Hands-Off Trade Unions! Respect and Pay the Doctors, Give Us Our Bonus

                               Workers Unite and Fight Back   !                                                                   

6 March 2017 – International Socialist Organization Solidarity Statement – Government Workers Strike                                                                            

Hospitals are now being run by soldiers and student nurses. The government has frozen the recruitment of junior doctors as part of the IMF austerity program and it continues to arrogantly refuse to improve the working conditions of doctors. Doctors have been striking for three weeks and patients continue to suffer with some dying due to lack of medical assistance and care. Nurses have joined the strike action demanding their 2016 bonuses and in solidarity with the doctors. Not only are doctors and nurses being exploited and subjected to unbearable working conditions, ordinary people , the patients are also being discriminated on the basis of wealth and class as most hospitals are now privatised and charging very high medical fees. The government is clearly showing its true colours, as a heartless regime which only cares about the interests of the rich and the politically well-connected that are treated in South Africa, India and Singapore. The President is always globetrotting , last year his endless travels gobbled $42 million. But a hundred or a couple hundred million dollars in bonuses is considered too much for over 500000 government workers!                         

Civil servants have been very patient with the government. They have been engaging the government through their participation in the National Joint Negotiating Council (NJNC) represented by the Apex Council. They have been demanding their payment of bonuses in cash & the government has offered three alternative bonuses in the form of mainly non-monetary incentives such as housing stands. The housing stands are progressive as they provide an opportunity for workers to build their own homes but they are coming at a complicated huge cost of monthly deductions of the salaries which are already below the Poverty-Datum-Line & on top of that an automatic stoppage of payment of bonuses for several years. After failing to agree with unions , the government through the despised, infamous and notorious Public Service Commission is now trying to undermine unions using divide and rule tactics by bypassing unions and engaging workers directly using intimidation.           

The government is very hypocritical, it spent over $500 million in free grants for 15000 black capitalist farmers under the command agriculture scheme who never paid a cent for the land but now it is demanding workers to pay for small portions of farmland partitioned into housing stands! Workers must be given land in the same way it was given to farmers. The Reserve Bank (RBZ) through ZAMCO has bailed out fatcats by assuming over $1 billion of bad debts given to politicians and capitalists after assuming another $3 billion through the RBZ Debt Assumption Act in 2015 but it cannot recruit more doctors and improve the working conditions of doctors who are toiling day and night to save lives! During such a difficult time when hospitals are in crisis, the head of state Robert Mugabe travelled to Singapore for his medical check-up, shunning as usual the local hospitals which lack adequate medical infrastructure and drugs.

The 6 March sit-in strike action which has been called by the Apex Council is the only language which the government has proven to historically listen to. If the government remains unbendingly and zealously arrogant and refuse to adequately respond to workers demands , the sit-in strike has to be escalated to a full-blown strike.Apart from the 1996 General Strike, the 6 July 2016 Shutdown which was led mainly by striking government workers and combi drivers forced the government to back down and urgently respond in less than 48 hours by paying salaries. To achieve victory on 6 March demands the class unity of all the striking workers; the doctors, nurses, teachers & all other sections of the working class. The grievances of the doctors, nurses, teachers & workers in general are the same, its time to build workers class power.

Shinga Mushandi! Shinga! Quina Msebenzi! Quina                                                                                                                  International Socialist Organization: email- iso.zim@gmail.com                                                                                    

Chinamasa’s Austerity Policies and ZANU PF’s Socialism for the Rich

 

The fundamental underlying logic of the neoliberal policies being boldly advanced to suck the sweat and blood of the poor in Zimbabwe is premised on the argument albeit brazenly articulated here, ‘taxing the poor to subsidize the rich’. This explains why all the tax reforms being implemented by the government especially after accenting to the LIMA IMF-World Bank austerity plan to honour debt peonage are essentially targeting the poor and skirting the rich. Job cuts, salary cuts, tax increases, urban tollgates, privatisations, and Municipal cost recovery policies are exclusively designed to skim and milk dry the section which is the most impoverished, precariously hanging on edge of survival and struggling daily to access the bare minimum needed to breathe, walk and talk.

Taxation is made complex and explained in alienating terms to cajole the poor and make it difficult for them to directly see the extent to which they are being dried to pauperisation by their government. The percentage tax increases are presented in syrupy ways to make them appear acceptable, tiny and insignificant to make them a major headline compared to the AFCON tournament and petty bedroom issues like the Stunner affair, Andy Muridzo-Beverly and Zvihuta tabloid stories. But the reality is that austerity and in particular tax hikes for basic commodities are major issues which have a direct bearing on the very existence and survival of the poor.

In the 2017 budget statement, the Finance Minister announced the introduction of a 5c health levy for every $1 spent on voice calls and data. He also announced the re-introduction of VAT on all meat products and cereals. The 5% health levy together with a data and voice tariff increase set by POTRAZ under the influence of ECONET-monopoly capitalism sparked a major consumer protest which forced both POTRAZ and telecommunications companies to back-down and reverse the tariffs hikes. The Ministry of Finance has re-introduced a 15% VAT for basic goods – meat products and cereals such as rice through Statutory Instrument 20 of 2017. The net effect of this new tax is a corresponding rise in the price of food and inflation. It is the working people, those who are already struggling who will suffer most.

“Conversely , when governments reduce the tax burden for large corporations, they tend towards two options: to cut back on the essential spending needed to reduce inequality and poverty: or to make up the shortfall by levying higher taxes such as Value-Added-Tax (VAT), on other less wealth sections of society” (OXFAM, Policy Paper Summary: 12 December 2016)

Big corporations continue to enjoy huge tax breaks and holidays and the “Income of a licenced during the first five years of operation” is tax free. OXFAM a global NGO which fights global inequality recently released a report at the 2017 Davos World Economic Forum which stated that, the richest eight billionaires in the world have more wealth than 3.6 billion people combined. It has also stated that 75% of government revenue in Africa comes from VAT and not from taxes on big corporations which are monopolising and exploiting African natural resources and expropriating the profits to the metropoles in Beijing, London, Paris, Washington and other metropoles of global capital.

Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa has never made proposals to introduce a Wealth Tax to redistribute wealth from the millionaires and billionaires in Zimbabwe are own and control the mines, banks and factories. He has never hinted on levying a tourism tax on all elites like him, his President Robert Mugabe and the Minister of Postal , Courier Services and Telecommunications who spent an average of a month on vacation in the most expensive holiday resorts gobbling up millions of dollars in the process. The privilege of rich people and their exemptions from paying their fair share of taxes is clearly a ‘socialism for the rich’ subsidized by the poor through austerity: job cuts, salary cuts and more taxes.

Cost recovery mechanisms are being used to ruthless enforce the privatisation of water in urban areas. Residents in all the countries major towns and cities especially those in the high density suburbs have been served with summons by the Messenger of Court or notices by Debt Collectors issuing them ultimatums to pay their debts or face the auctioning their houses and furniture. The councils are going after residents despite the fact that it is public knowledge that the majority of the population is reeling in poverty and unemployment.

The only option left for the working people- labour unions, social movements, Socialists, youths and students is their class unity and fight back which is anchored on their self-activity and independently fought without the restraining influence of all the political parties and factions running the government. Clear class demand against job cuts, salary cuts, cost –recovery measures, and tax increases must be advanced.

 

 

Raymond Sango

Programs Manager- Zimbabwe Labour Centre, Member – International Socialist Organization

‘Defend the Land and Fight for Democracy’, is Malema on Point?

 

Less than a week after the Zimbabwe People First Party led by the former Vice President, Joyce Mujuru and other opposition parties were mauled and strangled in the Bikita West by-election by ZANU PF, Julius Malema the firebrand former ANC Youth League President and leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters party has correctly exposed Robert Mugabe’s penchant for power and resolve to be a Life President. Malema, much to the chagrin of the pro-white monopoly capital opposition parties in Zimbabwe, also defended the land reform program but not hiding the fact that Robert Mugabe is now a frail , old leader who ‘cannot even control a spade’ and is always asleep in meetings . The statements by Julius Malema bring forth two crucial issues at the centre of the struggles in Zimbabwe, but which are treated as separate from each: democracy and land.

