State vs. Students: Why Marxism Troubles Xi Jinping

Palden Sonam


In theory, Marxism has for long been the ideological foundation of the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) regime. In practice, however, while Marxism is employed as an instrument of Party rule, its principles are not. Under China’s President Xi Jinping in particular, a new lease of life has been injected into ideological propaganda to garnish the increasing re-partification of the state and society.

In May 2018, during a commemoration of the 200th anniversary of Karl Marx’s birth, Xi hailed Marx as the “greatest thinker of modern time” whose ideas inspired a society free of oppression and exploitation. The study of Marxism is actively promoted from classrooms in the hinterland to the corridors of power in Beijing. Television shows, rap music and cartoon series have been launched to make communism, cool, and Marx, modern—especially for China’s tech-savvy millennials. This new push for ideological studies also includes the ‘Xi Jinping Thought’—described by the party’s chief ideological theoretician as the “Marxism of modern China.”

Therefore, in this atmosphere of renewed love for Marx, the government’s reaction to the activities of young Marxists in China is particularly intriguing. In August 2018, 40 Marxist students who came to support workers to form a union in Shenzhen disappeared after they were raided by authorities. In China, barring the Party controlled All-China Federation of Trade Unions, no other union is permitted to exist. In November 2018, authorities detained over a dozen students from premiere universities across the country in a seemingly coordinated effort to clampdown on labour related activities. The latest offensive on Marxists in China took place in December 2018 coinciding with Mao Zedong’s 120th birth anniversary, when the head of Marxist Society at Peking University was bundled into a black car while on his way to attend a memorial for the very founder of People’s Republic. 

These incidents beg the question: why does the Party treat young communists with disdainful repression for practising what the Party has for long been preaching via its ideologically greased education system? 

Primarily, the activism of the young Marxists makes evident the fact that the Party hides and seeks its interests using the facade of Marxism. Despite the Party’s lofty rhetoric, labourers (especially migrant workers) live and work in substandard conditions. The students’ attempts to advocate the case of the labourers embarrassingly exposes the gap between official rhetoric and ground realities in the country. For the authorities, this represents a bigger threat to their power than the formation of a small union as the former exposes their hypocrisy, whereas the latter is a negligible challenge.

Secondly, the Party is also apprehensive of the organised nature of activities, particularly by students, given the memory of the 1989 students movement whose 30th anniversary (June 2019) is fast approaching. Additionally, the authorities are aware of the students’ ability to mobilise in the age of social media. Moreover, the political price of a violent suppression of any student movement is likely to prove costly. In this context, the regime seems to be frantically dousing any emerging sparks of discontentment before they transform into a bigger flames like 1989. It is due to such considerations that the Party is aggressively targeting the activities of the young Marxists notwithstanding the latter’s appeals to working class consciousness. 

The CPC is not Marxist in the true sense of the term and the so called Sinicisation of Marxism is hardly a justification for its disregard for the core principles of Marxism. Since inducting the super-rich into its membership in 2002 under Jiang Zemin, the Party has become club of billionaires and millionaires. At present, the higher rungs of the pyramid of power include over 100 billionaires as members and/or advisors to the CPC leadership. The nexus between the powerful and wealthy changed the Party from being a mass party to an elite party with less emphasis on revolution and more on self-aggrandisement. The students’ attention to and advocacy regarding the hardships of workers highlights the Party’s failure to address the grievances of the proletariat and peasants who paid the most for China’s economic miracle in terms of their lands and labours but gained the least from the ensuing development.

Despite Xi’s loud calls of Marxism’s relevance to China’s present and future under the Party’s guidance, the rift between the rhetoric of Marxism and reality in China has never been clearer. With its omnipresence in every aspect of the Chinese society, the Party is free to interpret and employ Marxism depending on circumstances because it enjoys the exclusive right to choose an ideology and its interpretation in the country.

However, the recent crackdowns have not been without international backlash. For instance, in October 2018, Cornell University suspended exchange programmes with Renmin University on account of the latter’s failure to respect the academic freedom of its students. In another case, in November 2018, over 30 scholars including Noam Chomsky announced their boycott of Marxism conferences in China arguing that their participation would make them complicit in the state’s clampdown on Marxist students.

Overall, from Mao to Xi, whether it is due to the faction-ridden nature of Chinese politics or a lack of genuine interest in Marxism, Party leaders have been more Machiavellian than Marxist; and they view the preservation of Party’s dictatorship as imperative for the preservation of their own power within the Party.

The Abnormal Normal: Time Stands Still at Two Minutes to Midnight

Manpreet Sethi 

The Doomsday Clock, maintained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists since 1947, has come to symbolise a graphic description of the global security situation at any given time. Every year, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin, comprising of eminent personalities from the political, scientific and policy domains, undertakes a detailed examination of the two major threats facing mankind – from nuclear weapons and climate change. Based on the developments of the year in these two domains, a determination is made on how far the world is from midnight - or apocalypse. This imagery is intended to drive home the urgency of the threats facing humanity and the planet.

In 2018, in response to the heightened US-North Korea nuclear belligerence, and US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, the Bulletin took the minute hand of the clock closer by half a minute to midnight. So, in January 2018, the world came as close as two minutes to midnight - the closest it had ever come to 12 O’clock. In an earlier instance in 1954, when the USSR tested its biggest megaton weapon, the Bulletin declared the world at two and a half minutes to midnight, the closest before 2018.

