This article, originally published on a website in April 2007, is full of inaccuracies. Its author, Stephen Gowans, lives in Ottawa and as far as I know has never been to Zimbabwe. He relies on outdated internet information. I welcome his corrections, as he knows what's untrue about this material. If he has integrity, he will make the corrections here and at The Herald newspaper as well. But that's a big If.

Patrick Bond http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs pbond@mail.ngo.za

A majority of parliamentarians from the West have never been to Zimbabwe but has not stopped them from taking punitive action on Zimbabwe without any first hand knowledge of the country. As far as I know you (Patrick Bond)have never been to Palestine or Iraq, and if we follow the logic of your argument that means you and others should remain silent about the plight of Palestiians or people in Iraq. I take issue with your silence on the way in which neo-liberalism has played a bigger hand in bringing Zimbabwe to its knees and your belief that power in Zimbabwe or elsewhere is in one place. Your inability to find anything admirable in ZANU(PF)and your failure to grasp what it means to build an institution or a structure driven by a distributive instinct is what makes some us conclude that you really are close the neo-conservatives.

On this remark - "I take issue with your silence on the way in which neo-liberalism has played a bigger hand in bringing Zimbabwe to its knees" - let me ask: silence? Do you know any writer or analyst or scholar or activist who has done more work to document neoliberalism's damage in Zimbabwe, and written more words, than me? I don't. Do you not want to mention that as recently as 1995, the World Bank noted that Mugabe had applied neoliberalism in a "highly satisfactory" way (the highest such accolade the World Bank gives)? What about Mugabe's payment of $205 million to the IMF in 2005-06?

On this remark - "I take issue with your silence on the way in which neo-liberalism has played a bigger hand in bringing Zimbabwe to its knees" - let me ask: silence? Do you know any writer or analyst or scholar or activist who has done more work to document neoliberalism's damage in Zimbabwe, and written more words, than me? I don't. Do you not want to mention that as recently as 1995, the World Bank noted that Mugabe had applied neoliberalism in a "highly satisfactory" way (the highest such accolade the World Bank gives)? What about Mugabe's payment of $205 million to the IMF in 2005-06?

Dear Patrick,

I have read your work, on Zimbabwe and on NEPAD. A general complicity is your refusal to decipher what really is the difference between what are ZANU(PF)'s desires and those policies which were imposed on it by the IMF. Your work (the plunge!)has been used as a floating signifier whose function has been about the denunciation of the efforts ZANU(PF)'s efforts to return to a distributive politics. Your failure to note that the trade union movement in Zimbabwe grew out of different conjucture/periodisation compared to COSATU is shameful. Power in Zimbabwe is not in one place and your work fails to address that question. Your work has worrying affinities with neo-conservative academic trends that are at the forefront of demonising Zimbabwean political cultures and institutions. There are many other voices that have spoken about these questions than yourself. Your arrogance is astonishing. It says a lot about your class and formation. Some of us do hope that the neo-liberal bandwagon will be stopped by the efforts of all the institutions that grew out the wars of liberation in the SADC region in alliance with the people. That is what is happening in Zimbabwe. Its the illusion of an academic to think that they can lead the world.

My reply was to your claim of "silence" on neoliberalism; to my reply that no one has written more, you have no rebuttal. I'm genuinely sorry if that comes across as arrogant, but I hope you will be more careful with such allegations in future, especially if you like to bandy about phrases like "floating signifier". That suggests you have intellectual pretensions, so facts are helpful unless you are, perhaps, a postmodernist? After all, in terms of inconvenient facts, you have no follow up on my last two references, to Mugabe's 2005-06 payment of $205 mn to the IMF so as to get back in their good books, and Mugabe's "highly satisfactory" rating by the World Bank in 1995? If you need any further evidence that Mugabe has his own type of home-grown IMF policies to screw poor and working-class people, how about Operation Murambatsvina in 2005? How about the crony capitalism that has given briefcase businessmen a safety net against the inflation and shortages that ravage poor Zimbabweans, urban and rural? If you need evidence of how the IMF's last major loan to Zimbabwe (in 1999) coincided with his generals' rape of the DRC, you can find it in Simba and my Zimbabwe's Plunge. In sum, to claim that Mugabe's economic zigzags, since he ran out of money to repay foreign loans, represents genuine resistance to neoliberalism, is unconvincing. On your charges that I'm not paying attention to unions (I worked for the ZCTU from 2000-02) and other anti-neoliberal voices, it's just as accurate as the claim about silence. Zimbabwe's Plunge was written for and with the Zim Coalition on Debt and Development, for example, and back in 1998, my book Zimbabwe's Plunge predicted the rise of the kind of anti-neoliberal coalition you will find in the Zimbabwe Social Forum and last month's National People's Convention. Maybe these, though, are voices you're not attuned to, shamwari.

One remaining issue, for the record, is that the claims made by Gowans in this article (no, I didn't really expect him to correct these, knowing his and The Herald's regard for facts), are specious and inaccurate. For example, I am not a Trotskyist. But here are some rather more serious points I made to him in April 2007, which can easily be verified, but which Gowans likes to ignore in the course of rants such as: "His Centre for Civil Society (whose website links to Zimbabwe's US and EU-funded MDC opposition party) is connected to the ruling class Kellogg and Ford foundations, the South African NGO coalition, the South African bank, ABSA and the South African Chamber of Commerce."

So for the record, as I pointed out a year ago to Gowans: * As far as I know, CCS (http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs) has no formal links to Kellogg and never has since I was its director in October 2004. * CCS once received Ford funding but not since 2004; one result of the funding was this book: http://www.ukznpress.co.za/book.php?action=displaybook&conf[bookid]=261. * The SA NGO Coalition has no formal connection to CCS, and in any case it is laughable to put Sangoco in the category of the ruling class. * There is no such thing as the “SA Chamber of Commerce”, and CCS has no ties to any business lobbies of any sort (except making regular critiques). * As for ABSA banking group, not only is there no connection, I challenge Gowans to identify anyone who has written as many critiques of ABSA and SA banking more generally than myself. One of the things I’ve criticised ABSA for is their connections to the Mugabe regime via Jewel Bank, a point I made here - http://www.counterpunch.org/bond03272007.html - which apparently Gowans didn’t read, judging by his backfire allegation. No doubt Gowans will pull out p.42 of this document - http://www.nu.ac.za/ccs/files/annual-report2005.pdf - and find a CCS ‘advisory board member’ from ABSA Foundation. So for the record, during my time at CCS, he has never come to a single meeting or event and I’ve never met, spoken or communicated to him.

Dear Patrick,

I am always careful with what I say (within the bounds of law that is!) however I do not take threats lightly either. I could nt give a damn if you had written a million texts on neo-liberalism - I still do not agree with you. My argument with you is not the same as Stephen Gowans - that is for him to take up.I am not really bothered by who pays you, whether you are a Trot or a sweet neo-con. Thatv is for you and your confessor or shrink. My issue with you is how your work has been taken up and how it functions in circulation. I am more concerned about the way in which your work has been used to usher in an even more banal cocktail version of neo-liberalism in Zimbabwe. I guess you are partying today in the light of events in that country.

I was also trying to address the issues that I think your work is blind to and I think that your arrogance betrays the prism of your formation . Your blindness to raciology is striking. For your information, I borrow the concept of 'floating signifier' from some of the best black work around and I add my own spin to it. Your remark that I might be a postmodernist is cheap. A more productive starting point might be to improve your argument instead of proving your credentials.

The struggle for a left culture in Zimbabwe and elsewhere continues with or without your work despite what you and others think.

I wish you well.