Fight for fresh elections
The International Socialist Organisation (ISO) has always offered a different vision and plan for ridding Zimbabwe of the Mugabe dictatorship. The February 2009 lead story in the Socialist Worker, the ISO’s quarterly newspaper, called for the fight for fresh elections under a new people-driven constitution. The article has just been published online by International Journal of Socialist Renewal.
The ordinary people have no choice but to fight back against the massive attacks on their living conditions arising from dollarisation and liberalisation. For these reasons, progressive social movements, trade unions, student unions and civic groups must not call for a ceasefire and must not have naïve illusions in the GNU deal or the constitution drafting process. Some elitist and pro-MDC NGOs are trying to persuade, bribe and bulldoze civic society to give a chance to the GNU and its politician-driven constitutional process, saying we can improve on this. We must reject this. If the engine is defective, the car can never move.
Read the whole article here
On the same site you can read how Morgan saved the Mugabe regime
Meanwhile, the University of Johannesburg has organised a seminar called, Zimbabwe: youth, intellectuals and politics. Three men (why only men?) from Zimbabwe are speaking including Munyaradzi Gwisai, who’s always been strongly involved with the International Socialist Organisation. Tendai Biti, Zimbabwe’s new finance minister will be joining him. And then the already confused realm of Zimbabwean politics just got more confused with the University of Johannesburg advertising that the Prime Minister will speaking as well. That’s Arthur Mutambara, according to them.
Friday, February 20th 2009 at 11:08 pm
Oh, for heaven’s sake, please spare us this juvenile stuff. Who ARE these idiots?
If people did not and could not “fight back” against Murambatsvina, against the co-ordinated campaign of rape, torture and murder unleashed by the security forces, against cholera caused by deliberate neglect, even (for crying out loud) against Mugabe’s obscene birthday party preparations or the arrest of Jestina Mukoko, then how the &*$# are they going to “fight back against the massive attacks on their living conditions arising from dollarisation”?
If they couldn’t defend their livelihoods against the deliberate destruction of the Zimbabwe dollar over the past decade and more – even before people started to border-jump in their millions – how will they defend the local currency now?
For the information of the International Socialist Organisation, ordinary Zimbabweans are grown ups who are concerned about their parents, their children and survival of same. Not to mention their country. They don’t make a living publishing pamphlets, not even online. Instead, millions are working their butts off in foreign lands, to feed and educate their families, facing regular outbreaks of terrifying xenophobia – would they do that if they could “fight back” at home?
Whether the car can ever move is an interesting question and worth addressing but that car won’t run on socialist jargon any more than it can restart on ZANU-PF’s pseudo-Marxist babble. Those batteries went flat a long time ago. And you can bet your US dollar that it won’t be the ISO getting out to push, oh no, they’re going to summon “the workers” (who else, this is Africa after all).
So what shall we do if we don’t have the wherewithal to fight back against the people with guns, clubs, dogs and tear gas? Oh yeah – let’s go and deal with with a few “elitist and pro-MDC NGO’s”. Mugabe must be quivering in his hand-made shoes at the thought of that.
Sheesh!! To paraphrase Uncle Karl, the Renewed Socialist has the world as a mere object of his opinion. Lucky world. And to quote Uncle Friedrich, the sword of enthusiasm may be just as good as the sword of genius. Yeah, right. Check your brains at the door, enthusiasts.
Sally D
South Africa