March 30, 2007

Zimbabwe's Lonely Fight for Justice

By Stephen Gowans

http://gowans.wordpress.com/2007/03/30/zimbabwe%e2%80%99s-lonely-fight-for-justice/

Ever since veterans of the guerrilla war against apartheid Rhodesia
violently seized white-owned farms in Zimbabwe, the country's president,
Robert Mugabe, has been demonized by politicians, human rights organizations
and the media in the West. His crimes, according to right-wing sources, are
numerous: human rights abuses, election rigging, repression of political
opponents, corruption, and mismanagement of the economy. Leftist detractors
say Mugabe talks left and walks right, and that his anti-imperialist
rhetoric is pure demagogy.

I'm going to argue that the basis for Mugabe's demonization is the desire of
Western powers to change the economic and land redistribution policies
Mugabe's government has pursued; that his lapses from liberal democratic
rectitude are, in themselves, of little moment to decision makers in
Washington and London; and that the ultimate aim of regime change is to
replace Mugabe with someone who can be counted on to reliably look after
Western interests, and particularly British investments, in Zimbabwe.

I am also going to argue that the Zanu-PF government's abridgment of formal
liberties (including freedom of assembly and freedom to travel outside the
country) are warranted restraints, justified by the need to protect the
political program of the elected government from hostile outside
interference. In making this argument I am challenging a widely held, and
often unexamined, view that civil and political liberties are senior to all
other liberties, including rights related to economic sovereignty and
freedom from oppression and exploitation.

Before 1980 Zimbabwe was a white-supremacist British colony named after the
British financier Cecil Rhodes, whose company, the British South Africa
Company, stole the land from the indigenous Matabele and Mashona people in
the 1890s. British soldiers, who laid claim to the land by force of arms on
behalf of Rhodes, were each rewarded with nine square miles of territory.
The Matabele and Mashona -- those who weren't killed in the British land
grab -- were rewarded with dispossession, grinding poverty, misery and
subjugation. By the turn of this century, in a country of 13 million, almost
70 percent of the country's arable agricultural land was owned by some 4,500
mostly white farmers, many descendant from the original British settlers.

After a long campaign for national liberation, independence talks were held
in 1979. Talks almost broke down over the land question, but Washington and
London, eager for a settlement, agreed to ante up and provide financial
support for a comprehensive land reform program. This, however, was to be
short-lived. Britain found a way to wriggle out of its commitment, blocking
the march toward the national liberation struggle's principal goal.

George Shire's grandfather Mhepo Mavakire used to farm land in Zimbabwe,
before it was handed to a white man after the Second World War. Shire argues
that "The unequal distribution of land in Zimbabwe was one of the major
factors that inspired the rural-based liberation war against white rule and
has been a source of continual popular agitation ever since." (1)

"The government," says Shire, "struggled to find a consensual way to
transfer land," but with inadequate funds and insufficient assistance from
London, land reform made little headway. (2) Frustrated, and under pressure
from war veterans who had grown tired of waiting for the land reform they'd
fought for, Mugabe embarked on a course that would lead him headlong into
collision with Western governments. He passed legislation enabling the
government to seize nearly 1,500 farms owned by white Zimbabweans, without
compensation. As Zimbabwe's Foreign Affairs Minister from 1995 to 2005, Stan
Mudenge put it, at that point "all hell broke loose." (3) Having held free
and fair elections on time, and having won them, Mugabe now became an
international pariah. Overnight, he was transformed into a dictator, a
stealer of elections and a thug.

Displeased with Mugabe's fast track land reform program and irritated by
other economic policies the Mugabe government was pursuing, the EU concluded
that Mugabe would have to go, and that he would have to be forced out by
civil society, the union movement or NGO's, uprisings in the street, or a
military coup. On 24 January, 1999, a meeting was convened at the Royal
Institute of International Affairs to discuss the EU's conclusion. The theme
of the meeting, led by Richard Dowden, now the executive director of the
pro-imperialist Royal African Society, was "Zimbabwe - Time for Mugabe to
Go?" Mugabe's "confiscating" of white-held land compelled an unequivocal yes
to the conference's rhetorical question. Dowden presented four options:

1) a military coup;

2) buying the opposition;

3) insurrection;

4) subverting Mugabe's ZANU-PF party.

