BY NORM DIXON
The small nondescript three-room flat on Harare's busy Josiah Tongogara Street, which doubles as the International Socialist Organisation of Zimbabwe's national office, was a hive of activity when Green Left Weekly spoke to MUNYARADZI GWISAI and TAFADZWA CHOTO on July 25. Young activists dropped by and the phone did not stop ringing. The pace of political activity is clearly placing a lot of demands on these young comrades. They seem to be equal to the challenge.
Gwisai is the ISO's popular member of parliament, one of 57 MPs elected under the banner of the trade union-backed opposition Movement for Democratic Change. The ISO's participation in the MDC has been criticised by sections of the far left outside Zimbabwe. GLW asked Gwisai and Choto, the ISO's national coordinator, about the party's role in Zimbabwean politics.
"We formed at the University of Zimbabwe in Harare in 1989 as a Trotskyist study circle", Gwisai explained. "We had a different tradition and focus to the existing small Stalinist currents, which even at that stage were never organised as a national force. Their main thrust was to capture the trade union and student union bureaucracies. Our tendency is based on encouraging the self-activity of the working class, so we concentrated our political work in the rank and file movement."
Through the early 1990s, ISO activists won a following at general meetings organised by the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, known as labour forums. The ZCTU in the early 1990s was quite weak. It was originally a creation of Robert Mugabe's ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and was closely tied to the state.
In 1991, ZANU-PF introduced the Economic Structural Adjustment Program (ESAP). Despite the government's claim that it was "home-grown", it had been largely drafted by the World Bank. The impact of this anti-worker austerity program began to radicalise the working class and poor.
"The ISO became an organised group after 1994-95. We were now based outside university. We had developed a core of comrades in Harare and Bulawayo — but still less than 30 members", Gwisai continued. "By 1995, the crisis created by Mugabe's neo-liberal program was beginning to manifest itself. Our first real intervention as the ISO was to be a leading player in a demonstration against police brutality in December 1995."
That demonstration was organised by the ISO and township civic organisations after police shot innocent people during a riot. More anti-government rioting followed, reflecting the new mood among workers and the urban poor.
Social conflicts continued to intensify, Gwisai told GLW. "In 1996, tens of thousands of government workers went on strike to protest against low wages, the denial of bonuses and the denial of the right to organise in trade unions. The 1996 strike was the first real fight by workers against ZANU-PF's neo-liberal economic agenda. It was a spontaneous movement from below. The leaders of the teachers', nurses' and general workers' unions were forced to support the strike.
"From the mid-1980s until then, the labour bureaucracy had been playing a game of social partnership with the state and capital. It played a very major role in keeping workers down. But the government workers' strike changed that."
A section of the ZCTU leadership, led by Morgan Tsvangirai and encouraged by the radicalisation of the ZCTU membership, began to transform the union federation in a more militant, independent direction.
"The ISO was a key player in the 1996 strike. We pushed hard for, and won, the formation of an independent strike committee and the imposition of pickets. Our participation is not mentioned when that strike is written about by academics. Yet, it was our slogan, 'Worker, be resolute. Fight on!', that was adopted by the strikers. Subsequently, in 1997, it was adopted as the slogan of the ZCTU.
"That strike gave so much confidence to the working class: in 1995, 20,000 workers went on strike; in 1996, the number jumped to 250,000; and in 1997, 1 million workers took part in strikes."
Gwisai said the ISO learnt "a very important lesson" from its involvement in these events: "That a revolutionary socialist intervention is very important. No matter how small you are, you still have a role to play. I am talking about 30 people in Harare and Bulawayo in 1996 who were able to play a decisive role in the strike and later developments."
In 1997 and 1998, struggle intensified. There were national student demonstrations, partly inspired by the example of the Indonesian students' fight against Suharto, and thousands of liberation war veterans successfully mobilised to demand pensions.
The government attempted to impose a tax on workers' incomes to pay for the veterans' pensions. In December 1997, the ZCTU led a massive national strike against the tax. In mid-1998, ZCTU workers again struck, this time for five days. There were also food riots in Harare and student protests. The democracy movement, led by the middle-class National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), was also on the rise.
"We, as socialists, called on workers to form their own party. It became clear that workers had to take political power. We started to run headlines [in Socialist Worker] urging the ZCTU to form a political party", Choto told GLW.
At the 1998 May Day march, Socialist Worker's front cover called for a workers' party and it was snapped up by the workers. The ISO's call was reported in the mainstream press. At the time, workers in the labour forums were also calling for such a party.
The ZCTU organised a Working People's Convention in February 1999, which also issued the call for a workers' party. "From that time onwards, the party started to be built in the townships. The ISO played a major role in building what became MDC structures.
"Unfortunately, when the MDC was officially launched in September 1999, most of those who were appointed to the interim leadership were middle class. The workers who were involved in building the structures, and the regional chairpersons of the ZCTU who were also central, were hardly to be seen.
"We debated in our organisation whether or not to join and decided to do so as long as it remained a movement. We started campaigning among workers to prevent the middle classes and bosses from hijacking the party. Before the defeat of the February 2000 constitutional referendum, which would have entrenched Mugabe's repressive rule, the MDC was mainly run by middle-class left-liberal intellectuals.
"After the referendum, which gave confidence to the bourgeoisie in Zimbabwe and outside that the MDC could defeat Mugabe, we saw the bosses and the commercial farmers also get into top MDC positions. That is when the party adopted right-wing politics, supporting neo-liberal policies and the free market. That is the situation we see today."
