The Federation of Unions of South Africa (Fedusa) called on Tuesday for global solidarity with Zimbabwean workers after the viewing of a DVD that showed police beating trade union leaders in that country last month.
”As Fedusa has said before, politics and political power is one thing, human rights violations is completely another,” said Dennis George, general secretary of Fedusa.
Members of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) were arrested and beaten after an attempted protest march in Harare last month.
The DVD was produced and smuggled out of Zimbabwe by the American Solidarity Centre and showed the initial confrontation of the members of ZCTU with police fficers and their subsequent beatings.
”We did not want to overthrow the Zimbabwean government. We simply wanted better salaries for workers,” one leader said in the DVD.
Fedusa’s president, Mary Malete, said Fedusa would lodge an urgent application to the International Labour Organisation on behalf of the ZCTU to establish a fact-finding committee to investigate the assault as well as ”the ongoing intimidation and oppression of the trade union movement in Zimbabwe”.
She said they would do this with the view to exerting pressure on the international community to impose sanctions on Zimbabwe.
A United States trade union delegation was refused entry to Zimbabwe last month.
Lucia Matibenga, who was hospitalised with a fellow ZCTU member at Milpark Hospital in Johannesburg last month after attending the ninth Congress of South African Trade Unions meeting, was featured on the DVD.
She suffered severe injuries to her back, buttocks and arms as well a perforated eardrum as a results of beatings from Harare police officers. – Sapa