OTE equaliser, the persistent fact of our comradeship and the mutual respect that it demands from those below for those at the top, and from those at the top for those below.
This is why quarrelling, fighting, beating and ill-treating others obviate party relations constitute indiscipline.
Comradeship demands more the spirit of tolerance and the desire 1o educate others than the desire to punish, fight and beat others.
We should always try to invoke in others a greater degree of consciousthan they have, and help lo transform them into revolutionaries than they are. June 1979 I DEFINE party unity as harmony that draws us together under the given leadership of the party towards the achievement of its set goals manifesto.
and nowhere to be found hetter our Cousy. foreign capital.' u ducis farmers, if all ZIMBABWE may slide rapidly into civil war or simply undergo a slow political paralysis. But what will not happen is the instant legislation of socialism hoped for or feared by so many observers.
'You're not believing all this rubbish about me being a Marxist are you?' Robert Mugabe reportedly told a business delegation a couple of weeks ago. apocryphal but it does show that, despite the press campaign against him, the ZANU leader is still concerned not to frighten the white community, which has a stranglehold on the country's economic life.
The ZANU-PF election manifesto is remarkably similar to those of the other main African parties, It promises that the party would not interfere with white and multinational business interests. Private enterprise will be allowed to continue until 'circumstances are ripe for socialist change' — a sentiment vague enough to grace a Labour On land reform, the single biggest issue facing the land-starved rural Africans, it talks only of 'resettling' blacks on underused white land — a plan already supported by the white farmers' union: Land seizures and expropriations, the bogey of the country club set, are A good index of ZANU intentions is to be found in neighbouring Mozambique, which has always been Mugabe's strongest outside ally Only last week President Machel told a group of representatives fron major multinationals that 'there is a place for foreign private investment in 'And he correctly added: 'We have experience in working with A major problem for Mozambique has been that it inherited a colonial economy entwined with that of white South Africa. Combined with the flight of Portuguese settlers and the decision to close the Rhodesian border in solidarity, this has created appalling hardship.
Mugabe is concerned that these problems should not be repeated in Zimbabwe. He does not consider the opposite conclusion - that with Zimbabwe's vastly superior economic resources a ZANU victory might be the moment to accelerate the struggle for socialism in alliance with Mozambique. He has even gone out of his way to assure Pretoria that a ZANU regime would stand for coexistence with South Africa Mugabe's main efforts just before the election were devoted to a defence of the ceasefire agreement which has done him so much harm. The day the election began he flew to Mozambique to join the front-line leaders in their attack on President Nyerere. The Tanzanian leader had denounced the whole settlement as a British confidence trick Far from marshalling his forces to smash the white power structures, as his opponents feared, he has enthusiasticially taken part in the attempts i "integrate' elements of the two guerilla armies into the white security forces to form the nucleus of a new Zimbabwean army.
The very way the question is posed is revealing: the guerillas, the only popular force in the country, have to be assimilated into the existing structures. Such exercises will not stave off the danger of a white coup; thes simply render the nationalist forces less able to deal with it.
White fears of Mugabe are therefore largely delusions. But not entirely Mugabe, after all, has led the most popular and effective wing of the nationalist movement in armed struggle for eight years. His political standing is rather larger than words on the page of a party tract For example, whites must know or fear that ZANU militants in the bush are not saying the same thing on land reform as the manifesto. One of ZANU's weaknesses has been its failure to organise peasants and workers into mass struggle. But a Mugabe election victory could be the signal for land seizures and working class activity unforeseen by the party leadership What Mugabe would do in such a situation cannot be predicted. General Walls, the white commander, visited Mozambique last week in a move that was generally taken to mean that the army would allow Mugabe to govern -They will be watching with concern how Mugabe handles his first major strike or wave of peasant struggles. If he does not perform to their satisfaction the army is still at large in the countryside and the South African armour waits on the south bank of the Limpopo. ZIMBABWE 30p INFORMATION mi, bulletin no.13 w222e The story is probably Zimbabwe Information Group bulletin - left analysis of developments in Zimbabwe.
Available from bookshops or direct from: ZIG, 1 Cambridge Terrace, London NWI. Price 30p plus p&p. Socialist Challenge 6 March 190