By M.B. and Washington. That is, if he gets away with it.
ing to end.
As the Report of the Parliamentary Human Rights Group put it: "The recent election in Rhodesia was nothing more than a gigantic confidence trick... A high percentage poll was all that was deemed necessary to hoodwink the international community and secure recognition".
POWER Based on a constitution in which the Black majority had no hand in drafting, the elections gave a disproportionately large influence to the white electorate, each of whose votes carried nine times the weight of a Black vote. Although whites are only 4% of the total population, they received 28% of the seats in Parliament and a similar number of cabinet seats.
Moreover, while Muzorewe's ON MAY 28th, the new "black majority' government was installed in Zimbabwe. Bishop Muzorewe-the new Prime Minister-proclaimed it a "historic victory" after 88 years of white, colonial rule. In reality, of course, the 'victory was not for Zimbabwe's five million Black majority but for Ian Smith and his white racist backers in Pretoria, London The elections that gave birth to Muzorewe's puppet government represented a last-ditch attempt by Smith to block the struggle for the Black majority for true independence, majority rule and social progress. They were a fraud from beginngovernment has a formal Black majority, the white minority has been careful to keep control of such key areas as police, army, civil service, judiciary and the economy.
COMPULSION The previous government, as part of its drive to 'herd' Blacks to the voting booth, carefully avoided explaining these 'details' of the pact to Black voters. They also took extensive steps to ensure that Blacks suspicious of the elections would go along to the polls anyway.
Some 100,000 troops were mobilised throughout the country in a massive display of force designed to intimidate Blacks to vote.
Shortly before voting began, the police in Bulawayo, for example, arrested more than 900 Blacks because they tried to organise a campaign to get Blacks to spoil their ballot papers. The message was clear: anyone opposing the elections would face similar treatment.
ASSISTANCE Undoubtedly, the Smith regime hopes that with this forced turncan claim the elections as 'free tering behind its facade, they late the repression against the Black liberation fighters.
New York Times (April 27), Pretoria has already offered the new Muzorewa government masriotic Front.
COLLUSION A correspondingly sympathetic attitude towards the puppet Labour government in five years CAUTION out of 64% of the electorate, they SOLIDARITY and fair' and thus gain credibility for the new puppet regime. Shelhope to be able to both maintain their fingers on the levers of military and economic power and escaThey have obvious backing in this from their white racist allies in South Africa. According to the the streets sive arms and financial assistanceincluding the possible use of South African troops-to combat the Patregime has also grown up in London and Washington more recently. Playing down the undemocratic widespread use of force to make Blacks vote, both governments have leaned towards viewing the elections as "free and fair'.
In Washington, the Senate passed a motion calling on Carter to drop sanctions against Zimbabwe and to recognise the new regime. In London, the new Tory government has accepted without question the phoney Boyd "report" which stated: 'We are satisfied that the elections did, in fact, constitute a kind of referendum on the constitution."
While drifting towards support for the Muzorewa government, however, both capitals are moving cautiously. They are only too aware of the mass support the Patriotic Front still commands, in town and countryside, and the dangers to their own investment open support for Smith's racist manoeuvres would bring.
It is clear, however, that their deep fear of the impact of the Zimbabwean revolution on Southern Africa impels them to employ whatever forces are available to hold it back. If the Patriotic Front cannot be manoeuvred into any 'co-operative' acts, then they will be increasingly forced to support the puppet regime backed by the armed might of white sup. remecist South Africa.
For socialists and anti-racists in the labour movement, a central task in the coming months will be to block any attempt by the ThatIn 1976, under the threat of the Benyon Bill, both the TUC & Labour Party conferences went on record as supporting women's right to abortion on request.
Only last year, over 500 trade unionists - including NUPE lead. er Alan Fisher - attended a NAC conference to pledge support for any action against attempts to curb women's abortion rights.
PLEDGES Now is the time to live up to those pledges. 'Paper' support is not sufficient to stop the anti-abortion moves the Tories have unleashed. Only by turning those paper pledges into mass support on the streets can the labour movement become a real ally of women in the fight to defend - and extend - their rights.
This means raising the issue openly both in trade union and Labour Party branches, getting them to affiliate to NAC and to support all the activities NAC
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ABORTION (Continued from p.1)
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