A few months later, Washington weighed in. The US State Department held a
seminar to discuss a strategy for dealing with the "Zimbabwe crisis." Civil
society and the opposition would be strengthened to foment discontent and
dissent. The opposition would be brought together under a single banner to
enhance its chances of success at the polls and funding would be funnelled
to the opposition through Western backed NGO's. Dissident groups could be
strengthened and encouraged to take to the streets. (4)

The Milosevic Treatment

The program the US State Department prescribed to rid Zimbabwe of Mugabe and
his land reform politics had been used successfully to oust Yugoslavia's
president Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. The basis of the program is to
pressure the civilian population through a program of bombing, sanctions or
military threat, in order to galvanize the population to rise up against its
government, the proximal cause of its discomfort. (In Zimbabwe, the hoped
for response is: If only Mugabe hadn't antagonized the West, we wouldn't be
under this pressure.) This was illustrated by US Air Force General, Michael
Short, who explained the purpose of the NATO's 1999 bombing campaign against
Yugoslavia was to create disaffection with Milosevic. "If you wake up in the
morning," explained Short, "and you have no power to your house and no gas
to your stove and the bridge you take to work is down and will be lying in
the Danube for the next 20 years, I think you begin to ask, 'Hey, Slobo,
what's this all about? How much more of this do we have to withstand?'" (5)

Paired with outside pressure is the enlistment of a political opposition and
grassroots movement to discipline and organize the population's disaffection
so that it's channelled in the direction of forcing the government to step
down. Western powers create the pain, and inject a fifth column of
"democracy" activists and a "democratic" opposition to offer the removal of
the current government as the cure. In the end, the people administer the
cure themselves. Because the Milosevic treatment is typically deployed
against the leaders of revolutionary societies (though the revolution may
have happened some time ago), the opposition can be thought of as a
counter-revolutionary vanguard. The vanguard has two components: a formal
political opposition, whose job it is to contest elections and cry foul when
it doesn't win, and an underground grassroots movement, mandated to carry
out extra-parliamentary agitation and to take to the streets in planned
"spontaneous" uprisings, using allegations of electoral fraud as a pretext
for pursuing insurrectionary politics.

In Yugoslavia, the underground movement, known as Otpor, was established,
funded, trained and organized by the US State Department, USAID, the US
Congress-funded National Endowment for Democracy (which is said to do
overtly what the CIA used to do covertly) and through various NGO's like
Freedom House, whose board of directors has included a rogues' gallery of US
ruling class activists: Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Otto Reich, Jeane
Kirkpatrick, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Steve Forbes.

Otpor has been the inspiration for similar groups elsewhere: Zubr in
Belarus, Khmara in Georgia, Pora in the Ukraine. Otpor's Zimbabwean progeny
include Zvakwana, "an underground movement that aims to .. undermine" the
Mugabe government and Sokwanele, whose "members specialize in anonymous acts
of civil disobedience." (6) Both groups receive generous financing from
Western sources. (7) While the original, Otpor, was largely a youth-oriented
anarchist-leaning movement, at least one member of Sokwanele is "A
conservative white businessman expressing a passion for freedom, tradition,
polite manners and the British Royals." (8)

Members of Zvakwana say their movement is homegrown and free of foreign
control. (9) It may be homegrown, and its operatives may sincerely believe
they chart their own course, but the group is almost certainly not free of
foreign funding. The US Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, signed
into law by US President George W. Bush in December 2001, empowers the
president under the US Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 to "support democratic
institutions, the free press and independent media" in Zimbabwe. It's
doubtful Zvakwana has not been showered with Washington's largesse.

Zvakwana's denial that it's under foreign control doesn't amount to a denial
of foreign funding. Movements, political parties and media elsewhere have
knowingly accepted funding from Western governments, their agencies and
pro-imperialist foundations, while proclaiming their complete independence.
(10) Members of these groups may genuinely believe they remain aloof from
their backer's aims (and in the West it is often the very groups that claim
not to take sides that are the favored recipients of this lucre), but
self-deception is an insidious thing - and the promise of oodles of cash is
hard to resist.

