Zimbabwe and Pan-African Liberation
An interview with Netfa Freeman, Director of the Social Action & Leadership
School for Activists
by Gregory Elich
Netfa Freeman is one of the more dedicated and clear thinking political
activists committed to making the world a better place. Working primarily on
issues relating to Africa and the African Diaspora, he is also an organizer
in the No War on Cuba Movement and an advocate for the anti-imperialist
cause in general.
In the West, there is a dearth of first-hand information on Zimbabwe, so
when
I learned that Netfa had recently returned from a trip to Zimbabwe, I
contacted
him and suggested an interview so that he could share his thoughts on his
trip.
He was kind enough to take time from a busy schedule to answer the following
questions.
[Q] You've just returned from Zimbabwe, where you visited the Ujamma Youth
Farming Project. Before we talk about your trip, please tell us about the
organization you head, the Social Action and Leadership School for Activists
(SALSA).
[Freeman] Yes, I am the Director of the Social Action & Leadership School
for Activists (a.k.a. SALSA), but SALSA is not an organization unto itself.
SALSA is actually a program of the larger Institute for Policy Studies
(IPS). Since 1963 IPS has sought to transform ideas into action for peace,
justice, and the environment by linking and strengthening social movements.
IPS is a Washington DC based non-profit, multi-issue think tank that has
been working with movements from the U.S. Civil Rights era onwards.
SALSA is just one of several programs/projects of IPS which was started in
1994 as successor to IPS' Washington School. I’ve been with SALSA and IPS
since 2000. SALSA is a skills training program that offers classes or
workshops in various aspects of social justice activism and organizing.
Secondly, SALSA offers free public political education forums on various
issues ranging in scope from the local DC area, to national and
international. The skills classes fall under general categories, such as
organizational development, communications, money matters, leadership and
management, techno-activism, etc. We generally refer to the forums in the
political education category as our “policy” forums. There are no confines
as to what subjects we cover in our policy forums but because the program
basically reflects my own ideological leaning, the forums tend to have a
more revolutionary regard that is more left than liberal.
Frankly, although IPS and my colleagues at IPS often refer to themselves as
liberal, I’m not a liberal. Personally I’m definitely more left than
liberals tend to be. In fact the organization I voluntarily belong to, which
better reflects my affinity for, and commitment to Africa in general and
Zimbabwe in particular is PALO, the Pan-African Liberation Organization.
Instead of a philosophy, PALO regards “pan-Africanism” as an objective,
which is the total liberation and unification of Africans on the continent
and in the Diaspora under scientific socialism. This is in line with the
practical and theoretical contributions of the late President Kwame Nkrumah.
[Q] Kwame Nkrumah’s revolutionary theory continues to be an inspiration for
the pan-African movement, and many regard Zimbabwe as the focal point of
that struggle. What are your thoughts on the role of Zimbabwe in the
pan-African movement?
[Freeman] As Africa herself must be the land base for the pan-African
Movement, it’s crucial for there to be at least one beacon of revolutionary
progress and resistance against imperialism for Africa’s people, scattered
and suffering around the world. Zimbabwe’s anti-imperialist stance makes her
that beacon. Nkrumah referred to such bases as liberated zones and urged
pan-African revolutionaries to protect our liberated zones at all costs.
This is because such zones are to serve as the launching pads of the
struggle for a Unified Socialist Africa.
Zimbabwe has a very pivotal role in this neocolonial phase of the
pan-African Movement for several reasons. Not the least of which are the
land reforms that have boldly swept the country. Nowhere on the continent
have Africans taken as radical a measure toward land reform as we have in
Zimbabwe. And not only have Zimbabwe’s land reforms been an inspiration for
people in other African states, they have gained respect in Diasporan
countries such as Venezuela and Bolivia. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez
has publicly praised Zimbabwe’s land reform process as a model he would like
to emulate in that country. Another thing that makes Zimbabwe pivotal is its
role regarding our sister states: such as aiding Mozambique against the
foreign inspired counter insurgency of RENAMO; military assistance for SWAPO
’s liberation struggle in Namibia; recently helping the Congo to secure its
borders against CIA backed incursions; and lending troops to the AU mission
to stabilize Sudan. No other African state is upholding such a cooperative
position at this time. Zimbabwe even strategically held off on its land
reforms at the request of South Africa and other Southern African states, so
not to strengthen the belligerence of white settler colonialists in those
countries. And they did this at great cost to the integrity of their own
struggle. These things are concrete expressions of pan-African cooperation.
