The following assessment of the recent power-sharing deal between Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF and Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change is from the International Socialist Organisation of Zimbabwe
MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai has become the new prime minister and shares executive authority with the president and cabinet. In addition he will chair a Council of Ministers that will oversee the implementation of government policies, although Mugabe will remain chairing cabinet. The opposition has a majority of 16 to 15 in cabinet.
The two Zanu PF deputy presidents remain with two deputy prime ministers reserved for the opposition.
Mugabe remains the head of state and government, although required to consult Tsvangirai before making most appointments.
The deal will last for up to five years although subject to review after the first eighteen months.
The deal mandates a constitutional reform process that will lead to a referendum and new constitution in eighteen months time, overseen by a Parliamentary Select Committee.
Many ordinary people and some civic groups have cautiously welcomed the deal in the hope that it will bring an end to their suffering as well as the beginning of the end of the Mugabe dictatorship. The SADC [Southern African Devolopment Community, a consortium of states] and African Union have endorsed it. The western countries, led by Britain and the USA have only cautiously welcomed it, with the feeling that it still leaves too much power with Mugabe. On the other hand, it has been opposed by a number of major civic groups including the ZCTU [Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions] and NCA {National Constitutional Assembly], who have denounced it as unprincipled capitulation to the dictatorship.
The deal does not surprise us. Three years ago we argued:
“The perspective of a government of national unity between the opposition and Zanu PF is shared by the elites now dominant in the ruling party, in the two main opposition parties and local and international capitalists. Their main efforts, despite current disagreements are driven towards achieving such goal, as an instrument in pre-empting social revolution in an important periphery capitalist state sent into mortal crisis by the failure of neo-liberal capitalism…”
As for the MDC we argued that
“Its primary preoccupation is towards reaching a sell out agreement with the Zanu PF dictatorship that will not benefit the poor and working people …(that) the opposition is dominated by the petit bourgeois elite, who long ago prostrated themselves before western neo-liberal forces and are now eager to get into state power, even as junior partners, and accumulate as a neo-colonial dependent capitalist class.”
And as for Zanu PF that –
“Zanu PF elites now want the peace to grow and launder the wealth acquired in the last decade but cannot do so in the context of a crisis ridden state under siege from the west… despite his rhetoric, Mugabe is now ready to capitulate and enter into an elitist compromise deal with the MDC, the west and business. But only after the 2008 elections, which he hopes to use to legitimize his party’s claim to being the senior partner…”
Whilst for the west, we argued
“To ensure that Zanu PF elites do not relapse as they did in 1997, the forces of global neo-liberalism demand a political guarantee in the form of co-option in government of their trusted agents in Zimbabwe, the MDC.”
mixed bag
The mixed reaction to the deal lies not only in their desperate economic condition but also in that the deal itself is a mixed bag.
Tsvangirai is more than a ceremonial prime minister if one takes into account his control of the House of Assembly and urban municipalities, the opposition majority in cabinet, the right of MDC to opt out of the deal, that MDC remains a separate political entity unlike ZAPU and that MDC remains the relative gate-keeper of western economic support.
This is why many bourgeois analysts pushed Tsvangirai to sign, arguing MDC’s realistic objectives in the talks could not be full power now, but to get a strategic toe-hold in the state, neutralising the most vicious attacks on his party by the regime and thus be better prepared for the next elections, which Mugabe is unlikely to contest. Without defeating Mugabe in the streets, like the Patriotic Front in 1979, this was the best achievable result under the circumstances.
But the comparison with 1979 is misplaced. The Patriotic Front elites conducted negotiations even as they accelerated the war. And even then they were forced to make major concessions, accepting a deal that left the white settlers with legislative veto power, control of the civil service and judiciary and the land, for at least ten years after independence. But they had a fall back position on a mobilized peasantry and armed cadreship whilst they retained substantial control of the armed forces and national treasury.
On the other hand Tsvangirai, supported by a duplicitous and largely cowardly civic society, actively undermined any attempt at serious mass action, solely relying on western sanctions. Not surprising they have been forced into a deal which gives a desperate dictatorship breathing space to renew itself, whilst laying the foundations for massive long term assaults on the living conditions of working people. Make no mistake, despite the above concessions, MDC is the definite junior in this deal with very unclear chances of success whilst the future of the deal itself is very uncertain.
Whilst “humiliating” in form, the deal as Mugabe himself has said, in substance, leaves Zanu PF “ in the driving seat”.
Firstly Mugabe remains with most executive authority. He remains the head of state and government, with authority to appoint ministers, chair cabinet, dissolve parliament, declare war, enter into international treaties, assent to legislation and appoint or dismiss key state officials. All he is required to do, in exercise of some but not all of these powers, is to consult the Prime Minister or Parliament, but not necessarily agree with them. This is made worse by the fact that MDC signed a deal without even an agreement on what ministries they would get. Mugabe is now insisting on holding most of the key ministries. The opposition’s slight majority in cabinet does not amount to much because its decisions will be made by consensus, giving Zanu PF veto power.