There's no doubt Zvakwana is well-financed. It distributes flashy stickers,
condoms bearing the movement's Z logo, phone cards, audiotapes and packages
of seeds bearing anti-Mugabe messages, en masse. These things don't come
cheap. What's more, its operatives study "videotapes on resistance movements
in Poland, Chile, India and Serbia, as well as studying civil rights tactics
used in Nashville." (11) This betrays a level of funding and organization
that goes well beyond what the meager self-financing of true grassroots
movements -- even in the far more affluent West - are able to scrape
together.

If Zvakwana denies its links to the US, other elements of the Western-backed
anti-Mugabe apparatus are less secretive. Studio 7, an anti-ZANU-PF radio
program carries programming by the Voice of America, an agency whose
existence can hardly be said to be independent of promoting the aims of US
capital around the world. The radio station SW Radio Africa, the self-styled
"independent voice of Zimbabwe," broadcasts from the UK by short-wave radio.
It may call itself independent, but the broadcaster is as independent as the
British Foreign Office is, which, one suspects, is one of the principal
backers of the "international pro-democracy groups" that fill the station's
coffers with the cash that allow it to operate. (12) The radio station's
website evinces a fondness for British Prime Minister Tony Blair's take on
Zimbabwe, which happens to be more or less equivalent to that of the formal
political opposition in Zimbabwe, which also happens to be more or less
equivalent to that of foreign investors, banks, and shareholders. That the
station operates out of studios in London -- and it seems, if it had its
druthers, would not only put an end to Harare's crackdown on foreign
meddling in Zimbabwe's internal affairs, but see to it that policies
friendly to the rent, profits and interest of foreign owners and investors
were allowed to flourish -- should leave little doubt as to who's behind the
"international pro-democracy groups" that have put SW Radio Africa on the
air.

In late March 2007, Robert from SW Radio Africa contacted me by e-mail to
find out if I had been hired by the Mugabe government to write an article
that appeared on the Counterpunch website, titled What's Really Going On in
Zimbabwe? (13)

Stephen,

Do you promise (cross your heart) that you received no money from Zimbabwe's
Ministry of Information (or any group acting on their behalf) to write this
piece?

The rhetoric does sound awfully familiar.

Richard

Richard,

From your e-mail address I take it you work for UK-based SW Radio Africa,
which broadcasts Studio 7, the Zimbabwe program of the Voice of America,
funded by the US government.

I don't receive money, support, assistance -- not even foot massages -- from
anyone in Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwean government or any of its agents or
representatives.

Now, do you promise (cross your heart) that you receive no money from the US
or British governments or from the US Ministry of Truth, viz., the Voice of
America, (or any group acting on their behalf)?

Your rhetoric sounds awfully familiar.

Steve

Robert replied with assurances that "We are, in truth, totally independent,
sponsored by a variety of groups that support democracy and freedom of
_expression_," but didn't explain how Radio SW Africa could be "totally
independent" and at the same time dependent on its sponsors. When I asked
who the station's sponsors were, he declined to tell me.

An equally important component of the counter-revolutionary vanguard is the
formal political opposition. This to be comprised of a single party which
unites all the opposition parties under a single banner, to maximize the
strength of the formal political forces arrayed against the government, and
therefore to increase the probability of the anti-government forces making a
respectable showing at the polls. The united opposition is to have one goal:
deposing the government. In order that it is invested with moral gravitas,
its name must emphasize the word "democracy." In Serbia, the anti-Milosevic
opposition united under the banner, the Democratic Opposition of Serbia. In
Zimbabwe, the opposition calls itself the Movement for Democratic Change.
This serves the additional function of calling the government's commitment
to democracy into question. If the opposition is "the democratic opposition"
then what must the government be? The answer, of course, is undemocratic.

