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Periodical article |
| Title: | Zimbabwe: Labour's Options within the Movement for Democratic Change |
| Author: | Dansereau, Suzanne |
| Year: | 2001 |
| Periodical: | Review of African Political Economy |
| Volume: | 28 |
| Issue: | 89 |
| Period: | September |
| Pages: | 403-414 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Zimbabwe |
| Subjects: | political parties trade unions Labor and Employment Politics and Government |
| External links: | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03056240108704548 http://ejournals.ebsco.com/direct.asp?ArticleID=4106ABB7DBF94D08E743 |
| Abstract: | This paper sets out to understand the option for labour represented by the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), a movement made up of a wide cross section of groups opposing ZANU-PFs 21-year hold on power in Zimbabwe, with key leadership coming from the labour movement. It documents labour's radicalization, moving from the shop floor into broader political action and alliance-building and eventually into a direct partisan challenge for political power in the 2000 parliamentary elections. It analyses MDC policies, finding a seemingly contradictory emphasis on participation and social democracy, alongside the proposals for a mixed economy involving international donors and investors, with a moderate State role whose objective is to create employment and alleviate poverty. These policies reflect the loose alliance making up the MDC, ranging from citizen, labour and human rights groups, with some commercial farmers and industrialists. The challenge is to maintain support from the various interests within this common front as it consolidates itself into a party, capable of putting forward a national project. This requires a struggle between competing interests, and it is labour's actions within this struggle and its outcome that will ultimately define labour's options within this new grouping. Bibliogr., sum. |