Introduction
I first came across the concept of ‘organic intellectuals’ in the late 1990s when it was popularised during meetings by the International Socialist Organisation (ISO) of Zimbabwe activists in reference to the rank-and-file workers’ leaders who had emerged from the class struggles against the neoliberal austerity measures of the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP).1 I found the concept intriguing, particularly the view that those without a university education could be considered intellectuals. The ISO comrades applied the term and justified its use by referencing Marxist activist and writer Antonio Gramsci. They argued that through their experiences of engaging in class struggles, those they identified as organic intellectuals could do what degree holders could not do; namely, get to know more about working-class struggles than those already regarded as intellectuals by being embedded in those struggles. Crucially, they could mobilise people through developing strategies and tactics linked to a different vision for Zimbabwe.
Two decades later, I decided to explore whether it was accurate to regard such rank-and-file workers who led the unrest of 1996 and 1997 as organic intellectuals.2 This article aims to show how the concept of an organic intellectual enables us to better understand the character of rank-and-file leadership of working-class struggles in Zimbabwe from 1995 to 2000. It also seeks to understand why these organic intellectuals were marginalised at the 1999 National Working People’s Convention (NWPC) by those from the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) who were considered middle-class intellectuals by the workers. This is important because the NWPC resulted in the formation of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) instead of an explicitly workers-based party that the organic intellectuals had called for.
Although much has been written on Zimbabwe’s economic and political struggles during the mid-to-late 1990s, there remains a gap in the literature, which has failed to recognise the key role of workers as organic intellectuals and their significant contribution to Zimbabwean politics at the end of the twentieth century. Through rereading and applying Gramsci’s work on organic intellectuals, the article argues that these events and the role of organic intellectuals in them should be re-examined. Identifying the role played by organic intellectuals, alongside that of their adversaries in the movement, can help us both to understand and learn lessons from how and why MDC emerged in place of a radical workers’ party as the main opposition to the Zimbabwe African National Union–Patriotic Front (ZANU–PF). Such an understanding can better equip class conscious workers to stave off similar defeats in the inevitable struggles that lie ahead.
The article focuses on both organic and middle-class intellectuals, the latter also referred to here as specialised intellectuals, who were at the forefront of the struggles against the ZANU-PF government’s implementation of ESAP and the state repression which accompanied its imposition. Peasants and war veterans gained prominence when they led farm invasions following the rejection of the draft constitution, which included a clause for land redistribution, in a referendum in February 2000. In contrast, the MDC condemned these invasions, advocating for a more orderly land redistribution process, a stance which was likely to have been influenced by white farmers and local businesses that had begun openly aligning with the party to safeguard their commercial interests.3
The research used a qualitative approach to data collection and interviewees were selected using purposive sampling. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews with open-ended questions were conducted with individuals identified as organic intellectuals and drawn from trade unions and those who openly called themselves socialists. Those identified as organic intellectuals emerged from their experiences and distinguished themselves with their strong class awareness and commitment to collective action. They led the resistance against ESAP policies and Robert Mugabe’s authoritarianism during the 1996–97 strikes, shaping working-class interests and enhancing class consciousness.
According to Blee and Taylor (2002, 92), semi-structured interviews are more flexible, allowing participants to express themselves in their own words rather than in the words of the researcher. This process facilitated important dialogue that generated a deeper exploration of participants’ ideas. A mixture of English and the local language, Shona, was the primary means of communication to enable participants to express themselves in the best possible way, and most interviews took place at participants’ homes.
Women worker leaders, who are often less well known but no less influential than many of the men, were sought since women’s voices are less prominent in the existing literature. Unfortunately, few were forthcoming due to a fear of the continued repression by the ZANU-PF government. Another difficulty was that during the period under review, women workers were in the agriculture, clothing and textiles sectors, which were affected by ESAP liberalisation policies, resulting in the closure of their companies. Consequently, many such women have relocated to rural areas and are untraceable.
The rest of this article is divided into four sections. The first contextualises the subsequent discussions by recalling the 1990s, when the ESAP was adopted by the ZANU-PF government, resulting in job losses and a rise in the cost of living. The second section introduces Gramsci’s concepts of organic and specialised intellectuals, describing working-class organic intellectuals as those who emerge out of experiences in class struggle and specialised intellectuals as specialists in producing knowledge for the benefit of the capitalist system.4 The third outlines the contradictory response of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) to ESAP, then analyses the strikes by workers in 1996 and 1997, and which were led by organic intellectuals. It then introduces the specialised intellectuals grouped under the NCA, whose focus was on democratic reforms. The final section provides a brief account of the 1999 NWPC, where the organic intellectuals were outmanoeuvred by the specialised intellectuals, leading to the formation of the MDC instead of a more radical workers’ party.
ESAP and its adverse effects on the working class
In 1990, the government of Zimbabwe launched ESAP to address the country’s economic woes (Mawire 2000, 241). Some African countries that had adopted state-led development after attaining independence were, in the early 1980s, forced to implement macroeconomic policies shaped by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in response to the two oil shocks of 1973 to 1975 and 1978 to 1980 (Kanyenze 2021, 86). ESAP emerged as part of a broader global trend of neoliberal economic structural reforms initiated in response to the economic crisis of the 1970s that had hit many African countries hard, and that relied on exporting raw materials to Western countries and importing oil and heavy machinery on credit from the West (Dwyer and Zeilig 2012, 34). Leaders of key capitalist countries sought to resolve the emerging economic crisis by implementing free-market neoliberal policies globally to avoid another 1930s-style economic crisis (Aye 2012, 4).
