The Zimbabwean government is trying to quash the local trade union movement and send its own representatives to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) conference in June, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) said on Thursday.
”The government is using a variety of ways to destabilise and paralyse the most important independent force in civil society,” ZCTU secretary general Wellington Chibebe said.
Speaking to reporters in Johannesburg, Chibebe said Zimbabwe is putting pressure on two ZCTU members to attend next month’s ILO conference in Geneva, Switzerland.
”The minister of labour is trying to coerce the ZCTU second vice-president, Elias Mlotshwa, to attend the conference … and Edmund Ruzivethe, third vice-president … against the usual labour delegation, which normally consists of Lovemore Matombo and myself,” Chibebe said.
Matombo is the president of the ZCTU.
Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) secretary general Zwelinzima Vavi said Ruzivethe is a known government sympathiser.
”This is a sinister move from the government, who want to get an opportunity for a public-relations platform at the conference without any major input from the labour delegation from Zimbabwe,” Chibebe added.
He said he does not think the international labour movement will accept the Zimbabwe government’s manoeuvring.
”I’m quite certain the unions of the world will not allow it,” he said, explaining ILO delegates have to be appointed by genuine, representative union structures.
Chibebe said police raided the ZCTU offices in Harare on May 13, with a search warrant indicating they were looking for documents relating to foreign currency transactions and fraud allegations.
”This is part and parcel of the orchestrated move to harass and intimidate the ZCTU, and a continuation of the ploy to remove the current ZCTU leadership on flimsy reasons ahead of the ILO meeting.” he said.
In April, a ZCTU general council meeting in Bulawayo was disrupted by people calling themselves ”concerned affiliates of the ZCTU”, Chibebe said.
Chibebe said it appears these disruptions and other internal struggles within the ZCTU were state-sponsored.
”The problematic child is the labour movement, which is where the MDC [the opposition Movement for Democratic Change] is known to have come from, so they [the government] have to deal a blow to the labour movement,” he said.
Although the Zimbabwe government is trying various means to get a foot in the door at the ILO conference, Chibebe said it will not succeed.
”The political darlings of the government … can go to the conference … as long as they don’t speak on behalf of the workers, we are not worried.”
Should Matombo and Chibebe’s passports be confiscated and the two locked up in jail, they will still attend the labour gathering.
”We have other, alternative means of showing our faces at the conference.
”There is a 90% chance we’ll be [there] whether or not the government is successful in taking its excess baggage to the conference,” he said, referring to the government’s attempts to send its own representatives to Geneva.
Previously, the Zimbabwe government has accused the ZCTU of being an agent of British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government.
”Chibebe has been a regular feature at the British Labour Party annual conferences and has used the platform to call for … international isolation of the country and the illegal removal of the legitimate government,” Minister of Justice Patrick Chinamasa said in a statement in March. — Sapa