Zimbabwe: internal sellout, external bail-out

8 ZIMBABWE internal sellout The 'internal settlement' reached in Rhodesia between Smith, Muzorewa, Sithole and Chirau has been universally condemned as a betrayal of the interests of the Zimbfor the past ninety years abwe people. the Zimbabwe peasants and workers have struggled against their exploitation at the hands of a ruling class in collusion with international capitalists. ernal settlement leaves all the fundamental relationships of exploitation this alliance has engendered unchallenged. On the contrary, it entrenches them under the guise of a one person one vote independent black government; a government which is neither independent nor based upon democratic representation. Amongst the provisions is that of a 100 ~ seat parliament, 20 being reserved for white candidates elected by whites only, and another 8 reserved for white candidates elected by blacks and whites, but nominated by the present white governm are to be held by I'hus 28 seats ent. and whites representing i million whites, 72 by blacks supposedly representing 62 million blacks - in short, one-black-one Behind the vote, one-white-ten-votes. simple arithmetic of this sell-out is revealed the full scale of the capitulation. entrenched privileges Several entrenched clauses constitution include of the independence the guarantee of existing properties, or immediate compensation upon expropriathese entrenched ion or nationalisation. clauses can only be altered by a 78 vote The 28 white MPs will effectmajority. However, the ively block such changes. real guarantee of these relationships for the white settler class and its cohorts is the effective continuation of the existing judiciary, police and armed forees and public service authority. It is only when this power is in the hands of the peasants and workers that independence and democracy will cone to Zimbabwe. 2. This situation will obtain for two parliaments or ten years, whichever is Thereafter, whatever chanthe longer. ges may be proposed must be ratified by The 28 a 51 vote parliamentary majority. whites need therefore only find 22 black stooges to block any constitutional changes. Such stooges abound in Chirau's ZUPO (Zimbabwe United Peoples Organisation, as well as in Muzorewa's JANC (United African National Council Counci? Sithole's Sithole! ANCS (African National 3. Although the 23 whites may noi, 190c with any ore black group for the purposes of forming a coalition goverrment, there is nothing to prevent them from forming a majority government with two or more groups! The manifest contradictand differences within and between ions the three black parties, their inherent instability and petty sectarian wranglings make them highly vulnerable to splits and thus are rich pickings for the coherent white bloc. The interim government provisions 40 include an Executive Council (Smith, Sithole, Muzorewa, Chirau) and a Ministerial Council (dual portfolios for each ministry, one white for each selected by Smith, with the three blacks each selecting one third of black minister:) Any one member of the EC can veto any decision of either council. The resulting paralysis clearly favours a status quo situation - in other words, the whole gamut of the racist state, including of course its military apparatus, continues Some 'victory', some 'indepas before. endence' for Zimbabwe! The leaked minutes of the internal settlement talks reveal the extent to which Muzorewa, Sithole and Chirau were prepared to bend over backwards to nlacate and accommodate to white fears and privileges. I'he issue of 'white confidence' dominated much of the proceedings. The reactionary, albeit ingenuous, contributions of Chirau's ZUPO, the party of the defunct tribal chiefs, are summed up in one statement: "I lee went to tell you thet the men in the bush are not ours. We may be the first to face the firing squads". Having lost their power to the colonial state, and their traditional bases to the liberation movement, these anachronisms; compromised lackeys of white rule, yet. see a way in an internal settlement to. recoup their position. Sithole, a founding father of ZANJ and armed struggle in 1963, subsequently ara revealingly outstripped by the radicalisations of that struggle, finds himself in 1978 a crisader against nationalisation, friend of foreign investors, implacable enemy of guerilla 'terrorism' and man of peace at any price. The opportunist finds himself today traitor to Zimbabwe and an agent-in-chief of neo-colonialist enterprises. Bishop luzorewa, thrown up from obscurity ro a voice of popular mass rejection of the Peerce Settlement manoeuvre of 1972, fails to comprehend the contradictions of courting and being courted by international capitalists ard his populist rhetoric about 'ending exploitation of man by man'. As chief guest at a reception held by capitalists in the US, Muzorewa clearly revealed what 'independence' Like Sithole, for Zimbabwe means to him. his encouraging assurances in statements to them regarding : ationalisation and future foreign investment defined him as :. friend of international capitalism and enemy of Zimbabwe. imperialism's response One common interpretation of British and American government responses to the internal settlement sees apparent divergence between Young and Owen, the former sticking hard by the Anglo-US settlement proposals, the