In January 2019, the Bulletin has chosen to retain the hand at two minutes to midnight – largely because it could not have taken it anywhere else. It could not have pulled it back since nothing reassuring has happened in the nuclear or climate realms over the past one year. Rather, things have only begun to heat up – figuratively and literally – and the coming months could see matters becoming worse. In fact, some of the nuclear related developments of 2018, as discussed below, will begin to reveal their implications in the coming year. Therefore, the time-keepers can be seen as having been prudent in not consuming the little real estate now left between two minutes and 12 O’clock. That might become necessary in 2019 if some of the trends are not reversed.

In setting the time this year, the Bulletin would have taken cognisance of the major nuclear developments that started to come into play as soon as 2018 set in. In February 2018, US President Trump announced the US Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). Echoing the sentiments of 'America First', the NPR emphasised the centrality of nuclear weapons in US national strategy, including contemplating more circumstances in which the use of nuclear weapons may become necessary. Many nuclear issues and concepts that had been settled in the past after having been experimented with and discarded for the risks they carried, like the futility of tactical nuclear weapons or the impossibility of conducting a limited nuclear war, seemed to have resurfaced with the current NPR. 

In March 2018, President Putin of Russia responded with his State of the Union address that struck a note of aggression in Russian nuclear modernisation's ability to meet any threat that the US' new capabilities may pose to the country's deterrent. China is following the same approach and moving towards new capabilities like cyber and hypersonic missiles that will intersect with nuclear deterrence in ways that have not been seen before. 

Through March to May, US policy uncertainty towards Iran and North Korea continued. Finally, disregarding advice from the international community as well as several of his own strategic pundits, Trump decided to withdraw in May 2018 from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). This brought into serious jeopardy an agreement that had been painstakingly crafted to halt Iran’s nuclear capability that could have sustained its weapons ambitions. The agreement was meant to mainstream the country economically and politically so its sense of security would remove the temptation to develop nuclear weapons. This process, however, came to a shaky pass once Trump pulled out of the agreement. Iran is for now living up to its part of the commitments in the hope that Europe and other major players will help resolve the situation. 2019 will prove to be a test case for how much the others are able to shield Iran from US sanctions and actions, and for how long Iran perceives its own interest in staying in the JCPOA. As hardliners in the country become more influential and strident, the tables could turn quickly.

With regard to North Korea, the Summit Meet in Singapore between Trump and Kim Jong-un in June 2018 did perceptibly bring down the temperature of their nuclear bravado. Apart from that, however, it seems to have done little. North Korean denuclearisation remains a befuddled and distant goal and not much has been achieved by the officials of the two sides engaging at levels lower than the heads of state. A second Summit Meet is planned for February this year but it would be best to keep expectations low.

Meanwhile, in the second half of 2018, nuclear capability build-up continued unabated in all nuclear-armed states. New missiles were tested, and an offence- defence spiral between all dyads is evident. In general, there is a sense of greater value being attached to nuclear weapons as part of national security strategies of all nuclear weapon possessing states. Nuclear strategies that teeter on the edge of brinkmanship, profess escalate-to-de-escalate postures, highlight the utility of low-yield nuclear weapons for limited nuclear war, are on the rise. No nuclear arms control is on the anvil as of now. In fact, the existing agreements are under a cloud. The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty may be the next casualty this year.

In view of what could follow as a result of developments in 2018, it is not surprising that the doomsday clock time-keepers chose to maintain it at two minutes for 2019. If nothing positive develops over this year and the general sense of nuclear gloom continues, the challenge will re-present itself next year. It can only be hoped that the gravity of "two minutes to midnight" will sink in where it matters.  

Van der Veen-Schenkeveld Scholarship 2019/2020 for Female African Theologians – The Netherlands

Application Deadline: 1st May 2019

Eligible Countries: African countries


To be taken at (country): The Netherlands

Type: Masters

Eligibility: To be eligible for this scholarship the student should meet the criteria listed below:

• Admission to the international Master of Theology programme of the PThU;
• Be female;
• Be a native African;
• Preferably be under 35 years of age;
• Have an excellent study record and be committed to furthering the cause of African women.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: Full scholarship

Duration of Programme: 1 year

How to Apply: 

• You can apply for a scholarship by sending a letter to the Board of the Protestant Theological University before 1 May 2019.
  The address of the Board may be found here. Please send your scholarship application by e-mail to: a.s.nijboer@pthu.nl.

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European Commission Paid 5 Months Traineeship 2019 (Travel, €1,196 monthly stipend)

Application Deadline: 4th February 2019 (12:00, Brussels time)

Offered annually? Twice in a year (Bi-annually)


Eligible Countries: All

To be taken at (country): Any allocated country in Europe within the EU

Eligible Field of Study: None. Interested candidate can only apply for one type of traineeship at a time – administrative or translation.

About the Award: A traineeship at the European Commission is much more than just a professional experience. Each batch of trainees organises a huge range of non-formal learning, social activities, from football to wine-tasting and much in between – in true bureaucratic fashion, each with its own organising committee. There are usually 40-50 of such activities to choose from.

Type: Internships/Jobs

Eligibility: The traineeship programme is open to university graduates, from all over the world who have a:

1. Degree of at least 3 years of study (minimum a Bachelor);
2. Very good knowledge of English or French or German (C1/C2 level in accordance with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages);
3. Very good knowledge of a second EU official language (required for nationals of EU countries).

