The vultures who reign in Zimbabwe feed on carcases not quite dead.
In today's ZWNEWS featuring Reuter's Stella Mapenzauswa's "Zimbabwe unions back strikes amid economic chaos" I am inclined to dyslexia in mid-sentence. Should we not hope that Zimbabwe unions strike back? Without the ZCTU, the opposition MDC would never have got within striking distance in its attempt to scare giant ZANU(PF)scavengers off the dying Zimbabwe bird. The first, generally observed teeterings came from the king vulture himself in in August 1997 when the war vets camped outside his office and frightened him temporarily off his perch. He moved adroitly to a stronger one, closer to the cliff edge where he could not be reached. For (so far) another eight years he has sharpened his talons to perfection and it is his victims, critically wounded by the destruction of the country's economy, not the king vulture himself, that have been `teetering on the brink'- to borrow from Stella's words.
It is a source of amazement that with most formal commercial business destroyed or in the process of destruction(the banks being the last bastion of survival are now regularly `teetering')the ZCTU can still gather a body of protesting `workers' together. Unemployment, estimated at 80% is a frightening thought. With this week's news of the government - predictably - banning entry into the country of Congress of SA Trade Unions (COSATU)general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi and turning away most international delegates invited to a two-day meeting in Zimbabwe (they include leading trade unionists from Zambia and Swaziland and Norway)we are in no doubt that Trade Unions still represent a threat to the ruling ZANU (PF). Convential wisdom has it that Mbeki's fear of COSATU power is one of the reasons he has been so dilatory in the defence of freedom and full human rights for fellow Africans in Zimbabwe.
If the trade unions' intention was, as reported by The Star (SA) on May 20, to `decide whether the ZCTU will go ahead with strikes to protest against the country's rocketing inflation and poverty' the very best of luck to them, I say. I can't help dreaming of the day that my vulture image turns to one of a dead bird, though not the allegorical albatross, strung around the neck of an ancient. Only this has to be a landlubber and if my metaphor is to hold, the ancient will have need to kill himself and thus put an end to the suffering of his victims, the people of that once great country, Zimbabwe.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
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