The Congress of SA Trade Unions plans to revisit Zimbabwe in January after last month’s ill-fated fact-finding mission, the federation said on Thursday.
”We will write to Zanu-PF, the Zimbabwe government and the other organisations we had intended to meet … asking for their help in getting it rearranged,” said Zwelinzima Vavi, Cosatu’s general secretary.
He said Zimbabwe’s government had misunderstood the purpose of the mission, and exposed its paranoia and fear when it expelled Cosatu’s 13-member team from Harare on October 26.
”The mission’s short stay in the country exposed the regime’s paranoia and its abuse of basic human rights,” Vavi told reporters at Cosatu’s head office, after a three-day meeting of the executive.
He said he, Cosatu president Willie Madisha and ”the same level of representation from affiliates” would be part of the new mission.
The new team would explain to Zimbabwe’s ruling party Zanu-PF and to that country’s government the purpose of the visit.
The Zimbabwean government said Cosatu’s visit was not welcome because the federation intended to meet organisations involved in Zimbabwe’s political discourse, and critical of President Robert Mugabe’s administration.
The Crisis Coalition, the National Constitutional Assembly, the Zimbabwe Election Support Network, Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights and the Zimbabwe Council of Churches were some of the organisations Cosatu planned to meet.
Vavi said Cosatu, which has been criticised by the South African government and the African National Congress (ANC) for the short-lived mission, was not visiting Zimbabwe in a provocative way.
”We were not coming there in a disrespectful way. We wanted to find out what was happening on the ground.”
He said Cosatu remained shocked by the criticism from the government, and especially from the ANC Youth League.
The attack meant that Cosatu should ”keep quiet, move out of politics, be a lapdog. We refuse to do that”, he said.
Meanwhile, Cosatu would start pickets at the Zimbabwean High Commission and blockade the Beit Bridge border post pending further discussions with the Zimbabwean Congress of Trade Unions, Vavi said.
However, he did not say when these demonstrations would take place. He said Cosatu would also ask other trade unions in the Southern African Development Community to help Zimbabweans establish democracy in their country. – Sapa