Zimbabwe sell-out looms

Scan page 2

The leaders of the Patriotic Front have successfully. negotiated the latest critical turn in their historic deal with imperialism.

Now that all sides have amicably disposed of the constitutional questions, the London talks are moving on to the remaining problems of the transitional arrangements. In accepting the Tories' proposals on the new constitution, Nkomo and Mugabe displayed once again the opportunism of their revolutionary' politics and further exposed the reality of the London talks.

Cover

Their carefully timed withdrawal from the conference and temporary refusal to agree to the imperialists' draft were a transparent cover that miserably failed to conceal the process of sell-out. Carrington himself was able to call this feeble bluff with confidence by continuing talks with the Muzorewa delegation from the Salisbury regime.

The Tories were of course fully aware of the pressures which had brought the Patriotic Front leaders to London and which dictated their actions at the conference. The governments of the 'front line states' and the Kremlin bureaucracy are united in their determination to achieve a speedy end to the war in Zimbabwe.

The effects of international economic sanctions have not been confined within Zimbabwe. They have inevitably caused serious disruption to the economies of the bordering states, and Zambia in particular.

This situation sharpens the constant fears of Kaunda and his fellow petty bourgeois nationalists that mass action will develop to challenge their 'left' regimes and pro-imperialist policies. are brought nearer to the surface with each day that Nkomo and Mugabe fail to win 'victory' by their strategy of limited guerrilla warfare.

In the past, the 'front line' presidents have eagerly assisted the Patriotic Front leaders to suppress any left opposition by imprisoning potential leaders of such a movement.

Now, as the bankruptcy of the Patriotic Front leadership becomes increasingly obvious, they havé to act more boldly to Carrington the guerrilla armies that would create the conditions for a new leadership to advance the struggle for social revolution in Zimbabwe, with inevitable consequences for their own hold on power.

No conflict But this has worked struggle for There is no conflict between this assessment and the need of the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Kremlin to gain a negotiated settlement between the Patriotic Front and the imperialists that will not disturb the volatile balance of forces in southern Africa.

Nkomo and Mugabe can offer no political alternative to weigh against these massive pressures. While the Kremlin bureaucracy has played its well-tried game of restricting the flow of arms and the provision of training to the guerrillas, the Patriotic Front leaders have connived at this continuous betrayal by holding back the greater part of the strength of the massive armies which they control.

Even within the disastrous limits of their own strategy, they have worked against the struggles to overthrow the racist Smith-Muzorewa regime.

whole strategy to divert the social revoluof the rural masses in Zimbabwe, while he agrees to the Tories' draft constitution, which protects the property • of the white settlers, in exchange for vague promises of some international imperialist fund to assist agricultural development.

Such sellouts are entirely consistent with his previous career, and they will be far from the last at this London conference.

This opportunism throws into stark contrast the need to build a principled revolutionary leadership that can resolve the crisis of Zimbabwe within the international struggles for socialist revolution.

A new, revolutionary Marxist leadership must begin with the task that has been consciously avoided by the nationalist leaders-the mobilisation of the independent strength of the proletariat through a fight for the transitional programme to win over the rural masses who labour under oppression and lead them forward in a united struggle against the forces of imperialism within and beyond the borders of Zimbabwe.

Only the building of a Trotskyist party, section of a reconstructed Fourth International can offer the oppressed masses of Zimbabwe an alternative of freedom against the betrayals today's leaders. but was freed by Mao.

He returned to his native Anhui 1968 and was recruited into the army until three years later when he returned to Peking and took part in the Movement for Democracy. On 5 December he put lup his text on the "5th modernisation" • that is democracy, which was the beginning of the revue which Yang Guang-now missing-and Lu Lin also collaborated on. They were all arrested their criticism of the invasion of Vietnam and a main article called "Democracy or new Despotism?"

All the verbiage of Hua's visit will not hide the fact that the Peking bureaucracy is facing enormous problems and that it turns to capitalism to shore it up against the Chinese working class.

THE FALL of Ecevit's bourgeois RPP government and the reluctance of the right wing Justice Party to precipitate a General Election in Turkey has brought a new lurch in the country's political crisis.

FEATURE ARTICLE NEXT WEEK

Scan page 3

- INTERNATIONAL Army takeover of university in San Salvador Shooting during riots in San Salvador