allAfrica.com: Zimbabwe: The African Revolution Fails the Second Turn (Page 1 of 2)

Last week, a South African observer of the Zimbabwe general election, Kedibone Molema, of Southern Women in Dialogue, gave inspiring insights to the SABC Africa programme on events there. This discussion of the current electoral impasse is greatly indebted to her penetrating contribution to the debate on the subject.

The 'two stage' revolution has been one of the problem areas for both the theory and the practice of the anti-colonial struggles of the 20th Century.

In the latter half of the century African intellectuals and revolutionaries discussed the subject within the context of the circumstances of struggle that they found in their own countries. Kenneth Koma wrote 'The second phase of the African revolution' suggesting of course that there had been a 'first stage', the struggle for national liberation. Presumably, once the 'motherland' was freed from colonial rule and the physical presence of the administration of the British French, Germans or Portuguese, the Africans would then be confronted with the social differentiation in their own ranks, considerations of class gaining the upper hand as the dominant 'contradiction' over all 'nationalist' sentiment.

At the top half of the century, the Russian Social Democratic Labour party waged the first stage of the struggle, sections of it handing the baton - not without an ideological struggle between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks - to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union which sought to establish the working class or the proletariat as the leading force in the struggle for socialism.

In China the Red army of the Mao's communist party formed a 'front' with Chiang Kai Chalk's 'white' army to repulse the Japanese invasion, later confronting its ally in the nationalist cause against Japan fashion a socialist revolution in that country.

In both instances, there appeared to be a forward or upward movement in the progression of the revolution. And it did look as if there was hope in the horizon towards final emancipation of the working classes of the oppressed world from the capitalists.

The capitalists, acting together all over the globe, took the opportunity when the Africans, Latinos and Asiatics were still celebrating 'nationalist victories over the colonial powers, to fashion other strategies for continued domination of the economies of the liberated colonies.

Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana wrote the informative 'Neo-colonialism, the last stage of imperialism' perhaps as a sequel to Vladimir Lenin's 'Imperialism, the last stage of capitalism'. Nkrumah wanted to point out to demonstrate that once the 'first stage' representing the political struggle against colonialism, there would be need for the economic emancipation in the second phase of the African revolution waged against neo-colonialism in general.

There is the complicated matter of the various ideological colourations of the anti-colonial movements, some of them guided as in South Africa by nationalist movements in the shape of the African National Congress, in contrast to the struggles of Amilcar Cabral's PAIGC in Cape Verde and Principe, and Robert Mugabe's ZANU which seemed to lean towards the socialist ideal.

And so, when Ian Khama announced on April Fool's Day that 'I am a democrat', it was after Thabo Mbeki told the South African parliament that 'I am an African'. Long before them, Robert Mugabe had announced to a ZANU congress 10 years after achieving majority rule that, "I am a socialist', challenging the delegates to an ideological debate about the direction of the second phase of the Zimbabwe revolution.

It was becoming increasingly urgent in the light of disturbances in Poland, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, all outposts of socialism implanted by the Soviet Union there, that something was about to break in the direction of a reversal of the gains of the socialism since the October Revolution.

It would not be too far from the truth to point out that the current quagmire that faces Robert Mugabe, arises from the betrayal of the socialist ideal by the politburo that led ZANU to leadership of the nationalist revolution against Ian Smith, with the vision that the struggle would progress to the second phase of socialist reconstruction.

It is that context that the hatred by Ian Smith and the British for Robert Mugabe must be viewed. He was a socialist among a gang of the ruling elite that was soon tempted to abandon socialism for personal exploitation of the gains of the nationalist struggle for majority rule.

They cheered when 10 years down the line of liberation in 1980, Mugabe pressed for a land reform programme that would return the most important national asset, land, to the indigenous population. They were not cheering for democraticisation of ownership of the national asset. They were cheering for the opportunity of self enrichment even if it came at the cost of creating antagonisms with the World Bank, IMF, and the British who controlled the economies of Botswana and other former colonies.

The British, knowing that the efficacy of ZANU rule would be measured by its commitment to return of the land to the Zimbabweans, deliberately reneged on their agreements at Lancaster, later suggesting that they would rather sponsor 'civil society' organisations to carry out the process of paying the white farmers for the land that they would have to surrender to the indigenous peoples.

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