Arrested labour leader handcuffed and moved to Harare on public bus

By Violet Gonda
19 October 2005

The General Secretary of the Commercial Workers Union and leader of the MDC Women’s Assembly Lucia Matibenga was arrested Wednesday on unknown grounds by police in Gweru. Matibenga had been ordered to report to the police station there in the morning, but was later handcuffed and put on a Harare bound public bus with 2 police escorts.

Matibenga said she had been told that there was an outstanding warrant of arrest but Gweru police refused to show it to her. They then took her in handcuffs and put her on a public bus. Te police told her they did not have fuel or a vehicle to transport her to Harare Central Police Station.

Speaking to us on the bus, the labour leader who holds a lot of influence in the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions and the MDC said this is part of the harassment of ZCTU officials by agents planted by the government.

She believes her arrest is connected to the ongoing problems with the Commercial Workers’ Union of Zimbabwe. The General Secretary said: “In May, state sponsored people invaded our union offices trying to remove, to oust myself and my executive which runs the union. And we challenged that in court, and we successfully did so, and now we are back at the union working. But they continue to use their friends and relatives in the police force to harass us so that we don’t concentrate on our work.”

State agents have in the past seized equipment from the ZCTU offices claiming that officials had externalised foreign currency. They have also disrupted Union meetings by physically attacking top officials including Matibenga herself. Some officials and workers in the Transport Union, Leather Union and the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists have been at the forefront of these attacks. These unions were voted out of the ZCTU in a vote of no confidence as the government campaign to disrupt the union intensified.

The ZCTU president Lovemore Matombo and secretary general Wellington Chibhebhe have also been under attack during a government campaign to replace them with a pair more sympathetic to the government.