Land and democracy are treated as separate and antagonistic demands which do not go hand in hand. In reality, land and democracy go hand in hand. Colonialism dispossessed natives of land and settled black people in barren lands called Tribal Trust Lands to force them to submit to white capital and work as cheap labour to generate super-profits. Draconian land policies such as the Land Apportionment Act, Maize Control Act and the Native Land Husbandry Act were legislated to entrench racial inequality and sowed the seeds of dictatorship. The radical land reform program provoked by the incessant demands of the war veterans and Traditional Chiefs which began in the turn of the century undid the legacy of land thievery and dispossession and democratised land ownership. The land reform program distributed stolen land from 5000 land thieves to over 250 000 families. Extensive researches done by Sam Moyo, Joseph Hanlon, Ian Scoones et al buttress this reality. Opposition to the land reform program came from the MDC which was hijacked by white capital with its leaders filmed receiving stacks of cash from white farmers at a farm in Banket. Their opposition to the land reform can be directly inferred and interpreted as the defence of racial inequality, and stolen land .Within the broader democratization struggle; it represents opposition to the democratisation of the economy. Genuine social justice activism is not half-backed it fights for full democracy.

ZANU PF and Robert Mugabe have been able to amass significant traction among the landless urban and rural poor through appealing to nationalism and using the rhetoric of democratising the economy to burst up white monopoly capital. The land reform program has built up a solid support base for ZANU PF which needs much more-than harsh-tags to break up. Land is the main class interest of the peasantry. The peasantry has very little concern with 2.2 million jobs. Added to that free farming inputs, subsidies and general government support: Presidential Input Scheme and Command Agriculture; the peasants will be satisfied. This explains why the opposition parties lost in Bikita and generally why their support is decreasing than increasing. In fact, this is a pointer to the awaiting possibilities which will unfold in the 2018 elections. An electoral victory of any party which is against the land reform program is now inconceivable and unfathomable. Now the land reform is pervading the urban areas with 200 000 housing stands for teachers and youths. The net result of this process is easy to guess. A bumper harvest is likely in 2017 and this will worsen the predicament of those who have maintained a consistent antagonism to the way land was expropriated from land thieves.

But ZANU PF is indifferent to political democracy. It doesn’t support equality and freedom in the political realm. It gags its opponents, suppresses dissent and jails dissidents. Robert Mugabe has been at the helm of the leadership of Zimbabwe since 1980. He has clearly become a Life President. His fanatical and obsequious supporters in the Women’s and Youth Leagues of ZANU PF have called him the ‘Black Jesus’ who will rule even from the grave. He is being mystified. But underneath the treacherous hero-worshipping are the political ambitions of the Young Turks, the G-40 who are buying time to eliminate all their internal political foes in ZANU PF before declaring their political ambitions.

‘Democracy’ is a term, a principle and a lexicon which is quickly disappearing from the major demands of the opposition political parties. The implosion of the economic crisis and the splits in the bosses’ parties; ZANU PF and MDC have unleashed a massive political reconfiguration of classes, loyalties and allegiances. Party leaders now see cutting deals, compromises, co-option and possibly ‘coalitions’ sometimes veiled as ‘National Transitional Authority’ as the ultimate solutions. The positions of foreign embassies who have long positioned themselves as ‘pro-democracy’ has shifted to openly pro-neoliberal and deal –breaking. Making matters worse is the rise of economic nationalism globally. The British Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson is not an enemy of Zimbabwe’s land reform program and blames the Labour party, this explains Ambassador Catriona Lang’s sympathy with the Lacoste –Zanu Pf Faction. In the coming years, the major capitalist powers- USA, France and Britain will be more concerned with protecting their borders, economies and industries from globalisation and retreating steadily from liberal diplomacy. Pro-democracy groups are enduring their own contradictions as they are not free from democracy deficits. But the struggle for democracy remains key in the struggle to build an alternative for Zimbabwe which is democratic and founded on the pillars of social justice , liberty, equality , transparency , accountability, non-sexism and opposed to identity politics –regionalism and ethnicity.

 

Yes Malema is correct on this one!

                           

Bread and Freedom!

 

Raymond Sango

Programmes Officer, Zimbabwe Labour Centre                        

 

EFF STATEMENT ON ZANU-PF’S RESPONSE TO CALLS FOR PRESIDENT MUGABE TO STEP DOWN

24 January, 2017

The EFF reaffirms its position that President Mugabe’s occupancy of the position of president is not good for the radical African political program. He is the bastion of the reactionary phenomenon of “lead to the death” that has crippled the image and praxis of post-colonial Africa. President Mugabe is not only the contemporary engine of personality cult, but he is protected by a group of cowards around him who hypocritically defend him everyday, whilst harbouring ambitions to lead soon.

We are unequivocal that revolutions ought to promote programs and not personalities. The continent needs heroes who will be able to stand firm on the objectives of the African revolution whilst allowing democratic practices and succession of leadership. His example is contradictory to this ideal since it directly or indirectly promotes the phenomenon of refusing to leave office until death.

Before the ZANU-PF and its youth wing respond to the EFF about the charge that they are cowards; they should ask themselves a simple question – what is revolutionary about being led by a person in old age; who sleeps all the time in meetings, can no longer even hold a pen or write half a page? Failure to respond to this question signifies not that they are afraid of others, but of President Mugabe.

When youth movement across the continent are fighting for change, questioning the transformation of liberation movements into old age homes and general gerontocracy. The ZANU-PF youth is instead defending and advancing an essentially anti-youth statuesque. This is because there is actually no youth in the ZANU-PF Youth; what you find are middle age men and women, half of which are suffering from a mid-life crises. They should be ashamed of themselves for holding the future from being born in Zimbabwe.

We shall never tell lies as revolutionaries; all the anti-colonial struggle icons like Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela, Julius Nyerere knew when it was enough and handed over the baton to others. The African revolution must always distance itself from all forms of personality cults; insistence that President Mugabe must lead to the grave is a sign that ZANU-PF is drowning in cowardice.

ISSUED BY THE ECONOMIC FREEDOM FIGHTERS

MBUYISENI QUINTIN NDLOZI (National Spokesperson)

Contact: +27 (76) 834 7308

Naledi Chirwa (Media Liaison) +27 (61) 482 6589

The Fight for Free and Decolonised Education and Graduate Employment: The New Sight of Struggle for the Student Movement in Zimbabwe

Kudos to Comrade Tonderai Dombo and other graduates who challenged education without empowerment yesterday.

The decolonization of the economy has not led to the broad-based empowerment of the vast majority of the working class. The emerging struggles for jobs and against graduate unemployment which exploded on the 29^th of September at the recent University of Zimbabwe graduation when students protested against Robert Mugabe, the President of Zimbabwe and the Chancellor of all universities have given pointers to the new sight of struggle which the student movement objectively out of necessity now need to pursue. Graduate unemployment is so devastating and only a tiny proportion of those who graduate annually are able to find jobs.

Organization at a campus level gives the student movement sufficient power to mobilize potent rebellions for demanding their class interests. In their thousands they can organize and challenge the government to pursue certain policies and if they are radical enough they can even topple governments. It was at the University of Havana that Fidel Castro and others began the build up towards the revolutionary overthrow of the corrupt dictatorships of Fulgencio Batista and Ramón Grau. Others examples that come to mind are; the 1968 student protests in France which forced President Charles de Gaulle to quickly skip the border and hide , the 1980s student movement in Zimbabwe which forced the shutdown of the University of Zimbabwe including also countless protests launched after that to the current #feesmustfall# decolonise education protests in South Africa which started in 2015. The #feesmustfall# movement at Wits University in South Africa has gone as far as petitioning the South African Chamber of mines to fund free education. It is not under any illusion, it is aware that capital is running the show and the fight must be directed against it.

