Zimbabwe - July 22nd, 2023
In Zimbabwe, as in the entire Africa, imperialism plunders all the wealth and strangles the workers and the poor people in the most abject misery
A great fight against imperialism and its servants of the black billionaires must be organized!
Zimbabwe, a handful of black bourgeois junior partners of imperialism in a sea of black slaves
Zimbabwe is currently experiencing an economic marasmus. The ruling elite, a handful of bourgeois millionaires, left no stone unturned of the conquests of the national liberation struggle. The gold and mineral wealth is taken by the transnationals. The country is strangled by foreign debt to the IMF. They did not invest in maintaining the productivity of the expropriated lands and then they had to auction them off to give them back to the whites and transnationals in the countryside.
There are few US dollars and are taken by imperialism, which causes the local currency (ZWL) to devalue more and more. Inflation is at unbearable levels. They ask us to buy everything with US dollars, but the workers are paid our wages in ZWL. Unemployment is very high, the majority of the working class are informal workers. Our class is divided, torn and lives in the worst conditions, being forced to emigrate so that their families can eat. The Mnangagwa government, a product of our struggle, gave a $50 raise only to state employees. But even with this increase, the salary is not enough. We workers can't take it anymore!
Africa a continent double and triple looted and subjected to imperialism
Zimbabwe's situation is not very different from that of all of Africa, a continent where starving workers have gold, platinum, cobalt, diamonds and other great riches under their feet. If the Middle East is the area of oil plundered by imperialism at the cost of hunger, misery, massacre and wars, Africa is in terms of enormous mineral wealth.
The Congo is a mirror of how the continent's minerals, such as cobalt, are plundered by imperialist mining companies or by China to deliver supplies and cheap raw materials to the transnationals installed in its territory. In Congo, imperialist voracity has led even children to work in the mines, just like in the 19th century.
In Kenya a huge uprising said “Enough!” against a tax launched by the government servant of imperialism. Earlier in South Africa the workers marched to the general strike and the fall of President Ramaphosa was raised. There were also uprisings in Swaziland, Senegal and other African countries, all aborted by their Stalinist leadership.
Black lives matter in Africa, the US and France!
It is not enough for imperialism to plunder our continent, but when we escape the massacres, wars, hunger and misery that it brings to our nations, they close the borders of Europe and the US with walls, coast guards, Frontex, and the sinking of boats that transport our immigrant brothers. Those who arrive are left aside by the unions of the labor aristocracy and do the worst jobs without any rights, with devalued wages and even without papers, with the risk of being deported at any time.
There, the social-imperialist parties also hide that their monopolies are the ones that plunder the peoples of Africa and treat immigrants in the same way as in the colonies: with super-exploitation and repression.
Imperialism and its servants must be stopped!
In Zimbabwe, the grassroots want to march to a general strike to break with the IMF, not pay the foreign debt, throw out all the transnationals and recover the land and our wealth. But the ZCTU bureaucracy wants to deceive us by saying that in the next elections we can vote for the opposition that would supposedly bring our well-being. They seek to get us to vote again for the CCC of Nelson Chamisa, representative of the bosses and servant of imperialism. They promise us for the umpteenth time that now the opposition will win and we will have all our demands. But we know that whoever wins, nothing good will come from the hand of those boss parties for the workers. They only lead us to choose who will be the executioner, the representative of the black bourgeoisie, who will continue to starve us and hand over the nation to imperialism.
The defense of the nation has remained solely in the hands of the working class
We have to get the ZCTU back for the fight!
To open the way to the general strike, the bureaucracy must be thrown out. We must impose a break with the bourgeoisie. Enough with bureaucrats at the service of the bosses! Let's promote assemblies by electing delegates with grassroots mandates, in each work sector, factory, mine, and center for vendors and workers in the informal economy. Let's take back our union centre, the ZCTU!
Let's set up a national coordinator of struggle, to impose the general strike from the bases.
Out with the IMF! No to external debt payment!
Let's expropriate the transnationals and recover the wealth! There are the funds to have decent wages in US dollars, and to be able to reduce the working day without a reduction in salary so that all free hands go to work and decent work is guaranteed for all.
Expropriation of the banks and establishment of a single state bank to stop the flight of dollars!
Expropriation of land and establishment of collective farms under the control of rural workers!
There was an attempt by 16 unions, plus the ZINASU student federation and left-wing organizations to call a general strike. He had two meetings in Harare and in Bulawayo. It is necessary to transform this regroupment into a workers' and combative pole, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist, with rotating delegates and with a mandate from all sectors so that the vanguard of the working class regroups its ranks, to throw out the bureaucracy and recover the ZCTU.
We are the same class, we have the same enemy, it is the same fight in the entire subcontinent of central and southern Africa against imperialism and its servants. It is about unifying these combats.
Only in the continental workers' congress of workers' organizations will we be able to confront the imperialism that comes for all the workers of Africa. Against the power of the oppressors, the power of the doubly enslaved working class of black Africa must stand up!
We call on the South African metal-mechanic union NUMSA, the Marikana miners AMCU and all the combative unions of the continent to convene this great continental congress to expel imperialism and expropriate the transnationals that loot wealth.
In this fight against imperialism we have a very powerful ally, namely our black immigrant brothers and sisters that are already fighting in France, which stood up in USA at the war cry “Black Lives Matter” and sent Trump 14 stories underground in the White House bunker, and all the workers that reach the imperialist countries and do the worst jobs, without equal rights or documents and under the threat of being deported at any time. From Africa to USA and Europe, one single class, one single enemy!
For the working class to live, imperialism must die.
Workers International League (WIL) - Zimbabwe
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Uprising in Zimbabwe in 2019
Uprising in Zimbabwe in 2019
Marikana Strike 2012
Marikana Strike 2012
Children working in the cobalt mines in Congo
Uprising in Kenya
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