The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) on Friday evening dismissed comments by Zimbabwe’s ambassador to South Africa that the union body’s protest at the Zimbabwe border ”achieved nothing” and turned out to be ”no blockade”.
Cosatu spokesperson Patrick Craven said the demonstration went ”a long way to publicise the attacks of civil rights and trade union freedom in Zimbabwe”.
It was also not intended as a blockade, he said.
Ambassador Simon Khaya Moyo criticised elements in the trade union movement for behaving ”in a strange fashion”.
He said that the South Africa government had repeatedly advised Cosatu ”not to proceed with the misguided mission to blockade the border at Beit Bridge”.
Craven denied that the government had offered this advice to Cosatu.
”It’s completely untrue,” he said.
Moyo also praised the judgement in the Pretoria High Court on Friday. The court enforced the Musina municipal limitations, saying the protest has to be held at least 200m from the border post.
”It was a very educated judgement and most welcome to all progressive people,” said Moyo.
The ambassador said the judgement further placed Cosatu ”where they belong and where their mandate is housed”.
Cosatu’s Limpopo provincial secretary Jan Tsiane said many Cosatu members ”did not know whether to come to the venue. But we expect to see lots of improvement next week and we will continue to engage and discuss with authorities how we are going to conduct our forthcoming pickets on March 18 and 30”.
Tsiane said picketers were carrying placards with slogans such as ”All in solidarity of the Zimbabwean people”.
Tsiane said most of the people expected to take part in the picket were from near Musina.
On Thursday night, Cosatu was granted permission by the South African Police Service to hold the picket.
Limpopo police said on Thursday that Cosatu had only applied for permission to picket and had later changed its application to include a march.
”They were given permission to picket, but not to march,” said Superintendent Mohale Ramatseba. ”We can’t allow them to march when they’ve applied at such a late stage.”
One of the reasons Ramatseba gave was that traffic on the N1 highway through the border post would be disrupted by the march.
On Wednesday, a group of Cosatu members protested outside the Zimbabwean embassy in Pretoria.
They were protesting against human rights abuses in Zimbabwe and asking that a fact-finding mission be sent to investigate the running of elections on March 31.
Cosatu plans to continue picketing the embassy in the run-up to the March 31 election, spokesperson Patrick Craven said.
The protests will culminate in a vigil at Beit Bridge on the night before Zimbabweans go to the polls.
In February, Zwelinzima Vavi, Cosatu’s secretary general and president of the Southern Africa Trade Union Coordination Council, was stopped from entering Zimbabwe, along with a Cosatu delegation.
Also in February, two South African-based trade unionists were deported from Zimbabwe, shortly after arriving at Harare International airport.
Zimbabwean Congress of Trade Unions secretary general Wellington Chibebe said at the time that Bobby Marie and Vihemina Prout were deported after failing to produce ”security clearance letters from the ministry of labour”.
He said the two travelled to Zimbabwe at the instruction of the Southern Africa Trade Union Coordination Council. — Sapa