Police hunt down ZCTU officials in Chinhoyi and Gweru

By Tererai Karimakwenda
27 March 2007

State agents have continued their campaign to intimidate officials from Zimbabwe’s umbrella labour union ahead of a planned mass action scheduled for April 3 and 4. On Tuesday the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions reported that their Chinhoyi offices were visited by 3 men in plain clothes who wanted to find out who was distributing flyers for their planned stay away. They interrogated the acting Regional Officer Wilson Kambanje and told him they were watching his moves closely.

Meanwhile in Gweru, about 40 armed policeman raided the offices of the Zimbabwe Domestic Workers' Union looking for the same thing, fliers about the stayaway. They asked to see an official there named Zacharia Chikwenya, who was fortunately not in the office at the time.

The ZCTU said they expect the raids to continue and increase in the next few days leading up to their protest action. But despite all this the stayaway will not be cancelled. The labour group called for the stay away to pressure government to address the drastically deteriorating economic conditions plaguing workers.

ZCTU Secretary General Wellington Chibhebhe told Newsreel last week that a group of other fake unions met with Zanu PF structures in Marondera and are trying to mobilize thugs from rural areas who will be used to intimidate people into going to work during the strike. But the group has been resilient in the face of continuous government tactics to discredit the ZCTU leadership and intimidate workers.

Asked if they did not risk endangering their members given events in the past few weeks Chibhebhe said, ‘we are more threatened by hunger than those who are physically going to threaten people.’ He urged workers to stay in doors and not leave their homes on the days of the strike arguing this would ensure the police could not brutalise them. ‘They are safer in their homes than outside their homes,’ he said.