In a provocation last month, the European Union (EU) sent Sweden's ambassador to the United Nations to head what was to be a 150-member elections observer team in Zimbabwe. The government in Harare had said it would not accredit observers from Britain, Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, or Sweden and denied the Swedish ambassador's request to remain in the country for more than 15 days because he spoke to the news media about Zimbabwe, a violation of his visa.

The British government then pressed the EU to pass a resolution February 18 freezing any assets in Europe owned by Mugabe and other government officials, and prohibiting member nations from selling arms or equipment to Zimbabwe that could be used for repression. Washington followed soon followed suit.

London then moved to have Zimbabwe suspended from the Commonwealth, but ran into trouble at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Australia in early March. Prime Ministers Anthony Blair of Britain and Helen Clark of New Zealand both attacked a declaration that failed to carry out the suspension and instead empowered representatives of three governments to decide on what action to take after the elections are held.

Australian prime minister John Howard said the vote reflected the "optimum" that was possible given the lack of support from a majority of countries at the meeting.

Blair called the Zimbabwean govern-ment's decision to charge Tsvangirai with treason an "outrage" and said Mugabe was being "completely wrong, undemocratic, and dictatorial." London endorsed Tsvangari's candidacy.

President Thabo Mbeki in South Africa said his government opposed the sanctions, calling them "regrettable and unfortunate" and urged Mugabe to stem his attacks on the opposition. A government statement said the sanctions may "further compound the situation."

The Congress of South African Trade Unions, a longtime supporter of Mugabe's party due to historic ties in the struggle against apartheid and the white minority government in what was then Rhodesia, also called on the regime in Zimbabwe to halt "state-sponsored terrorism."

Over the past two years, Mugabe, Zimbabwe's 78-year-old president and central governmental official since independence in 1980, has unleashed a campaign of intimidation against the MDC as his support has fallen in face of a deepening economic crisis in the country. Mugabe has combined this repression with a bureaucratic series of "land seizures" of large farms held by whites, and anti-imperialist demagogy posing the battle as one between the old colonial powers and a newly independent country.

"We must decide whether we shall be the decision makers of Zimbabwe, or whether the British...will remain in power over us," Mugabe told an election rally in February. "Imperialism must fail! We must crush it here," he said. While support of the regime among working people in the cities is at an all-time low, Mugabe has been able to retain backing among peasants in the countryside with promises of land. It is to shore up this support that the seizures of white farms has been aimed. He is also taking advantage of Tsvangirai's growing connections with Washington and London and the opposition's open support for the sanctions to paint the MDC leader as a front man for the wealthy farmers and imperialist powers.

While London and Washington feign concern for whether or not "democratic" elections are held in Zimbabwe, the real history of imperialist support to the white minority regime that ruled the country until 1980, and the exploitation by finance capital of the wealth and resources of the south African nation, is a better gauge of what is really involved.

A decade ago the Mugabe government abruptly abandoned its socialist rhetoric and subscribed to an economic "structural adjustment" program demanded by the imperialist International Monetary Fund. In return for loans the government promised to carry out a stiff austerity program that had a wide impact on the population.

Modest social gains registered since independence were eroded as the imperialist powers tied the country ever more deeply into the prevailing trade imbalances and anarchy of the world capitalist market. In 1999 the IMF abruptly pulled out of the country and suspended loans to Harare.

The combined impact of the world capitalist economic downturn that is hitting southern Africa particularly hard, a growing economic boycott of Zimbabwe, and drastic decline in agricultural production has devastated the living conditions of working people.

Nearly 60 percent of the workforce is jobless and the annual rate of inflation is 116 percent. Some 500,000 people, mostly in the countryside, are at risk of starvation due to the rising price of food and the scarcity of goods. Nearly 400 companies have closed over the last two years and 60,000 physicians and other professionals have fled the country during the same time period.

The national treasury is also being drained by Mugabe's decision to send more than 10,000 soldiers to the Congo to defend the government there at a cost of nearly $3 million a week.

The lack of any attempts at land reform in a country where 4,000 white capitalist farmers control nearly all the productive land has put the population at the mercy of this wealthy layer. As a condition of granting independence to Zimbabwe and easing out the racist regime in the late 1970s, London demanded a provision be written into the country's constitution barring the government from touching the land of the wealthy farmers for at least a decade. The British imperialists pledged in return to help fund government land purchases, a promise it has failed to keep. Today, some 6 million of the country's 12.5 million people remain landless peasants.

Looking closer to home, the British government is not extending such compassion to Zimbabwean citizens arriving in the United Kingdom. A recent report indicates that hundreds of Zimbabweans are either being sent back home or put in jail as they arrive. At the end of December there were 106 in detention in Britain and the Zimbabwe Asylum Seekers Association set up in October says it has 200 cases on its book of people who have been put in jail after fleeing Zimbabwe.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home