Graduate unemployment and the demand for a free decolonized education should be at the centre of student struggles. Sometimes activists fail to mobilize mass struggles because they will be articulating periphery issues which students are not prepared to take risks by participating. Most students are aware that they will mostly likely not find employment after graduation. But are most student protests and campaigns placing graduate unemployment at centre of the struggles? The economy has collapsed owing to a number of factors such as the failure of the national bourgeois to become the historic bourgeois, the Rockerfellers. They have failed to confront international capital. They expropriate whited capital but they are still dependent on its loans, FDI and aid. They are the typical lumpen bourgeois of the third world, corrupt, dependent and oppressive. The bursting of the economy by neoliberal capitalism, ESAP squandered the industrial potential of the economy which was aided by ZIDERA and the combined piercing striking rod of imperialism. Mugabe apart from failing, he has also been whipped by an unimaginable sjambok which is now being oiled by the likes of Patson Dzamara with their lobby for the intensification of the economic and financial airstrike. In such a complex situation the intervention of a radical student movement united with the working class, social movements and the radical left potentially bequeaths a potent movement against both the rotten and parasitic ZANU PF and international capital. This is so, because the reality of the matter is that ZANU PF is applying failed trickle-down economics of enriching the elites to create jobs which has failed. Also because international capital will never come to Zimbabwe with a bag loaded with $100 billion to build the economy but rather it will merely revive the system of chibharo- slave labour through labour market flexibility to repeat another Zuva Petroleum vs Don Nyamande and massacre thousands of jobs as demanded by the IMF in the LIMA Arrears Clearance Strategy expressed in the Civil Service Audit report.

The epistemicides being regurgitated in Colleges and Universities by students must be challenged. Education should not only empower students with skills, it must liberate their minds from mental slavery. It must give them an awareness of their relationship with nature, the origins ad nature of what they know and what they are being taught, how they can manipulate nature to transform society and crucially how the system of capitalism works. Colonial epistemologies which are still dominant in the colleges and universities are disempowering, destructive and only serving to creating the 1960s intellectual who has to serve settler colonialism with his blood and tears. Education must not be a question of cramming and passing an exam. It must change the thinking and behaviour of the educated. The reason why most students are struggling to articulate an alternative to what they were taught is because of the mug and jug pedagogy condemned by Paulo Freire. The capping of students bowing their heads at the graduation is the final process of this stamping of inferiority in the student and forcing him/her to respect dictatorial leadership and gerontocracy. Neoliberal capitalism is the hegemonic discourse in University curriculum. It is celebrated. Alternatives are rarely studied. It is not the same education that has produced the makers of Microsoft, Apple, Facebook and automobiles; it is a pale shadow of it. It is alienating. Its enlightening value lies in the fact that it teaches new things to students but it does not create critical thinkers and innovative leaders, it stifles them. It reflects the objectives of the Rhodesian educational system and the clueless national liberation which took over whose key policy makers are still student themselves after 36 years of independence!

 

 

Break With Imperialism : Workers, Students, Vendors, Youths and Rural Farmers Unite and Fight Dictatorship and Neo-liberalism. Build Class Power Reject Imperialism

 

Romper con el imperialismo : trabajadores, estudiantes, vendedores , jóvenes y agricultores rurales unirse y luchar dictadura y el neoliberalismo

 

By Raymond Sango

If ever there is going to be any successful and progressive struggle against dictatorship in Zimbabwe it has to be through the class unity and power of the oppressed and its direct self-activity and not through the intervention of imperialism. The removal of an authoritarian system and its callous neoliberal economic paradigm which is causing untold suffering should bequeath a new society based on social justice, equality, solidarity, and freedom not a society run by elite technocrats imposed by imperialism through a military intervention like what happened in Iraq.

Imperialism in particular the United States of America and Britain have no history of intervening in any country to promote democracy but they have a rich record of looting resources under the pretext of ‘promoting democracy and good governance’ as they did in Iraq after toppling the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and installing a puppet regime which aroused the scourge of terrorism. The Chilcot Report in the UK finalised in 2016 has concluded with a damning indictment on the participation of the UK in the invasion in Iraq and the role played by Tony Blair. If the British are condemning Blair then why should we be creating allies like him in the struggle again the dictatorship? In the Middle East absolute monarchies still exist in places like Saudi Arabia but ironically they are all ‘close and strategic’ allies of the USA.

Both Mugabe and the imperialists are representing dictatorship albeit in different forms. Mugabe is representing dictatorship at a national level of supressing dissent and opposition to his rule and protecting the interests of the emerging black bourgeois. Activists campaigning against dictatorship, austerity policies, unemployment and poverty are abducted, maimed, tortured and arrested. There is no freedom of assembly and of demonstration and petition. Imperialism on the other hand manifests itself at a global level at first through colonialism and now neo-colonialism. The United States of America has arrogated itself the role of the Headman in the ‘Global Village’ , a role advocated and supported by academics like Robert Gilpin, some civil society organizations at a national , regional, and global level. It controls multilateral financial institutions such as the IMF, and the World Bank which it uses to whip all countries straying from the logic of neoliberalism into submission and if they remain intransigent use its immense political and financial power to topple these regimes through coup de tats like in Chile when Salvador Allende was removed through a US backed Coup de tat led by General Augusto Pinochet. African Presidents such as Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba were all removed through US backed Coup de tats. In Latin America ; Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela are enduring imperialist backed political onslaughts to dismantle the left-nationalism and self-reliance economic paradigm through neoliberal movements fighting for ‘democracy and good governance’.

The society envisioned by the immense majority reeling under neoliberalism and pseudo-nationalism in Zimbabwe is incompatible with the vision of American and Western capital. The working people of the USA who were rallying behind the Democratic Party Socialist Candidate Bernie Saunders identify with the struggles of the oppressed in Zimbabwe. In terms of class and material conditions they are identical. But the bourgeois state of America and its vulture capitalists have interests antagonistic to the interests of the working people in Zimbabwe the same as it does with its own local own working class. When the French government was issuing statements and giving solidarity to the suffering working people who were protesting at Africa unity square it was ironically facing massive protests at home dubbed ‘Nuit debout’. The French working class rejected the neoliberal anti-labour El Komri laws which the government planned to promulgate through a Decree. There is no doubt that the French working class rejected the same laws which state in Zimbabwe introduced via backdoor through the Zuva Petroleum vs Don Nyamande Supreme Court ruling. Capital globally is looking for cheap labour –‘labour-market flexibility’ to freely exploit labour and natural resources and accumulate and expropriate profits privately. This is why Communists have a slogan which states, ‘Workers of the World Unite’. It is working class internationalism based on class not an alliance with imperialism which is solution.

It must always be remembered that the struggles against dictatorship in post-colonial Zimbabwe emerged as struggles against both the One party state and imperialism. The radical anti-dictatorship struggles that emerged in the 1980s especially amongst the students and labour were both against the closing in of democratic space, repression, the ending of multi-party democracy and imperialism. The anti-imperialism or the dictatorship of capital struggles reached their zenith in the aftermath of the assassination of Samora Matchel , the President of Mozambique. During his speeches, ZCTU Secretary General, Morgan Tsvangirai did not only unequivocally condemn the dictatorship of Robert Mugabe but also the dictatorship of capital, imperialism. The struggle against ESAP became the biggest protracted fight against the twin dictatorships of Mugabe and international capital through the IMF. The IMF which prescribed Structural Adjustments globally on behalf of the dictatorship of capital using the ideas of Milton Friedman as the template and Volckers monetarism as an example emerged as the global financial prefect using its unique position in international finance to strangle third world countries by ‘cracking them open’ or ‘bursting them’ through trade liberalization, liberalization of capital markets, floating of exchange rates, privatisation, deregulation , austerity- job cuts, salary cuts and recruitment freezes. The experience of the 1990s is very graphic and the poverty and suffering bequeathed by ESAP has been documented with terrible exactness for all to see and judge.