Integral to the Milosevic treatment is accusing the government of electoral
fraud to justify a transition from electoral to insurrectionary politics.
The accusations build and build as the day of the vote approaches, until, by
sheer repetition, they are accepted as a matter of indisputable truth. This
has a heads I win, tails you lose character. If the opposition loses the
election, the vote is confirmed to be illegitimate, as all the pre-election
warnings predicted it would be, unleashing a torrent of people onto the
streets to demand the government step down. If the opposition wins the
election, the accusations are forgotten.

The US, the European Union and international human rights organizations
denounced the last election in Zimbabwe as tilted in favour of the governing
party. The evidence for this was that the state controls the state-owned
media, the military, the police and the electoral mechanisms. Since the
state of every country controls the military, the police and the electoral
mechanisms, and the state-owned media if it has one, this implies elections
in all countries are titled in favour of the governing party, a manifestly
absurd point of view.

So far the Milosevic treatment has failed to achieve its desired end in
Zimbabwe. One of the reasons why is that the formal political opposition has
failed to execute the plan to a tee. The lapse centers around what is know
as Plan B. The Los Angeles Times describes Plan B this way: "Insiders are
asking what happened to the opposition's 'Plan B' that they had designed to
put into operation the day after the March (2005) elections. The plan called
for (the MDC leader, Morgan) Tsvangirai to claim a confident victory, with
masses of his jubilant supporters flooding the streets for a spontaneous
victory party -- banking on the idea that with observers from neighbouring
African countries and the international media present, Mugabe's security
forces would hesitate to unleash violence." (14) (Note the reference to the
planned "spontaneous" victory party.) That Plan B wasn't executed may be the
reason Tsvangirai is no longer in control of a unified MDC, and is vying
with Arthur Mutambara, an Oxford educated robotics engineer who worked as a
management consultant, to lead the opposition.

Countering the Milosevic Treatment

The problem, from the perspective of the US State Department planners who
formulated the Milosevic treatment, is that if you do it too often, the next
victim becomes wise to what you're up to, and can manoeuvre to stop it. With
successes in Yugoslavia, Georgia and Ukraine, but failure so far in Belarus,
the element of surprise is lost, and the blatancy of what the US government
is up to becomes counter-productive. So obvious has the Milosevic treatment
become, US government officials now express surprise when the leaders
they've targeted for regime change put up with it. (15)

Mugabe, however, hasn't put up with it, and has imposed a number of
restrictions on civil liberties to thwart destabilization efforts. One
measure is to ban NGOs that act as instruments of US or British foreign
policy. NGOs that want to operate in Zimbabwe cannot receive foreign funding
and must disclose their sources of financial support. This stops Washington
and Britain from working within the country, through proxy, to meddle in the
country's internal affairs. For the same reason, legislation was put forward
in Russia in 2005 to require the 450,000 NGOs operating there to re-register
with the state, to prevent foreign-funded political activity. The
legislation's sponsors characterized "internationally financed NGOs as a
'fifth column' doing the bidding of foreigners." (16)

In a similar vein, foreign journalists whose reporting appears to be
motivated by the goal of promoting the foreign policy objectives of hostile
nations, like the US and UK, are banned. CNN reporters are prohibited from
reporting from Zimbabwe because the government regards them, with
justification, as a tool of US foreign policy. What reasonable person of an
unprejudiced mind would dispute CNN's chauvinism? Given that one of the
objects of US foreign policy is to intervene in Zimbabwe's affairs to change
the government, the ban is a warranted restraint on press freedom.

Limitations on press freedom are not unique to Zimbabwe, although those
imposed by Mugabe are a good deal more justifiable than those imposed by the
West. In the wake of the March 2006 re-election of Belarus president
Aleksandr Lukashenko, the US planned to sanction 14 Belarus journalists it
labelled "key figures in the propaganda, distortion of facts and attacks on
the democracies (i.e., the US and Britain) and their representatives in
Belarus." (17) In 1999, NATO bombed the Serb Radio-TV building, because it
said Serb Radio-TV was broadcasting propaganda.