ESAP measures included reducing the size of the public sector, trade liberalisation, fiscal and monetary policy reform and currency devaluation (Dansereau 1997, 106–107). This required the government to cut spending, including reducing the size of the civil service and cutting subsidies to parastatals for social services such as health and education, reversing many of the social gains made in the early years of independence (Dansereau 2003, 32; McCandless 2011). In return, Minister of Finance Bernard Chidzero promised that the initial suffering through what he termed the ‘tightening of belts’ would eventually result in economic growth and create jobs through private sector investment and privatisation of public goods and services.
ESAP was, however, not successful, with workers bearing the brunt of its neoliberal policies (Sachikonye 2000, 200). There were massive job losses in the public and private sectors. Sachikonye (1997, 121) estimates that by 1995, 50,000 permanent workers had been retrenched. Unemployment rose to between 35% and 45%, and there was a decline in manufacturing (Dansereau 2003, 33). Price controls and government subsidies on commodities were removed, leading to the prices of essentials skyrocketing, resulting in ‘bread demonstrations’ by working-class people in the early 1990s (Chagonda 2011, 98). Kanyenze et al. (2011, 280) reveal that a Central Statistical Office of Zimbabwe study in 1998 suggested that poverty increased from 40.4% of the total population in 1990/1 to 63.3% in 1995/6. Formal employment growth declined from 2.5% between 1986 and 1990 to 1.2% between 1991 and 1996. Consequently, ‘The share of wages in the gross national income tumbled from 54 percent in 1987 to 30 percent in 1997, whilst profits increased from 47 percent to 63 percent during the same period’ (Raftopoulos 2018, 66).
Mlambo notes that:
as a result of the adverse effects of ESAP, it was sarcastically referred to as the ‘Eternal Suffering of African People’ by the masses, and in Shona, it was referred to as Ehe Satani Ari Pano meaning ‘Indeed, the devil is among us’. (Mlambo 1997, xi)
It was known in Ndebele as Ekhaya Siyahlupheka Asisafuni Puma, meaning ‘at home, we are suffering; we no longer want ESAP, get out’ ( The Financial Gazette 1994). As a result, the late 1990s witnessed a ‘defining watershed in Zimbabwe’s political economy’ as workers resisted (Matombo and Sachikonye 2010, 113). A wave of resistance by trade unions and community organisations across the country in 1996 and 1997 initially called for the abandonment or repeal of ESAP and progressed to calling for the overthrow of the Mugabe government, which had responded in an authoritarian way to the struggles.
Gramsci on traditional intellectuals and working-class organic intellectuals
Gramsci discussed the concept of organic intellectuals in the context of his characterisation of the social role of other intellectuals,5 such as traditional intellectuals, who are a historical phenomenon and can be described as organic functionaries of a class that was no longer dominant. He identified traditional intellectuals as those who had come out of a more-or-less feudal society, illustrating this with the example of the ecclesiastics who, through their role, had preserved the dominant system and monopolised religious ideology, schools and education for centuries (Q4, §49). From the late nineteenth century, Italy’s shift to manufacturing industrialised the north while the rural south remained dominated by traditional intellectuals rooted in classical philosophy and the church, influencing ideas until after World War I.
In his analysis of traditional intellectuals, Gramsci also included those who were not a historical legacy but a contemporary product of industrialisation that was dominant in the urban north, and whose intellectual function operated through esprit de corps. He gave an example of how ‘the capitalist entrepreneur develops, along with himself, the economist’ (Q4, §49). Gramsci brought these into his analysis as they served both the dominant economic system and power relations. The traditional intellectuals within the capitalist system aligned themselves with and defended the tradition that contributed to their ideas, and in the process, they became conservative in their support for the status quo (Q4, §49).
In developing the concept of organic intellectuals, Gramsci established that there is more than one rank of intellectuals organically linked to the class from which they emerge. Gramsci described ‘Moderates’ as the leading stratum of intellectuals in an organic sense, stating that: ‘the Moderate intellectuals were a real organic vanguard of the upper classes because they themselves belonged economically to the upper classes’ (Q1, §44).6 ‘They were intellectuals and political organisers, and at the same time company bosses, rich farmers or estate managers, commercial and industrial entrepreneurs, etc.’ (Q1, §44). Gramsci asserts that a class rising to become dominant in the relations of production, that constitute the structure of the economy, has corresponding intellectuals who are organically linked and enabled in the superstructure – cultural, legal and political institutions.7
Gramsci introduced the term ‘urban intellectuals’ to refer to intellectuals who had emerged because of industrialisation in the north. According to Gramsci, the urban intellectuals are, on average, very standardised, with the majority: ‘the junior army officer whose role was directing the primary stages of work, unlike the top urban intellectuals who had more authority’ (Q12, §1). The role of the standardised majority urban intellectuals is that of building relationships with the instrumental masses and, in the process, influencing their economic and political ideas (Q4, §49). Gramsci argues, however, that this is not always the case, singling out factory technicians who do not always exercise political influence over the masses and noting that the phase when they did so had been superseded (Q4, §49). On the contrary, the masses might be influenced by the working class. At this pivotal moment, Gramsci introduced the idea that the working class had its own organic intellectuals, stating that: ‘Sometimes precisely, the reverse occurs: the instrumental masses – at least, through their own organic intellectuals, exercise influence over the technicians’ (Q4, §49, in Gramsci 1996, 202).
