Zimpapers Logo

Job losses triggered by the recent Supreme Court judgment empowering employers to terminate worker contracts on three months’ notice have led to widespread rage and worker organisations have petitioned President Mugabe to invoke his powers to stem the sackings. But the workers are also saying they are willing to unite and take on employers head-on. Our Political Editor Tichaona Zindoga (TZ) spoke to Zimbabwe Federation of Trade Unions secretary general Kenias Shamhuyarira (KS) on this hot issue…

TZ: Labour relations have taken centre stage after the recent Supreme Court ruling which empowers employers to terminate workers’ contracts on three months’ notice. There has been outrage, which is now a matter of public record, but how do you think we have come to this situation?
KS: Yes, I think in all earnest, like the Head of State and Government, President Mugabe said, the judges simply did their job by interpreting the law. Interpreting the law is something else because you have to read and interpret what it means. But jettisoning an interpreted law into a veld fire of malicious intent like what has manifested now is what is a cause for concern to us as a revolutionary trade union, ZTFU. We observe that this no longer has anything to do with the interpretation of the law but is now much more to do with individual and class agendas in terms of their ultimate goal, which in our view is to derail the revolutionary path that the Government of Zimbabwe has been taking.

Mind you, we inherited the laws that we are using from our erstwhile colonisers, who enacted them to protect their interests and it’s still up to us as a country to continue to refine them. And it’s still up to us to align all our institutions with our ideological thrust that came about through the liberation struggle, which is Marxist/socialist (ideology).

Any country in the world has an ideological framework. Take for instance the Americans. It is embedded on capitalism. They know capitalism is whereby they pursue individual agendas, which include stealing from the weaker, which include distorting, which include causing disharmony and disarray.

The world over you have seen what America is doing. When they do that, it becomes easy for them to make prey of whatever target they will have targeted. So, in this regard it is very awkward for our judiciary, which is one arm of the State, and our Legislature, which is an arm of the State, to actually not have seen the ramifications of such a void as has been pronounced in the judgement.

It is the duty of the Legislature, if they really seek to protect the interests of Zimbabweans to rectify the matter.

TZ: But is this not a matter of economic pragmatism; the employers saying that offloading workers is a way to stay afloat? Okay, you are a worker representative. May I bring you into the shoes of an employer who is operating at a loss or below capacity. Do you not think that maybe this kind of thing would help at least in the short-term?
KS: My friend, workers are the vanguard of the economy. There is no country; there is no thriving economy that has thrived on depriving the wheels of production, the workers. What is lacking are sound innovative ideas on how to diversify their business parameters beyond horizon. And they always take it out on the worker because this is a war between capital and labour. Labour is always the weaker recipient because the employer’s duty is to provide capital and the worker’s duty is to provide services. So why would you say when you fail, then you say it’s the worker? You are failing to bring new horizons to your business on which you have put your capital. We don’t have to be so myopic to that regard because at the end of the day, if you see all of these companies that have already discarded 16 000 employees, it’s not premised on the need for sound economic environment, but it is premised on greed and selfishness because you still are likely to see CEO and middle managers driving posh cars, sending their children to elite schools, flying to and fro and so on at the expense of the workers, who are working at times with six months of no salary.

You see, the worker is always being the subjugated one. This will never attract any growth of any given undertaking because you are actually loosening the bolts and nuts that are supposed to tighten your business pyramid.

TZ: There has been an observation that the people who are clapping the most or who are happy the most including some judges are the people who want to quickly offload workers without due regard to their livelihoods. And you are seeing a kind of conspiracy?
KS: The conspiracy is that you see some of these judges and all these ministers and officials in MDC and Zanu-PF are enjoy the comfort of their offices and perks they get from the fiscus. These are people who are hypocrites, pseudo-revolutionaries who pretend as if they like him (President Mugabe) yet at the back of their minds they are actually targeting him. Why would we have a party like Zanu-PF, a revolutionary party that brought about independence, that brought about the worker rights, that brought about employers’ rights allow this kind of situation? So this is where the conspiracy and complicity is all about. And now they are also very much in close contact with the IMF and they want to take the measures of IMF to try and put them. They to think that they can give us salvation, which is a non-starter. All these programmes are premised on the IMF.

