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Liberte Zimbaiwe!

Thank you Mr Chairman, comrades and friends. Firstly may I express my gratitude to the New Zealand University Students Association and also to the Australian Union of Students for making this visit to your country possible. I want to say that the Executive of my party, and the people of Zimbabwe greatly appreciate this gesture.

This morning there was an announcement on the news that Ian Smith had arrested and detained six leaders of the African National Council of Zimbabwe, or Rhodesia. But last week Smith was reported to have held discussions with Bishop Musorewa, President of the African National Council. A few weeks before that Smith addressed Parliament and said that there was no point whatsoever in admitting members of the African National Council because their demands were "too excessive". These demands included insistence on equal representation for the 250,000 white people and the 6,000,000 black people in Parliament. But this demand was regarded by Ian Smith as "too excessive". Bishop Musorewa and the ANC went on to demand the release of political prisoners. T[unclear: n]ere are many political prisoners in Zimbabwe, and some of them have been in jail for ten years or more. But the demand that these prisoners should be released was regarded by Ian Smith as "too excessive".

Yesterday Ian Smith reported that he had killed four African guerrillas in the North-eastern area of Zimbabwe, in a confrontation with the forces of the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army. This situation must be very confusing to most of you. What is actually happening in Zimbabwe? How did it come about that a leader like Ian Smith can make so many contradictory statements? I might go on to explain a little more. About four weeks ago some five helicopters from South Africa flew low over Salisbury in the direction of the North-eastern area of Zimbabwe. They were going to fight the African liberation forces. In short, a new situation, which seems very confused, exists in Zimbabwe. It is my task tonight to try to explain to you how this situation arose, and what it is all about.

As you probably know Zimbabwe is the name we give to the country the Europeans call Rhodesia. Our country was named after a man called Cecil John Rhodes who was an Englishman who came to South Africa for health reasons sometime before the end of the last century. He was in South Africa at the time of the diamond rush at Kimberly, and as a result of his participation in that diamond rush Rhodes became one of the richest men in Southern Africa. Rhodes was an Empire builder, and he dreamed of the British controlling and occupying all the land of Africa from the Cape to Cairo.

About that time white missionaries, hunters and explorers had been coming back to South Africa with stories of a land of great wealth north of the Limpopo River, the land now known as Rhodesia by the whites and Zimbabwe by us. They reported that the area north of the Limpopo was rich in gold, diamonds, silver, copper, coal, iron and particularly chromium. These estimates of the wealth of Zimbabwe have subsequently been proved to be true. The land was rich, and it was also blessed with a very good climate; to use the words of the early white explorers "a climate suitable for European occupation".

It was Cecil John Rhodes' dream to go and explore the natural resources in the land to the north of the Transvaal. To do so he created the British South Africa Company in which he was the main shareholder. Rhodesia is really the child of the British South Africa Company. In 1889 Rhodes persuaded the British Government to register the company under a Royal Charter. Few companies in the whole history of the British Empire have ever been registered with the aims and objectives that were granted to this particular company. They included mining, making roads, commerce and administrative powers related to these and other operations of the company in Zimbabwe.

When Cecil Rhodes returned to the Transvaal he put together a group of what I can only describe as mercenaries, soldiers of fortune, who wanted to go north to exploit the wealth that was reputed to exist in Zimbabwe. This group of people, known as the Pioneer Column, left the Transvaal and finally arrived at the city of Salisbury on September 12, 1880. At that time Salisbury was not a city, it was just a village. To this day we, the people of Zimbabwe, do not refer to it as Salisbury, we refer to it as Harari because our forefathers, by the name of Harari, lived there.

After they had arrived at Harari the Pioneer Column's first act was to raise the British flag as an act of annexation. Then they began to establish the British South Africa Company's administration. One of the company's first jobs was to reward the soldiers of fortune who had come up on the Pioneer Column. They were rewarded with large tracts of land, and those of them who were not satisfied with the amount of land they were given were able to purchase more. In those days the company sold land to the white settlers at a very low price, about two and sixpence an acre. You can imagine what happened. All the best land, or as much of the best land as they could get, was taken by these new settlers in the form of grants or purchases from the British South Africa Company.