Laws "sharply curbing freedoms of the press and public assembly, citing
national security" were enacted during the 2002 elections. (18) Mugabe
justified the restrictions as necessary to counter Western plans to
re-impose domination of Zimbabwe. "They want our gold, our platinum, our
land," he argues. "These are ours forever. I will stand and fight for our
rights of sovereignty. We fought for our country to be free. These resources
will remain ours forever. Let this be understood to those in London." (19)

Mugabe's warning about the danger of re-colonization "underpins the
crackdown on the nation's most formidable independent forces, pro-democracy
groups and the Movement for Democratic Change, both of which have broad
Western support, and, often, financing," as the New York Times put it. (20)
(Note the reference to the opposition being independent even though it's
dependent on broad Western support and financing.)

This "fortress-Zimbabwe strategy has been strikingly effective. According to
a poll of 1,200 Zimbabweans published in August (2004) by South African and
American researchers, the level of public trust in Mr. Mugabe's leadership
has more than doubled since 1999, to 46 percent - even as the economy has
fallen into ruin.and anger over economic and living conditions is
pervasive." (21)

Mugabe, his detractors allege, secures his support by focusing the public's
anger on outside forces to keep the public from focusing its anger on him
(the same argument the US government and anti-Castro forces have been making
about Castro for years.) If this is true, the groundswell of opposition to
Mugabe's government that we're led to believe threatens to topple Mugabe
from power any moment, doesn't exist; it's directed at outside forces.
Consistent with this is the reality that the US-based Save Zimbabwe Campaign
"does not.have widespread grassroots support." (22)

Implicit in the argument that Mugabe uses anti-imperialist rhetoric to stay
in power is the view that (a) outside forces aren't responsible for the
country's deep economic crisis and that (b) Mugabe is. This is the view of
US ambassador to Zimbabwe Christopher Dell, and many of Mugabe's leftist
detractors. "Neither drought nor sanctions are at the root of Zimbabwe's
decline. The Zimbabwe government's own gross mismanagement of the economy
and corrupt rule has brought on the crisis." (23)

Yet, in a country whose economy is mainly based on agriculture, the idea
that drought hasn't caused serious economic trouble, is absurd. Drought is a
regional phenomenon, whittling away at populations in Mali, Ethiopia,
Malawi, Mauritania, Eritrea, southern Sudan and Zimbabwe. Land
redistribution hasn't destroyed agriculture in Zimbabwe; it has destroyed
white commercial, cash-crop farming, which is centred on the production of
tobacco for export.

Equally absurd is the notion that sanctions are economically neutral.
Sanctions imposed by the US, EU and other countries deny Zimbabwe
international economic and humanitarian assistance and disrupt trade and
investment flows. Surgical or targeted sanctions are like surgical or
targeted bombing: not as surgical as their champions allege and the cause of
a good deal of collateral damage and suffering.

Left critics of Mugabe ape the argument of the US ambassador, adding that
Mugabe's anti-imperialist and leftist rhetoric is, in truth, insincere. He
is actually right-wing and reactionary -- a master at talking left while
walking right. (24) But if Mugabe is really the crypto-reactionary, secret
pro-imperialist some people say he is, why are the openly reactionary,
pro-imperialists in Washington and London so agitated?

Finally, if Mugabe uses outside interference as an excuse to keep tight
control, why not stop interfering and deny him the excuse?

Mugabe's government also denies passports to any person believed to be
travelling abroad to campaign for sanctions against Zimbabwe, or military
intervention in Zimbabwe. The justification for this is the opposition's
fondness for inviting its backers in Washington and London to ratchet up
punitive measures against the country.

No country has ever provided unqualified public advocacy rights, rights of
association, and freedom of travel, for all people, at all times. Always
there has been the idea of warranted restraint. And the conditions under
which warranted restraint have been imposed are conditions in which the
state is threatened. There's no question the ZANU-PF government, and the
movement for national liberation it champions, is under threat.

Archbishop Pius Ncube tells a gathering that "we must be ready to stand,
even in front of blazing guns, that "this dictatorship must be brought down
right now, and that "if we can get 30,000 people together Mugabe will just
come down. I am ready to lead it." (25) Arthur Mutambara boasts that he is
"going to remove Robert Mugabe, I promise you, with every tool at my
disposal" and that he's not "going to rule out or in anything - the sky's
the limit." (26) If I declared an intention to remove Tony Blair with every
tool at my disposal, that no tool was ruled out, and I did so with the
backing of hostile foreign powers, it wouldn't be long before the police
paid me a visit.

