24 September, 2007Leafleting deemed criminal under Mugabe's bizarre and brutal dictatorship.
ZIMBABWE: In the days surrounding the second worker stayaway organized by the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), government security forces raided the homes of union leaders, abducted trade unionists and their family members, and beat and arrested peaceful demonstrators.
Reports indicate that at least ten ZCTU activists and leaders were arrested between Monday, September 17 and Thursday, September 20. Of them, Michael Kandukutu, national organiser for the ZCTU, Tennyson Muchepfa from the National Engineering Workers' Unions (NEWU), and Justice Mucheni from the Food Federation were beaten and abducted on September 17 while distributing ZCTU flyers about the worker stayaway scheduled for September 19 and 20. NEWU is an affiliate of the International Metalworkers' Federation.
The three were beaten and interrogated for two days before being charged with being a "criminal nuisance" and released on bail. They are scheduled to appear in court on October 3.
On September 18, Reason Ngwenya, the regional chairman of the ZCTU in Matebeleland, was picked up by police in Bulawayo. That evening, security forces also raided the home of ZCTU president Lovemore Matombo. When they found the union leader not there, they abducted his brother Kenneth Matombo and another man in an effort to force Lovemore Matombo to come out of hiding. The two reported being beaten in custody and were released the following day.
Meanwhile, at least 200 people gathered outside the Zimbabwe embassy in London, in solidarity with Zimbabwean workers who were participating in the mass stayaway on September 19 and 20. The ZCTU called for the two-day job boycott to protest a wage freeze imposed by President Robert Mugabe's government on August 29 which outlawed all pay rises without government authorisation and froze all rents, school fees and service charges for the next six months. Failure to adhere to the new law will be punishable by fines or a six month jail sentence.
Hardly a week after banning all wage increases for the country's working destitute, Mugabe gave himself a raise, increasing his salary from Z$62 million annually to Z$1.4 billion.
Workers are fighting for wages to be linked to the poverty datum line, which is adjusted every month in accordance with the country's rate of inflation, currently at a record breaking 7,600 per cent.