Dumping Nkomo won't solve workers' problems

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ZIMBABWE Jim Farnham reports on Mugabe's moves towards a one-party state and Mugabe: an uneasy alliance breaks down LAST week, prime minister Robert Mugabe carried through a major purge of his cabinet, sacking the leader of ZAPU, Joshua Nkomo, and three other ZAPU ministers-and thus effectively terminating the government alliance between the two nationalist organisations, ZANU and ZAPU.

The sackings follow the discovery by army units of huge arms stockpiles on some of the farms owned by Nkomo and the ZAPU leadership.

This is being used as evidence that Nkomo and other leaders were plotting an armed coup against ZANU.

Mugabe accuses Nkomo of having held secret meetings with South African officials, in which he sought support for a possible coup attempt. Nkomo has vigorously denied any such coup plans or contacts with the apartheid state.

But despite Nkomo's denials and his claims that the arms caches were planted on ZAPU property: Mugabe has pressed ahead with the seizure of ZAPU's considerable property assets, and with the major purge of government.

These moves have been followed by controlled demonstrations by ZANU supporters, backing the actions of Mugabe, and calling for the imprisonment of Nkomo.

• Last month, at a mass rally in Salisbury, Mugabe had announced that the two leaderships would be holding talks on building a one-party regime. But the next day, Nkomo issued hot denials of any such talks-and added that he was alarmed at the trends towards arbitrary rule which he saw in Juan Carlos with Franco IT HAS not been a happy birthday for last year's attempted military coup d'etat.

Over the last tew weeks there has been another dramatic rise in political tension in Spain.

One reason for this is that at last some of the conspirators of last February have brought to a kind of trial. The other is the decision of the Basque nationalist organisation ETA (Militar) to end the military truce it has maintained since Nkomo ZANU.

In rejecting Mugabe's offer, Nkomo was probably gambling on getting much more out of waiting for the crisis facing the govern ment to deepen.

Ambitions

But he overplayed his hand. Mugabe is in no position to tolerate the ambitions of Nkomo. He is caught between the militant demands actions of his supporters among the working people on the one side, and the pressure for tighter control coming from the capitalist reaction on the other.

Each day the balancing act on which Mugabe and his ZANU bureaucracy try to maintain their position, is coming under greater and greater challast year's coup attemp!.

The increasingly rickety right-wing government led was installed shortly before the coup attempt partly to allay miltary dissatisfaction with the alleged softness of the former Premier Adolto Suarez.

Insatiable

Since February 232198 Calvo Sotelo has been tryi simultaneously 10 satis two insatiable pressures. In lenge.

A government which claims on the one hand to be there to meet all the needs of the masses, and on the other acts to protect on theatharanteti nratort the property and profits of the capitalists is always trying to achieve an impossible balance.

While the economy remains under capitalist control, while production takes place for private profit and not human need, while the forces of the state are used to protect private property -then Mugabe's government, whatever it says, is a bosses' government.

Increasingly, workers and peasants are seeing this reality.

They see a government which sends out the police if they _strike, the army if they: seize and occupy land. And all the time, their the first place he had to be seen to be moving ; againsi the plotters in order to res pond to popular demand: for their punishment.

Only if the governmen did something could thr Socialist and Communis Parties present with even.: semblance of convictior their policy of relying or Spain's post-Franco "demo cratic" monarchy and hear off more militant mas actions.

At the same time (alv‹ Sotelo is a prisoner of thi Francoist military.

The least he could do or its behalf was to delay th conspirators' court martia and to limit any legal actiol to those handful of officer already arrested.

This is despite the fac that many revelations hav since been made through th press about the wide esten of participation by the milit ary hierarchy in plans i advance of the cou attempt.

Most of these sugges that King Juan Carlos wa closely involved as well a most of the regional mili ary commanders. standard of living continues at the same appalling level without any sign of the improvements which Mugabe and ZANU promiand mised As the world capitalist crisis bites harder, things are getting worse. Inflation is running at around 20% -while unemployment is probably higher.

Two years after Mugabe's grand promises of land redistribution —absolutely central to his appeal amongst the masses oI rural poor-only 6,500 families out of nearly 200,000 have been settled On land bought from capitalists.

Workers and peasants are responding to this situation with growing confusion -but also with growing anger and resistance. In the rural areas, thousands have occupied The limit to the government's ability to delay the trial has now arrived and a military court martial opened on February 19.

The state prosecutor is asking: for heavy sentences of up to 30 years' jail for the main accused.

This probably lays the basis for the imposition of lesser sentences which the government hopes will be a compromise designed to satisfy both democratic publie opinion and the army.

