From a Marxist-Leninist perspective, the history of communist parties and revolutionary politics in Zimbabwe reflects both the potential and the betrayal of the revolutionary path. Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle was fundamentally a national democratic revolution with strong Marxist-Leninist influences, yet the promise of socialism was ultimately derailed by bourgeois nationalism and opportunism within the leadership of the ruling party.
During the colonial period under white-settler Rhodesia, the oppressed African working class and peasantry lived under brutal capitalist exploitation and racial domination. In this context, revolutionary consciousness grew, and Marxism-Leninism provided the theoretical and strategic framework for the liberation of Zimbabwe. The two main liberation movements—ZAPU, led by Joshua Nkomo, and ZANU, led by Robert Mugabe—emerged as the leading forces against imperialism. ZAPU, aligned with the Soviet Union, adhered more closely to Marxist-Leninist doctrine, promoting a scientific socialist program and receiving support from socialist countries. ZANU, on the other hand, leaned toward Maoist and guerrilla-inspired revolutionary principles, drawing support from the People’s Republic of China.
The Second Chimurenga (the armed struggle from 1966 to 1979) was a just and necessary war of national liberation. However, the rivalry between ZAPU and ZANU, influenced by the Sino-Soviet split, weakened the unity of the revolutionary movement and prevented the formation of a unified Marxist-Leninist vanguard party. Despite this, both parties mobilized the masses and armed them for revolutionary struggle, which is a fundamental task of any serious Marxist-Leninist movement. The liberation war was not just a nationalist movement but a class struggle—one that aimed to destroy colonial capitalism and establish workers’ power.
With the achievement of national independence in 1980, the historical task of transitioning from national liberation to socialist construction was immediately posed. ZANU-PF, which consolidated power through its merger with ZAPU in 1987, paid lip service to socialism but failed to carry out the revolutionary transformation of society. Rather than expropriating the bourgeoisie and establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat, the party integrated into the global capitalist system, preserved many colonial structures, and pursued a petty-bourgeois program masked with socialist rhetoric. The proclamation of socialism by Mugabe’s government was not matched by the establishment of workers’ control over production, nor was there the creation of a planned economy governed by the working class.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the contradictions of ZANU-PF’s reformist and nationalist program became increasingly clear. The turn to neoliberal structural adjustment policies under pressure from imperialist financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank marked a complete betrayal of the revolutionary cause. The working class bore the burden of these policies, while the ruling elite enriched itself. What was needed—and still is needed—is a genuine Marxist-Leninist party rooted in the working class and poor peasantry, committed to completing the socialist revolution in Zimbabwe.
In response to this betrayal, small Marxist-Leninist parties and formations have attempted to rebuild a revolutionary movement. The launch of the Zimbabwe Communist Party (ZCP) in 2017 was a step toward reasserting the Marxist-Leninist program in Zimbabwean politics. However, these organizations remain marginal due to the long-term effects of political repression, ideological confusion, and the absence of a clear, united vanguard. The road ahead requires ideological clarity, organizational discipline, and mass mobilization based on the principles of Marxism-Leninism.
Today, the need for socialist revolution in Zimbabwe remains urgent. Land reform, economic independence, and social justice cannot be achieved within the framework of capitalist exploitation and neo-colonial dependency. Only through the reconstitution of a true Marxist-Leninist party, one that unites workers, peasants, and revolutionary intellectuals under the banner of proletarian internationalism, can Zimbabwe complete the revolutionary path it began during the liberation struggle.