U.S. bill would sanction Zimbabwe
Aim is to block land reform
By Deirdre Griswold
The art of public relations goes back a long way, as the old
expression "a wolf in sheep's clothing" shows us. Disguise
something bad or give it a cuddly name and by the time people
find out it has fangs, it may be too late.
A bill called the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery
Act (ZDERA) now making its way through Congress is a case in
point. Democracy, economic recovery--who could argue with that?
But this bill is an open attack on Zimbabwe's economic and
political independence. It was passed by the Senate on Aug. 1
and is now before the House.
Zimbabwe is a long-tormented land in the middle of Africa
that was violently colonized by Britain in the 1890s. The
British South Africa Company, headed by financier Cecil Rhodes,
massacred the Matabele and Mashona people, grabbing their
livestock and the best land in the area and parceling it out to
soldiers who would settle there, laying the basis for the
white-settler regime to be known as Rhodesia.
Zimbabwe has rich farmland, but 60 percent of the best land
is still in the hands of descendants of the white
settlers--even now, more than 20 years since a united front
government of the two main African liberation organizations
took office. But now the government of Zimbabwe has passed a
law that would redistribute millions of acres of land,
currently owned by just 3,500 white farmers, to 5 million Black
farmers.
It is obvious that the whites are into farming as a
lucrative business, not for survival. The Black people,
however, are desperately poor and need the land just to live.
The land question has become the focus of a giant political
battle.
'Democracy' through
bought elections
President Robert Mugabe and the Patriotic Front government
are the targets of ZDERA. In the name of democracy, the bill
would allow the U.S. Congress to spend $6 million to influence
the upcoming national election, in the name of "voter
education," and would put sanctions on the country's leaders.
While members of the opposition party, the Movement for
Democratic Change, would be free to travel around the world,
the bill would restrict travel by the leaders of the Zimbabwe
government and freeze their bank accounts.
The MDC doesn't hide the fact that it is funded by Britain's
Westminster Foundation for Democracy, the political equivalent
of Washington's National Endowment for Democracy that has
poured millions of U.S. taxpayers' dollars into elections
abroad, many in Eastern Europe, to get the results desired by
U.S. strategists.
The sanctions proposed in ZDERA are not the only outside
pressure on Zimbabwe. A delegation from the European Union,
representing the countries that carved Africa up for colonial
plunder in the 19th century, arrived in Harare Nov. 22
threatening to suspend beef and sugar trade deals vital to
Zimbabwe's economy. But Minister of Foreign Affairs Stan
Mudenge told the Herald newspaper that the government was ready
for them and wanted to expose the EU's interference in the
internal politics of Zimbabwe by funding opposition
parties.
There is strong support for the Patriotic Front government
in the country's rural areas, where most of the people live.
The opposition MDC is based largely in the cities.
Pressure on Zimbabwe from imperialist lending institutions
like the IMF and the World Bank became heavy after Mugabe
heeded the call of Congolese President Laurent Kabila to defend
that country against invading troops from Uganda, Rwanda and
Burundi, who were funded by the same banks that are squeezing
Zimbabwe. Kabila was eventually assassinated. His successor,
Joseph Kabila, was forced to come to Washington and make
economic concessions to U.S. imperialism in order to end the
war. The uneasy truce that now exists in the Congo is proof of
the imperialists' responsibility for the earlier war and
invasion.
The capitalists of the U.S. and Europe who make tremendous
profits from their control over the rich resources and
underpaid labor of Africa act shocked and hurt when accused of
perpetuating the economic super-exploitation first established
under colonialism. But there really is no other word for
it.
IMF reforms deepened poverty
The mechanisms in the modern era are more nuanced, of
course. But they are every bit as oppressive. Today, 45 percent
of Zimbabweans are not able to meet "basic nutritional needs,"
according to a government poverty assessment survey.
Three-quarters of the people live in poverty, up from 40
percent just a decade ago. At that time Western-backed economic
reforms, the so-called "structural adjustment programs," forced
underdeveloped countries everywhere to sell off state
properties and end food and other subsidies. Mugabe, like other
Third World leaders, went along with these programs
reluctantly, knowing that his government would be up against a
full-court press if it refused.
While Zimbabwe has passed its Land Acquisition Act and
Mugabe has added a "fast-track" decree giving the white farmers
just 90 days to move off requisitioned land, ultimately this
issue will not be settled in the courts. The struggle is on the
land itself and has been going on for some time.
Over the past 18 months, veterans of the liberation war and
other militants have occupied an estimated 1,700 white-owned
farms, demanding that they be redistributed to landless Blacks.
They have done this in the teeth of virulent resistance by the
commercial farmers.
To get a sense of what these farms are like, the Commercial
Farmers Union reported Nov. 22 that an ostrich farm in
Matabeleland North had been "invaded" by 15 Black farmers. The
farm was a joint venture between a white Zimbabwean and an
Indonesian investor who had sunk $12 million into the deal.
The people of Zimbabwe have seen what capitalist
globalization brings. Land that should be feeding the people is
being used to raise ostriches for the exotic food market in
Europe and elsewhere. Programs that promise democracy and
economic development bring national humiliation and economic
slavery.
The struggle in Zimbabwe can only intensify as the world
capitalist recession deepens, bringing to the fore the most
glaring inequities and contradictions of this rapacious
system.
Reprinted from the Dec. 6, 2001, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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