CRISIS IN ZIMBABWE

Independence anniversaries in post-colonial countries used to be a time of celebration for those workers who believed they were commemorating their freedom. Zimbabwe’s 20th anniversary of independence fell on April 18th. For the great majority in this southern African country, caution, not cheer was the order of the day.

As well as widespread political unrest, the newspapers that day reported the reality of everyday life for Zimbabwe’s exploited majority, hardly mentioning the 15 year liberation war: a war in the Congo that President Mugabe has committed Zimbabwean troops to at a cost of $1 million per day, fuel shortages, an Aids epidemic, rampant inflation, rising interest rates and soaring unemployment.

Neither was Robert Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF government in a celebratory mood, having a month earlier suffered defeat in a constitutional referendum intended to enhance the powers of the state, and a defeat that hinted he would lose his power to the newly-formed Movement for Democratic Change in the coming elections.

Ever the opportunist and desperate to win the rural vote – some 65 per cent of the population – Mugabe set about orchestrating mass occupations of white-owned farms.
For 20 years, Mugabe had all but reneged on his promise of land and jobs for the veterans who fought the liberation struggle – only 70,000 families ever having been resettled. Now his government was paying the ‘veterans’ to occupy white-owned farms, evict the farmers and to attack demonstrations by the nascent MDC.

Not only was he urging the veterans to occupy the land of the white farmers of the profit-hungry Commercial Farmers Union – a capitalist outfit he had always sucked up to - but also keeping from these same landless veterans the story of a land scam
involving his government and many of its hangers on.

In the last few years, under Zimbabwe’s land resettlement programme, the majority of state owned commercial farms have been given to individuals connected to the Mugabe regime. Most of these absentee landlords have no agricultural experience and have been given 98 year leases at knock-down prices. These leaseholders include cabinet ministers, provincial governors, civil servants and members of Mugabe’s office.

Whilst one provincial governor pays £1000 per year for 2,800 acres of land, a defence secretary can be found renting 780 acres for £1.00. All in all, the 500,000 acres of these commercial farms have been divided up into 253 separate units for those loyal to Mugabe, and all land that was initially set aside as part of the governments plan to resettle 150,000 families by 2003.

Similar stories of corruption and cronyism have been the hallmark of Mugabe’s reign in Zimbabwe since 1980 and provide plenty of ammunition for Morgan Tsvangirai’s
Movement for Democratic Change that is widely expected to take over from Mugabe in elections planned for late June.

Ostensibly an organisation with a pro-working class agenda, emerging from the
popularity afforded the Zimbabwean Confederation of trade Unions during their struggles of the late 90s, the MDC is in fact just another party that will be charged with running the country in the interests of its capitalist elite.

Claiming to be able to restore ‘investor confidence’, Tsvangirai clearly nails his colours to the capitalist mast. Although the MDC manifesto (which can be viewed at
www.mdc.co.zw) is perhaps well intentioned and far surpasses anything Mugabe and Co could dream up, a lengthy section stating its economic agenda nevertheless is fused with the jargon the master class drool over and use to great effect at election times: ‘stronger currency’, ‘poverty alleviation programmes’, ‘progressive taxation systems’, ‘the MDC will interact with international financial institutions’. If this is not the MDC clearly advocating reformist policies then why does Tsvangirai take on board Eddie Cross, a lead player with the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industry, as an economic adviser?

Without a doubt the elections that will be fought out in Zimbabwe on June 24th and 25th will, as in elections the world over, be little more than a contest between various parties each believing they can run the capitalist system more profitably than the others. Nothing in the MDC manifesto suggests they, rather than ZANU-PF, can alleviate poverty or address the myriad social ills that capitalism gives rise to.

Perhaps Tsvangirai said it all when he described the MDF as ‘social democrats…although driven by working class interests…[who can] never be ideologically pure.’

There is hope, though, for the Zimbabwean working class. Whilst we foresee no significant and immediate change in their circumstances, socialism will one day be on the agenda in Zimbabwe. The WSM already has the makings of a strong socialist movement there, having found many members and supporters there in recent years.

Hopefully in the near future, the voters of Zimbabwe will have a real choice at election time – the chance to vote for a system this journal has been arguing for for 95 years.

FAMINE OR FARCE IN ETHIOPIA?

Sixteen years after television cameras first brought the plight of Ethiopia’s starving millions into our living rooms, sparking the Live Aid rescue mission of 1985, history appears to be repeating itself on the Horn of Africa.


