This is an abridged version of President Robert Mugabe’s speech delivered at the Central Committee Meeting at Chimoio, Mozambique, on August 31 1977

THIS meeting of the Central Committee is unique in the following respects:
(a) This is the first meeting of our Central Committee since its reconstruction last March, when new structural changes were made in order to suit ourselves to the situation facing the Party.
(b) This meeting occurs at a very important stage of our struggle, a stage when the war has gained significantly in momentum and its effects have begun to be felt by the enemy and we are, accordingly, called upon to review the war in terms of our general policy and strategy in order to intensify our war effort.
(c) We are also meeting at a stage when the Party stands in need of a structural consolidation, a clear definition of departmental functions and systematic streamlining of appointments so that the entire Party machinery can be geared to greater efficiency and effectiveness.

This Central Committee meeting, in order to achieve progress, has, in my opinion, to take stock of our past as indeed it must examine our present and proceed to cast its view into the future.
The past, present and future constitute the time-frame or form in which our actions pitted one against the other as we move towards the attainment of our objectives.
I shall, accordingly, attempt a brief history of ZANU and our revolution with emphasis on the immediate past.
Brief history of our Party and its struggle
Only a few days ago we celebrated ZANU Day, the 8th of August, when, in 1963, ZANU was born in Highfield.
From the moment of its conception, it had to struggle for survival against enemy forces.
Its resilience, commitment to the struggle and sense of direction distinguished it even at this early stage, for whilst it fought gallantly for survival, it took positive steps in planning for a people’s armed struggle.
In May 1964, the Congress of Gwelo, which gave us a Constitution and a Party structure with the Central Committee and a National Executive, mandated the leadership of the Party with the task of implementing the Party’s action programme and planning the struggle in general.
By July 1964 we had got our ‘Crocodile Group’ into action, while our military training programme was underway.
In September, 1964, the Party was proscribed and the leadership, except for those few who were outside the country, was detained.
Adjusting itself to the new situation, the leadership delegated the task of waging the armed struggle to members of the Central Committee abroad, under the leadership of the late Comrade Herbert Chitepo.
After the establishment of the Revolutionary Council, the armed struggle began with the Battle of Sinoia in April, 1966.
The launching of the armed struggle opened a new vista in our general struggle against imperialism and colonialism and regenerated a completely new confidence in our people’s ability to fight for their freedom and independence.
The environment of independence offered by Zambia, Botswana and Malawi was another source of inspiration and confidence.
Our armed struggle naturally lacked experience both among the leadership and the cadreship and soon we began suffering setbacks.
There followed a loss of morale among our fighters and a general lack of enthusiasm on the part of our people to join the war.
Accordingly, the leadership abroad, structurally adjusted itself as the external wing of the Party, gearing the entire machinery for a new military offensive based on an objective assessment of the situation.
DARE spearheaded the revision of the general plan and strategy of the war.
Soon our fighters were fighting alongside FRELIMO in the Tete offensive.
In December, 1972, we opened the North-Eastern (currently, the Tete) operational area.
By 1974, the armed struggle had assumed proportions extremely frightening to the enemy.
The detente exercise of 1974 together with the internal revolt experienced by the Party were ingenious tactics in the enemy’s overall strategy aimed at reversing our revolutionary thrust.
The harm done to the Party and the revolution by the revolt of 1974 within ZANLA and the accompanying detente exercise is common knowledge.
The detente exercise is told in sequence by the occurrence of the following sad events:
(a) The assassination by the enemy of Comrade Chitepo in Lusaka;
(b) The arrest and imprisonment of members of DARE and the High Command in Zambia;
(c) The arrest and detention of hundreds of ZANU cadres in Zambia;
(d) The deliberate halting of reinforcements to the battlefront as a means of exposing our fighters to the enemy.
We put up a strong and principled resistance against imperialism and colonialism operating partly through the willing agency of our neighbours and partly through the treachery of our own President.
Once we judged the moment was ripe, we struck a military alliance with ZAPU, called it ZIPA, and re-launched our struggle with a new vigour that confounded the enemy.
We opened new operational zones off Manica and Gaza provinces in Mozambique.
The re-launching of the armed struggle became the first effective step in our bid to resuscitate the Party.
We had succeeded in reconstituting our army, but we had not yet managed to re-establish the Party, especially now that the treachery and the apostasy of its top leader had become conclusive, causing a confused situation to exist in the whole fabric of our organisation, especially with the ANC domination of the political scene.