But there is a significant point that must not be overlooked: every square mile of the land that was given to the settlers was already occupied by my own grandparents and my own great grandparents. My people were living on that land. It is also important to appreciate that the soldiers of fortune in the Pioneer Column were people who had left England or Europe without any money. Even in England they had been a landless people. They had been part of what could be called the landless proletariat. But the act of coming to Rhodesia and being granted land by the British South Africa Company turned them into a landowning class in our country. But just as the company's grants of land turned these mercenaries into a land owning class, they also turned our people into a landless class. Very soon after the grants had been made the new landowners turned to our people and said: "Now you are a trespasser, you are tenants under my control, you are occupying my land. You must either get off my land or pay me rent. If you can't do that you must work for me for part of the year as rent for continued use and occupation of my land."

You can imagine that this was a great surprise to our people who had occupied this land for centuries and generations. They therefore rose in resistance in an attempt to oust the white settlers who they felt were intruders in their land. They rose in what the white settlers called the Mashona and Matabele wars of rebellion in 1893, 1894, right up to 1897. These wars were land wars. The Africans said "the land is our's." The white settlers said "we occupied the land, it is our's." At that time there were very few white people in Southern Rhodesia, and that was very significant. Our people fought. They fought with axes, bows and arrows, and all the weapons they could muster. But they were defeated by the Europeans' guns and horses, and the white mercenaries' superior weaponry. From that time on in Zimbabwe there has existed a stale of undeclared war between our people and the white settlers.

It is also essential to understand another important aspect of the white settlers' attitude to Zimbabwe. Not only did they consider the gold, silver, copper, wood, elephants and the land as natural resources; they also considered us, the black people, as part of the natural resources of Zimbabwe. Their attitude was outlined extremely well by Professor Arnold Toynbee in his book. "The Study of History". In one of his comments Toynbee said: "When we white westerners called people natives we ceased to regard them as human beings. We see them as trees walking or as animals infesting the country we come across. This type of occupation cannot grant the native any prescription or right to the land in which we found them. And how", he went on, "shall we regard these natives when we come to occupy what is our own, that is the land? Shall we regard them as vermin to be exterminated or shall we regard them as hewers of wood and drawers of water. There is no alternative because niggers have got no souls."

These words of a very eminent historian accurately describe the attitude of the white people who went to settle in Rhodesia. They regarded us as hewers of wood and drawers of water. They didn't go the next step of trying to physically exterminate us because they thought we were useful as units of labour in their kitchens, their gardens, their mines, their factories, their shops and everywhere else. That was the attitude of mind with which they came.

After the land wars ended in 1897 more and more settlers came to Rhodesia, and by about 1918 some 50,000 whites were living there. Many of them were settlers who were not connected with the British South Africa Company, but the administration of the country was in the company's hands. These settlers began to ask whether it was right for them to be administered by a company which just administered them for profit. They didn't want to be governed by the company, and therefore they sought the right to self-government for themselves. Of course they did not think that we, the African people of Zimbabwe, also wanted the right to self-government. Obviously if they were going to have self-government it was important to find out to whom the land of Zimbabwe belonged. Did it belong to the new white settlers, or did it belong to the British South Africa Company? To this dispute was added our forefathers' claim that the land belonged to them, the African people of Zimbabwe.

The dispute went through the courts in Cape Province, and finally ended at the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London. That august body produced what I think was the most surprising decision in all judicial history. They said the land of Zimbabwe did not belong to the white settlers who had arrived after the company had established itself. It did not belong to the company either. It did not even belong to the African people of Zimbabwe. According to a perculiar form of logic the land belonged to the British crown.

That is how Rhodesia was colonised. It was colonised by judicial decree, by a decision of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. This decision was made necessary because of the white settlers' claim to the right of self-rule. By 1919-1920 it had become to be accepted, certainly in the British Parliament and among the British public, that white men, wherever they were, were entitled to self-rule. This may have been a consequence of the success of the American Revolution. It certainly was a consequence of what had happened in New Zealand, Canada, Australia and South Africa, where the white people were granted Dominion status in the British Empire.