Just as it needed live images of children starving to death to shake Western governments out of their complacency all those years ago, having had prior warning that a famine was on the cards, so too now has the full threat of a famine had to become a reality before the world could sit up and take notice.


This time round, the Ethiopian famine was well predicted. In April of last year, the UN’s early warning system (GIEWS) reported that two years of drought were threatening 2 million people in Ethiopia with starvation. Nobody listened. Five months later, with further rain failures, the World Food Programme warned that 5.3 million Ethiopians faced starvation. Still, the cries fell on deaf ears. In January of this year, a UN mission in Ethiopia reported that 8 million faced starvation and that 800,000 tonnes of food were urgently needed to avert catastrophe.


At the beginning of April this year, the Ethiopian story finally hit the news headlines, but now with 16 million facing starvation in Ethiopia, as well as Eritrea, Djibouti, Kenya, Somalia and Uganda, and with a further 2 million expected be added to this figure if the May rains fail to save the June harvest.


Perhaps many Ethiopians will recall the comments made by one key Ethiopian minister back in 1998 and recounted recently in the editorial of one Ethiopian daily.
In Kissingerian* fashion, the minister in question announced that ‘hunger in Ethiopia is already a thing of the past…it has already been eliminated’ and that Ethiopia would be food self-sufficient within five years and producing a food surplus ( Tamret Bekele in the Addis Tribune, 6th April).


Of course, we cannot criticise this individual for failing to forsee the present tragedy. He after all has no more control over the weather than the Ethiopian economy. But his remarks do point to the misplaced confidence people have in the present system and the inability of capitalist society to avert catastrophe because of its insistence in prioritising profit before need and in failing to implement long-term provisions.


Most of the aid given to Ethiopia in the 80s was spent on emergency provisions, with little set aside for forward planning and for heading off the problems that made rescue missions so difficult back in ‘85. Roads and bridges came low on the list of priorities, as did systems for storing what water did fall on the drought-prone regions. Vulnerable areas, like the Ogaden region were known to offer precarious living conditions but no plans were made for population relocation.

Again, much is hampering the current relief effort. Firstly, as in 1985, there is another war with Eritrea, sparked by an Eritrean invasion over a border dispute and which provides western governments with an excuse to cut aid – the logic being that aid is sidetracked into the military machine. Though not exonerating the likes of Clare Short, Britain’s overseas development minister whose idea it was to penalise Ethiopia for its border dispute nor the Ethiopian government who claim they did not start the conflict in the first place, as socialists we are upset that in an area desperate for concerted human cooperation and a willingness to work together in face of an overwhelming crisis, half a million men are dug into trenches preparing to kill one another over a piece of land none of them will profit from.


As in 1985, food distribution is also proving a logistical nightmare, with poor roads and the threat of inter-clan warfare and banditry halting the relief effort. Moreover, since the conflict with Eritrea, land-locked Ethiopia has since lost the use of two key Eritrean ports And, at present, mid-April, only 50 per cent of the food needed has actually been pledged, with only a small percentage of this actually getting through.


Again, the current crisis and the famine of ’84-5 were caused by rain failure. But there are major differences now. The Ethiopian population is now 60 million, twice its size in 1985, which means an increasing rural population has had to work, and overwork, smaller parcels of land, which could only ever produce weaker and weaker yields. Added to this has been the shrinking availability of fertilisers. Ethiopia’s use of fertiliser, at 7 kg of nutrients per hectare is half the sub-Saharan average and about seven per cent the world average (statistics from Addis Tribune, 6th April).


After the 1985 famine the Ethiopian government sought to hold 350,000 tons of food in reserve to help avert further crises, but with 50,000 tons remaining at the beginning of April, it is evident a massive overseas contribution is needed to help provide the basic 7.2 million tonnes needed to feed the Ethiopian population in the year ahead.


What percentage of pledged food actually gets through remains to be seen, but it’s a fair guess it will fall far short of the 1.2 million tonnes the Ethiopian government estimates is needed urgently. Again, it is too early to predict whether or not the May rains will come and provide a desperately needed source of water to a country in which only 27 per cent of the population have access to clean water even in the wet seasons, as well as saving the June harvest.


Only a month ago this journal reported on the natural disaster Mozambique encountered when the skies dumped a year’s rain on the country in a few short weeks, flooding tens of thousands of square miles. It seems something of a sick irony that we now comment on a country a few thousand miles up the same east coast of Africa that has awaited rain for three years.


In the years ahead we can well predict to comment on further natural disasters as the effects of global warming kick in and, more, to continually point to the failure of capitalism to effectively mobilise its vast technological resources to the benefit of those in direst need. As in Ethiopia 15 years ago, so too now will history continue to repeat itself, as tragedy, then as farce.


