Zimbabwe: the saga of 'detente', the play for time

the saga of detente, 14 ZIMBABWE Tne unfolding saga of 'detente' in southern Africa took another step forward on 25 August. An enormous international fanfare of publicity greeted the opening of the Victoria Falls Conference on Rnodesia. The talks were neld in a luxury railway coach lent for the occasion by South Africa railways and parkeu 400 feet above tie Zambezi river at the centre of the bridge linking Zambia and Rhodesia. Tne wiole affair was stage managed from beginning to end by the two men who had set up the talks. - Kaunda of Zambia and Vorster of the Republic of South Africa. Indeed the fact that tine talks took place at all was a result of the pressure which they had exerted upon their respective clients. The participation of the Rhodesian government was secured only through Vorster's blackmail. Earlier this month Smith was summoned to Pretoria and returned • after a few days with a new line on the long postponed constitutional conference. For eight months since the Lusaka agreement of December 1974 he had declared that such an event could not take place except that it was held in his capital of Salisbury and was preceded by a total ceasefire on the partiof national guerillas. In Pretoria he was told to drop these terms. Vorster backed up his position by announcing the total withdrawal of the more than 2,000 South African policemen' (antiguerilla specialists) who had been stationed in Rhodesia since 1967, playing a key role in anti-freedom fighter operations. In vain attempts to play to 'Verkrampte'l sentiment inside South Africa the move was justified as being made because the danger which they had been sent to combat no longer existed. (The original justific. ation for their presence was the combined ANC-ZAPU operations launched with the professed aim of infiltrating into South Africa itself). Nobody was deceived by the explanation for a move which was clearly a transparent attempt to put pressure on Smith to open negotiations. The need for Smith to play up to Vorster at this time was rendered more urgent by the independence of Mozambique. Certainly, despite the protestations of FRELIMO's leadership before June 25th that it would "carry out its international öbligations' over Rhodesia, the main part of the latter's trade continues to flow unimpeded along the railway from Umtali to the port of Beira. But there is an ever present threat that with the total breakdown of the present negotiations this link could be cut, throwing the entire weight and volume of Rhodesia's trade upon South Africa's already overburdened railway and ports systems. But above all determining Smith's reversal of lis position was his appreciation that the status of the the play for time... Taking a tip from the south? 300.000 strong whie minority in Rhodesia has been changed overnight by the 1974 reversal of Portuguese colonial policy. Confronted with the certainty of black governments in Mozambique and Angola the previous South African policy for the creation of buffer states around the white 'laager' was rendered totally inoperable. From that time onwards Rhodesia became an expensive and embarassing irrelevance to South Africa. The longer that there was no 'settlement? in that country: the longer that its black population were denied elementary democratic rights, the more likely it was that their their struggle would have a contagious effect upon ine black population of South Africa itself. This above all is the threat lurking in the background which determines Vorster's present strategy. But if Vorster was the most important influence in forcing Smith's attendance at Victoria Falls, an equal part in setting up the conference must be ascribed to the Zambian government. The latter, despite its formal commitment to the elimination of the white supremacist regimes has had over the whole period since its independence an ambiguous attitude towards the struggles of the population of these areas. Above all this is determined by the fact that supposedly 'non capitalist' and "humanist' Zambia remains in fact an integral part of the capitalist system. At the moment its very stability. is threatened through the effects of the world wide recession of that economy (see page. ). Most recently problems have been multiplied further by the events in Angola which have effectively closed the port of Lobitu and the Beguela railway which in the recent past have been Zambia's most important avenue for imports and exports. Although it could not in any way solve the fundamental. problems which face the totally imbalanced economy of Zambia, a Rhodesian 'settlement' could provide a much needed breathing space of which the crucial components are three: (i) A 'settlement' in Rhodesia would provide the long awaited opportunity to reopen the Beira rail link - Zambia's shortest route to the sea. (ii) The success of the 'detente' exercise would mean the possibility of a full reopening of trade links with South Africa which would bring a big flood of essential goods at cheaper rates than they are currently being obtained from further afield. (iii) In a more long term sense the Zambian government has a deep rooted and thoroughly justifiable fear of the implications for itself of the outbreak of full scale revolutionary struggle by the black masses of southern