Out Scheme Is Hatched

Scan page 2

As we go to press the South African cabinet is meeting to decide acceptance or otherwise of the Western proposals for a solution to the conflict in Namibia. Every indication exists that they will accept the deal.

A UN "peace keeping" force will supervise the run down of South African troops from 20,000 to 1,500 over a period of 3 months, during which a ceasefire will be in operation.

Political prisoners will be released, all racialist legislation will be repealed and electoral procedures will be established.

A four month election campaign will then be opened leading to the election of a Constituent Assembly which will draw up a constitution.

The imperialist plan allows for the continued presence of South African troops until after the elections; agrees to the restriction of SWAPO liberation forces to their bases; accepts the continued administration by South African appointed, controlled civil service and judiciary and the immediate halt to armed struggle.

The only point of disagree. ment remaining is the future of the strategically important Port of Walvis Bay.

The South African government do not want to lose control of it, while the SWAPO leadership is insisting that it be controlled by Namibia.

Whie SWAPO leaders make noises abour Walvis Bay, the actual effects of their capitulation in accepting the imperialist plan were beginning to tell.

Despite the propaganda postures adopted by SWAPO's leaders after they had capitulated, the South African author¡ties have been able to win significant successes in a campaign to register votes for elections under the imperialist plan.

They have been able to do this because with SWAPO's capitulation there are no forces within Namibia to provide the working masses with an alternative. - As Socialist Press has warned, any reliance on the front-line African states was doomed to failure.

Acting as agents ism, the SWAPO leadership and the front-line Presidents have connived with each other to produce the sell out agreement behind the backs of the Namibian masses and despite opposition from militants within SWAPO.

Meanwhile the efforts of imperialism to secure a neocolonial solution in Namibia have again forced it into a clear, open alliance with and reliance upon its key agent in the areathe South African State.

The EEC has declared its intention to 'limit' pressure on South Africa while the negotiations continue.

The greatest challenge to the struggle of the Namibian masses is now posed. A weakened imperialism is forced to rely increasingly on the treachery of the Stalinist and left nationalist regimes.

The SWAPO leadership has gone along with this treachery. As in Palestine, reliance on progressive bourgeois regimes and Stalinists is no way forward. Only an independent programme and support from the international working class can protect the Namibian masses.

Scan page 3

liberation David Whitfield traces the history of the struggle of the Eritrean people for self-determination against both the imperialist powers and a succession of repressive regimes in Ethiopia, the latest of which is now backed up by military support from Cuba and the USSR.

As the Eritrean people suffered increasing political and economical oppression at the hands of the Ethiopian feudal autocracy, so the masses began to turn to the Eritrean Liberation This produced major problems for the leadership of the ELF, for the workers and peasants began to raise demands to satisfy their needs.

Violent conflicts developed, as the bourgeois leadership sought by every possible means to restrain the popular movement within the confines of a political revolution, while this movement was pressing forward in the direction of social revolution.

This opposition reached crisis point in 1970, when the first of the major splits took place, nine years after the founding of the ELF.

The Eritrean Popular Liberation Front dates its origins from this time.

Obscure history

The leaderships of both the EPLF and of the ELF obscure the history of this period entirely, producing only hollow polemics and barren abuse.

The political character of the 1970 split (and the two further splits from the ELF in 1971) is thus far from clear.

What is certain is that two major forces were involved in the formation of the EPLFon the one hand, elements proclaiming the necessity of mobilising the masses to win the revolution; and on the other, a grouping round Osman Sabbe.

An opportunist, who had failed to win control of the ELF, Sabbe looked for political assistance towards the petty bourgeois and feudal nationalist leaders of the Arab states.

His years of dominance in the EPLF rested on the basis of the arms supplies which he could draw on from these allies.

The groupings from the three splits came together in what they termed 'united front' in 1971.

As the EPLF consolidated its forces, war developed between the two liberation fronts, and was to last for nearly three years, from February 1972 until late 1974.

Two factors were decisive in determining the ceasefire. Firstly, a certain radicalisation had taken place within the ELF; and these new layers were opposed to the internal war.

Secondly -and of course of more immediate significancethe Emperor Haile Selassie had been overthrown in Ethiopia.

This seemed to create far more favourable conditions for the liberation struggle itself. But the struggles of the Ethiopian masses were beheaded by the military dictatorship of the Derg.

Negotiations

Within this counter-revolution, Col. Mengistu shot his way to power in a coup. .

The EPLF and the ELF jointly proposed negotiations with the new rulers of Ethiopia, on the basis of recognition of the Eritreans' right to self-determination, and recogrition of the two fronts as the sole representatives of the Eritrean peopie.

Mengistu rejected these conELF guerrillas load a mortar Part Five Castro ditions as 'arrogant' and condemned the liberation armies as 'bandits'.

Massacred

The Derg made clear its determination to crush the Eritrean revolution, just as it had already massacred the leftists and working class militants within Ethiopia.

But the military dictators were not yet in a position to throw their full forces against the Eritreans.

The Derg turned its attention first to consolidating its repressive regime, and suppressing other national uprisingsabove all, the revolt led by the Western Somali Liberation Front in the Ogaden.

During 1977, both the ELF and particularly the EPLF were able • to make spectacular advances, until between them they controlled the whole of Eritrea outside the five main cities, where the Ethiopian forces were heavily besieged.

By this time the EPLF had undergone a major internal reorganisation.

