Brian Stephens, Harare
Having demobilised the once vibrant mass movement that had previously threatened his rule, and neutered the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's ruling party — the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) — is confident of victory in the country's March 31 general elections.
Mugabe is now looking ahead to regaining the confidence of international capital and attracting new investment to revitalise a devastated economy.
As cleaner elections would help to legitimise Mugabe's rule, the electoral laws have been liberalised, access to the state media has been relaxed and the use of state-sponsored violence and intimidation has been eased.
Re-integration with the "international community" would return Zimbabwe back to the course of austerity and structural adjustment that it was taking at the behest of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the 1990s.
However, these policies caused strikes, protests and food riots among workers and students, generating a social mobilisation that had the potential to take an anti-capitalist direction.
In response, Mugabe took a left tack. The land reform program was unleashed, popular policies such as price controls were instituted and official rhetoric became stridently anti-imperialist. Accompanied by state-sanctioned violence, media censorship and electoral fraud, ZANU-PF narrowly beat off the electoral challenge of the newly formed MDC in 2000 and 2002.
However, Mugabe's opportunist policies caused economic meltdown. The most controversial, the land reform, resulted in 4000 of the 4500 white commercial farmers being evicted from their farms and 350,000 rural black workers chased away from their jobs. Agricultural production plummeted as farming reverted from large-scale capitalist to small-scale peasant methods of production.
Many ZANU-PF "comrades" used the land reform as an opportunity to grab multiple farms and Mugabe himself recently condemned "telephone farmers" who use their new farms merely as weekenders for holding "braais" (barbeques).
Partly through land acquisition, a breed of ZANU-PF "suitcase capitalists" has grown rich through hoarding, currency speculation and financial fraud.
The ZANU-PF leaders have evolved into well-entrenched businesspeople who use the state as an instrument to accumulate private fortunes and who occasionally resort to leftist rhetoric and some popular measures to deceive the masses.
While many of the poor settlers who led the land occupation have benefited from the land reform laws, they have often lacked farming experience and necessary inputs such as fertilisers and seed.
There are also many cases where "new farmers" have been evicted to make way for ZANU-PF cronies. In September 2004 for example, the burnt out shacks of evicted "new farmers" were scattered along a 12-kilometre section of the Chinoyi Road to the north of Harare.
The economic collapse caused by the devastation of the farming sector continues. Ordinary Zimbabweans continue to suffer job loses — at least 60,000 were lost in 2004 — and unemployment is now 75%.
Hyperinflation has eroded the purchasing power of wages and high taxation and school fees mean that at least 80% of the population are officially living in poverty.
The country's once exemplary health system has collapsed, with even government newspapers admitting that the main public hospital in Harare is "terminally ill". Due to the AIDS pandemic, average life expectancy has fallen to 43 years.
Along with political concessions in the run up to the March 31 elections, Mugabe's ZANU-PF government has made important overtures to international capitalism by increasing quarterly loan repayments to the IMF from US$1.5 million to $5 million. As a reward, the IMF has allowed Zimbabwe to keep its membership of the fund.
Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono is "liberalising" the economy while arguing that wage rises be pegged at 85%, well below the official inflation rate of 134%. In an effort to attract agribusiness investment, some of the evicted white farmers and corporations are getting their land back.
Significantly, young leaders centred around former information minister Jonathon Moyo have been purged from ZANU-PF. Moyo and his team of ZANU-PF hardliners credit themselves with beating off the MDC challenge.
However, as Zimbabwe's pro-government Daily Mirror pointed on January 9: "Moyo failed to adjust from the politics of combat which were necessary in the period 2000 to 2003 to those of dialogue and bridge building across the party and state. Moyo had urged African countries to sever ties with the IMF and World Bank. Moyo and his faction have become excess baggage."
To consolidate its rightward shift, ZANU-PF has also marginalised the radical independence war veterans who mobilised and led the party's radical base during the land occupations.
Mugabe himself has been softening his anti-Western rhetoric. The victory of the right-wing neoliberal faction of the party will mean vicious attacks on the poor through privatisation, retrenchments, deregulation and price increases.
Many in the pro-democracy movement argued for a broadly based mass mobilisation involving an electoral boycott and civil disobedience against the ZANU-PF electoral circus. The MDC leadership had to overcome this boycott sentiment among its base, before announcing that it would contest the elections. Participation, of course, means running the risk of legitimising Mugabe and his rigged elections.
However, having abandoned its radical trade-union origins, the opposition MDC has evolved into a traditional parliamentary party with an electoralist orientation.
While ZANU-PF looks confident, the consequences of the serious internal fighting and purges have yet to be gauged.
With neither side in the elections offering radical change, the elections have generated little popular excitement. A low voter turnout in the rural areas will favour the MDC while a low turnout in the urban areas will favour ZANU-PF.
If the MDC is massively defeated, given the rightward shift by both parties, MDC parliamentarians may come to some agreement with ZANU-PF, such as participation in a government of "national unity". If it wins, the MDC will still have to deal with Mugabe, who will remain Zimbabwe's president until 2008. ZANU-PF will also remain in control of the armed forces and the civil bureaucracy.
Regardless of the election outcome, the defeat of Moyo's faction removes the confusion caused by its left-wing demagogy. Being the ones who drafted and enthusiastically enforced repressive legislation, their demise creates space for genuine left-wing forces, such as those gathering around the Zimbabwe Social Forum, to organise and rebuild.
From Green Left Weekly, March 16, 2005.
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