Africa - especially within South Africa itself. Because of the deep involvement of imperialism in that area it knows that such struggles cannot avoid being anti-capitalist in content from the word go. To that extent their outbreak would be as much a threat to ihe surrounding neo-colonialist regimes as it would to the structure of the apartheid state itself: accomplice It is therefore no accident that Kaunda was the second principal accomplice in giving birth to the Victoria Falls conference. Zambia's attempts to find a 'settlement' of the Rhodesian "problem' date back at least a year. They reached an initial climax in the Lusaka talks held in early December 1974 where representatives of the Smith regime supposedly agreed to a constitutional conference with the Rhodesian nationalists. Since then the preparations for a 'settlement' have continued on the part of the Zambian government. Immediately after the conference in December Zambian intervention supported by Nyerere of Tanzania and Khama of Botswana, was central in securing the formation of a fusion of the four existing nationalist movements under the wing of Muzorewa's ANC (African National Council), the most reformist of all and the only one not hitherto committed to armed struggle. These 'friendly' leaders' ability to impose such a settlement rested essentially on their wielding the threat of total withdrawal of any form of support or bases from the guerilla movements. Since then a series of actions have been taken by the Zambian government to demobilise the effective military wing of the Zimbabwean resistance. Most notable in this respect was the arrest in Apirl (using the excuse of the murder of ZANU chairman Herbert Chitepo) of more than 60 leading militants of the most effective wing of the armed liberation movement. Fortunately the dynamic of the struggle inside Rhodesia itself appears to have continued unabated. The guerillas active in the North East have scored periodic successes right up to the present time against the Smith forces, despite the effective end of sustenance from what had previously been their key supply base. Their etfectiveness is testified to by the increasingly urgent fashion in which Smith has been talking of the prosecution of the struggle in the "war zone' . Especially indicative of their impact have been the mass desertions by hundreds of secondary students from boarding schools in the area to join the guerillas. Against the background of this developing dynamic, the continual stress of the Zambian government on the need for negotiation and the jetting about the world en- 15 gaged in by Muzorewa were wearing just a little thin. In Lusaka in December it had been stated that Smith was being given three months to come up with an acceptable formula for a constitutional conference on the transition to majority rule. After nine months it was essential some results would be shown at the Victoria Falls "indaba'2 Needless to say the Zambian media had a field day in the build up period to the conference. 13 August saw its formal announcement, accompanied by the revealing statement that 'the governments of South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia have expressed their willingness to ensure that this agreement is implemented by the two parties concerned' prayers For ten days the Zambian population was barraged with press comment which referred to the impending "breakthrough', the 'historic nature? of the settlement to be made, the 'dramatic setting' for the talks etc Even before they had taken place they were described as as a 'victory' for the folicies of Kenneth Kaunda who had promoted this 'historic compromise'. Sunday 24 August was even deemed a day of prayer in Zambia for the success of the talks! (Some cynics were suggesting that had they been believers they would have been in the churches for the. whole 24 hours praying for their Now that the smoke has cleared, what did the 14½ hours of talks on Monday 25 August actually achieve? The answer appears to depend on who.you are. For the two principals it was nothing. Immediately on his return to Salisbury on Monday night Smith went to Parliament to say that they had broken down as a result of the ANC's intransigence. Because of this he was intending, he said, to proceed with talks with the Council of Chiefs (a stooge government paid body) and 'other African organisations who had indicated interest'. On Friday 29 August he re-iterated this line stressing that he had no doubt any constitutional settlement reached as a result of this new charade would be 'endorsed by the governments of South Africa, Zambia and britain as well as the UN'. For Muzorewa and other ANC spokespersons the whole conference plan was similarly off. The stumbling block was that Smith had refused to allow immunity to ANC delegates under threat of arrest inside Rhodesia. this, said ANC, made it impossible for them to select a delegation which was fully representative for the proposed sub-committee meetings inside the country. For them too the proposed conference was therefore a non-starter. team managers The only people who appeared to take a differentl view were the two team managers! For Vorster, on his arrival in Pretoria, it was 'so that certain hitches have occurred and that there are still certain problems which have yet to be ironed