The dire situation in Zimbabwe was highlighted by the brutal crushing by the police of a meeting held in Harare on March 11 by the opposition movement to the government.
An opposition activist, Gift Tandare was killed and Morgan Tsvangirai, a leader of one of the factions of the Movement for Democratic Change(MDC) was badly beaten up.
The meeting was called by the Save Zimbabwe Campaign(SZC), a coalition of churches, opposition parties, including the Movement for Democratic Change, trade
non-governmental organisations and student bodies.
Tension has been mounting in Zimbabwe for the past two months marked by protests and running battles with the police as shortages of food, fuel, electricity and medicine due to the economic crisis, bite deep.
Police attacks against the people have led to a spirit of defiance. In response to tear gas attacks on them, residents in Highfield, Harare, stormed a police station and shut it down for a couple of hours.
The governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, Gideon Gono, has given a parliamentary committee graphic details of the parlous state of the economy. He told the committee that the government was unable to provide adequate food supplies or maintain many basic services.
He said he received desperate calls daily from state food and petrol distributors, the national airline and the state railway and power utility, all demanding hard currency for imports. Exports
Tobacco exports, which were the nation's main hard currency earners, are forecast at one-fifth the level of production of 1999 and food output is down to one-third.
Zimbabwe's inflation is the world's highest at 1,600% per year. For the rélatively few who have jobs, the inflationary rise in fare prices makes sharing transitional government public transport unaffordable.
The life expectancy in Zimbabwe has dropped to 34 years for women and 37 years for men. There are over 3 million Zimbabweans, who have had to leave for neighbouring countries and further afield. Their families depend on the remittances they send to them for survival.
The seriousness of the economic situation underlines the failures of the neo-liberal policies the government has been pursuing since the late 80s and its implementation of the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) in 1990.
The ESAP led to cuts in public spending, currency devaluation, the liberalisation of prices and deregulation of labour relations.
These policies undid the reforms such as free schooling and health care, which the government introduced following the first democratic elections in 1980.
When after 1997 the people rose up against the effects of the ESAP, the government partially reversed the Programme through policies like price controls, subsidies The imperialist countries want to see Robert Mugabe replaced either through a putsch or by a power and refusal to devalue or privatise. Land occupations, which have occurred throughout the independence period, intensified following ESAP.
In June 2000 about 800 farms were occupied. Under mass pressure, the government was forced to implement compulsory land acquisition and mass redistribution.
By the end of 2002 it had compulsorily acquired 10 milTion hectares of land -approximately % of white commercial land - for redistribution to 127,000 peasant households and 8000 capitalist farmers.
The black elite in the government and its supporters appropriated some of the land for itself. International media networks labelled the land reforms as "land grabs" and a financial boycott of Zimbabwe followed.
The MDC and the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions(ZCTU) joined in an alliance with white commercial farmers against the land reform.
The US and Britain have imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe demanding that, before they lift these and resume aid, the government must fully implement the ESAP under IMF supervision.
They have been pinning their hope on Reserve Bank governor, Gono, who has been working on a framework to regularise bilateral investment protection agreements. He has removed levies on tobacco farmers and given cheap money to businesses in the so called productive sector support scheme. Wage freeze
In the present situation he has demanded a wage freeze in the face of skyrocketing price rises, which the ZCTU promptly rejected. Now the trade unions have called a
Zimbabwe stands at the crossroads. In one direction is imperialism, which seeks with its capitalist allies in the country, in the region and in the Southern African Development Community, to reimpose the policies of neoliberalism.
The imperialist countries want to see Robert Mugabe replaced either through a putsch in the increasingly divided governing party, Zanu-PF, or by a power sharing transitional government which includes members of the opposition. Zanu-PF recently refused to agree to extend Mugabe's presidency until 2010.
In the opposite direction stand the workers and peasantry, engaged in a struggle against the policies of neo-liberalism.
For their struggle to be successful, the organisations that represent them need to be united, a situation, which does not prevail at the moment.
The leadership of the MDU and ZU, by allying with the white farmers, has antagonised the peasants, who constitute by far the largest section of the population living in the rural areas.
Many of the peasants have supported the government because of the redistribution of the land.
They have so far failed to understand that the government's policies as a whole, which attack democratic and human rights and have led to the economic crisis, are a threat to their interests as well.
It is important that the organisations of the workers and the peasantry agree a common programme for their struggle to move forward.