Central to this process had been the expulsion in 1976 of Osman Sabbe and his narrow group of equally opportunist supporters.

Sabbe now formed the ELFPRF (Eritrean Liberation FrontPopular Revolutionary Forces) which courts US imperialism and has its closest links with the feudal tyrants of Saudi Arabia, although its headquarters is in iraq.

No base This thoroughly reactionary organisation has virtually no base within Eritrea.

With the expulsion of Sabbe, the arms supplies from the Arab states were halted, and the EPLF was forced to rely on equipment captured from the Ethiopian forces.

But events of a major international significance had also developed in this period, and were to have a critical effect on the course of the Eritrean revolution.

the leadership of Mengistu, the Derg threw its imperialist backers out of › embraces Mengistu in Havana Ethiopia, although the Zionist state of Israel still appears to be supplying the military dictatorship with arms.

The forces now called in to prop up the counter-revolutionary regime were the ruling Stalinist bureaucracies of the Soviet, Union and Cuba, along with their petty bourgeois nationalist allies in the South Yemen.

In the past, all three had repeatedly declared their verbal support for the right of the Eritreans to self-determination, and had even contributed small amounts of material aid to the liberation struggles.

The international interests of the Kremlin now dictated that they entrench themselves on the opposite side of the battle-lines.

Brezhnev Without Cuban troops and Soviet weapons, the Derg could never have carried through the brutal crushing of the revolt in the Ogaden.

There are conflicting reports as to the direct involvement of Cuban forces in the war against the EPLF and the ELF.

But it is quite obvious that the Ethiopian army could never have launched its present offensive, without the assistance of Cuban troops to suppress the renewed rising in the Ogaden, smash the other revolts south of Ethiopia and the struggles of the Tigrai Popular Liberation Front borders of Eritrea.

The present military advance of the Ethiopian state holds the threat of a major defeat and renewed colonial oppression for the Eritrean people.

It is vital that a campaign is taken up in the labour movement internationally to•defend the struggles of the Eritrean people for their right to-selfdetermination.

Criticisms

But within such a campaign it is equally our duty to advance our criticisms of the present leadership of the Eritrean masses and fight to develop a revolutionary socialist perspective and leadership for their struggles.

There is no independent proletarian party in Eritrea. The base for such a party would lie in the capital of Asmara and the ports of Massawa and Assab, all still occupied by the Ethiopian army.

Any moves by workers to organise in those cities will certainly have been suppressed with the ruthless efficiency of the Derg.

But neither the EPLF nor the ELF has a perspective of building such a party.

For all its Maoist rhetoric, the Eritrean Liberation Front is essentially a 'radical' • petty bourgeois nationalist movement of the type seen in the MPLA of Angola.

The Eritrean Popular Liberation Front is a far more complex organisation.

Claiming to be "Marxist-Leninist" , its rhetoric is indistinguishable from that of the ELF' and it is soaked through with the ideology of Stalinism.

The EPLF advances an 11 point 'National Democratic Programme', which aims 'to establish a people's democratic state' , and:

"to build a truly independent, self-reliant and massowned national economy that serves national development and social progress and advances aløng with the civilisation of progressive humanity so as to abolish all forms of exploitation and bring about prosperity for the masses of our people who have for centuries been denied humane existence"

For the EPLF, the 'national democratic revolution' must first be victorious, before the socialist revolution can begin.

Linked with that, the EPLF does not give the leading role in révolutionary struggles to the proletariat-its leadership has either rejected or developed no understanding of the theory of permanent revolution.

But the Stalinist conceptions and strategy of the EPLF are not a simple question.

No links For all its Maoist language and sympathisers, the EPLF has no links with the Chinese And far from being dependent on the Soviet bureaucracy the EPLF is a front line victim of the counter revolutionary policies pursued by that bureaucracy to defend its own privileged interests and the balance of forces with imperial:

ism.

Faced with Cuban troops and Soviet weapons the EPLF has been unable to analyse the contradictory role of Stalinism as it is being played out in Africa. (It has to be said that most organisations styling themselves "Trotskyist" have proved equally bankrupt in this, although only the Trotskyist analysis of Stalinism can provide thin undordanding)

Yet, while describing the USSR as a 'super-power" • the EPLF has not turned to imperialism for aid but has issued a principled call for international solidarity, and appealed to the Cuban and South Yemeni troops not to attack the Eritrean revolution.

It is crucial that this line is developed, especially through a major turn to the working class within Ethiopia.

Ways must be found to approach the difficult task of agitation within the peasant militias of the Ethiopian army, and in the ranks of the Cuban and South Yemeni troops.

Mengistu Somali leader Barre But such work will be of little value unless it goes alongside the development of social revolution in Eritrea.

There is conflicting information from the liberated areas as to the developments that have taken place in establishing peasant and workers councils, reforming agriculture and restoring industrial production.

We are in. no position at present to say definitively what role has been played by the EPLF in the Eritrean revolution and what role it will go on to play, although some of its strengths and more of its weaknesses are obvious.

But the workers and peasants of Eritrea must be made aware that if their leadership in the . EPLF abolishes feudalism yet restores capitalist property relations, then their struggles will be set back and their revolution betrayed.

To prevent such an eventuality a Trotskyist party as part of a reconstructed Fourth International, must be built to uphold the programme for socialist revolution in Eritrea.

CONCLUDED