Candidate must have completed at least 3-years of study with a degree to apply for a Blue Book traineeship. Only if you have a certificate or an official confirmation from your university that you have at least a 3-year degree will you be eligible to apply.
Candidate can apply once per session but as many times as you want until you are finally selected. If you do not pass the pre-selection, or you are in the Blue Book but not selected for a traineeship, you will have to submit again your application. It will undergo again the pre-selection with no guarantee that you will successfully pass it and be in the Blue Book again.

Selection Criteria: Candidates are anonymously evaluated in the assessment phase by two different evaluators, on the basis of following criteria:

• Level of education (a full university degree of at least three years of studies is mandatory);
• Language level in one of the three European Commission working/procedural languages (English, French, German) other than your mother tongue/s (mandatory);
• Language level in the remaining European official languages and/or non EU-languages, if applicable;
• Relevance of work experience, if applicable;
• International profile – experience of living/working abroad (mobility);
• Motivation and quality of reasoning;
• IT Skills, organisational skills, publications and rare domains of study.

If they successfully pass the first phase of the pre-selection, candidates are “pre-identified” and admitted to the second phase of the pre-selection, i.e. verification of supporting documents/eligibility check.
For the level of education, candidates can send:

• the certificate/s with the final grade/s clearly mentioned;
• the Europass Diploma Supplement, if available;
• university transcripts.

Up to three relevant work experiences can be mentioned in the application. Only work experience that is related to the profile that is selected and lasted, uninterruptedly, more than 6 weeks should be declared. Traineeships made during university courses are already assessed as part of the education and shall not be mentioned as work experiences.

Number of Awardees: Not specified. Every year, there are about 1,300 places available.

Value of Traineeship: 

• The living allowance for the traineeships sessions will be €1,196.84 per month.
• Visa costs and related medical fees may be reimbursed together with the travel expenditures.

Duration of Traineeship: October 2019-February 2020

How to Apply: Go here for more details

Visit Traineeship Webpage for details

Award Provider: The European Commission

Ms. Geek Africa 2019 for Young African Women in ICT

Application Deadline: 31st March, 2019 at 5pm (CAT).

Eligible Countries: African countries


About the Award: The experience provides young women with opportunities to compete and collaborate with others in the world.
Top 10 finalists undergoes a weeklong intensive training program to equip them with presentation, speaking and critical thinking skills to prepare them for competition day. 
Last year, the second Ms. Geek Africa, Salissou Hassane Yari Latifa from Niger was crowned during the annual Transform Africa Summit.

Type: Training, Contest

Eligibility:

• Female between ages of 15 and 23 years old 
• Citizen of African Union Member States 
• Contestants must be available in Rwanda between April 30th and May 10th, 2019 for training and Transform Africa Summit

Selection Criteria: 

1. Your application must describe what you are trying to do. 
2. Your solution must be original or an improvement to existing solutions.
3. You must consider many Africans have limited access to the internet / smart devices. 
4. A graphical presentation to accompany a concept note, demonstrating how the solution will work and an example of its user interface

Selection:  The best solutions will be selected to participate in the finals. Finals include a weeklong training, followed by two rounds of presentation where the top 3 will be chosen and Ms. Geek Africa 2019 crowned during the closing events of the summit.

Number of Awards: 1

Value of Award: Ms. Geek Africa receives a cash prize, a tablet, a laptop, a trip to an international technology conference, among others. All expenses are covered for all selected finalists.

How to Apply: 

1. Submit solution to msgeekafrica@smartafrica.org 
2. All applications must be submitted in English or French. 
3. Name the submitted application in this format: YOUR NAME-COUNTRY 
4. Deadline for submission is March 31st, 2019 at 5pm (CAT). There shall be NO EXCEPTIONS. 
5. If you have questions, please contact on twitter @GirlsInICTRW or Facebook Page “Girls in Rwanda ICT.” More information at www.girlsinict.rw and smartafrica.org.

MsGeek2019_application_english


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Rothamsted/University of Nottingham Fellowship 2019 for Research Scientists from Developing Countries

Application Deadline: 22nd February 2019

Eligible Countries: Developing Countries


To be taken at (country): UK

About the Award: The Fellowship will support overseas scientists to train at either University of Nottingham (UoN) and/or Rothamsted Research for 6-12 months on a research project they co-develop with UoN and Rothamsted senior scientists , who will co-supervise the project.

Type: Research, Fellowship

Eligibility: The Candidate must meet the following criteria:

• The Candidate must be of doctoral status, with at least two years’ post-doctoral experience. Candidates without Higher Degrees must have equivalent research experience to be considered eligible for the scheme.
• Applications will not be considered where the main objective of the visit is research leading to a higher degree for the Candidate.
• The Candidate must be a citizen, or be based exclusively in a low- to middle- income country. Please note that this will be defined as the countries listed on the DAC list of ODA recipients
• Candidates who have extensive and/or continuous employment in a high-income country are not eligible for RI Fellowships.
• It is essential that the Candidate returns to employment in their home country where the experience gained through the RI Fellowship can be applied.
• Applications are submitted by the UK supervisor, but must be of relevance to research in the candidate’s home country. It is therefore essential that the candidate makes contact with the UK supervisor and helps to co-develop the research proposal. Proposals with minimal contributions from the candidate, or supervisor, are unlikely to succeed.
• In addition to the support of the UK supervisor, applications must also have the approval from the relevant Department Head at Rothamsted Research and Professor David Salt, Director of the Future Food Beacon at UoN.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: The Fellowship will provide the successful candidate with

• Supervision and training at University of Nottingham and/or Rothamsted Research
• Funds for Research costs related to their project
• Access to world-class research facilities and scientific support
• Funds for accommodation and subsistence.
• Funds for travel between the home country and the UK

Duration of Programme: 6-12 Months

How to Apply: 

• It is important to go through all application requirements on the Programme Webpage see link below) before applying.

