ZIMBABWE: MDC, farm workers Mugabe's real target
Despite the populist rhetoric of President Robert Mugabe — seemingly bolstered by the criticisms and exaggerations of the British Labour government, the Western mass media and, in Australia, Coalition government leaders and the Australian Democrats — the Zimbabwe government is not encouraging a genuine movement for radical land redistribution.
The goals of the state-sanctioned occupations of some wealthy farmers' land are to discredit the trade union-backed opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), obstruct its efforts to organise in the countryside and to pressure the West, in particular Britain, to resume funding a limited land acquisition program that benefits Zimbabwe's "indigenous" capitalist class, which is tied to Mugabe's ruling Zimbabwe National African Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF).
The MDC emerged from the militant mass urban struggles provoked by the ZANU-PF regime's austerity policies. In 1997-98 there was a series of national general strikes called by a revitalised Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), a three-day uprising in Harare against food prices, and extended strikes by public servants, doctors and nurses, and farm workers. In March-April 1998, students demonstrating for increased allowances and against increased fees chanted, "Zimbabwe's Suharto must go".
In response, strikers and protesters were baton-charged and shot by Mugabe's riot police. Protest rallies were banned.
ZCTU secretary-general Morgan Tsvangirai was bashed unconscious by ZANU-PF thugs after Zimbabwe's largest general strike in December 1997. In March 1998, ZCTU offices were razed by arsonists. An attempt in late 1998 by the government to outlaw strikes was ruled unconstitutional by the courts.
During the same period, the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) — a coalition of more than 150 "civil society" organisations with the ZCTU and the Zimbabwe Council of Churches at its core — spearheaded a movement for democratic reform of Zimbabwe's constitution. The NCA held public hearings for ordinary Zimbabweans to express their opinions.
In 1999, Mugabe hijacked the constitutional reform process with a 400-member commission stacked with ZANU-PF hacks. At the public hearings of both bodies, Zimbabweans overwhelmingly demanded that Mugabe's sweeping presidential powers be limited and that the people's freedom of speech, assembly and to strike be strengthened.
Mugabe's commission in December produced a draft constitution that entrenched rather than curbed Mugabe's powers.
Movement for Democratic Change
The ZANU-PF's persistent use of repression and cooption convinced the ZCTU leaders and key human rights activists that a political alternative was needed. The MDC was launched in September at a Harare rally attended by 20,000 working people. Its founding congress on January 29 was attended by around 6000 delegates. The party claims a membership of 1.1 million in a country of 12.5 million.
The danger the MDC poses to Mugabe's party at the next general election, due before June, and in the 2002 presidential election was apparent when — despite widespread intimidation, poll irregularities and a black-out of the MDC campaign by state-owned media — the draft constitution was easily defeated in the February 12-13 referendum.
Contrary to the impression created by the Western media and the British government, the land question was not the main issue. Rather, the referendum was seen by Zimbabweans as a vote for or against Mugabe and ZANU-PF.
A clause to allow the government to confiscate private land without compensation was a crude gambit by Mugabe to win support from rural Zimbabweans and to paint the MDC as puppets of the white farmers and the British government. It failed miserably.
The abstention of peasant voters reflected how little credibility Mugabe's repeated promises of land redistribution retain. Urban Zimbabweans, and increasingly those in the countryside, have woken up to Mugabe's populist exploitation of land hunger.
In the past, Mugabe won support with loud theatrical threats to confiscate white-owned plantations and denunciations of the white minority, Western governments and, more recently, the IMF and World Bank. However, on each occasion, behind closed doors, Mugabe meekly backed down and reassured his domestic white capitalist partners, the Western powers and their financial institutions that he would not undermine their economic interests.
Prior to Zimbabwe's independence in 1980, Mugabe agreed, at London's insistence, that rich white farmers' land be acquired only on a "willing seller-willing buyer" basis. A clause was inserted into Zimbabwe's constitution to prevent the seizure of land without compensation at its market price.
This has made radical land redistribution impossible but did allow an "orderly" ascension of the black elite — whether by legitimate purchase or through state corruption and patronage — into Zimbabwe's capitalist class. Since 1990, virtually no land has been redistributed to the landless — other than "landless" ZANU-PF bureaucrats, MPs, cabinet ministers, army officers, Mugabe relatives and business cronies.
According to radical South African economist Patrick Bond, in his 1998 book Uneven Zimbabwe (African World Press), some 4800 large commercial farms — 70% owned by white Zimbabweans, 20% by black capitalists and 10% international agribusiness corporations — account for more than 30% of total land and a far higher proportion of the best land.
