Zimbabwe: The Way Forward After Sham Elections

The Zimbabwean Electoral Commission (ZEC) announced that ZANU-PF candidate ED Mnangagwa won 52.6% of the votes in the presidential elections, thereby defeating Nelson Chamisa of the CCC with 44%. ZEC’s announcement came after a damning report issued by the SADC observer mission confirmed that elections were not free, fair, credible, or legitimate. Instead, the campaign period and election days were marked by several irregularities such as shortages of ballot papers and banning opposition rallies. Consequently, these elections will not give the regime the legitimacy it has been looking for since coming to power in the coup in 2017. Mnangagwa only remains in power because his party has control over the armed core of the state. However, any government that reigns without the support of the masses is illegitimate and vulnerable to fall under the will of the people. It falls above all on the workers, young people, and poor communities of Zimbabwe to refute these rigged elections and to fight for an alternative that will carry their interests forward.

The masses are suffering daily under crippling hyperinflation, chronic unemployment, and continuous collapse of the economy. Villagers across the country are facing forced removals from their homes in order to make way for Chinese-owned mines that do not bring any development to local communities. Meanwhile, ZANU-PF is benefitting from this state of affairs as cartels connected to the ruling party are enriching themselves through criminal transactions. A second term in office for Mnangagwa will bring more attacks on the working class through neoliberal policies, repressive laws, and corrupt officials looting public coffers. There is no better time than now to fight back against the thieves in government selling the country to the highest bidder.

Despite the report from the SADC observers, the ANC’s Secretary General Fikile Mbalula immediately congratulated Mnangagwa for his joke of a victory. Thus showing once again how the ruling class in South Africa is in support of ZANU-PF and turns a blind eye to the political turmoil in Zimbabwe. Both the ANC and ZANU-PF are former liberation movements that have betrayed the masses and enriched themselves since coming to power. This means that the report from SADC observers will not be enough as other ruling parties in the region might support another term for ZANU-PF in power. The only force that can successfully wrestle power from Mnangagwa and his cronies is the working class united by a revolutionary socialist programme. This means that the masses of Zimbabwe cannot look to the bourgeois institutions — like the courts — for support. Instead, solidarity from working class people in other countries is the only genuine solidarity.

Although ZANU-PF has maintained an atmosphere of fear in the country for decades, the masses have not reneged on their commitment to fight for what is rightfully theirs. Be it nurses and teachers fighting for decent living salaries paid in US dollars, students fighting against tuition fee increases at universities, or protestors demonstrating against fraudulent election results in 2018 — despite a desperate situation, the masses have refused to take ZANU-PF’s attacks lying down. It is simply not true that the Zimbabweans are a “docile people, too afraid to revolt” as some have suggested. Instead, the people have been in a state of revolt for decades, locked in a bitter struggle against capitalist tyranny in the country. This is why the ruling party has resorted to constantly ramping up repression against the population.

The ruling party unleashed several pieces of legislation designed to curtail the masses’ right to contest against oppression ahead of the election. Recent amendments to the Private Voluntary Organisations bill, for example, were designed to shrink the political space as far as possible, so that at the end of the day, ZANU-PF would be left with a monopoly over the political landscape. Such drastic actions and violations of democracy emanate from the fact that ZANU-PF realise that they do not enjoy support from the majority and they are afraid that they will be ousted from power as a result.

In the final analysis, it is not the military junta that creates Zimbabwe’s wealth. On the contrary, it is the workers who create value by expanding their labour power on a daily basis. Without a working class to produce wealth, ZANU-PF would not be able to continue exploiting the country’s wealth. However, the working class without ZANU-PF or any other capitalist government would be able to generate value, distribute wealth fairly, based on the needs of all, and develop the country’s economy in a sustainable way, without destroying nature or dividing and oppressing people in any way. Therefore, the working class has the revolutionary responsibility to step up the struggle in order to safeguard the interests of the people of Zimbabwe.

We call on the working class in Zimbabwe to take a defiant stance against these fabricated elections. There is simply no time to bemoan yet another stolen election. Instead, there has never been a more appropriate time for the masses to organise themselves. We are calling for a general strike led by the workers to demand an end to the madness experienced under ZANU-PF rule.

It is through organised and united mass struggle that the working class and poor can put forward a bold program of action and demands that challenge the foundations of the regime such as the demand(s) for:

All of this can be achieved on the basis of nationalising the commanding heights of the economy such as the mines under democratic control by the workers and poor communities. The struggle to liberate Zimbabwe will not end until the whole military-party-state of ZANU-PF is dismantled, and overthrown along with the neo-colonial capitalist system it is part of and a genuine socialist system is put in its place. The struggle for true liberation will not end until the working class — including all who are today condemned to unemployment — together with young people hungry for change, poor farmers, and communities, get organised independently of all pro-capitalist elites, and take up a revolutionary mass struggle for this, in cooperation with the struggling working masses of all of Southern Africa and ultimately the world.