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Zimbabwe’s Capitalist Crisis: Imperial Vultures and Subimperial Doves Both Turn Away From Economic Carcass

Patrick Bond

Return of the IMF?

The most crucial potential bailout lender for Zimbabwe is still the much-feared IMF, to which Robert Mugabe’s regime (questionably) repaid all arrears in late 2016. A series of self-delegitimizing 21^st-century leaders have helped reduce its reputation: Rodrigo Rato (jailed last October for bank fraud), Dominique Strauss-Kahn (resigned in disgrace but demanded IMF support for his 2011 rape trial) and still today (after a guilty verdict in 2016 for corruption ‘negligence’ in France), Christine Lagarde. Nevertheless, the institution remains the global policeman for the entire financial world, and since 1984 it has pummeled Zimbabwe into austerity and structural adjustment.

In early 2018, IMF spokesperson Gerry Rice endorsed the neoliberal path Mugabe’s coup-based successor Emmerson Mnangagwa had chosen for Zimbabwe: “The authorities are cognizant of these challenges that they face and the economy is facing and they’ve expressed their determination to address them. The 2018 budget which they presented on December 7th, so about a month ago, stresses the government’s intentions to reimpose budget discipline, reform and open the economy, and engage with the broader international community, which is ongoing and important in terms of arrears clearance.” For budget shrinkage, he specifically recommended more agricultural subsidy cuts.

Again last September, as pro-IMF finance minister Mthuli Ncube took office, Rice made clear that his staff “stand ready to help the authorities design a reform package that can help facilitate the clearance of external payment arrears to international development banks and bilateral official creditors and that then would open the way for fresh financing from the internal community including potentially the IMF. But, again, just to stress as we said before, potential financial support from the Fund is conditional on the clearance of those arrears to the World Bank, the AFDB and financing assurances from bilateral official creditors. We are working with the Zimbabwean authorities in the meantime to provide policy advice and technical assistance that might help, could help move that process forward.”

In December Rice reiterated IMF support for Ncube: “The policies of the new administration under the Zimbabwe transition and stabilization program, do constitute a comprehensive stabilization and reform effort in order to address Zimbabwe’s macroeconomic situation.”

And just as full reports of the most recent IMF Riot and army repression were filed on January 17 this year, Rice repeated his institution’s demands: “In terms of the IMF, Zimbabwe has in fact cleared its arrears to us, to the Fund, but our rules preclude lending to a country that is still in or under arrears to other international financial situations. So until that particular situation is resolved, we would not be moving forward with a financial support for Zimbabwe. I said here the last time that the authority’s economic policies we felt were headed in the right direction broadly in terms of addressing the fiscal deficit and monetary policy and so on. I won’t repeat what I said the last time but that’s where we are on Zimbabwe.”

Clearly the system needs a jolt to get out of the rut. Who can provide it?

Enter biggish brother: Talk left (about sanctions), lend right (about $7 million)

The next door neighbor, South Africa offers the most logical crutch. A desperation visit by leading Harare officials to Pretoria the day after Christmas late last year included a request for a loan to clear the other arrears. The lead Treasury bureaucrat turned them down: “Initially they wanted money, $1.2 billion. We don’t have $1.2 billion but what we have is the will to assist them… Our engagements are across the system — assisting from a budgeting implementation point of view, and reprioritizing of public expenditure, including on their behalf engaging multilateral development institutions, which we have started.”

A year ago, the same official prepared the 2018-19 South African budget, cutting social programmes and municipal infrastructure support to such an extent that even neoliberal Business Day newspaper termed it ‘savage’ – while allowing an extra 5% of all local institutional investor wealth, around $36 billion, to escape the country via exchange control liberalization.

With this mentality prevailing in Pretoria’s Treasury, it’s no wonder that at the very high point of the state’s repression last week, South Africa’s neoliberal finance minister Tito Mboweni endorsed Ncube: “I think the idea of using a new currency in Zimbabwe is a good one. I think our colleagues there are on a good wicket when it comes to that space. We are working together very well but at the end of the day it is Zimbabweans who need to fix their country.”

Zimbabweans can recount a long history of the South African ruling party propping up its liberation-era allies, Zanu-PF, when the latter turn most repressive. This occurred most regularly when Thabo Mbeki was president from 1999-2008. Laments veteran South African business journalist Barney Mthombothi, “What still sticks in the craw for many Zimbabweans is the arrangement concocted by Mbeki 10 years ago to keep Mugabe in power despite the fact that he had been defeated by Morgan Tsvangirai.” Adding insult to injury, even while activists remained in appalling prison conditions on January 20, Pretoria’s Foreign Minister Lindiwe Sisulu intoned, “Protests in Zimbabwe have calmed down and life in the streets of Zimbabwe is returning to normal.”

When it comes to money, however, the South African finance minister reverts to type: a scrooge. According to Mboweni, the existing South Africa-Zimbabwe credit facility of a measly $7 million was in any case backed by Harare’s collateral, in the form of “its holding of SA Land Bank bills. The extension of this facility depended on Zimbabwe being able to provide further collateral.” The potential low-level debt relief he implied would be a tokenistic sop to elite solidarity, and would do nothing to change the structural economic power and financial deficits that Zimbabwe faces in the region and the world.