The class unity of the oppressed and its movement towards the establishment of class power is only possible if workers, vendors, youths, and the unemployed begin to identify their class demands and uniting in a common struggle for their fulfilment. Workers and vendors should not be coerced to join the struggles through burning their goods and worsening their suffering but through mobilisation and unity around specific demands. A working people’s revolution to establish class power involves the masses and is not carried out by a few inexhaustible and dedicated revolutionaries who move around burning the goods of struggling vendors. Fighting dictatorship entails challenging capital and moving towards expropriating large retail chains, mines, banks and factories built through the exploitation of the property-less workers and sheer plunder of the state. Robbing the poor is not progressive. But robbing the rich to empower the poor is progressive in the dictionary of the working people. All capitalists are the same. Dividing them into black indigenous capitalists –Mphoko (Choppies) and white capitalists- John Moxon (TM Pick n Pay) reeks of sympathy with imperialism. John Moxon the great grandson of Thomas Meikles privately owns looted property established first through primitive accumulation; the looting of cattle and land. Mphoko owns wealth looted directly from the state. They are all looters. The only people who are not looters, the losers in this process are the working people who are unemployed and who continue to earn starvation wages. Their class unity and fightback against the few who are accumulating is the only progressive movement of the oppressed that is left. The coalition with imperialism is only but siding with one section of the exploiters, the oppressors and plunderers! Our international allies are the global working classes, students, rural farmers and youths not their reactionary states which are also supressing and oppressing them.

Workers of the World Unite!

Shinga Mushandi! Shinga! Qina sisebenzi qina!

INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST ORGANIZATION

                

       NERA DEMONSTRATION SOLIDARITY STATEMENT                                                 

                           …Mugabe Must Go! IMF OUT NOW..      

2018 is too far…One Solution…Mass Action…Another Shutdown is Necessary

There is power and strength in numbers. The unity of pro-democracy forces around the democratic demands such as: the immediate resignation of Mugabe, Free and fair elections, and an end to police brutality is crucial in ensuring victory and in ending divisions and factionalism which are weakening the resistance against dictatorship. The country has virtually been turned into a fiefdom of Mugabe and his wife wherein he has been declared the life President.We share the position of the radical MDC-T Youth Assembly Chairperson ‘Bvondo’ Chidziva who said in a statement, “We reject the false narrative.  Zimbabwe is one person and one family. Our strength rests in the diversity of our nation and plurality of our voices. It’s time for Mugabe and his regime to stand aside now. We can’t trust them with our future” All the arms of government including the police, army, continue to mobilize resources human and material to sustain his hold on power when 5 million people affected by drought are starving and languishing in hunger. He draws his power not from the people but from the state’s monopoly of organized and funded violence. The police received orders to thwart the NERA demo and after a High Court order gave it a nod it still could not proceed because the black-boots , para-military gangs and thugs in uniforms armed to the teeth had already started arresting pro-democracy activists and clamping down on the masses who were trooping in at Freedom Square.

Let’s unite and fight but being mindful of regime turncoats like Didymus Mutasa who still see Mugabe as a friend or a father. Mugabe is a dictator, he must go now! Why are the leaders fighting for a compromise with Mugabe? Class is important especially in relation to the leadership of this emerging movement. The petty bourgeois and middle class leadership of the opposition due ; to its class position and its inherent behaviour of vacillating between peddling the interests of capital and responding to the radical forces from below when faced with the threat of extinction ,its indecisiveness, wavering, and cowardly behaviour of vanishing during decisive revolutionary moments is an opportunistic class which cannot be trusted.

It is impossible to serve two classes at the same time. One class will have to be sacrificed. Its either you decide to move with the radical working people fighting austerity and revolutionary youths like the MDC-T Youth Assembly Chairperson  ‘Bvondo’ Chidziva and topple dictatorship or choose to be cowardly and vainly hope that Mugabe will voluntarily resign and accept a National Transitional Authority of academics.

The MDC-T Youth Assembly Chairperson also correctly stated contrary to the position of the ‘GNU minded’ opposition political elites that,

“2018 is far away and elections are not only a way of removing a democratically elected government or president from power in a democracy. However let me clear that this current government was not even democratically elected. Peaceful protests are a legal means of removing government from power whether they were elected by Nikuv or dead voters. My Zimbabwe is a vehicle to achieve this very important objective and milestone in our country.”

 

The dictatorship cannot and will not be removed by speeches, talks and press conferences. It is an illegitimate violent dictatorship ruling through the use of force, bribery, murder and chicanery. No free and fair elections can be done under this regime no matter what electoral reforms. Remove the regime first then free and fair elections. The only solution to cripple and paralyse it is united mass action. Another shutdown is necessary.

 

Removing Mugabe should mean ending dictatorship and the destruction of its structures. If Mugabe is removed with the dictatorship left intact and retained for use by the next government, we are mostly likely going to endure another era of a fresh , young and energetic dictatorship ready to perpetuate the same brutal suppression of protests and the rigging of elections. Mugabe must be removed together with the whole oppressive corrupt system!                                                                                                                                                  Important for the oppressed in these ongoing struggles and the movement towards a ‘Grand Coalition’ and booting out Mugabe is to ensure that the policies, programs and strategies remain democratically determined through the inclusion of the demands of the workers, youths, students, vendors, residents, the disabled and rural farmers. Workers demands for job security and the end of job cuts, salary freezes, promotion and recruitment freezes which are being demanded by the IMF to repay Mugabe’s debts should be included. The demands being advocated for by the ZCTU such as the repeal of the Special Economic Zones which are not subject to the Labour Act and tax legislation should form part of the demands of the ‘Grand Coalition. Residents are protesting against pre-paid water meters and residents organizations such as CHRA, Water Alliance and others are fronting this campaign. Students are demanding free education and end to the victimization of student activists. Youths are demanding jobs and loans to start their own income generating projects. The landless rural farmers and the unemployed such as the youths arrested in Ruwa for invading a farm and being represented by MDC-T Secretary General- Douglas Mwonzora are demanding the equitable distribution of land for farming and housing.           

The radicalizing youths, students, and vendors should not have any illusions in bourgeois democracy, elections, courts and reformism in general. The imploding economy is just but the sign of a rotten capitalist economy. The neoliberal policies being implemented such as ‘inflation targeting’ , job cuts, wage freezes, recruitment freezes, an export-oriented economy with no industry focusing merely on pumping out raw materials combined together with a corrupt and clueless capitalist class using the state and parastals as its feed trough, and lacking progressive policies to expand the productive forces explain the manifestation and trajectory of the rot. At the centre of these policy distortions and economic decay is the crisis of capitalism. The fall of profit rates of many companies owing to the fall of global commodity prices, failure of the market system as a way of organizing production and overproduction in many industrialized countries which are dumping surplus products leading to de-industrialization and surplus-labour (unemployment) has triggered an endless economic crisis which is manifesting itself globally with recessions and depressions in many countries. The only solution to this crisis is socialism. Socialism entails the public ownership and socialisation of the economy to ensure efficiency, equality, freedom, justice and a better life for all at a national, regional and global level. Private accumulation like that of corrupt businessmen linked to ZANU PF and multinational corporations which are looting minerals like what happened at Chiadzwa with the diamonds will only continue to ensure the enrichment of the few capitalists and the impoverishment of the majority. The IMF is demanding job cuts in a country with 90% unemployment. It is clear that its agenda is merely that of worsening the crisis by making more money from high interest rates attached to loans awarded to the corrupt junta and never about addressing the crisis.

Varombo! Tamuka! Abayanga! Sesivhukile! Qina Msebenzi Qina! Shinga Mushandi! Shinga!                                                                             Email: iso.zim@gmail.com –   26 August 2016

 

Has the ‘Mugabe Must Go’ Mantra Become an Ideology?

For many in the opposition, Robert Mugabe is the quintessence of dictatorship and the man responsible for the economic collapse and its results such as job cuts, unemployment, poverty and general suffering. Robert Mugabe is the President of Zimbabwe and has been ruling ruling the country for 36 years with a strong fist. From the 1980s butchery of people belonging to the Ndebele ethnic group, attempts at creating a one party state, suppression of the emerging opposition to dictatorship and in the 1990s the gagging of anti-neoliberal (ESAP) protests  to the suppression, torture, maiming and cold blooded murder of MDC supporters and anti-dictatorship activists from the year 2000 , the regime of Robert Mugabe drips of the blood of innocent working people who only wanted the improvement of their lot and the end of suffering, misery and poverty. But today the meaning of ‘Mugabe must go’ has underwent significant changes. Today ‘Mugabe Must Go’ only entails Robert Mugabe and his family…First Lady Grace Mugabe, Bona, Chatunga Bellarmine and Robert Junior and also the son in law Simba Chikowore. The reason why I argue that the ‘Mugabe must go’ is now only a fight against the first family is because those who have been aiding Mugabe,  who actively participated in the dissipation of the country’s wealth and the butchering of innocent men and women who dared question the direction the country was taking have now been openly welcomed, embraced and given the leadership of the opposition. They are now the new leaders of the opposition , fighting against a monstrous regime they designed, lubricated and entrenched.

