[Marxism] MDC weaknesses

[Louis Proyect]

james daly wrote:
> 
> I was not "suckered" (ad hominem?) by the article. It was not about Mbeki's 
> record in South Africa, nor about Mugabe's in Zimbabwe. 

But the website that the article appeared on is straight-out Mugabe 
puffery. It includes all sorts of material from Stephen Gowans, whose 
articles on Zimbabwe discredit him. I have noticed, btw, that apologists 
for Mugabe understandably have few good things to say about him other 
than his "land reform". So support boils down to attacking the MDC and 
its Western backers. As Patrick Bond has pointed out repeatedly, there 
is a radical movement in Zimbabwe that we should be in solidarity with 
not the scum in power.

> While it and the regime overthrow in Iran are being prepared, I cannot 
> understand how a Marxism list is welcoming only to criticisms of the 
> regimes, often paid for by the aforementioned funds.

And we find it just as difficult to understand why people such as 
yourself are so appalled by information such as this that has been 
circulated here. Do you think that these are imperialist lies, like 
"weapons of mass destruction in Iraq"? Do we support destroying poor 
peoples' shacks because Kofi Annan opposes it? If so, there is no need 
for any of us to have a brain. For somebody who has written extensively 
about Marxism and morality, you seem to need a refresher course yourself.

NY Times, July 27, 2005
Zimbabwe Police Resume Drive to Raze Slums
By MICHAEL WINES

JOHANNESBURG, July 26 - The Zimbabwean police resumed a slum-demolition 
campaign on Tuesday, hours after the United Nations secretary general, 
Kofi Annan, accepted a government invitation to view firsthand the 
impact of the widely condemned program.

The campaign has already rendered at least 700,000 people homeless.

Mr. Annan's special envoy, a Tanzanian economist named Anna Kajumulo 
Tibaijuka, reported to him on Friday that the slum demolitions were a 
"disastrous venture" that had "unleashed chaos and untold human 
suffering." Mr. Annan agreed to go to Zimbabwe after its president, 
Robert G. Mugabe, had denounced the report as hostile and biased, even 
as Mr. Annan called it "profoundly distressing."

Mr. Mugabe's aides called the program an urban cleanup effort, but 
human-rights critics and political opponents said it had been directed 
at peasants who make up the core of political opposition to Mr. Mugabe's 
25-year rule.

News reports said that the resumption of the demolitions had effectively 
wiped out a suburban Harare settlement called Porta Farm, where some 
20,000 Zimbabwean peasants had lived for decades. The reports said the 
government riot police had burned homes and beaten citizens who had 
returned to the site, which had been cleared earlier this month, in an 
effort to re-establish their homesteads.

Hundreds of thousands of impoverished Zimbabweans have fled to the 
countryside or have been herded into makeshift camps after being ousted 
from their homes by the two-month-long campaign, dubbed "Operation Drive 
Out Trash" by Mr. Mugabe's government.

Mrs. Tibaijuka's unusually blunt report to Mr. Annan said that the 
forced evictions constituted "a humanitarian crisis of immense 
proportions," and demanded that "the culprits who have caused this 
man-made disaster be brought to book." Both Zimbabwe's neighbors and the 
African Union, the continentwide body charged with setting economic and 
human-rights standards, have either praised Mr. Mugabe's campaign or 
deemed it an internal matter outside their control.

South Africa, the region's dominant economic and political force, has 
largely remained silent about the campaign and global criticism of Mr. 
Mugabe's rule. President Thabo Mbeki said several days ago that his 
government was considering helping Zimbabwe pay a debt of more than $300 
million to the International Monetary Fund, which is to consider 
Zimbabwe's expulsion from the fund later this month.