adminFreedom Mutanda
IN my previous instalment, I went to great lengths to explain the relationship between law as espoused by the Roman-Dutch law statutes and the knowledge systems of the Zimbabweans. Celebrated African writer who is the doyen of African literature, Chinua Achebe, noted that Africans must know where and when the rain began to beat them.In view of the massive retrenchments that left thousands in limbo in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling on the common law vis-à-vis The Labour Act, one is left wondering whether it is a bad idea to align our laws taking into cognisance our very own culture?
The West is capitalist oriented; therefore, undoubtedly, its modus operandi has capitalist tendencies. Hand in glove with its dog-eat-dog mentality, the West crafted laws that hedged White Capital leaving the proletariat weak kneed and vulnerable.
Certainly, a person or company gets into business to make a profit and thus, it would be highly mischievous to expect a business to carry on at a loss making mode as if everything is normal.
That is similar to pouring water in a watering can that has numerous holes under it.
By the time one gets to the garden, there is very little water left; it will take one forever to fully water a garden.
Industrialists, granted, can’t be expected to pay workers when productivity is at a low ebb. That is subsidization which a business can ill afford.
Nevertheless, it is diabolic for someone to, with a stroke of the pen, render thousands redundant and feel nothing for the ripple effects that would extend the massive retrenchments that visited many Zimbabwean homes.
Zundera Mambo, was a concept that our ancestors, in their wisdom, developed in order to act as a safety net to hundreds of people when crops failed.
Industry must have a similar safety net where workers aren’t exposed to such an extent that they walk away from their employment with nothing to show for their years of arduous work.
Policymakers now have to see to it that a win-win situation arises from their deliberations of the amendments to The Labour Relations Act that is now before parliament and later on the Senate would deliberate on it.
Yes, the legislature is skirting on thin ice in its attempt to resuscitate the economy as well as make the restive labour body be cooled.
Perhaps, it is high time the Tripartite Negotiation Forum stop its rhetoric and be a key driver in the journey to an economic Canaan.
It beats me as a legal nonentity, that for years, the labour body’s legal department did not find the obnoxious part in the Labour Act which allowed employers to callously send workers packing without terminal benefits in tandem with retrenchment packages.
Ever since this statutory body was born, there has been rhetoric mainly political and that did not bring food on the table for the shop floor worker.
Capitalism’s relentless attack on the worker is legendary.
Thus, Karl Marx’s cry, “Workers of the world unite,’’ still resonates with any sane human being today.
Workers have to give their input when laws are crafted. In the pre-colonial period, at every homestead, there was a bandla, which
Members of the bandla came from the male side of the homestead. Sadly, not much came from the female side; today, we can’t ignore these people who in Mao’s words hold half the sky.
‘’Ears that do not listen to advice, accompany the head when it is chopped off,’’ so goes an African proverb.
The above words of wisdom tally well with the worker situation in Zimbabwe. Now that Government has taken the bull by the horns through the amendments to the Labour Act, it is incumbent upon the other two legs of the TNF, labour and employers not to remain head strong by insisting on a winner take all result.
When Israel came out of the ashes of World War 2, the United Nations at the behest of the British, divided Palestine into two-Israel and Palestine for the Palestinians.
At that time, the Palestinians had a policy of ‘It’s all or nothing’ and up to now the conflict does not show signs of abetting.
In the alignment of the law, it is important to juxtapose productivity and worker welfare. If the workers had not received salaries for ten months or more, it means the enterprise isn’t profitable, period. However, why did management fail to institute cost cutting measures as the company walked in a mine field of a credit crunch?
It expected good times to roll again.
In the meantime, the economic quicksand swallowed the enterprise slowly but surely. A new wave of strikes to complain against massive job losses would have resulted in the further retreat of the economic barometer.
Labour was in a fix. Government was in a dilemma what with the social media abuzz with how the civil service wage bill would be reduced by more than 50 percent and any movement it takes the opposition would seize the opportunity to lambast it.
Ladies and gentlemen, let us face it. This is our country and we cannot allow it to bur for narrow political ends. Of course,
Hitler and Mussolini rode on the economic quagmire the Germans and Italians suffered in the early twenties and thirties.
A suicidal bus driver plunges into a cliff wishing to perish along with the passengers, but he gets the shock of his life when he survives. Employers or employees can be equated to the suicidal driver if they want to win everything in the envisaged amendment Bill.
Dialogue normally carry the day. Management has to look at itself in the mirror and check its own profligacy.
Corporate governance in most of these entities is zilch, but it is the worker who must lose her job while the management talks of cost cutting measures that hurt the poorly workers the most.
Online Reporter