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Solidarity with the Zimbabwe trade unions
Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU)
Extracted from COSATU Weekly News
January 13, 2006

http://www.cosatu.org.za/news/

COSATU has deplored this week's raid by armed police on the offices of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), condemned the seizure of the federation's documents and rejected government allegations that ZCTU leaders have been illegally dealing in foreign currency.

"COSATU," says its statement, "agrees with ZCTU president, Lovemore Matombo, that the raid was a ploy by the government to harass and intimidate them from fighting for workers' rights and freedoms, and that its real aim was to find a pretext to attack the labour movement after the government failed to impose puppet leaders on the ZCTU last year. This is a view confirmed by a senior police officer who is quoted in the media as saying that the raid was ordered from 'high office' and that it was 'part of a plan to destabilise the entire labour union'.

"This raid took place at a time when Zimbabwe is facing a full-blown economic and political catastrophe. The economy is going into freefall, unemployment and inflation are rocketing, more and more desperate workers are being forced to emigrate as the only hope of finding work, and the living standards of those remaining are reaching mass starvation levels.

"Meanwhile government attacks on human rights, civil society and the trade unions continue relentlessly. This is not the first time that the ZCTU has been under attack. As the most effective voice of protest against the disastrous policies of the Mugabe government the ZCTU has seen its leaders arrested, jailed and tortured many times, demonstrations have been brutally broken up and there has been a concerted attempted to replace the elected leadership with pro-government stooges.

"Yet the ZCTU has continued to organise protests against worsening poverty and attacks on trade union rights. It deserves the support and solidarity of workers throughout the world."

COSATU reiterates its view that South Africa cannot sit idly by as the situation deteriorates. "The total collapse of Zimbabwe will seriously affect South Africa and other SADC countries, as thousands of Zimbabweans flee across the borders as economic refugees. The situation in Zimbabwe, as in Swaziland, whose even more undemocratic regime has been arresting its chief opposition leaders, threatens the whole basis of the AU's African Peer Review Mechanism and its commitment to human rights. If the continent's democratic governments remain silent on these two states which contemptuously flout the standards of good governance to which all Africans aspire, the AU initiative will never be taken seriously."

COSATU pledges to intensify its campaign of solidarity with the ZCTU and calls upon the workers of the world to join in demanding that the Zimbabwe government cease its attacks on the trade union movement and civil society and fully restores the human rights of all its citizens.

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