latter making conciliatory noises towards the developments in Salisbury, We should however, see these . differences in imperialist responses ag tactical. The strategy of all imperialist nations towards all colomial and semicolonial national liberation struggles is coherent and united: namely, the deflection of mass militancy by the incorporation of as much of the leadership as possible into an alliance with western imperialism in their continued exploitation of those 'independent' nations in neocolonial form. Such incorporation depends on the collaboration of these petit bourgeois leaderships, their hold over the mass organisations and the strength, conerence and identity of class interests of their petit bourgeois bares. The many thousand black capitalist farmers, businessmen and professionals in Rhodesia provide such a basis, and the three parties to the internal settlement deal such leaderships. The problem for imperialism is its inab-. ility thus far to incorporate an essential component of the liberation movement, the Patriotic Front, whose guerilla campaigns have precipitated this frantic search for a negotiated settlement. Herein lies the source of the tactical differences between the UK and US - how best to achieve such incorporation. upon which the successful consummation of the neo-colonial •solution for Zimbabwe depends. The US Government sees the current internal settlement attempt as a non-starter, since it in no way guarantees the end of the war. For the UK government, the possibility of drawing Nomo into it is real. Thus the two imperialist governments have no strategic differences, just tactical ones. Whilst keeping a keen eye on the progress and possibilities of the internal settiement, Owen is colluding with Young in continuing to promote the Anglo-US proposals in an ongoing series of meetings with the Patriotie Front leaders. The logic behind such tactics is that the spurious respectability accorded the UK- US proposals by the internal settlement, the weakness of stomach for a genuine liberation struggle and the fear of being outflanked by the internal settlement, Murabe, Youns, Owen, Nkomo will ell conspire to undermine the resolve and expose the socialist rhetorio of many in the PF leaderchip . Those militants genuinely fighting for liberation will be thus isolated and dealt with appropriately by the govern ment of 'independent! Zimbabwe. The mechanism behind such a sell-out may well come in the form of a mongrel admixture of the two sets of formilae. The tacticians of Imperialism, drawing on their experiences in Vietnam, Angola, Mozambique and elsewhere, have pressurised the Smith regime into seeing the wisdom of donoeding the trappings of state power to compliant black quislings as against the military and economic propping up of the white regime in its confrontation with black nationaliem. Snith however, wishes to install a black government he himself can control in the interests of 10 Owen and maintaining white privilege. Young, from the greater vantage point of global imperialism that controls Rhodesiate economy and envisages the ultimate dispensability of the luxury of white privilege in its plans for the courtry, feel that only an incorporation of the PE guarantees the required result and gives them the whip hand. programme vital The crucial question now is how the antiimperialist struggle is to continue in the face of the internal sell-out and contiming diplomatio manoeuvres.. A crude counterposition of guerilla struggle is clearly inadequate. Guerilla struggle is a crucial tactic, but cannot on its own substitute for political intervention around a programme leading towards the revolutionary transformation of Zimbabwean society. A mass abstention by the Zimbabwean people in the internal settlement elections would carry far more weight than a mere military sabotage of such elections. Intense political agitation exposing the true nature of the collaborationist sell-out by the leaderships of the JANC, ANC (S) and ZUPO, and the nature of neo-colonialism and imperialism and centrally important debates with the masses around key programmatic points to consolidate the gains of the liberation struggle can produce such a rebuff to Smith, his stooges and imperialism. This agitational politics aims to prepare the people for the forms and exigencies of continued struggle, to concretely expose the inability, let alone the unwillingness, of the parties to the Salisbury deal to confront the problems The purely of the masses on Zimbabwe. constitutional obsessions and empty populist rhetoric of Muzorewa and Sithole and their explicit collusion in the neocolonising process offer no solution to the agrarian crisis in Zimbabwe, nor tn the crisis of living and working condi:ions of the agricultural and industrin] workers and the huge pool of unemployed. what solutions does the internal settlement propose to the disgusting living conditions of the four million black Zimbabweans crowded into barren agricultural areas and for the }million agricultural workers? They have no answer, and why? - the only real solution is the re-appropriation of the farm lands in the 'white' areas under peasants and workers onntrol, a solution wnich demands the destruction of the colonial state, not collaboration with it. democratic rights... Democratic rights must be granted inmediately to the Zimbabwe people, they