Guerrillas shun 'peace' plan

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6.10, well thanks to generously anomyous Socialist Press Monthly Fund In a clear indication of the kind of "democracy" ushered into Zimbabwe by the settlement between British imperialism the Smith/Muzorewa regime and Patriotic Front leaders, Muzorewa last week called for the Patriotic Front to be banned from the coming •His pretext? That only 18,500 people, not all of them guerrillas, had heeded the treacherous appeal from their leaders to come out of the bush and effectively surrender to Rhodesian state forces.

Estimates suggest that up to 50% of the actual guerrillas remain in the bush, unconinced by the blandishments and diplomacy of their leaders Mugabe and Nkomo.

Weakness

• Muzorewa's moves against the PF clearly reflect a feeling of weakness in the run-up to the elections. A mass rally addressed by him in Salisbury on Sunday attracted a crowd far smaller than on previous occasions despite a vigorous campaign by his United African outh Park Hill, London NW5 1HI National Council.

Meanwhile the British Governor Lord Soames has dispatched Rhodesian troops to hunt down remaining PF guerrilla units in the bush. Their efforts will be assisted by 2,000 regular South African troops which British spokesmen have finally admitted are stationed inside Rhodesia at Beitbridge.

Little confidence

The success the imperialists have had in herding large numbers of Patriotic Front guerrillas into the thirty-nine collection points, provides them with little confidence.

There is no doubt that considerable sections of the most experienced and politicised guerrillas have remained in the bush with their weapons, thereby reflecting the widespread spontaneous opposition to the imperialist-imposed settlement, which in may respects is identical with the Smith/Muzorewa agreement of last year.

Workers and militants within the Patriotic Front must transform their abstention from the imperialist settlement into an aggressive strategy starting with the defence of the independent interests of the Zimbabwean working class.

While urging their comrades not to hand over their arms or move to the collection points, they must forge links with the masses by creating independent committees of the working class on the farms, in the factories, mines, townships and protected' villages.

By making the defence of the working class the first task of armed struggle, they will be able to protect the masses from intimidation and mobilise them around demands for democratic rights, the defence of living standards and the expropriation of land and capitalist holdings as the basis for a planned socialist eçonomy in Zimbabwe.

By counterposing to the imperialist elections the need for a genuine constituent assembly, with no guaranteed seats for the whites and the free oper; ation of working class parties, and by training workers' self-defence squads, they will be able to prepare the Zimbabwean working class for the inevitable struggle that will ensue after the Whatever black petty-bourgeois regime is brought to power by the elections the need to restore " capitalist profitability will bring it into violent conflict with its erstwhile supporters.

• It is thus necessary to take up the struggle now for the independent organisation and interests of the working class in order to meet that threat when it comes.

Without the mobilisation of the workers in the towns and rural areas as a class, the mass struggle will always remain the tool of the PF petty-bourgeois nationalists.