However, if more South Africa credit materializes, it’s also likely that Mboweni would try to get a higher repayment prioritization for South African firms. More than just fraternal ideology, there is also blatant national-capitalist self-interest at work, as the Sunday Times reported: “At least 15 major South African linked companies with operations in Zimbabwe were struggling to repatriate funds. These include Delta Beverages [beer and soft drinks] (40% owned by AB InBev), MultiChoice [cable television streaming] (owned by Naspers), Tongaat Hulett, PPC [cement] and Zimplats (owned by Impala Platinum). Other firms such as Edcon [clothing], Pick n Pay [food retail], Sanlam [insurance], Tiger Brands [wholesale food], Nedbank and Alexander Forbes [finance] either have units in Zimbabwe or are invested in locally owned business.”

Mboweni’s South African national budget will be tabled in parliament in one month’s time. It must make gestures to reducing parastatal agencies’ outsized debt, so in talks with Ncube he may even demand that the first repayment of arrears go to Pretoria’s bankrupt national airline, South African Airways. That firm is owed an estimated $60 million in ticket-sale revenues on the vital Harare-Johannesburg route, funds which Zimbabwe has lacked sufficient hard currency to repay. Early this month the airline’s spokesperson claimed that Ncube had begun to settle those arrears, but provided no details.

There are other solidarities, as well, including ordinary South Africans working closely with Zimbabwean organizations in networks such as the United Front-Johannesburg and the sporadic anti-xenophobia movement. With Zimbabwe’s capitalist crisis worsening from the late 1990s, South Africa began to host a vast immigrant pool who were not only political but also economic refugees, with many more expected in coming weeks and months. Hence anti-xenophobia politics remain crucial, as an angry South African working-class often takes out its frustrations on those they consider competitors, for scarce jobs, housing and township retail trade.

The two biggest potential sources of bottom-up Zimbabwe solidarity are the leftist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), which polls around 10% of the vote, and the largest trade union, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) with 350,000 members. However, in neither case has a concrete strategy emerged.On January 23, in contrast to the ruling party’s nurturing of the neighbor’s oppressors, EFF leader Julius Malema emphatically criticized Zimbabwe’s leaders, calling Mnangagwa a “backward fool… His behavior is tyrannical and barbaric. How do you switch off internet and kill people in 2019? We do not support brutal dictatorship. Mnangagwa must beware of that Constantino Chiwenga, a former military General who wants to bring military dictatorship in Zimbabwe.”

But on the question of how to aid Zimbabwe, Malema had a mixed message, insofar as financing support was required at a time the xenophobia threat again looms: “South Africa must contribute to the bailout of Zimbabwe. Anyone who refuses that is dumb. If you won’t help Zimbabweans, the border will be flooded by them. Anyone who is going to block them from coming into South Africa, we’re going to fight with that person. You’re always complaining that there’re Zimbabweans here, the only way not to have them here is by helping them in their own country. Zimbabwe must be helped. Southern African Development Community countries need to come together, we need to close ranks, we must give a conditional grant dedicated to developmental programmes which will help Zimbabwe to stand on its own.” But unasked and unanswered is the question, who exactly will deliver a genuinely development programme? Certainly not the Mnangagwa-Chiwenga- Ncube regime.

On January 25, Numsa’s leader Irvin Jim issued a statement: “We salute the masses for acting with courage and for rejecting the austerity measures which have been imposed on them by the Zanu-PF government. It is clear to them that the removal of former president Robert Mugabe did not result in an improvement of their conditions… We stand in solidarity with the Zimbabwean people and the working class majority and the poor in particular. We support the demands made by workers in the public sector. We are calling on all our comrades locally, on the continent and around the globe to support Zimbabwe in its hour of need.” But again, the central question is, how to support Zimbabwe?

Another form of South African-Zimbabwean elite solidarity comes from endorsing the red herring of U.S. and European sanctions. Mnangagwa claimed to Sputnik during last week’s Moscow visit, “those sanctions were able to collapse our own currency.” The same line of argument was taken up by Mboweni, interviewed by Daily Maverick ezine’s Peter Fabricius: “Politically there were two key issues to be resolved by Zimbabwe, Mboweni said. The first was for the political leadership to work hard for the lifting of the remaining international sanctions against Zimbabwe” while the second was to re-introduce its own currency (a process at least a year away).

Consistent with Pretoria’s unwillingness to send material support to Harare, Fabricius observed, “the idea of Zimbabwe adopting the rand [South Africa’s currency] is clearly not on the table in the current discussions between the finance ministers and officials. Mboweni tweeted a news report that Ncube had said that Zimbabwe would not adopt the rand as it did not have adequate resources to do so.”

Does African advocacy against the U.S. and European sanctions against Zimbabwe’s elites make any difference? Fabricius provided a reality check: “Though South Africa and Zimbabwe’s other regional allies have often called on Western countries to lift the few remaining sanctions against Zimbabwe, these countries are reluctant to do so mainly because of political considerations. When Zimbabwean soldiers used live ammunition on Zimbabwean opposition supporters protesting against the results of the July elections, Western sources said Mnangagwa had already blown his chances of sanctions being lifted.”

Can’t borrow, either – thanks to U.S. sanctions (?)

Western sanctions against Zimbabwe’s ruling elite have essentially been limited to financial and travel bans on individuals and their closely-held firms. Trivially, the European sanctions affect only seven elites, and Mnangagwa was already removed from that list in 2016. Likewise a U.S. law – the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001 (Zidera) – specifies measures against “individuals responsible for the deliberate breakdown of the rule of law, politically motivated violence, and intimidation in Zimbabwe.” Zidera instructs the U.S. Treasury to “identify assets of those individuals held outside Zimbabwe [and] implement travel and economic sanctions against those individuals and their associates and families.” There are 141 people on the list at present, including Mugabe, Mnangagwa, Chiwenga and their cronies.

