Published by the government of Zimbabwe
Stephen Gowans
24 March 2008
opinion
IN their zeal to demonise Zimbabwe's Zanu-PF government it sometimes seems that members of the "independent left" are working for the US government.
The reason why is that many are. At the same time, Trotskyites peddling bizarre theories that say the country's President Robert Mugabe is in league with the same governments that are trying to overthrow him, might as well be.
An April 5, 2007 US State Department report confirmed what has been revealed in scattered Press reports for years: that civil society groups and media some left scholars misrepresent as "the independent left" are actually puppets of the US governments. That's not to say these groups don't believe they're independent, or that all of their members know that the funding for their expensive websites, magazines, newspapers and radio programmes are financed by Uncle Sam. However, knowingly or not, they're doing Washington's work.
Only the wilfully blind or naïve would believe the US government lavishes money on groups that aren't going to be of some service in promoting its agenda.
And only the wilfully blind or naïve believe that Uncle Sam's agenda has anything to do with promoting democracy, freedom of expression and good governance.
Patrick Bond, director of the right-wing funded Centre for Civil Society at the University of Natal -- whose case against Cde Mugabe is formulated in the same language of hunger for power leading to betrayal and corruption that characterised Trotsky's case against Stalin -- points to such US-funded groups as Sokwanele as the "independent left" in Zimbabwe.
Is he wilfully blind, naïve or is he grinding the usual Trotskyite axe against really-existing socialist governments and national liberation movements?
The US and EU use civil society to effect colour revolutions -- to do overtly what the CIA used to do covertly.
An integral part of any colour revolution is to demonise target governments to facilitate their replacement by local politicians prepared to open or re-open their country to imperialist penetration.
Bond is thoroughly integrated into the civil society apparatus.
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. It could be said of Bond that he talks left and is funded right.
In 2006, according to the US State Department, Washington was busily interfering in Zimbabwe's internal affairs, funding the opposition, backing civil society groups, showering money on "alternative" media, and seeing to it that Bond's "independent left" was well greased with lucre.
"The US Government continued to support the efforts of the political opposition, the media, and civil society." (That the efforts pertained to replacing the Zanu-PF government with one that would effectively shelf land reform, lift tariffs, abolish performance requirements on foreign investment, and privatise state-owned enterprises, should be spelled out.
That these policies would benefit the corporations, investors and banks connected to Bond's Centre for Civil Society should also be spelled out.)
"The United States sponsored public events that presented economic and social analyses discrediting the government's excuses for its failed policies, (which is to say, absolving US and EU sanctions of undermining the country's economy.)
"The US Government sponsored -- and supported -- several township newspapers" and worked to expand the "listener base" of "Voice of America's Studio 7 radio station" (by distributing short-wave radios to expose the population to anti-Zanu-PF propaganda.)
"US programmes provided funding to NGOs that collected and circulated information on civil society, human rights, and government actions," (groups like Sokwanele.)
The US "supported workshops to develop youth leadership skills necessary to confront social injustice through nonviolent strategies," a reference to the "grassroots" "pro-democracy" activist groups the US has previously trained and funded in Yugoslavia (Otpor), Belarus (Zubr) and Ukraine (Khmara), to carry out colour revolutions with the intention of installing local politicians that favour pro-US trade and investment policies.
The Zimbabwean equivalents are Bond's favoured Sokwanele, and its counterpart Zvakwana. The State Department also "sponsored an -- exchange programme to learn about activism by civil society groups in the United States," groups that one might infer are as deeply embedded in Uncle Sam's pocket as their counterparts in Zimbabwe are.
Any doubt that these civil society regime change operations are motivated by purely economic considerations should be laid to rest by the State Department's observation that "A growing number of like-minded donors now agree that fundamental political and economic changes are a prerequisite to reengagement by the international community with the government."
In other words, once Zimbabwe shelves its land reform programme, opens its doors to unfettered US investment and exports, and stops interfering in US imperial designs in Africa, funding to civil society and Bond's "independent left" will dry up.
The actions of some Trotskyite groups and Trotskyite-inspired scholars serve the same ends.
Australia's Green Left Weekly, and the Zimbabwe International Socialist Organisation, have both backed the opposition MDC from the start (in fact, the ISO is a founding member).
The problem with the MDC is that it's the US and EU vehicle for strengthening a neo-colonial domination of Zimbabwe and of white farmers for stopping land reform.
The ISO and Bond use language to rail against Mugabe that seems to be drawn from the same bag of clichés.
Bond's "Mugabe talks radical -- especially nationalist and anti-imperialist -- but acts reactionary" is almost a word for word recycling of the ISO's "Mugabe is compromising with the bosses at the expense of the workers -- not only the local capitalists, but with foreign investors," and "he speaks left but his policy is pro-capitalist".
If Mugabe is as useful to imperialism as his Trotskyite detractors say he is, (Bond says "The Zim counter-example, frankly, is a useful one for imperialism to keep alive") why are imperialists in Washington and London lavishing money and support on the political opposition, "independent" media and "independent left" to overthrow him?
The anti-Mugabe screed is a replay of the Trotskyite narrative about pure revolutionaries opposing a revolution that has been hijacked and betrayed by an unworthy power-mad monster (Stalin being the Trotskyites' archetype.)
In this view, all revolutions are corrupt and must be overthrown -- that is, all but the one that will never happen.
Trotskyites have always been useful to Washington and London: many are reliably against the same revolutions (though for different reasons), and therefore serve the useful function of whittling away at left support.
To discourage left support for Third World anti-imperialist movements, many Trotskyites invoke the argument that those who support Zanu-PF, the DPRK and sometimes even Cuba, are reflexively placing a plus sign beside the enemy of my enemy and that they ought to be more selective in who they support.
Since many Trotskyites often have trouble with really-existing socialist governments and national liberation movements, this amounts to a prohibition against putting a plus sign beside any such movement.
The truth of the matter, however, is that anti-imperialists support national liberation movements, not because Washington or London dislike them, but because national liberation movements are anti-imperialist, period.
By comparison, misnamed independent left groups that depend for their existence or funding on the US, the EU and Western ruling class foundations, and those Trotskyites who can be reliably counted upon to oppose all revolutions except those they lead or influence, do what they accuse Zanu-PF of doing: talking left, and walking right.
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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.
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