We will find out soonly

Who is the real revolutionary

I don’t want my people to be contrary

-Bob Marley, “Zimbabwe”

How the words of Bob Marley haunt the ruling circles of Zimbabwe. Some 27 years after liberation from settler rule, massive unemployment, decling infrastructure increased has lead to open challenges to the leadership of President Robert Mugabe. Mugabe, 80, is considered by many to be the last living link to Africa’s anti-colonial struggle, which has earned him the scorn of British and American imperialism. Currently Zimbabwe has been cut off from aid to the International Monetary Fund, their leadership has been subject to travel bans, while the “opposition” of Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change has been funded by funded by “human rights” groups and “groomed” for leadership.

Mugabe’s decision to redistrubute white owned land to Black farmers has earned him the respect of many on the Black-nationalist and communist left in the United States. But what is not understood is that these actions do not point to a revolutionary outlook on the part of Mugabe, but rather an attempt to defuse the anger of both the working classes (primarily the veterans of the liberation struggle) and the petty bourgeoius. In such a situation, Mugabe has been able to conduct land seizures without at all threatening the interests of Barclay’s Bank, HSBC, or the mining concerns.

Mugabe is no revolutionary hero. He is a servant of neo-colonialism, a system where there is political independence but overall economic dependency on the same system of oppression that colonialist put in. As such, Mugabe’s situtation brings to focus the unfinished character of the African revolution.Freed from colonialism, the leadership of national liberation movements stopped short of a social revolution, i.e.-socialism, where the people control the land and resources of the continent. The killing of advanced leaders like Amilcar Cabral and Chris Hani, along with the economic pressure and the outright buying of folks like Mugabe, Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki has blunted the revolutionary aspirations of a people.

Recently The World to Win News Service published an article “Zimbabwe: regime Change on the Imperialist Agenda”. While the tone is grim, the facts are clear. But beyond the question of McWorld vs. McLiberation, is a strong thrid force, the masses in Zimbabwe. Schooled by twenty years of armed struggle against colonialism alongside a strong trade union tradition, this is the force that can bring about not only a revolution in Zimbabwe, but set the set for a new liberation struggle through the southern part of the continent. This is what the rulers fear the most.

May 19th would have been Malcolm X’s (El Hajj Malik Shabazz) 82nd birthday.

These are the things I learned from Brother Malcolm:

Be the Media: Before the IMC movement, Malcolm X was a proponet of alt. media. As a writer he started Muhammed Speaks. As a Black public intelluctual in the ZTV age, he

Principle: Malcom was politcally sharp, but at the same time he understood the need to bring people together.  His ablity to stand for something while at the same time making trasparent his mistakes served as a learning tools for political organizers. Indeed, I learned from Malcolm is that people respect those who disagree with them more than people that act as “yes men.”

Style: From the conk and zoot suit to the clean cut blazers and ties, Malcolm stood for the apex of style. His post-Mecca goatee and short Afro prefigured the Black Power aesthetics of the 1960s.