Why the West wants Mugabe gone

It's not Mugabe per se that Washington and London and white commercial
farmers in Zimbabwe want to overthrow. It's his policies they want to be rid
of, and they want to replace his policies with their own, very different,
policies. There are at least five reasons why Washington and London want to
oust Mugabe, none of which have anything to do with human rights.

The first reason to chase Mugabe from power is that in the late 90's his
government abandoned IMF-mandated structural adjustment programs - programs
of bleeding people dry to pay interest on international debt. These are
policies of currency devaluation, severe social program cuts - anything to
free up money to pay down debt, no matter what the human consequences.

The second is that Mugabe sent troops to the Democratic Republic of Congo to
bolster the Kabila government. This interfered with Western designs in the
region.

The third is that many of Mugabe's economic policies are not congenial to
the current neo-liberal orthodoxy. For example, Mugabe recently announced
the nationalization of a diamond mine, which seems to be, in the current
climate, an anachronism. If you nationalize anything these days, you're
called radical and out of date. The MDC - which promotes the neo-liberal
tyranny -- wants to privatize everything. It is for this reason that Mugabe
talks about the opposition wanting to sell off Zimbabwe's resources. The
state continues to operate state-owned enterprises. And the government
imposes performance requirements on foreign investors. For example, you may
be required to invest part of your profits in government bonds. Or you may
be required to take on a local partner. Foreign investors, or governments
that represent them, bristle at these conditions.

The fourth is that British companies dominate the Zimbabwean economy and the
British government would like to protect the investments of British banks,
investors and corporations. If you read the British press you'll find a
fixation on Zimbabwe, one you won't find elsewhere. Why does Britain take
such a keen interest in the internal affairs of Zimbabwe? The usual answer
is that Britain has an especial interest in Zimbabwe because it is the
country's former colonial master, but why should Britain's former colonial
domination of Zimbabwe heighten its interest in the country? The answer is
that colonization paved the way for an economic domination of the country by
British corporations, investors and banks - and the domination carries on as
a legacy of Britain's former colonial rule. If you're part of the British
ruling class or one of its representatives, what you want in a country in
which you have enormous investments is a trustworthy local ruler who will
look after them. Mutambara, who was educated in Britain and lived there,
and has absorbed the imperialist point of view, is, from the perspective of
the British ruling class, far more attractive than Mugabe as a steward of
its interests.

Finally, Western powers would like to see Mugabe replaced by a trustworthy
steward who will abandon the fast track land reform program, which apart
from violating sacrosanct principles of the capitalist church, if allowed to
thrive, becomes a model to inspire the indigenous rural populations of
neighbouring countries. Governments in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand
also look askance at Mugabe's land reform policy, and wish to see it
overturned, for fear it will inspire their own aboriginal populations.

Mugabe's government accelerated its land redistribution program in the late
90s, breaking with the completely unworkable, willing buyer, willing seller
policy that only allowed the government to redistribute the country's arable
land after the descendants of the former colonial settlers, absentee
landlords and some members of the British House of Lords were done using it,
and therefore willing to sell. Britain, which had pledged financial
assistance to its former colony to help buy the land, reneged, leaving
Harare without the means to expropriate with compensation the vast farms
dominated by the tiny minority of white descendants of British colonists.