Here the organic intellectuals are part of the working class but play a unique role within the class, with Gramsci highlighting their potential to influence the factory technicians whose main objective was not philosophical but instrumental. Gramsci did not give a precise definition of working-class organic intellectuals. Understood in a broader context of his role as a Marxist activist, it is reasonable to suggest that the working-class organic intellectuals are organisers of the workers who are rooted in the soil of exploitation and resistance of that class (Choto 2023, 186). Embedded in the struggles, they provide leadership and demonstrate their leadership skills by recognising, seizing and fusing political opportunities. This is a set of practical and inherently political organising tasks (Dwyer 2006). Gramsci reached this conclusion as a result of the heightened class struggles – the factory occupations of 1919 and 1920 – that he had witnessed when those he identified as organic intellectuals became leaders of the occupations. They are workers but are distinguished by their awareness of the class interests of the workers that are antagonistic to those of their employers and by the possibility of taking mass action that would, they believed, reduce exploitation. For instance, they may start with a limited, sectional consciousness of the conditions of workers in their own company, but through engaging in class struggle, develop a broader awareness of workers as a class and the need for collective action against the bourgeoisie.
This understanding of Gramsci’s development of the concept of organic intellectuals shows how intellectuals are formed by social groups who must undergo a more extensive and complex process to become dominant. For Gramsci, this depended on the working class forming its own organic intellectuals so that they could be better placed to conquer the traditional intellectuals. He states:
One of the most important characteristics of any group that is developing towards dominance is its struggle to assimilate and to conquer ‘ideologically’ the traditional intellectuals, but this assimilation and conquest is made quicker and more efficacious the more the group in question succeeds [in] simultaneously elaborating its own organic intellectuals. (Gramsci Q12, §1, in Gramsci 1971, 10)
Failure by the working class to develop its own organic intellectuals would allow the traditional intellectuals, supported by specialised intellectuals such as lawyers, to maintain intellectual hegemony as the dominant class.
Gramsci’s conceptualisation of specialised intellectuals
Gramsci highlights that the development of industrial capitalism in the north brought with it occupational specialisation. In formulating the role of intellectuals, he brings in the term ‘specialised intellectuals’ to refer to those who were specialists in their professions, or in a particular field and, referencing lawyers, stated: ‘from technique-as-work, one moves on to technique-as-science and to the “humanistic-historical” concept, without which one remains a “specialist” and does not become a “leader” (specialist in politics)’ (Q4, §72 in Gramsci 1996, 243). In Notebook 12 (§1), Gramsci further identifies the education system as pivotal in creating specialised intellectuals, asserting: ‘the varying distribution of different types of school (classical and professional) over the “economic” territory and the varying aspirations of different categories within these strata determine, or give form to, the creation of various branches of intellectual specialisation.’
Applying Gramsci to the working-class struggles in Zimbabwe in the late 1990s
Operationalisation and data analysis
Data analysis was informed by Gramsci’s works, with key quotes arranged chronologically to trace his evolving ideas on intellectuals. This approach facilitated an analysis that connected Gramsci’s ideas to their historical contexts, defining organic intellectuals relevant to the study period. Data were also analysed through an interpretative phenomenological lens (Medico and Santiago-Delefosse 2014), focusing on the lived experiences of organic intellectuals during the late 1990s working-class struggles, supplemented by thematic analysis and a timeline of events. Reflexivity facilitated iterative analysis, follow-up interviews and refined insights, ensuring analytical rigour. Data were inductively coded, highlighting patterns and themes while preserving the authenticity of participants’ voices and emotions. This methodology contextualised experiences within broader socio-economic and political dynamics, offering a nuanced understanding of organic intellectuals’ roles in shaping working-class struggles. The analysis characterised the organic intellectuals who emerged as individuals with strong class awareness and a commitment to collective action, leading resistance against ESAP and opposing Mugabe’s authoritarianism, thereby elevating working-class consciousness.
The making of organic intellectuals: the role of revolutionary intellectuals in Zimbabwean working-class resistance against ESAP during 1996 and 1997
When ESAP was instituted in 1991, ZCTU secretary-general Morgan Tsvangirai and president Gibson Sibanda denounced it as the ‘recolonisation of Zimbabwe’ (Yeros 2013, 222). Then, in 1992, the government amended the Labour Relations Act to deregulate labour relations in line with ESAP (Raftopoulos 2001, 8). In response, the ZCTU staged a demonstration that was crushed by the government, with five ordinary trade union members and ISO activist Ashley Fataar arrested and charged under the Law-and-Order Maintenance Act of 1960 (Raftopoulos 2001, 8).
Confronted with repression, the ZCTU bureaucracy retreated into aspirant-corporatist mode, seeking accommodation with neoliberalism (Bond 2001, 32). Tsvangirai embarked on professionalising the labour bureaucracy and, in his biography, states that by the mid 1990s the ZCTU boasted a vibrant secretariat with labour economists, lawyers, doctors, advocacy and gender experts: specialised intellectuals who had been engaged either full-time or as consultants (Tsvangirai 2011, 142). This professionalisation was part of the process through which Tsvangirai became socially separated from the workers. As he became more concerned with running a large organisation and facing government repression, he was propelled into seeking compromises with the government and capitalists. Cliff and Gluckstein (1986) describe union leaders like Tsvangirai as ‘Janus faced’, looking both to the members who elected them and paid their salaries and to the bosses with whom they reached deals:
The trade union bureaucracy is a distinct, basically conservative, social formation. Like the God Janus it presents two faces: it balances between the employers and the workers. It holds back and controls workers’ struggle, but it has a vital interest not to push the collaboration with employers and state to a point where it makes the unions completely impotent. For the official is not an independent arbitrator. (Cliff and Gluckstein 1986)
It was because of his social role as part of the bureaucracy working with the ZCTU specialised intellectuals that Tsvangirai sought compromises that avoided confrontation with the government and the capitalists and started advancing an alternative to ESAP.