*At a world food summit in 1973, Henry Kissinger announced that global hunger would be eradicated within 10 years. There were then 400 million chronically malnourished people on the planet (a 75 million increase over the previous ten years). That figure now stands at 800 million.

FLOODS IN MOZAMBIQUE

During four days at the end of January, the skies dumped a year's rainfall onMozambique. The consequent floods killed many and displaced over 1 million people. Within one week of the first rains, Mozambique's economy and inrastructure had been set back 25 years, the floods causing more damage than than the 16 years of civil war that devastated the country. More was to come as Cyclone Eline moved in from Madagascar.


In front of our TV sets in the relative safety of our living rooms, most of us watched with empathy the plight of the thousands left clinging to tree tops and bridges and with a shared feeling of human pride in the frantic and selfless efforts of the South African helicopter crews who flew countless missions to rescue those most in danger.


TVs are useful in this regard - allowing viewers to witness, almost live, the colossal tragedies endured by our fellow humans around the world, evoking in us all manner of emotions, whether it be the urge to send a cheque off to some charity, the despair at not being able to help out more, or a certain numbness borne of an over familiarity with such events, a kind of donor fatigue.


What TV sets don't seem to get across is the behind-the-scenes stories, the kind of stories that hint at our powerlessness to help out at once, the futility of the controllers of capitalist society in putting the vast technological resources that are available in case of such emergencies into operation.


Weeks into the Mozambique disaster, arguments sprang up as to who was to pay for the continuing South African search and rescue missions. The US argued with the South African government over landing rights and, here in Britain, a battle raged between the Ministry of Defence and the Department for International Development over who was going to pay the £2.2 million cost of sending five Puma helicopters. Never did it occur to the latter reprobates that in 24 hours the British public had chipped in £4m to help out or that the Blair government was throwing more money into the wasteage of the £750 Millennium Dome.


So incompetent were the British government in getting their act together, in fact, that the Puma helicopters arrived after the search and rescue phase had been called off. Even then, they proved of little use because the limited range they could cover meant they could not offer assistance in the norrth of the country where they were needed. Moreover, the officer in charge of the British party, one Colonel Jonathon Downes, had no experience at all in disaster relief.


Many commentators criticised the ineffectiveness of the Western relief operation, many observing how soldiers from 16 African and Western countries, who had been sent to help, sat about on the tarmac at Maputo airport or on beaches. Neither, bearing in mind that many of Mozambique's bridges ands roads had been swept away, did any government consider sending engineering units to help repair them and thus speed up the rescue mission and food distribution operation.


We can well ask why there was no information on hand that could have suggested that Mozambique was about to face such devastating floods and a
cyclone. While there are established international protocols for the sharing of meteorological information, there is no international obligaton to do so. With advanced scientific equipment, and with Sattelite technology now widely used, the know-how exists to provide the world with data regarding soil absorption water run-off in rivers and anticipated rainfall. However, as one Guardian writer observed:


"It costs money to amass, monitor and analyse data and pass it on to the people who need it most." (6th March 2000)


And this is the crux of the problem. Who will pay for this level of technology or, more importantly, how much immediate profit can be gleaned from investment in the same?


After each natural disaster and the rescue missions that slowly swing into action, the 'experts' tell us we can learn lessons from it. As much was said after the December 1999 Venezuelan flood that left 20,000 dead, and after the Orissa, India, cyclone that left 2 million homeless and Central America's Hurricane Mitch which created 1 million refugees.


Each time there are calls for an International rapid deployment force of rescue and first aid teams. Each time there were questions as to how such devastation could not have been forseen and for more cooperation and sharing of information.


Few make an attempt to set the problem in a wider social and economic context - for instance making that crucial link to the perrenial priority of profit before human need. Few point to the mountain of red tape that has to be cut through before rescue teams can be mobilised - red tape that the functioning of capitalism makes necessary (ie. the observance of national boundaries and air-space, getting the okay from this and that government, working out who will foot the bill before operations are underway etc.)


While global warming is undoubtedly the cause of recent floodings, hurricances and cyclones (ie. the greenhouse effect means more warmth, which means more evaporation, which means more wind and rain) there is no current planning for future disasters - and they will come! Foresight as ever proves an expensive luxury to those who at currently have the greatest say in our lives.


Right now, we not only have the technology to begin reversing the effects of global warming, and to predict the patterns and consequences of changing global weather conditions, but we have more than the capability to meet any natural disaster head on, thus preventing the loss of further life and the waste of valuable resources. At present, however, control over such technological resources are in the hands of a small elite, the capitalist class, and their executive, the world's governments.