Setting aside the Zanu-PF elites’ desires to lubricate their overseas financial holdings, Zidera has other features worthy of debate, according to two critics in Zimbabwe, Tendai Murisa and Shantha Bloem. First, they write, “It also enshrined into law the US stance that funding from the likes of the IMF and World Bank could not be reinstated until the act was lifted.” But as noted, this has not been a consideration at all, given that the Bank has not been repaid its $1.3 billion in dubious Mugabe-era loans. When making his general pitch for debt relief in an article last September, Ncube did not even bother mentioning Zidera as a factor.

Second, Murisa and Bloem argue, last July, “US Congress introduced an amended version of it. Passed just days before Zimbabwe’s first ever elections without Mugabe, this renewed act included the extra demand that the vote be free and fair. It is debatable whether Zimbabwe’s 30 July elections passed that test.” In addition, Zidera was amended to support a few of Zimbabwe’s white farmers who, in a regional court, won a case for property reimbursement after their land was dispossessed more than 15 years ago.

Do Zidera’s provisions prevent Ncube from repaying arrears (nearly impossible as that appears) and then acquiring new loans from the IMF and other multilateral financiers where the U.S. has influence? Apparently not in Ncube’s view, as they were not raised even in passing, last September, in his own detailed article, “Zimbabwe’s options for sovereign debt relief.”

Indeed, Zidera has a provision that would actually help Ncube: “two sectors of financial support for the Zimbabwean economy under the imposed sanctions. 1. Bilateral debt relief: restructuring, rescheduling, or eliminating the sovereign debt of Zimbabwe held by any agency of the U.S. Government; and 2. Multilateral debt relief and other financial assistance… a review of the feasibility of restructuring, rescheduling, or eliminating the sovereign debt of Zimbabwe… as well as to instruct the U.S. executive director of international financial organizations to which the U.S. is a member to proposition financial and technical support for Zimbabwe.”

And do sanctions prevent Zimbabwe from receiving donor aid? In spite of Mugabe’s degenerate rule, since 2010 Zimbabwe has received far more Western (OECD) donor grants than it ever did prior to 2010, in the $650mn-$800mn/year range. Of that, more than a quarter comes from the U.S. From Obama to Trump there was a minor decline in 2017-18, but $194 million was given last year, mostly in the form of AIDS medicines and “strengthening private sector services.” Of course much Northern aid is a self-serving sham, remaining in multinational corporate or ‘NGO’ home-country accounts. Much of the funding that does reach Zimbabwe is hijacked by the ruling party.

A crucial question is whether such funding plus large inflows of remittances from migrant (often politically-exiled) Zimbabweans then circulates locally, relieving the cash shortage. But as you would expect from US dollars, they leak out of the country quite rapidly given this is still the global currency and can readily be slipped into socks or underpants before traveling over the border (unlike a local soft currency which typically requires capital-control vetting before it can be changed into a hard currency).

But Zimbabwe’s underlying financial dilemma is two-fold: not only its inability to pay the $5.6 billion in arrears, but whether payment is even appropriate, given how badly the lenders performed when putting Zimbabwe into debt. (This was the subject of my PhD and a 1998 book, Uneven Zimbabwe: A study of finance, development and underdevelopment.)

When repaying arrears first emerged as a possibility during the period of joint Zanu-PF/MDC rule from 2009-13, at a time foreign aid inflows soared, advocacy groups including the Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development and the African Forum on Debt and Development demanded a debt audit, a repayment moratorium and indeed full cancellation. As Reuters reported in 2009, at a time Tsvangirai was in a government of national unity with Mugabe, his minister of state Gordon Moyo “said it would be immoral for Zimbabwe to pay off its debts to the IMF, World Bank and AfDB when it could not pay teachers.”

Again in 2017, when it appeared that one of the world’s most notorious corporations, Amsterdam-based Trafigura, would lend Mugabe’s regime $1 billion (reportedly at “usurious” interest rates), Biti complained. “That will not help much or anything at all in reality. The biggest challenges facing Zimbabwe cannot and will not be addressed by paying off arrears on which we defaulted almost 20 years ago; what really needs to be addressed are structural economic issues, de-industrialization and unemployment. That money could be better used to fund industry revival to create jobs and boost production, as well as increase exports and improve liquidity.”

Indeed none of the prior arrears-repayment efforts worked, but not because they were immoral or a waste of money, but because the funding always fell through. And yet today, arrears repayment is the choice – and first priority – of neoliberal authoritarians, damn the consequences.

Where to?

Zimbabwe’s progressive forces have mainly been located in trade unions, urban civic groups, feminist and youth organizations, rural social movements and a small but impressive intelligentsia. At the time of writing, we have heard only sporadic appeals for popular solidarity, some of which were answered in once-off protests by small solidarity groups against Zimbabwe high commission offices in the main South African cities, Zambia’s capital of Lusaka, and London.

Numsa’s Irvin Jim argues for a much more ambitious political agenda: “There are major lessons to be learned in Zimbabwe, South Africa, and all over the globe. The removal of Mugabe did not solve the crisis which has paralysed the economy. Just like the removal of Jacob Zuma did nothing to improve the suffering of the working class in South Africa. Instead, conditions worsened and they continue to deteriorate. The lesson is that capitalism cannot be reformed, tweaked or improved. It is a brutal system which creates inequality and poverty. As the working class we must unite across borders, to destroy it, and replace it with a genuine democratic socialist state under the leadership and control of the working class.”

