Weary Zimbabweans suffer national strike
Zimbabweans braced for a national protest strike today in the wake of a police crackdown on government opponents.
Scores of businesses had shut down yesterday, and some main factories were operating at reduced capacity as a wary calm descended in the capital, Harare.
Police reinforcements were being deployed during the strike, spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena said.
The main Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions called the two-day strike to protest against the country’s economic crisis, accusing the government of corruption and mismanagement that fuelled official inflation of nearly 1,700 percent – the highest rate in the world – as well as 80% unemployment and acute shortages of food, hard currency and fuel.
The were no immediate reports of labour officials canvassing for support that, before past strikes, had stoked tensions and led to police searches, scuffles and arrests.
Labour unions urged strikers to stay home, and planned no street demonstrations, for fear of inciting police action.
Bvudzijena said the planned strike had been declared illegal, and that police were manning an increased number of road blocks and were being “strategically deployed” at bus stations, outside businesses and factories and at commuter transport ranks in townships to stop intimidation of workers by labour activists, state radio reported.
He said police would protect people going to work and “going about their legal business”.
Executives at one Harare engineering plant said its workers planned to ignore the strike because the lunch provided in the canteen was the only daily meal they could rely on. Other workers feared that participating in the strike would lead to their pay being withheld.
Labour Minister Nicholas Goche, in a statement Monday, accused the labour federation of “playing political games” in support of an opposition-led defiance and civil disobedience campaign as well as a string of alleged petrol bombing across the country.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the UN was “very much concerned about the situation” in Zimbabwe.
“It is necessary for the leaders of the Zimbabwean government to strictly abide by all democratic rules, to firmly establish democratic rules again,” Ban said at UN headquarters in New York.
