Documentary: Zimbabwe’s Chimurenga

The following is a very informative documentary from 1979 about ZANU-PF, Robert Mugabe and Zimbabwe’s national liberation struggle. You can watch it in six parts here, or you can see it all together and at a somewhat higher quality at zwtube.com. For more information, please see the outstanding book Chimurenga! The Liberation Struggle in Zimbabwe edited by Harpal Brar, which can be purchased from the website of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist).

Congress of South African Trade Unions oppose Israeli Apartheid

The following was posted on ML Today:

Why South African Trade Unions Favor Sanctions and Boycotts Of Apartheid Israel

Address to Lenasia (near Johannesburg) Rally on Palestine 14th January 2009, by Zwelinzima Vavi, General Secretary, Congress of South African Trade Unions [COSATU]

From our own experience, we know how painful and dehumanizing is the system of segregation, otherwise known as apartheid. Apartheid is a system based on the assumption that one group or race is superior to others and therefore has a right to all the privileges and virtues associated with that particular status. It has a right to run and determine the lives of others, excluding them from certain privileges, merely because they do not belong to the “chosen” group.

What other definition would so fittingly define a system based on different rights and privileges for Jews and Arabs in the Middle East? The bantustanization of Palestine into pieces or strips — West Bank, Ramallah, Gaza Strip and so on — run by Israel and with no rights whatsoever for the Palestinians, is definitely an apartheid system. Israel occupied the land of the Palestinian people and created settler communities of Jews who enjoy a different lifestyle and privileges than those experienced by Palestinians. Palestinians are packed like Sardines in a tin throughout the Bantustans, with Gaza being acknowledged as the world’s biggest open-air prison.

Sudan’s Trade Unions condemn western intervention

H. E Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir, President of the republic of Sudan

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from the Sudan Workers Trade Unions Federation on the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court for Sudanese president, Omar Hassan Al Bashir.

Sudan Workers Trade Unions Federation Statement

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Comrades, Honest workers of the world,
Free citizens of the world,

Today, the Pre-Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a warrant for the arrest of H. E Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir, President of the republic of Sudan. This precedent, which is the first of its kind, violates the sovereignty and independence of the states.

Sudan Workers Trade Unions Federation knows very well that this decision has nothing to do with the law, the justice and the humanity; rather, it is a political decision aiming at targeting a country saying No to the oppression powers. It is a conspiracy against a country paved its course of development, independence and glory, far away from the imperial domination and its aggression.

Congo: still struggling for independence

The following is from from the December 2008 issue of the Proletarian, the newspaper of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist)

Congo: still struggling for independence

Genocidal war has raged in the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) since the 1998 US-backed invasion by the forces of Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi. At the last estimate, the war has claimed a staggering 5.4 million lives. [i.]

Lessons of Zimbabwe

The following is by Mahmood Mamdani and was posted at the London Review of Books. I am reposting it here because it confronts head-on many of the attacks against ZANU-PF and Robert Mugabe and provides an interesting analysis of the role of imperialism in the class struggles in Zimbabwe:

It is hard to think of a figure more reviled in the West than Robert Mugabe. Liberal and conservative commentators alike portray him as a brutal dictator, and blame him for Zimbabwe’s descent into hyperinflation and poverty. The seizure of white-owned farms by his black supporters has been depicted as a form of thuggery, and as a cause of the country’s declining production, as if these lands were doomed by black ownership. Sanctions have been imposed, and opposition groups funded with the explicit aim of unseating him.

Zimbabwe: Power sharing deal in the balance

The following is from Lalkar:

Zimbabwe: Power sharing deal in the balance

Political deadlock

At the time of going to press, the political deadlock in Zimbabwe remains unbroken. The parliamentary seats are divided roughly equally between ZANU-PF and the misleadingly-named Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-T, led by Morgan Tsvangirai), with a few seats taken by the Mutambara faction of the MDC (which has over the past few months shown itself to be much more willing than the Tsvangirai faction to engage with the political process). Robert Mugabe holds the presidency, which he won by a landslide margin when Tsvangirai – realising that he was facing defeat – dropped out of the second round just a few days before voting was due to take place. A recent power-sharing deal between ZANU-PF, MDC-T and MDC, brokered by former South African President Thabo Mbeki, gave Tsvangirai the post of Prime Minister.

Mama Afrika

Miriam Makeba (4 March 1932 – 9 November 2008)