ZANU-PF’s indigenisation and economic empowerment program

The following is from Zimbabwe’s Herald: 

PRESIDENT Mugabe yesterday said the indigenisation and economic empowerment programme would take centre stage at the Zanu-PF 12th Annual National People’s Conference, which starts in Bulawayo today.

Speaking during his photographic exhibition at the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair (ZITF) last night, the Head of State and Government and Commander-In-Chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces said the time has come for ordinary Zimbabweans to have a say in the national economy.

He said the liberation struggle was fought in order to repossess the land from the white minority and empower black people economically.

Robert Mugabe on Libya, Colonialism, and NATO Aggression

President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe’s speech at the 66th general assembly meeting in the United Nations in which he condemns the aggressive approach towards Libya, violating the UN-Charter and ignoring the peaceful attempts for negotiations and ceasefires proposed by the African Union.

CPGB-ML interview with ZANU-PF MP

Anastasia Ndhlovu, Zimbabwe’s youngest MP, speaks to a British correspondent about Zimbabwe at the 17th World Festival of Youth and Students, currently being held in Pretoria, South Africa. She addresses many issues including Robert Mugabe’s ongoing leadership, the MDC’s role in coalition government, Britain and US sanctions and the positive role of Chinese economic involvement in the country.

U.S. Senator comes clean on Zimbabwe sanctions

Zanu-PF supporters march against imperialist sanctions.

The following article by Stephen Gowans is from his blog, What’s Left:

The received wisdom among Western governments, journalists and some concerned progressive scholars is that there have been no broad-based, economic sanctions imposed upon Zimbabwe. Instead, in their view, there are only targeted sanctions, with limited effects, aimed at punishing President Robert Mugabe and the top leadership of the Zanu-PF party. The sanctions issue, they say, is a red herring Mugabe and his supporters use to divert attention from the true cause of Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown: redistribution of land from white commercial farmers to hundreds of thousands of indigenous families, a program denigrated as “economic mismanagement”.

Democratic Republic of Congo celebrates 50 years of independence

The following article is from Zimbabwe’s Herald:

By Morris Mkwate in KINSHASA, DRC

PRESIDENT Mugabe arrived here yesterday to join in celebrations to mark the vast country’s 50 years of independence from Belgian colonial rule.

He was welcomed by Harare’s Ambassador to Kinshasa, Mr John Mayowe, DRC Prime Minister Adolf Muzitu, DRC Defence Minister Charles Mwandosimba and Zimbabwe embassy officials.

Zimbabwe after 30 years of independence: Indigenization & gender equality on agenda

President Robert Mugabe

The following article by Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of Pan-African News Wire, is from Workers World:

Against all odds the southern African nation of Zimbabwe is celebrating its 30th year of independence from British settler-colonialism.

In February and early March of 1980, nationwide elections were held inside the former Rhodesia, named after racist colonialist Cecil Rhodes, in which the two leading national liberation movements, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front and the Zimbabwe African People’s Union-Patriotic Front, won the overwhelming majority of votes leading to the recognition by the international community of an independent state on April 18 of that year.

The elections grew out of a 14-year armed struggle waged by the African majority against the Rhodesian state headed by Prime Minister Ian Smith. After tremendous gains were made in the national liberation war during the late 1970s, the U.S. and British imperialism pressured the Smith regime to negotiate an end to the war.

These talks held in December 1979 resulted in what became known as the Lancaster House Agreements. A ceasefire was declared, and 16,500 guerrillas from the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army, which was the armed wing of ZANU-PF, and 5,500 fighters from the Zimbabwe African People’s Revolutionary Army, the military section of ZAPU-PF, returned to the country.

The survival of Zimbabwe as an independent country committed to the empowerment of the African majority as well as an anti-imperialist foreign policy is a testament to the unity and fortitude of the ZANU-PF party, which merged with ZAPU-PF in late 1987. Over the last decade, since the imposition of the Third Chimurenga — a radical land reform policy that seized control of half of the farm land previously controlled by white settlers even after national independence — the Western imperialist states have enacted sanctions against the country and its leadership.

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).

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.