ZAMBIA: KAUNDA CLIQUE FACES GROWING ISOLATION by JOHN BLAIR "I expect a great improvement in our economic situation next year, "said President Kenneth Kaunda on October 18 at the opening of the Kawambwa tea factory. "I can't pretend, and 1 cannot mince words, becouse the picture before me in the treasury shows that hard times lie ahead of our country, " said Minister of Finance John Mwanakatwe speaking on Zambia Television on October 17Despite the optimism of Kaunda's statement a quick glance at a few key statistics (see tables) will demonstrate that Mwanakatwe was being a good deal more honest than his boss on the prospects for the Zambian economy in the coming period. As we predicted a year the recovery of the imperialist economies which began in a stuttering fashion in late 1975 has not been of sufficient dynamism to promote a commodity price boom equivalent to that of 1973-74. If account is taken of the 20% devaluation of the kwacha last July, we find that the price of copper in October 1976 was approximately equivalent to the disastrous average for 1975. If devaluation were to have any real effect it would have had to be reflected in significantly higher prices over a long period of time. In fact, for a number of reasons (which include the chronically ailing state of the pound sterling, in which all transactions are conducted), the kwacha value of Zambia's copper is now back to what it was immediately before devaluation. *See "Zambia - Humanist Rhetoric, Capitalist Reality" (Africa in Struggle Pamphlet No. 1, available From Red Books, 97 Caledonian Road, London N1, 30p). 32
Copper Prices per Ton for Wire Bars (London Metal Exchange — (in kwacha; K2.50-USS1) 1973 (average) 1,155 1974 (average) 1,326 1975 (average) 794 1976 (average January-June) 897 1976 (August)* 1,300 1976 (September) 1,155 1976 (mid-October) 1,002 * The kwacha was devalued by 20% on July 8, 1976. Balance of Payments on Current Account (in millions of kwacha) 1972 -148.8 1973 + 93.4 1974 +48.5 1975 -393.0 Note: Total exports in 1975 were K510 million. Nor would the return of copper prices to their 1974 levels recreate the heady conditions of the first part of that year. The cost of copper production rose 37% between 1975 and 1976. This figure cannot include the full effects of devaluation, which will become apparent only as higher costs of imported equipment and labor begin to make themselves felt in the account books. In oddition, it has been found necessary to take further costly measures to try to stem the outflow of expatriate labor. The turnover of the latter now stands at the quite uneconomic level of 37% per year and the labor force is less than 4,000 instead of the 5,000 considered necessary for maximum efficiency. In an attempt to reverse the trend, the new wage agreement for the mines, in effect as of November, guarantees expatriates a yearly gratuity of K2,000, in addition to their basic wages, payable externally and not subject to income tax. Previously, gratuities were calculated at 25% of gross earnings over a minimum contract period of two years and were liable to tax. Since few expatriates earn more than KB, 000 a year (which is more than seven times the average Zambian wage), the effect of this award will be to greatly odd to mining companies' expenditures and to the "remittances" section of the minus side on the balance of payments. In 1974 "private transfers" - which consist almost entirely of foreign currency purchases by Zambia's 34,000-strong expatriate labor force - amounted to K86.5 million, more than 10% of the income from copper sales (KB38 million). In 1975, for which figures are not yet available, it is certain that these transfers rose to at least 20% of the total copper sales of K471 million. The new incentives will further increase the part played by this cost in the future. But given the current international competition
for such technical staff, it is likely that the new incentives will still not solve this problem. Zambia's desperate financial situation, which has led to lengthy delays in the payment of importers' bills and in some case a consequent complete cessation of supplies, has found willing creditors over the past year in the capitalist countries whose aim is to cement the position of their most important bulwark in central Africa. Thus, in August and September there were announcements of a K50 million loan from the EEC, K24 million From the U.S. -controlled World Bank, and K12 million in U.S. foreign aid, Zambia's indebtedness to such donors is reflected in its foreign policy, as we shall see. In the meantime, a constant feature of govemment statements during the past two years has been the need to redress the imbalance of the economy through a revival of the agricultural sector. Indeed, the more fanciful government representatives have suggested that wheat, beef, sugar, etc, should eventually replace copper as the country's most important export earner. As yet their words have failed to show any tangible result and the picture of stagnation described in the pamphlet referred to above remains unchanged. There is now much talk of this year's 7 million bag commercial maize harvest (1 bag = 90 kilograms). But this is a crop which is subject to extreme fluctuations coused by weather and disease (for example, the 1970 harvest was 1,388, 000 bags; in 1972 it was 6, 367,000). If is certain that this "achievement" will make little difference in the prevailing situation, under which more than 90% of export earnings derive from copper sales. Further, in the absence of any significant development in other fields, the maize harvest will not change the situation of 1974-75, when 40% of retail food was imported. Finally, it should be emphasized that the past year has strengthened the conclusion drawn in our pamphlet that Zambia has totally failed in its efforts to develop import substitution manufacturing industry. In fact, employment in that sector remained virtually stagnant through the years of the latest copper boom (December 1972: 39,360; June 1974: 40, 820). The most recent news of layoffs indicates a significant decline in employment here. Many factories have laid off workers due to the prevailing shortage of foreign exchange for essential plant maintenance and raw material inputs. All these trends confirm our analysis of the impasse reached by government attempts to break away from Zambia's role as an insignificant part of the southern African sub-sector of the imperialist world. They are reflected in the desperate current attempts of the government to advance a "settlement" in southern Africa that would "excuse" Zambia's full reintegration into this economic system. Wages and the mines As the key sector of the economy and the employer of
