This 18 April, exactly 43 years since defeating the racist colonial Smith dictatorship, Zimbabweans are more than used to being let down by the old freedom fighters now turned looters and killers. Although it has long been known that the ZANU-PF regime has been involved in massive looting of minerals like gold and diamonds, Al Jazeera’s recent documentary The Gold Mafia has laid bare the details and the extent of the state sanctioned robbery through corruption and gold smuggling.
Settlements made between the racist regime of Ian Smith and the impending black nationalist elites at the Lancaster House Conference in 1979, were far from resolving the capitalist contradictions which had motivated and undergirded colonialism. And so it became inevitable that the new elites would go on to betray the very objectives of the Chimurenga struggle. The ZANU-PF regime’s betrayals of the Zimbabwean masses are hefty and yet to be fully documented.
They begin with the Lancaster House Agreement which bludgeoned the cause of Chimurenga struggle with compromises with capital and including on the land question by extending and preserving the colonial property regime to an undefined time of period. Today this colonial and capitalist property system remains in place. This is despite the chaotic land redistribution process, which was a forced reaction by the ZANU-PF regime to both growing land occupations and the political oblivion it faced in light of the glaring betrayals which were rooted in its compromises with capital.
The history of the ZANU-PF regime is indeed the history of backstabbing the masses by evicting, dispossessing, looting and downright thuggery. The Gold Mafia saga is just another fresh cut into the backs of the masses that are somehow living and dying, and then living again through it all.
The Gold Mafia
The four-part documentary series details how the infamous gold mafia operates. The UAE is a crucial link as it has a history of warlords and different syndicates using the weak regulations to fund armed conflicts and to launder profits from crime. Despite promises from authorities in the UAE to tighten regulations around gold trade, it is still an attractive base for money laundering and gold smuggling operations.
The gold mafia consists of a network of various players including President Mnangagwa, government officials, gold smugglers, money launderers and bankers and businessmen in South Africa, and famous religious celebrity and top diplomat Prophet Angel. These criminals collectively smuggle billions worth of gold out of the country every year. Meanwhile, poverty is on the rise, two-thirds of the population face starvation, and public services are severely underfunded meaning that there is no government support for the people in need.
Most Zimbabweans are unable to access basic health services following decades of neglect by the state. Doctors and nurses are forced to perform life saving procedures without essential provisions such as pain killers, gloves and electricity. There is even a shortage of maternity wards, meaning that thousands of women give birth in dangerous conditions every year. As a result, Zimbabwe has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in SADC. Thousands of cancer and diabetes patients die needlessly every year due to a shortage of healthcare centres with functioning radiology and dialysis facilities.
ZANU-PF’s only answer is repression – threatening the combative healthcare workers, who have in recent years bravely taken strike action for such basics as clear water in hospitals and clinics, with jail as punishment for striking. Recently the government also outlawed foreign recruitment of healthcare workers – a huge problem indeed that will only be resolved by massively improving the conditions and wages of these workers in Zimbabwe. Violence is the order of the day under ZANU-PF.
Just three years after gaining independence, Mugabe unleashed the bloodthirsty 5th brigade trained by North Korean forces on Zimbabweans. The barbaric 5th brigade led attacks that left up to 40 000 people dead. There has never been justice for those killed during the Gukurahundi massacre despite the recent pledge from the chief-butcher, Mnangagwa himself, about issuing a public apology. Opposition MP Job Sikhala has been in jail since June 2022 in addition to dozens of other activists and journalists who have been arrested on dubious charges. ZANU-PF has never been called to justice for the countless arrests, tortures, kidnappings, and murders that its forces have unleashed to suppress workers and opposing voices.
Other public sector workers such as teachers can relate to the exploitation experienced by healthcare workers under ZANU-PF. One of the results of more than 20 years of extreme inflation is that workers’ wages have fallen far behind the cost of living. At least 135 000 teachers, almost all of the teachers in Zimbabwe, refused to report for work in January last year. Teachers were demanding a wage increase to bring their salaries to US$540 a month. The government’s response to issue threats of suspension did nothing to fix the problems. Unsurprisingly, teachers’ strikes continued at the start of 2023 though at a lower intensity, but the demand for salaries of US$540 remained. University lecturers also face similar exploitation and periodically do battle with the state for higher wages and better working conditions.
The state attempts to play working class people against one another for example by attempting to increase university fees under the guise of raising salaries for staff. Such a move is designed to prevent solidarity forming between students and their lecturers. Students at NUST, UZ and other institutions demonstrated against ridiculous fee increases in the last year – with some support from university staff. In spite of ZANU-PF’s efforts, the flames of the #Feesmustfall movement will not be extinguished easily.
