THE INDEPENDENCE STRUGGLE
Political leadership of the black majority in Zimbabwe was historically in the hands of a black middle-class leadership, closely tied to the missionaries and liberals. These exhausted every possibility for negotiation and compromise before reluctantly concluding that they had to mobilise the masses in order to struggle for a position in government. But even the mass struggles that took place from the 1950s onwards were held back by leaders who never gave up hope of reaching a compromise with British imperialism.
This led to enormous frustrations and tensions in the movement and exposed it to serious defeats. Thus the dreary road of compromise was littered with splits, slanging matches, party violence, and a confusion of policies. Instead of bringing freedom quicker, these policies of compromise laid the basis for much of the bitterness of political life today.
In particular it brought about the ZANU-ZAPU split in 1963. At least in part this represented a revolt among ZAPU’s rank and file against Nkomo’s conservative leadership—but was increasingly steered onto lines of tribal division.
UDI
Unable to win mass support by offering a clear way forward, the various leaders looked to home areas, and thus to tribalism, for continued support during times of factional struggle.
With the break-up of the Central African Federation, the Rhodesian Front came rapidly to government, representing right-wing farmers, small businessmen, and privileged workers, and reflecting a partial split in the ruling class.
The more liberal wing, basically representing finance capital and manufacturing, believed in maintaining their own rule by a process of gradual concessions towards the black majority, leading to a form of ‘power sharing’ between black and white. The Rhodesian Front, on the other hand, followed a policy of ‘digging in’. They calculated that the disunity of the nationalist movement in Zimbabwe would enable them to stand up against the independence struggle. In 1965 the Smith regime issued its Unilateral Declaration of independence (UDI) and looked to South Africa for support.
The black nationalist leadership still looked to British imperialism to hand over power to them. Their problem was that the reformist Labour Party government in Britain defended the interests of imperialism. This recant meant that the Labour government refused to struggle seriously against the Smith regime which defended capitalist interests in Rhodesia.
With the door to negotiations slammed in their faces, the nationalist leadership was forced to look for a new bargaining lever. With many or their rank and file completely disillusioned with the policies of moderation, the leaders now proclaimed armed struggle.
What they had in mind was a carefully controlled guerilla struggle, under their own leadership, based on the peasantry and the youth. They had no intention of mobilising the working class on the basis of a socialist programme to overthrow the system.
The young guerilla fighters, battling against a ruthless enemy, showed the greatest courage and determination. Yet for over ten years they could not weaken the Smith regime into making significant concessions. The reason for these long years of frustration, and the many lives this cost, lay in the policies of the leadership.
Since the leadership rejected the task of mobilising the urban workers and youth for insurrection, it swung to and fro between attempts at negotiations and bursts of activity on the guerilla front.
The repeated failures of the negotiations, and the stubbornness of the Smith regime, brought about a radical ferment among the guerilla youth. This, in turn, brought about a radicalisation of the guerilla leadership, many of whom, to win support, began to use the rhetoric of socialism.
The guerilla fighters were strongly radicalised by the experience of FRELIMO in Mozambique fighting a long struggle against the Portuguese, who were firmly backed by British and US imperialism.
These trends within the guerilla movement, both in ZANU and ZAPU, led to youthful revolts against nationalist leaderships committed to negotiation and compromise. But counter-action was swift and decisive. Some of the young guerillas were imprisoned, others shot.
To the shame of the leadership, some were even forced to walk over the Victoria Falls bridge to certain execution by the Smith regime.
With Nkomo very reluctant to commit his ZIPRA forces to struggle, the guerilla war was fought most strongly in the East where ZANU won the backing of FRELIMO. Providing more decisive military leadership, ZANU gained massive support from the peasants who suffered huge losses and atrocities at the hands of the regime.
The end of white rule
After the Portuguese revolution in 1974-5 and the collapse of Portuguese colonialism in Angola and Mozambique, the imperialist powers became much more concerned about their interests in Southern Africa. They now began to worry that a defeat for Smith in the guerilla war would mean the end of capitalism, as in Angola and Mozambique.
The western governments now, for the first time, put firm pressure on Smith to compromise with the nationalist leaders.
