(The following resolution was issued November 14 by the United Secretariat of the Fourth International.]
Once more world imperialism is united in an attempt to block the advance of the Zimbabwean people toward selfdetermination. The Callaghan-Kissinger proposals and the Geneva conference are a cynical attempt to head off, divide, and blunt the growing struggle of the Zimbabwean masses against the racist Smith regime. The economic, military, and political situation of the Smith regime is serious. It has virtually no foreign currency reserves; its armed forces are quite unable to suppress the guerrilla struggle now encompassing every region; and white Rhodesians-mainly young men avoiding military service-are leaving the country at a growing rate.
Van der Byl, a former military commander of the Smith regime's forces, has spoken of a Vietnam-type situation emerging during the rainy season. The "acceptance" by Smith of Black majority rule is merely the recognition that his regime has been unable to defeat the liberation forces and needs to play for time. The true aim of the white-settler regime is demonstrated by its vicious attacks against Mozambique.
U.S. and British imperialism and the Vorster apartheid regime require more flexibility from the Smith regime to enable them to remove the Rhodesian question as a source of instability and radicalization in the whole southern African subcontinegotiated settlement to ease the transi tion to a neocolonialist setup in Zimbabwe. This is also essential for Vorster's policy of détente and his plans for consolidating the inhuman apartheid system.
The so-called front-line presidents (Nyerere, Machel, Khama, Kaunda, and Neto) and most of the petty-bourgeois Black nationalist leaders in Zimbabwe are complicit in this endeavor. The lure of office in the transitional government, the promise of economic aid from imperialist powers, and fear of the self-activity of the masses escaping their control, unite them in an attempt to contain the militant struggle against the Smith regime. But the frontline presidents and Black nationalist leaders also feel strongly the pressure of the expectations of the Black masses; thus, they are obliged to combine talks with Kissinger, attendance at the Geneva conference, and collaboration with British imperialism, with militant talk of continuing the struggle. However, it will be extremely difficult to persuade the masses to call off their struggle against the Smith racist regime.
The successful military struggle against Portuguese imperialism, the humiliating defeat of the U.S.-backed South African invasion of Angola, the blows dealt to U.S. aims in the Angolan civil war, the rising freedom struggle in Zimbabwe, and-the most powerful of all in potential-the emerging struggle of the urban Black masses of South Africa, show that time is running out for the imperialists in southern Africa.
The only way that imperialism and the Smith regime can gain a respite is by dividing the liberation struggle. The endeavours of Kissinger, Callaghan, Vorster, Smith, and company are designed to do just that. The front-line presidents and petty-bourgeois nationalist leaders go along with this. They concede in advance the right of the imperialists to intervene in Zimbabwe by their demand that "Britain assume its responsibilities" for a constitutional transfer of power.
The Fourth International states its unconditional solidarity with the freedom struggle in Zimbabwe. It supports those in the national liberation movement who have rejected Smith's arrogant demands. It calls upon the workers movement to give all possible aid to the Zimbabwean freedom struggle. From the workers states (in the first place the Soviet Union and Chine) the first place the Soviet Union and China) it demands that they give unconditional solidarity and all necessary material support to those fighting imperialism and racism in southern Africa. It calls upon the organizations of the working class every. where to unite in an international campaign of solidarity with the Zimbabwean liberation struggle and to back this up by a campaign of demonstrations, propaganda, and political education.
To the imperialist project of a two-year transitional government, we counterpose:
Immediate majority rule now!
Self-determination for Zimbabwe!
To the various constitutional plans of Kissinger, Callaghan, Vorster, and
Smith-which all seek to limit selfdetermination—we counterpose:
One person, one vote!
Release all political prisoners in Zimbabwe!
End the state of emergency!
To their neocolonialist plots and to imperialist intervention in southern Africa, we counterpose:
U.S. and British imperialism out of southern Africa now!