out'. Nonetheless he fully expected the talks to be reconvened shortly. For Kaunda 'we had a very useful start and I think we shall have a real chance to find a peaceful solution to the problems of southern Africa.... We hope that if this hitch is got rid of, that is the one of getting Mr Smith to accept the right of all ANC leaders to go back home and be part and parcel of the discussion, then the talks will start 16 in Salisbury'. What is really behind this double talk? 1. At no stage since the beginning of the whole 'detente exercise' has it been possible to imagine that Smith will meekly hand over power to the African majority. His whole political base has been founded on intransigent opposition to any moves whatsoever in that direction. ed gestures made in the recent past to please his South African sponsors have met a fierce reaction from among st Rhodesia's Whites. A growing number are now turning to far-right organisations, in particular the recently established Southern Africa Solidarity Congress of Rhodesia. BUY FOR THE BOYS ON THE BORDER Help keep Rhodesia Super and Safe More than 1,000 whites attended a meeting in the first week of August which called for an end to detente. And SASCON's reaciton to news of the Victoria Falls meeting was to denounce it as 'an open invitation to terrorism and treason.' It is politically impossible for Smith to move against this tide. 2. Vorster's international ambitions which see South Africa as the doyen of a sub-imperialism stretching up to the Equator and further, mean that he is desperately attempting to get Smith to agree to a compromise with ANC. But this does not mean that he is potentially capable of completely pulling out the rug from under white supremacy in Rhodesia. The only weapon Vorster possesses which can do that is the imposition of full and complete economic sanctions by South Africa. For the Nationalist government of the Union that move would be political suicide amongst its white electorate. 3. Therefore it is crystal clear that there is only one direction from which effective pressure can come to destroy the Rhodesian white minority regime: that is the the escalation of armed struggle, which has continued sporadically for the past twelve years to levels which can totally smash the weak fabric of Smith's state. There is no doubt that the situation is now more objectively favourable than ever for the achievement of this end. The very turmoil of the past fifteen months of developments in southern Africa have roused the consciousness of the mass of the population to new heights of opposition to their oppressors. Unfortunately the ANC leadership, confronted with this situation, is paralysed with inaction. For months we have been told that the impending constitutional conference was a 'last ditch attempt at settlement' and that ANC was actively preparing the guerilla army which would move in in the event of its collapse. Now that the time, even by Muzorewa's long delayed terms, has come to launch massive attack they are totally silent on the subject. Why? It is basically because the leadership of ANC is deep in the pockets of the neo-colonialist African regimes — above all of Zambia. For reasons which we have developed above the latter are as desperate as Vorster to avoid upsetting the delicate balance of imperialist dominated southern Africa. To reinforce their position they quite willingly resort to all manner of unprincipled and totally false formulations on the situation. At a stage managed UNIP demonstration on Rhodesia held in Lusaka on Saturday 30 August, Kaunda proclaimed 'Zambia will be destroyed and lose all that it has achieved since Independence unless a racial conflict in southern Africa is avoided by all means. We will lose all our development because we will be engrossed in the war'. Later he stated: 'If there is going to be a war that must only come after failing to reach a peaceful solution. If Zambia fails to secure a peaceful solution she will tell the world. Those involved are working on a programme to see that talks between the ANC and the rebel regime in Rhodesia succeed.' By summoning up in this way the mirage of an allconsuming racial contlict as the inevitable result of the breakdown of the present negotiations Kaunda is engaging in a deliberate falsification whose function is to distract own treacherous role in demobilising the Zimbabwean liberation movements. If it is not possible to convince the populations of the virtues of a detente exercise which had led precisely nowhere in its one year duration, then we must frighten them into it with invocations of the horrors which will result from its its failure. The use of arguments of this illusory kind is in fact a welcome sign of the desperation which the detente manoeuverers now find themselves in. Now is the time when socialists world wide, and all supporters of the liberation of southern Africa from white racism should be countering such fake "support' by organising the largest possible political and material support to the armed struggle for the liberation of Zimbabwe. John Blair, August 1975 1. "Verkrampte'...Afrikaans literally 'warlike'. Used commonly to refer to right wingers who oppose any form of concessions to non whites. Those prepared to compromise are conmonly referred to as 'Verligte' 2. 'Indaba' - gathering, meeting.