Dr Godfrey Kanyenze, an economist who headed the ZCTU Economic Department, in conjunction with consultants developed an alternative, ‘Beyond ESAP: Framework for a Long-Term Development Strategy in Zimbabwe beyond the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme’. This was agreed by the general council and published in 1996. It argued for reform of neoliberal economic policies for the benefit of the working class to be achieved via a partnership linking the state, business and workers in a social contract under the auspices of the National Economic Consultative Forum (Choto 2023, 131). Even though the neoliberal market approach was proving a failure, with rapidly rising inflation eroding the value of wages, Kanyenze’s Beyond ESAP attempted to convince workers to accept reform rather than repeal of neoliberal economic policies. Gwisai (2002, 234) argues that the ZCTU, through the social contract, sought to offset the worst effects of ESAP instead of opposing them outright through strikes and protests.
Consequently, Tsvangirai and those close to him shifted to a position which saw them looking for ZCTU to enhance its influence as a mediator by brokering a partnership between the state and workers. He wrote, ‘We firmly believed that workers could benefit through social contracts, conflict management, and a coherent national vision’ (Tsvangirai 2011, 162). Alexander (2000, 387) argues that Beyond ESAP was an attempt by ZCTU to influence national economic policy by negotiating with the regime for a tripartite arrangement, as had happened in South Africa. With Beyond ESAP in place, the ZCTU leadership started to shift workers’ focus from resisting towards collaboration. Yeros highlights that ‘Whereas the May Day theme in 1991 had been “Liberalisation or Liberation”, by 1995 it had become “Progress through Co-operation, Participation, Involvement”’ (Yeros 2013, 395). Beyond ESAP advocated expanding democratic control over the economy and for the state to play a more enabling and redistributive role than that envisaged by economic liberalisation (van der Walt 1998, 85). This move by the ZCTU laid the foundations of the ideological shift towards class collaboration and compromise, which became its hallmark, and was used as a cover for accepting neoliberal economic policies. This is a clear example of how and why Kanyenze’s work should be seen as that of a specialised intellectual.
While the ZCTU bureaucracy and its specialised intellectuals were involved in the Beyond ESAP project, in 1994, significant strikes took place led by organic intellectuals such as Lovemore Matombo. The sectoral strikes started with workers in banking, followed by their counterparts in the construction and insurance sectors. Notably, 9,000 Post and Telecommunications (PTC) workers, led by their union, the Zimbabwe Post and Telecommunications Workers Union (ZPTWU), went on an eight-day strike seeking a salary increase (Dansereau 2003, 34). Matombo, identified here as an organic intellectual, became an influential leader during this strike. He was a full-time PTC employee and part of the union’s national executive leadership. In June 1994, upon realising that the government would not award the PTC workers a salary increase because of its commitment to ESAP, Matombo caucused with those he identified as radicals within union leadership for a strike. During the union leadership meeting, Matombo’s faction successfully persuaded other union leaders to call for a strike to pressure the government. Matombo recounted that after giving the government two weeks’ notice of the impending strike, the radical faction produced leaflets explaining why PTC workers should heed the strike call. He and the comrades set about mobilising for the strike by distributing strike leaflets and organising discussions with PTC workers during lunch breaks and after work (Matombo interview, 2019).
During the strike, workers convened at a central location, where Matombo became one of the main speakers. He urged workers to persist with the strike until their demands were met and advocated for the cancellation of ESAP, identifying it as the primary reason behind the government’s refusal to increase salaries. Matombo explained that his class consciousness was shaped by his earlier experiences and connections, particularly his relationships with Eastern European trade unions and academics at the University of Zimbabwe who viewed Stalin’s policies in the USSR as socialist (Matombo interview, 2019). The strike ended only after Information, Post and Telecommunications Minister David Karimanzira appeared on national television at the height of the strike, ordering the PTC to accede to all the demands put forward by the striking employees (Jazdowska and Saunders 1994, 52). Physicians also went on strike, but this led to the firing of all junior doctors (Bond 1998, 409). The strikes gained the support of both parliamentarians and the public and forced the government to back down. Dansereau (2003, 34) points out that unions learned an important lesson from the strike: industrial action was the way forward. Despite the stiff measures in the Labour Relations Act, the government had been forced to accede to worker demands, including rehiring of dismissed workers, while workers took their newfound confidence into strikes in 1996 and 1997.
However, it was the public sector strike in August 1996 that sent shock waves through the state, serving as an indication of growing worker dissent in other sectors (Raftopoulos 2020, 7). The strike was started by nurses at Chinhoyi hospital, who walked out after the government failed to pay civil servants an agreed 20% salary increase ( The Worker 1996). Junior doctors joined the strike, which soon spread nationwide and was joined by other government workers mobilised by the Public Service Association. Despite the trade union bureaucracy not supporting the strike, rank-and-file nurses became more militant (Saunders 2001, 156).