Furthermore, President Mugabe is a leader who also publicly keeps the
inspiration of Kwame Nkrumah alive. That is, not only have all the
aforementioned things been done under the leadership of Mugabe, he also
often mentions Nkrumah and his ideals in speeches addressing other Africans.
He is not afraid to speak of socialism at a time when no other African
leader dares utter the word. President Mugabe openly condemns imperialism
with the boldness and clarity we have only come to expect from leaders such
as Fidel Castro or Hugo Chavez. That is why President Mugabe receives such
resounding applause wherever he goes on the continent of Africa or when he
speaks at UN or AU summits. No other African leader is doing what he is
doing right now, and because he is, Zimbabwe stands as an inspiration to
African people the world over. We need to see and hear such things. They
serve as political education for pan-Africanism.
[Q] You’ve put your ideals into action through, among other things, your
work with the Ujamma Youth Farming Project. Tell us about that project, and
your purpose in visiting it.
[Freeman] An integral part of any genuine social justice movement or
revolution is the empowerment of the working class, the women in society and
the youth. The Ujamma Youth Farming Project (UYFP) was established in June
2005 by a group of Zimbabwean university students who saw Zimbabwe’s land
reform as a means to empower youth. The project is an African youth-led
farming cooperative that has secured a 100-acre plot in the central city of
Gweru under the government’s A1 resettlement program and is registered under
the Ministry of Youth, Gender and Employment Creation. (1) Led by the
project’s chairman and cofounder, Kwanisai Mafa (age 32), the leadership
core of UYFP is a very socially conscious group that stands against poverty
and for the development of the African family, nation and continent toward
their fullest potential. Our mission is to empower African youth through
gainful farming initiatives so that they’re able to get the essential skills
necessary to function as lifelong productive citizens in Africa’s
development.
The first goal is to grow into an agribusiness that can eventually offer
produce to wholesalers and retail outlets in and around Midlands province in
Zimbabwe. But a longer-term goal is to establish a training program so that
youth of African descent from outside of Zimbabwe and even outside of Africa
will be able to visit, meet, train/work, and bond with their youth
counterparts on the farm. I began working with the UYFP from here in the
U.S. in August of 2005, serving as U.S. liaison to help raise mostly
pan-African support for it. Since the formation of UYFP we’ve learned that
our biggest challenge has been in mobilizing resources to kick-start the
project. So that has been my main role: to secure resources and promote the
project. While we have every intention of becoming self-sufficient, we don’t
qualify for loans from local banks and the land can’t be used as collateral
because it was acquired under the A1 village development scheme for
non-commercial farmland.
My purpose for recently visiting the project is basically to finally see
first hand what I’ve been supporting since last year and also to get first
hand experience of Zimbabwe’s political situation; the effects of U.S. and
British sanctions, etc. This, because I’ve also been working as an organizer
with PALO to expose the misinformation against Zimbabwe by Britain, the U.S.
and Western world in general. I’ve become pretty familiar with the political
situation through my own research into the things a person can glean from
historical and geopolitical context, but I wanted to also fortify that
knowledge with a physical visit to the country. As you’re well aware Greg,
there is an intense propaganda assault of misinformation and lies being
waged against Zimbabwe, and so many people only respect what someone has to
say about a place when the person has been there. So I went there, to do a
site visit of the farm and to see what else I could learn about the
political situation. Although UYFP does not refer to itself as a political
initiative, the political implications of the project are obvious to me and
that is what really motivates my work with it.
