Glenda Daniels
Zimbabwe can be saved from economic collapse only if its President, Robert Mugabe, is removed from power at the next election, general secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) Zwelinzima Vavi said this week.
Speaking after a three-day meeting of the Southern Africa Trade Union Co-ordination Council (Satucc) in Johannesburg, Vavi asked: “How do we save Zimbabwe? Remove Mugabe in the next election.”
He said Mugabe’s sole aim was power, and that he was “desperate and does not care how many corpses he leaves behind”.
The council, of which Vavi is president, unites union federations in countries of the Southern African Development Community, except the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mauritius.
His comments coincide with a visible toughening of the South African government’s stance on Zimbabwe, including three public attacks by President Thabo Mbeki, and a propaganda assault on Mbeki in Harare’s state-owned Herald. Relations between the two countries are more strained than at any time since 1994.
Vavi said he was not sure the South African government could do anything about the near-collapse of the Zimbabwean economy “seeing that we are facing similar problems though not on the same scale of poverty and escalating unemployment. We do not have our fundamentals right in this country.”
He said, however, that Mbeki is now “making the right noises, which is encouraging … We need more of these noises, but would have preferred stronger statements earlier. It might have helped a bit.”
Vavi said Afro-pessimism might be playing some role in the slide of the rand. However, he did not believe the theory that the currency was rapidly devaluing because of South Africa’s initial “quiet diplomacy” towards Zimbabwe.
“You cannot blame every problem with the rand on Zimbabwe. Our economy is unstable; there is chronic rising unemployment and slow delivery. Which country is going to listen to South Africa when the rand is R11,10 to the dollar?”
An investment strike by South African business and huge capital flight was affecting the local economy, Vavi said.
Regional unions at the Satucc meeting decided to write a letter to Mugabe asking him to curb the “anarchy” in Zimbabwe and stop intimidating unions and opposition parties.
The federation decided that free and fair elections in Zimbabwe are not possible if the current climate of lawlessness persists.
“We should be doing more than sending a memorandum, though, as this will probably be ignored. We should be mobilising workers to defend democracy actively,” Vavi said.