[refugees and guerrillas were once again suffering an…]

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refugees and guerrillas were once again suffering an attack from Smith's (largely British) air force, David Owen in Parliament last week was reassuring the Tories that British arms would not be used in their defence.

Despite the carefully cultivated illusions being sown by Owen and Callaghan, _the arms being sent to Zambia are not primarily for Zambian defence against Rhodesia..

It is now clear that Callaghan and Owen-even before the Rhodesian raidsagreed to a major re-supply of arms to Zambia.

The raids simply provided them with a useful pretext for announcing the deal, which is aimed on the one hand at strengthening even further Kaunda's dependence on imperialism; and on the other at bolstering his image inside Zambia as an international statesman, defender of his people.

Kaunda has as little intention of using these arms against Smith as he did of using all his other heavy imperialist weaponry which has now become obsolete.

In the face of massive unemployment, food shortages and soaring inflation, opposition amongst workers and peasants and sections of the petty-bourgeoisie to Kaunda's rule has been mounting inside Zambia itself.

In the absence of a progressive alternative, much of this opposition has rallied, around Simon Kapwepwe, one-time Vice President and now right wing opponent of Kaunda.

'An aspect of Kaunda's response to this internal opposition has been to move more and more to the right.

This has meant adopting Kapwepwe's plans of much closer economic co-operation with South Africa and Rhodesia, through the rail link between the countries.

After having just publicly re-opened his border with Rhodesia in order to obtain immediate supplies of fertiliser from South Africa, Kaunda is hardly in any position to run the risk of Rhodesia cutting off those supplies.

But while Kaunda's collaboration makes it extremely difficult for him to defend Zambians and Zimbabweans against Smith, he has shown no reluctance in using his imperialist weapons to smash opposition inside Zambia.

As Socialist Press has reported, a series of santicrime raids' has. been launched by the Zambian police and army to terrorise workers-migrant workers in particular-and as the pretext for the arrest of Kaunda's opponents.

In these raids and others against internal opposition, Kaunda's police and army have not lacked for weapons from the imperialist countries.

Kaunda is now fully set on a course of frantic zigzags to retain his hold on power-all the while becoming increasingly dependant on imperialist 'aid' He rushes from meetings with the World Bank and IMF (where he has agreed on ways of making the Zambian masses pay for his crisis-stricken economy) to public rallies where he postures as the liberator of the people.

He rushes from meetings with the inperialists to