The politics of wynter kabimba: Part 2

Kabimba addressing supporters

By Munyonzwe Hamalengwa, Ph.D.

This is the continuation of the article on the Politics of Wynter Kabimba. I had introduced the examples of countries that tried to impose socialism without the prerequisite conditions of advanced capitalism that Marx and Engels had theorized were necessary for scientific socialism to succeed and the disasters that befell most of these countries. Advanced capitalism on which socialism would be built had completed the stage of primitive accumulation of capital, that is vast majorities of rural dwellers would already have been overhauled by industrialization and forced into the urban areas for cheap labour. The countryside would consist of sprawling mechanized capitalist farms, without peasant farmers. Urbanization would be brimming with advanced forms of industrialization and urban decay. They go hand in hand. In Africa, colonialism attempted primitive accumulation of capital but not for the benefit of indigenous capitalist development.  The furthest this process went in Africa is in South Africa, resulting in a domestic colonial state and apartheid. Domestic colonialism fully succeeded in the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. That is for another day.

I posited the question of what kind of socialism does Wynter  Kabimba actually have in mind in Zambia? Utopian socialism is a non-starter. Given the backward nature of the Zambian economy, scientific socialism of the Marxian pedigree is out of the question. Are the conditions ripe for him to embark on a Stalinist primitive accumulation of capital? Zambian democratic imperatives under multinational corporate ownership of the means of production would make it difficult to undertake primitive accumulation of capital at this stage. Does Kabimba have the chutzpah of a Fidel Castro to embark on Cuban-type socialism, a socialism that was forced on Cuba by American imperialism? Castro was previously  a social democrat who simply wanted a national democratic revolution and not a socialist revolution, to get ride of the Batista dictatorship and foreign control of Cuba ‘s means of production. This forced socialism was genuinely embraced by Castro and it succeeded in ensuring a modicum of socialist means of production and distribution of results of collective production and consumption.

China emulated the Stalinist internal primitive accumulation of capital with almost similar results. As a result,  China, like the Soviet Union was able to elevate their means of production to be able to compete on the world stage. Both have vast territories, enormous populations and natural resources to be able to leverage an integrated self sufficient internal economy. Zambia does not have the wherewithals of China or the former Soviet Union. It doesn’t have the forceful and charismatic leaders of the Stalin and Mao stature who had actually fought in the trenches to ground their theories into practice.

The above is the debate Wynter Kabimba has not engaged in. Nor has he engaged in the debate of why he never implemented a full constitution under his watch and whether he calls limited road construction as a yardstick of being pro-poor and socialistic. If Kabimba calmly explained to what happened in PF under his watch and precisely what kind of socialism he envisages for Zambia, he may get receptive ears rather than being a lonely voice in the wilderness.

Dr. Munyonzwe Hamalengwa teaches law at Zambian Open University.

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