Therefore the Rhodesian whites were granted self-government in 1922. That self-government consisted of a parliament which was elected on a franchise which gave the vote to practically every white man, and to practically no black men. The parliament consisted of 30 MPs who then appointed a Prime Minister, and an administration under the Prime Minister. What happened once this was achieved is very significant. They then preceded to secure for themselves and the rest of the white community a position of unshakeable predominance and privilege in the country.

To avoid any possibility of a further uprising, they saw to it that Africans could not move around the country without their authority. They saw to it that African employment in domestic service, on the mines, and everywhere else was carefully governed by law. That was known as the Masters and Servants Act. They saw to it that Africans would not be allowed to organise themselves into trade unious, and they limited the level of wages that Africans could be paid, compared to Europeans.

They saw to it that the African chiefs were reduced to messengers and errand boys. The Native Affairs Act determined who were to be chiefs. They were to be men appointed by the Governor of Rhodesia, men who were subject to his control, men who would carry out the government's policy and men who could be removed from chieftainship at the will of the government. In short the white government set out to remove the whole concept of African society as it had existed from time immemorial.

They saw to it further that the government paid little, if anything, in the way of subsidies for African education. In fact at that time there wasn't even a single government school, there were only mission schools. And the government gave virtually no grants to mission schools. Over the years grants have been made to schools giving education to Africans. But today these grants amount to about $(NZ)20 per African child per year. Yet the grants to European children amount to about $(NZ)200 per head per year. These were some of the injustices that followed the granting of internal self-government to a small minority of 50,000 white people in a country which was also occupied by some two million Africans.

But the most vicious discrimination was in the division of land. At that time the government gave the two million Africans no more than one third of the land. The other two thirds was reserved for occupation and use by the 50,000 white people. This was done under the Land Appointment Act which has undergone many changes, and is now known as the Land Tenure Act. Today the division of land between the races is roughly equal. The 250,000 whites in Rhodesia have as much land as the six million Africans. If you calculate this per head it means that each white person is entitled to 200 acres, while each black person is entitled to no more than eight acres.

All these laws were part of a clever scheme to enable the whites to continue to exploit the African people as natural resources. Because of the reduced amount of land available to them our people were unable to make a living out of the land. They couldn't cultivate enough crops or raise enough beasts to feed themselves on African land, so they were forced to go onto the European farms, into the towns, and into the mines to offer themselves as labour in service to white capital. You should remember that by this time a lot of page 11 capital had begun to come into Rhodesia. Big companies had started mining gold, silver, iron, coal and chromium. These companies were anxious to use African labour in the mines and other enterprises, so they encouraged the white government to pass the land restrictions which forced the Africans off the land and into their hands. This was the situation that began to exist in Zimbabwe.

Our people's reaction was to accept employment in white jobs simply in order to survive. But as they realised more and more how difficult life had become they started to organise themselves into welfare associations. These associations tried to plead with the white people to improve the Africans' lot by giving them more land, more education, more training, and more and better housing. By 1957 these organisations bad reached the point where they were able to create the first fully fledged African political organisation, the African National Congress. In the years that followed the African people organised around the ANC to demand social and economic reforms, and an improved constitutional position. Unfortunately all they got was a bluff.

The white people thought the reason why the Africans had united to call for better conditions was because Garfield Todd, the New Zealander who was then Prime Minister, was not controlling the natives firmly enough. So he was replaced by Sir Edgar Whitehead. Almost the first act of Sir Edgar Whitehead's administration was to ban the ANC in 1959. When the ANC was banned all its leaders were arrested and detained in prison without trial. Many of them served long periods of detention and some of them are still locked up.

