Voices from Harlem forum on Zimbabwe

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The following excerpts are from talks presented at a Feb. 8 “Zimbabwe: Pan Africanism or Imperialism” forum in Harlem, N.Y. The forum was organized by the December 12th Movement and Friends of Zimbabwe.

Amiri Baraka, playwright and poet

How can any Black or anybody who lived through colonialism ever accept anything Britain and the U.S. or any of the European imperialist nations have to say about Africa? How can someone who stole your land and then got put off it, ask for reparations like a thief who steals your wallet and wants you to pay them when you force them to give it back? No matter what is happening in Zimbabwe, Britain and the U.S. must not have anything to say about it. There are criminal charges still pending against them for colonialism, even for slavery. The best they can do is submit to just claims for reparations and hope nobody asks for prison terms. How is it that the greatest murderers and thieves in the world keep getting off without even a dime of reparations, then have the nerve to say that the oppressed peoples, once freed from straight out colonialism, owe them something?

WW photos: Lal Roohk

Dr. James McIntosh, Committee to Eliminate Media Offensive to African People

In Zimbabwe, children die for lack of an asthma pump, clean water or IV solution to replace fluids lost from cholera or some other cause of diarrhea. When we realize that under sanctions, shipments of chlorine gas necessary for water purification are blocked, when we realize that under sanctions aircraft parts necessary to repair crop dusters to grow the grain necessary to stop malnutrition are blocked, then we recognize that the imposition of economic sanctions on a developing nation like Zimbabwe is not an alternative to war, but such imposition is itself a weapon of war. Like weapons or even war itself, these sanctions have historically been used for the same purposes. In Zimbabwe the purpose has been to attempt regime change. The first sanctions were the unofficial sanctions in the form of the refusal of credit to Zimbabwe by the IMF [International Monetary Fund] and others. These undeclared and unofficial sanctions were sparked by the reclaiming of the land by the Zimbabwean people. Mugabe, like Malcolm X, recognized that land is the basis of all revolution and that the Zimbabwe revolution must be no different. The response of imperialism to land reclamation is always war.

Monica Moorehead, International Action Center

Historically, sectors of the U.S. left movement have been weak in carrying out a consistent, anti-imperialist perspective, especially where imperialism’s interests are the most profound. Therefore, struggles especially in Africa and the Middle East face the most intense political isolation due to racism, chauvinism and social-patriotism, rooted in the ideology of the capitalist ruling class. The movement must explain in popular language to the workers and oppressed in the U.S. that the Wall Street bosses and bankers that are stealing their homes, their apartments, their jobs, their education, their health care—if they even have health care—weakening their unions; that benefit from the divide-and-conquer ideology of racism, including from police brutality to incarcerations to deportations and much more, are the same forces imposing endless economic and military wars and occupations abroad. Our enemy is the same here and worldwide—capitalism and imperialism, not the people of Zimbabwe, Palestine and elsewhere, who are on the front lines in the war for national liberation to get imperialism off their backs. The most effective way to build international solidarity with the people of Zimbabwe is to weaken imperialism at home with the building of an independent, fightback movement to demand real change, which translates into a revolutionary transformation of society that will put human needs before capitalist greed.

Chaka Cousins, All-African People’s Revolutionary Party

The struggle that is being played out in Zimbabwe is not just about Zimbabwe. It is a link in the chain of struggle against slavery, against colonialism, neocolonialism, capitalism and imperialism. This struggle will show clearly the forces that are for genuinely fighting for true independence and the forces that seek only to collaborate with imperialism. Imperialism has declared war against Zimbabwe and the Zimbabwean masses because they dare to struggle for genuine independence. The sanctions against Zimbabwe are in fact a maneuver of the neocolonialists. The imperialists can no longer rule directly, so instead they seek to rule through economic control and through puppet leaders.

We are currently witnessing the fall of capitalism. Every day we read about some type of pyramid scheme where the person at the top has stolen the money of those at the bottom. This is precisely how capitalism exploits the masses. Those who don’t labor reap and plunder the resources of those who do labor. This system is bound to fail because it is an unjust system, it is an oppressive system, and wherever there is oppression, there will always be resistance.

Professor Molefi Kete Asante, author of “The History of Africa,” and a trainer of journalists in Zimbabwe during the first year of the country's independence.

The condition of the Black people in Zimbabwe before the Second Chimurenga [armed struggle] was near slavery. Whites had managed to segregate the country much like South Africa. The wages of the African population averaged about 10 dollars a month, while the whites made 600 d dollars a month. It was once reported that the whites in Rhodesia had the highest standard of living in the world. When Mugabe’s government began to take the lands and redistribute them to the people, sometimes to the people who had been working the farms for decades anyway, because the land belonged to their ancestors, the reactionaries started a military resistance by arming themselves and some of their collaborators to fight the government. His decision was historic because it was in the interest of the masses of the people. They had to take back the land. They also knew that the white farmers, some who owned 60,000 acres, were producing not food crops, but cash crops to make themselves rich. Who eats tobacco and cotton? Yes, there was maize but most of it was for export anyway. The condition of the people was pitiful in their own land. They were compelled to call for redress. What people would stand by and allow such a small minority to dominate their lives?

Atty. Malik Zulu Shabazz, New Black Panther Party

Today, Britain and America have determined that they will rule Africa through virtual, digital, high speed, automatic remote control, using African leaders that are pre-stamped, pre-qualified and preordained to be good stool pigeons for the West and Western neocolonialism under the guise of “responsible and good governance.” Any leader like Robert Mugabe who stands up for justice and righting the wrongs or for reparations is lied upon, slandered, attacked, vilified and his people are made to pay the price through economic and diplomatic sanctions, which are weapons of war by other labels. These are the policies of George W. Bush. These are the policies of Prime Minister Tony Blair. Now, history has vanquished these two men, the people have removed them and cast them off into the dustbin of arrogant rulers who disregarded the rights of smaller nations. The people, Black, Brown, Red, Yellow and White, have removed these two arrogant ones as a sign that their ideas and policies are morally bankrupt and repugnant to the universal ideas of mutual cooperation amongst nations and peoples. With the removal of Bush and Blair, so too must come the removal and dismantling of their policies and ideals, and indeed a change must come.

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