 

ZANU PF rejects are being embraced automatically by the same speed and rate that they are booted out. They are not seen as a problem. The problem is Mugabe and Mugabe are alone. The splits in the ruling ZANU PF party have exposed the ideological bankruptcy of the mainstream opposition. It is now only fair to start attaching ideological tags such Left, Right and Centre to these parties so that people begin to really appreciate what they represent beyond the façade created by the ‘Mugabe must go’ mantra. Opposition parties; ZPF, MDCT, MDC, PDP are rightwing political parties which are following neoliberalism as an ideology and a system of running government, society and relating to the world. Neoliberalism entails the unrestrained and uncontrolled operation of the market based on the assumption that the market is the best mechanism of responding to people’s needs. This means that these parties and in reference to their policies i.e JUICE, ART, HOPE, BUILD would privatise hospitals, clinics, schools, universities, water to introduce the price mechanism so that whenever one approaches a hospital he/she will have to pay first before being attended to, if he/she does not pay first there wont be any treatment and medication. The same applies to education , water, housing and other services. When it comes to employment relations, these parties believe in the centrality and righteousness of the market in determining salaries, who stays and who loses a job. Basically they take labour market flexibility as a principle, the idea that hiring and firing of workers of workers is the best way of operating markets.

 

Most of all these policies have already been tried in Zimbabwe and globally. They have failed. In Zimbabwe ESAP was tried in the 1990s and failed. It was the ZCTU which was at the centre of condemning ESAP and its drivers, the IMF and the Worldp Bank. The anti-retrenchment struggles, anti-privatisation battles in University and College campuses, minimum wage and salary increment strikes and demonstrations where all waged against the neoliberal austerity policies pushed by the IMF known as ESAP. But how come the opposition has dumped all these campaigns opting only for the ‘Mugabe Must Go’ campaign ? The MDC was hijacked by economic and political elites and comprador middle classes. The direction of the party was exclusively put into the hands of a few rich elites such as Welshman Ncube , Eddie Cross, Tendai Biti and other educated elites who took instructions from rich white farmers, businessmen and women and international donors. The views, opinions and cries of the common folk were relegated to the dustbins and the party changed course and began championing a ‘Mugabe Must Go’ mantra separated from the ‘IMF Must go’ mantra which laid the foundations for the formation of the MDC.

 

Now the ‘Mugabe Must Go’ mantra which now only refers to Mugabe and his family leaving out brutal bloodthirsty fanatic defenders of the regime booted out f internal ZANU PF succession squabbles such as Mujuru, Mutasa, Mliswa and many others has lost all meaning. Instead of being a rallying point for all the oppressed against dictatorship and for the democratisation of the political system and the articulation of an economic alternative , it is emerging as an empty aimless protest movement involving pro-establishment and anti-establishment forces with no clear alternative and lacking a new narrative. If one is to ask those who gave the war vets solidarity during the trial of the leadership of the ZNLWVA , apart from the old tired responses like ‘we are all Zimbabweans’ no meaningful response is retrieved.

 

With the growing calls in some sections of the opposition for a second GNU, a putrid elite compromise which as usual treats the majority poor with  contempt seeing the  ill-fed, ill-clothed as helpless, ignorant mobs incapable of articulating their alternative is now in the offing. At best, a GNU is an undemocratic elite political pact to think and act on behalf of the masses without their consent. It is not similar to a united front of the oppressed where workers, rural farmers, students, youths and progressive pro-democracy and anti-neoliberal austerity converge , articulate and resolve collectively to embrace a particular political strategy and economic policy alternative which speaks to their needs, desires and aspirations; their class interests. The poor are now at the mercy of political elites in both ZANU PF and the opposition who are attracting together like magnets around a common position of ‘eating together’ and telling the masses that ‘eat what you kill’, as if what they will be eating in government with their friends in the IMF, Word Bank and in the corporate world when they emerge victorious in their push for a second GNU are fruits of the labour. A third pillar is not only indispensable but it is a natural product of the current political and economic circumstances. The ZANU PF dictatorship should be collapsed and a democratic political system based on participatory democracy ushered in. On the economic front the natural resources of the country should be used to provide free healthcare, education , water and revive the fallen industries. Factories and banks should be put under public ownership. Banks cannot get bailouts and benefit from ZAMCO following reckless lending to CEOs and unscrupulous banking tycoons and expect to get away with it. This process entails the heightening of the ‘Mugabe must go’ campaign to new levels based on ideology, democratic principles and genuine search of an alternative. The tired chorus of ‘Mugabe only must go’ and ‘ ZANU PF must remain’ is not getting us anywhere. They are some who have built their careers only singing this chorus but reluctant to heighten it inorder to procrastinate the inevitable victory of the oppressed over both dictatorship and neoliberal capitalism to give just so that they continue getting some crumbs from international donors, hot speculative capital and bitter white capital.

 

In the final analysis, ‘Mugabe must go’ is not an ideology but a rallying point of the oppressed against dictatorship. Mugabe is the face of the dictatorship, he together with his appointees and those consenting to his deadly bloodletting should face the chop. The ‘Mugabe must go’ slogan expressed the oppressed people’s longing for democracy, it should not be mistakenly abused to mean only the removal of one family and the maintenance of the system.

 

Democracy Now!

 

Varombo! Tamuka!

 

 

Why the Masses Decided to Shutdown Zimbabwe On 6 July

By Raymond Sango

The levels of arrogance, opulence and decadence of the ruling elites in government and business side by side with the worsening economic crisis and neoliberal austerity measures and their devastating effects have only logically provoked the anger and determination of the oppressed strata. Yesterday it was the despot’s daughter giving birth in Singapore and today the despot orders that no ordinary person can import basic commodities from across the borders. It is the First lady who snobbishly denies a photo with Wicknel Chivayo in Dubai for ‘fear of Zimbabweans’ and Supa Mandiwanzira takes $200 000 from a parastatal and arrogantly defends himself saying he is ‘not a street kid’ …‘what is $200 000?’. The arrogance of Supa provokes the memory of one Happison Muchechetere who was earning $40 000 a month as the CEO of ZBC while workers had went for months without salaries, the disgusting lootocrat had the guts to say ‘I don’t care about poor people’ while defending his plunder. Now $15 billion was stolen and there has not been a single suspect arrested but 57 protesters at Beitbridge and some commuter omnibus operators are already behind bars. Vice President Phelekezela Mphoko is making merry enjoying life in a hotel eating fancy dishes , deserts and drinking expensive wine and whisky at a cost of $550 000 for the 18 months he has been booked in . The story doesn’t end there. The new face of tenderpreneurship Wicknell Chivayo has run amock, he is dipping his hands even dipper at ZESA thanks to Samuel Undenge the runner boy. Cuthbert Dube was earning $550 000 a month and now PSMI workers are paying by salary cuts and job losses. Over a billion dollars was misused at NRZ and it is the workers who are now paying the price. Robert Mugabe gobbles over $100 million in his unrelenting globetrotting and guess who is paying … ? The President splashes over $5 million annually on his useless birthday celebrations as if he is celebrating the poverty of 5 million people faced with starvation following the El Niño induced drought.

The Oppressed are Tired of Talking. They Now Want to Fight!

The masses increasingly disgusted by corruption, infuriated by the worsening economic and tired of endless talk-shops and fruitless conformist approaches to issues which are ‘smart’ and ‘peaceful’ have reached a conclusion the only potent solution to end oppression , suffering and suppression is fighting back. And action is what we are seeing! Irate Zimbabweans in the diaspora and Cross-border traders at Beitbridge have expressed the precise mood in the country and how far people are ready to go in defence of their class interests. From the beginning of the year the MDCT run Chitungwiza Municipality was forced to back down on its plans to increase the operational licences of Commuter omnibus to $100 following a riot by commuter omnibus operators that forced the police to appeal for reinforcements from Harare to suppress it.