At that time we, the African people, still believed we could improve our position by discussion and agreement with Sir Edgar Whitehead. So we created another organisation called the National Democratic Party. The only difference with the ANC was the fact that we had come to realise that the reason why we were unable to get any changes to our advantage was because we were not represented in parliament. We could only get into parliament if we had the vote, so the main plank of the National Democratic Party was equal representation in parliament, however a lot of people had come to believe that what we really needed was universal suffrage, one man — one vote. This demand began to be heard loud and clear in the towns and villages all over Zimbabwe.

This frightened the white people even more. They said even Whitehead is not doing his job, he is not controlling the natives properly and ensuring that we have got a permanent position of dominance in this country. So Sir Edgar Whitehead was also thrown out, and replaced by man called Winston Field. Winston Field stayed in power for only one year, but when he came to power his first job was to ban the National Democratic Party

Even after the NDP was banned in 1962 we still believed that it was possible to achieve independence by constitutional means. By this stage we were watching what was happening in other African colonies of the British Empire. We had seen Ghana, Nigeria, Tanganyika and other territories gradually developing from a position in which they were ruled by an autocratic governor to a position in which they were ruled by a parliament consisting of members nominated by the British Government. Later on we saw that representatives elected by the African people were introduced into parliament. At first the elected representatives were in a minority, later they acquired parity with the nominated members, and then they became the majority. Before very long the African people in these territories reached majority rule and independence.

When we saw this happening we did not understand why we should not be permitted to achieve the same rights. One thing we didn't realise was that although the 1923 constitution had given the British Government power to prevent any discriminatory laws against us, the British had in fact allowed their while kith and kin in Rhodesia to discriminate against us in almost every field - education, employment, trade unions and land. The mining companies, the tobacco companies and the industrial companies in Rhodesia were mainly British companies, and they were able tu persuade the British Government to allow the continued discrimination, and penalisation of the African people In short there was a community of interest between Britain and its while kith and kin in Zimbabwe.

Some of us began to realise this by 1963 when the Zimbabwe African People's Union, which was formed after the banning of the NDP, was failing. Many of us began to debate among ourselves whether we could possibly hope that we would ever be able to achieve independence and majority rule like Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda. Could we possibly hope that we would ever reach independence through constitutional means? Would the British agree to it? Would Ian Smith and the whites in Rhodesia ever agree to it? We increasingly tame to believe that the constitutional road was not open to us, and that it was in fact a dead end.

Those of us who came to that conclusion back in 1963 decided to form a new party called the Zimbabwe African National Union. I became its chairman, and I am still its chairman. The Zimbabwe African National Union was formed on a very simple premise. It was formed by those people who had come to believe that became we could not bring the British and Ian Smith to a constitutional conference, and get improvements by discussion and persuasion we could only confront them. From the time it was formed the slogan of ZANU has been confrontation.

By that time the white people had been moving further and further to the right, and the white regime had become worse and worse in its treatment of the African people. Every day our attitude became harder and harder. Consequently confrontation became inevitable. In 1964 there was actual confrontation between the white people and ourselves. We did not have weapons then, we only had stones and axes, bows and arrows, and knives. We cut telephone lines, we tried to blow up bridges, we tried to storm police stations, and we built road blocks with stones. In fact these things were not very successful. Our party was banned, and nearly all the leaders who were arrested and detained are still in jail today. One of them, Eddison Zvobogo, was in New Zealand not long ago. He was arrested at the time ZANU was banned and he remained in jail until the time of the 1972 Smith /Home constitutional proposals for settlement. So you can see how the situation developed in which confrontation became more and more the case.

When ZANU was banned in 1964 some of us were not arrested. I and a number of others were not in Zimbabwe at that time. Some of those who were in Zimbabwe were able to escape to Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya or Malawi. When these people came out of Zimbabwe we regrouped and started to discuss whether we should go back on our decision to enter into confrontation. We decided we should rather improve the weapons of confrontation. We should try to get more and more recruits, and more and more weapons.

