ZIMBABWEAN communists hit out yesterday at an official’s decision to ban a public celebration of the 98th anniversary of the Russian revolution.

Bulawayo West District Superintendent Dario Mapiye scotched the celebration, organised by the Communist Group and the Zimbabwe Communist League (ZCL), because the organisations were “not registered.”

Communist Group general secretary Ngqabutho Nicholas Mabhena and his ZCL counterpart Ian Beddowes asked why their organisations, “which are not political parties and have no agenda to stand at elections,” should be required to register in order to commemorate the event.

The planned venue, Stanley Hall, is located in Makokoba, the oldest black working-class suburb in Zimbabwe’s second city of Bulawayo, where many activities by nationalists and trade unionists took place during the colonial era.

“This action reflects the degeneration and paranoia of the Zanu (PF) government and its state machinery,” they charged.

They traced Zanu (PF) history back to the merger of two bodies — Zapu and Zanu and their armed wings Zipra and Zanla — which were armed, funded and trained ideologically by the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China.

“Further, as the red star of the Bolsheviks is a prominent feature of our beloved national flag, this ban represents in reality a desecration of our flag and the principles which that flag symbolises,” the communist leaders added.

They urged “all communist and progressive forces in Zimbabwe, on the African continent and in the world as a whole to stand in solidarity with us, the staunch upholders of the principles of scientific socialism and pan-Africanism for which our martyrs shed their blood.”