The Sunday News
Khumbulani Vodloza Sibanda
THE world over, labour unions play a key role in advocating for and championing the welfare and rights of workers. They are recognised at law by both employers and governments in most countries.
In Zimbabwe they are part of the Tripartite Negotiating Forum (TNF), a roundtable which brings together Government, labour and employers to tackle issues of common interest to advance the economy. Labour bodies assist workers to assert their rights and fight for justice when they feel prejudiced. In most countries, this is the main mandate of labour unions, but not so in Zimbabwe, where labour bodies such as the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), have over the years morphed into active political players fighting in the opposition’s corner.
A record of fighting government
A history of the ZCTU will put things into perspective. The labour body was formed on 28 February 1981 with the active support of Government. The latter sought to correct the uneven labour rights and relations landscape of the Rhodesian era which were characterised by the tight control of the trade unions by the white minority which was driven by the goal of entrenching their economic privilege.
Government intended to bring about a new and free labour environment in which workers, especially black ones, who suffered oppression and unfair treatment at the hands of whites, could assert and exercise their rights. Government also moved to enact the Labour Relations Act of 1985 to provide a legal framework for the new labour dispensation.
The legislation, however, paradoxically became the spark which ignited the fire of bad relations between Government and the new labour body. This was to be exacerbated by the election of the late Jeffrey Mutandare from the Associated Mine Workers Union of Zimbabwe (AMWUZ) in 1985 as the ZCTU president. Unlike Alfred Makwarimba, his predecessor, Mutandare delighted in criticising Government on various matters which included the Labour Relations Act. He described the law as centralising control over trade unions in Government.
Politicisation of labour
The severe economic hardships brought about by the Government’s adoption of the World Bank-recommended Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (Esap) in the 1990s became the straw which broke the camel of the relations between Government and the ZCTU.
Instead of working with Government to come up with mutually agreeable solutions to the challenges facing the nation, the ZCTU, whose secretariat was now led by the late Morgan Tsvangirai, chose the destructive path of confrontation.
Zimbabweans will remember how Tsvangirai led the violent and destructive food riots of January 1998. Thousands of companies suffered millions of dollars in looted stock and damaged assets as Tsvangirai rallied both workers and ordinary citizens in nationwide mutiny over a bread price increase. Instead of bringing Government and business to a negotiating table to discuss workers’ discomfort with the increasing cost of living and propose a way forward, the labour body chose open confrontation with Government, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. This marked the ZCTU’s departure from its labour mandate of fighting for the workers’ welfare to fighting Government in support of the opposition.
National Working People’s Coalition and the MDC
Given the foregoing, it was not surprising that when the National Working People Coalition (NWPC), body made up of 40 associations drawn largely from the civil society fraternity and students, met in February 1999 ostensibly to come up with solutions to the country’s challenges, the ZCTU played a key role in deliberations.
The meeting culminated in the formation of the MDC seven months later. The world was not surprised that Tsvangirai became the founding leader of the Western-funded party. The ZCTU continues to boast on its website that it “played a key role in changing the political landscape of Zimbabwe” and is conveniently mum about how it has sacrificed workers’ welfare and rights on the altar of politics to the detriment of labour issues.
Opposition funding conduit
Apart from playing midwife to the birth of the MDC, the ZCTU continues to be a rogue labour body which openly dabbles in politics on the side of the opposition. The labour body was hoist by its petard when its political brainchild invited sanctions which killed Zimbabwe’s economy dealing a blow to subscriptions from its member unions as workers were retrenched in droves.
This forced the ZCTU to abandon its large rented Travel Centre building offices in Harare and moved to the less prestigious Gorlon House in downtown Harare, which it owns. Faced with this harsh economic reality, the ZCTU took to playing the conduit for foreign funding for the MDC to enable the opposition party to avoid contravening the Political Parties (Finance) Act. The law precludes local political parties from receiving foreign funding among other provisions.
When the MDC lost the 2013 harmonised elections, the MDC fell on hard times as its Western backers were frustrated and abandoned it.
In 2016, the ZCTU played an active role in securing funding from some Western countries for the survival of the party through projects such as the MDC’s National Electoral Reforms Agenda (NERA). As the funding came through, the ZCTU shared it with the MDC to ensure its own survival.
Abandoning the worker
Over the past few years the ZCTU has become more shameless in its politicisation of labour issues and callous abandonment of the workers. This has resulted in some self-respecting labour unions such as the Zimbabwe Teachers Association (Zimta) leaving the labour body citing its increasing dabbling in politics.
Perhaps the most telling sign of the ZCTU not caring about workers any more is its position on the issue of the unpaid and fired MDC workers. The labour movement was prepared to organise on behalf of the MDC, nationwide destructive and violent protests against Government in January last year over a fuel price increase but refused to pronounce itself clearly on the reports that Nelson Chamisa fired over 145 MDC workers in June last year and that in May this year many of the workers on the party’s payroll had gone unpaid for months on end.
Only last week the labour body joined the attention-seeking phoney Amalgamated Rural Teachers’ Union (ARTUZ) in calling for a protest against Government for allegedly refusing to pay teachers in United States dollars and failing to implement economic and political reforms. This left many progressive Zimbabweans asking how political reforms had sneaked their way into labour unions’ mandate.
Disgrace to the global labour movement
The ZCTU’s behaviour has brought the international labour movement into disrepute. Some have questioned whether anyone has heard of South Africa’s Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) playing the running dog for the Democratic Alliance or Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters. Neither does it dabble in politics on behalf of the ruling African National Congress (ANC). Even when the economy turns round the corner and companies employ in millions again, the ZCTU is very unlikely to re-gain the respect of workers after squandering their trust and trashing the mandate they gave it in pursuit of opposition politics.