But it is now extremely doubtful that any such compromise is politically possible. It is being made more difficult by the defence offered by the accused themselves.

They are not surprising!! browned-oft at being made into scapegoats for organising a conspiracy which had extremely wide backing.

So in their defence they have all drawn attention 1o the embarrassing fact that they believed that in preparing the coup they were conspiring with no less a figure than King Juan Carlos.

As the trial develops. therefore. it remains to be parts of the big farms in defiance of the law and the threat (and use) of force by the government.

In the towns, there is mounting anger over the totally inadequate housing and services, the rising prices, the lack of jobs. While the working class has not yet mobilised strikes on the scale of the 1980 wave, the signs all point in this direction.

A strike by 250 railway workers (firemen and shunters) brought the whole rail network to a standstill for one week last month. The workers were demanding nearly 100% wage rises to bring their pay closer to a living minimum wage as they assessed it-rather than the totally inadequate figures decided by government bureaucrats in the new minimum wage laws. seen whether the "innocents" among the top generals are prepared to let it continue rather than initiate another coup.

Many of them will be stimulated in that direction by the renewed plans of ETA (Militar) to attack military targets the Basque country.

Coup

While the pressures and opportunities for a new Francoist coup are once again growing, there are still no signs that the main parties and organisations of the labour movement are preparing to combat such a coup.

The Socialist and Communist Parties and trade union leaders have for the last year maintained their common front with the right in support of the monarchy and Parliamentary democracy.

They have insisted, but almost inaudibly, that the conspirators be brought to trial. They have hit on the head demands for an indeMugabe arrested all the workers under a law which Smith had introduced against strikes. In the courts, these workers were fined and given six month suspended sentences.

Disarmed

Mugabe's reformist politics force him into the camp of the bosses. And his actions over the last two years confirm this. He has disarmed the guerrillas; continually renewed the state of emergency brought in by Smith; banned all demonstrations and meetings without government permission; made sure that bosses' representatives sit in government; and put one of Smith's generals at the head of the armed forces.

Mugabe has done much by Henry Phillips pendent labour movement enquiry and now they make no serious protest against the limited number of indictments or that the case is being tried before military judges.

The trial opens a new period of high tension in Spanish politics It will not be forgotten that the last World Cup in Argentina was preceded by a military coup. This year the World Cup takes place in Spain!

Tejero of this in the name of guarding against the threat of right wing reaction, from inside Zimbabwe as well as from South Africa.

He is correct to see a threat from these sources. But there is only one force that can overcome it-the strength of the workers of Zimbabwe, mobilised behind an independent programme of struggle, united with the peasants, and drawing on the strength of the South African workers' movement.

And all of Mugabe's actions cut across the task of preparing and mobilising this force. The repressive measures which are announced as aimed against the right, are in reality used more and more to clampdown the workers and peasants.

This is the reality that lies behind the plans for a one-party state which ZANU leaders have talked more and more about, and which is brought closer by each measure of clampdown.

This is the same reality which has emerged time and again from the nationalist leaderships in many countries-from Algeria to Zambia.

The purging of the cabinet may not have been the action that Mugabe and the ZANU leadership wanted to use to try and tighten up control. But they will not regret the fact that the purge opens up a huge diversion from the real issues and the real enemy facing the working people.

And more than this, the governmental crisis threatens to open up divisions within the working masses.

They will have to rely on and build their own independent • organised strength. They will have to join in a united front of struggle behind demands that start from the needs of the people, and take the struggle forward towards the only solution that can meet those needs-the defeat of the bosses and their state, and the building of socialism and a workers and peasants' government.

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AT DDTs 9/1 egede ensi ree Socialist Organiser, Thursday February 25, 1982 ELECTIONS 'IRELAND - TIME FOR TORY POLICIES TO GO'. Labour movement conference organised by Labour Committee on Ireland and Committee for Withdrawal from Ireland. Saturday February 27, starting 11am at The Theatre, 309 Regent St, London W1. Delegate's or observer's credentials £2 from 1 North End Road, London W14.

Haughey (left) finished a nose ahead of Fitzgerald (right) military of ition.

Joe • Uff Stalinist-influence OtfIRA, from which the os split away in late . It called off its own ary campaign in the h a decade ago, and by has broken with much he Republican tradsecured one deputy, Sherlock (Cork East) le 1981 election, and CE campaign to form a workers' opposition and break with FG and coalitionism, and it asked voters to treat Labour as their second choice.

No. doubt designed to appeal to the anti-coalitionist rank and file of the Labour Party, the appeal may produce results. The Labour Party is badly divided,