Zimbabwe: Workers' Anger Behind Splits

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When the masses of Zimbabwe voted Mugabe into office to transform their conditions of life they showed, even then, that they were not simply relying on numerical majorities in the ballot box.

In a widespread strike wave which followed the ZANU election victory, workers gave warning of their own independent voice to Mugabe and his bosses' Even as he set about the task of restoring stability and promoting conditions for capitalist profits, Mugabe was forced to respond to the mass demand for real change.

In the face of the warning posed by the strikes and on the basis of the tremendous mass pressure which had won him the election, Mugabe was forced to promise material concessions to workers.

Crucial . to Mugabe's proposed reforms was a Minimum Wages Bill which, on the face of it, appeared as a substantial reform for thousands of starvation-paid workers, even though the proposed new levels remained abysmally low.

Minimum wage

A £22 per month minimum was set for domestic servants and farm workers, and a £52 per month level for workers in industry and commerce.

Even before the date of implementation, the ineffectiveness of the Bill as even a defensive measure for workers had become transparent. Reports indicate that in the Salisbury area alone, employers dismissed more than 5,000 workers, rather than pay the minimum rate.

Worst hit appear to have been domestic servants and farm workers, with hundreds of workers reportedly complaining of dismissal throughout the country each day.

In other sectors, workers earning above the minimum have been laid off, with new workers being recruited at the minimum rate.

While some workers may have temporarily benefitted, the employers reaction to Mugabe's Minimum Wage Bill has been to make additional thousands of workers jobless. • Whatever the laws it passes in parliament, Mugabe's government cannot promote both Unemployed workers in Salisbury capitalist profits and workers' interests.

The interests of the workers demand a full defensive programme which can be secured only by their own independent organised, mobilised strength.

While ownership of the means of production and control of the repressive state remain in the hands of capital and its petty bourgeois agents, parliament will not control and parliamentary laws will not govern Zimbabwe-capitalists will control and the laws of profit will govern.

In the period ahead, as workers and ZANU and ZAPU militants are increasingly confronted with the failure of Mugabe's government to meet their needs, hostility, tension, militancy and conflict will mount.

Agriculture

Thousands of workers are unemployed. The vast majority of those employed face . not reforms, but increasingly harsh conditions as capital struggles to boost profits.

While agriculture remains in the hands of finance capital and directed towards profit, the future holds continued poverty and misery for the masses.of rural poor.

Under these conditions Mugabe's proposed land reforms can at most benefit a stratum of the rural petit-bourgeoisie.

Thousands of guerrillas remain in camps, facing either unemployment, contrived incarceration or the discipline of the bosses' generals and officers.

As the current disagreements within the cabinet indicate, the increasing militancy, dissatisfaction and frustration among workers, guerrillas and the rural poor are bound to be exploited by petty-bourgeois opportunists.

The most verbose opposition to the petty-bourgeois leaders who won the last election will inevitably come from the petty bourgeois leaders who didn't.

Cynically exploiting every problem into which Mugabe's reformism leads, they will zigzag from left to right in populist demagogy-combining left wing rhetoric with the nurturing of reactionary tribalism.

But the populist demagogy and promises of real change from Mugabe's reformist opponents holds for workers the same dead end as the populist demagogy and promises of real change from Mugabe and his supporters.

The progressive social relations and qualitative improvements in their standard of life for which workers and militan : in Zimbabwe have been fightin cannot be secured on the bas of backward forces of produ tion with production organist for profit.

It is only in a planned soci: ist economy, with the produ tive forces unleashed from t constricting grip of profit al directed towards human nee that these changes can be re ised.

This demands a workers' and peasants' government, based on the organisations of the working class and starting from their independent class interests and not the protection of capitalist profits.

It requires that ownership of the means of production be taken from the hands of the capitalists and brought under the control of the working class.

It requires the arming of the Zimbabwean working class to defend against capitalist reaction and it depends on the carrying through of the Southern African and world revolutions through which alone socialism can finally be secured.

Mugabe's bosses' government and Nkomo's opportunist zigzags stand as obstacles between workers and their goals.

The capitalist state machine remains intact, in defence of the profit system. No law, no proclamation and no speech will remove that fact.

Workers have already given warning to Mugabe and the bosses of their own independent class strength.

It is through the building of Trotskyist party, able to develop and lead that strength that the working class will be able to move ahead in struggle drawing the mass of oppressed behind it-to the only solution which secures the independent class interests of workers-the workers' and peasants' government and the dictatorship of the proletariat.