The voice of Zimbabwe's workers
The voice of Zimbabwe's workers: Interview with Lovemore Matombo President of the ZCTU
Lovemore Matombo looks tired. It's not surprising: it's 9am on Monday morning, at his hotel near Euston, and he's had a gruelling few days already. These trips to
The ZCTU has been a potent force in Zimbabwean politics for almost three decades. Formed in 1981, it provided increasingly vocal opposition to the regime of Robert Mugabe during the 1990s. It was the ZCTU which contributed the impetus behind the formation of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change: MDC head Morgan Tsvangirai is a former Secretary-General of the ZCTU.
It's been over a year since Mugabe's ZANU-PF and Tsvangirai's MDC entered into a power-sharing agreement, but the ZCTU's scrutiny of labour practices will not be relaxed until conditions for
'In a mining company known as Mashaba Mining, workers were not paid for nine months last year. This was a company under state control. Workers were contemplating striking, and police went in and shot three of them. They were seriously injured, but they did not die.'
Matombo himself continues to experience the wrath of the government.
'In October I was arrested when I travelled to another district to hold meetings.' He pauses, seeming to choose his words carefully. 'It was disturbing because it revealed that the MDC would allow the president of a labour centre to be arrested.'
If he feels a sense of betrayal towards his old ideological comrades, he doesn't show it. Matombo has been fighting his fight for over 25 years at this point, and has been detained and harassed on more occasions than he can count. Even during the halcyon post-independence days, with Mugabe still widely revered as a liberation hero, Matombo was making himself unpopular with the state.
'Some of us could already see at that point that this government was going to take an authoritarian route,' he says. 'As early as 1985 I was removed from my role as President of Communications of the ZCTU, in what some claimed was a politically-induced dismissal. Then in 1989 I was arrested when there was a workers' strike.' According to the government and police, the strikers were influenced by Matombo.
Looking back, Matombo places much of the blame for
'The Zimbabwean government had no option but to agree to accept the conditions, and in doing so, they created real hatred between themselves and the workers,' Matombo explains. Strikes and collective action followed in the mid-90s, but to no avail. 'The workers realised that the government would not listen unless they attacked them in their own political arena, which is how the MDC was formed in 1999.'
Matombo concedes, however, that bad unilateral choices made by the government at this time also had a disastrous effect on Zimbabwe's economy. In particular, the decision during the mid-90s to give the veterans of the liberation struggle ('war vets', in colloquial Zimbabwean parlance) a one-off payment of 50,000 Zimbabwean dollars each, as compensation for war roles, was an act of political expedience which had not been budgeted for and saw the beginning of uncontrollable inflation. Similarly poorly-considered was the decision to enter the war in the
One of Mugabe's most criticised policies has been the handling of land redistribution, which has seen
Matombo is scathing about the government's land redistribution policies - he says 'farms were handed to people who simply did not know how to till the land' - but has been a supporter of the principle of land redistribution of 1996. In that year, he says, the ZCTU released a document entitled 'Beyond the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme', where they laid out alternative development plans which would no longer rely on handouts from the World Bank and the IMF. Redistribution of land, in a structured, incremental way, formed a critical part of the document - but it went ignored. In 2001 Mugabe's ZANU-PF introduced their land-grab.
'It was a revolution which went mad,' Matombo says. 'And that's when
He is referring primarily to Robert Mugabe's very public attacks on the
On the day we meet, it's almost 30 years to the day since
Matombo disagrees.
'It may be that Graca Machel or Mister Malema don't know exactly what is happening,' he says, sarcastic emphasis heavy on the 'Mister' he appends to the name of Julius Malema, 'or are basing their opinion on certain benefits which they have been given.'
The firebrand leader of
Matombo believes that a good relationship with the
Matombo is also appreciative of the support rendered to ordinary Zimbabweans by western NGOs. In particular, the ZCTU has a strong relationship with
'This is a contribution which has had clearly observable outcomes,' he says.
In the absence of the unaffordable sanitary products, many Zimbabwean women resorted to using unsanitary materials like old cloths or bits of newspaper, which sometimes led to infection. Not only has the 6 million sanitary pads distributed by the ZCTU on ACTSA's behalf largely put a stop to this, but the campaign has also had a dramatic impact on union membership. A report by the ZCTU last year noted that unions dealing with the clothing industry, rural workers and agricultural industry all saw a hike by 50% in female membership since the campaign was launched. The union for the catering industry received a 90% boost in numbers of female members.
'Even ZANU-PF is coming behind the scenes to ask for supplies for their women,' Matombo says.
In the past, the government's antipathy towards foreign NGO interventions saw the supplies of sanitary pads being confiscated, but Matombo says this is no longer the case.
It's not the only change he sounds upbeat about: he expresses enthusiasm about Zimbabwe's gradual economic improvement under the unity government, largely as a result of the decision to dollarize the currency.
'Businesses have started to operate, workers in the civil service have begun to go back to work, and the supermarkets are stocking food again,' he lists.
For a country brought to its knees over the past decade, these are immeasurable improvements. Matombo is optimistic that they're only the beginning of the recovery.
'I believe that the future will be bright,' he says. 'It may be soon, it may be later, but the life of an authoritarian system has always been unpredictable. We know for certain that things will change for the better.'
By Rebecca Davis, ACTSA Member with permission to reproduce for the TUC website.
Picture courtesy of Unite the Union.
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