I used to be in at least two Workers Committees in my previous places of employment. Coming from a leftist leaning ideological framework, it was never a hard ask.
In fact I would regularly volunteer. Be it for the hard negotiations with management for salary adjustments or increases at the risk of ostracisation and refusal of promotion.
Or the harder fund mobilisations for workers welfare when a colleague fell ill or on hard financial times due to family commitments/challenges.
In the 2000s this was not only run of the mill. It was also exciting to do because in Zimbabwe we we had always had a strong belief in the rights of workers to fair remuneration and working conditions.
Moreso because of the sterling amd organically historical worker's rights activism undertaken by the still amazing Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU).
So the perpetual struggle for workers rights was generally in our DNA.
We could see an employment injustice with immediacy and fight to try and right it.
Even as student leaders at the University of Zimbabwe and within the ambit of the Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZINASU) we would regularly join local and national strikes for workers rights and attend without fail the annual Workers Day, May Day, rallies at Rufaro, Barbourfields, Sakubva, Mucheke, Gwanzura and Dzivaresekwa stadiums without fail.
We also joined in the working peoples struggles against neoliberalism (ana ESAP).
And always used to sing that amazing song from the South African Communist Party (SACP) which intones,
"My mother was a kitchen girl,
My father was a garden boy
That's why I am a Communist!"
In all of this as we grew a broader national consciousness (but other former cdes in individual wealth) we always held dear the fact of posterity about workers rights for younger cdes!
We were always keen on passing on the (argumentative) consciousness about shopfloor organising, strikes, negotiations, stay aways and even broader demonstrations!
All based on left leaning ideological premise as taught by for example cdes Kempton Makamure, Shadreck Rutto, Munya Gwisai, Tafadzwa Choto, Grace Kwinjeh, Morgan Tsvangirai, Lovemore Matombo, Hopewell Gumbo among many others.
Together with the still revolutionary writings of Biko, Fanon, Nkrumah, Nyerere, Ben Bella, Lumumba, Neto, Machel and Cabral!
Including the point at which the above cited cdes pursuaded us that in order to make workers rights a reality we need to all come together and support the political agenda of forming a Working Peoples Party in 1999.
This historically morphed into what we now know as the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) as Zimbabwe's largest post-independence opposition political party.
In this a lot of us on the left sufferred the political and economic violence that came with our pro-worker's rights affiliations.
Particularly civil servants in the form of teachers, nurses, police personnel and those in central or local government administration.
From 2000-2009 (almost a decade) cdes bore the brunt of the ruling Zanu Pf's violent reprisal against an organic workers movement for political representation and progressive societal change.
Until at some point we capitulated to co-option in the inclsive government of 2009.
Not that we had much of an option after the Southern African Development Community (SADC) had at least ensured we were not going to be another Iraq or Afghanistan given the liberal interventionist (also read as war) tendencies of Blair and Bush at that global time (2002-2010).
The only problem with the co-optation is that it became ahistorical. We forgot who we were and where we were coming from. Letnalone where we wanted and still want to go!
We forgot that all post independence struggles for a more equitable Zimbabwe derive from our country's working people,"vashandi!"
In this we sadly became more individualistic, less ideological and refused to see the lack of national and economic sustainability to what was beginning to occur nationally and globally.
By the time we hit 2013 we had an emerging national elite linked to tenders and easy money.
We also had a growing anti-workers rights global economic investment cartel with a plan that priotised global financialised capital in our mines and retail sector (vana buda ndipindewo). Be they from the global east or the west!
Come 2017 and the 'changing of the guard' from Mugabe to Mnangagwa in Zanu Pf, and the current era of the 'ease of doing business' we had already faced the risk of being ideologically too far gone to recover the revolutionary path to an national consciousness focused on an equitable life for all Zimbabweans.
Economically and in relation to broader understanding of human rights and the rule of law.
Now we are in 2026. And little appears to have changed.
Workers committees, labour unions and social movements are under relentless attack.
Not only from the usual Zanu Pf ruling establishment but also from private capital that has no major problems with what is obtaining economically. As long as it can make a dollar out of fifteen cents!
What we do accept as workers and organic supporters of workers rights is that Zimbabwe's political economy has become much more complicated.
And that in most cases, it is being experienced at a very personal/materialist as opposed to collective progressive struggle level.
Young Zimbabweans do not understand that it is a universal right to form a workers committee once employed. They are intimidated and threatened with the loss of opportunity amd also made to work ridiculous hours in strenous circumstances for very low pay. Be it in a white or blue collar job.
Retirees or retrenchees are given below par pensions that in most cases they cannot afford to go and collect from the bank.
Or those workers that are radical enough to strike or take industrial action are victimised and summarily dismissed with the full knowledge by the employer that they cannot afford long term legal representation.
Our trade unions and workers associations are much more weaker because of the divergence of individual material interests over collective well being.
Something that for sociologists that know their work points to a structurally and morally collapsing society.
But as always, I function on optimism. We know what needs to be done.
We need to move away from the materialistic individualistic culture of 'zvigananda'.
And return to the ideological principle of an equitable Zimbabwean society, "Gutsaruzhinji".
One in which where you can get the bus, go to the hospital/clinic, send your kids to a decent rural/urban school, enjoy a pension, vote in peace and above all else feel that you belong equitably, like everyone else, with the Zimbabwean people!
Shinga Mushandi Shinga! Qina Msebenzi Qina!
Happy May Day 2026 macdes!
*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity
No comments:
Post a Comment