LL SAN remain the central indicator (and to some extent the determinant) of the position of the entire working population. The results of the recent "negotiations" conducted between the MUZ (Mineworkers' Union of Zambia) and the two 51% state-controlled companies, RCM and NCCM, are just becoming public knowledge. Significantly, the content of the new agreement has been allowed to filter out bit by bit rather than being issued in a single announcement. The object is presumably to avoid any kind of militant reaction to the ir abysmal content. Below we statistically describe the effect on real wages of this and previous agreements dating back to 1970 on a representative group of miners: the lowest grode of surface worker. Since no official statistics on cost of living increases are available beyond August 1975, we have projected our figures by using the rate of increase for the first months of 1975, which gives an annual rate of increase of 15%. This extrapolation is almost certain to lead to a conservative estimate of current and future situation. As justification for this we may cite the statement of Government Minister Alexander Chikwanda in the October 1976 issue of the magazine African Development (special supplement on Zambia): "The internationally induced pressure on the internal price structure is calamitous. For a long time we have held prices even of things we Imported at constantly higher prices of the same level to keep the cost of living of our lowest income social groups bearable. ... Now the inflation flood gates can no longer be kept in check."
Wages needed to keep pace with official low income index and proMonthly jection of 15% increase Wages per year in the future 1970 K54.50 --1975 K64.50 K79.45 1976 November K70,50 K91.37 1977 November K77.60 K105.07 1978 November Renego- K120.82 fiation date The wage statistics amply demonstrate that real wages in the mining sector have already undergone a substantial decline and will continue to decline for the next two years. The question is not whether but when the strongest section of the working class will react against an agreement in the course of whose application their living standards will fall to 50% of 1970 levels. Up to now there are no signs of an organized resistance. This is not surprising in a situation in which union officialdom is in no effective way responsible to the rank and file. As of now, mass meetings have been
ZAMBIA of the new agreement relating to a slight improvement in the conditions of granting retirement benefit to sick employees and to an improvement in terms for the granting of loans for purchasing bicycles and motor bicycles. But at these meetings union officials have refrained from explaining the details of the pay agreement (despite the fact they have been published in the national press), on the grounds that they are still subTect to final government approval. It is thus clear that they intend to introduce the sweet before the sour to deflect any reaction. One encouraging sign that the miners retain some tradition of militancy came in their reaction to a government proposal whereby candidates for election to any official post within the trade-union movement would be subject to approval by the Central Committee of the ruling party, the United National Independence party (UNIP). It was explained that in a "one-party state" such a step was both logical and necessary in order that the workers be protected from becoming the pawns of self-seeking careerists and instead be guaranteed representation by dedicated servants of the nation! Reaction to this attempt at eliminating the last remaining vestiges of trade-union freedom was violent. A meeting of 8,000 miners in the copperbelt center of Kitwe saw speaker after speaker denounce the proposal as an insult to the intelligence of the workers and an unprecedented intrusion on their freedom to elect whom they wished as representatives. After this single meeting the goverment, clearly fearing any further demonstrations of opposition, backed down, explaining that the directive would in fact be limited to leadership elections in the ZCTU (Zambia Congress of Trades Unions), a body which is already a de facto government organ. It is to be hoped that the reaction shown in this instance on the question of representation will be imitated in the future in the beginnings of the organization of a fight against government's wage cutting policy. Government and Party The past period has seen a noticeable weakening of the position of the small clique that effectively rules Zambia through its government and sole legal political party. As we have stressed before, the latter has long since ceased to be any kind of mass party. Rather it consists almost exclusively of government officials and aspirants to office. The latest evidence of its decline came during the copperbelt regional conference in September, when it was revealed that the party had signed up only 32,000 members out of an eligible population of more than one million. Far more serious than the loss of its mass base, however, is that the UNIP leodership itself shows every sign of disintegration. In the past period we have seen:
1) The demotion of the most capable of Lambia's younger generation of politicians, Vernon Mwaanga, from his post of foreign secretary to a place on the Central Committee and a few months later his exit from politics to become chief executive of Lonrho in Zambia; 34
