The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) led a protest march to the Zimbabwean consulate in central Johannesburg on Tuesday on the day a general strike was called in Zimbabwe.
The crowd of about 300, many wearing red Cosatu T-shirts, marched peacefully from the Library Gardens to the consulate in nearby Anderson street.
They carried placards with slogans such as ”Hang Mugabe”, ”Mugabe must repent or perish”, ”We want guns now to blow out Mugabe’s head” and ”Mugabe I will kill you in person”.
Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi and South African Communist Party (SACP) general secretary Blade Nzimande addressed the marchers before setting off for the consulate, where Vavi spoke to the crowd again.
A line of police guarded the office building in which the consulate is housed, but members of the public were allowed in and out as usual.
As Vavi addressed the marchers, workers in hard hats in a building opposite watched the proceedings.
The protesters presented a memorandum of demands to a consulate official.
In the memorandum, the SACP, Cosatu and the Zimbabwe Solidarity Forum demanded an end to ”barbaric repression by the Zimbabwe Republic security forces”.
”This is not the freedom Zimbabweans fought for when they sacrificed their lives in the liberation struggle,” the memo read.
With rampant inflation and widespread unemployment in Zimbabwe, the signatories demanded:
- Minimum wages linked to the poverty datum line;
- Reduction of income tax to 30%;
- Workers earning less than the poverty datum line not to be taxed;
- Free antiretroviral drugs;
- The stabilising of prices of basic commodities; and
- An end to the harassment of informal economy workers.
When the official who accepted the memorandum walked back inside, some of the crowd surged forward, but were held back by the police.
The crowd then dispersed. — Sapa