The most decisive battles that shaped the mood and set the tone that enabled the complete success of the stay-away are the GMB and NRZ sleep- in strikes, the public sector workers meeting and strike, the protest staged at the Rainbow Towers against Mboko, the actions of a grouping of youthful political activists from MDCT and PDP  #Tajamuka# and the social media citizen activism led by Pastor Evan Mawarire. The GMB workers sleep in strike staged earlier this year demanding the payment of outstanding salary arrears was intervened and supported by the radical left in particular the ISO and key radical trade unions such as the bank workers – ZIBAWU, PTUZ and ZEWU and   succeded in building working class confidence in its capacity for fight back and managed to spread to key sections of industry such as the ; NRZ where workers staged a 80 day strike, Chitungwiza Municipality,   Agrifoods         and      Ingwebu.The mood created by these fight backs combined with the small protests such as the anti-National Pledge demonstration, vendors protests in towns and cities and critically the protest at the Rainbow Towers hotel demanding Vice President Mphoko to vacate the hotel , the Occupy Africa Unity Square protest, the MDC demonstrations, and protests by the #Tajamuka# group created the sufficient anger necessary for the masses to rebel. The Beitbridge crossborder traders rebellion excited the oppressed and emboldened commuter omnibus operators who sprang up in rebellion and launched a boycott protesting against police corruption and brutality. The most decisive action was the historic collective decision by the Apex and Health Apex representing all the public sector unions which met for the first since the 1996 General Strike on the 2^nd of July and resolved to call for strike action. With key layers of the working class going on strike, and a riotous mood in the townships it was left to the social media to coordinate the action. Whatsapp emerged as a key organizer of the stay-away just like in Egypt and Tunisia during the Arab Spring. The social media campaign was effectively conducted by Pastor Evan Mawarire who has a following of 14000 on Twitter.

Radical lumpen elements infuriated with the unrelenting suffering, oppression and idiocy of loafing emerged as the key enforcers of the stay-away when it was officially called, assuming the role of the citizen militia. It is this underclass which is largely responsible for the violence and targeted attacks against the ruling class and its properties. Indeed capitalism is its own gravedigger ,. It creates a class of underpaid and unpaid workers and the unemployed which annihilates it when the contradictions of capitalism intensify.

What is becoming apparent to the oppressed is that the country is split between two antagonistic classes, the bourgeois and proletariat, those who own multiple farms, retail chains, mines, factories, banks and privileged political elites who are feeding on parastatals and roadblocks and on the other, the struggling majority poor who rely on selling their labour and precariously on buying and selling basic commodities and cheap consumer goods. The import controls have been an eye opener to the oppressed as they have clearly witnessed their government taking a biased economic decision in favour of those who own factories and retail chains. It is this oppressed class with nothing to lose but its chains which is beginning to organize as striking government workers and rebellious petty traders fighting in defence of their livelihoods.

The Stampede to Claim the Leadership of 6 July

Sections of the middles class, NGOs and opposition parties are now stampeding to claim the leadership of the stay –away. The media in particular the independent media houses have penned sensational stories on what transpired on 6 July which omit the role played by public sector workers in particular teachers and nurses who had called their strike independent of the calls by Pastor Mawarire, Occupy Africa Unity Square Movement and Tajamuka. What is missing in the jejunes pusblished in newspapers and aired in some channels is an analysis that looks the underlying causes that caused the strike, stay-away and rebellions in the townships. That the material conditions are responsible for the fight backs is not understood and appreciated. That public sector workers had not received their salaries is relegated to be a collorary of an assumption of heroes with an immense social base and message that is followed by the oppressed which outweighs the poverty and suffering of the revolting masses. That the masses were not fully organized in a united will soon be manifestly clear after public sector workers are paid and return to work. Increasingly the stay-away is being accredited to a few heroes without any mention of the organized movements and selfless activists with names that have never appeared in newspapers.

The rebellion will most likely stagnate because it lacks revolutionary leadership . But the economic crisis will most likely get even worse in the next three months. Organization and leadership that is revolutionary and principled is crucial. Public sector workers must continue to strengthen their class unity across all sectors and unite with private sector workers in preparation of bigger fights ahead. The system of capitalism based on markets is in crisis and has not recovered from the global economic crisis of 2007-8 which destroyed banks, made millions homeless and increased suffering until it was rescued by the printing of money in the USA and China which began to stimulate global demand until the 2015 when its economy imploded with a stock market crash and the fall of its growth rate. The state of capitalism internationally, however is not enough to explain the economic crisis. The parasitic elites preying on state coffers to aid their extravagance and insatiable appetites for celebrity lifestyles, their lack of a concrete economic program to address the crisis, the austerity policies implemented at the instigation of the IMF, corruption and dwindling production summarize the root cause of the economic crisis.

The Politics of the Opposition Political Parties     

Most opposition political parties tacitly endorsed the stay-away. It must be appreciated to avoid confusion that there is no single revolutionary opposition political party in Zimbabwe. The strategy of the opposition political parties does not lie in demonstrations or a revolution but in an election that will most likely be rigged and messed up by vote-buying and electioneering. The political elites leading these parties: MDCT, PDP, PF will soon order their members to renounce radical actions and wait for 2018.

2018 is too Far ! Mugabe Must Go Now                                                                                                     Robert Mugabe and his corrupt and cannibalistic cabal must go. But to achieve real and meaningful transformation, the whole system of governance should to be transformed through the creation of a more democratic political system based on participatory democracy. Power must be drawn from the people not from the military and thugs. People must be consulted; we need more referendums that allow people to participate in decision making. The economy should be democratized. The economy is not an affair of one family or two factions in ZANU PF. The industries, mines and farms that have been captured by the elites should be but under public ownership. These elites never worked to own these mines, industries and farms , they simply grabbed them like the BSAC before them. Retail chains built by corrupt monies should be seized and the commodities distributed to the poor. The forty eight and sixty roomed palaces, double storey duplexes and mansions built through plunder should be vandalized and nationalized. The fleets of vehicles owned by corrupt officials should be seized and auctioned off. The suspects in the plunder of Marange diamonds must be locked up at Chikurubi and the keys thrown away. Power must be placed in the hands of the majority, the working people.                                                                                                                                                             Lastly the misdirected IMF which is pushing for job cuts, wage freezes and recruitment freezes, prepaid water meters and the assumption of private debts by the RBZ through ZAMCO should be ordered to leave Zimbabwe. It appears that by continuing to force the state to ‘crack open’ the economy by destroying peoples livelihoods to give Mugabe another loan at huge interest rates so that he loots it and uses it to intimidate, maim and kill helpless workers, youths, peasants and farmers demanding accountability, salary increments, payment of salaries, job security, jobs, food, houses, water and an end to dictatorship; the IMF has declared an economic war on the poor and it is on the same side with dictatorship.

 

People’s Assembly Against Austerity: A Momentous Period in the History of the Working class

The People’s Assembly Against Austerity and Neoliberalism which was convened on the 7^th of May 2015 at Courtney House succeeded in bringing together in a proper assembly over 200 representatives from all the sections suffering most from the crisis of capitalism and neoliberal austerity measures. From trade unions to striking workers such as GMB workers and the NRZ workers to the National Vendors Union, radical intellectuals, community organisations such as the Community Water Alliance, Anti-Privatisation Forum and Harare Residents Alliance which are building the resistance to the privatisation of water to students represented by ZINASU and finally the anti-capitalist and political left led by the International Socialist Organisation (ISO-ZIM) and the Revolutionary Workers Group (RWG); the assembly was a lively working class space coloured by a revolutionary ferment and excitement with the opportunity the platform presented for the poor to articulate their struggles and chart the way forward.