Jim is correct insofar as in various ways, Zimbabwe has served as the world’s lead canary in the capitalist-crisis coal mine for around three decades. A variety of neo-colonial strategies were deployed to displace inherited structural problems, which include 1970s-era overproduction, extreme inequality and highly-concentrated crony state-corporate relations. By the early 1990s, as assimilation of a few black elites into white capital exhausted the potential for further accumulation within a closed economy, Washington-Consensus structural adjustment was introduced. What with Zimbabwe’s small production lines due to the limited middle-class base, trade liberalization soon deindustrialized what was once Africa’s most balanced economy. Then came hyperinflationary Reserve Bank responses during the 2000s, with the second-highest price increases in modern human history (after post-war Hungary), wiping out a generation of savings and terminating the local currency.

After the turn to the US dollar from 2009, the regime more recently tried providing liquidity through a supposedly cashless society, with electronic transactions augmented by faux-currency ‘bond notes,’ which soon rapidly devalued. Thus today the crisis is unfolding with one fatal, overarching characteristic: a lack of hard currency in the system. The military men in charge are now a big part of that problem, having dominated the lucrative diamond trade with Chinese partners, followed by close relations with Trafigura when illicitly managing the supply of oil. But the systematic looting by the military, politicians and corporations under conditions of structural underdevelopment has nearly exhausted itself.

Short of displacement of this elite through a revolution, which appears a long way off on the horizon given Chiwenga’s military prowess and the troops’ continuing loyalty, the strategic options for a beleaguered human-rights and economic-justice network are limited. At the least, such strategies should bolster the popular critique of any relegitimation of Zimbabwe’s neoliberal authoritarians, such as the process South Africa’s ruling party is half-heartedly attempting.

But beyond that, the Zimbabwean masses are way overdue in regathering the spirit so evident exactly two decades ago, at the January 1999 Working People’s Convention held in a distant Harare township, Chitungwiza. While the Convention’s programme itself included social-democratic bandaids, at that point a new party was mandated to serve poor and working people’s interests. Workers built the MDC throughout 1999, although it was soon thereafter hijacked by middle-class elements, adopting what its leader Tsvangirai termed a ‘spaghetti’ ideology.

“Contrary to the vision of the Working People’s Convention, an untouchable ruling elite was formed at cost of the party detaching itself from the mass,” according to a critique by the Zimbabwe National Student Union in 2011. “The MDC, a party supposedly a movement for social democracy seems to be under a deadly and toxic siege from a capital-centered clique inspired by the ever approaching prospects of economic as well as individual political gains. These individuals some of whom have hands which can extend to reach to the party’s top leadership clandestinely steered the party into abandoning its founding documents in a rush to reach to the feeding trough with the hitherto enemy.”

Nevertheless, 1999 was a leap forward, consolidating the aching demands of a society that had already suffered nearly a decade of neoliberalism. Such front-building organization is lacking today, even if the masses’ militancy is even higher in the aftermath of the state’s recent show of force. But unity of the oppressed always lurks as a potential, and has more of a chance of re-emerging in 2019, than do the efforts of Mnangagwa-Chiwenga-Ncube have a hope of succeeding with neoliberal authoritarianism. If they continue imposing such extreme economic pain, expect more political shake-ups, as Zimbabwean capitalism continues to implode.

The Empire’s Propagandists

Kenn Orphan

With most media attention in the US on the government shutdown and border wall stand-off spectacle, the Trump administration has been quietly ramping up US militarism around the world. And it has set its sights on Venezuela, once again, by supporting a coup. Whether or not one supports the policies of Maduro or any other leader is inconsequential in this regard because, despite the empty mythos, the American Empire has never been interested in defending democracy. After all, its list of allies include fascist strongholds, a murderous medieval kingdom, a ruthless apartheid regime and several compliant, neoliberal states.

The ruling class of the US imperium will simply not tolerate any government that opposes its financial and geopolitical dominance, attempts socialism, or transfers its nexus to another powerful state entity, like Russia or China for instance. If one chooses to do so it is instantly targeted for assault either by crippling economic sanctions or embargoes, which make governance nearly impossible and primarily harms the general population, or covert subversion, or by direct and indirect military intervention. And the corporate media, when it chooses to cover these issues, generally parrots State Department and Pentagon talking points and obfuscations about the intentions of the US government, the role of corporations and global capitalism, and the character of the governments the US happens to be opposing at the time. And all of this is done with virtually no historical analysis. But of course none of this is new.

Whether it was for Reagan in Grenada or Bush Sr. in Panama or Kuwait, or Clinton in the Balkans, the American mainstream media has dutifully peddled the lies of Washington. The media cycle was drenched in the lies of the Bush administration about “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq. Despite Iraq having absolutely nothing to do with the attacks on 9/11, the corporate media did little to underscore this fact at a time when the Empire was ratcheting up the war machine. Those who questioned it often lost their jobs or were marginalized. Now that this foray resulted in the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of civilians, mass migration, and the decimation of an entire region many in the media and some politicians have looked back with selective remorse. As if that helps the dead in any way.

