By Horace Campbell and Eusi Kwayana
(Horace Campbell is a Professor of African American Studies and Political Science at Syracuse University. Eusi Kwayana is the veteran Pan African activist of Guyana and the Caribbean.)
Zimbabwe, a week before the run off elections for the Presidency, presents many progressive Pan Africanists with a conflict, be it in analysis or action.
There are four main competing interests in Zimbabwe, as it is today. First, but not in order of importance are the interests of the ruling party and its supporters. These are followed by those of the Opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and its supporters. Next are the vested interests of the white minority settlers supported heavily by the United Kingdom and the neo-conservatives of the Bush Administration in the United States. Finally, but first in rating, there are the interests of all the producers (workers, poor peasants, farm workers, traditional healers, cultural workers, students, traders, hawkers etc.) in Zimbabwe. This last group has been rendered poor and powerless by the present government of Robert Mugabe and the ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union, Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF).
In the past weeks the state-run daily, The Herald, reported that President Mugabe has warned that he will take the country to war to keep the ruling party in power. The Herald quoted Mr. Mugabe as saying he will not let the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) take power. Mr. Mugabe on many occasions said that an opposition victory would be tantamount to giving the country back to its former colonial master. The president has repeatedly accused the MDC of being sponsored by Britain. Mugabe declared in a speech that: “We fought for this country, and a lot of blood was shed…We are not going to give up our country because of a mere X. How can a ballpoint fight with a gun?”
This kind of talk is dangerous and should be condemned by Pan Africanists and decent persons everywhere.
First, there should be an attempt to clear the landscape of certain obstacles. Zimbabwe was in growing trouble before the sanctions imposed by the governments of Britain and the United States. Still, the attempt to bully a small country’s ruler who was in turn bullying his compatriots draped Robert Mugabe in the role of a hero against imperialism. The attempt encouraged a blundering ruler to stay on course. The ZANU-PF forces and sympathizers have blamed the disastrous economic situation on the sanctions. Yet, the political leaders have accumulated wealth in such a conspicuous manner that their consumption of luxury goods stands out in a country where more than 80 per cent of the eligible workers are unemployed. Millions more Zimbabweans have been rendered as economic refugees in Africa and beyond.
Zimbabwe‘s situation has some striking parallels with that of the recent history of Guyana in the Caribbean, where rivalry between anti-colonial forces started long before independence and was only draped in flags at the moment of Uhuru, without serious attempts at a deep resolution of the difficulties. Once in power the Burnham regime did nothing to resolve the ethnic conflict but superimposed on it a parliamentary dictatorship. Forbes Burnham consolidated this dictatorship while brandishing non-alignment and support for African Liberation. Yet, Walter Rodney was assassinated by the regime of the People‘s National Congress in 1980 because he was part of a movement that wanted to transcend the politics of division and exploitation. It is this kind of anti imperialism that has been used by many dictators to cover up the repression of their own citizens.
In Africa, the home of Ubuntu, there was no thought of employing the indigenous mechanism of conflict resolution. Instead the Zimbabwe maximum leader adopted methods of control patterned on the deformed systems of Eastern Europe. He ignored the option of applying Ubuntu (or its national expression – in Zimbabwe as hunhu) as a way of healing. As in Guyana there was a reliance on external forms and vanguardism. We did not learn, whether in Zimbabwe or Guyana, to surround universal science with our own ethos.
In 1987 the fusion of ZANU with the Patriotic Front led by Joshua Nkomo was done in such a way that the post-colonial world knew little about it, except that it led to the virtual silencing of the section of the liberation front that had been led by Joshua Nkomo. In the merger of the two wings of the national liberation movement there was also too much reliance placed on foreign tutelage, much of it from trusted allies of African liberation. This fusion had been orchestrated to end the divisions within the political leadership of Zimbabwe. One of the tragedies of the post liberation Zimbabwean society was the massacre of thousands of citizens of the Southwestern region of the country. Progressive Pan Africanists were silent when these massacres of the Ndebele took place in the early eighties. We, by and large, ignored these atrocities in the interests of solidarity with the dominant force in the country, and the need to not to make too much of small skirmishes, lest we “play into the hands of imperialism”
The best way for us (as African, Asian or Caribbean peoples) to keep the enemy at bay is to have a praxis of respect for all national forces and apply the highest principles of our culture as an indigenous method for the resolution of conflict. Of late the western media and certain forces within the United Nations have been reporting the possibility of talks of power sharing, and the arrangement of some form of a transitional authority. While the spirit of these discussions may be guided by the search for social peace, it is urgent that these discussions between the various elements are not carried out behind the backs of the people and do nothing to undermine the political will of the people. But above all there must be an engagement by all to ensure that the elections and its aftermath does not deteriorate into the kind of violence and destruction that was witnessed in Kenya after the elections of December 27, 2007. At all costs, war must be avoided. The present leadership cannot expect to be supported when it terrorizes its own people and unleashes the very same Rhodesian military apparatus (the Joint Operation Command) against the opposition and unarmed civilians.
The present situation in Zimbabwe is confused by the circumstance that President Robert Mugabe has been a heroic figure in the continent of Africa, the Diaspora, among African observers and well-wishers. And he would have remained so, if the Pan African world had assisted Zimbabweans with friendly criticism of the government when the flaws began to show. Instead, the whole movement and the international left, including us, remained silent, some longer than others, hoping that such a well-resourced government would correct its own shortcomings. Earlier we had special cause to be partisan to Robert Mugabe, who had extended solidarity to our colleague Walter Rodney when he was being persecuted by the Guyana government.
It does not worry those who would defend the Zimbabwe government absolutely and in all circumstances that the imperialists have their embassies and observation posts and espionage networks in all of these places and are fully posted on developments in Zimbabwe. In this they have an advantage over those in the diaspora whose leaders think it is good policy to hide the truth from their constituencies about what is really going on in Zimbabwe. Those in the Global Pan African world who continue to defend Mugabe have in effect kept their constituencies in ignorance of information essential for human development in the name of solidarity. This is not the way to help the millions of working people learn how to govern.