The strike’s success was made possible by the workers holding daily mass meetings to discuss strategies to strengthen and sustain the action. An ISO activist who participated in solidarity with the strike, Ashley Fataar, confirmed that they used to meet at Africa Unity Square and Harare Hospital (Fataar interview, 2020). Young doctors and some nurses emerged from the rank-and-file and formed a strike committee that led and sustained the industrial action.8 Fataar added that ‘the strike committee used to produce daily strike bulletins updating workers on the strike and in the process radicalising workers’ demands.’ In Bulawayo, doctors and nurses gathered at Mpilo Hospital and Bulawayo Central Hospital and had daily meetings. In Mutare, strikers used to meet at Meikles Park, and striking workers also met every day in other towns such as Gweru, Chinhoyi and Bindura. The meetings radicalised workers, leading to increasing political demands such as cutting the size of the government, providing adequate resources in hospitals and schools, and enacting a new harmonised labour law (Gwisai 2002, 236).
Fataar also noted that ‘Harare was the command centre of the strike, where leaflets and other materials for the strike were produced’ (Fataar interview, 2020). Strategies agreed by the workers striking in Harare were communicated to other cities and towns through phone calls. The striking government workers received support from the victorious PTC workers led by Matombo and those he influenced. Matombo outlined that after their 1994 strike victory, he organised the radicalised and confident PTC workers to give solidarity to the government workers by sending strike materials from Harare strike centres without the knowledge of their PTC bosses (Matombo interview, 2019). To end the public sector strike, the government conceded on issues to which workers already had a legal right – a 20% job evaluation agreed upon by the government in 1995 – and also a promise of no victimisation or mass dismissals of strikers (Saunders 2001, 157). The strike was significant because the single largest component of workers had united, rising against the feared Mugabe government, and scored a victory.
A rising tide of strike activity and growing militancy by workers resisting austerity measures occurred in 1997. This was also a landmark year for industrial action, with a record number of strikes, 230 (Saunders 2001, 148). Among the sectors affected by the wave of strikes in 1997 were communication, education, energy, finance, hotel and tourism, local government, mining, national printing and publishing, clothing and textiles and security (Saunders 2001, 144). The industrial action demanding wage increases took the form of demonstrations, picketing, sit-ins and go-slow activities. In most cases, the emerging organic intellectuals were more eager for industrial action than, for example, the more reluctant bureaucracies of the clothing, commercial and construction unions. Madhuku (2001, 125) has highlighted that this was made possible by the Labour Relations Act of 1992 that gave workers’ committees collective bargaining rights, which were used on occasion to wrest even greater concessions from employers in direct negotiations than those agreed with the union beforehand. Nonetheless, their far greater access to expertise and other resources meant that union representatives usually negotiated from a position of much greater strength than did their worker committee counterparts.
The strikes of 1997 are key in that they showed the organisational power and influence of the organic intellectuals, who in most cases initiated the strikes from below, bypassing union bureaucracy, which they accused of holding workers back. Such organic intellectuals challenged and rejected old ideas, taking independent positions, and – like Matombo – sometimes went against the trade union bureaucracy in advancing workers’ struggles and building solidarity for other striking workers. Another organic intellectual was Kumbirai Kudenga, a member of the National Union of Clothing Industry (NUCI) leadership. The clothing sector was one of the first to be affected, as cheap imports undermined the sector due to trade liberalisation under ESAP (Dwyer and Zeilig 2012, 183). Her recollections capture the impact of her union and political leadership:
Several clothing companies started closing in 1996 and sending workers home without retrenchment packages, with the situation getting worse in 1997. Those that were not retrenching resorted to low wages. In most cases, the union bureaucracy involved in negotiating compromised the low wages. In June 1997, I became one of those who organised industrial action against the compromised agreements. I started mobilising workers at my workplace and then during lunchtimes moved from factory to factory within the light industrial area where I worked. Outside the industrial area where I worked, we organised meetings after work, mobilising for a strike against the retrenchments and low wages. We went on a one-week strike. The union bureaucracy that was not involved in organising the strike came and tried to persuade workers to return to work, but the workers refused. Though the striking workers were harassed by the police, including being beaten, they remained steadfast to their demands. The strike ended with the industry bosses agreeing to award retrenchment packages and increase wages, but inflation soon wiped out the increase. (Kudenga interview, 2020)
Crucially, Kudenga discussed how, during the mobilisation meetings, she politicised the plight of the workers by tracing the root cause of the clothing sector’s predicament to ESAP and called for its overthrow as its policies had flooded the clothing market with cheap imports. She added that the workers wanted to remove the trade union bureaucracy but were unsuccessful as the bureaucracy had the support of the industry bosses, who started victimising the strike leadership, including her. Kudenga was suspended from work and later fired to prevent their opposition movement from further influencing workers (Kudenga interview, 2020).
Others from the full-time trade union bureaucracy also played the role of organic intellectuals, such as Collin Gwiyo, the general secretary of the Zimbabwe Banking Workers Union. Though Gwiyo was a trade union bureaucrat, he did not display bureaucratic tendencies. Gwiyo attributed this to his experiences rooted in struggles. As he became more conscious of the problems with ESAP, like Kudenga and other organic intellectuals, he became a transmitter of political ideas to the working class, simplifying ideas for them to understand and be able to contribute to the way forward. He outlined how:
My radicalism during this period was influenced by Stalinist intellectuals at the [University of Zimbabwe] Law Faculty, such as Kempton Makamure and Shadrack Gutto, who used to conduct ZCTU training in which they infused labour law with socialist ideas. During [this period] besides marrying what I had learned and experienced, I also read a lot of socialist materials on workers to broaden my awareness on workers’ issues and not just focus on my union. We gave solidarity to other striking workers, especially in 1997, the year that witnessed workers striking in almost every sector. (Gwiyo interview, 2020)
Gwiyo further highlighted that the bank workers enjoyed several benefits, such as access to housing, cars and educational loans, that were slowly being taken away by ESAP policies. The radicalised Gwiyo led bank workers to defend some of these benefits. In July 1997, bank workers went on strike demanding a wage increase of 48% to keep up with the rising cost of living. Although the union only secured a 22% increase, following the strike the union’s membership increased by 600 (Dansereau 1997, 111).
