Alex Callinicos: Southern Africa after Zimbabwe, (Pluto Press, 1981, £2.95), Review of African Political Economy No 18 (1981, £1.50)
The state that emerged in Zimbabwe after the ZANU-Patriotic Front election victory of February 1980 has surprised many on both left and right. Tory racists predicted that the government of the 'terrorist Mugabe' would preside over a wholesale exodus of whites, the collapse of the economy and a period of anarchy and retribution,
Many on the left took rhetoric for reality and saw the result as heralding a transition to socialism. A year later events have confirmed neither set of fears or hopes. The new regime eased itself into the driving seat with the apparently unquestioning assistance of its former battlefield opponents and the uneasy aid of the Soames-directed British team that had spent the election campaign manoeuvring to prevent its victory.
Two substantial challenges have been met head on and apparently squashed by the new government. One came immediately after its election from a working class long cowed by repression and now hoping to gain some of the fruits of independence. A series of strikes swept through the main towns and industries, Most were around wage demands although some made a more fundamental challenge to long-resented white managerial authority There was however no national co-ordination of these actions able to lead a fight for the government to come clean on its promises and implement a programme of change in the interests of the working masses. This has made it easy for Mugabe's team to condemn the strikes as a challenge to stability and prospects of renewed economic development. The police and existing legal framework were used to crush the strike wave. New legal minima were established which gave increases only to the very lowest paid and actually gave some employers an excuse for lowering wages.
The second challenge simmered continually from the pre-election period when the former guerrilla armies were rounded up into a series of encampments under the effective control of their former opponents, It found its fiercest expression in the fighting in Bulawayo earlier this year between the ex-ZIPRA and ex-ZANLA elements. This was a product of the pent-up frustration of freedom fighters whose role in defeating the Smith/Muzorewa regime appeared to have been forgotten by the government, It was unfortunately expressed in a vicious faction fight whose main victims were local civilians; this played straight into the hands of the government by further increasing their isolation from the rest of the population.
The new book of Alex Callinicos, designated a sequel to his previous work with John Rogers, Southern Africa after Soweto (Pluto 1977), deals in its first part with some of these developments. Its detailed concentration on these developments and on the recent evolution of the South African state and reaction by blacks makes it far more useful than the previous work which, ranging over the entire sub-continent, was bitty and often wrong. Callinicos gives a broadly accurate description of the negotiations, elections and first six months of ZANU rule. He focusses on the electoral commitment to socialism and subsequent evolution to best defender of the status quo. Particularly strong is his explanation of the [illegible] model for the one[-party state] means the elimination of democratic participation, competing political parties and any autonomous mass organisations.
Unfortunately the attempt to locate these events theoretically scarcely goes beyond one quotation from Luxembourg's Reform or Revolution. It would have been more useful to have placed the Zimbabwean experience within the whole context of African nationalism over the past 20 years.
ZANU is by no means the first organisation to combine socialist rhetoric during the struggle for independence, and even for many years afterwards, with policies that deepen integration into the capitalist world. This is especially characteristic of movements that have engaged in armed struggle which entailed more than simply verbal support from the masses, Contrary to assumptions made in much academic writing of the early 1970s this was by no means a guarantee of a movement's socialist credentials.
It would have been particularly useful to have compared ZANU with its peers in Angola and Mozambique, and to have developed some conclusions around the important comment made at the end of the book about South Africa: 'There is a danger that concentration exclusively on the organisation of armed struggle will lead to the creation of a guerrilla army that operates as a military elite alienated from the mass of the population.'
The point, however, needs to be refined In Angola and Mozambique it is clear that guerrilla cadre have slotted rapidly into positions in the new state. What leaves the situation in Zimbabwe temporarily a good deal more open is that the majority of freedom fighters responsible for the ZANU victory are still in encampments policed by their former opponents with the collaboration of their leaders.
For the past five years the Review of African Political Economy has been the most stimulating and politically useful English language journal on the affairs of the continent. Its latest edition deals overwhelmingly with Zimbabwe and, as usual, combines comment on contemporary developments with historical analysis. Luke Malaba's piece on African Labour outlines the mechanisms of its control from the 1930s to 1970s and poses a series of questions about the possible development of working class organisations independent of the nationalist movement
Cliffe, Mpofu and Munslow provide an extremely interesting account of the 1980 elections. Particularly important is their refutation of the popular myth that ZANU and ZAPU are based on the 'tribal' affiliation of respectively Shona and Ndebele-speaking peoples. They show that Zimbabweans voted irrespective of their language groups for the parties whose fighters had been the most active within their areas.
The high quality of the contributions, however, contrasts dramatically with the article written under the pseudonym 'Peter Yates'. Although it doesn't acknowledge its ancestry, its stagist argument is clearly Stalinist in derivation: 'ZANU PF rightly argues that the stage of national democratic revolution in Zimbabwe has been successfully achieved. ZANU PF has now embarked upon the socialist revolutionary phase.' (p 68) 'Ultra-leftists' unjustly accuse ZANU of having 'sold out to imperialism', Yates continues, and do not comprehend the objective situation in which 'all patriots and revolutionaries have to rally behind ZANU-PF' and in which it is wishful thinking and suicidal to establish independent workers' party'.
After this tirade it is surprising but perhaps a little reassuring to find that some realities penetrate Yates' consciousness. After a lame attempt to present the new government's policies in health and education (where fee-paying and therefore effective racial segregation still remains), Yates concedes that ZANU has some problems which, he argues, can only be resolved by holding a party congress. Yates concludes: 'We cannot overlook the fact that the outcome of such a congress is likely to see the emergence of a preponderance of traditionalist, conservative, petty bourgeois elements at the expense of the movement's more progressive wing...'
We agree — except that we don't think it's necessary to wait for a congress to see this happening. And that's precisely why it would be 'wishful thinking and suicidal' not to take every step possible towards establishing an independent workers' party now.