The current regime is illegitimate in the eyes of most young people. This is because while the country has massive reserves of valuable minerals, ZANU-PF stands between the majority of young people and the country’s resources. Hopelessness is growing among the youth as a result of the collapsed economy, high unemployment, poverty, starvation and brutal repression from the ruling party. Four decades of ZANU-PF rule have been a disaster, instead of delivering the land to the people the party has secured only its interests and power.
If a fraction of the billions smuggled out of the country were rather invested in the country this situation could be overturned. Unfortunately, ZANU-PF has shown that its main priority is to extract and hoard as much wealth as possible for the ruling elite.
The Gold Mafia shows that the resources necessary for generating funds to improve life for all Zimbabweans are there. However, ZANU-PF uses the country’s resources – gold in this instance, to fund their cronies and to support criminals who are stealing from the people. The information about corruption, fraud, and money laundering is there. But there are no prospects of any justice being served for the crimes ZANU-PF has committed against the people of Zimbabwe as it stands. The documentary showed how people connected to the country’s rulers freely offer to launder dirty money using gold for the benefit of shady criminals. Instead of leaving the country’s wealth in the hands of a few, the majority should have direct democratic control of the commanding heights of the economy.
No end to working class uprisings
It is not true that Zimbabweans are afraid of struggle. There are countless examples of uprisings, demonstrations, and attempts by ordinary people to defeat the ruling party.
It is on the basis of the resilience and daily struggles of the Zimbabwean masses that the idea of chimurenga is alive in our time today because as long as they survive, so does their chimurenga. It is not some void idea without meaning, to be remembered on certain occasions. It is in fact more than an idea, but a living breathing revolutionary struggle that has stood the test of betrayal and forges ahead relentlessly. The regime in Harare and others perhaps unwittingly so have vulgarised the word chimurenga by defining it in stages, as we often hear of the first, second or even third chimurenga often to suit certain neatly picked historical events. This is not only ahistorical but owes itself to the inherently reactionary politics of the ZANU-PF regime, a politics which predates its rise to power and is persistently fuelled by the capitalist aspirations of its leadership.
The struggle for living wages which are constantly dissolved and shredded by hyper inflation goes on whether it’s Mugabe or Mnangagwa – or indeed theoretically Chamisa – being in power. The struggle for housing, for food, for clean water and sanitation, for healthcare and education goes on despite a coup or an election, and that is precisely why the chimurenga is permanent and must go on to fight for a socialist Zimbabwe, Africa and world
The euphoria felt by Zimbabweans in 1980 when the country gained its independence is now a distant memory. There was widespread jubilation when Bob Marley performed at Zimbabwe’s Independence Day celebrations at Rufaro Stadium in Harare in 1980. It was a momentous occasion, the brutal war against Rhodesian forces was over, and the majority had high hopes that the new government voted in by the majority would lead the country to prosperity. Yet, 43 years later, those hopes and the country itself, lie in ruin.
ZANU-PF has failed to find a way out of economic turmoil and has grown further away from the masses, losing support and legitimacy in their eyes. Consequently, ZANU-PF has grown into an organization focused on maintaining power through rigging elections and intimidating opposition.
While the MDC may exist in various forms today including the Chamisa led Citizens Coalition for Change which recently emerged out of the MDC, it too has been superseded by the enormity of the chimurenga demands and has been found historically wanting. Its early capitulation to neoliberalism and capitalism, particularly when it came to the land question as well as the economy and the private sector doomed it from the onset, and much like its ZANU-PF foe turned ally in 2009 after the coalition government and then turned foe again in 2013, set itself on the trajectory of neoliberal reformism and ultimately predicating a betrayal of the masses. However, it is unlikely that ZANU-PF will concede power peacefully through an election.
Indeed the struggle to defeat the colonial regime took on the character of armed struggle which paved the way for warlords to come into power at the end of the war. But we must remember that organized mass struggle is the only way to wrestle power from degenerate rulers and to dissolve class society. To this end, the workers, trade unions, youth, and student organizations representing the people of Zimbabwe need to unite behind a programme to fundamentally change the system.
The task facing the Zimbabwean working class is to continue the struggle for working class control to its socialist conclusion. It will take nothing less than a Socialist Chimurenga/uMvukela to achieve the liberation that ZANU-PF cannot grant. Without bringing the land, resources, and banks under collective ownership the masses will continue to suffer under the bondage of class society.