This produced a sharp about-turn by Smith. In March 1976 he proclaimed that there would be no black majority rule for “1000 years”. Within months, he was forced by the imperialists to publicly concede to “black majority rule within two years”. By this they meant the installation of the puppet Prime Minister Muzorewa in power. But, no sooner was he in power, than the imperialist powers were faced with the fact that the ‘Muzorewa’ government was unable to bring the war to an end.
They feared the growing regionalisation of the war would spread the virus of radicalism throughout the sub-continent and lead to direct intervention by South Africa to support Muzorewa. The continuing exodus of the whites would undermine the social base of the Smith regime, and prepare the collapse of the Rhodesian state despite the support of South Africa.
If the war took this course it was inevitable that, with appalling bloodshed and sacrifice, the whole capitalist system would crumble, and the guerilla leadership would be driven to bring the economy under state ownership once they came to power.
Independence
The Lancaster House talks were a gamble for imperialism. Their aim was to frustrate the democratic and socialist aspirations of the masses, by engineering a ‘settlement’ to end the war on the basis of a bourgeois coalition including ZANU(PF) and ZAPU but based on a bloc of Muzorewa and the whites.
Imperialism put strong pressures on the Ieaders of the ‘front-line states’ to threaten to close down the ZANU and ZAPU guerilla bases if a settlement was not reached immediately.
Major concessions were made by the nationalist leadership on the protection of privilege of the capitalists and the whites. The whites were guaranteed 20 seats in parliament. The land—the key question of the liberation struggle—was safeguarded against expropriation. Capitalist property generally was protected in the constitution. On the basis of these concessions an agreement was finally reached with imperialism.
The only alternative to this development would have been the mobilisation of the working class. Organised and armed, the working-class, supported by the peasant guerilla fighters, would have been able to bring the swift overthrow of the murderous regime, and capitalism along with it.
But ZANU and ZAPU leaders feared to awaken the power of the proletariat more than to compromise themselves with the capitalist class and the state.
After the Lancaster House agreement everything possible was done by the imperialists to frustrate ZANU(PF) and ZAPU campaigning freely. Nevertheless the election result was a resounding victory for ZANU(PF).
The Mugabe government made promises of reforms to the masses, along with firm guarantees to the capitalists that private property would be respected. It hoped to solve this contradiction by reaping a harvest of aid and investment from the imperialist powers.
A consumer boom, based on the ending of the war, the lifting of sanctions, and the workers’ achievements in raising wages, followed independence. This upturn made possible several important reforms in education, wages, and health services. It also meant the rapid promotion of an educated black elite to levels of wealth previously enjoyed only by the whites.
However, on the fundamental question of the liberation struggle of Zimbabwe, the land question, precious little progress was made. Also, the total number of jobs, far from increasing, actually declined, particularly in agriculture.
Because the working class did not come to power to transform society, may of the basic problems of Zimbabwe soon reappeared in an even more serious form.
The tribal-national division between Shona and Ndebele, partially overcome in the struggle against the Smith regime, reappeared. Even though Nkomo, while he was in government, said to the surprise of his audience in Matabeleland “there is no shortage of land for the people” (Herald 24 November 1981), he—and other petty bourgeois politicians of both parties—exploited the grievances of the people for their own ends.
Instead of leading the people in the struggle against capitalism, Nkomo and the ZANU leaders both blamed the existence of the other party for the lack of social and political progress, recklessly whipping up tribal hostility in the process.
Negotiations between ZANU(PF) and ZAPU were opened to discuss the formation of a single party. But these broke down early in 1982 because of the jockeying for position of the politicians.
Only at this point were the arms caches on ZAPU owned farms exposed, and most of the ZAPU leaders removed from government. This led to a crisis in the army. Whole battalions broke up and mass desertions weakened the army (although its backbone, the officers and NCOs trained by the old regime, remained).
The ‘dissidents’ became a serious problem, using the bankrupt methods of armed terrorism to fight back against the political defeats of ZAPU and against the growing isolation of the Ndebele people.
Only by understanding the incapacity of capitalism to solve the basic problems of the masses can we understand the bitterness of the national question, and why political ‘solutions’ within a capitalist framework will fail.