Like Kudenga and Gwiyo, other workers were also transformed into organic intellectuals through practical experience and knowledge gained in workers’ struggles. They became conscious of their social and economic conditions through their oppression and exploitation as working-class members. Paurina Mpariwa, who was part of the founding MDC executive, was among the organic intellectuals who emerged as a result of the struggles against ESAP and led the working-class resistance of the late 1990s:
I became conscious against ESAP as an ordinary worker at OK chain stores in the early 1990s. I became concerned about reducing exploitation at the workplace. When salary negotiation by union leadership failed, I became one of those who organised other workers for industrial action. The majority of OK stores employees were women and were the worst affected by the introduction of ESAP as they were easy targets for retrenchment and underpaid. I joined the Commercial Workers Union of Zimbabwe and became actively determined to overthrow ESAP. (Mpariwa interview, 2020)
Mpariwa added that she developed the need to go beyond quick reactions and develop a broader awareness of workers’ need to act as a collective, becoming concerned about having a bigger picture of events happening in the country. She started reading books on previous workers’ struggles in different countries. This helped her to formulate strategies for developing consciousness and building the confidence of female trade unionists.
Importantly, these organic intellectuals developed a broader awareness of workers as a class and recognised the need for collective action against ESAP. In an attempt to unite all workers and move beyond sectional struggles, they also mobilised workers to attend national and regional ZCTU labour forums. These forums were introduced as part of ZCTU’s improved communication with its membership, as the leadership learned from the failure of the general strike it had called in 1996 (Raftopoulos 2018, 69). Sutcliffe (2013, 6) notes that the nationwide labour forums provided a platform for workers at the grassroots level to meet and discuss their issues and play a role in union strategy. The labour forums became the most influential segment of the working class, rather than the affiliated unions, and were chaired by ZCTU regional and district chairpersons, some of whom emerged as organic intellectuals. For example, Cephas Makuyana was the ZCTU Harare District chairperson, and stated that:
As the district chair, I was employed full-time at United Bottlers and knew issues that were affecting workers, and I tactically brought them to the attention of the leadership in my chairing for them to address. The labour forums allowed us to strategise with workers collectively against the hardships of ESAP for better wages and conditions regardless of their sectors. Since the labour forums were held in central places, we also did feedback meetings in industrial areas. (Makuyana interview, 2020)
We can see how some workers developed as organic intellectuals through their organising roles in the struggles against ESAP and ZANU-PF hegemony. In this way, they can be distinguished from the mass of workers through their awareness of their distinct class interests which are antagonistic to those of their employers (Choto 2023, 186). But they can be distinguished further by their political and strategic beliefs that taking mass action would, at least, reduce exploitation and immiseration. Although they started with a limited, sectional consciousness of the conditions of workers in their own company, we have seen how they used their practical and political organising skills to shape a broader awareness of workers’ interests as a class, and the need for collective action against the bourgeoisie or its policies. Also included as organic intellectuals are those few exceptional full-time trade unionists, like Gwiyo and Matombo who, having been elected by their worker colleagues, broke with their trade union bureaucracy to continue to live alongside the workers who elected them, such that they remained knowledgeable about the latter’s preoccupations. It is these material and practical ties to their class that enabled them to remain grounded in the struggles and win the respect of other workers, and which differentiated them from other trade union bureaucrats.
Specialised intellectuals of the NCA
One of the outcomes of the struggle in this period was the formation of the NCA by those who were referred to by workers as middle-class intellectuals. These people would fit Gramsci’s concept of the specialised intellectual. While workers radicalised and engaged in mass action, specialised intellectuals initiated a parallel process, the NCA. The NCA was an umbrella body of human rights organisations, women’s organisations, lawyers and progressive individuals. ‘The main objective of the NCA was to lobby for a broad constitutional process that would reflect ordinary people’s preferences on democratic issues such as electoral law and executive presidency’ (Raftopoulos 2001, 15). In seeking to fulfil its mission, the NCA would later play a key role in the NWPC and in the process sideline the political demands of the organic intellectuals for a radical mass workers’ party. Though the NCA was formed in 1997, it was launched in January 1998 at the University of Zimbabwe, with Tsvangirai as its inaugural chairperson (Kagoro 1999, 10). Bond and Manyanya (2002, 92) state that ‘it is important to note that the NCA leadership neglected the fundamental debates over political economy.’ In doing so they diverted the workers from their initial economic demands to focus on struggles for good governance, ideas and policies hailed by the IMF and World Bank.
NWPC and the defeat of organic intellectual aspirations for a workers’ party
Led in many instances by the emerging organic intellectuals, the mass actions of 1997 gave workers confidence to raise their own independent political demands, a key one being the call for the formation of a workers’ party in 1998. According to Makuyana (interview, 2020), these calls intensified during labour forums in mid 1998, not only in Harare but also in other towns. Lucia Matibenga, women’s chairperson of the Commercial Workers Union of Zimbabwe (CWUZ), stated that workers in Midlands province called for the ZCTU leadership to lead the formation of a political party for workers (Matibenga interview, 2020). Matibenga emerged as an organic intellectual by effectively organising workers across various sectors to advocate for a living wage in Midlands province. This was particularly important in the face of escalating living costs due to the removal of price controls under ESAP. She visited companies and industries to mobilise workers from not only her union but also from other sectors in Midlands province, encouraging them to attend labour forums where experiences and strategies on wage negotiations and strike actions were shared (Matibenga interview, 2020).