[Q] There is indeed an unrelenting propaganda campaign by Western
governments and media. You saw a good deal of the country while you were
there. As an eyewitness to the current situation in Zimbabwe, how does what
you saw compare with reports in the corporate media? I am also interested in
your assessment of the impact of Western sanctions on the nation, as well as
how well the spirit of the people is holding up under that onslaught.
[Freeman] Well, there is no short answer to that question but I’ll try. Yes,
we did see a good deal of the country, my partner and I. We were able to
travel from what’s basically the northeast of the country -- Harare -- into
the center provinces where Gweru is, further south to Bulawayo, then up
toward the northwest to the great Mosi-oa-Tunya Falls (what the settlers
renamed Victoria Falls), then back through all those areas to Harare again.
We did all this taking the people’s public transportation, buses and what
are called kombis (2).
It was a very educational and gratifying trip to say the least. Politically,
Zimbabwe is in an intriguing situation that is grossly misrepresented by the
Western World and even by too many so-called progressives, Africans alike.
As you say in your book, Greg, complexity and context are neglected in the
analysis/information that is readily available about Zimbabwe. The police
and the state news media (at least TV news) consist overwhelmingly of young
people, below the ages of 30, and many women. Now in my view, youth and
women are generally the sectors of society that are too zealous about
justice and too courageous to be in the majority in carrying out the
maintenance of a repressive state. Claims of an atmosphere of repression and
volatility that are propagated by British and U.S. media are pure lies. From
what we saw, life is relatively peaceful. The police don’t even carry guns,
as they all do in the U.S. What kind of dictator or repressive government is
it when the police don’t even carry guns? In fact, we barely saw any
uniformed police presence in the cities we visited. They were mostly on the
main roads where they had checkpoints trying to catch smugglers of currency
and foreign exchange.
The sanctions have exacerbated a shortage of foreign exchange and also, as a
result, instigated a black market in exchange of Zimbabwean currency for
foreign currency. This is reaping crippling effects on the economy, making
foreign currency that much more scarce for the government and banks, which
of course need it to conduct business in the international economy. Because
the Zimbabwean currency had become too physically cumbersome to carry and
complicated to calculate, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe introduced a new
currency while we were there that slashes three zeros from the bills. They
were phasing in this new currency while phasing out the old. The measure
wasn’t expected to reduce the hyperinflation but merely to make currency
more manageable.
Western reports regularly imply that there is repression of news media that
is not state-owned. But we saw opposition papers being sold openly on the
streets by vendors and we saw people reading them. However, more people
seemed to be reading the Herald and the Sunday Mail, the state’s papers. The
state-owned news -- TV or print -- also reports on corruption among
government officials. So the suggestions that the state’s news institutions
are less reliable simply on the grounds that they are state-run is bogus in
my view. It’s the content of the news that should be the gauge of
reliability, not just the source. We also found that people are very
distrustful of foreigners. They know that there is a propaganda assault on
their country and that people have come there for video footage and
interviews as a means to present things out of context. We had several
people urge us that when we returned to the U.S. to tell the truth about
Zimbabwe. It was disheartening to have my own African sisters and brothers
hold this level of skepticism about me but I understood it.
The effects of the illegal and immoral sanctions are evident. I refer to
sanctions as “war without guns or bloodshed.” Only the imperialist powers
have the ability to enforce sanctions and are therefore always exempt from
them. Because of this reason sanctions are always immoral. It’s a blatant
lie that the sanctions are confined to travel and financial assets of
government officials. (3) In fact maybe I should not say it’s a lie because
those imposing the sanctions publish public information that would easily
dispel such a misrepresentation. Basic needs such as gasoline have become
scarce, making it susceptible to exploitation on the black market. While the
black market offers national currency at much lower than official rates, it
offers gasoline for triple, sometimes four times, the official market price.
People need gasoline, so if they have the money, they pay it. Almost
everywhere we went there were power outages. Because the country imports
electricity the outages are a means of conserving energy. In spite of all
these things the people seemed to adjust to the challenges and for many
sanctions seem to harden them with either animosity and/or the resolve to
oppose the governments of Britain and the U.S.