What is becoming apparent in Zimbabwe is that the growing crisis of neoliberal capitalism spawning the fall of key commodity prices such as platinum which the economy is heavily reliant on together with the accelerated de-industrialization which is driven by the overproduction of China and South Africa whose cheap products are made by the ‘sweat-shops’ and subsidizied by ‘migrant-labour’ are combining in their suppression of the local productive capacity. The strong US dollar which became even stronger after an interest rate hike by the US Federal Reserve in December has also meant the importation of deflation. The currency situation in Zimbabwe exposes the short-term piecemeal solutions of the GNU which merely addressed the economic crisis which exploded in 2008 by introducing the US dollar and opening the borders to increase imports but without addressing the structural deficits of the economy. The ‘dollar for two’ era came with a price that we are now paying for. It came with even accelerated de-industrialization now increasingly fronted by Pick n Pay. At the international front ZIDERA is still actively militating against the economy as imperialism remains embittered by the land reform and indigenization policies. Compounding the situation is the degeneration of the nationalist regime which has become the face of grand theft and corruption as is revealed by the looting of $15 billion from diamond mining in Chiaadzwa.

The growing economic crisis is pushing all sections of the working into a precarious edge leaving them with no other choice than to fight back. From the 2015 anti-prepaid water meters demonstration organized by BUPRA in Bulawayo to the thunderous vendors demonstration organized by NAVUZ the social movements have clearly been on good course in challenging neoliberal policies. The response by organized labour to the 2015 anti-labour Supreme Court ruling that upheld the common law right of the employer to terminate the employment contract upon a three months’ notice was weak with no serious attempt at mobilising the over 30 000 workers who lost their jobs. But the political landscape is increasing changing simultaneously with the worsening economic crisis.

The adoption of neoliberal austerity measures at the behest of the IMF as a means to try and address the suffocating economic crisis through huge cuts in public expenditure by significantly slashing the civil service from taking 82% of the national budget to 40% and the restructuring of parastatals through job cuts and salary freezes is increasing being met by resistance. In February 2015 GMB workers clocked a historic 32 days sleep in strike at their employers Headquarters, Dura house demanding the settling of their outstanding salaries and managed to force the employer to back down through a combination of radical working class action and legal challenges in the courts. In March NRZ workers facing the same challenges as GMB workers before them embarked on a sleep in strike which has surpassed 40 days!

Assembling in Harare on the 7^th of May were all these sections of the working class at the centre of the erupting anti-neoliberal restructuring in the parastatals. The sharing of experiences between all the sections of the working class, their interactions and understanding of the attacks fired against them by neoliberal capitalism through the comprador bourgeois and the degenerate nationalist class became the first defining moment towards the solidification of an organic class alliance and unity of the working class against capitalism. The platform provided a space for articulations of one’s class interests amongst potential class allies sharing the same interests but working in different environments. The space negated the atomism and individualism characterizing the isolated and uncoordinated class actions against neoliberalism and austerity. The community organisations fighting pre-paid water meters fitted into the labour, vendors and students class politics with the campaign finding its natural home amongst the working class which suffers most from the commodification of nature. The meaning of class alliance was more felt and understood than it was articulated. Crucially was the reflection of the potential of the organic intellectuals being trained in the counter-hegemonic class conscious working class schools such as the Zimbabwe Labour Centre who ably articulated the emerging neoliberalist labour relations pushing forcefully for labour market flexibility. The radicalism of the student movement and the acceptance of the logic of dialectical materialism and the refusal of the fallacies of neoliberal capitalism articulated as ‘common-sense’ in Universities by the organic intellectuals of the ruling classes provided the engine of rejuvenation and revolutionary fire as students articulated the #Feesmustfall# campaign.

With the endless downward spiral of capitalism as it moves from one recession and depression to another causing massive shocks in the economies of the globe whose custodians respond by instituting neoliberal reforms, it is critical to avoid imposing solutions and setting agendas alien from the experiences and practice of the working class. The global economic crisis of 2007-2008 which exploded causing unprecedented and unimaginable catastrophe was only addressed artificially the ‘take-off’ of China as the new centre of overproduction which consumed the excess commodities exported by most commodity driven export oriented economies. The year 2015 was revealing as the contradictions within the Chinese economy became intense and started exploding with a stock exchange crush that wiped away billions in value thus forcing a major restructuring of the Chinese economy to become more domestic market driven than high debt and export driven economy. The double digit growth rates of China have disappeared in tandem with the export receipts of commodity driven economies of the world such as South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Brazil and many others. This massive crisis has eroded the ‘impressive’ jobless growth spikes of the GNU which were driven by the rise in global commodity prices.

Worsening the situation is the diamond revenue which assisted in addressing the liquidity from 2007 in more ways than one , initially through enlarging the household incomes of the thousands who thronged the Marange diamond fields and later on private capital colliding with the state to brutally establish operations and beginning a process of throwing some crumbs to the treasury and carrots for indigenisation and youth programs and critically oiling the ZANU PF election machinery of 2013. Thus the role of diamonds in spurring liquidity whether informally or formally cannot be underestimated.

Appreciating that the GNU only postponed the complete collapse of the economy by introducing the multicurrency US$ thereby stabilising merely the currency market and the inflation but not addressing the causes the 2007-08 explosion which was a culmination of a plethora of factors can serve as the starting point of understanding that the worse is still yet to come. The introduction of bond coins and notes  is a unique but familiar quantitative easing strategy of printing money to improve liquidity or to ‘print the nation of crisis’ covered up cleverly in monetary economics jargon and logic to suppress popular discontent with it. The resort to printing money whatever the justifications being given by the RBZ Governor John Mangudya and Finance Minister shows the desperation of the government and direness of the economic meltdown.

The radical left in particular the ISO which was at the core of organising the assembly should continue playing the role of coordinating the emerging anti-capitalist struggles through establishing more platforms for the working class to interact and build united class actions. It might be that the old traditional Fordist- trade union organization is dying and paving way to the social movement trade unionism that coalesce anti-prepaid water meter struggles at home with the labour activism employed at the work place and targeted at the system of capitalism. The extreme democratic forms of protests witnessed at GMB and NRZ characterised by collective decision making and the evolution of consciousness from illusions with the employer and the Parliament as the solution to radical fight back serve as an illustration of how the consciousness of the working class develops naturally. The role of the radical left is intense political education to guide and direct the working following its shift away from reformism. The practical-economic struggles should be fed by through on-going rigorous schooling of cadres to avoid the degeneration of the struggle during the defining moments which are usually characterized by demoralization as many struggle to see the light at the end of the tunnel which will have become apparent for the left.

The working class is at a historical moment. Its confidence and the experience and careful reading of the situation by the left will prove decisive. The radical left should participate in all the working class struggles and anti-capitalist initiatives of community organisations with a clear conception of the stage reached by the struggles. Inaction and premature political decisions may scuttle the whole process. The poor have lost faith in electoral democracy and the right wing opposition is well aware of it which explains it’s pseudo-posturing as a radical alternative. If the working class repeats the mistake for the second time in its history of moving together with either elite and degenerate nationalism or neoliberal capitalism and imperialism it would have signed for its own death. With the growing resistance to job cuts, salary freezes, increases in VAT, prepaid water meters, tuition fee hikes in Universities and colleges more assemblies of the poor should be organized. The era of commodified struggles is over, the working class should fund its own programs and above all control them. The working class should not guess, estimate or assume the nature of the crisis and its historical role. Working with the radical left it should seek to broaden its understanding of the system of capitalism and its troops through class alliances with other sections of the proletariat. These processes have to be allowed to happen organically through interactions in assemblies which provide the platform for the working class to generalise its struggle against wage-slavery and transforming it into a single antagonistic affair between the corrupt exploiting idlers (bosses, comprador, bourgeois, IMF, World Bank,Imperialists) and the working class( workers, vendors, rural farmers, students, ad youths). The nature of the offensive by capital demands a clear class alliance of the working class which is national in character in the initial phase of settling its issues with the national bourgeois thereafter it naturally has to become regional and global.

Raymond Sango!!

People’s Assembly Against Austerity: A Momentous Period in the History of the Working class

 

The People’s Assembly Against Austerity and Neoliberalism which was convened on the 7^th of May 2015 at Courtney House succeeded in bringing together in a proper assembly representatives of all the sections suffering most from the crisis of capitalism and neoliberal austerity measures. From trade unions to striking workers such as GMB workers and the NRZ workers to the National Vendors Union, radical intellectuals, community organisations such as the Community Water Alliance, Anti-Privatisation Forum and Harare Residents Alliance which are building the resistance to the privatisation of water to students represented by ZINASU and finally the anti-capitalist and political left led by the International Socialist Organisation (ISO-ZIM) and the Revolutionary Workers Group (RWG); the assembly was a lively working class space coloured by a revolutionary ferment and excitement with the opportunity the platform presented for the poor to articulate their struggles and chart the way forward.

