Down with the electoral trap of the generals of the coup, the ZANU PF and the MDC (Movement for Democratic Change)!
Statement of the International Workers' League of Zimbabwe on the electoral trap and the opportunism of the so-called socialists and the ZCTU bureaucracy that subject the working class to the parties and military officers of imperialism
Zimbabwe Elections: A scandalous fraud
With deceit and pseudo-democratic lies, the MDC comes to save the businesses of imperialism, the military coup and ZANU PF from the hatred of the masses
The old saying goes that "the proof is in th pudding", and at the recent press conference of Chamisa, the MDC candidate for president, the proofs were more than enough. "We have the power and the ability to stop an election and make the country ungovernable." "We will not boycott the elections, because we cannot boycott our victory." These phrases demonstrate the role of the MDC in the current situation of the class struggle in Zimbabwe and its central performance as a savior of the bourgeois regime hated by the masses, of which the MDC is part along with the military coup and ZANU PF at the service of the imperialist gangs that plunder the nation.
Zimbabwe during 2017 was the scene of great workers, students and different struggles of the exploited, whose actions, such as strikes, demonstrations and street struggles, clashed with the ZANU PF's dictatorial regime and threatened to defeat the Mugabe government. The constant onslaught of the exploited unleashed a deep political crisis in the ruling classes. The government of Zuma, hung by a thread, was about to fall to the masses. From the army officers, supported by a majority fraction of the ruling ZANU PF and the "opposition" MDC supported a military coup that put Mnangagwa (also ZANU PF and candidate for president in the next elections) in the government.
The exploited working masses soon returned to clash with the new Government and its cabinet of Army officers. Huge street struggles of, miners, workers, the unemployed, students, nurses and doctors, strikes, work stoppages, mobilizations, occupations and pickets in the mines, put the workers back in the position of pulling down with their fight in the streets, the military dictatorship and the puppet Government. It was the MDC and the trade union centrals, like the ZCTU, who in a real political front demanded general elections to get the masses out of the way of the struggle. The Government and the military cabinet called for elections next July 30. The MDC just weeks ago said it would "fight" against Zimbabwe Electoral Council fraud and threatened to "boycott the elections" if necessary. These were just words in the wind to better deceive the workers. However, this demagogic pose used in the electoral campaign had to be erased immediately. It is that nothing could stoke the fire in the masses that had managed to be momentarily anesthetized by the MDC, the ZCTU bureaucracy and the rest of trade unions, and the left cover of the ISO, to endanger the plans of imperialism and the bourgeoisie.
According to the aforementioned statements, Chamisa makes it clear that there were conditions on the exploited masses to fight to make the country ungovernable for imperialism and the bourgeoisie and that the MDC is in charge of taking the masses to the electoral trap to avoid that they are carrying out a real boycott by organizing a revolutionary general strike that would strike again the broken regime and put the working class at the height of the seizure of power
In summary: yesterday saving ZANU PF from falling with workers' and popular mobilizations; and today through a real electoral trap, saving the military dictatorship and the illegitimate government of Mnangagwa, the MDC prepares to be the party that restores the battered bourgeois state and defends the Government, supported by the officers caste of the coup - plotting Army, the capitalists business, the IMF and the imperialist bandits, over the ruin of the people and the plundering of the oppressed nation.
The ISO calls to vote for the MDC, the trustworthy party of the English crown in Zimbabwe.
From London the SWP, those friends of Corbyn and English Labor Party, gave the order to the Zimbabwe ISO leadership to call to vote for the MDC, the reliable party for the imperialist interests of the English crown.
The leaders of the ISO have denounced that the MDC comes to continue the plans of imperialism in the country, but they still call to vote for it, that yes ... "without opening illusions" and "covering the nose". This means that they have subordinated to the bourgeoisie to support the interests of England. And the pretext used for such a stab in the back the workers' struggle, is that the MDC "will bring more democracy, then the working class can will have better conditions for their struggle, as for example, it happens in South Africa (see box)". This is a real scam to the workers and the people, a true betrayal of the struggle for Socialism
Now then, how did the MDC support the coup plotters who dethroned Mugabe, those same coup leaders who governed and still govern alongside ZANU PF (and who also did it with the MDC when it was part of the Coalition Government in 2008)? Will ZANU PF bring the "democracy" that the ISO leadership yearns? If this bourgeois party is not even able to propose a trial to punish all the officers, commanders and generals who were part of the Mugabe dictatorship that imposed 90% of chronic unemployment in the ranks of the exploited, hunger and widespread misery. He tied to Zimbabwe with triple chains to the plunder of the IMF with 9,000 million dollars of fraudulent external debt that will make the people pay with more suffering than those already suffered in hell they are living in the present!