As calls for the formation of a political party for workers intensified, the ZCTU national leadership gave the go-ahead to its Advocacy Department, coordinated by Timothy Kondo, to embark on a national outreach consultation process with the working class on the way forward in the political and economic crisis. This culminated in the NWPC being established, with a meeting held in February 1999, organised by the ZCTU in conjunction with civic organisations such as the NCA.
The NWPC brought together the two parallel processes: the radicalisation of, and demands from, the masses, and the functioning of the NCA, which was dominated by specialised intellectuals. ‘The Convention thus resolved to take the agreed resolutions to the people across the country and mobilise them towards a working-people’s agenda and implement a vigorous and democratic political movement for change’ (Kondo 2000, 131). This resulted in the formation of the MDC, through a resolution of the NWPC. The labour-backed MDC emerged as the first significant opposition since 1980 to the government of ZANU-PF (Raftopoulos 2001, 1). However, as Dansereau (2001, 411) states: ‘the movement is not a workers’ party, but a common front of different political and economic interests that embraced neoliberal policies.’
The MDC went on to achieve significant electoral success. In the 2000 general elections, the MDC captured 57 parliamentary seats, against 62 seats for ZANU-PF. However, in 2002 the MDC, described by Nkiwane (2002, 51) as having posed a credible challenge to ZANU-PF, was defeated in the highly contested presidential election between ZANU-PF’s Robert Mugabe and MDC candidate Morgan Tsvangirai. The defeat was an enormous setback for the working class as the party had offered them ‘hope for social change’ (Gwisai 2002, 247). The party’s defeat in the 2002 presidential election can be attributed to the increasing influence inside the MDC of those who supported neoliberalism, such as white farmers and industrialists like Eddie Cross (Bond 2001, 42), and a concurrent loss of influence by organic intellectuals.
How did this turn of events come about?
The organic intellectuals were marginalised during the national consultation process overseen by the ZCTU Advocacy Department led by Timothy Kondo. When calls for a workers’ party intensified in 1998, Tsvangirai preferred to use the Advocacy Department to test the water about the main issues that concerned workers and their support for a new party. Tsvangirai controlled the Advocacy Department, which operated as a separate project implementing the Beyond ESAP recommendations and advocating for tripartite talks. By then, Tsvangirai had convinced workers against the militant action of strikes in favour of less confrontational stay-aways as he was already involved in the elite process of NCA, emphasising constitutionalism and reforms to the second phase of ESAP, rather than it being ended as the organic intellectuals were calling for. Kondo’s consultation process was not inclusive. The national consultative meetings were held from September to December 1998 in 20 towns and involved around 400 participants, including those from civic society organisations (Kondo 2000, 48). In so doing, they sidelined the labour forums that the ZCTU had established, which were attended by hundreds of workers and were more participatory. This undermined the political influence of the organic intellectuals who had been at the centre of the forums, framing the demands on the way forward for working-class struggles.
Crucially, Kondo’s consultation process, although approved by the ZCTU leadership, lacked thorough deliberations within its own structures, sidelining radical rank-and-file members. This marginalisation weakened the organic intellectuals, who did not sufficiently organise themselves ahead of the NWPC, thereby ceding the initiative to middle-class specialised intellectuals operating through the NCA. Gwiyo – who was part of ZCTU’s highest decision-making body, the general council – said he knew that a consultation process was taking place, but he thought it was for research purposes and not the formation of a political party (Gwiyo interview, 2020). Makuyana, chairperson of the powerful Harare district, only got to know of the consultation process at the end and was never asked to mobilise workers to participate in the process, as had previously occurred (Makuyana interview, 2020).
After compiling the perspectives from the consultation process, Kondo, through the ZCTU Organising Department and with the approval of Tsvangirai, organised the NWPC of February 1999 to discuss the way forward. Even though the NWPC had an overtly political title, the ‘National Working People’s Convention’, the working people did not control the process, which was dominated by specialised intellectuals. At the NWPC, Kondo was not given the opportunity to continue overseeing the process he had started. Alongside the marginalisation of Kondo, working-class organic intellectuals who wanted the ZCTU to initiate the formation of a workers’ party were also marginalised by the NCA’s specialised intellectuals, who emphasised democracy and electoral reforms. Although workers demanded much more, the NCA’s demand was timid, leading to intense struggle between these competing interests and aspirations. Kondo stated that there were contestations at the convention, with the middle-class intellectuals taking over the process that the ZCTU had initiated (Kondo interview, 2021). According to Kondo, the middle-class (specialised) intellectuals viewed the trade unionists as lacking the knowledge and expertise necessary for strategic planning. However, Tendai Biti, a lawyer and member of the NCA leadership, refuted this, stating that, rather than being in charge, these intellectuals had been invited by the ZCTU to provide technocratic input (Biti interview, 2020).