"Zimbabwe finally abandoned the 'willing buyer, willing seller' formula in
1997. The formula was crippled from the start by parsimonious British
funding, and it was a clear that the program's modest goals were more than
Great Britain was willing to countenance. In a letter to the Zimbabwean
Minister of Agriculture in November of that year, British Secretary of State
for International Development Clare Short wrote, 'I should make it clear
that we do not accept that Britain has a special responsibility to meet the
costs of land purchase in Zimbabwe.' Referring to earlier British assistance
funding, Short curtly stated, 'I am told that there were discussions in 1989
and 1996 to explore the possibility of further assistance. However that is
all in the past.' Short complained of 'unresolved' issues, such as 'the way
in which land would be acquired and compensation paid - clearly it would not
help the poor of Zimbabwe if it was done in a way which undermined investor
confidence.' Short was concerned about the interests of corporate investors,
then. In closing, Short wrote that 'a program of rapid land acquisition as
you now seem to envisage would be impossible for us to support,' as it would
damage the 'prospects for attracting investment'" (27)

It was only after Mugabe embarked on this accelerated land reform program
that Washington and London initiated their campaign of regime change,
pressuring Mugabe's government with sanctions, expulsion from the
Commonwealth, assistance to the opposition, and the usual Manichean
demonization of the target government and angelization of the Western backed
opposition.
The MDC, by comparison, favours a return to the unworkable willing seller,
willing buyer regimen. The policy is unworkable because Harare hasn't the
money to buy the farms, Britain is no longer willing to finance the program,
and even if the money were available, the owners have to agree to sell their
farms before the land can be redistributed. Land reform under this program
will necessarily proceed at a snail's pace. The national liberation movement
always balked at the idea of having to buy land that had been stolen from
the indigenous population. It's like someone stealing your car, and when you
demand it back, being told you're going to have to buy it back, and only
when the thief is willing to sell.

Conclusion

One thing opponents and supporters of Mugabe's government agree on is that
the opposition is trying to oust the president (illegally and
unconstitutionally if you acknowledge the plan isn't limited to victory at
the polls.) So which came first? Attempts to overthrow Zimbabwe's ZANU-PF
government, or the government's harsh crackdown on opposition?

According to the Western media spin, the answer is the government's harsh
crackdown on opposition. Mugabe's government is accused of being inherently
authoritarian, greedy for power for power's sake, and willing do anything -
from stealing elections to cracking skulls -- to hang on to its privileged
position. This is the typical slander levelled at the heads of governments
the US and UK have trouble with, from Milosevic in his day, to Kim Jong Il,
to Castro.

Another view is that the government's authoritarianism is an inevitable
reaction to circumstances that are unfavorable to the attainment of its
political (not its leaders' personal) goals. Mugabe's government came to
power at the head of a movement that not only sought political independence,
but aspired to reverse the historical theft of land by white settlers. That
the opposition would be fierce and merciless - has been so - was inevitable.
Reaction to the opposition, if the government and its anti-colonial agenda
were to survive, would need to be equally fierce and merciless.

At the core of the conflict is a clash of right against right: the right of
white settlers to enjoy whatever benefits stolen land yields in profits and
rent against the right of the original owners to reclaim their land. Allied
to this is a broader struggle for economic independence, which sets the
rights of investors and corporations abroad to profit from untrammelled
access to Zimbabwe's labor, land and resources and the right of Zimbabweans
to restrict access on their own terms to facilitate their own economic
development.

The dichotomy of personal versus political motivation as the basis for the
actions of maligned governments recurs in debates over whether this or that
leader or movement ought to be supported or reviled. The personal view says
that all leaders are corrupt, chase after personal glory, power and wealth,
and dishonestly manipulate the people they profess to champion. The
political view doesn't deny the personal view as a possibility, but holds
that the behavior of leaders is constrained by political goals.

"Even George Bush who rigs elections and manipulates news in order to stay
in office and who clearly enjoys being 'the War President,' wants the
presidency in order to carry out a particular program with messianic
fervor," points out Richard Levins. "He would never protect the environment,
provide healthcare, guarantee universal free education, or separate church
and state, just to stay in office." (28)

Mugabe is sometimes criticized for being pushed into accelerating land
reform by a restive population impatient with the glacial pace of
redistribution allowed under the Lancaster House agreement. His detractors
allege, implausibly, that he has no real commitment to land reforms. This
intersects with Patrick Bond's view. According to Bond, "Mugabe talks
radical -- especially nationalist and anti-imperialist-(to hang on to power)
but acts reactionary." He only does what's necessary to preserve his rule.

