ZAMBIA KAUNDA 730 BANS ZAPU, ZANU by JOHN BLAIR On March 28 Zambian Home Affairs Minister Aaron Milner announced the arrest of "a number of Rhodesian nationalist leaders - mostly belonging to the Zimbabwe African National Union" (ZANU). They were said to have been rounded up and detained for questioning in connection with the murder of former ZANU chairman Herbert Chitepo. The arrests had been made at 7:00 p.m. on March 23, when ZANU members were still mourning Chirepo at his house in Chilenje South in Lusaka. Milner refused to reveal the number arrested, but witnesses at the time said armed police stormed into the house and ordered "ar least seventy men" into trucks. Some of the arrested men had come from the rural areas and from overseas to attend the funeral. At the same time, Milner announced the closing of the Lusaka offices of ZANU, ZAPU (Zimbabwe African People's Union), and Frolizi (Front for the Liberation of Zimbabwe). Only the ANC (African National Council) would be allowed to continue operations in Zambia. The registration of the other three parties would be canceled "until the nationalists honor the Lusaka accord which brought them under the umbrella of the ANC." The possibly grave effects of this action for the guerrillas of ZANLA (Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army, the military wing of ZANU) operating in northeast Rhodesia were underlined in Salisbury by Robert Mugabe, secretary general of ZANLA. If the detained men were all functioning members of the militory wing, it would cause big problems in maintaining supply lines to the freedom fighters. However, Mugabe asserted that "they would cer-
Ndabaningi Sithole, a leader of ZANU, addresses supporters. tainly carry on - on the strength of their own supplies and what they could manage to bring in on their own. " Under lining ZANU's determination to continue the campaign of chimurenga (armed struggle), he said: "This will not mean that the war has come to an end." This treacherous action by the Zambian government should be condemned by all sections of the internafional working-class movement, and particularly by the organizations active in solidarity with the struggle in southern Africa. It constitutes an attempt to break the organization that has been the vanguard of the struggle in Rhodesia. Objectively, it stands alongside the Smith regime's arrest of ZANU president Ndabaningi Sithole and the killing of Chitepo The following statement by Milner at his March 28 press conference is a vile betrayal of the Zimbabwean revolution: Referring to the murder of Chitepo, he said, "One cannot say it wasn't Smith's agents. One cannot say it wasn't ZANU." Thus, he effectively placed the militants of ZANU on an equal footing with the racist Smith regime instead of exposing the fact that the murder of Chitepo was clearly directed by the latter. The murder, along with Smith's re-arrest of Sithole, is part of a sustained offensive against the most militant and effective wing of the Zimbabwean liberation movement. The purpose of this campaign against ZANU is to render inoperative the wing of the movement that has most consistently argued and fought for the principle of immediate majority rule in Zimbabwe. If this goal can be achieved, then perhaps Smith can reach a deal with other sections of the movement, none of
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UKRAINIAN WOMEN POLITICAL