July 4, 2008
By Terry Bell
The bitter reaction yesterday of a Zimbabwean trade unionist in Harare went as follows: "[Zanu-PF members] seem to have won. They claim to have won, but still the beatings have continued."
He and several of his fellows bewailed the fact that the contribution and suffering of the labour movement tended to be ignored. They argued that the issues and the positions of the various parties in the conflict in Zimbabwe had become confused in the public mind.
Although this is not widely publicised, it is certainly true that the trade unions have been among the greatest losers in the repression and violence across the Limpopo. They have also provided much of the impetus and policy direction for the opposition, quite apart from playing the key role in establishing the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
The Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) has been particularly targeted in recent months. Union research reveals that nearly 5 000 teachers have been assaulted, with 600 hospitalised as a result of beatings. The homes of at least 230 teachers have been razed.
The general secretary of the PTUZ, Raymond Majongwe, who has twice suffered beatings and electric shock torture, was reported missing yesterday. On Wednesday afternoon a group of men raided his Harare home.
A union official said: "We do not think they found him, but we do not know what has happened to him."
PTUZ treasurer Lad Zunde was also not home when a group of men arrived on Wednesday evening to say they had called to "take him to a funeral".
The persecution of the unions is no recent phenomenon. The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) and most of its affiliates have been prime targets of the state ever since Morgan Tsvangirai, then the general secretary of the ZCTU and now the leader of the opposition MDC, led the federation on an independent course from the Zanu-PF government.
A ZCTU official said: "Yet we were fighting the very things [President Robert] Mugabe now claims to be opposing."
The unions, which were initially linked to the ruling party, opposed the liberal economic policies pursued by Mugabe on the advice of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
In 1996, at the same time that the trade union federations in South Africa were drafting their alternative economic policy proposals, the ZCTU produced a document titled Beyond Esap (the economic structural adjustment programme).
Like the South African labour movement's Social Equity and Job Creation document, Beyond Esap presents more thoroughly considered policy positions than anything put forward by the government. The ZCTU also drew on the experience of South Africa's reconstruction and development programme which, at that stage, had not yet given way to the macroeconomic reform programme of growth, employment and redistribution.
Beyond Esap argues for the establishment of a tripartite - labour, business and government - forum, such as the national economic development and labour council, to consider and confirm government policies. Its demand that "land redistribution should be given the highest priority" came at a time when the Mugabe government was doing little about redistributing land.
Among the most battered of all the Zimbabwe unions - the agricultural workers- there is demand for the establishment of farm worker co-operatives.
A co-operative supporter said: "But first we have to survive before we can start to talk about that."
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Mike B)
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