Wave of protests anticipated in Zimbabwe this week

By Violet Gonda
12 February 2007

A wave of protest marches by disgruntled workers, students and pressure groups are in the planning stages. The increasing price of basic commodities caused by runaway inflation has made daily life impossible. Already doctors and teachers are taking industrial action. The Zimbabwe National Students Union has given 13th February as their deadline for a class boycott over recently introduced unaffordable tuition fees.

Jacob Mafume, Coordinator of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition said the situation has gone beyond just increasing salaries, devaluation and all the other cosmetic efforts that government normally resorts to.

For the first time since the late ‘90s the country’s civil servants, working under the Public Service Association, warned the government to improve working conditions or face unspecified action. An industrial action by the civil servants in 1998 effectively crippled government operations.

Mafume said: “I think we have a fundamental economic crisis, a fundamental social and political crisis and there is a need for a whole scale approach to deal with the situation. And I do not believe the government, as it is currently configured, is willing to stop and look around and come up with a wholescale situation.”

The Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition coordinator said the way forward is for the government to begin negotiating with stakeholders in good faith, and to begin putting in the reforms that are needed so that Zimbabwe can be accepted in the community of nations.

He said there is also a need for respect for human rights and the rule of law. “We need to be able to respect the will of the people. It does not help the government in a situation where its commitment to elections is already being doubted, then suggests to the whole world that it is going to push elections even further. It does not help the government to keep on clamping down on media such as it does now. It does not help it to keep disobeying bilateral agreements at their own whim. There needs to be a certainty in the way this country is being governed.”