Zimbabwe: opposition get huge vote despite intimidation
Zimbabwe’s elections held on 24/25 June delivered a huge vote against the ruling Zanu-PF. Zanu-PF retained 53 seats to the opposition MDC's 47.
Although the MDC would have needed to win 74 seats in order to gain control of parliamen,t due to the fact that Mugabe can appoint 30 MPs himself, nevertheless the vote was a big rebuff to Mugabwe.
In the cities the vote for the MDC was 80 per cent. In the rural areas where the violence against the opposition was greatest and the demogogy of land redistribution most telling, the Zanu-PF vote was highest.
However no fewer than seven ministers lost their seats, including the Justice Minister, Emmerson Munangagwa, considered a possible heir apparent to President Mugabe.
The most prominent government casualty, Munangagwa, was crushed by a margin of 2-1 in a rural district by an opponent who had gone into hiding after being attacked by ruling party militants.
The other contender to succeed Mugabe, Sidney Sekeremayi, held his seat by just 63 votes.
The Home Affairs Minister, Dumiso Dabengwa, received less than 4,000 of the more than 24,000 votes cast in his district in the southwestern city of Bulawayo - where all seats went to the MDC.
Tourism Minister Simon Kaya-Moyo and Sikhanyiso Ndhlovu, the Deputy Minister for Higher Education, were also among the government casualties.
President Mugabe may choose to use the 30 parliamentary seats at his discretion to restore defeated ministers to parliament.
Hunzvi, leader of the war veterans who spearheaded the invasion of more than 1,500 white-owned commercial farms with government support, won a seat for the first time by a comfortable margin in a farming area.
In the weeks up to the election the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)bore the brunt of attacks by gangs supporting Mugabe’s Zanu-PF ruling party.
Zanu-PF supporters threatened candidates as they registered at the start of this month. Candidate Thadeus Rukini was beaten to death. In March, Mugabe was trailing in the opinion polls.
Sixty three per cent of voters said they wanted a change of government. Zimbabwe’s workers and peasants were disillusioned with a ruling party and leader which presided over 50 per cent unemployment and 60 per cent inflation. The MDC gathered support on a wide scale.
Then Mugabe has launched a counter attack using both carrot and stick. The stick is political violence and intimidation. MDC rallies were broken up. The MDC had virtually no access to the air waves.
The carrot is the promise of land redistribution. First Mugabe unleashed the "war veterans" to lead land occupations. When the white farmers caved in and promised not to support the opposition, the leadership tried to rein in the squatters.
At the end of last month the ZANU-PF government finally decreed the land occupations legal, and promised to resettle 100,000 landless peasants by the end of June.
This is too little, too late. The country's 4,400 white farmers own the most fertile 34 per cent of Zimbabwe’s land while one million black peasant farmers subsist on the remainder.
Yet for 20 years, Mugabe only managed to "resettle" a few of his closest friends and ministers. As one popular opposition t-shirt puts it: "Land to the people, not the politicians".
Far from being the scourge of the capitalist farmers, Mugabe wants to do business with them. That is why he left the white landowners alone to build up their wealth for two decades and even now has allowed them to bank 20 per cent of their income, from the lucrative tobacco trade, in foreign currency accounts
Mugabe has only encouraged land occupations now to save his political skin. After the elections he hopes to call off the occupations and strike a deal with the reactionary Commercial Farmers’ Union (CFU).
Unfortunately, the MDC – which was formed by the trade union movement in September 1999 and quickly attracted over a million members from the workers and the rural poor – has bent over backwards to support the white farmers and the Western capitalists.
On the land question, the MDC supports the retention of the big plantations in the hands of the landowners, allowing only unutilised and marginal land to be redistributed.
Even then, the black peasant farmers will have to mortgage their land to attract investment while the white capitalist farmers will enjoy rich compensation.
The MDC leadership want to mortgage Zimbabwe’s future to the bankers in the IMF by rescheduling the debt. Over the past few months Zimbabwe has had to sell half its gold reserves and mortgage next year’s gold deposits just to keep the country afloat.
Doing the IMF’s bidding will mean following approved policies such as privatisation, welfare and education cuts and a concentration on production for export.
The black workers and poor peasants must not allow Morgan Tsvangirai and the rest of the MDC leadership to throw away their futures and hand the capitalists a lifeline.
Workers and socialists should learn from the South African experience. There the trade unions supported a bourgeois-led ANC government and paid for it with privatisation, job cuts, speed-ups and a deteriorating social fabric.
Zimbabwe’s workers have launched three impressive general strikes in recent years. They have fought vicious price hikes by taking to the streets and battling with the police. They have forced their leaders to build a new party of opposition. In short they have shown courage, tenacity and ingenuity in equal and enormous measures. They will need all of these in the months ahead.
- For workers’ militia to defend political action!
- For a general strike to guarantee a free and fair an election and stop Mugabe's reign of terror!
- Link up with the South African working class, not the white farmers and the IMF!
- Build a revolutionary socialist party, not a popular front!
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