admin
to celebrations at Gwanzura Stadium under the theme, “We Are Under Siege: Organise and Fight On”.
A very interesting, albeit ironical theme given that workers are under siege from the same predatory trade union leadership that sees them as nothing more than rungs up the political ladder.
The lot of the Zimbabwean worker has never been the same since the ZCTU went to bed with white capital in the late 1990s.
Then ZCTU boss Mr Morgan Tsvangirai was thrust to the leadership of the MDC which was launched under cover of the ZCTU with a brief to sabotage the land reform programme.
From that day, trade unionism became synonymous with opposition politics that prioritised defence of white capital over workers’ rights and aversion to all pro-people policies.
Though some unions joined the breakaway Zimbabwe Federation of Trade Unions in search of representation, the ZFTU failed to last the distance as the sanctions depressed industry with deleterious effects on potential revenue and membership.
In the words of former US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Chester Crocker, the sanctions were imposed to make the economy scream; to — in the words of former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook — get Zimbabweans to stone the Zanu-PF leadership in the streets.
The economy did scream along with workers who saw their livelihoods diminish by the day in contrast to the expanding waistlines of the ZCTU leadership which never saw anything wrong with the sanctions. Ironically, today that same leadership that has not found a voice against sanctions will feign concern for the worker and pontificate about a people they have done nothing to protect on the altar of political expediency.
If anything, it is the Zanu-PF component of Government that has worked and spoken for the worker from the day he was ditched by the ZCTU which went to bed with the MDC mantra of trying to protect the colonial status quo under the guise of verbalised change.
Today the land reform programme and indigenisation and economic empowerment drives stand out as the policies that provided safety nets for workers thrown into the gutter by the ravages of sanctions, workers largely ignored by a predatory trade union leadership.
Through progressive concepts like Community Share Schemes and Employee Share Ownership Trusts, workers have been given the dignity they were stripped of by the sanctions regime.
As part of poverty alleviation 59 Community Share Ownership Trusts have been registered countrywide to develop and rehabilitate community infrastructure and improve livelihoods. Employee Share Ownership Schemes are also being set up to enable workers to participate and benefit from the indigenisation and economic empowerment programme.
This is why today some of the workers who were laid off in the factories have found refuge on the land and are delivering their tobacco at various auction floors in Harare and the provinces earning serious money that would have remained the stuff of dreams were it not for the pro-people policies that the ZCTU is still to back to this day.
Let this be a day of introspection for the worker who, true to the ZCTU theme, is “under siege” from a sanctions regime the ZCTU condones.
It is “time to fight on” to claim their union from dwarfish politicians in giant trade union robes. To borrow from Karl Marx, workers of Zimbabwe unite, you have nothing to lose but your politicised, compromised leadership!
Online Reporter