The corporate media came to the aid of the Obama administration when it targeted Libya, repeating stories, many unsubstantiated, about atrocities being carried out by the Gaddafi government. When Gaddafi himself was brutally murdered by a mob his death was talked about in the parlance of empire. “We came, we saw, he died,” Hillary Clinton, then Secretary of State, maniacally proclaimed in a television interview. And the media barely lifted an eyebrow of shock. On the contrary, they laughed and applauded it. Now that country, once one of the most prosperous in Africa, has become a haven for slave traders and a focal point for the migration crisis in Europe. But one would be hard pressed to find many big news stories once the US/NATO war machine has finished bombing their intended target. All the monumental failures and brutality of militarism should rationally signal its end, not only in the US but everywhere. The interests of capital, however, drive its continued expansion. And the corporate media has been its ever faithful mouthpiece.

The mendacity of a sycophantic corporate press has allowed for decades of unrestrained plunder and whole scale destruction of entire societies, regions and ecosystems. It speaks in a language sanctified by empire which, of course, cannot mention the word “empire” or “imperialism” at all. It is, after all, a media governed and guided by corporate interests and those interests are tied to some of the most lucrative industries on the planet. Business is booming, in fact, for American and multinational companies that profit from war and militarism, like Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. Other companies, like those in the fossil fuel industry and infrastructure development contracting, wait in the wings for the aftermath of each new exploit like vultures waiting to feed on carrion.

The corporate press understands how sacrosanct the military is to the elite establishment in the US. One can see this in the copious amount of “experts” on cable news that are members or former members of the US military, the CIA and other agencies of empire. No one at the top dare question how much money the military gets, this year it is slated to get at least $716 billion, or call it out as the biggest polluter on the planet and contributor to global warming. The ones who do in the mainstream are swiftly chastised or silenced.

No tears can be shed for America’s so-called “enemies” either. A hospital? A school? A wedding party? An ambulance? None of these garner the same outpouring of sympathy that just one American soldier receives. They know, too, that the culture has been conditioned into obeisance to the war industry. This is the same machine which bamboozles young men and women with scant economic or educational opportunities into “defending US interests” – code words for being cannon fodder, a term buried long ago, or mercenaries for the protection of corporate investments.

Of course militaristic jingoism is nothing new in the US. It has played well for decades at nearly every single sporting event getting slicker with more techno flash every time. With jets tearing the sky into shards over packed stadiums festooned with red, white and blue everything, crowds of disenfranchised youth are encouraged to buy into the lie that bombing impoverished and largely powerless people elsewhere to smithereens will somehow defend their homeland.

High schools and even colleges welcome recruiters often to “career day” events. The organized murder game is often their only option for employment or educational advancement. But should they return home from a deployment damaged, with PTSD or in financial straits they are generally scuttled out of the spotlight. Suicide, domestic abuse, and homelessness are skyrocketing among them, but you would hardly know that if you watch cable news or read most mainstream newspapers. True, they are occasionally trotted out onto podiums by politicians for empty patriotic accolades, but only if they are telegenic and useful for the continuation of the war machine. Should they dissent from the narrative, they are rendered invisible.

Hollywood acts as an arm to this media intoxication when it comes to the military. Watch virtually any action, sci-fi or suspense movie these days and notice how militarism is seamlessly laced through most of the plot lines. Military hardware is easily available for these productions. Soldiers are almost always cast as virtuous. And this also demonstrates the strain of pernicious authoritarianism within American culture. FBI and CIA agents, detectives, prosecutors, all of them are portrayed with an air of troubled, perhaps flawed, but intact unassailable nobility.

And this gets to the covert actions of the American Empire which are obscured or talked about in muddied terms even more. Those actions masterminded in the dark halls of the surveillance state. Whether it be supporting coups, kidnapping dissidents, targeted assassinations, or training and funding death squads, the US has a long history of destabilizing democratically elected governments or infiltrating democratic movements with subterfuge. It did this in the Democratic Republic of the Congo when it murdered its first president, Patrice Lumumba. It did so in Iran when it toppled the government of Mohammad Mosaddegh. It did it in Chile when it aided the coup against Salvador Allende. It did it in Indonesia, and El Salvador, and Honduras and so on. So there should be no doubt that it is doing it again, right now, in Venezuela.

The ones rendered expendable by the American mainstream media, who are seldom if ever spoken of, are the civilian victims of the American Empire’s endless wars, occupations and covert actions. They are ghosts that roam the sphere without glorious tombs in which to repose. No imperial-sanctioned, wreath clad monuments adorn their graves. No days of remembrance. They may have met their end in the killing fields created or fostered by the Empire thanks to a brutality paid for in full by the US taxpayer, but they are not important enough to be mentioned by the American media except maybe in passing. It is as if uttering their names might summon a spirit of vengeance from a mountain of corpses, the sediment of imperialism itself.

Of course other nations around the planet, including Russia and China, use brutal militarism as well to crush dissent. But none of them invests or spends nearly as much as the US in this regard, nor use it to the same extent. And this is what makes American imperialism the most dangerous on the planet. The business of the American Empire, after all, is war, whether it is selling weaponry to its client states who are actively engaged in genocide, occupation or repression, be it Saudi Arabia, India or Israel, or engaging in war games itself throughout Africa and Central Asia. And as the Trump administration lurches toward an even more aggressive foreign policy, and even more sanctions and threats of military actions against Venezuela or Iran or North Korea, we will be seeing a lot of the same sycophantic and a historical propaganda being pumped out by virtually every corporate media outlet. While they might loath Trump’s vulgarity and overt racism, they will never oppose his belligerent foreign policy. The enemies of the American Empire will always be vilified accordingly as the enemies of democracy because mendacious doublespeak is the official language of a media inextricably wedded to its corporate masters.