The fuss over Operation Murambatsvina is another propaganda ploy. (4)
Western news hasn’t ceased mentioning the government’s demolition of
shantytowns in Zimbabwe last year. But what is always neglected is Operation
Garikai, which I’ve seen with my own eyes. (5) This noble operation is
rebuilding brand new homes for all those displaced by Operation
Murambatsvina that are of course far better than their previous homes. You
can see that construction of the homes has been interrupted by sanctions,
but why does no one even talk about it? I’ve taken video footage of them. Is
it ignorance or intentional omission? I tend to believe the latter because
when I’ve presented these facts to so-called progressives they all but
physically run from them. We cannot let the enemies of Africa and enemies of
all humanity dictate how we see the world or Africa. They’ve become very
sophisticated in how they advance their misinformation so we must become
that much more sophisticated in how we get ours.
[Q] That is beautifully put. You’ve touched on a curious aspect of a segment
of the Western Left. It rightly condemns U.S. intervention in the Middle
East, while simultaneously favoring sanctions, covert operations and war
against other manufactured enemies, such as was the case with the bombing of
Yugoslavia, or as is happening today with the economic strangulation of
Cuba, North Korea and Zimbabwe. It often seems that there are those on the
Western Left who have lost their bearing, and are thus prey to appeals to
support imperial adventures under the pretext of human rights, when in fact
other motives are at play. How does Western policy against Zimbabwe relate
to the invasion and occupation of Iraq? And finally, is there anything else
you would like to add concerning Zimbabwe or the pan-African Liberation
struggle?
[Freeman] This is a complicated question that is directly related to
ideology. On the one hand there is the class in the West that is reflected
by governments and business corporations, and which are incestuous in many
ways. We can refer to this as the capitalist class. This class has the power
to imbue society with its ideas and values, fooling much of society into
believing that they share the same economic and political interests as the
capitalist class. Then there are others in society who unwittingly adopt
those values and ideas, or else see the contradictions in them and reject
that. Many on the Western Left have chosen to adopt enough of these values
and ideas that they cannot go far enough left. They’re stuck in a middle
ground trying to reconcile things that are irreconcilable.
More simply put, Western policies against both Zimbabwe and Iraq are not
motivated by any desire to see democracy or justice for the people of those
countries. They are in fact motivated by the need to dominate and exploit
the labor and resources of those countries. Because the West is so much less
than democratic or just, exploitation is the only thing that can motivate
its policies. Yet many on the Western Left cannot accept this fact. Even
though all facts and history reveal this, they cannot accept that the ideas
and values of democracy and justice are complete hypocrisies and lies on the
part of these governments and corporations. On some level they acknowledge
the injustices of the policies but on another level they believe these are
isolated incidents or merely the result of shortsightedness. If they didn’t
believe this, then they would have to reassess their understanding of
reality in general. For example, often we hear from those among the Western
Left denouncing such things as the U.S. blockade against Cuba, saying “It’s
a failed policy”; “It has failed to bring freedom and democracy to Cuba,” as
if the policy is really to bring those things to Cuba. Moreover they would
not dare consider that Cuba is already a democracy. Even when this Left
doesn’t accept Western policies against a country, they generally do accept
some degree of demonizing propaganda, whether true or false. We can see this
with Zimbabwe, Cuba and even Venezuela to an extent.
A practical reason is that most of this Left works through non-profit
organizations or NGOs. And because most get their funding from, either their
government, a corporate foundation, or some rich individual(s) with no
interest in seriously challenging the system or world order, the West has
effectively co-opted the Left by funding its activities. They then are torn
between biting the hand that feeds them -- that is, speaking complete truth
to power -- or acquiescing to merely an acceptable level of protest against
them by speaking only select truths to power.