Meanwhile the whites were going from bad to worse. Ian Smith had to justify his claim to be a better protector of white privilege than anybody else. The one thing in the 1923 constitution that prevented the whites from continuing to exercise complete control over the Africans was the provision that the British Government could prevent the passage of laws that discriminated against Africans. Smith's problem was how to get rid of this provisions. He tried to call the British to a conference but the British refused. The real reason why they refused was because a number of independent African countries were beginning to veto any suggestion of independence to Rhodesia without majority rule.

To protect the interests of the white settlers and the big companies that were behind them, Smith finally decided to unilaterally declare Rhodesia's independence from Britain in 1965. By the time of Smith's unilateral Declaration of Independence we had already got some weapons, and you will recall that the first military confrontation between the Africans and the Europcans since 1897 took place at Senoia on March 28, 1966. This action was carried out by the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army as a response to UDI.

Since then all that has happened is that the confrontation has gone from bad to worse. We have been able to acquire more and more weapons, and Smith has become more and more repressive. Since 1964 the whole of Zimbabwe has been under a state of emergency. Because of this state of emergency Smith has been able to call out all the armed forces. The whole of the Rhodesian regular army has been deployed, mostly in the north and northeastern areas of Zimbabwe where the fighting has been taking place.

That is what is happening right now. Ian Smith has been compelled to go a step further page break and call in South African military personnel to help him fight the liberation forces. This is what we have come to.

From 1969 to 1972 there was a lull in the military confrontation, and there was very little reported activity. The reason was that we in ZANU had decided that to be successful we had to be able to penetrate into Zimbabwe and win the complete support and involvement of the ordinary masses; the peasants in the rural areas, the people in the towns, and the workers in the mines. By 1972 our forward cadres' political work among the people made it possible for us to launch the offensive which is going on today. Part of the offensive was reported yesterday when Ian Smith announced that he had killed some guerrillas. But he has not told the whole story. The full story is that he has suffered a considerable amount of damage in terms of property and soldiers who have been killed.

In 1971 when Smith discovered that the Zimbabwe liberation forces were in the northeastern area he sent his troops and police up to that area. This area is a country area in which you will find large European farms producing tobacco, maize and other crops, and raising cattle. Each of these farms is between 2,000 and 10,000 acres, or even bigger, and each farmer has established a homestead on his farm. It was Ian Smith's tactic to send units of his troops to these homesteads to protect them. When confrontations took place between our forces and the soldiers and police guarding the homesteads white farmers and their wives sometimes got shot and killed. But that is Smith's fault. If he chooses to keep civilians in an area of confrontation then he must obviously take the consequences.

At the moment Ian Smith's chief concern is that practically all the African peasants and workers in these areas have come to espouse revolution. The reason is that they have seen the regime go from bad to worse, from year to year. Our people have been arrested and detained without trial, and refused even the most minor reforms. Therefore they have decided, like everybody else, to join in the confrontation, because there is no alternative. Ian Smith has tried to punish these people. Firstly he sent informers, police and military units to close the people's schools, shops, clinics and homes in an effort to mare them stop working hand in hand with the units of the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army. When he found that didn't work he sent bombers to go and bombard our people in these areas. And when that didn't work he decided to institute what is called communal punishment.

What communal punishment means is this. If the people of a village or villages are suspected of containing people who have assisted, or participated in the work of the liberation army, the men, women and children of those villages are rounded up and imprisoned in what are in fact barbed wire concentration camps, like those that existed in the days of the Mau Mau in Kenya. But even that policy has proved inadequate. So Smith has started transporting whole villages from the northeast to other parts of the country. We are not worried about that because all the people Smith transports to other areas are members of ZANU. And they will continue the struggle there. Ian Smith will get nowhere with this latest policy.

You will want to ask questions. First of all, are we likely to succeed? I want to tell you that as far as we the black people are concerned we are committed to victory. We are going to win the war because no one in the world can possibly expect us to accept the repression of the Smith regime. In spite of his large army, sophisticated; military equipment, military aircraft and other resources, we are bound to win because it is impossible for Ian Smith to supervise and control a rebellious population of six million Africans. Today it may be difficult to spread throughout the country but we are going to do so. When we do spread throughout Zimbabwe Ian Smith will not be able to survive because he will completely lose control.

