Rhodesia murders blamed on government

NATIONALIST guerrillas denied responsibility for the recent murder of a nun and a missionary doctor In the Lupane district of Rhodesia, according to Mr Arthur Chadzingwa, spokesman for the Patriotic Front of Zimbabwe.
Sr Ferdinanda Ploner and Dr Hanna Decker were gunned down by a group of eight terrorists who broke into St Paul's Mission Hospital at Lupane last week and demanded money. Dr Decker gave the terrorists about 400 Rhodesian dollars (some f400) but was told this was not enough. She offered to go to her house to fetch some more money and was murdered on her way to collect it A few seconds later, according to eye-witnesses, Sr Ferdinanda was killed by a volley of bullets from an automatic weapon. The terrorists attacked the black mission staff, threatened the nurses with rape and ordered the 130 patients out of their beds.
Mr Chadzingwa, addressing journalists at the Royal Commonwealth Society last Friday, said it was thought the murders were the work of the Rhodesian government's scouts.
He explained: "The nationalist guerrillas have no reason to kill missionaries, but the regime is against the missionaries because they are in sympathy with the people. The report of the murders has come from the regime. How do they know ii was guerrillas? II could have been government scouts."
Sr Ferdinanda volunteered for missionary work in Rhodesia six months ago. Before that she had
worked for 24 years in South Africa. Dr Decker had worked as a medical missionary in Rhodesia for 28 years.
Inequality permeates every aspect of Rhodesian society says the exiled Bishop Lamont in the introduction to a pamphlet on the Rhodesian economy to he published shortly.
"Rhodesia is often portrayed as a land of large, profitable farms, thriving industry, modern cities and rich natural sources," .the bishop says. "But it is also a country where the majority of the people live in abject poverty".
He accuses the colonial structures of Rhodesian society of continuing this poverty which, he says, has been made worse by the war for majority rule.
The pamphlet, "Alternatives to Poverty" iS being published by the Catholic Institute for Inter national Relations and is written by Fr Roger Riddell, Si, who has worked in Rhodesia for 12 years.
The pamphlet shows that the Rhodesian economy is linked with the international structures of capitalism and is not a free market economy but a tightly controlled State economy run by those who hold political power and own the land.
It also shows that the Rhodesian economy is dependent or, rural poverty and, far from being able to eradicate that poverty, continues to cause it.
"Alternatives to Poverty" ends with suggestions for a radical new approach to eliminating poverty in Rhodesia.
It calls for a development strategy based on the basic needs of the poorest, but Fr Riddell says that not even this "Utopian" approach is likely to achieve success in the short term.