Durban spread to public sector

BY A FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT STRIKE action among workers in Durban, South Africa's largest port, spread yesterday to the public sector, bringing some essential services to a halt.

About 3,000 . municipal workers walked out, affecting road works, cleansing operations and other services. They joined several thousand other workers who have stopped work during the last four weeks in a major strike wave.

Black workers in South Africa have no right to strike, and the Durban workers "have defied threats and intimidation by the police and continual harassment by the authorities to press home their demands.

At least three-fifths of the black workers in South Africa earn less than the official poverty minimum. They have had to bear the brunt of rampant price inflation.

The municipal strikers said they were demanding an immediate increase of 10 rand (about £5) a week. Their average weekly wage at present is about 13 rand, though by working vast amounts of overtime some manage to raise this to 25 rand.

The strike began in the City Engineers' department and spread to the electricity workers. An excited crowd gathered to urge African clerks to strike.

Strikers stopped a refuse truck and chased its crew with sticks and clubs.

They refused to listen to an African labour officer who tried to tell them that a special meeting of the city council was being held today to decide on wage increases.

A municipal official said the government's Labour Department had been called in and the city's policy and finance committee was holding an emergency meeting.

The strike action has been steadily growing over the past four weeks affecting at least 20,000 workers in Durban. Scapegoat found for crop crisis THE DISMISSAL of the Soviet Minister of Agriculture, Vladimir Matskevich, and his replacement by Dmitry Polyansky is being interpreted in the bourgeois Press as one of the biggest shake-ups in the bureaucratic apparatus since 1965.

It follows the disastrous failure of the 1972 harvest, which has made it necessary for the USSR to purchase vast quantities of grain abroad. It seems that the outgoing Minister - who is apparently bespecied inte is being mae another the scapegoat for the harvest results.

The latest statistics demonstrate just how serious these are. Not only is the grain harvest very low, but the potato crop is also heavily down, with the worst results since 1963. The crop is 25 million tons less than the THE DOLLAR made a moderate recovery on the Frankfurt foreign exchange yesterday when the marAlmirante calls mass demo LEADING Italian fascist, Giorgio Almir ante has called for massive demonstrations of the National Right against the Andreotti government's 'culpable inertia and the insidious manoeuvres of the left'. - Lone Valpreda witness:

Deportation to death? THE • French government is threatening to deport the last remaining witness in the notorious 'Milan 16' bomb case back to Italy, where his life will be in danger from the police or the extreme right.

Sergio Ardau fled to France after he accused Milan police chief Calabresi of assassinating the anarchist rail worker Guiseppi Pinelli.

Police said Pinelli 'jumped' from a window in Milan police headquarters while undergoing interrogation over a bomb explosion which killed 16 people in a Milan bank in December 1969.

After the attack, a group of left-wing militants were rounded up in Italy and accused of the There was no evidence at all to support charges and it record potato harvest of 1968, which was about 100 million tons.

Farm production as a whole is down 4.6 per cent on the 1971 figures and productiyity per head was 3 per cent down on the previous year. These figures serve to underline the extent and seriousness of the crisis, for which the 'Morning Star' Moscow correspondent blames the weather.

The bad weather undoubtedly played a part, but it does not explain the spate of sackings in the administration.

Matskevich's is not the first head to roll: in August last year, the Byelorussian Agriculture Minister was replaced. Three days before Matskevich's sacking the Soviet Press announced the dismissal of a high agriculture bureaucrat, Shevchenko, for 'violating state discipline'.

It may be that Matskevich was connected in some way with Shevchenko's activites. Public criticisms have also been levelled at the Minister for Wate Economy. Yevgeny At a central committee meeting of the National Right on Sunday, he condemned 'the concurrent political offensive of the Communist Party and the offensive of hooliganism and terror of leftist ists'.

The Argentinian exdictator Juan Peron left Rome and crowds of enthusiastic supporters from the National Right yesterday en route to BY A FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT became known that the killings were, in fact, the work of the fascists, backed by the CIA and the Greek secret service.

Ardau is the only witness to see fragments of the bomb police alleged was used in the attack. This 'evidence' was destroyed by police after experts had challenged it.

A series of other witnesses important to the case have disappeared in mysterious circumstances, died or 'committed suicide.

Pinelli committed suicide. Armando Calzorari, who knew about fascist involvement in the outrage, also committed suicide.

Uso Lenke, who implicatec leaders of the extreme right disappeared into a pyschiatric hospital.

Another witness, the taxi driver Rolandi, died of a 'heart attack' after admitting he BY A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT Alexeyevsky,, who is responsible for canals, irrigation and farm land improvement and reclamation.

The government daily 'Izvestia', in a report on the failures of a giant experimental farm at Podo Isk in the Moscow region, blamed Alexeyesky's Ministry for milk losses. The experimental milk farm at Podolsk has been automated with imported East German machinery so that one man can milk 1,000 CoWs through the use of one control panel. ( annual yield target of Planned The farm had a tons, but could not achieve this to faults of the two ministries, 'Izvestia' reported.

The Water Ministry had not provided a promised irrigation canel and the Agriculture Ministry had failed to produce the required number of prize milkers to the farm.

*What is the reason for postponing the date of the irrigation channel . . . and how and when will the Ministry of Agriculture supply the farm with high-yield cows?' the paper asked. The 'exposure' of this situation in Pools could foreshadow shortages of milk for consumers.

Certainly, prospects for the 1973 harvest do not look promising. Once again snowfalls have been below average, leaving the shoots of winter wheat exposed to the biting froosts. In addition, the bureaucracy is relying heavily on an increase in the summer crop.

Florentyev, the Russian Agriculture Minister, indicated at the weekend that 7.5 million acres of land had not been sown with winter crops 'owing to unfavourable weather conditions'.

He added that farmers in the Soviet Far East and the Urals had been unable to plough 4.3 million acres, presumably because of frost. This indicates that the

General

welcomed BELISARIO VELASCO, general secretary of the Chilean Christian Democratic Party, has given his support to the participation of the military in President Salvador Allende's government.

Velasco told a party meeting last Friday that the armed forces were a vital factor 'for the maintaining of a climate of peace for the elections next March, which are vital for the economic and political future of the country'.

The latest decision from the General Carlos Prats-Allende cabinet vindicates this notorious right-winger.

All demonstrations have banned in the centre of capital, Santiago. schedules for the 1973 harvest are already getting way out of gear.

Commenting on the situation yesterday, the New China News Agency said that Soviet CP chief Leonid Brezhnev was no better than the late Nikita Khrushchev at running agriculture. It noted that when Brezhnev came to power eight years ago, he blamed Khrushchev for the state of Soviet agriculture.

The agency said both Matskevich and Polyanskywhose appointment it described as a demotion - had been made scapegoats by the 'Brezhnev clique.

It recalled that Khrushchev had to dismiss six Ministers in succession in order to absolve himself of the responsiblity for the failure of the crops.

'Khrushchev's trick did not leceive the soviet people ir um. Presumably Breznner will fare no better by repeating this trick of Khrushchev's', agency said.