So more to the relationship between policies toward Zimbabwe and Iraq, you
also have varying factors at work such as the racial stereotypes and what
the people will put up with. The Arab world is effectively stereotyped as
fanatical terrorists that have irrational hatred for the West and everyone
in it. They can be bombed and outright invaded because the outcry will not
garner enough support to effectively stop it. Yugoslavia was and still is to
a large extent unknown by the masses in the U.S., so bombing that nation was
not such a big deal; especially since some of the blame can be shared with
NATO and there is no obvious racism that would upset anybody. But for Africa
it is a different story. While most Africans/Black people around the world
are politically disorganized and too imbued with Western values and ideas to
take an effective stand against Western policies toward Africa, the easiest
way to get us organized and energized around Africa would be for the West to
bomb or invade her. Somalia did not go well or last long and Zimbabwe stands
out more as a Black Liberation struggle against racist settler colonialism.
So instead they use covert operations by mercenaries and the fostering of
internal destabilization. This works because our stereotype is a bit
different from our Arab sisters and brothers. We are pegged as not being
able to get along and being naturally violent toward each other. You can see
this regarding our populations, even within the Western countries
themselves, and many of us have accepted this stereotype and self fulfill
the prophecy if you will.
So in short, policies toward all these countries are essentially the same:
to maintain Western hegemony over countries that refuse to dance to its
tune. And the dilemma of the Western Left essentially is to try protesting
against the injustices of those policies while at the same time not
upsetting the powers that be too much, or questioning their own class
privileged perceptions of reality and stereotypes. They can only appeal for
the powers that be to simply become a little less oppressive and “more
benevolent,” instead of working to organize and fight “with” (instead of
“for”) the people who are under subjugation in order to completely transform
the world order. That is, fight to dilute the dominance of the powers that
be and turn them into ordinary folk who are no longer capable of
exploitation and oppression.
The one thing I would like to add about the pan-African Movement is that
revolutionary pan-Africanism recognizes the interconnectedness of humanity.
All just people around the world must recognize the value in a United
Socialist Africa. I’d like to quote Ho Chi Minh of Vietnam who said simply,
“The Liberation of Africa is the Liberation of man.”
For further information, contact:
The Social Action and Leadership School for Activists
http://www.hotsalsa.org/
The No War On Cuba Movement
http://www.nowaroncuba.org
The Ujamma Youth Farming Project
http://ujammafarming.org/
The Pan-African Liberation Organization
panafricanlib@yahoo.com.
To make a donation to the Ujamma Youth Farming Project
http://ujammafarming.org/donate.htm
Gregory Elich is the author of Strange Liberators: Militarism, Mayhem, and
the Pursuit of Profit
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1595265708/sr=8-1/qid=1156814483/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-5343377-5198403?ie=UTF8
Notes
(1) There are two programs comprising Zimbabwe's land reform process. The A1
model is intended to create small family farms for landless peasants or
those previously farming in areas unsuitable for agriculture. The aim of the
A2 model is to create commercial farms for those who have the means to
become rapidly productive.
(2) Kombi - a mini-van bus
(3) On December 21, 2001, President Bush signed into law S. 494, the
Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001. Senator Jesse Helms of
North Carolina, the one-time supporter of apartheid Rhodesia, sponsored the
bill. The law instructed American officials in international financial
institutions to "oppose and vote against any extension by the respective
institution of any loan, credit, or guarantee to the government of
Zimbabwe," and to vote against any reduction or cancellation of debt. The
law also authorized President Bush to fund opposition media and
organizations in Zimbabwe. U.S. officials in international financial
institutions were joined by British and Western European officials in
ensuring the near-total cutoff of foreign currency flowing into Zimbabwe, a
crippling blow for a nation that had to import 100 percent of its oil and 40
percent of its electrical power supply.
(4) Operation Murambatsvina was the first phase of a program to improve
living conditions for the urban poor. In this phase, squalid slum dwellings
were torn down.
(5) Operation Garikai is the second phase of that effort, in which new homes
are being constructed for the urban poor. The intent is to provide decent
housing installed with plumbing to former slum dwellers. It is indicative of
the nature of Western reporting that much emphasis was given to Operation
Murambatsvina, while Garikai has been almost entirely ignored. Western media
thereby managed to deliberately distort the project and portray it as simply
a malevolent effort to drive people into homelessness.
