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Cosatu unmasked
The Sunday Mail (Zimbabwe)
February 06, 2005

http://www.sundaymail.co.zw/index.php?id=10253&pubdate=2005-02-06

THE Congress of South African Trade Unions’ foiled mission to Zimbabwe was masterminded by the American-sponsored International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), it has emerged.

Following the deportation of the 20-member Cosatu delegation on Tuesday, more details continue to emerge about how the Cosatu machinations are part of a broader agenda of the ICFTU to use trade unions to destabilise countries in Southern Africa being governed by former liberation movements.

Cosatu last year attempted a similar unauthorised visit to Zimbabwe, but its delegation was quickly bundled into a kombi and sent back to South Africa.

It has now emerged that the latest attempt to invade Zimbabwe was less for the Zimbabwe audience but more for the South African constituency, where attempts are being made to stir anti-Zimbabwe and anti-President Mugabe sentiments.

The initial plan was to get the Cosatu delegation into Zimbabwe to mobilise pro-MDC unions and civic bodies ahead of the March elections. But when it became clear that that mission would not succeed, Cosatu persisted with its visit to Zimbabwe in order to create an international incident that would change the South African people’s attitude towards Zimbabwe.

"The visit was less for Zimbabwe but it was meant to build a constituency in South Africa.

"They wanted to create a grievance within the South African body politic," said a senior government official who has been following the Cosatu programme.

The South African government has remained resolute in its position that it will allow the people of Zimbabwe to solve their internal affairs. The general population in South Africa has also increasingly shown a liking for President Mugabe who they cheer every time he visits that country such as when he attended the funeral of anti-apartheid icon Walter Sisulu and at the inauguration of President Mbeki.

Following the deportation of the Cosatu delegation, a South African newspaper, the Mail & Guardian, reported that 12 civil society organisations (all sponsored by Western donor money) met in Johannesburg to formulate plans to mobilise protests against the Zimbabwe Government.

But they seemed to admit that theirs was a futile exercise. The Mail & Guardian quotes an official of one of the anti-Zimbabwe civic bodies, Zimbabwe Liaison Office, Venitia Govender, as saying she was realistic about the difficulties of mobilising mass support against Zimbabwe in South Africa.

"There is not enough anger and passion among people in South Africa about what is happening to their neighbour," she said. "It’s going to be an uphill battle to get people to express their solidarity."

She also concedes that the formation of the coalition of anti-Zimbabwe Government NGOs is "too little, too late" for the March 31 elections. "We will build up momentum over time," she threatened.

But what is shattering for Cosatu is the role of the ICFTU in the transformation of Cosatu from a pro-workers’ trade union movement to one that serves the interests of white capital.

Sunday Mail investigations have shown that Cosatu’s attempt to defy the borders of Zimbabwe and Swaziland and stir up trouble in those countries has nothing to do with the workers of South Africa. Neither does it have the support of the Pretoria government.

Instead it is part of an on going ICFTU programme that has been applied before to the former anti-Western governments of Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.

"The ICFTU have for long coveted the Cosatu role in the anti-apartheid struggle. Cosatu had demonstrated its capacity to have street power. The ICFTU has been keen to commandeer that street power against the liberation movements in the Sadc region. So now they are looking for incidents that will outrage the South African public so that they can mobilise workers to demonstrate. They wanted the Zimbabwe Government to arrest the Cosatu delegation or to manhandle them.

"They wanted this to trigger the protests. But they failed to get the sort of incident they wanted but are now using the deportation as a pretext to form a coalition of anti-Zimbabwe Government and pro-MDC NGOs to put pressure on President Mugabe’s Government. They realise that this is the last time the MDC can engage the Zimbabwe Government as a serious force," said the official.

After the deportation of the Cosatu delegation, the ICFTU general secretary, Guy Ryder, wrote to President Mugabe condemning the deportation. In a letter dated February 2 2005, the ICFTU general secretary claimed that the deportation added up to the Government repression and harassment of trade unions.

Earlier on the ICFTU general secretary had written to Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi, encouraging him to press ahead with the unsanctioned visit to Zimbabwe. He wrote: "We fully understand the spirit of solidarity with Zimbabwean workers that is driving Cosatu to stick to its declared intention to hold exploratory talks with the ZCTU on matters of interest to workers of Zimbabwe and indeed of the region. The solidarity work of Cosatu is known worldwide, which trade unions across the world appreciate very much.

"In the context of globalisation and the ever greater interdependence of workers across frontiers, the solidarity of Cosatu is an essential building block in the continuing task of promoting an effective defence of workers’ interests. In the circumstances, the ICFTU expresses its full support to Cosatu on maintaining its plan to visit the ZCTU, Zimbabwe."

The South African government has distanced itself from the Cosatu action, describing it as a "sideshow" aimed at removing focus from the process being taken by Zimbabwe and other Sadc countries to come up with more democratic ways of holding elections.

According to diplomatic sources in South Africa, President Mbeki and his government have for a long time now been sceptical of the Cosatu political manoeuvres and are aware of the penetration of the trade union movement by Western interests.

"The redeeming thing in all what has been happening is that the ANC sees the forces behind Cosatu. They can see the emerging coalition between Cosatu and the NGOs as well as the South African Communist Party. They know that this is a dry run for a political role for Cosatu in South African politics," said a diplomatic source. This anxiety is likely to increase, as the Cosatu/ICFTU links become more apparent. The ICFTU was created by the American government during to the Cold War era to counter the Soviet Union’s global programme of communism, which was predicated on workers’ support. The ICFTU’s mandate was to penetrate trade unions and turn them into rightwing organisations to compete with Eastern bloc unions, which were greatly influenced by organisations such as Socialist International.

It was the ICFTU that gave birth to rightwing leaders such as Leck Walesa in Poland who went on to change the political landscape in that country and the rest of the Eastern bloc.

In its Africa programme headed by its Nairobi office but reporting to the Brussels headquarters, the ICFTU has sought to work with civic bodies funded by NGOs that draw resources from the same source as the ICFTU, which is largely American money.

After failing to enter Zimbabwe, Cosatu invited a ZCTU delegation to South Africa where they reportedly discussed strategies to confront the Zimbabwe Government.

SABC News quoted a member of the ZCTU delegation, Lucia Matibenga, as saying their meeting with Cosatu had been fruitful.

She said the delegation would go back to Zimbabwe to "implement strategies that were discussed at the meeting".

Read the response by COSATU to this article

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