For that reason, against what the SWP says from England and the Zimbabwean ISO, we revalidate what we wrote in our statement published on the 10th of July: "We, the revolutionary socialists affirm that the democratic freedoms, humiliated at every step by the governments of the capitalists and imperialism, they conquer and defend themselves with the methods of the working class struggle: the strikes, the pickets, the general strike, the fighting in the streets and the revolution itself. We affirm that the bourgeois "democrats" of the MDC and the dictatorship come out of the same cesspool that is this capitalist system with its hunger and slavery bosses and imperialism looting the oppressed peoples.
That's why ISO lies. And we have to tell the workers the truth: as we said, if the MDC wins the elections it will govern supported by this Military Junta and the repressive forces, as Mugabe did for decades, because he must apply his plans of attack to the workers and the sell out of the nation to imperialism. It has nothing different to offer. To hide this is to subject the working class to imperialism and the bourgeoisie disguised as ‘democratic’. "
The MDC supported by the bureaucracy of the ZTUC and other trade union centers, comes with sweet phrases to numb the masses, take away their confidence in their own strength, strike hard the left and combative wing of the working class of Zimbabwe. So, they give time to the pro-coup officers of the Army to recover themselves from the damage suffered by the onslaught of the workers and the poor people, to give a blood bath when the imperialist bosses think it is necessary.
The ISO, with the trade union bureaucracy of the ZCTU, has set up a real class collaboration front with the pro-imperialist bourgeoisie of the MDC. That was the old policy of Stalinism, which in the anti-colonial struggle of Zimbabwe and all black Africa. He sold out the Government to the black bourgeoisies, as it did with Mugabe ... and now the ISO does it with the MDC, as it did in 2008. They are neither socialists nor revolutionaries. They are the successors of Stalinism in the workers' movement.
The struggle for national independence, even the most minimal and elementary democratic freedoms, it means to defeat the military dictatorship; when there are enough conditions to boycott these fraudulent elections. Liberties have been won by the workers in the streets, in their strikes, pickets, fighting committees. Neither the Zanu PF nor the military dictatorship gave it to them, let alone the MDC.
Through this call to vote for the MDC, the ISO has not only broken with the struggle for socialism, but also will be responsible for the policy used by the MDC against the great masses of the country if it manages to stay with the government.
The honest militants of the ISO must disobey their leaders
and call the workers not to support the MDC or any of their executioners
The honest militants of the ISO should disobey their leaders. The workers do not vote for any of the candidate parties of the imperialist bourgeoisie. We do not do it for the ZANU PF nor for its partners of the MDC, which will be the worst of all the executioners, because in the name of "freedom" and "democracy" will be responsible for sending the generals to slaughter the workers when the interests of the capitalists be at risk. This has already happened in Egypt, where the "democratic" bourgeoisie of the "April 6" Movement, to which the ISO gave its support, was the one that handed over the power to the "democratic generals" of Al Sisi that rule to blood and fire his dictatorship, with thousands of political prisoners and popular fighters killed.
There were more than enough forces to organize the boycott for the elections, the declarations of the candidate Chamisa do nothing more than confirm it. If the ZTUC and the workers' centrals had broken with the MDC and called to boycott the elections with the methods of struggle of the working class, conquering the organs of masses political struggle and the general strike, the road would have been opened. The workers and exploited would have impossed their own power, which is the only way to achieve the most minimal democratic conquests that is to defeat the military dictatorship. The road was to impose the rupture of the workers' organizations with the ZANU PF and the MDC and the imperialism that leads them all.
That is why, from the WIL-FLTI, we call the workers not to vote and to set up a Struggle Committee to face the electoral trap and the Government that emerges from it. The working class must turn its back on these elections, since they come to cover with a democratic mantle the dictatorship that has been governing Zimbabwe for years.
We call all the socialist militants to ignore any policy that puts our class down of its our next executioner's knees. We call on all workers to ignore the support of union leaders to the MDC. Because it is the MDC that comes with beautiful phrases to disarm our struggle to apply the worst plans, even worse than the military dictatorship and Mugabe.
For a National Congress of employed and unemployed workers and all the exploited to promote a struggle plan and the General Strike!
We cannot let this pro-imperialist anti-worker regime to keep on reinforcing itself and gaining legitimacy with fraudulent elections and electoral traps, where the working class is banned. For that reason, all the organizations that claim to defend and represent the workers, such as ZCTU, PTUZ or ISO must break with the parties of the bourgeoisie and call for a big National Congress of employed and unemployed workers and the exploited for the working class to prepare the best conditions to fight for bread, job and against the imperialist plundering. We need to conquer a revolutionary general strike to defeat this repressive government, the electoral trap and put an end to the plundering to the nation made by imperialism and the IMF!
We are before an iron alternative: either ISO’s proposal of being with the bourgeoisie of Zimbabwe or being with the working class of southern Africa for the general strike against the lackey governments of imperialism, that treat the black workers worse than the white masters did with their slaves centuries ago.
