Thursday, November 19, 2009

Zimbabwe: IST digs deeper hole

From: Munyaradzi Gwisai <munyag@hotmail.com>
Date: Nov 16, 2009 1:55 PM
Subject: RE: Court Case
To: sociallabour@gmail.com
Cc: iso zim <iso.zimbabwe@gmail.com>, munya gmal gwisai gmal <munyagwisai@gmail.com>

Comrades

The NCC of ISO recently met and considered your above letter and responds as follows:

1. We reject out of hand the falsehoods, lies and insiuations in your letter and other documents you and your allies have widely circulated in relation to this dispute, including your being the legitimate ISO leadership in Zimbabwe, but which it will serve no purpose to go into detail or rebut at this stage.

2. As we informed you right from the start of this case and indeed as shown in our various offers to you to settle the matter out of court, it has never been our objective to have this matter resolved through the bourgeois courts.

3. Be that as it may, we remain willing as has always been the case, to settle this matter and welcome you finally coming to the same conclusion. We remain prepared to have this matter settled in an amicable manner that allows both organisations to proceed with their work without unneccssary distraction by this case. To that end we propose the following:

a. Jointly approaching the Harare Provincial Prosecutor, who had initially suggested this route but which you then rejected, and your confirming your willingness to have the disputed property currently in the hands of the police, being restored to our custody with yourselves reserving the right to initiate civil proceedings to assert your claim to the property, should you so wish, and our simultaneously withdrawing our complaint on such agreed settlement of the criminal matter.

b. The setting up of an arbitration tribunal made up of experienced revolutionary comrades from the region to determine on the dispute. We propose a tribunal made up from members of the IST Africa, since both organisations claim allegiance to such tendency and to ensure that we do not allow other hostile forces to take advantage of this dispute to accelerate division in the Zimbabwean left.

If you are agreeable to the above or have modifications to make please advice accordingly as soon as possible and thereafter we may arrange to effect the same, on or before the 19th November 2009, when the matter comes before court.

regards
M Gwisai
[General Co-ordinator ISO on behalf of NCC, International Socialist Organisation]

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From: ISO ZIM <sociallabour@gmail.com>
Date: Nov 18, 2009 12:34 PM
Subject: Court Case
To: munyagwisai@gmail.com, munyag@hotmail.com

Gwisai

1. We thank you for finally clarifying that the case against us is by the International Socialist Tendency and the group that it recognises in Zimbabwe, and not a case made in your individual capacity.

2. We still maintain that we are the only legitimate group of the ISOZ but such dispute cannot be resolved over the email;

3. As we indicated earlier, one of our major concerns is that the secret information of the organization is in the hands of the state and now that you, for the first time indicate that you want to settle the matter, we immediately agree that we must do anything possible to get equipment and information from the workers' movement, out of the hands of the state. Out of concern, not only for our members but also for whoever supports you and even for you yourself, we are prepared to put the assets of the organisation (ISOZ) in the custody of an independent respected comrade agreed by both parties. We reject any mention of civil claims as we do not think that the courts can decide something like this. We maintain that the dispute be resolved by an International Moral Tribune. It is none of the business of the court which forum is used, that in the settlement agreement we can merely state that the dispute over ownership be resolved within the workers movement.

4. We reject a panel of comprised of any member of the IST as not a single group has up to now publicly stated, despite acknowledgement of receipt of our concerns, that they are in principle against the use of the bourgeois courts to settle disputes in the workers movement.

5. As we are the aggrieved ones, having been charged in the bourgeois court and having spent 4 days in Mugabe's Gulag, we are the only ones who can decide who should be on the panel of the International Moral tribune. Of course, these should not be members or supporters of yourself or us, but people of impeccable moral standing in the workers's movement, who absolutely do not believe in the use of the bourgeois courts to settle disputes in the workers' movement. We will be discussing the names and be forwarding them to you so that we can discuss the practicalities so that should you wish to give evidence before it, you are most welcome to.

6.We are happy that you have finally admitted that the assets in dispute are indeed ISOZ property, not of your private law firm.

Please send a draft settlement agreement to us for our consideration. Please call us so that we can make arrangements to go together to have the case withdrawn. We are also arranging for a witness to accompany us to the office of the prosecutor so that the first part can be handled in a transparent manner.


Comrade Mutero
National Coordinator
0733295722
For the National Coordinating Committee of the International Socialist Organisation Zimbabwe (NCC -ISOZ)

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