Zimbabwe in focus: A hard-hitting review of an exciting new book by Patrick Bond and Masimba Manyanya Zimbabwe's Plunge: exhausted nationalism, neoliberalism and the search for social justice

Zimbabwe's Plunge: exhausted nationalism, neoliberalism and the search for social justice Patrick Bond and Masimba Manyanya Merlin £14.95

Zimbabwe, alongside countries such as Iraq and North Korea, is often seen as a rouge state with a mad ruler. Mugabe is using terror against his opponents in an attempt to win another six-year term as president. However, the roots of the economic crisis in Zimbabwe, with unemployment now at over 60%, inflation hitting 114% and 76% of the population below the poverty line, are in urgent need of analysis.

At independence, in 1980, the country inherited debts of nearly $700 million from the white minority regime. The authors of this book argue that Mugabe's Zanu government had the option of repudiating this debt, had this happened, the government would have had much more flexibility to implement its social policies and address the land question. As they argue, had 'Mugabe embarked upon a high profile repudiation of Rhodesian-era debt, [it] might have deterred international bankers … from lending to South Africa during its 1980's crises, which kept apartheid in place for longer and with more durability than should have been the case'. In addition, Zimbabwean debt repudiation could have led the way to Mandela's government following suite and a far healthier economic climate for the whole of southern Africa.

During the first decade of independence the Zanu government did follow what Bond and Manyanya describe as an 'exemplary social policy'. This reduced infant mortality from 86 to 49 per 1,000 live births, doubled primary school enrolment and raised life expectancy from 56 to 62 years. But at the same time the Zimbabwean government maintained repayments on its foreign loans and the land question was not fundamentally changed. Seventy percent of the best land in Zimbabwe is still owned by around 4,000 white farmers, although this picture has changed massively with the recent land seizures.

However with the formal adoption of the World Bank's Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) over the period 1991 to 1997 living standards of the working class were significantly reduced. The Zimbabwean Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) 'reported in 1996 that their average member was 38% poorer than in 1990 and 40% poorer than in 1980'. In addition, the social wage also fell sharply 'thanks largely to new cost recovery policies for health, education and many other social services'.

Despite this in the early 1990's Zimbabwe was often described as the World Bank's African success story. Even as late as May 1999, the World Bank 'Project Completion Report' for ESAP in Zimbabwe gave the country the best possible final grade of 'highly satisfactory'. Morgan Tsvangerai, the opposition leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), wants to implement a modified version of ESAP, that they today call the ‘Bridge Strategy’.

Yet ESAP 'pushed foreign debt as a percentage of GDP from 8.4% to 21.8%'. By 1998 Zimbabwe, with debts of nearly $5 billion, spent 38% of its export earnings on servicing foreign loans, exceeded in that year only by Brazil and Burundi.

This book outlines the effects of these crippling debt repayments and the economic and political constraints that encouraged the adoption of neo-liberalism. However, the speeches of politicians are given far more prominence than the power of ordinary people who spearheaded resistance to the policies of the World Bank and the IMF. For example, the authors dismiss the mass public sector strikes of 1996 and the resistance that followed in a couple of paragraphs. In contrast three pages of the book are devoted to a single speech by the MDC's economic spokesperson.

As they state 'The overarching aim of the concluding chapter … [is]…to restore some hope in the idea that the nation state … can indeed with stand the pressures associated with Washington's version of corporate globalisation'. The chapter argues that an 'NGO-swarm' at home and the 'world-scale social change' since Seattle could form the basis of a government implementing alternative policies to both Mugabe and the neo-liberalism of the MDC. The support for such a government would be composed of 'a variety of civil society groups - church agencies, a resurgent movement of residents' associations, community health workers, and the more progressive currents within the ZCTU'.

The policies of this hypothetical government would include a total repudiation of the foreign debt and the deflation of domestic debt. The government would also regulate foreign exchange while ensuring that any ‘resulting distortions … are mitigated through a strong but slim, efficient and benevolent state.'

At the London launch of the book, Patrick Bond, a leading South African anti-capitalist activist, argued that this programme provided a technical synthesis of Keynes and Marx. A member of the audience then challenged him that the potential power of the organised working class in Zimbabwe, demonstrated through recent general strikes in Madagascar and Nigeria, provided a far stronger power base for an alternative economic programme.

It is important not to distract from the great strengths of the book. It provides a comprehensive summary of the recent economic and political developments in Zimbabwe, and as an example of the effects of globalisation and third world debt it has a wider relevance. The alternatives it outlines to the policies of the World Bank and the IMF could have practical significance if adopted by anti-capitalist movements but only when they are based on the power of an organised mass movement. In Zimbabwe the government was shaken to its foundations by a movement that showed the potential to overturn society.

- From IMC Zimbabwe