It has happened in Greece, they cannot continue to come and say we want ESAP now, no. They will come and talk about austerity measures. Also remember this business community tried to convince the Government that this country could progress because we didn’t have foreign currency but then we moved over to the multi-currency regime. We now have a currency, which can buy anywhere in the world but business shifted from that and started blaming the so-called country risk factor . . . The country’s risk factor is them the business people, the predatory capitalists who can’t innovate, who can’t think beyond the box. Some ministers in Government are hypocrites, very dangerous people who lack clarity.

Why have we failed to bring completion to the land reform programme or the indigenisation and economic empowerment programme? You see these are the people in our midst. This is where the problem is.

TZ: You have been meeting the Government lately and there was a meeting between labour and Minister Prisca Mupfumira. What came out of it?
KS: What came out of it is we truly managed to convince the minister and we all agreed that the minister was going to persuade His Excellency to invoke the Presidential Powers Temporary Measures Act for six months, which will act in retrospect to cover for all the casualties. By then the figure was at 8 600. This has not happened.

Some people are saying invoking the temporary powers would be draconian but what is more draconian between a person who deprives 8 600 patriots a source of livelihood and simply putting a stop to that madness? Then you begin to feel that this is being done by shrewd contrivers, cunning plotters, people who don’t have the people at heart.

TZ: We observed that on Thursday, worker bodies with the exception of the ZCTU held a joint Press conference to address this issue. Can you just comment on this closing of ranks in the labour movement at this juncture?
KS: The importance of it is that it is now unity of labour versus capitalism. We don’t want to put political illusions into it. We are just talking of bread and butter, we are talking of productivity, and we are talking of making sound economic adventures in our country regardless of those that are coming from whatever political parties.

TZ: One of the resolutions that you have come up with is to give the Government an ultimatum of up to Monday to resolve the matter. Can you elaborate on this?
KS: It’s a plea to the Government, although we are targeting precisely the Head of State because he is the only person who can stop this madness. And already he has alluded to the fact that the law must always seek to protect its people. And we are saying thank you very much, just use your powers within 72 hours because now the veld fire is continuing. These people (employers) are not stopping and they are not even cooperating with the Government in trying to put this to an end. So it is up to him because these people want to create a spirit of rage against President Mugabe. When workers coupled with vendors go into the streets, that will be so disastrous and the only accountable officer to this will be His Excellency. That’s why we said before it’s too late, put this to a stop.

Why did judges give such a judgment at the expense of the supreme Constitution of Zimbabwe, which says any law must seek to protect democracy, citizens, fairness and justice? These are very limiting. Even in the labour law, any judgment must always reflect democracy, justice and fairness. But his has never happened. So the only person that can stop this is President Mugabe. The 72 hours is also a sound warning to the predators because we will go to them. And we know the President does not want workers to go against employers, neither the employers to go against the employees.

TZ: What do you mean going after the employers?
KS: What we mean is that we will start targeting the companies with big casualties. We will unlock the gates, reinstate all the workers and takeover the company. We will proceed with the company’s operations. That is what we are going to do. After all we have got a law which entails us to do that, the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act and we will do that.

TZ: But some of these entities are wholly owned or majority owned by Zimbabweans. How do you seek to do that? They are large companies that have been at the forefront of giving these notices of expunging these workers.
KS: Then if you are such a Zimbabwean who doesn’t pursue to economic blueprint Zim-Asset then I think you are a casualty. You are a pseudo-revolutionary, you are a reactionary element and you must not be in our way, we will just remove you. After all we do not seek to protect individuals, we seek to protect the popular masses upon which the liberation struggle was fought for.

TZ: Lastly, should workers have confidence that they are well represented in the country? That finally the labour movement is dealing with the bread and butter issues and not politics?
KS: Yes, I think they must start to celebrate that because over the years the same capitalists divided the workers. We now have in our midst progressive people like Raymond Majongwe, who used to have other political agendas. We are ready to fight this war together for the good of popular masses.