2) The sudden demise of Mwaanga's successor, Rupiah Banda, who was reportedly excused from duties to go on "study leave" in Britain, In fact, it is well known that Banda had been exposed as having acquired personal property far in excess of that stipulated by the "leadership code"; 3) The sacking of Sikota Wing, long-time Central Committee member, on the grounds that he had supposedly failed to devote his full aftention to his job - no doubt because his attention was rather more occupied by his extensive business interests;
4) The recent removal to East Germany on study leave of Sefelino Mulenga, minister of lands, natural resources, and tourism. Mulenga had just become involved in a bitter public argument with the Law Association of Lambia, whose president was accusing him of having used his position to secure grants of land for his own personal friends; 5) The arrest for embezzlement of the governor of the Bank of Zambia, Bitwell Kalwani, who is said to have diverted hundreds of thousands of kwacha to his own pocket. All these cases and the hundreds of others which probably exist but have not yet been uncovered are evidence of the extreme insecurity felt by the governing group in a neocolonial stafe like Zambia. The state capitalist bureaucracy whose control of the state machine itself is its only security is desperate to acquire wealth to insure Itself against the future and become an independent bourgeoisie in its own right. To achieve these ends it attempts to enrich itself af every possible opportunity. Thus the attempts of Kaunda, and similarly of Nyerere in Tanzania, to cover up this process through promulgating a "leadership code"; thus also the inevitability of at least some goverment leaders' falling victim to rules whose existence is required to ensure the credibility and therefore the continuity of the whole system. The hemorrhage of talented leodership in this fashion and the effective reduction of the ruling group to a tiny number of Kaunda's most intimate associates have been Important factors in the recent attempts to reintegrate the remnants of the most serious split to have taken place within UNIP, that of the UPP under Simon Kapwepwe (former vice-president) in 1971. This party, which included men like Valentine Musakanya, ex-governor of the Bank of Zambia, and John Chisata, exleader of the MUZ, temporarily won considerable support, especially in the copperbelt. This was not because it offered any real altemative program to that of UNIP, but because its very existence was a magnet for all discontent. The UPP was squashed by detentions and the declaration of the one-party state in 1972. But it has retained a certain prestige and even organization throughout the subsequent period. Aware of this, the government has initiated a series of secret negotiations conducted by Home Secretary Aaron Milner with Kapwepwe and other leaders. The aim was to reintegrate them into government. In this way not only would the latter's leodership gain sorely needed reinforcements, but a potential organizer of discontented elements would be eliminated.
So far these attempts have failed, because the remnants of UPP recognize that their scattered following would be completely lost in the process. The continued failure, however, serves only to strengthen the feeling of vulnerability among the Kaunda clique. Another "running sore " in the flesh of the regime is the situation in North Western Province. A group of armed men known as the "Mushala Gang" have been operating in the province for more than a year now, making sporadic attacks on government offices, trucks, etc. Mushala himself is known to have been one of a group of malcontents enticed into Namibia in 1973 by South African agents. There they underwent military training In order to cause disruption in the western part of Zambia. A number of them were subsequently captured, but Mushala's grouping, which appears to have passed through the eastern part of then war-torn Angola, has so far escaped, despite a major military operation launched to hunt them down. Undoubtedly they have received support from the local population in an area which does not even have a paved road across its 600 kilometer breadth and whose peasantry constitutes one of the most deprived sections of the Zambian population. Some army and police casualties have been reported, but information from the Ndola Central Hospital, the nearest reception point for dead and wounded, suggests that these have been far greater than publicly acknowledged. It is also said that UNIP Secretary General Grey Zulu's recent return after one day from a proTected ten-day tour of the province was a result of the fact that his official convoy came under armed attack as it moved westward from Solwezi, the provincial capital. At the very least, the fact that a massive police and military operation has failed to round up a gang whose number is now officially said to be only seven men is a very clear sign of the tenuous hold of the government over the populace of this area. The student sector The government's extreme sensitivity to any apparent threat was amply demorstrated by the closure of the University of Zambia at the beginning of February this year following a three-week campaign by the mass of students in solidarity with the MPLA in the Angolan civil war and in opposition to Zambia's collaboration with the FNLA and UNITA, covered diplomatically through its advocacy of a "government of national union" in Angola. The January-February demonstrations, which also involved other sections of Lusaka's students, were the high point to date of activity by a group which has consistently resisted integration into the government's plans. They were encouraged by the existence, in the Frantz Fanon Society, of a group of militants who were beginning to grapple with Marxism and to apply this philosophy to an analysis of Zambian society itself. Without doubt, the sudden closure of the university was partly motivated by government's fear that this element might begin to try to extend the campaign beyond the demand for solidarity with MPLA to the