Workers Charter Supports Zimbabwe's Fight For Freedom

Two weeks ago, on April 3rd and 4th, Zimbabwe was rocked by a General strike, as the urban movement of the working poor stood up against the vicious repression of Robert Mugabe's dictatorship. Many democracy and union activists have been beaten, arrested and imprisoned. One student leader was murdered.

Workers Charter in NZ is proud to have one of those grassroots fighters with us in Auckland this SUnday and Monday.

(The Organisers of the Workers Charter forum are now scheduling media interviews with Munya, who will only be here Sunday and Monday. To arrange an interview, please contact Joe Carolan
mobile/ txt: 021 186 1450
email: solidarityjoe@yahoo.com )

(Workers Charter is a left wing network of trade union and social justice activists who publish a monthly newspaper by the same name. Its editor is John Minto. Copies of Workers Charter are available to all intersted parties- please phone John at 0800 2 UNITE)

Profile of Munyaradzi Gwisai

Personal

Born on 12 March 1968 in Gweru in Zimbabwe as Enock Munyaradzi Chikweche.

Went to primary and secondary school in Gweru at Senga Primary School and Chaplin High School, respectively.

Studied for an undergraduate law degree at University of Zimbabwe (1988 – 1991) and a masters degree (LLM) at Columbia University (New York) 1992 – 1993.

Professional and Academic

Has worked as a lecturer at the Faculty of Law (University of Zimbabwe) since 1994 to the present where am currently the Director of the Commercial Law Institute. Areas of interest: Labour Law, Jurisprudence, Human Rights Law and History of Roman and Roman Dutch Law.

Registered member of Law Society of Zimbabwe focusing mainly on pro bono work on behalf of trade unions, workers committees and individual employees.

Chairperson of the Zimbabwe Labour Centre, a non profit NGO which specializes in research in the fields of labour law, history and economy as well as working with trade unions, shopfloor workers committees and individual workers’ activists in matters of unfair dismissals, retrenchments and infringements on the right to organize.

Publications include:

Labour and Employment Law in Zimbabwe: Relations of Work under Neo-colonial Capitalism ( ZLC and Commercial Law Institute, 2006)

Revolutionaries, Resistance and Crisis in Zimbabwe: Anti-neoliberal Struggles in Periphery Capitalism (ISO, 2002, updated 2007)

A Guide to Farm Workers Rights (LRF, 1995)

Revolution in the 21st Century (Unpublished, 2007)

Political History

Member of the National Co-ordinating Committee of the International Socialist Organisation – Zimbabwe (1994 up to date)

Deputy Chairperson, Zimbabwe Social Forum (2007 – current)

MDC Member of Parliament for Highfields (2000 – 2002)

General Secretary, University of Zimbabwe Students Union (1989 – 1990)

Fighting Zimbabwe's Two Dictatorships

by Munya Gwsai
30 March 2007

The people of Zimbabwe are suffering from both the political dictatorship of President Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) as well as the economic dictatorship of employers, businesspeople and the rich. While Mugabe unleashes repression, businesspeople unleash vicious price increases on the basic necessities of life.

Monthly wages are less than Z$200,000 despite the official Poverty Datum Line being over $600,000. Transport alone costs over $220,000 a month. Prices of food, clothing and the anti-retroviral drugs necessary to fight HIV, have gone through the roof and thousands die each week as a result. The Zim dollar has again collapsed and inflation is over 2000%.

Despite this, not everyone is suffering. The architect of government neoliberal policy himself, Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono, was exposed earlier this year as having splashed billions on posh cars and mansions. The bosses and many of the "Lords of Poverty" who run the foreign-funded non-government organisations are "earning" huge, often forex (foreign exchange) denominated, salaries and benefits. Capitalists' profits have been such that the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange was voted among Africa's top three performing in 2006!

The very same Western diplomats who now laud Zimbabwe's bourgeois opposition were the same ones who applauded Gono as he rolled out increasingly harsh neoliberal economic policies, slashed subsidies that provided some relief for the poor and paid money to the International Monetary Fund these past three years.

However, the economy has now become the weakness of the elites — both dictatorships fear the entry of workers, the urban poor and the rural masses into the political equation.

The virtual state of emergency imposed in the towns and the killing by police of Movement for Democratic Change activist Gift Tandare have failed to quell anger and struggle.

The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) has called for a national mass action in the form of a stay-away on April 3-4. The economic, social and political demands now being raised link the various political and economic demands of the poor and oppressed in a manner that goes beyond the limited demands of the bourgeois opposition parties and civic societies.

The elites realise this and want to pre-empt the current struggles and prevent them from radicalising further. Such a mobilisation could challenge not only the corrupt and brutal Mugabe regime but also the neoliberal free-market capitalist foundations on which it is now embedded. They want to prevent a movement similar to the anti-neoliberal, anti-capitalist, anti-dictatorship and anti-imperialist movements seen in Latin America.

This is now the common objective of local and international elites in regards to the Zimbabwe crisis, as shown in the March 5 International Crisis Group review of Zimbabwe. The elites in government and in opposition would like to reach a settlement or "social contract" between themselves that would see an end to Mugabe but not to Gono's policies. This is what lies behind the manoeuvring of the various factions within ZANU–PF.

Such a project would, at least at the beginning, incorporate compliant sections of the opposition, organised labour and "civic society" to be used as a safety valve to contain mounting anger from below as the new government embraces a total and naked neoliberal agenda.

However, workers, residents, traders, women, HIV/AIDS activists, students, disability rights activists, debt cancellation activists, and the rural poor have their own interests that need to be linked with both political and economic democracy in the public and private spheres of life.

This means a fight for a new people-driven democratic constitution that not only guarantees free and fair elections but also guarantees the right to free and quality education; access to health, anti-retroviral drugs, water, housing, electricity, and facilities for the disabled; an end to patriarchal and capitalist oppression of women; and support for poor farmers; as well as a living wage, pension and state support for workers, the elderly, pensioners, vendors and traders, war veterans and the disabled. Such a constitution must subordinate both public and private wealth to fulfil such demands. By definition that movement can only be anti-neoliberal, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist.

The Zimbabwe Social Forum has committed to mobilise the different segments and clusters of the social forum process in Zimbabwe and regionally for this action as we did for the 2005 ZCTU-led anti-poverty demonstrations. It is heartening to see the solidarity actions already being planned in South Africa, Botswana and Britain.

The challenge is to develop this kind of action into a sustainable programme of full-scale democratic united actions from below in the next couple of months. Without this, there remains the real danger that the courageous fight, sacrifices, including that of blood that we have seen in the last few months, might be channelled into a dead-end elite settlement for the benefit of the few rather than the many.

From: International News, Green Left Weekly issue #705 4 April 2007.

ENDS

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