The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has applied to the Zimbabwean government to send a high-powered delegation on a fact-finding mission to Zimbabwe at the end of the month, two months after officials from the organisation were deported.
The purpose of the visit is to find out how the current crisis in the country is affecting workers. Cosatu wants to include militant secretary general Zwelinzima Vavi and president Willie Madisha in the delegation.
Vavi and Madisha were not part of the first Cosatu delegation that was bundled out of Zimbabwe in November.
Cosatu spokesperson Peter Craven said the union had made the application just before the Christmas holidays.
”We did not only write to the Zimbabwean government explaining why we want to come,” said Craven. ”We also wrote to labour and other stakeholders. We wrote the letter just before the holidays and we are still waiting for a response from the Zimbabwean government.
”We want to get a better understanding of what is happening on the ground by talking to all stakeholders,” he said.
The South African labour body had planned its mission to Zimbabwe for this month, but is still awaiting a response.
Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) secretary general Wellington Chibhebhe, who visited South Africa last week, also said Cosatu is ”spelling out its plans” to visit Zimbabwe.
In a move that alarmed labour movements in the region, Cosatu’s last visit ended when the government forced the South African visitors into a kombi and ordered them out of the country.
The union later resolved to block the Beitbridge border post in retaliation.
Craven said other regional trade unions would support the blockade. A date for the blockade has not yet been set.
Though Chibhebhe said there is nothing political about Cosatu’s intentions, the Zimbabwean government has repeated its claim that Cosatu is not welcome there.
”I do not know what they want in my country. I am having negotiations with the ZCTU, a union in my country and our relations with the ZCTU have improved,” said Zimbabwe’s Minister of Labour, Paul Mangwana.
”I am not interested in talking to them. They are a federation in South Africa and they have no business to do in my country, except through the bilateral relations we have with the ministry of labour in South Africa,” he told the country’s Daily Mirror newspaper.
”They are unwanted people. Unwanted people are thrown away. If they come, we will throw them into the next kombi,” he said. — Zimbabwe Independent, Sapa