Zimbabwe masses caught between thugs and traitors

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The reactionary forces of the embattled Smith regime, aided by those of the Patriotic Front leadership, combined this last week to produce a serious setback to the liberation struggle in Zimbabwe.

As we go to press Smith has declared a poll of 64% in the elections stage-managed to provide imperialism with an excuse to make a deal over the heads of the masses with the internal' government and to increase pressure on the Patriotic Front leadership (or sections of it) to come to terms with Smith and his stooges.

The large turn-out, a blow to the Patriotic Front's propaganda claims of a massive boycott, was, ot course, ensured by factors which causes even the imperialist bourgeois press some embarrassment as it surveys the supposed 'freedom' of the elections.

State of emergency

The country is under a state of emergency, with over 90% of it' subject to martial law.

This, together with emergency regulations, a huge mobilisation of reactionary armed forces (including the private thug armies of the black members of the internal settlement'), the fact that most of the internal leaders of the Patriotic Front are in detention, and massive South African military assistance, makes the "freedom" of the elections a mockery.

Bishop Muzorewa's party has intimidated voters and candidates. of all other parties to the internal settlement.

Sithole's army has done simgaries na these mitate all kinds of brutality in their political 'canvassing'.

Serious setback

Inmates of a military training camp outside Salisbury for Muzorewa supporters and recruits admitted for example to journalists who visited them in 1978 that their mission was to "teach people how to vote".

Despite the obviousness of these intimidatory measures, there can be no doubt that the size of the vote and the welcome generally given it by imperialism indicate a serious setback, both for the Patriotic Front leadership and for the Zimbabwean masses.

Hollowness If is a setback for the leadership because it exposed the hollowness of their propaganda claims;

and for the masses because it serves to strengthen the hand of Smith and his friends in their attempts to produce a sham 'internal accord' satisfactory to imperialism.

Opportunists can now be expected to manoeuvre and slide in and out of various pacts and deals in this situation where the forces of reaction have gained a transient advantage.

Smith has always been quick to capitalize on the lack of political leadership given the masses by the Patriotic Front leadership.

Political

Now again he will make use of the results of the reșultant confusion and uncertainty among the masses -feelings fostered by the palpable failure of the Patriotic Front to fulfil their promise of disrupting the elections.

This failure was not military, but political. It was not simply the consequence of the strength of Smith's army-the Zimbabweans have shown themselves willing and eager to fight.

Above all else it came from the strategy of a petty bourgeois Patriotic Front leadership which is itself linked to the interests of imperialism-a strategy which has told the Zimbabwean masses that their goals would be-secured for them by guerrillas.

Once again masses

Smith with his Uncle Tom struggle are being made suffer the consequences of the political bankruptcy of pure guerrillaism.

It is the task of revolutionaries to take up the struggle for the exposure of the political betrayals of a leadership that is itself involved in secret diplomacy aimed at reaching an accord with imperialism, while it calls on its supporters to sacrifice their lives guerrillaist adventures.

The fight must be cabinet stooges. up by revolutionaries for the building of a Trotskyist party to provide the programmatic demands and develop the organisational forms through which to extend the struggle of the Zimbabwean people to a victory in line with their independent class intereststhe socialist revolution.

*Build the armed struggle through workers' militias as part of a programme based on the mobilisation of the oppressed masses.

*In the factories, on the farms, in the schools, build the independent organisations of the working class.

*For a Constituent Assembly linked to the dissolution of the racist, capitalist state apparatus:

*For a revolutionary programme of democratic and transitional demands. IN