If we accept this as true, then we're saying that the behavior of the
government is constrained by one of the original goals of the liberation
movement (land reform) and that the personal view is irrelevant. No matter
what the motivations of the government's leaders, the course the government
follows is conditioned by the goals of the larger movement of national
liberation.

There's no question Mugabe reacted harshly to recent provocations by
factions of the MDC, or that his government was deliberately provoked. But
the germane question isn't whether beating Morgan Tsvangirai over the head
was too much, but whether the ban on political rallies in Harare, which the
opposition deliberately violated, is justified. That depends on whose side
you're on, and whether you think Tsvangirai and his associates are earnest
citizens trying to freely express their views or are proxies for imperialist
governments bent on establishing (restoring in Britain's case) hegemony over
Zimbabwe.

There's no question either that Mugabe's government is in a precarious
position. The economy is in a shambles, due in part to drought, to the
disruptions caused by land reform, and to sanctions. White farmers want
Mugabe gone (to slow land redistribution, or to stop it altogether), London
and Washington want him gone (to ensure neo-liberal "reforms" are
implemented), and it's likely that some members of his own party also want
him to step down.

On top of acting to sabotage Zimbabwe economically through sanctions, London
and Washington have been funnelling financial, diplomatic and organizational
assistance to groups and individuals who are committed to bringing about a
color revolution (i.e., extra-constitutional regime change) in Zimbabwe.
That includes Tsvangirai and the MDC factions, among others.

For the Mugabe government, the options are two-fold: Capitulate (and
surrender any chance of maintaining what independence Zimbabwe has managed
to secure at considerable cost) or fight back. Some people might deplore the
methods used, but considering the actions and objectives of the opposition -
and what's at stake - the crackdown has been both measured and necessary.

1. The Guardian (January 24, 2002)
2. Ibid.
3. Zimbabwe's Land Reform Programme (The Reversal of Colonial Land
Occupation and Domination): Its Impact on the country's regional and
international relations. Paper presented by Dr I.S.G. Mudenge, Zimbabwe
Minister of Foreign Affairs, to the Conference 'The Struggle Continues',
held in Harare, 18-22 April 2004.
4. http://www.zimfa.gov.zw/speeches/minister/min014.htm
5. Globe and Mail (May 26, 1999)
6. "Grass-Roots Effort Aims to Upend Mugabe in Zimbabwe," The New York
Times, (March 28, 2005)
7. Los Angeles Times (July 8, 2005)
8. Ibid.
9. New York Times (March 27, 2005)
10. See Frances Stonor Saunders, "The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the
World of Arts and Letters," New Press, April 2000; and "The Economics and
Politics or the World Social Forum," Aspects of India's Economy, No. 35,
September 2003, http://www.rupe-india.org/35/contents.html
11. New York Times (March 27, 2005)
12. Globe and Mail (March 26, 2005)
13. "What's Really Going on in Zimbabwe? Mugabe Gets the Milosevic
Treatment," Counterpunch.com <http://counterpunch.com/>. March 23, 2007,
http://www.counterpunch.org/gowans03232007.html
14. Los Angeles Times (July 8, 2005)
15. New York Times, (December 4, 2005)
16. Washington Post (November 18, 2005)
17. New York Times (March 29, 2006)
18. New York Times (December 24, 2004)
19. Globe and Mail (March 23, 2007)
20. New York Times (December 24, 2004)
21. Ibid.
22. Globe and Mail (March 22, 2007)
23. The Herald (November 7, 2005)
24. Patrick Bond, "Mugabe: Talks Radical, Acts Like a Reactionary:
Zimbabwe's Descent," Counterpunch.com <http://counterpunch.com/>, March 27,
2007,
http://www.counterpunch.org/bond03272007.html
25. Globe and Mail (March 23, 2007)
26. Times Online (March 5, 2006)
27. Gregory Elich, "Zimbabwe's Fight for Justice," Center for Research on
Globalisation, May 6, 2005, globalresearch.ca/articles/ELI505A.html
28. "Progressive Cuba Bashing," Socialism and Democracy, Vol. 19, No. 1,
March 2005.

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