Yet despite this evolution, Gwisai and Choto stressed, militant workers continue to support and are the overwhelming majority of the MDC's members. For the vast majority of Zimbabweans, the immediate task is to remove the Mugabe dictatorship, regardless of the program of the MDC. The March 2002 presidential contest will pit Mugabe against MDC leader Tsvangirai.
"ISO members joined the MDC because as revolutionaries we have to be where the workers are", Choto said. However, she explained that the ISO has not hidden its political views or its criticisms of the MDC leadership and has continued to build itself. "We have maintained our independence as a revolutionary socialist organisation."
Gwisai's election as the MP for the working-class seat of Highfield, a traditional bastion of the liberation movement, in the June 2000 general elections was a triumph for this approach. Choto described how Gwisai's and the ISO's refusal to compromise its politics has brought them into conflict with the MDC's pro-capitalist leaders.
"Last year, in response to ZANU-PF's exploitation of the people's hunger for land, we supported peasants being given land. We opposed rich commercial farmers being compensated because, in the first place, they stole the land. Gwisai and the ISO were attacked by the right-wing in the party. We thought he was going to be expelled. But because of the support we got from the thousands of workers who elected Gwisai, the MDC leaders had to back down."
Recently, Gwisai has again been at loggerheads with the MDC right after the ISO distributed a leaflet at this year's May Day march calling on workers to ignore the "rule of law" and occupy their factories to stop sackings.
The MDC leadership and the capitalist press seized on this to again demand Gwisai's expulsion from the MDC. The Daily News railed: "Gwisai is glaringly in the wrong camp... He belongs in ZANU-PF. The MDC ought have told him long ago to either shape up or ship out."
The MDC leadership unconstitutionally dissolved the MDC's elected structures in Highfield and suspended Gwisai's party membership.
In fact, the ISO leaflet had called on workers not be misled by a wave of "factory invasions" led by a stooge of ZANU-PF, and that ZANU-PF's real motive was to smash the ZCTU and replace it with a tame cat union. Tafadzwa Choto and another ISO member were savagely beaten by ZANU-PF thugs while they were distributing the leaflet.
The ISO responded in an article in the July-August Socialist Worker, entitled simply "MDC & ISO": "Our agenda has always been open and transparent, namely the struggle for the construction of a working people's party to destroy the ZANU-PF dictatorship and the propertied classes... And in such a struggle, the working people are entitled to use all the means at their disposal, in particular their key power of withdrawal of labour, stayaways, riots and mass action without regard to such nebulous and class-partisan concepts like 'the rule of law' ...
"At no stage have we hidden our agenda [from the MDC] and those of our comrades who have run for positions at various levels in the party ... have openly stood by these positions... Why should we now be called to recant on positions that everyone in the party has always known about and accepted? Of course, we have been under no illusions about the fact that right-wing bourgeois elements, especially the beneficiaries of colonialism, who sneaked into positions of power and influence in the [MDC] ... would spare no effort or dime to suppress us and worker activists bent on ensuring the party remains true to its original goals."
While the ISO will attempt to again mobilise its supporters to defend Gwisai, it is prepared to part ways with the MDC if need be. As another Socialist Worker article, penned by Choto, explained: "Throughout we have fought for and retained the complete freedom of expression [within the MDC] in order to expose the betrayals, indecision and half-way spirit of the reformist leadership of the MDC. For that reason, any sort of organisational agreement which restricts our freedom of criticism and agitation is completely unacceptable to us, hence we have been prepared to make a complete break with the MDC should such conditions become imposed on us."
Choto told GLW that the ISO would prefer to remain in the MDC until workers have had the opportunity to experience it in office. The ISO will urge a vote for the MDC in the 2002 presidential election so that workers can gain "some bourgeois democracy", such as the right to strike.
"But we are under no illusions that things will change, because of the MDC's neo-liberal policies. If the MDC comes to power, the honeymoon will be short. Workers will expect change and will not get it. We will maintain our stance of exposing the policies of the MDC leaders and fighting for a socialist alternative that removes the capitalist system and creates a system that puts human needs before profits."
The ISO today is stronger than ever, Gwisai and Choto said. It has around 150 members, mainly workers and unemployed, and some students (the ISO does have influence in the national tertiary students' union). It is growing rapidly, up from 90 members six months ago. The ISO has three branches in Harare, one in Bulawayo, one in Gweru and one Kadoma. It is the only organised left party in Zimbabwe.
ISO members are active in many unions and industrial disputes. Choto noted that, while most workers in the party are in their 20s, workers in their 40s and 50s are beginning to join.
Choto told Green Left Weekly that the ISO is now calling for all opponents of the Mugabe regime to form a united front to win their demands. "Right now, the enemy of workers and students is the ZANU-PF government and the dictatorship of Mugabe. We cannot win that struggle if we are isolated."
The ISO has proposed that the ZCTU, university students and the NCA jointly organise a mass protest outside parliament in Harare in September to coincide with the debate on the regime's anti-worker Labour Relations Amendment Bill. To build support for this, the ISO organised a national "From Genoa to Harare — Anti-neo-liberalism tour" in late July early August, at which Gwisai and Choto both spoke along with speakers from the ZCTU, other trade unions, the NCA and the national students' union.