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The economy has become the government's main opposition
IRIN News
February 07, 2007

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=57554

HARARE - A wave of strikes in Zimbabwe is making the threat of a "crippling" general strike by the country's largest union federation largely academic, as current industrial action or threats of more to come are already bringing the scenario to pass.

The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), which has often been in the vanguard of protest against President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF government, is taking a back seat, while a whole swathe of society, including doctors, nurses, teachers, university lecturers and tobacco industry workers have embarked on strike action, and miners, government employees and students are on the brink of doing so.

Although previous calls for general strikes by the ZCTU have largely gone unheeded, the federation's president, Lovemore Matombo, has set a 23 February deadline for government to improve working and living conditions, or face industrial action. University students said they would boycott lectures next week, but many are already not attending classes because lecturers are on strike.

Wage negotiations between miners and the Zimbabwe Chamber of Mines (ZCM) deadlocked in late January, and Tinago Ruzive, chairman of the Associated Mine Workers Union, said the union was now considering the way forward. The mining industry is the country's second biggest employer after the agricultural sector.

Ad hoc strikes, such as a recent one-day walkout by employees of the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) for better pay, are an illustration of the high levels of dissatisfaction among the national workforce as a consequence of the world's highest inflation level, now at 1,281 percent.

While inflation soars, wages remain static. According to the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe's most recent report on the monthly budget of the average low-income urban earner, the cost of living has increased two-fold in a month. In January the council put the required budget for a family of six at US$92, up from the previous month's requirement of US$49.

In recent years, the formal economy has shrunk by 65 percent, agricultural production has declined by 50 percent, unemployment has been running at nearly 80 percent and shortages of food, fuel, electricity, medicines and foreign currency have become commonplace.

"The strike by ZESA, tobacco workers, medical practitioners and teachers is for a worthy cause," Matombo said. "With the average minimum wage currently pegged at Z$90,000 (US$18 at the parallel market rate*) and an average family needing Z$459,000 (US$92) to meet basic monthly requirements, and inflation at more than 1,200 percent per month, the nation must brace itself for more serious strikes as workers fail to make ends meet."

Although the ZCTU, an ally of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party, has been a fervent critic of Mugabe, disillusionment with the ZANU-PF government's handling of the economy is spreading among government employees.

Edmore Tichareva, executive secretary of the Public Service Association (PSA), commented that "The PSA, having noted with great concern that the salaries that were awarded civil servants in January 2007 had been eroded by inflation long before they were earned, has resolved to engage the government with a view to have this matter addressed."

The association has not ruled out the possibility of strike action. "In the meantime, the provincial structures of the PSA have been requested to hold meetings with members to plan for the way forward in the event that we do not get the relief we are seeking," Tichareva said.

Tendai Chikowore, president of the Zimbabwe Teachers' Association, (ZIMTA) said the association's members were becoming worn down by the government's failure to put inflation in check and were "being short-changed, and thus heavily paying for their understanding, patience and resilience." ZIMTA is widely regarded as a pro-government body.

"Although teachers were awarded an increment in salaries and allowances with effect from January 2007, failure by the government to bring down inflation and stabilise prices of goods and services has rendered these increments a non-event. Low remuneration has further reduced the status and image of teachers, who cannot afford to buy decent clothing in order to conform to the professional dress code," he said.

The secretary-general of the Progressive Teachers' Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ), Raymond Majongwe, told IRIN that his members had been on strike since the beginning of 2007 and were demanding a monthly salary of Z$650,000 (US$130) instead of their current salary of Z$150,000 (US$30). He said about 5,000 teachers were leaving the country annually to seek employment elsewhere.

"Our members are going to school but are not teaching. We demand that all children of teachers should also be exempted from paying school fees as a benefit similar to that offered to war veterans."

War veterans were the catalyst for Mugabe's fast-track land reform programme, launched in 2000, which saw white farmland redistributed to landless blacks, an event widely seen as the departure point for the country's economic meltdown after the government failed to provide agricultural inputs to the new farmers.

Promise Mkhwananzi, president of the Zimbabwe National Students' Union, (ZINASU) said students were preparing for strike action because the tuition fees of Z$560,000 (US$112) a semester had become unaffordable. "ZINASU shall embark on an indefinite lecture boycott from February 14 if the government fails to address our plight."

A faction of the divided MDC opposition party, led by Prof Arthur Mutambara, was planning street protests over the "untold hardships" of ordinary Zimbabweans. "The 'No' campaign is about demanding, mobilising, organising and collectively engaging in resistance for the restoration of democracy, political freedoms and our dignity as a people," he said.

Mugabe's former spindoctor, Jonathan Moyo, recently dismissed the MDC as an ineffective agent of change and said the real opposition to government in Zimbabwe had become the economy and the race to succeed Mugabe as president.

"If there is one unified truth among otherwise divided Zimbabweans, a truth now also ringing true within key governmental and nongovernmental centres of regional, continental and international opinion, it is that the country's seven-year-old economic recession will worsen ... unless and until there is a far-reaching political settlement of the five-year-old Zimbabwean leadership question."

Mugabe assumed the presidency in 1980, when the country achieved independence from Britain, and was expected to step down in 2008, but is proposing to stay in office until 2010.

"If Mugabe has become so self-serving that he cannot do what everyone can see is the right thing, or if his security men have become so irresponsible that they want him to remain as their hostage while the country is bleeding, then the people of Zimbabwe, including those in ZANU-PF, should do the right thing by rising up to the challenge to save the country," Moyo said. "There is just no other option. Otherwise, chaos is looming."

* Official exchange rate Z$250 to US$1

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