must have the right to form trade unions, neighbournood committees, workers and peasants committees etc - the lessons of Angola are very instructive. • It is only by relying on their own self-organisation that the Zimbabwe people can achieve real and lasting independence. It is only on the basis of their own struggles that the power of the colonial state and its backers international cap. ital , can be broken, whether these strugg?es be trade union struggles or guerilla ones, whatever the form they may take. Muzorew, Sithole and Chirau have been in "power" now for over two months and have made much hot air on the question of political detainees. But what of the * million Zimbabweans in smith's concentration camps ('protected villages'). The immediate demand for their release Smiths military has not been made! forcibly drove these people from their farmlands and villages into these conditions because they aided the guerilla struggle, thereby posing serious threats to the regime. Do these Zimbabwean peas. ants pose a threat to the internal settlement or do the three traitors also from themselves? wish to protect them The release of these a million political prisoners whose crime has been to participate in the liberation of their country and whose struggle has catapulted the likes of Muzorewa, Sithole and Chirau into 'govern nent' must wait while these three haggle over the constitutional arrengements for their future and jostle for ministerial portfolios and the other fruits of 'independence'• Are the Zimbabweans to vote for the three stooges under the protection of barbed wire and Smith's soldiers? May the real militants of the liberation struggle freely enter these barbaric fortresses to convince the people of the fraudulence of the internal settlement and their need to continue the struggle for genuine liberation? ...suppressed Mugabe's ZANU and Nomo's ZAPU, the two wings of the PF, have been declared legal under the interim arrangements. this mean that the PF and other opponents of the sell-out may freely agitate against the internal settlement, or for demands on the transitional government, or for an abstention vote in the fraudulent elections, or for a referendum of all Zimbabweans (and not only of whites as agreed under the internal settlement) The answers have on the whole deal? Demonstrations by already been given. People's Movement Militants (the internal organisation of ZANU) have met with police On 24.4.78. a march by harassment. students from Salisbury University into the town centre to demonstrate against the settlement was forcibly blocked by police, 78 students were arrested, (demonstrations are Illegal under still operating Rhodesian laws) and given suspended prison sentences by the country's A virtually only black magistrate! total boycott of classes by the 1000 black students ensued. Muzoreva appointed Justice Minister, Hove, for more rapid Africanisation of top ministrative posts in government prodwoed his immediate sacking by the Executive Council - with the knowledge, if 11 not the collusion, of Muzorewa himself. Muzorewa's VANC is still inside the sett- And the war against the Zimbablement. Muzorewa himself wean people continues. blandly stated that Rhodesian raids against guerilla bases in neighbouring territories which in the past have caused the deaths of hundreds of refugees, will continue under the transitional government (D.I. 18.3.78). The balance sheet thus far shows clearly that Smith is very much in control with his black partners willing accomplices in his plans for Zimbabwe. Muzorewa is now on the horns of a dilsupporters' demonstrations emma, UANC outside his HE demanding the re-instatement of Hove or withdrawal from the settlement deal caught him on the hop with their size and militancy. He is now caught between two stools. Having unegrivocally renounced guerrilla war and the PF, he faces political isolation or a split in his party and base. Although Hove's demands, being essentially a reflection of petit bourgeois aspirations, were hardly an answer to the real problems of the masses of Zimbabwe, his sacking and the popular response to it highlight many of the contradictions and frauds of the demagogues of the internal settlement and the class nature of the national lib eration struggle. Muzorewa has been courted and feted and materially favoured by such multinationals as lonrho and His and other UANG Allegheny-Ludlum. officials' many assurances regarding foreign interests in Zimbabwe have made him powerful friends in the international bourgeoisie• Although his feathers are ruffled, the Bishop is not yet a dead duck. the way forward The way forward now for the continuation of the liberation struggle clearly lies in an intensification of the armed struggle together with a concerted political mobilisation of the rural population and the organisation ofthe urban workers around clear exposures of all "settlement' frauds and agents and concrete demands on living and workirg con- The A-A proposals must be seen ditions. and exposed as a more sophisticated var iant of the internal settlement betrayal. The PF leadership has consistently approached Britain as the decolonising pow the only decolonising er in Rhodesia. power is the popular power of the Zimbabwean people, the power of struggle through their own democratic organs against all forms of oppression. Ainsley Dentin