The ANC, an amorphous and purpose-lacking body into whose orbit ZANU had found herself coerced, had striven hard, with the support of our treacherous leader, to smother ZANU.
It became quite obvious to those of us who still stood by ZANU’s principles that only a full reemergence of the Party would place it in a strong position to prosecute the war and defend itself against onslaughts upon it.
Hence, in September last year, at the meeting of the Frontline States in Dar-es-Salaam, the four members of the Central Committee who attended the meeting declared before the five Presidents the re-emergence of ZANU.
In the context of a re-emerging ZANU, the cumulative effect of the various pressures we had exerted for the release of our comrades from prison in Zambia, soon bore fruit when the long-awaited event occurred.
All the comrades except one, got released in October.
In the meantime, the intensification of the armed struggle had prompted another subtle move by the British and the Americans to confound an imminent military victory by ZANU through a deceptive constitutional scheme whose effect would have been to leave effective power in the hands of the settlers.
As a conference strategy, ZANU had formed an alliance with ZAPU.
At the Geneva Conference (October – December 1976), the Patriotic Front succeeded in obstructing the enemy move to establish a neocolonialist regime under cover of democracy and thus winning yet another lease for the armed struggle.
Party unity
Throughout the 14 years of ZANU’s existence, the one unmistakable feature that emerges is the unity that has bound together those of us with a greater commitment to the principles and objectives of the Party.
I define Party unity as a harmony that draws us together under a given leadership of the Party towards the achievement of its goals.
Unity is in fact more than mere harmony.
It is an active bond of aspirants who share common given political beliefs.
Unity is integrative of constructive or progressive or revolutionary forces in the direction of set goals.
Unity is equally disintegrative of destructive or retrogressive or counter revolutionary forces that operate against progress and against unity itself.
I take all those of us who genuinely believe in ZANU and accept its constitutional structure and objectives and are actively working for the fulfillment of its revolutionary goals, as ZANU’s progressive forces.
On the other hand, destructive forces are those amongst us who arduously strive in directions that militate against the Party line or who, like the rebels of 1974 and 1975, seek to bring about change in the leadership or structure of the party by maliciously planting contradictions within our ranks.
These constitute negative or counter revolutionary forces because their actions are a negation of the struggle.
We must negate them in turn.
This is what is referred to as the negation of the negation.
We cannot afford to lie low when cliquists, tribalists or regionalists are plotting daily to undermine the unity of the Party by fanning dissension and confusion.
Party discipline
ZANU is a Party full of experience.
It cannot be denied that right from the Central Committee down to the smallest Party unit indiscipline pervades our structures.
On a number of occasions, I have described discipline as having two
dimensions – the external and the internal – emphasising that the internal kind of discipline was the more important of the two.
Internal discipline is a state of order within a person that propels him to do the right things.
It is a stage of individual development that resolves the contradictions within an individual.
The pull to be selfish is counterbalanced by a greater pull to be selfless, the pull to drunkenness is countered by one to moderation, the pull to disobedience is negatived by that to obedience, the pull to sexual givenness yields to sexual restraint, deviationism is corrected by compliance and individualism by collectivism.
The individual must comply with the order laid down by the group.
Our group is the Party called ZANU.
ZANU has an order, rules and regulations which make its system – the ZANU system of behaviour.
When an individual cannot subject himself to discipline, then external discipline must apply.
The Party must compel him to conform.
This is where punishment comes in.
We, who are members of the Central Committee, have to demonstrate by our own actions that we are entitled to demand of others compliance to rules of discipline. Let a greater consciousness of the tasks that confront us grow within us.
Let us deserve to be ZANU.
Party ideology
The Party has accepted scientific socialism as its guiding philosophy.
No one is born a scientific socialist.
Marx was not, neither was Lenin nor Mao.
Marx conceived the philosophy underlying scientific socialism.
Lenin learnt, interpreted and applied it to Russia.
Mao did the same in respect of China.
We, who have accepted socialist theory as the basis of practice in our own countries, have a duty to read and understand what the fathers of that theory actually say.
We also have to examine the theory in the light of our history and the environment of our country.
Only in this way can we evolve from the pure ideology of socialism a workable practical ideology for Zimbabwe.
The leadership must be warned that unless it can keep ahead of its followers, in its ideological education, it cannot justifiably continue to lay any sustainable claim to leadership.
Ideology guides the Party.
The leadership which leads the Party must, therefore, be ideologically oriented. Otherwise, such leadership becomes a misfit.
Let us with haste transform ourselves so we can deserve to lead and instruct our followers.
Literature abounds.
Let us avail ourselves of it!
The British-American manoeuvres
The British and Americans have just been holding a meeting in London.
We understand they have agreed on a set of proposals whose general principles are:
(a) Independence by September 1978;
(b) Elections on the basis of one-man-one-vote;
(c) Cease-fire before elections.
To us, the fundamental issue is none of all these ideas.
It is precisely the fact of effective control.
The question we should have answered is whether our army will constitute the security forces of independent Zimbabwe.
If the answer is ‘No’, then there is no question of any agreement by us.
If we maintain our Party cohesiveness and continue to uphold the armed struggle as the only form of revolutionary action capable of achieving true victory, true victory will come our way.
As the leadership of the Party our task must be to lead and not to mislead, to inform and not to misinform, to persuade and not to dissuade, to encourage and not to discourage, to guide and not to misguide, to direct and not to misdirect, to unite and not to disunite.
We must be leaders and not ‘misleaders’.
Let us live up to expectations of our people:
Pamberi neZANU!
Pamberi neCentral Committee!
Pamberi neChimurenga!