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Strike fails to take off, Zimbabwe police deploy to head off labour protest marches
Associated Press (AP)
September 13, 2006

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/09/13/africa/AF_GEN_Zimbabwe_Protests.php

Harare - Police sealed off several main streets and the central square in the Zimbabwe capital Wednesday to head off an anti-poverty and anti-government march called by the main labor federation. A planned national strike appeared to have been called off. Banks, shops and factories were open as normal. Managers at one Harare construction firm said labor leaders withdrew the strike call in what they called a last minute tactical change. With record unemployment of about 80 percent in the ailing economy, many workers, showed little enthusiasm for a walkout amid uncertainty of whether they could lose their jobs after the government declared the strike and protest marches illegal, managers said. The main Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions said it was going ahead with a march from about noon (10:00 GMT) through downtown Harare to the Labor Ministry but police cordoned off the organization's proposed routes via the central square. Uniformed and paramilitary police manned road blocks and barriers on approaches to the square and the nearby labor ministry.

The labor organization said it also planned protest marches later in the day in cities and towns across the country to protest economic policies that left workers and most Zimbabweans living in poverty. Police on Tuesday said the proposed marches were banned under the nation's sweeping security laws that require clearance for political meetings and gatherings. Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena said the protests were "most likely not going to be peaceful judging from previous experience." Last week, Security Minister Didymus Mutasa said the nation's security forces were on alert to quell any form of demonstrations. The opposition-allied labor federation is demanding pay increases, minimum wages linked to the official poverty line, tax breaks for low income earners and price regulation to cushion the effects of record inflation of nearly 1,000 percent, the highest in the world. It also is demanding a halt to police harassment of street vendors that has continued since an often brutal government slum clearance operation last year that U.N. officials said deprived at least 700,000 people of their homes and livelihoods and affected another 2.4 million.

Civic organizations have urged employers to at least give workers time off to join marches scheduled between noon and 2:00 p.m. or encourage staff in their work place to debate the causes of the nation's economic crisis, the worst since independence in 1980. Zimbabwe is reeling from runaway inflation, worsening unemployment and acute shortages of food, gasoline and imports, along with an HIV/AIDS epidemic that is killing at least 3,000 people a week. The agriculture-based economy collapsed under after the seizure of thousands of white-owned commercial farms that began in 2000. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change has called for civil disobedience and street protests against deepening economic hardships but has given no program for its action.

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