Crackdown continues as police interrogate ZCTU officials

By Tererai Karimakwenda
08 August 2006

Just days after the police questioned religious leaders from the Christian Alliance about their activities, they have targetted several officials from the Zimbabwe Congress Of Trade Unions in Harare and Chinhoyi. The ZCTU secretary general Wellington Chibebe was summoned by officials in the serious fraud section of the Criminal Investigations Department Tuesday morning. He was interrogated with a possibility of being charged under the Foreign Exchange Control act in connection with a ZCTU bank account through which the police allege there were illegal foreign currency dealings. ZCTU spokesperson Mlamleli Sibanda told us the same case was previously withdrawn from the courts for lack of evidence and it is not clear whether any new information has been discovered. Sibanda said the interrogations may have been triggered by the recent release of an investigative report on the ZCTU that was sanctioned by the Ministry of labour.

In Chinhoyi two ZCTU staff members were also questioned Tuesday by the police regarding flyers that were confiscated from their office last week. Sibanda told us that the flyers contained information for workers about how to deal with taxes which are now too high. But the police claim the information is subversive and likely to incite public violence. The 2 officials Michael Kandukutu and Wilson Kambanje were told they are going to be charged under the Criminal law (Codification and Reform) Act No. 23 of 2004. Sibanda said the ZCTU sent flyers to all their districts as part of a campaign to educate workers about taxation.

As for the case involving Chibebe, Sibanda said the ZCTU secretary general was signatory to an account that was part of a project funded by the Commercial Workers Trade Union Council. He and 2 other signatories who are co-accused authorised Standard Chartered Bank to do some foreign currency exchanges on the parallel market for the CWTUC project. Sibanda said the account involved free funds which the Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono confirmed did not fall under Foreign Exchange Control regulations.

The ZCTU has been the target of harassment by the government for the last few years in what has been criticised as an effort to replace the leadership with individuals more sympathetic to the ruling party. The umbrella labour body has also been lobbying for mass action against the current economic crisis. A statement released Tuesday read: “The ZCTU views all these manouvres by the police as a way of cowing the organisation into withdrawing the proposed protests by the labour body against the ever deteriorating economic situation in the country.”