an independent liberation struggie.
For western impenalism ine exisung integration of southern Africa in the world capitalist system - - largely through South Africa - is crucial. Huge US and British investment in South Africa, the access to raw materials and cheap labour, and for South Africa itself, its dominant tole in a southern African common market are what lie behind the present The British Government has been leading the attempts to force Smith to make sulficient concessions to provide the basis for a negotiated settlement. It has been backed up in this by a US State Department statement (20 February): We are calling on Mr Smith and the white regime to negotiate realistically and seize what may well be their last opportunity for a negotiated settleKissinger has urged Smith to show A desperate scramble is on to prevent the anti-colonial struggle in Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) from escaping out of the control of the traditional leaderships, in the face of Smith's refusal to budge an inch on demands for majority rule. At stake is the whole 'detente' policy cooked up by Vorster of South Africa and Kaunda of Zambia, which has already taken a terrible battering from the victory of the MPLA in Angola. That is why Kaunda made such an impassioned plea on Monday for an immediate intervention by British troops, as a last gamble to preserve neo-colonial stability from the threat of nexibility and warned that 'the time lor settlement is now running out.
Vorster is reliably reported to have warned Smith that under no circumstances would South Africa commit its armed forces in the Rhodesian struggle, though it may reasonably be expected that arms and "volunteers' will be forthcoming.
Kaunda, Machel (Mozambique), Nyerere (Tanzania), and Sir Seretse Khama (Botswana) have lent their weight to this drive towards a peaceful settlement by brandishing the possible alternative of a 'people's war' to liberate Ine knodesian masses. Their maior effort in this direction has been to promote the conciliationist Nkomo faction of the African National Council in the settlement negotiations Since the beginning of Vorster's "detente' initiative, Kaunda has conA magnificant response followed our appeal last week for an extra boost to the Fightsistently hampered, and in some cases positively crippled, the waging of armed struggle from bases mside cambia. Taken together with his reactionary stance during the Angola struggle, this clearly indicates his bankruptcy in dealing with the diseases endemic to a neo-colonial status: impotence in the face of capitalist manipulations of the international copper market, paralysis before the reverberations in Zambia of the international crisis of capitalism, and surrender to pro-Western elements in his government and party.
THREAT The Zambian ruling class know only too well that an escalation of armed struggle in Zimbabwe could transform the waves of internal industrial unrest into a much more radical upsurge threatening their whole position.
As for Nkomo, he has been quoted as sayin, mar ne would we come brasi intervention since it had always been his view unal only britain could give indep endence to this country' (New York grated. unto itself.