Zimbabwe: Elections, despondency and civil society's responsibility (3) Response to Critics

We cannot do much about the colour of our skins or our ancestors but we are democratic socialists, a pre-requisite of which is freedom of expression and participation in the means of decision making regarding the conditions of material life. 'Free and fair' elections of representatives to parliamentary institutions reflecting popular consent are a necessary - but not sufficient - component of this process. On those grounds we could accept a 'liberal' label for now or temporary alliances with 'liberals.' Long-term ones would include 'workers' in the traditional Marxist sense and underprivileged people in countries like Zimbabwe, the analysis of which has perplexed Marxist analysts for a long time (including the 'agrarian question,' arguably at the root of the Zimbabwean experience).

The responses to our note on the recent Zimbabwean elections illustrate the complexities - 'confusions' might be too derogatory - of a 'progressive' take on this crisis-ridden society. Unreflective nationalism in defence of authoritarianism is not helpful, but does reflect the ideologies floating about in what Ibbo Mandaza has famously called the 'schizophrenic post-colonial state.'

In such situations maintaining the truth might be (more) important than class allegiances. Truth must be spoken both to power and to resistance against colonialism, racism, globalisation, patriarchy and the long, long list. Refuge in a dying nationalism's exhausted slogans does not help in this struggle.

Regarding the election's funding, we are condemned for neglecting the MDC's receipt of around three billion Zimbabwean dollars (less than $US 250,000 in 'real' terms that make people with access to official exchange rates billionaires over-night). True, the Parliamentary Finance Act allocates these funds to parties on the basis of their seats in the legislature. However, the President's Office receives unaccountable billions every year expended on everything from the Central Intelligence Organisation to helicopter rides to ZANU-PF rallies. Because they are invisible funds, only rough estimates get to the public: but we are told they approach 60 billion Zimbabwean dollars. Check that out against the heath and education budgets. The three billion covers about 90% of the MDC's legal fees for their challenges on the last elections' count, to take a small example and on top of that the party had to pay $2 million for each candidate's election deposit. Bourgeois democracy is not free: but for ZANU-PF, as long as it remains in control of the state - and the counting - it is seen as a free lunch.

Yes, we are in solidarity with "those who strive and persist in crafting new African social worlds," as Dr. McFadden has it. Not, though, if the 'new political traditions [crafted] after hundreds of years of vicious, colonial exclusionary politics' include intimidation, vote-rigging, and other forms of chicanery rivaling those of George W. Bush and family, in the cause of a new, 'post-colonial' bourgeoisie hiding under the cloaks of anti-colonial discourse.

Elections carried out with honesty and in peace - for more than a three week window to a carefully invited world - are part and parcel of the creation of new worlds. Free and fair elections can offer a moment of freedom on a long road towards self-determination going far beyond a 'sovereignty' that collapses dissent with puppetry and international solidarity with imperialism.

We stand by our comments in the hopes that they will contribute to larger truths shorn of rhetorical sleight of hand. We hope, too, that they will keep us far away from the sort of state to which we are accused of aspiring (McFadden claims we, or those we support in this instance, are 'squealing about the lack of democracy [because we] have not yet been able to reach the state and accumulate.')!