Munyaradzi Gwisai, the Zimbabwe ISO's charismatic young MP, told Green Left Weekly that new possibilities have opened up for the left internationally. The collapse of the Stalinist movement, which discredited socialists in the eyes of the working class, and the rise of the new anti-corporate movement, symbolised by the Seattle demonstrations, have set the scene for "the re-emergence of a credible left".
"It is critical that we intervene in these struggles. The struggles in Zimbabwe are at the cutting edge of these struggles in peripheral capitalist societies.
"The challenge for the left in Zimbabwe and South Africa, the two leading bourgeois states in southern Africa, and also internationally, is the regroupment of the left.
"The tasks and possibilities — we are on the verge of an international recession — require the left to provide alternative ideological leadership for this movement. This means that revolutionary socialists have to begin to work together. The time for 'toy internationals' is over.
"That is why we think the Asia-Pacific International Solidarity Conference is very important. We see that quite a number of revolutionaries from different traditions will be coming together in Sydney next Easter. We are fully behind this kind of thing and, indeed, we are beginning the same interactions with left groups in the region, in particular South Africa.
"We think the left, regionally and internationally, has a big challenge to get over the sectarianism of previous years, to link up with the new movement and build through these sort of united fronts."