Yet, the ZCTU advocacy report by the NWPC advocacy coordinator highlights how these specialised intellectuals controlled the convention’s agenda, presenting thematic technical papers, chairing the sessions, deciding who would speak and being rapporteurs for the discussions (Kondo 2000, 100–122). They were thus able to influence the convention deliberations and participants. Another worker leader and organic intellectual, Gift Chabatwa, who had organised and led strikes in his food industry, explained that other worker leaders like him were excited about the prospect of forming a workers’ party and went to the convention without adequately preparing to defend their position (Chabatwa interview, 2020). Consequently, the organic intellectuals took it for granted that there would be no objection to the idea of a workers’ party. Chabatwa believed that the workers’ marginalisation was also made possible by the fact that workers learn from direct experience rather than theory, and did not have a back-up plan on either electoral reform or how to remove Mugabe from power, aside from forming a workers’ party. This can be attributed to uneven class consciousness in opposition to neoliberal capitalism. At the NWPC some working-class organic intellectuals embraced electoral reforms and the possibility of reshaping policies in their favour, reflecting the working class’s subordination to the economic and political ideas of the ruling class. Draper (2012) observes that an underdeveloped working class may harbour reactionary views which persist despite ongoing struggles and which take time to overcome.
Organic intellectual Makuyana claimed that the radicalised workers wanted a workers’ party like the PT Workers’ Party in Brazil – an alliance of trade unionists and left intellectuals that developed from the working-class movement (Makuyana interview, 2020). The most politically informed sections of the working class in Zimbabwe were familiar with the PT Workers’ Party and Lula’s defeat in the presidential elections in 1998 and sympathised with him. However, the realisation of this vision was stymied by the sidelining of the Marxist ISO activists who, through their Socialist Worker newspaper, leaflets and contributions at the labour forums, had been the first to argue for workers acting on behalf of the working class to form a workers’ party. They argued against a cross-class alliance party for workers as it would be dominated by specialised intellectuals, resulting in the workers’ demands being diluted. In the event, this is exactly what happened with the MDC, where specialised intellectuals dominated and advanced their interests.
External forces such as the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) also contributed to the marginalisation of organic intellectuals. In the late 1990s, the FES played a dual role within Zimbabwe’s working-class movement, training workers from trade unions within ZCTU on labour rights and promoting reformism. The foundation’s seed funding facilitated the processes that led to the NWPC and significantly contributed to the formation of the MDC, which espoused mild social democratic principles and demonstrated a willingness to collaborate with the World Bank, even accepting aspects of the ESAP opposed by workers.
In his analysis of the role of organic intellectuals, Gramsci (2007) argued that to be effective, an intellectual must be embedded in some collective in a political party. He called the political party ‘the modern Prince’ and conceptualised that:
The modern Prince, the myth-prince, cannot be a real person, a concrete individual; it can only be an organism, a complex element of society in which the cementing of a collective will, one that is recognised and to some extent has asserted itself in action, has already begun to take shape. Historical development has already produced this organism, and it is the political party – the modern formation that contains partial collective will with a propensity to become universal and total. (Q8, §21 in Gramsci 2007, 247)
In a footnote in Prison Notebooks (Gramsci 1971, 15), Quentin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith state that Gramsci had in mind the revolutionary party – thus the broadened Communist Party of Italy. Gramsci further elaborated on the topic of the political party in Notebook 12, §1, where he asked: ‘What is the character of the political party in relation to the problem of intellectuals?’ In response, he states that: ‘the political party for some social groups is nothing other than their specific way of elaborating their own category of organic intellectuals directly in the political and philosophical field rather than in the field of productive technique.’ This seems to suggest that Gramsci was referring to a political party composed of one social class, thus either a party of the bourgeoisie or of the working class: that is, where it elaborates its own organic intellectuals in the political field rather than the economic field. Reading Gramsci’s formulations of the party and his emphasis on every social group forming its own party, it can be concluded that he envisaged that the organic intellectuals would provide the intellectual foundation for the transformation of Italy from capitalism to socialism (Choto 2023, 34).
Yet, the MDC was a far cry from the more radical working class-led party that Gramsci argued for in the form of the modern Prince and the one demanded by the Zimbabwean organic intellectuals. Though the much less radical social democratic MDC provided a platform for unification and organisation of workers in the struggles, its formation prevented organic intellectuals and their followers from influencing the direction of the struggle and, as a consequence of being marginalised, of also being less able to influence the political direction of the MDC once it was formed.
Conclusion
This article’s findings show, first, that the concept of the organic intellectual remains relevant in contemporary academic debate, as it facilitates the identification and analysis of the important role played by working-class organic intellectuals who, as in the case under review, can emerge during periods of intense class struggles and, in many cases, assume leadership in these struggles. Organic intellectuals are distinguished from other workers by their awareness and skills to organise and lead other workers and are embedded in the soil of exploitation and resistance. Consequently, the notion of political and practical organising and convincing workers of their class interests is key to the concept of organic intellectuals.
Second, the findings show that, during the period in question, there were also specialised intellectuals. The notion of specialised intellectuals appears only rarely in Gramsci’s notes. It is under-theorised and has been applied here to show the central role they played in the class struggle. In Zimbabwe, the specialised intellectuals were from the NCA, and most were lawyers and academics, with a few from other professions. Their focus was political change through constitutional reform rather than political economic transformation spearheaded by a newly formed workers’ party. Lastly, the findings highlight that at the NWPC the specialised intellectuals were able to marginalise the organic intellectuals using as their argument the need to remove ZANU-PF from power if the improvements that workers desired were ever to be realised. This resulted in the formation of the MDC, a less radical party based on cross-class alliances, in contradistinction to a workers’ party that the organic intellectuals wanted. The less radical nature of the MDC benefited local capital and businesses, whose interests were not much threatened by its moderate stance.