domestic political arena, where a series of price rises af the end of January had provided combustible potential for a campaign among workers. The closure was occompanied by the detention of seventeen students and five lecturers. Four of the latter, who were expatriates, were subsequently released and deported; fifteen of the students were Finally released last month. Inevitably, given the low political level among the overwhelming majority of students, the reopening of the university in June saw a decline in radical activity. But the continued anti-government mood of the students was reflected in October 1976 in the unanimous decision of the National Union of Students delegate conference to reject affiliation to the UNIP Youth Brigade despite the exertion of numerous pressures on it to accept this. For many years the government has sought to gain a presence on the University of Zambia campus and at other institutions of higher education through the opening of party branches, but these have been unanimously resisted, a pattern which appears likely to continue. There is no doubt that the student population will remain fertile ground for revolutionary agitation. The possibilities for conducting this will be enormousiy improved by the unfolding struggles in southern Africa in respect of which the Kaunda government remains deeply compromised by its actions. If It is possible to convince students of the need to link their agitation to the discontent of an increasingly disaffected working class, they will play a key role in stimulating real mass struggle in the future. Foreign affairs As Zambia's vulnerability to the effects of recession and dependence on loans from the imperialist economies increases, so too does the government's desperate need for a "settlement" in southern Africa. Hence the cries of delight of the arrival of Kissinger, Kaunda's tears upon welcoming Kissinger's Lusaka statement last April as opening a new phase in U.S. policy in the region, and the readiness to do everything possible to encourage the success of Kissinger's most recent mission. Nor should one be surprised by the so-called front-line presidents' apparent rejection of the Kissinger-Smith agreement of September and their reaffirmed commitment to armed struggle in Rhodesia. In reality, their present attitude is determined by the foct that it is quite clear that no Zimbabwean nationalist (even the most compromised, like Nkomo) could accept a deal that involves leaving control of the military and police in the hands of the Smith government. Hence the proposal now being raised by Zambia, Tanzania, and most sections of the nationalist movement: that the British should be called upon to play a central role by "re-establishing their legal position as the colonial power and themselves conducting a peaceful transition to independence. *They hope in this way to provide an
IN STRUGGLE
ZAMBIA alternative to renewed armed struggle if the talks break down over Smith's insistence on maintaining control of the repressive apparatus. It is fruly ironic to listen to supposed fighters against colonialism calling on Britain to "re-assume its colonial responsibilities.
" But there is no doubt that for Zambia in particular this move would be in the government's immediate best interest:
1) It would enable an immediate re-opening of the border and resumption of trading links with Rhodesia, which before Smith's declaration of "independence"
provided 40% of Imports, as well as opening the shortest and cheapest rail link to the sea at Beira.
2) It would be the most rellable way of assuming uninterrupted progress toward neocolonial rule in
Zimbabwe. Thus, it would avoid the danger inevitably
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36 involved in a renewed upsurge of the armed struggle:
that the mass mobilization necessary to ensure success would go beyond nationalist demands and assume an anti-capitalist dimension. Even were this not to happen in Zimbabwe itself, it is certain that the imperialists and their neocolonial agents fear the exemplary effect of any massive struggles in that country on the masses of South Africa itself.
Exposure of the motivation behind the current line of
Zambia's government on this issue is a cenfral task of revolutionaries in the coming period, because it places an unquestionable identity upon the class nature of the regime.
October 25, 1976
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STUDENTS On the morning of November 12 some 700 armed police Invaded the Peradeniya campus of Ceylon University and opened fire on about 1,000 unarmed students, killing one and seriously wounding sixty-two. At least five people are missing and it is feared that the police may have killed them and secretly buried the bodies. Mass anger grew by the hour in the wake of the shootings, with many workers going on strike. The members of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) imprisoned since the repression of 1971 declared a two-day hunger strike to protest the police attack. Student strikes continued to spread. Ceylon University had been in crisis for nearly two months. The workers, teaching staff, and students had been demanding that the government remove the president of the Perodeniya campus and shelve the "university amendment bill. " The president of Peradeniya campus, a close associate of Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike, has earned the wrath of the students and staff because of his authoritarian rule. Even a government-appointed commission had recommended his removal, but the regime paid no heed. The university amendment bill seeks to eliminate what little remains of academic freedom and to transform the university into an institution under open government control. The bill has been opposed by teachers, workers, and students, and there were even differences over it within the government itself, which temporarily withdrew its presentation to the State Assembly. In early November the university staff had gone on strike in support of its demands, which included removal of the campus president.
SRI L