The past few weeks brought a spate of complaints from the left. The Young Communist League, the Communications Workers’ Union and members of the Zimbabwe Solidarity and Consultation Forum were all unhappy with various reports.
Piers Pigou, of the Zimbabwe Torture Victims Project, wrote to complain that a report, “Anti-Zim front fractures” (March 24), was “inaccurate and lazy journalism”. It dealt with a difference of opinion between the Landless People’s Movement (LPM) and two other groups who had sent a mission to Zimbabwe. The LPM supports the Zimbabwean version of land reform, the other groups don’t.
Pigou’s letter confirmed the difference of opinion, dealing with the LPM in quite scathing terms. But he argued that this does not amount to a rift in a broader grouping, the Zimbabwe Solidarity and Consultation Forum, which the three groups who went to Zimbabwe are not yet a part of.
The article can be faulted for being unclear about the different structures and groupings — admittedly, politics in this area can be complex. And perhaps it overstated the situation by turning a difference of opinion into a “fracture” involving a wider grouping.
But there’s no argument about the fact that the LPM does take a different view of Zimbabwean land reform to other groups on the left. Pigou’s letter was published (April 8), so the issue has been resolved.
Another complaint came from the Communications Workers’ Union (CWU), which was unhappy about a report that suggested the union stared dissolution in the face because of organisational difficulties and declining membership. The union wanted to know where the report came from.
The piece quoted Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi, who said a final decision on the union’s future would be taken shortly. In fact, an official Cosatu statement confirmed that he had been quoted correctly.
The union felt that the report jumped the gun by suggesting a turnaround strategy being implemented was a last-ditch effort to save the union.
The term last-ditch is often inappropriate. But in this case, when a decision to close the CWU is already being discussed, it’s hard to see how else the strategy can be described.
A final complaint came from Buti Manamela, secretary general of the Young Communist League, who was unhappy with a report dealing with the communist party debate about whether it should contest elections on its own. He was primarily unhappy with the fact that the report reflected differences within the party about the issue. “The different views expressed prior to a resolution being taken remain immaterial,” he says.
It may be convenient for parties to believe that once they take a decision, everybody realises the error of their earlier views, but the rest of us understand that life doesn’t work like that. Even on the left.
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