British
and U.S. Imperialist Hands off Zimbabwe:
Zimbabwe for the African People!
LONDON, England — Today,
the African masses of Zimbabwe are fighting for the return of their land
after more than 100 years of white colonial rule and 20 years of poverty,
hunger and landlessness since the so-called independence from white domination.
Today, Zimbabwe is supposed
to be an independent, black state. However, the white settlers control
70 percent of the land even though they make up less than 1 percent of
the population. While African workers and peasants starve and suffer from
unemployment on their own land, most of the land stolen by the white invaders
is used to grow crops to be exported to Europe, such as tobacco or flowers,
or the land remains fallow and unused.
All land must return to
the poor masses of African workers and peasants, not to Mugabe's Zanu-PF
corrupt leaders
The African masses of Zimbabwe will no longer stand for this. While they
have begun to take back their land, Britain, the former colonial power
and slave master who ruled over the African masses in Zimbabwe, has slandered
the African people as terrorists and murderers. Britain is doing everything
it can to prevent the return of the land of Zimbabwe to the hands of its
rightful African owners. We must defend the African people of Zimbabwe
and defend their right to take back their land.
The victory of the people's
independence war was incomplete and hijacked by the petty bourgeois class
led by Zanu-PF
During the 1960s and 1970s, the African masses of Zimbabwe fought a heroic
struggle to end white domination over their lives and land. They took
up arms to do this because the British colonialist and white settlers
assassinated and massacred African people who demanded freedom.
In 1980, when the total victory
of the African masses was approaching, Britain, the USA, black neo-colonial
governments in Africa, and the current Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe,
signed a deal that allowed the white settlers to keep the land while a
black government in the form of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU)
took office.
Land reform was supposed to be implemented to put land in the hands of
the African masses. Britain was supposed to compensate the white settlers
for their land. This never happened!
The land repossession may secure
victory for Mugabe's regime in the near future but will not end the imperialist
economic crisis that continues to strangle the African masses.
The Zimbabwean dollar has plunged. Taxes were raised to pay the war veterans
pension fund, which created a massive rebellion of poor people against
the government in December ‘97, and set the war veterans against
Mugabe's regime.
The government has sent Zimbabwean
troops into the Congo to protect the mining investments of Mugabe and
his generals. Those troops cost $7 million every week. In addition, the
fact that the mutilated and dead bodies of soldiers are coming home to
Zimbabwe from the war in Congo is very unpopular with the masses of Zimbabwe.
There is 50 percent unemployment.
Seventy percent of the African people live in poverty every day.
The life expectancy at birth
for the total population is 39 years. The infant mortality rate is 61
deaths per 1,000 live births.
With the forthcoming election,
the land repossession from white settlers has turned the anger of the
war veterans away from Mugabe and onto the white farmers and British imperialists.
The Movement for Democratic
Change is another neo-colonialist alternative
This organization, financed by the white settlers within Zimbabwe, also
enjoys the support of the British ruling class. In the absence of a dynamic
revolutionary organization to organize the impoverished Africans masses,
the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) led by Morgan Tsvangirai, has
been able to obscure the real land issue and draw support from poor people
in urban areas. It uses sell-out slogans such as "jobs not the land."
However, we must ensure that
the MDC does not get any support from African people anywhere in the world.
Revolutionary unity of Africa
led by the African Socialist International is the only way forward. The
events in Zimbabwe reveal the need for an international revolutionary
party of African workers aligned with the poor peasants. This party will
fight for the only solution to economic and social crises that exist there
and in all of Africa — the revolutionary unification of Africa under
the leadership of African workers and poor peasants.
Land to the Zimbabwean peasants
Power to the Zimbabwean workers
Africans of the world unite in defense of the people of Zimbabwe
Join the African Socialist
International Planning Committee
Every Friday at 7pm
4-16, Deptford Bridge, SE8 4HH.
Buses:47,53,453 and 177, DLR Deptford Bridge.
Contact the African People's Socialist Party at: Tel:020 82651731
or e-mail: uhuruasi@aol.com
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