Wither to Zimbabwe? Part two

Wither to Zimbabwe? Part two
By Azwell Banda
Sunday April 08, 2007 [04:00]

An even more pertinent question, also relevant for our own South African realities, is whether national liberation struggles that fail to rapidly advance towards socialist-type or full-blown socialist dispensations are bound to degenerate into some kind of deformed bourgeois democracies or repressive oligarchies?”

Blade makes the following profound analytical observations:
“The fundamental problem in many post-colonial states is that of transfer (usually without any significant transformation) of political power to local political elites, whilst leaving the colonial character of the economy untransformed.

In such a situation the character of the economy is unable to sustain a transformative effort, instead it continues to serve the interests of the colonial bourgeoisie and local economic elites, whilst actively undermining (if not reversing) developmental measures aimed at addressing the interests of ordinary workers and the poor.

“This was also the Zimbabwe of the 1990s, the era of the structural adjustment programmes, which actively reversed even the many gains made during the first decade of Zimbabwe's democracy. In such situations, a highly compradorial and parasitic layer of the bourgeoisie drawn from indigenous populations emerges, without its own independent 'means of accumulation', thus relying on its access to state power to preserve and reproduce its wealth.

Failure to transform the conditions of the ordinary mass of the people for the better generates resentment. As we have argued before, such situations produce a whole host of behaviour from the ruling elites. There usually is denialism about the scale and extent of the problems facing those societies.

The last stages in such degeneration are a turn against the masses when they begin to legitimately struggle for better conditions. Usually in such cases, liberation movements that during the struggle against the colonial regimes were able to distinguish between the enemy and people's camps, begin to confuse expressions of genuine grievances of the people's camp for enemy fire, and real enemy strategies (e.g. structural adjustment programmes) are treated as the necessary instruments to transform society!”

Ultimately, Blade says, “Unfortunately in such instances, such as the case of Zimbabwe, the opposition that emerges becomes largely reactive and unable to provide a more superior alternative vision in such conditions.

That alternative and superior vision can, in our circumstances, only be that of the completion of the national liberation struggle and its vision; that national liberation without full social and economic emancipation shall always remain incomplete and liable to serious reversals. One without the other is a foundation for future regressions.”

Blade believes that the completion of the liberation struggle and its vision – restoration of full political and economic rights to the people – is the only full meaning of “human rights”.

The three positions illustrated above clearly serve distinct class and power block interests, in Zimbabwe. I have quoted at length from Blade’s Zimbabwe: 'A bourgeois state without a bourgeoisie'? of March 2007, because his kind of views do not see the light of day in the mainstream media, which naturally, peddles the interests of the return of a more ruthless and virulent imperialism, in former colonies.
Ultimately, of course, we all must answer the question, what, then, needs to be done, about Zimbabwe?

First, it must be clearly understood that all those who are decrying the deplorable state of affairs in Zimbabwe without first locating this in its correct and complex historic and political context are consciously and unconsciously furthering the interests of imperialism, the return to colonialism, of Zimbabwe. There is a historic and political foundation to the crisis in Zimbabwe.

Second, it is rank hypocrisy of the highest order to imagine that “human rights” and “democracy” and the “rule of law” are class and power block neutral issues, and that therefore what we have in Zimbabwe is a simple “melt down” that merely requires the restoration of these “democratic values”.

There are real local and international class and power block interests who in fact are happy to see Zimbabwe slide further into its murky waters, so that they may then move in, and take over. We Zambians must be very educated about this.

What all this means is that all those who truly wish to see the national liberation project in Zimbabwe rehabilitated and succeed, and therefore real human rights restored to the people, must first clearly identify the class(es) and power block

interests in Zimbabwe that are best placed to carry the national liberation struggle forward, no matter how much noise the US, Britain, and the Western media may make, about Zimbabwe. It is these class forces we must then support.

As things are right now, inside Zimbabwe, it is difficult to identify such a progressive pro national liberation power block. But it can, and it must be, grown, and quickly. Which is why the ANC strategy of “quite diplomacy” makes a lot of sense, today.

Because in such circumstances, all loose talk about “human rights”, “rule of law”, “democracy” and so on simply favours and advances the interests of the most organised power block right now – the openly neo-liberal assortment of all those backed by the US, Britain, and South African white capital in their quest to completely “recapture” Zimbabwe.
bandaazwell@yahoo.com