will not be celebrated by the masses. They are paying for the failure of the post-colonial state.

Anti-Imperialist

For a regime that today claims to be anti-imperialist, you would be surprised at the number of international awards that Mugabe received in the 1990s when he was introducing an IMF structural adjustment program.

During the 1990s, Mugabe was already brutally cracking down on opposition activists. But back then he was a buddy of the American and Australian governments. He was the friend of Western elites. They didn’t say anything.

He only became an enemy when, out of concern for his own survival, he decided to turn against their interests.

So we have to be very clear about some of the so-called solidarity from Western governments. We have to point out their hypocrisy and complicity.
Today, Zimbabwe is a political and economic dictatorship of the rich. But it’s not all not bleak and gloom.

This year marks a decade since the time when hundreds of thousands of workers went on huge strikes that shook the ZANU-PF regime.

1997 was a year of huge struggles and stayaways [strikes]. Student and workers rose up against the privatisation and commercialisation of education.

War veterans rose up, saying that independence had only benefited the senior bureaucrats in the party. Peasants rose up and demanded the land reform they had bee promised.

It was a rising against both the political dictatorship and the rule of neo-liberal free market capitalism: The dictatorship of money. It shook the whole of southern Africa. People demanded that the dreams of independence, of a just society, be met. In Zambia, Malawi and Nigeria there were similar movements.

In 2000 emerged the MDC. ZANU-PF was swept from office in towns across the country. They only hung to power by a thread.
But we were not ultimately successful.

After the presidential elections in 2002, the MDC’s “final push”—designed to be a popular revolt to remove Mugabe—was defeated. Since then it has been a very difficult and barren period for the opposition and democratic movement.

We in the International Socialist Organisation (ISO) were expelled from the MDC. Later on the MDC split, showing how far things have gone backward.

But the movement has begun to re-emerge since the middle of 2006.

We are seeing a resurgence from below, a second bite at the cherry. It is a time in which people are starting to shake off their fears.
But there are many roadblocks on the way. We have to learn the lessons of the failure of the period 1999-2002.

We have to be frank about this. Mugabe survived because of the kinds of action taken by him, especially the land occupations [by war veterans], which won him renewed support. He bought off war veterans with pensions, welding them to ZANU-PF. Mugabe outflanked the opposition to the left—hence some of the confusion internationally about the role of ZANU-PF and Mugabe.

But we must also be clear that Mugabe’s model is designed to run things for the rich and powerful in society: the employer class. He has no solution to the current economic crisis, which is now at a level of near-implosion.

As we move into 2007, this is situation is the result of trying to tinker with the power structures of capitalism, the limit of a purely national liberation strategy.

Solidarity

As we appeal for solidarity and engage with international comrades, I see a number of scenarios. The movement is discussing the way forward.
On one hand, Mugabe has confounded most analysts by saying he is going to run again next year in the presidential elections. For the last three years he has indicated that he will retire in 2008 and will handpick a successor.

Suddenly he has said, no: He is the only one who can run the country.

It is quite possible that should Mugabe remain in power over the next couple of years, Zimbabwe could develop into a ‘failed state’, the kind of situation we have seen in Cote D’Ivoire, Somalia or Zaire.

That is why the situation demands our urgent mobilisation to ensure that this never happens.

The opportunities are there. There are two ways forward that are emerging. The first is to try to pursue the negotiated settlement route with ZANU-PF. This is the approach of South African President Thabo Mbeki.

Immediately after the brutal beating of opposition leaders, Mbeki called for a negotiated settlement leading to elections next year in March 2008.
There are many in the opposition movement who want to negotiate. They want an electoral or legal framework that will allow the opposition to run in elections. They hope pressure from Mbeki can help deliver a fair election.

The other way forward is to realise that ZANU-PF has demonstrated its willingness and capacity to use all means to remain in power. Therefore, any methods that do not involved the mass mobilisation of the people, supported by international solidarity, cannot succeed.

The way to end the crisis, to end political and economic tyranny, is to lead a mass revolt from below. We are beginning to see the possibility of this happening.

My own view is that to take the first option—a negotiated settlement supported by western sanctions against the regime—is a dangerous replay of old mistakes.

What confidence can we have in Mbeki? He is frightened about the prospects of a labour-based movement rising up in South Africa. His past interventions have only bought time for Mugabe.

In either case, what guarantees do you have that if you win the election, Mugabe will respect the result?

It is a naïve and dangerous approach. It suits those who want to simply remove Mugabe, but who want to continue with the same free market neo-liberal policies.

We need instead to take the opportunity presented by the strikes and demonstrations in the last few months.

We must accelerate the resistance.

We need marches and demonstrations, petitions and solidarity from activists across Africa and the world. Not the fake solidarity of Howard and Bush: These are the murderers of Iraq and Somalia.

They detained David Hicks for five years, and now they tell him he can’t talk about what they have done to him in Guantanamo Bay! These people are murdering the children of the world through their neo-liberal policies.

How can they suddenly become the friends of the starving masses of Zimbabwe, Africa or the Global South?

We need a movement that is based on opposition to the political and economic dictatorship of the ruling classes of the world.

Munyaradzai Gwisai is a leading member of the International Socialist Organisation (Zimbabwe) and deputy chair of the Zimbabwe Social Forum.

Socialist Worker supporters in Australia are helping to organise financial support for the ISO’s activities in Zimbabwe. Donations are urgently needed. To pledge your support, please call 02 9211 2600 or 0408 619 152.