Much of the rest is divided between 8500 black-owned small commercial farms, 57,000 family plots on resettled land and around 1 million households farming land in the desolate, overcrowded former reserves in which black people were restricted during white minority rule. There are millions of landless peasants.
Farm occupations ordered
Shocked by ZANU-PF's failure to mobilise its rural supporters in the referendum campaign and by the strength of MDC support in the cities, Mugabe convened an emergency meeting of the ZANU-PF central leadership on February 18. It concluded that the regime had to act to convince the peasants that it had not abandoned them.
Mugabe emerged from the meeting blaming Zimbabwe's white commercial plantation owners for the defeat of the proposed changes to the constitution — a ludicrous claim since the total white population is less than 80,000 and around 1.3 million people voted (less than 25% of eligible voters).
On February 22, Mugabe told Zimbabwe state television: "The land question has not been resolved. The people are angry and if we let the people vent their anger, they will invade the farms and then [the farmers] will come to us for protection". That was the signal for the farm occupations to begin and on February 29 the first 36 farms were taken over. The number of "invaded" farms soon reached more than 1000.
There is little evidence that the farm "demonstrations" (as Mugabe has called them) have been spontaneous or have kindled mass enthusiasm in the countryside. Government trucks and ZANU-PF vehicles deliver members of the National Liberation War Veterans' Association (headed by ZANU-PF central committee member Chenjerai Hunzvi), ZANU-PF youth brigade members (infamous for their physical attacks on trade union and student demonstrations) and unemployed youth and landless peasants recruited from local townships.
Zimbabwe's independent newspapers have reported that the squads of "war veterans" are being led by members of the 5th Brigade, Mugabe's military force that massacred more than 30,000 people in south Zimbabwe in the early 1980s. Agents of the Central Intelligence Organisation are also involved. The Zimbabwe Independent reported on April 21 that officers of the Zimbabwe National Army have directed the farm invasions and provided logistical support.
Farm workers
The mainstream media and Western politicians have all but ignored the fact that it has been Zimbabwe's black farm workers and their relatives who have borne the brunt of the violence.
Mugabe and ZANU-PF know that the votes of the 400,000 or so black farm workers (who, with their family members, are estimated to account for about 20% of the electorate) will be decisive. Many farm workers are members of the ZCTU-affiliated General Agricultural and Plantation Workers Union.
The image being spread by Mugabe and the "war veterans" of farm workers as dupes of the white farmers is far from the truth. The farm workers are the country's worst paid (about A$60 a month) and in 1997, farm workers held a militant three-week strike that won a 40% pay increase.
Farm occupations have been concentrated in areas where MDC rallies have been well-attended by farm workers. Farms owned by MDC supporters have been targeted.
Workers' quarters are searched for MDC T-shirts and other material and the owners are beaten — dozens have been hospitalised — and MDC campaign material destroyed.
Workers are forced to empty their pockets to prove they do not have MDC membership cards and ZANU-PF thugs force farm workers to attend "re-education" meetings in which they are threatened and intimidated. ZANU-PF thugs have set fire to workers' quarters. Hundreds of families have been left homeless.
ZANU-PF thugs have also attacked MDC organisers and activists. MDC rallies and gatherings are regularly attacked. MDC offices have been fire-bombed.
Edwin Gomo was stoned to death on March 26 near Binduna, 100 kilometres north of Harare. A 4000-strong march organised by the NCA in Harare was brutally attacked on April 1 by 200 members of the 5th Brigade in plain clothes. Two hundred thugs attempted to attack a 6000-strong rally in Magunje, Mashonaland West, on April 7.
On April 15, MDC organisers Tichaona Chimenya and Talent Mabika were cornered by a ZANU-PF gang near Buhera. The young activists' bodies were found in their burned-out car. Mabika's throat had been slit.
On April 24, David Nhaurwa was axed to death near Harare when he could not produce a ZANU-PF membership card. MDC organiser Robert Mbuzi was shot on April 21 as he tried to arrange an MDC meeting in Mhangura, north of Harare. He died on April 24.
The overwhelming majority of white farmers who have been murdered or bashed have been active MDC supporters. David Stephens, killed on April 15, and Martin Olds, shot dead on April 18 near Bulawayo, were both prominent in the MDC. A black farm worker employed by Stephens was also murdered.
Olds' attackers made no pretence of occupying his farm. About 60 attackers arrived armed with AK47s. The force was made up of members of the 5th Brigade. Soon after, the same men attacked an MDC rally in Bulawayo.
BY NORM DIXON