As we await further natural disasters we can only guess at how long it will take the 'experts' to contemplate a system of society in which the earth's scientific and technological resources are the common property of all and in which the death tolls from such disasters are greatly reduced.

Putin Raises Nuclear Stakes

In December's Standard, we commented on the decision by the US Senate not to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the promise by the more hawkish Republicans to scupper the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty which outlawed 'Star Wars' defence programmes, and suggested that such steps, at the dawn of a new millennium dampened any hopes the more optimistic workers held for the 21st Century.


We did not have to wait long for further confirmation of the troubled century that awaits us. Two weeks into the new millennium, The Guardian reported on Moscow's newly published security strategy doctrine which aims to raise the nuclear stakes by lowering the threshold at which Russia can resort to the use of nuclear weapons:


'Mr Yeltsin's strategy, decreed in December 1997, declared that nuclear weapons could only be used "in the case of a threat to the very existence of the Russian Federation as a sovereign state". The new document states that the use of nuclear weapons is necessary "to repel armed aggression if all other means of resolving a crisis situation have been exhausted or turn out to be ineffective"' (14th Jan.2000)


With the nuclear button already in his possession, acting Russian president Vladimir Putin has overnight not only given himself greater opportunity to press it, but has signalled to his country that the West is a force for reaction which must be opposed. What crisis situations necessitate the downward thrust of Putin's index finger can only be guessed at, but it's fair comment that the latest decision is rooted not only in Russia's inability to bring the Chechen rebels to their knees by conventional methods - humiliating for Moscovites in the wake of NATO's utter annihalation of Serbian resistance in the Kosovo conflict - but also directly linked to the US decision not to ratify the CBTT.


Indeed, back in October, Putin, on hearing of the Senate's decision over in Washington, and coming to terms with what he perceived as a growing internal and external threat to Moscow's interests, announced plans to increase military spending this year by 54 percent to $4 billion. Responding to Republican threats that the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty would be wrecked, the RussianDefence Minister, Nikolai Mikalov further announced that the only way Russia could realistically counter the technology the US was capable of setting up to counter nuclear attacks, was to deploy more weapons with increased warheads, thus overwhelming US defence systems.


At the peak of the Cold War, the former Soviet Union had a force of 5 million under arms and was an acknowledged superpower. Since 1989, it has seen its armed forces shrink to almost a fifth of that number and has suffered humiliation after humiliation - the withdraw from Afganistan in 1989 and the first botched war in Chechenia, for instance. As well as morale in the armed forces being low, their combat readiness, according to Putin himself, is in a critical condition, with training and maintenance reported as being grossly inadequate. While a contingent of 300 Russian soldiers serving in Kosovo as part of the peace keeping force have been returned home because of alleged drunkenness, drug-taking and a general inadequateness, the higher ranks are becoming notorious for their infighting, with the defence minister constantly arguing with his generals.


With the above in mind, one can well see the method in Putin's madness. He has after all the job of protecting the interests of Russia's capitalist elite with faulty tools. Moreover, he is faced with the stark realisation that he exists in a unipolar world increasingly dominated by the US. Putin's attempt to make the world once again bi-polar can also be seen a response to NATOs New Strategic Concept which, like Putin's proposals in his 21 page document, suggests the early recourse to the use of nuclear weapons.


That the world's leaders are still prepared to carry their nuclear logic into another century, that they are continually prepared to wipe out millions of their fellow humans to further the interests of a minority at the end of a century that witnessed the deaths of 220 million in conflict, should shatter any illusions we have that this century will proceed on a different course to the one we have stepped out of. While we contemplate the wars, the conflicts and the horrors our masters have in store for us this coming century, it is also important to remember that we as a class hold the power to prevent the same from coming about.


We are not ruled by force or coercion, but by consent. The Putins and Clintons of this world can only do the things they do because we vote them in, thus legitimising their actions, however detrimental they may be to our interests. War and conflict and all the terrors we dare to imagine only come to pass because we refuse to join together as a class to express our class interests.


Once we recognise that as a class we have shared basic needs and desires, suffering the same privations because of our less privileged position in the relations of production, and unite in defiance of that minority intent on maintaining the status quo and its nuclear insanity, we need never fear the horror of war again.


While you muse on the aforementioned, remember the argument is not that complicated. This is your world as much as anybody's and requires your active involvement to protect it. Are you for socialism or against it? Don't take too long to make up your mind - we may not have that much time.