Tsvangirai’s much vaunted Council of Ministers is little more than the administrative and implementing sub-committee of Cabinet, as no executive authority vests in it.
Secondly the deal affirms Zanu PF’s position that the land reform programme is irreversible and any compensation paid to the white farmers will be from Britain. This allows Zanu PF to protect its crucial rural base ahead of future elections whilst hoping that economic recovery will minimize the opposition’s protest vote.
Thirdly the MDC has no real fall back position if the deal collapses. Its only guarantor is a mediator who has now been ousted. Having consistently neutralized the mass action route, the MDC has solely relied on the western sanctions.
support will wane
The deal looks very fragile and may unravel sooner rather than later. Popular acceptance of such an expensive and over bloated coalition government, proportionately the biggest in the world in a country with the world’s highest inflation, is likely to wane rapidly if the promised economic recovery fails to take place, with the draft national constitution a possible flash point. At such stage Mugabe’s continued control of the security apparatus, the state and treasury will be decisive and the opposition’s naked foolishness in signing such deal exposed.
One of the fundamental problems of the deal is that its success relies on a western-supported economic neoliberal programme, whose efficacy is today being dramatically challenged by the financial melt-down in the USA and globally. Today the worst economic crisis has only been avoided so far by the pouring of hundreds of billions of dollars of public money into the money markets by the western governments. Yet it is this economic paradigm of austerity for the working people and the third world and subsidies for the rich that is being pushed by the west as a necessary precondition for any support of the deal.
In their election manifestos both MDC and Zanu PF have indicated their willingness to comply. So despite the deal, employers, businesses and capitalists will continue paying workers starvation wages, imposing inhuman price increases of basic goods and services indexed to the $US dollar and acceleration of privatisation of water, electricity and education. Poverty, deprivation and suffering for the ordinary people is likely to continue, and with it repression as the now united political elites seek to deal with hungry and increasingly angry working people.
The looting of state resources by politicians, now both from Zanu PF and MDC will reach unprecedented levels. This is why we urge working people to reject this elitist deal and continue the fight for a better future.
The possibility of massive mass action is slim. People are exhausted, hungry and weighed down by the long-running crisis as well as the misleadership, duplicity and opportunism of the opposition and civic elites. However… continued poverty will likely trigger small to significant revolts around bread and butter issues, such as we see with the teachers and doctors strikes. The challenge will be to generalise and link such different small actions into broader and bigger campaigns supported by all the various forces still ready to fight, including the newly established regional solidarity campaign led by COSATU [South African unions]. And in doing so always deepening the ideological basis of our struggles and movements to clearly expose the root cause of poverty and dictatorship as capitalism.
We welcome the positions taken by the ZCTU and NCA for continued demand of a genuine people driven constitution and the holding of free and fair elections thereafter. With Mugabe’s ally in South Africa, Mbeki, ousted, there will be further scope for expanding regional mobilisation especially involving COSATU, the SACP [South African Communisty Party] and social movements in South Africa who have all rejected the deal as well.
regroupment
But to ensure progress it is imperative that there be the urgent regroupement in a united front of the radical, anti-neoliberal and left forces, including organised labour. To avoid the treachery we experienced in the popular frontist Peoples Convention, which was dominated by the imperialist funded and controlled groups, it is essential that there be a serious shake-out and split of civic society between the militant, serious and pro-working people anti-neoliberal movements and the opportunistic, cowardly and imperialist funded and controlled ones. We hope the coming Zimbabwe Social Forum in October provides a further platform for remobilisation of the radical forces.
The regime cannot last in the medium term because it has no solution to the escalating economic crisis, it is alienated from its capitalist class base and hated by the masses whilst it suffers massive serious internal divisions around the unresolved succession question. This is why the regime made significant concessions to MDC and was so desperate for Tsvangirai’s signature.
There therefore remains a possibility of a people-centred resolution of the Zimbabwean crisis that smashes both the dictatorship and elitist plans to replace it with a regime that perpetuates the neo-liberal capitalist agenda. Such solution immediately means: a new people-driven constitution prioritising economic rights of working people, free and fair elections and democratic rights; land-redistribution and support to the peasants; nationalisation of the major sectors of the economy and the general subordination of private property to satisfy society’s needs like education, health, transport, housing and food security.
But as history has taught us such reforms cannot be sustained in the long term unless the very system of capitalism which breeds poverty and dictatorship in the first place is uprooted, locally, regionally and internationally, and replaced by collective and democratic ownership and control of the economy and the state by working people, i.e. socialism.