Furthermore the people who support Ian Smith and his regime are white people who came to Rhodesia only recently. Sixty to seventy per cent of the whites came to Rhodesia after the Second World War in search of wealth and comfort. As the war grows from day to day they will find that they cannot guarantee cither their personal security, the security of their property, or their privileged position in Zimbabwe. When they find that more and more of the white Rhodesians are taken out to fight the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army, many of them will come to the conclusion that the things which brought them to Rhodesia are no longer available to them. And those of them who cannot change will have to leave Rhodesia for good and go elsewhere. So we are convinced that we are bound to win. Ian Smith and the white settlers have not got the same commitment as us. We accept that it is going to be a protracted struggle, but victory is surely on our side.

The next question you will probably want to ask is "Okay, you win. So what, what are you going to set up? Are you simply going to replace the white oligarchy with a black one?" My answer to that is that there are two basic issues from which our struggle arose. The first is racism. The attitude of arrogance that has been imposed upon us by the white people is something we abhor. There is nothing more evil than racism, and therefore the one essential pillar of policy in the state we hope to create will be anti-racism. We will not practise the things that the white people have tried to practise against us.

The other aspect of the situation in Zimbabwe has been oppression and exploitation by the white settlers, the white landlords, and the big white companies. These companies have helped the legislature pass laws designed to enable them to continue to exploit the African people of Zimbabwe. So you can be quite certain that one of the fundamental principles of the new government in Zimbabwe will be anti-capitalist and anti-exploitation. This is bound to be so because of the nature of our revolution. The people who today are giving their lives fighting for the new Zimbabwe are inspired by a vision of the new Zimbabwe and they would certainly not tolerate the creation of a black oligarchy in the place of the white military regime. So we are bound to be a socialist movement, we cannot avoid it because we are fighting in a situation which can only be overthrown by a socialist programme.

You know that Ian Smith is not the only white dictator in Southern Africa. There is Vorster in South Africa, and Caetano in Mozambique. Both of them have been doing exactly the same things as Smith. Vorster, Smith and Cactano have been trying to increase the involvement of international capital in Southern Africa by trying to build what is known as the Cabora Bassa schcme. There has already been a good deal of co-operation and co-ordination between Ian Smith's forces and Vorster's forces. I have already told you that South African troops and military equipment have been coming into Zimbabwe. We in Zimbabwe have had to fight Portuguese troops in our country, and the forces of the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo) next to us in the provinces of Tete and Manica Sofala have had to encounter and fight Rhodesian troops.

In short there already exists actual military co-operation between Caetano, Vorster and Smith, which amounts to the existence of a military alliance. Whether this alliance exists on paper or not docs not matter. It certainly exists in practice. This means we are facing a bigger enemy than Smith. The bigger enemy is the South Africans, the Portuguese, and international capital. Which are the countries that Smith, Caetano and Vorster have invited into the Cabora Bassa scheme? They are countries with big capital, the big companies which influence government policies in Britain, America and various European countries. The Cabora Bassa scheme is an attempt by the white regimes of Southern Africa to involve foreign military support in fighting the rising tide of African nationalism in Southern Africa.

Obviously this situation requires a certain amount of co-operation between the liberation movements of Southern Africa. We have already got a very high degree of co-operation with Frelimo, which has been imposed upon us by the very proximity of their operations in Mozambique and our operations in Zimbabwe. We see the dangers of a huge confrontation in Southern Africa, involving not only Vorster, Smith and Caetano, and the African peoples in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Angola, but also all the black African countries.

Like us the black African countries strongly feel that the continued exploitation and suppression of our people and the racist attitudes of the white regimes are an insult to them, as well as an attack on their African brothers. Consequently the danger exists of a confrontation between the whole of black Africa, assisting the liberation movement and the peoples of Southern Africa, and the white minority regimes. The proportions this kind of conflict could reach would certainly involve the whole world. It might even produce something far more serious than Vietnam.