The strength of the working class to get “democratic freedoms” is not supporting the MDC but in the unity with the working class of the entire Southern Africa. In South Africa, the workers are getting ready to once again confront the ANC government. From Zimbabwe not only we should follow this pat but also we need to unite our forces to that of our class brothers and sisters in the entire south of the continent. In unity and in internationalist fight, there’s the strength to defeat our oppressor governments and free our nations from the imperialist yoke.
Nobody who claims to be socialist can be for a minute longer with the executioners of the workers and the people. The one who wants to fight as in Marikana, the one who wants to establish struggle organizations with direct democracy of the exploited, the one that wants to get decent wages with decent work for all… MUST BREAK RIGHT NOW WITH THE BOSS PARTIES. There’s no time to lose!
Only a revolutionary provisional government of workers and poor peasants, based in the self-defense committees and disarming the murderous dictatorship of the military lackeys of imperialism, will be able to conquer national independence and the broadest democratic freedoms for all the oppressed sectors of the nation.
Workers International League (Zimbabwe)
ISO lies:
It says “democracy” and the democratic freedoms were gained with the government of the ANC in South Africa
Lies! The democratic gains were conquered with the slave masses of Apartheid fighting on the streets, overthrowing that opprobrium regime
ISO lies:
The ANC and the black bourgeoisie only expropriated that struggle, guaranteed the business deals of imperialism and let all the enslavers and repressors of the workers and poor peasants free in South Africa
ISO lies:
The “democracy” given by the ANC is to send the police at the service of Anglo American to massacre the workers and miners as in Marikana
ISO lies. They have become an appendix of the Stalinist parties that sold out the anti-imperialist struggle of the working class in the entire tormented Africa. Imperialism and its agents and junior partners in the plundering of the people they oppress don’t spread around democracy or freedom but starvation and repression. The monopolies need to have at hand the most totalitarian government they can. The democratic freedoms have been conquered by the masses with their struggle and blood. It is proved that a new millionaire black bourgeoisie manages, whip in hand, the same interests of Anglo American that yesterday were managed by the Boer and the white gangs of Apartheid.
In moments when the South African working class breaks with the bureaucracy of COSATU and confronts the ANC and the infamous regime of reconciliation with Apartheid with demonstrations and general strikes; ISO tells the workers of Zimbabwe that with the ANC government “democratic freedoms” were gained such as, for example, workers can have their own parties. This is a total lie.
Let the “socialists” of the queen of England and their branches in Zimbabwe and the entire southern Africa stop lying now! In South Africa it was not the party of Mandela or the Communist party the ones that defeated Apartheid and opened democratic freedoms. It was the workers and millions of black exploited that fought and defeated Apartheid. On the contrary to what ISO says, Mandela and the national reconciliation regime were to put a limit on the freedoms that were conquered by the workers with thousands of dead and prisoners in their hundreds of fights. The “freedom” of the ANC was for the transnational companies to keep on plundering South Africa, for COSATU to state-ize the unions and subjugate the working class to support the armed forces of Pretoria and the white generals caste of the Apartheid armed forces to defend the interests of Anglo American.
The working class exercised its democracy and freedom in its struggles against Zuma’s government, who was forced to resign from the very ranks of the ANC so Ramaphosa takes office and the workers don’t overthrow him with their general strikes. Any similar scenario with Zimbabwe is not a coincidence. In South Africa, the government of Ramaphosa, who was not elected by anyone, calls for elections in 2019. This is a deception to ease the workers and prepare a bloodbath against its most militant ranks. Because the ANC “democracy” is the regime of the massacre of Marikana workers, the massacre of Zimbabwean workers throughout pogroms organized by the government and the armed forces against the immigrants.
The more Stalinism subjugated the working class and the ANC and Zuma’s government, the more democratic freedoms were lost. This is the tragedy that the working class. It has the possibility to take over power at hand, and it ends up giving it to its own executioners, due to the action of the leadership they have ahead.
The wise and militant South African working class has risen and fights and defends its rights to strike, wages, working conditions, decent jobs for the unemployed. They regroup their ranks and push to coordinate the struggle throughout the unions and union federations (as seen in the recent workers summit called by SAFTU and NUMSA) and preparing for the next few weeks a 3 day general strike against the ANC and the government agent of the transnational companies. The struggle in the streets, breaking with the class-collaborationist bureaucracy, the picket lines and the general strike is the way forward for all the workers and exploited of South Africa!
For a long time now, ISO in Zimbabwe, in South Africa, in London and New York fights for a “real democracy” but for the bourgeoisie and imperialism that exploits the workers and plunders the subjugated people. They are socialists in words and hanged to the coat-tails of the bourgeoisie and imperialism in the facts.
WIL |