What is becoming apparent in Zimbabwe is that the growing crisis of neoliberal capitalism spawning the fall of key commodity prices such as platinum which the economy is heavily reliant on together with the accelerated de-industrialization which is driven by the overproduction of China and South Africa whose cheap products are made by the ‘sweat-shops’ and subsidizied by ‘migrant-labour’ are combining in their suppression of the local productive capacity. The strong US dollar which became even stronger after an interest rate hike by the US Federal Reserve in December has also meant the importation of deflation. The currency situation in Zimbabwe exposes the short-term piecemeal solutions of the GNU which merely addressed the economic crisis which exploded in 2008 by introducing the US dollar and opening the borders to increase imports but without addressing the structural deficits of the economy. The ‘dollar for two’ era came with a price that we are now paying for. It came with even accelerated de-industrialization now increasingly fronted by Pick n Pay. At the international front ZIDERA is still actively militating against the economy as imperialism remains embittered by the land reform and indigenization policies. Compounding the situation is the degeneration of the nationalist regime which has become the face of grand theft and corruption as is revealed by the looting of $15 billion from diamond mining in Chiaadzwa.

The growing economic crisis is pushing all sections of the working into a precarious edge leaving them with no other choice than to fight back. From the 2015 anti-prepaid water meters demonstration organized by BUPRA in Bulawayo to the thunderous vendors demonstration organized by NAVUZ the social movements have clearly been on good course in challenging neoliberal policies. The response by organized labour to the 2015 anti-labour Supreme Court ruling that upheld the common law right of the employer to terminate the employment contract upon a three months’ notice was weak with no serious attempt at mobilising the over 30 000 workers who lost their jobs. But the political landscape is increasing changing simultaneously with the worsening economic crisis.

The adoption of neoliberal austerity measures at the behest of the IMF as a means to try and address the suffocating economic crisis through huge cuts in public expenditure by significantly slashing the civil service from taking 82% of the national budget to 40% and the restructuring of parastatals through job cuts and salary freezes is increasing being met by resistance. In February 2015 GMB workers clocked a historic 32 days sleep in strike at their employers Headquarters, Dura house demanding the settling of their outstanding salaries and managed to force the employer to back down through a combination of radical working class action and legal challenges in the courts. In March NRZ workers facing the same challenges as GMB workers before them embarked on a sleep in strike which has surpassed 40 days!

Assembling in Harare on the 7^th of May were all these sections of the working class at the centre of the erupting anti-neoliberal restructuring in the parastatals. The sharing of experiences between all the sections of the working class, their interactions and understanding of the attacks fired against them by neoliberal capitalism through the comprador bourgeois and the degenerate nationalist class became the first defining moment towards the solidification of an organic class alliance and unity of the working class against capitalism. The platform provided a space for articulations of one’s class interests amongst potential class allies sharing the same interests but working in different environments. The space negated the atomism and individualism characterizing the isolated and uncoordinated class actions against neoliberalism and austerity. The community organisations fighting pre-paid water meters fitted into the labour, vendors and students class politics with the campaign finding its natural home amongst the working class which suffers most from the commodification of nature. The meaning of class alliance was more felt and understood than it was articulated. Crucially was the reflection of the potential of the organic intellectuals being trained in the counter-hegemonic class conscious working class schools such as the Zimbabwe Labour Centre who ably articulated the emerging neoliberalist labour relations pushing forcefully for labour market flexibility. The radicalism of the student movement and the acceptance of the logic of dialectical materialism and the refusal of the fallacies of neoliberal capitalism articulated as ‘common-sense’ in Universities by the organic intellectuals of the ruling classes provided the engine of rejuvenation and revolutionary fire as students articulated the #Feesmustfall# campaign.

With the endless downward spiral of capitalism as it moves from one recession and depression to another causing massive shocks in the economies of the globe whose custodians respond by instituting neoliberal reforms, it is critical to avoid imposing solutions and setting agendas alien from the experiences and practice of the working class. The global economic crisis of 2007-2008 which exploded causing unprecedented and unimaginable catastrophe was only addressed artificially the ‘take-off’ of China as the new centre of overproduction which consumed the excess commodities exported by most commodity driven export oriented economies. The year 2015 was revealing as the contradictions within the Chinese economy became intense and started exploding with a stock exchange crush that wiped away billions in value thus forcing a major restructuring of the Chinese economy to become more domestic market driven than high debt and export driven economy. The double digit growth rates of China have disappeared in tandem with the export receipts of commodity driven economies of the world such as South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Brazil and many others.

Worsening the situation is the diamond revenue which assisted in addressing the liquidity from 2007 in different ways , initially through enlarging the household incomes of the thousands who thronged the Marange diamond fields and later on private capital colliding with the state to brutally establish operations and begin a process of throwing some carrots for indigenisation and youth programs and critically oiling the ZANU PF election machinery of 2013. Thus the role of diamonds in spurring liquidity whether informally or formally cannot be underestimated. The crisis at Chiadzwa has critically worsened the already dire situation.

Appreciating that the GNU only postponed the complete collapse of the economy by introducing the multicurrency US$ thereby stabilising merely the currency market and the inflation but not addressing the causes the 2007-08 explosion which was a culmination of a plethora of factors can serve as the starting point of understanding that the worse is still yet to come. The introduction of bond coins and notes which is a unique but familiar quantitative easing strategy of printing money to improve liquidity or to ‘print the nation of crisis’ covered up cleverly in monetary economics jargon and logic to suppress popular discontent with it. The resort to printing money whatever the justifications being given by the RBZ Governor John Mangudya and Finance Minister shows the desperation of the government and direness of the economic meltdown.

The radical left in particular the ISO which was at the core of organising the assembly should continue playing the role of coordinating the emerging anti-capitalist struggles through establishing more platforms for the working class to interact and build united class actions. It might be that the old traditional Fordist- trade union organization is dying and paving way to the social movement trade unionism that coalesce anti-prepaid water meter struggles at home with the labour activism employed at the work place and targeted at the system of capitalism. The extreme democratic forms of protests witnessed at GMB and NRZ characterised by collective decision making and the evolution of consciousness from illusions with the employer and the Parliament as the solution to radical fight back serve as an illustration of how the consciousness of the working class develops naturally. The role of the radical left is intense political education to guide and direct the working following its shift away from reformism. The practical-economic struggles should be fed by through on-going rigorous schooling of cadres to avoid the degeneration of the struggle during the defining moments which are usually characterized by demoralization as many struggle to see the light at the end of the tunnel which will have become apparent for the left.

The working class is at a historical moment. Its confidence and the experience and careful reading of the situation by the left will prove decisive. The radical left should participate in all the working class struggles and anti-capitalist initiatives of community organisations with a clear conception of the stage reached by the struggles. Inaction and premature political decisions may scuttle the whole process. The poor have lost faith in electoral democracy and the right wing opposition is well aware of it which explains it’s pseudo-posturing as a radical alternative. If the working class repeats the mistake for the second time in its history of moving together with either elite and degenerate nationalism or neoliberal capitalism and imperialism it would have signed for its own death. With the growing resistance to job cuts, salary freezes, increases in VAT, prepaid water meters, tuition fee hikes in Universities and colleges more assemblies of the poor should be organized. The era of commodified struggles is over, the working class should fund its own programs and above all control them. The working class should not guess, estimate or assume the nature of the crisis and its historical role. Working with the radical left it should seek to broaden its understanding of the system of capitalism and its troops through class alliances with other sections of the proletariat. These processes have to be allowed to happen organically through interactions in assemblies which provide the platform for the working class to generalise its struggle against wage-slavery and transforming it into a single antagonistic affair between the corrupt exploiting idlers (bosses, comprador, bourgeois, IMF, World Bank,Imperialists) and the working class( workers, vendors, rural farmers, students, ad youths). The nature of the offensive by capital demands a clear class alliance of the working class which is national in character in the initial phase of settling its issues with the national bourgeois thereafter it naturally has to become regional and global.

Raymond Sango!!