MUGABE: NO MORE "FREE MARKET": ZIMBABWE MOVES TO REDUCE FOOD PRICES
By Deirdre Griswold
October 25, 2001--The struggle of the people of Zimbabwe to win back control of their national economy from the settler descendants of British colonial rule has taken a new turn.
President Robert Mugabe announced on Oct. 15 that Zimbabwe would turn away from a free-market economy and exert state control over prices of food and other necessities to deal with a growing crisis in the country.
His government says that resistance to its efforts to seize white-owned farms for redistribution to landless Africans is what is responsible for a recent steep rise in food prices.
On Oct. 12 the government had imposed a price freeze on basic foods. When bakeries and other businesses threatened to close their doors, Mugabe replied that the government would seize any firms that shut down, withheld their goods or engaged in illegal profiteering.
"Let no one on this front expect mercy," said the president. "The state will take over any businesses that are closed. We will reorganize them with workers, and at last that socialism we wanted can start again."
Businesses that resisted, he said, could "pack up and go."
Zimbabwe is a fertile land with the resources to provide a good life for its people. But the majority are mired in poverty because a small number of rich white farmers still control 60 percent of the arable land, more than 20 years after majority rule was won from the former racist state of Rhodesia.
Winning political power from the white minority did not change the class and economic structure of Zimbabwe, however. Control over the best land and much of the country's commerce and industry remains in the hands of Europeans, at home and abroad.
Like almost every formerly colonized country in the world, Zimbabwe also has depended on loans from international banking institutions to finance its development. These banks are controlled by the imperialist countries and play a highly political role in keeping Third World countries trapped in the debt cycle, where they become a perpetual source of interest-profits for the Western capitalists.
Since Zimbabwe began the struggle for land reform, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank--whose predatory role in the world has been exposed by the anti-globalization movement--have frozen loans to the Mugabe government.
This has led to a shortage of so-called hard currency, the devaluation of Zimbabwe's money, and higher prices for imported goods. The domination of world commerce and trade by a few hard currencies--like the dollar, the euro and the yen--is another mechanism to keep economic control in the hands of the imperialist banks and corporations.
The big-money interests in Zimbabwe have taken advantage of the resulting economic turmoil to organize political opposition to Mugabe, particularly in the cities, where a cash economy prevails.
In the countryside, however, where the vast majority live, the land issue is predominant. Mugabe's strongest support appears to have come from landless rural workers. This move to freeze, and in some cases roll back, food prices will appeal also to the urban poor.
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